Tarek

Re: Batman vs Midnighter The Authority is basically a meaner, nastier, uglier version of the JLA. Think "Normal people with superpowers and a vindictive/megalomaniacal streak." They rely on their powers to bring them through trouble, and rarely take the time to think. That said, one of the Superman comics had Superman vs. a thinly disguised Authority. Superman won, because he used his brains.

Re: Kazei 5: The Soundtrack Ghost in the Shell, Standalone Complex, the opening theme. Ghost in the Shell, Standalone Complex 2nd gig, the opening theme.

Re: Martial Arts in the Pulp era There are Philipino martial arts as well. Escrima, which is really a generic name that covers many variations of weapon fighting. Of course western fighting styles are just as good as eastern fighting styles. The "mystique" of the oriental martial arts is due solely to the fact that the teachers were secretive about the combat style they taught. In the west, any teacher of a style of combat would advertise his training and take on anyone who wished to learn. Any hand-to-hand fighting technique that's actually used must be effective, or the practitioners get badly wounded and/or die. The difference between west and east, is that western styles tend to be much more eclectic and not organized in terms of "schools" as the eastern arts are. And it doesn't surprise me at all that "forms" were used in training mercenaries and soldiers in the middle ages and renaissance. Hand to hand combat depends on muscle memory, and "forms" are one way of training the effective movements into the body.

Re: Amaze the Natives Kit Heh. And you can add an activation roll, with side effect if it fails :"Transform: Amaze the Natives kit to Enrage the Natives kit". I'll leave the specifics up to you, but I'd recommend a penalty to Bribery, Diplomacy, and Trading of, oh, about -4. :-)

Re: Villianous/Heroic Powers The original post asked three questions. "Is there a power that lends itself more to good? Is there one that lends itself more to evil? And is there a power that absolutely cannot be used for either good or evil?" In Champions rules terms, there is no Power that is used solely either by villains or by heros. None. What makes a Power villanous or heroic depends on the choices and motivations of the character who uses it. You can add limitations, advantages, and SFX to a Power which may cause it to become more hero oriented or villain oriented, certainly, and may tend to cause the character who has that power to use it less or more often depending on tendencies. But that's a function of the limitations and advantages applied to the Power and the circumstances in which the power is likely to be used, and not a part of the Power itself. The campaign background also plays a role in this. Some things that are appropriate for Dark Champions are inappropriate for a Four-Color Golden Age campaign.

Re: Villianous/Heroic Powers ...but not impossible. Consider the "fleet of hostile alien ships" scenario and a superhero with EB, Megascale, Area of Effect.

Re: Star Fleet Battles The Hydrans had the fusion beams and the hellbores. They were also the first ones to develop gatling phasers. Fusion beams are extremely powerful direct fire weapons up close, but drop off in damage very quickly at range. (inverse square law, I believe) Hellbores affected all the shield facings, but had their greatest effect vs. the weakest shield.

Re: Villianous/Heroic Powers There are no powers that I can think of that cannot be defined solely as "villainous" powers. There are ways to define such things so that they're clearly meant to be evil. "'Rip the living heart from your chest with a thought and display it before you while you're still alive', RKA, 6d6, NND (Power Defense), linked Aid (10d6, only to keep someone alive until the next post-segment 12)" is one that comes to mind as being clearly an evil person's shtick. There are some powers that lend themselves better to villains. Mind Control is a big one. So are extremely high "Superman" levels of PD/ED, Strength, Flight, Body/Stun, all in combination. When you're effectively invulnerable, unless you have some psych lims. of the heroic sort, it is easy to start thinking that you can just take what you want. As a friend of mine says, Superman has to be lawful good, because otherwise he'd be the worst tyrant the world has ever seen. If you want an example of how this could play out, look at the recent run of Hyperion, as written by J.M.S., or the Supreme Power series, also written by J.M.S., both MAX titles from Marvel Comics.

Re: WWYCD: "Dude, you stole my shtick!" Blue Star is blind thanks to a Major Transform with a very particular healing condition, which is one heck of a problem for a flying energy projector. He's semi-retired at the moment. Still, on being informed about it by his teammates, he would first contact his OTHER teammates in the Galactic Rangers and find out if another Ranger had been posted to Earth. He'd also check the list of renegade agents, and the list of galactic villians. Then he'd try to meet with this person to find out what was going on. With his teammates along, just in case. If villian, arrest. If renegade, ditto. If another Galactic Ranger, then why didn't he/she/it follow protocol and at least drop by to say hello? If a citizen of Eart... umm... the United States of America (can't quite get the hang of this whole 'multiple nations on one planet' thing), would seriously suggest a name and costume change. It's a bad idea to impersonate a Galactic Ranger, thanks to all the galactic level villains the Rangers have thwarted over the years, plus there's the whole 'impersonating a police officer' problem.

Re: How to end a dystopia... Yes, but it does prove the point... the slander that was attributed to her is still being taught as historical fact. Corporations are powerful, but the 'cyberpunk' era will die when individuals network together and become something more powerful, in political, social, and economic terms. Look at the underlying assumptions on how the 'cyberpunk' era came to be in the first place, and look at how fragile the underlying social structure is that supports the 'Big Corporations are Gods' mentality. Generally, the big thing that will break the 'cyberpunk' era is this: cheap, abundant resources. With so much raw material coming down the gravity well, no one corporation can control all of it, and the resulting economic boom will cause some corporations to fail and new ones to be started. And those new ones will drive laws into place that benefit them and cripple the old corporate structures, as the politicians flock to the new 'golden goose.' For example, a new asteroid mining corporation opens up. It needs people to work for it, and buys off a few key politicians to put through a small change in SIN controls, allowing anyone who wants to work for them, offworld, to break their current corporate contracts without penalty. Imagine the kind of changes that one act would have in a cyberpunk world...

Re: Build me a power There's another 'drug' like this in Steve Perry's books. First seen in the book, The Man Who Never Missed, which established the Matador universe, there's both a combat drug that increases neurological response time for a short period and a longer term version based on bacterial augmentation of some unexplained kind. It effectively increases nerve signal speed and reaction time for the 'fast-twitch' muscle fibers, meaning you think faster, react faster, move faster, and perceive everything in the world around you being slower. I'd buy that as extra SPD, DEX, and combat skill levels. It doesn't help much with mental skills though.

Re: Build me a power This one's easy. Combat Skill Levels + Overall Skill Levels for non-combat skills. The other effects, being able to think faster, is simulated by the metagame mechanic of letting the players take as long as they'd like in order to think over their next action, and coordinate by just plain talking to each other over the gaming table.

Re: Building a collapsing/recharging force field. Star Hero, page 198, talks about Ablative as it applies to Starships/Force Shields, and suggests a variation of Ablative (-3/4, may be reestablished x amount of time after it breaks). Not being familiar with HALO, this variation works best if the force field doesn't protect while "charging up", I think. You can probably extend the logic and make it a -1/2 limitation (defenses 'recover' at x points per post-segment 12) if you want to.

Re: A very strange build for critiquing. Or, use Multiform with 3 different forms: Sword Dominant w. Wielder Wielder Dominant w. Sword Sword Alone And include "accidental change" or some similar effect to simulate the fact that sometimes the wielder is 'free' of the sword's influence. The first two forms are almost identical, except for the mental stats, while the third would, of course, be only the sword. Then you can have the "Mind Control" power be solely part of the "Sword Alone" form, when it is looking for a new wielder. Include a trigger for the "Sword Alone" form: only when the current wielder dies. Complex, yes, but not impossible.

Re: A very strange build for critiquing. Seems to me this would be a perfect use for the AI template. You have a magical intelligence inside an item, which is very much like an artificial intelligence in a computer.