Kesedrith

Mine would have to be for a group I was the GM for. They ended up naming the group "The Dragon" for reasons that will hopefully become clear as I introduce them. Also not that the initial premise is that they were all associated with the same school in Miami. They did not make their characters to blend together as they came to. Street Dragon: A martial artist and the most vigilante minded of the whole crew. He nearly died his first time out, because he decided to take on a major drug deal going down complete with ten guards, all with automatic weapons. After the first hits though, he started using cover and the occasional dodge, then moving in on their reload phases to take one or two out. That became indicative of Street Dragon's tactics, as well as good team tactics with his teammates. He came to be known as "the Heart of the Dragon." Sniper: A former Israeli sniper who moved to America on retiring. She was one of two characters with a mild penchant for killing. Bottom line: she'd become used to the idea that problems could be solved with a well-placed round. Between her rifle and her own skill levels, she could do called shots anywhere on a target at 3km. She became known as "the Eyes of the Dragon." Well, that or "God," because of one adventure where they were trying to get information out of some thugs, and Street Dragon commented that "God was watching." (They used subvocal head sets by this point to stay in touch.) The thugs laughed, so Street Dragon shook his head and says, "Bluebolt," and one of the thug's knees exploded from a shot by Sniper. Badger: Claws, regeneration, heightened senses, and superleap. I don't think I need to elaborate much farther there. He was "the Claws of the Dragon." Juggernaut: A flying powersuited brick. He also had the highest defenses in the group, and was the movement actor for a lot of team maneuvers, as he could also move the fastest of anyone. He became "the Skin of the Dragon." Char: Of all of them, Char was probably my absolute favorite. He was a flame based character, with the ability to immolate himself (Damage Shield) and project fire. He became the group's favorite on the night they raided a crack house (set in the 90's, give me a break). Char went in as his normal persona to scout the place on the inside. There were three guys taking the money and passing out the smack. Street Dragon also went inside, but he came in later and making threats and requests for information. As they were about to start shooting, Badger leaps from across the street, sweeps through, taking one of the three with him. Presence Attack, the remaining two are standing there in astonishment. Sniper takes out one of the three outside the house. Street Dragon does a kick to Inside Guy #2 that puts him through the wall behind him. That leaves Char with the third. What does he do? He gets the attention of Inside Guy #3 and asks, "Do you want to see something really scary?" He then turns on his flames, and everyone's cheering. I won't go into the rest of that episode, unless I'm asked, but this was the downhill slide toward the National Guard getting called in to deal with them, and the Dragon leaving Miami. Char was, of course, "the Breath of the Dragon."

I've been in games where I co-ran the world with one or more other GMs. When we each had ideas, we'd take over for awhile. Our PC's generally didn't disappear or find reasons to be otherwise occupied when we were the GM, so during those times the were...the dreaded GMPC! Other instances involve things like Cantriped mentions: there was a role needed for the campaign that none of the players chose to take. If that lack later got covered, then the GMPC faded into the background. Long and short, it can, and does work. The bad side of things is when the GM makes a character that they just want to show off with - "Look at me! Look how great I am! Look how much crap you guys wouldn't survive/figure out/win if I weren't here!" Those need to go the way of the dodo.

The move The Abyss also shows some nice use of "water powers."

I'd have to say that my favorite builds to play were Ink, who was based on a similar idea to the character Cloak, only without the cloak, drug addiction/abduction backstory, and without the need of a Dagger to keep his power in check. He did have the ability to envelope his targets in darkness and instill upon them a whammy straight at the primordial fear of the dark. The other I named Dirt. As in "Older Than..." Dirt was a mentalist from the "old" days; a first generation hero in this universe. He'd had a career, retired, but come back at the age of 60 because these young guys were screwing it all up! He was cantankerous, waspish, but a loyal team player, and a blast to play, even for those around me who had to listen to a lot of, "Why in my day....!"

I've always felt that the perk point cost kicked in if the storyline in question focused on the military. The team of PCs is a special forces military unit? There's perks to being the "top dog." If they're high enough rank that they can draw on military resources in some way: perk it. Otherwise, as has been suggested, it's really more appropriate to work it in as Contacts, Favors, and the Social Limitation. Sooner or later, you've drawn watch after all, and can't head out with the rest of the team without getting in some serious stink.

I'll add in songs to all the things mentioned above. There are some songs out there that tell some amazing stories if you think about it, or have some great ideas in them. One of my favorite street level villains I named "The Worm" after hearing They Might Be Giants song "Mr. Worm". He had a 1d6, cumulative, invisible power effects, telepathic Mind Control that only worked on normals. This set up several adventures, because the Worm would mind control some random stranger to go in and rob a convenience store, jewlery store, or whatever, and when they were arrested, they had no idea why the thought had popped into their mind or why they acted on it, but there was no trace of mind control....except the same MO kept happening and happening.....They finally looked at surveillance tapes and someone spotted the Worm at every incidence. Chaos ensued from there. I created an entire set of adventures from the Police song "Wrapped Around Your Finger". I have ideas for Seal's song, "Kiss From a Rose". I could go on, and probably further date myself, but the point is, inspiration can come from anywhere if you're open to it.

I once did a "villain" character like this. I put that in quotes because one of the personalities was heroic. The overall character was named Pleiades. I allowed precognition in this campaign, always with the limitation that two precogs in opposition muddied the river of time so much, each trying to tug the flow to their own favor, that neither could see anything. (Yes, I've read way too much Dune. What of it?) Well, none of the PC's took precog, so to keep the Constellations (the villain team Pleiades was part of) from just rofflestomping them all the time (their leader was a potent precog), I built the heroic personality of Pleiades with precog...and added Duplication into the powerset along with Multiform. Yep, that's right, occasionally they'd get a "save" from Cassiopeia just anticipating everything they did because either heroic Pleiades was in control of the one body, or the Duplication kicked on, all six of the "sisters" took form, and she joined in with the PC's. Deux ex? You bet. It was a fun build though, and the players actually loved fighting against the Constellations, because they loved trying to find that one off, so unlikely thing to do that Cass hadn't seen it, or seeing if they could stress Pleiades out enough that she'd have a blow out and let loose the heroic character. They had fun with it. I had fun with it. It was a good time.

I've had groups that were entirely fighters types that worked just fine. Especially if everyone took something like Fast Healing. Add good perception rolls and one of two characters with various mechanical skills, and traps aren't a problem either. I guess the latter could be considered a "multiclass," except everything else about them was still aimed and carving any enemies up. Even in D&D I've had, or seen, single class parties work. I've found that, in fact, it makes players think more about what they're doing because of that lack of healing abilities or magic or swords and armor. Again, most of that sort of thing is ingrained because many of us were told that back at the beginning of our RPG "careers": a group must contain at least.... Well, no, they really don't have to have that spread of classes.

http://imgur.com/gallery/S82QF I ran across this nice IMGUR thread, and felt it went along with the "Danger! Humans!" thread, just from a different angle. Basically, humans are dangerous, breathing that deadly gas and with their venomous, micro-organism laden bite, but they're also prone to trying to hug almost any fauna they come across. Enjoy. Maybe.

#3 is a big one for me....when I'm running. It's why I've taken to just stating up front that my supers games are more along the lines of things like the Elementals by Comico or the Vertigo titles from DC. It's just how it is. I can play that comic book morality just fine, but for whatever reason, I can't run it worth a flip. I have a similar issue with running games, period. I've tried so hard on so many occasions to run a more episodic campaigns, simply because most of my groups were fluid enough that you just didn't know who exactly was going to show up from week to week. No matter how hard I try though, continuity takes hold, a story line forms in my head, and suddenly the whole thing is an epic adventure. Every time. Every genre.

I'm not sure I wouldn't go for a setting along the lines of the Fremen first arriving on Arrakis. That avoids the necessity of dealing with shields, House intrigue, and pretty much anyone that can see the future outside of the Guild Agents. I like stories about the struggle for survival over courtly intrigue though.

Once upon a time, back at the start of 4th ed., I wrote up all twelve of these bad boys. I never put them into play after writing up Doomgiver, Farslayer, and Shieldbreaker though. All three wound up simply being too close to "I win" buttons. Sure Shieldbreaker can be bypassed if you attack unarmored and unarmed, but unless there's only one PC, how often is that going to happen? I mean, someone would have to be an absolute idiot to jump on the wielder of Shieldbreaker and ignore the four other heavily armed and armored friends they have there...unless you just decide to swarm them and try for a TPK or something.

Spoken like a true...uh...eccentric scientist.

Am I thinking more correctly that you're talking about teams like DP7 and Psi-Force from Marvel's short lived New Universe?

Agreed there. The last group I played with seemed to get the idea, for the most part, that there were simply some villains that we were meant to thwart, but apprehending them simply was never going to happen. Even if we got close he has that escape pod, or it was just a simulucra/android or....You get the idea. It's Dr. D. You don't beat him, you simply stop him. A team that I've always viewed similarly is Eurostar. The only problem with them is that they'll kill your players (Pantera and Bora), whereas Destroyer is an egomaniac, so he won't bother because he -knows- he's superior and wants to gloat and rub their noses in their defeat, so he'll just leave the scene once his purpose is thwarted and show them their insignificance on another day. Pat yourselves on the backs, and count it a win.

And when I've had teams do it, I've handed them their collective posteriors. One team even failed the mission because they sought that confrontation, rather than disabling the death ray first. I have no pity for not taking into account mission objective over personal grandstanding. As TheQuestionMan asserts, the objective with Master Level Villains is always to defeat their objective, not to directly confront them. Doing the latter is a perfect way of being lain flat, and again, I show no mercy on that.

I'd say do whichever you wish. I've found that the biggest mistake teams I've been with make with that scenario is that they try to beat Dr. D. The goal is to stop the death ray. Beating Dr. D. himself should be -just- this side of impossible.

Then I'll still have to wonder if ascribing an extra END for only counting against LTE Limitation might not be the way to go. They're burning normal END to use the power, but it's counting as 2-, 3-, 4-X or more toward that LTE calculation. I'd want to play it out though. It might instead be another case of they're fine, and then just suddenly crash like a pallet of bricks from a 3-story crane.

It seemed that the OP was about trying to limit the number of times an attack could be used by using the LTE rules. Maybe I misinterpreted. I started to say that I couldn't see much use in the whole idea, but it would make sense for an attack or other power that tires the character out for longer than just taking a recovery. They can use this (these) power(s) as much as they want, but they'll reach a point where they're just tired and have to rest for quite awhile instead of just a few seconds.

How about a Limitation that goes something like "X4 End, only for counting toward LTE"? Just a thought.

Hmmm....for some reason this doesn't seem to have posted the first time. With regard to "painting yourself into the background," there are such things now called metamaterials. These materials have micro- (almost nano-) circuits in them that effectively make the "cloak" or whatever act as if it has a negative index of refraction. What this means is that someone looking at the cloak would see what's behind it, rather than the cloak. Anything covered by the cloak is thus effectively rendered unobservable. That is except for the fringe. In short, wearing such a suit or cloak would fall under normal Invisibility rules, not a bonus to Concealment or Stealth. Still, it's a neat thing and completely "real world" for those running heroic level games that might come across such. (As a side note, metamaterials are still ridiculously hard to make, and so still relegated to the lab or those with enough money to burn that they want to make use of it anyway.)

Since I seem to be unable to delete this post, I'll instead change it into something else. One possible special effect that I might allow someone to be able to give a target penalty levels against their OCV would be if they have a power to swarm them with gnats, black flies, or something very distracting, that often are drawn to the eyes. Still, I could see so many better ways of doing that that it's not funny. Such an effect would, however, affect the target's OCV against pretty much everything, so I might be convinced to allow it. I hope the player, not the character, has plenty of levels in Fast Talk though.

A couple other classics to me would be the final fight between Violet and Daxus in "Ultraviolet". (Yes, I know that overall that was a craptastic movie, but that last fight was pretty intense, as was the fighting leading up to it.) Another is Neo's fight with the Merovingian's henchmen in "The Matrix: Reloaded". One for you to play imaginative license with is the battle between Gandalf and the Balrog. Sure it looked boring in the movie, but when you consider that this was a battle between two deity level beings, the real fight was likely not on the same plane as the poor mortal characters, so it looks like they just stood there staring at each other, when in the overall reality....all hell was breaking loose.

Yep, and now this thread is making me realize the potential of doing "increased gravity" or "super magnetism" as Entangles. I'm not sure why I haven't thought of that before.

Slightly off topic, but this reminds me of a 4th/5th edition concept I whipped up using movement powers that were UAO. I named the character The Journeyman.