Monolith

This has to do more with character concept than anything else. In CKC it also has to do with the fact that they are villains and should not always be greater than the PCs who will be fighting them. As I said above, this is why you will see a lot more 20 or 23 or 26 DEX scores as opposed to 21, 24, and 27. It gives the PCs the "initiative" edge. If you take a look at Nighthawk, Shugoshin, Green Dragon, and Cheshire Cat you will see that they are all "starting level" martial artists with DEX scores in the 24-27 range. A 30 is clearly a pinnacle score that few starting level characters should have, but that does not mean that a 450 point example of all the above characters will not have it. Also keep in mind that Steve Long designed the Lightning Reflexes talent and clearly favors it in his character designs.

Consider yourself flamed. Also keep in mind that the human limit in the CU is 30, not 20.

The webpage which has the Marvel Superheroes conversion is here: http://www.geocities.com/Area51/Nova/1996/marvel1.html I did not find anything on the DC Heroes game from the "official" conversion.

The were two issues of the Adventurer's Club in the early 80s which had conversion for Marvel Superheroes and DC Heroes. I think they were between issues 2 and 6 but I will not swear to it. I think someone took the Marvel conversion and put it on a website. You can probably find it if you do a search on google.

Make sure you get the older stuff! If you buy the updated material all the HERO System stats were removed from later printings after HERO/ICE went their separate ways.

Re: Hmmm. Well after Dr. Destroyer MPAs you with his 30d6 and 20d6 attacks once or twice we'll let you know how the rest of the battle turned out when you wake up in the hospital a week later.

Now that was a pleasant surprise. Most of the Dr. Destroyer statements tend to go the other way. I like Dr. D as written too, but I don't think I'll be using him for a loooong time.

I use the gadgets in that book all the time. My players are living in the example base and flying the example vehicle from that book. You must like doing a lot of scratch work.

Re: Do I Really Need the Champions Genre Book? I do not think anything in the book is indispensible. I do think there is some very good stuff in the book though. The archetype sections are useful. The Random Character generator is fun. The vehicles, bases, and equipment examples are good to have. The genre-specific new and adjusted rules sections are good. I also like the "optional" ranged aspect of Susceptabilities. Buy Tclynch's on eBay. You probably won't be disappointed.

Re: What defines extreme or not? I would go with the Major Side Effect with the modifier that it needs gloves. That would give it a -1/4 Limitation value. That would make the cost of the item 13 points.

Yeah, so you had better get all that stuff bought right away!

Yeah, darn that Ben! Why doesn't he get in here and tell us all what is going on!

You are extrapulating a lot from Ben's single sentence. All he says is required is protective gloves. That could be any character who has a force field, or has focused armor, or someone just wearing gloves. That fact that some people might pick it up and get hurt is just what might happen. All focuses are unknown until you see them used. If you have never seen seen a pistol before, the fact that someone can kill someone with it is quite a shock. After you see someone get shot with the gun you know what it does. How many movies have you seen where an unsuspecting person is pointing a pistol at himself because he does not know it can kill him? By the same token, someone who has never seen the Shock Staff before might pick it up and hurt himself with it, but after the character knows it can hurt him he takes steps to make sure it does not. The SFX could also be that it surrounds the hand with crackling energy, so any reasonably intelligent person can discern that it would be dangerous to touch. You might be assuming that a villain will pick up the staff and be shocked by it. I am assuming that most villains are smart enough to know it will hurt them, and only the most intellectually limited people (Grond, Ogre, etc) will actually be surprised that the staff hurt them instead of the hero.

Re: Re: But I thought... I believe the point is that when you are giving a modifier to a power it is supposed to effect the character occasionally. In this instance there is a 1/4 conditional modifier applied to the Side Effect, so when I open up my copy of FREd I see that a 1/4 modifier should affect the character about a quarter of the time. That means in about one in every four sessions something is going to occur which forces the character to either use the shock staff and take damage, or be forced to not use it so as to not take damage. One out of four does not seem to bad to me. It is not a question of the character saying: I am never taking the gloves off. It is a question of the GM putting the character into situations where he cannot use his gloves (perhaps they have been destroyed, or they are wet and will not insulate, etc). The GM inforces the limitation values, not the players. If it were up to the players they would never take off their bullet-proof vests.

You are correct. It appears they have all been removed. Apparently DOJ is no-long offering them for sale. I know Dragon's Gate was removed, but I did not know about the others. I guess that solves that problem then.

The new Hero Games domain might not have cycled through for you yet, but if you are using the message boards on Dan's server you can click the home button and the top and get the regular Hero Games homepage.

Re: opinions of hero products I do not play fantasy games, so I cannot comment on them too much. I believe Shadow World was written for Rolemaster though, and then they added Hero System stats into the game to make it usable for both systems. All the other books you mentioned are Hero Plus products and only available as pdf downloads. All are still available at the online store except for Dragon's Gate. Dragon's Gate has been sold back to Gold Rush Games, and they will probably be producing a paper version sometime late this year. The two Unknown Eagles books are for Golden Age Champions. They basically are fact books for the war, giving dates and times and places. It is a very good resource if you are planning on playing in a Golden Age campaign, but I have not found much use for them outside of that. I did not really care for Haunted Heroes. It seemed very generic to me. Maybe it was meant to be, or maybe I'm just not that interested in the horror genre. I'm sure some other can give you better feedback about it that I can though.

Re: But I thought... No, you are correct. Independent has nothing to do with whether or not someone else can use your Focus. That is determined by the Personal or Universal status of the Focus.

The value of the limitation is based entire on the amount of damage it does. In the example I wrote above, the shock staff will do full damage (8d6 Pen) to the person using it. That is a -1 Limitation. Then there is a 1/4 modifier due to the fact that it only works if the person is not wearing protective gloves. This leaves a Limitation value of -3/4. This is right out of FREd. If you wanted the weapon to do 1/2 damage (4d6 Pen) to the person holding it when not wearing gloves that would end up being a -1/4 Limitation (-1/2+1/4=-1/4).

As far as powers go I would list: Attack Powers: Physical Energy Blast Telekinesis Physical Ranged Killing Attack Hand-To-Hand Attack Entangle Defensive Powers: Force Field (could also be bought as Armor) Force Wall Other Powers: Flight FTL Images Life Support UBO HRRH with Mega-Scale Universal Translator There might be more, but those are the ones most frequently used. Everything else could just be part of a small VPP (this would cover things like Telescopic sense or Clairsentience, etc).

I would write it up as follows: 17 Shock Staff: Energy Blast 8d6 (vs. ED), Penetrating (+1/2) (60 Active Points); OAF (-1), Extreme Side Effects (Side Effect always occurs when not wearing protective gloves -3/4), 12 Charges (-1/4), No Range -1/2

You might want to use a Coin Store/Shop. Many of the upscale coin shops carry large numbers of 1 ounce gold and silver coins. A 1 ounce gold piece goes for around $600.00, and specialty pieces can go for several times that. If it also stocks rare coins you could easily be looking at a several hundred thousand dollar hit. Gold and silver are also fairly easy to unload (meaning the villains would get a better price from their fence), but would require a brick or demi-brick to cart off the load. I always wanted to do a robbery at an upscale liquor store too. Imagine a bunch of villains breaking in to steal a few cases of Crystal or Dom champagne. There are also specialty wines which can run several thousand dollars per bottle. Three of four cases of that could easily make a turnaround of a hundred thousand or more to the thieves. A third choice, and one that is often overlooked today, is a major industrial company on payday. Many workers cash their paychecks when they receive them. A refinery, for example, might have a thousand workers. $500.00 pay times 250 workers cashing their check equates to around $125,000 in cash on hand. That would be a fairly quick and easy score. There are also riverboat casinos (good time is when they are transferring the money to armored cars), Currency Exchange companies (cash a lot of paychecks as above), major Western Union stations (deal with a lot of cash from people who are wiring), as well as the other things which have been mentioned such as art galleries, museums, etc.

Champions Universe recommends 125+75, and then reaffirms the Active Point limit of 40 first mentioned in the Teen Champions section of Champions.

Very nice picture Storn. I look forward to having it destroy my players in a couple of weeks. Thanks!

CKC already has a ranking system within it. I do not know if Steve plans on expanding that system, but it wouldn't be a bad idea. It would definately add some color to the book.