Monolith

Re: Mutants and Masterminds Paragons

While I was thinking about it I will just say there are some Paragons' pdf previews on the M&M site. You can check them out. They might give you a bit of info to help you decide whether you might be interested in the book or not.

http://www.mutantsandmasterminds.com/gimmicks_gadgets/cat_paragons.php

Re: Mutants and Masterminds Paragons

I thought it was pretty cool and could convert easily to Hero ... but then I'm a bit biased

You are not allowed to have an opinion. Go away so we can talk behind your back.

Re: NightHawk version Deviant Art

It saves fine for me as well. Thanks TheQuestionMan for posting the links. I look forward to using many of these characters in my games!

Re: Super Powers in Hudson City

If crime is so bad in Hudson City' date=' why don't some superheroes go stomp it out? And if some superheroes aren't stamping out crime, why don't supervillains go to town on this ripe piece of fruit?[/quote']

How about if we reword these two questions slightly?

 

If crime is so bad in Gotham City, why don't some superheroes, such as the JLA, go stop it out? And if some superheroes aren't stamping out crime, why don't supervillains go to town on this ripe piece of fruit?

 

The only answer which can be given to these two questions is: genre. The genre does not allow for change. Metropolis is what it is for a story reason. Gotham is what it is for a story reason. The same goes for Millennium City, Vibora Bay, and Hudson City.

 

Superheroes do not make changes to their environments. They use the environments as springboards for stories which are action packed but generally have little consequence. The action within the individual story is what is important. Superheroes do not make changes.

The No DEF rule was put into place to keep players from purchasing 15 or 30 AP Side Effect that they would be immune from. A 3d6 EB is an 11 on average. Few Champions characters have less then 11 DEF, few have less then 20 DEF! So with the No DEF rule it makes it possible for supers to be damaged by the Limitation. That being said, common sense should be the norm. The Limitation needs to be limiting to the character in some way. If they can immediately heal from the Limitation then it's not really that limiting.

My personal preference is to use Drain for damaging Side Effects with the Delay rate being set at 5 per 5 minutes. Thus a 15 point SE is 1d6 Drain, a 30 pt is 2d6, and a 60 pt is 4d6. This works well for Characteristics or Powers. It's limiting to the character and makes more sense then just assuming the character takes 3, 6, or 12d6 damage.

Personally I just call this a plot device. If I want Miranda Chen under Interface's control I just say she's under his control. The same for a PC. If I want the character to be under Interface's control then I just tell the PC in an email or telephone call before the game that his character was captured and what happen to him. Then I expect the player to act true-to-form.

That being said, you construct is as good as any I have seen and seems to do that job. A Transformation would be the most correct way to deal with a long-term mentally-controlled character or NPC.

Originally posted by The Mind Master

From what you're saying, you do decide to make changes in the official published versions of stuff. I assume you also allow original villains? And of course many, many things change and evolve the longer a campaign in played, as you stated. So inevitably it's going to grow apart from the published CU.

That's my point. The CU does not change. There are no CU:2003 or CU:2004 updates telling us all the major events that happened within the CU during those years. The CU only grows through the designs and adventures of each GM who picks up the books. We all start from the same place but we all end up somewhere different.

That's my point, and that being the case, why couldn't the campaign evolve to bring in any 4th Edition characters that you really like and miss? Why do they have to be eliminated in your campaign if you like them? You'd still be basically set in the CU, if that's how you consider your campaign. The differences would not be any greater than those we have already talked about.

The campaign world can evolve to bring in anything, up to the point where it starts changing CU history. When you are at the point where you've deviated that much from the common norm then you're playing a "mutant" CU campaign.

If in your CU game Dr. D died in 1990 then he was not there to blow up Detroit, which leads to no Millennium City, no reason for the Champions, and no reason for UNTIL to be allowed to work within the US. When you change the history that much you are changing the entire tone of the CU as it is currently written. There's nothing wrong with that, but you're then playing a dramatically different CU game then everyone else. Your playing a "mutant" game which is as much homebrew as it is CU.

By me adding in the Psi-Kin or Deathstroke to the game I'm not altering the course of the CU because there are already 200 villains we know nothing about except for names within the CU. I'm playing within the same CU game, and anyone can easily use my material within their own CU games without it also forcing them to alter their history or storylines. I guess that's the real difference to me. Anything which alters starting-point continuity leads to a "mutant" CU game.

Out of curiousity, do you consider ALL the supercharacters published as part of CU as existing in your campaign? If a new villains book is published, are they all automatically considered to exist, even if they are never encountered?

Yes, all the villains introduced in the books are considered part of my CU whether I choose to use them or not. The thing about most villains though is that they are written so as not to have a major impact on the CU. They are CU-Generic. 80% of all the villains produced are generic enough that it does not matter if they are in a CU game or not. You can use or not use most of them without any CU continuity issues.

I also assume that just because I'm not using a particular villain doesn't mean that the other 12 superhero teams in the US are not encountering that villain. It makes for nice news blurbs when the players can read about the Bay Guardians and their run-in with Takeofane or the Sentinels fighting Eurostar over Greenland. Having the other characters around allows me to build continuity with the CU universe without ever having to worry about using something I don't like.

Originally posted by TheEmerged

Shoot, I even use a different lineup for The Champions (Defender, Ironclad, Sapphire, Solitaire, KnightSeeker, and Jaguar).

OH MY GOD!!!!!! You mean you're one of the Jaguar likers?

Originally posted by The Mind Master

It is not the "official" CU anymore. And I'd be surprised to find that many GM's do strictly follow the CU.

Once a GM starts playing in the CU it stops being "official" because each campaign evolves from that point. The CU does not evolve by itself. The CU is static, with new books being added to the static universe. What each GM does with it from the point of buying the book determines what the CU is in his own game. We all work from the same baseline universe.

A true deviation from the CU would be a GM deciding that Terror, Inc was not destroyed from within, or that the battle of Detroit never took place. It's when you change the history of the CU that it really becomes something different, not when you just evolve it from a common beginning, IMO.

Originally posted by The Mind Master

All this being said, who really sets their campaigns in the CU anyway? I certainly don't. If there are characters who haven't shown up yet in 5th Ed, and I want to use them, I do. So it's kind of silly to really "miss" any character or group. Just use them in your campaign.

 

Chances are, your PC's aren't part of the official CU anyway, so why bother with the rest of it?

I think you'd find that a fairly large percentage of gamers use the CU as their game starting point. I'm currently running my game in the CU in Millennium City until the time that I can finish writing my New Cairo campaign city, then I'll be moving the players there. But we'll still be within the CU. There's a lot of good stuff in the CU for those interested in running a standard four-color game.

I do agree that it's not a major issue to bring back 4E characters into a game though. The CU is just a common starting point. Where each GM takes it after that is up to them. For example I use Anarchy from EoSA, Deathstroke, Factor Four from Freedom City, The Psi-Kin (modified and renamed the Kindred), and several homemade villains and groups. There's always room for expansion.

I think Killershrike is basically correct. 3 was chosen to make the number for odd dice calculate easier. Easier to figure out that a 13d6 attack does 39 STUN then to figure it does 45.5.

There are some advantages to Standard Effect, and in some small degree it changes the dynamic of combat. The advantage is that you now can set true immunity levels. Because you know how much fixed damage something does you know at what level you need to set the defenses to be immune to it. If you know bullets can do 35 STUN then you know you can buy a 35 DEF and be immune to them.

One aspect of the game that many people seem to dislike is the randomness of the die rolls. Thanks to things like STUN Lotto or exceptionally good rolls it's possible to unjure people with relatively low dice attacks. It's possible, for example, for someone with an 8d6 attack to actually do STUN to Dr. Destroyer with the randomness factor. Whereas with Standard Effect only someone doing 14d6 had any chance of injuring Dr. D.

In a mainstream game there is not that much immediate effect. Most Champions characters are designed to be beaten in 2-4 hits, with an average being 3. Assuming a 11d6 attack, 20 DEF, and 35 STUN the difference is being knocked out with 2 hits instead of 3. That's not that much of a change when you consider how time consuming gathering, rolling, and adding damage dice are to the flow of combat.

I'm not a big fan of Standard Effect. I think if I wanted to play that way I'd just play the old Marvel Superheroes game. But it does have its uses and advantages.

I used Sanctuary as a neutral ground for villains. It was a place where villains could meet, find work, sell goods, etc. I never cared for the idea of heroes and villains mingling on a social level. I just can't see the Avengers and Ultron vacationing together.

Originally posted by grymlocke

or the species that left the galaxy...no explanation..just gone..the mandaarians maybe?...or the gate are even older. from a unknown ancients?

I like this idea. In the future the Mandarrians vanish but they visited Earth in 1973, 79, 84, 91, and 99. Part of their reason for the visit could be to check on the Stargate, which the US Government learned about by accident during their 1999 visit. So now the Government has access to the Stargate but is unsure exactly how to use it. They have been sending tentative teams through the gate to learn more. The Government is mostly hoping to use it to learn about, and then stem the tide of, any future alien invasion forces. After all, it has been 20 years since a major alien invasion and it might be time for another. The Government wants to be prepared.

Originally posted by BNakagawa

Pre-rolled damage only helps if you never push, always do the same number of dice all the time, etc.

You can preroll Pushes too.

I go to every game with a chart that has some 40 prerolls for damage classes 8d6 to 15d6 (more if I have more powerful villains). A villain that does 12d6 gets marked off the 12d6 column. If he decides to Push his attack then gets marked off the 13 or 14d6 column. No problem and slows nothing down.

Most of my combats involve 7 heroes and 5-12 villains, and we get through them very quickly because all my time is saved from rolling damage for those 5-12 villains each Phase.

Originally posted by Vex

Which Half Price Books? Did they have any of the other older books? I recently got back into the game and have been trying to pick up all the old books that I loved so much (the classic Enemies and such) and to find all the books that I never had (the newer Enemies, Strike Force, etc).

If your patient you can find many great deals on eBay.

http://toys.listings.ebay.com/Role-Playing_Super-Hero_W0QQsacategoryZ2548QQsocmdZListingItemListQQsocolumnlayoutZ1

Originally posted by Enforcer84

Hey Monolith, how would you pronounce Goriy?

GORE EE

Any chance you know the russian word for "Snowflake"?

Snezhinka Snay Zheen ka

Originally posted by ThothAmon

Nobody heard of Red Doom? The Supreme Soviet? Comintern?

We all remember them, just after 15+ years I think we're all looking for something new. There are only so many old, reused concepts we can tolerate. Sometimes you need new and fresh ideas and perspectives.

There is a lot of ways to simulate Superman's toughness.

There's the completely invulnerable Superman type:

75 PD

75 ED

75 PD/ED Damage Resistance double hardened

double hardened on 75 PD/ED

This version walks away from 20d6 attacks without taking any damage on average.

The near-invulnerable Superman type:

40 PD

40 ED

40 PD/ED Damage Resistance hardened

hardend on 40 PD/ED

50% Damage Reduction PD/ED Resistant

This version takes 15 STUN from each 20d6 attack.

and finally the takes a beating but keeps fighting Superman type:

20 PD

20 ED

20 PD/ED Damage Resistance

75% Damage Reduction PD/ED Resistant

This version takes 12 STUN from each 20d6 attack, but will ocassionally take BODY too from above average rolls.

My personal version of Superman has him at a 125 STR.

As far as making him tougher, you can buy more PD/ED through Characteristics or Damage Reduction to represent his ability to withstand damage.

Instead of giving the character Growth look at giving him Stretching with a Side Effect (decreased STR) and then PER Levels and Damage Reduction Linked to Stretching.

If the size increase is just a SFX then just give him Desolid and Invisibility with the Linked PER Levels. He shouldn't need the Damage Reduction with the Desolid. Put extra time on the Invisibility to show that he slowly gets invisible.

Originally posted by Kristopher

To get the full effect of the old Shapeshift, you'd have to take it vs Sight, Sound, Touch, and Taste/Smell, correct?

Yes, that's correct.

Originally posted by Corven_Ren

Ok thanks wasnt sure if it should be bought as shepeshift or Illusions

Shapeshift, to some great extent, is really just an illusion in 5th Edition. It uses PER Rolls for people to determine the person is not who he appears to be. I think it's easier to think of shapeshift as an illusion which affects one character and Images is an illusion which affects areas.

In tth Edition Shapeshift might have been better grouped as a sub-power of Images with the Self Only Limitation.

Pinecone has it right. Just throw in 0 END and Persistant (or Continuing Charges) and call it a gadget.

Here are a few I use in my game:

Komar (Mosquito) shrinker with Drain attack.

Krasny Kralik (Red Rabbit) speedster with great leaping ability too.

Vodopad (Waterfall) water control.

Koroleva (the Queen) mentalist.

Goriy (Mountain) Growth brick.

Kot (the Cat) male marial artist.

Beliy Svet (White Lightning) electricty control.

Originally posted by Kristopher

How many dice does Menton have in Mind Control, again? He can easily get far enough over the "target number" on most characters to create significant penalties to the victim's breakout roll.

I know everyone thinks he's VERY tough, but Menton really only does 16d6. Yes, that's 56 on average but against a 15 EGO character that's only 11 over a +30. Still a good chance to break out of Menton's attack.