Great Beyond

Re: A couple of flying manuver/power questions for you guys Well, Hero Designer only has Hit Location, Range, Armor and Throwing modifiers listed under the PSL entry - and of course I forgot my book at home today. Still, I'll take your word. It sounds like a fit to me. (Of course now I'm about 10 points over - so I wont get these cool things for a couple of weeks. )

Re: A couple of flying manuver/power questions for you guys I was looking through the rules, but didnt see that one in there - but that's perfect. (***EDIT*** I did find it later in the Hero Designer, tucked away under the manuvers. Serves me right for not going digital. ). So - PSL. Presumably the SL is skill level, but the P part? Sorry, I'm JUST dangerous enough with the rules to still get thrown by the occasional acronym.

Thing one: So GB is a helluva fast flyer, but not exceptionaly strong (sporting about a 13 STR or thereabouts). What I would love for her to do is to be able to catch falling planes, bits of building and other Superman-ish things. The easy way would of course pump her base strength up, but I dont see her as a muscle-man type. So, what would you guys recommend instead? Thing two: Along that same lines, poor old GB is always getting called on to fly by something really fast (for example, a sacrifice vicitim in the middle of a big room surrounded by bad guys, we'll say) snatch said object without stopping and blow past getting the MacGuffin out of harms way. Would buying a martial manver - something like "Fly By grabbing" - be the best way to do this, or perhaps just buying a couple of levels in a "Grab things as you fly past" DEX skill?

Re: Opinons --- Value Of Limitation On A Disad Well, Great Beyond has farsightedness (nearsightedness - the cant see things far away one), so has to wear glasses in her civilian ID and wears stylish (prescription) sunglasses while on the job. While it doesn't come up that much off the clock as far as combat goes - there's driving, there's movies, a whole bunch of mundane problems that hassle her - so it was worth 10 points or so, I think. (Always, infrequantly, if I recall correctly) So that's what I would go with. Not a character breaker, but it certainly worth a couple of points.

Re: Calling All Heroes! You've got mail!

Re: How would you do this: Big sheet of ice? Ah, good show! I found just what I wanted. I'd searched for ice and variations thereof and came up dry (or came up with way too many hits), but it was Marbles than found the way. Perfect! Thanks!

I'm going for a pretty simple effect, but I'm not sure about the mechanics how to get there: a big sheet of ice (or oil - some kind of big, slippery area). Basicly an area effect that makes folks slip and fall. Simple, right? So would this be a dex drain? Perhaps something that effects the speed of the targets? A 1D continuous energy blast with like 18x knockback? What do you guys think?

Re: Calling All Heroes!

Re: Calling All Heroes! So is that an export function on Hero Designer that I've just not found yet, or is that another program all together?

Re: The Champion Protocols (ie how to take down your character) Natasha - poor old Natasha. While helluva strong and helluva tough, she's had a pretty big exhaust port for the longest time: the ego of a newborn goldfish. After a while she did pick up 75% damage reduction - so bad guys could hit her all day long, but she was just so bad that the damage slid off like eggs off teflon. Magic, however - that was her weak point. Magic attacks would make her fold like a house of cards. Great Beyond - on the other hand, GB doesnt really have kryptonite. She is just an average person who can channel magic, so otherwise catching her off guard is the best way to go. If you had to get into a fight - well, she does fire and ice magic, so the yang to her yin would be earth and air magic. The problem being that if the bad guy is throwing around those, the'll probably be weak to fire and ice. So it's all a matter of who gets the shot off first.

Re: Power help - how would you do this? So it sounds like TK is the way to go. Easy, cheap and simple - just how I like it. Since I dont have my book handy, I'll have to guess on the "only towards attacker" disad would be worth. What - probably -1/2 you think?

So I was playing with powers that my archer character could have (well, that her bow could have), and was thinking of something like an arrow with a big suction cup on the end kind of a "Hit the target and drag it back to you" attack. The first way that springs to mind would be a stretching - and looking at the Metamorph book, a couple of examples back this up. But it seems that stretching would have all kinds of unintended benefits (like if it was a stretched arm, there'd be a hand at the end that could flip switches and otherwise manipulate things - which an arrow would most certainly not have). On the other hand - Telekinesis might work too. Sadly I don't have my main rules book here, so I can't double check and make sure it would work for this intent. I guess the big drawback would be that its a mental thing and not a physical arrow thing (though there has to be a disad for that, I'd suspect. I've not bought the power before). So I'll turn to you guys. If you were to do a bow and arrow "grab things far away" attack, how would you do it?

Re: Your personal comic book origins Ah, thats easy: Star Wars. More specificly, the marvel run of the series. You see back in the 70's, when Star Wars Ruled The World, they had - well, we'd call them trade paperbacks these days - everywhere. 7-11, drug stores, malls - I couldnt avoid them. Not that I wanted to, mind you. I got my mits on all things Wars back then, so the comic was a natural extension of that. Fast foward 3 years to 1980 - I've been following the book for a while now, and started wondering "This guy wearing red and blue throwing hostess fruit pies at the guy in green and yellow - whats that all about?" And so I started picking up other books - spiderman at first - but it quicly went downhill from there.

Re: Help! I'm stuck in a disad rut!

Re: Unofficial Handbook to the Champions Universe Sounds like a blast. Yeah, I'd be willing to throw A) a couple of characters into the project and a couple of bucks into the coffers for the end result.

Re: Champions Diceless Role-playing While I've been gaming for years, I've never wrapped my head around a diceless game. How do you randomize outcomes then? If I want to shoot that stormtrooper (for example), if they have the same defense number every time and I've got the same offense - doesnt that get boring? What about the Lucky Shot against a vastly superior foe? ("Holy crap! I just hit the Red Baron with a rock!!!") Sorry, I dont see it working. Gimmie the good ol' plastic random number generators.

Re: For those of us not artistically inclined Wow - when did hero machine become so limited? It used to be as robust as the CoH character designer, but man - I cant make ANYthing there.

Re: Help! I'm stuck in a disad rut! Heh - that's kind of like what I have on my pulp hero character (not the one that I'm currently stuck with disads on). He's a transport pilot that travels the Caribbean for a living. He has: * DNPC: A Girl in Every Port * Hunted: Former Girl in Every Port It makes for some . . . intresting times.

Re: Length of Background/Origin It depends on how much I need to work on the character to make it real. Often I'll run it through this questionare: http://www.the-chaos-crew.com/swrpg/gm/resource/20questions.htm - 55 questions designed to flesh out a background and help you come up with cool ideas for that character. The one at the end of the link is Star Wars specific, with mentions of the Force and all, but easily adapted to views on religion and a "higher power" or how your characters super power. One of the other things I do is flesh out each of the disadvantages. Sure "Hunted by: Dr Destructo (-11, more powerful) = 10 points" is all that's required, but it's nice to get behind the disads and flesh them out a bit. So each disad gets a paragraph where possible detailing the how and why. So all in all - perhaps 3 pages, and mostly for my own benifit and not meant for public consumption.

Re: WWYCD: Quantum Leap Natasha has been running around with a time machine for years now, so really all the sightseeing she's ever wanted to do has probably been done. She'd probably jump back to England about 1972 and find her way to the BBC archives. There she'd stop them (either by convincing them or the "Gimme that!" method) from junking the television masters from the last 20 years. Doctor Who would be the top of her list, of course - but she'd probably feel guilty about the rest getting fragged too. So she'd walk out of there with a trunk full of film canisters. Great Beyond wouldnt prevent an event, but would get the real story about a major event - like what caused the Tungusga Blast in 1909, or who really killed JFK - that sort of thing.

Re: WWYCD: The Nebula Affair Natasha would make a couple of calls to the Time Cops - the extradimensional time/space patrol agency of her campagn (her Father was drafted by them for numourous temporal . . . um how shall we say offences, and her stepmom is a full on Time Agent). If they indeed have authority, then - well Natasha would probably tell her to go away anwyay. If she DIDNT have authority, then she'd probably put togther a anti-banishing field (which shouldnt be too hard with her Super Genius level skils in temporal physics) and then apply the beatdown. Or, if she was in a bored mood, Natasha would put together a dimensional recall translocator - a widget deigned to send her home when zapped to a galaxy far, far away. If she gets banished, she'll pop right back again. Wash, rinse, repeat until the cows came home. Great Beyond - would probably go "fine, we can patrol my couch then." and go sit things out until she got bored and wandered away to pester someone else.

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious

Re: Help! I'm stuck in a disad rut! Now here's another question: would Vegan be a physical or psych disad? While I'm not one, I did spend a lot of time with veggies and vegans in college. After a while the body doesn't have the enzymes to deal with protein and meat and stuff anymore. So what started out as a lifestyle choice now makes them sick when they eat a cheeseburger. Eventually the body can adapt back to consuming meat - but it does take some work. So a case could be made for either way.

You know, it occurs to me as I'm building one of my characters to be, that I am in a disadvantage rut. It's always seems to be the same type of psych disads, a D of unluck or two - the same ol' same old. Now of course every character is different, so I cant expect you guys to load me up with suggestions, but I thought I'd ask: what was the most unusual, offbeat, fun to play disadvantage you've come up with. Perhaps if I have a big list to mull over, it'll spark an idea or two of my own.

Re: Plot Seed: Six Places to Nuke When You’re Serious Hmmm, point. Perhaps you could arrange detonation during one of those long shots of the stadium and the skyline of the city. That should be far enough away that the signal keeps sending for a few moments after the blast. Oh - damn, I forgot about the EMP. Sneak in and specialy shield the camera against EMP bursts perhaps?