Psylint

Re: Teen adventure ideas? There's the usual stuff, whilst going off on superhero business, a crime or other dastardly deed occurs where the character was last seen in his secret ID. A teacher pulls the teenaged superhero aside and says, "Johnny, you can trust me. Where did you really get all those bruises? And if you tell me "I fell" I'm gonna smack you." [[i.e. how to avoid getting one's folks busted for child abuse, and keep DFACs from crawling up your secret ID, oh... and saving the world]] The character is currently the subject of a narco-sting operation and has an undercover officer crawling up his or her life, and/or trying to entrap said character. Pictures of the character stripping off clothes (to enter into heroic ID no less) start circulate on the Inter webz. Character is declared a social outcast by his/her peers.

Re: Potential Villain Scheme That's what I remembered, water vapor to be precise. Apparently, this particular process has some issue with Sodium and Chlorine by products as well. Makes you wonder whether it would work with just distilled water, which should eliminate the Sodium and Chlorine issue but may not provide the radio frequencies enough to intereact with to loosen the Hydrogen bonds. Still amazing. Peace

Re: Potential Villain Scheme Oh my frickin' Divinity of choice. That's ... wow. The implications... Anybody know the byproducts of burning Hydrogen? Wow ((repped)

Re: WWYCD: Out of cash Hmmmm.... 1. Appeal to the greater nature of those with resources? e.g. Reed Richards convinces Doom to let him "borrow" a space craft by pointing out the commercial possibilities; Corax convinces the Lady of Chicago that investing in a new quantum whatsit named after her is the "social coup" of the century. 2. Find alternative solutions? 3. "Commandeer" the resources under the legal doctrine of necessity or as an aspect of your official police powers? 4. Talk smack to the Avengers and goad them into handling it for you?

Re: Iconic Heroes Hmmm... Bruce Wayne, self consciously deranged but dealing with it. He's the hero who bleeds yet perseveres. He's got all of the collective unconscious "spooky" of the Wanderer and the Mystic, both stealthy and mysterious and possessed of esoteric knowledge, yet vitally mortal. Green Arrow probably fits with a more socially conscious twist. Superman, in my opinion, is iconic because he was consciously driven to become an icon for Nationalism Unbound. Sort of like Uncle Sam (who incidentally was a Scot). Juggernaut for villains, I would guess. Brutish and invulnerable, a person who chose to have no conscience beyond their own immediate gratification. Magneto is a good candidate too, sort of the flipside of Bruce Wayne. The traumatized victim who decides to turn the tables. Denies the "humanity" of most everyone. The Remover of Inconvenient Obstacles. Silent, deadly, without name or even form. The distillation of the menace of the dark.

Re: WWYCD: We hope you're feeling better now Revenant: "Yeah? So?" Being entirely self-conscious and accepting of the fact that he is thoroughly bonkers helps. I suppose. Then he'd walk out the front door quoting Heraclitus (breaking as few bones as possible; they're only doing their jobs). Psilint: would probably have an "archetypal emergence" and one of his over developed archetypal personalities would arise and get him out. Whether it's the Wanderer by stealth, the Warrior by brute force, or the Innocent by playing along. Just hoping it isn't Corax that arises, the body count would be staggering. Reverb: "Cool, pass the Haldol." Peace

Re: Fifteen points of wealth is very justifiable Totally agreed Oddhat. Wealth is just one of those "powers" that I lack the wisdom and creativity to use well. And in general, my games just don't deal with cash flow, except as a plot device and that could happen to anyone really. It is a weakness in my game. 'preciate all y'all trying to help out. But I think I'm just gonna have to stick with "no point and getting on with the game" until I can wrap my head around it better. Peace

Re: Fifteen points of wealth is very justifiable Interesting... As far as the power armored poor guy? How many brilliant scientists and engineers don't have private jets? It's entirely possible for someone to have the technical brilliance to build, maintain and operate power armor and not have the funds to build it from scratch. For the rest? It almost seems like a "favor" variable power pool. Except they "recharge" after the play session. To me 15 pts. is a lot to spend on wealth, but I can't think of many ways that one could use it, that doesn't step on the toes of foci, contacts, favors, and other perqs. I suppose a filthy rich person could have their identity "scrubbed" with enough cash, but they could buy "Anonymity" as a perq. I don't play Filthy Rich folks, except for "concept" purposes, like the rock star/sonic energy projector. But I'm still at a loss as to what it buys other than plane tickets, and lots of replacement insurance for your durable goods. Peace

Re: Negative STUN and Body Martial Choke's NND damage does body after the target is KO'ed.

Re: how?? Aid Body, delay return rate 2 days, others only, lim. power. max effect to net of 1 body. That should put the target of the Aid into a position where they are no longer bleeding to death or otherwise losing body for 2 days. Peace

Re: Fifteen points of wealth is very justifiable It brings up an interesting issue, "what does that 15 pts. buy you?" In most games, extreme wealth seems to buy, first class air tickets anywhere commercially available. And settle the occasional law suit with the players get sloppy. Out of curiousity what do you allow your stinking rich players to get for their 15 pts.? 1. High tech weapons? 2. Summers in the Lincoln bedroom? 3. Super cool, high tech, ultra hidden super base? 4. Surplus fighter jets complete with Side Winder missiles? In game terms 15pts. is a significant investment, so what kind of return are these captains of industry getting? Peace

Re: Damage and Defenses FYI: The very, very old reference was back from the original Champions, at least, that's the way we played it. Normal defense against normal damage, resistant defenses against killing damage and never the twain shall meet. Peace

Re: I have created a Regulation Act Couple of points: 1. Failure to register should be a felony, you're average superhero is packing more deadly force than you're average machine gun, and they're all registered or supposed to be anyways. 2. Artificial supers (that is equipment based supers) are more likely to be regulated by ATF, FDA, etc. that is to say that the equipment itself will be regulated rather than the possessor/inventor thereof. 3. As far as defining superhuman, I would prefer something along the lines of "1(a)Superhuman or Paranormal for the purposes of this Act shall be defined as any person or entity that demonstrates any behavior, action, or expression that is incompatible with accepted community standards for normal human capability." 1( Notwithstanding section 1(a) any person or entity that demonstrates any ability to perform any of the following will be deemed to be a superhuman required to be registered under the act: (i) the ability to project any form of energy other than normal voice. Normal voice is defined for the purposes of this act as [goes into details of human voice in terms of frequency, amplitude, range, volume etc.) (ii) the ability to lift more than x kilograms over the head. (iii) any reaction time faster than [whatever the Olympic start time is] (iv) any skin or outer covering of said person or entity with a hardness of greater than .2 on the Moh's scale (v) any ability to create either intentionally or as a by product any display, sound, tactile or other perceptible sensation outside the realm of normal community standards. (vi) any perceptive ability beyond normal community standards or any ability to perceive any of the following [gives ranges like sound lower than 100 Hz, or higher than 50,000 Hz, etc.) Yes, I am basing the definition of superhuman off of the pornography laws, but when you're in a "I'll know it when I see it" circumstances, it seemed appropriate. Peace

Re: Need help deciding points for physical limitation Agreed with Talon, but you might also consider Susceptibility: Grounding, character takes xd6 damage while in contact with any conductive surface whilst "bleeding." To represent the arcs of electricity, grounding out.

Re: [Villain] Threshold Were I a player and this monstrosity showed up for dinner, I'd kill him and not think twice about it. The only tactics that immediately come to mind are, call my namesake and turn him into his Butler or use martial choke at 6d6 NND until he passes out and dies (which you have to do because his recovery and Stun total are so high, he'll just pop up and kill you if you don't). Unless there happens to be a handy nuclear reactor core or active volcano about. But that's assuming he's a stand alone antagonist against a team of 350's or 250's. When even a maxed out, pushed attack does no more than 12 Stun, against a target with that much Con, Stun, and Rec, you're gonna have a lot of frustrated players. What I would ask you is, "How would you deal with Threshold under your campaign limits?" If your strategy requires a particular environment, a particular uncommon power like entangle based on ego combat value, etc. then I'd say Threshold is a poor choice. I like the concept, and the build has some fidelity to the concept but the total package ends up being, in my opinion, unsupportable. You've got a character throwing out 16d6 attacks, at an OCV of 7, who has spent well over 200 points on defenses and as a result can likely one punch or two punch anything that could be a threat (assuming he could catch up to the threat, he's kinda slow) and effective ignores everyone else. Players like to feel omni-capable, they hate it when they're stuck in a situation where they can't do anything to effect the outcome. What are bricks going to do in a situation against Threshold? or martial artists? or weapon masters? or physical energy projectors? If I were to quibble, the "Believes he's truly invincible" is just part and parcel of being a super villain, they all keep fighting even though obviously injured. Just like heroes. If you can find meaningful things for each of your players to do against Threshold, great, but if not, I'd rewrite him until they do. Peace

Re: Change Environment: Personal Immunity or Envirnomental Movement I, as they say, stand corrected. Darn that know it all FRED, anyways. Peace

Re: Change Environment: Personal Immunity or Envirnomental Movement Rubric: 1. Actually, it's not straight out of the book, it incorporates 3 separate Change Environments and puts it into 1 Change Environment. Personally, I see a lot of merit in the construction. A patch of ice should probably impose an OCV penalty, penalty to Dex skills, and inhibit horizontal movement (though perhaps not with a DEX roll, after all, until you fall down, you get great velocity running on ice). As for the power of the effect, I think you are underestimating the value of a -4 Dex roll just to stand up or move. Against any low DEX, melee based character (traditional bricks for example) this becomes a very effective entangle, that bypasses their strength (in STR). And while it is a 60+ Active point cost power, I have a sneaking suspicion that the power will be incorporated in a power frame work for massive Real Cost savings. Again, I've no problem with that (I think tight character concepts should be rewarded, but that's an aside). If a 6d6 energy blast stuns you're average agent, then your agents are too fragile, in my not so humble opinion. There's always a conflict between special effects and game effects. The easiest way to get the other 1/4 is to add limited range to it for 1/4. I doubt you'd ever need the 300" of range the power naturally has, but that is at least "book legal." The 16" radius is itself rather concerning, as it would encompass the majority of any battlespace I would like project in a heroes game. Do you really need to be able to lay down Football field sized patches of ice? Natural properties of Ice? folks can go either way on this. Either you can build for every possible interaction of the sfx or you can just lump it. YMMV, but modeling all of the potential interactions, is in my view a pain. Heard tell that that was part of what Ultimate Energy Projector was about, but I've yet to get my copy. I'm not sure your calculations are right either, the combination of 3 effects + 16" radius seems to me to be a little light for 60 Active points, unless you were triple counting the initial CE (that is to say you calculated based on the initial CE providing -1" movement and -1 OCV and -1 Dex rolls). Peace

Re: Suseptibilty vs. Vulnerability Vulnerabilities are dicey. In many campaigns, folks tend to gravitate towards the caps, that is to say, that almost all characters have the maximum amount of damage allowed for that campaign. In such circumstances an attack that leverages a vulnerability is often devastating, and often in the case of my characters (who, for concept reasons, rarely have more than 10 resistant defense) fatal. By contrast, a susceptibility will hurt, but tends to leave the character alive and awake enough to do something about it. What I prefer to do is limit my defenses against X effect rather than take the disadvantage vulnerability, e.g. (Jack Frost has 20red but the last 10red is limited Not against fire/heat). Then when I get hit with the evil X power, it hurts a lot more, but isn't as often fatal. Peace

Re: Change Environment: Personal Immunity or Envirnomental Movement I'd be surprised that a GM would allow all of these stacked effects from 1 application of a large aoe continuous power, but moving on... 1. Desolid, as a desolidified entity has no contact with solid stuff, like ice, a desolid character would not be affected by an ice sheet. So, no Desolid means they are not affected by anything other than powers with affects desolid and the limited powers chosen at character creation. If one of those selected powers was ice, then perhaps, but if not, no. Lim. power. doesn't affect desolid isn't a limitation, because it does not normally affect desolids. Affects desolid is a 1/2 advantage. 2. Personally, I"d require a limited power: environmental movement at -0. You're trying to replicate real ice, and EM ice negates the penalties of real ice, even if in this specific instance you are creating "super ice on steroids" 3. Lim. power only affects targets on the ground -1/4. Lim. power does not affect targets with EM ice, or targets of mass to volume ratios greater than 4:1. Depends on the campaign. In general, EM ice is a rare talent, as are sufficiently massive targets. Against any non-super this attack is devastating (your average cop or agent is reduced to a less than 30% to hit, assuming he's not scrambling up from the ice, and slowed to half his movement). Against ground based supers it's still quite powerful. While the sum of the limitations may indeed be greater than 1/4, I'm not convinced that it's worth 1/2. Peace

Re: Power Build Question: Manipulate your own projectile Either indirect or Standard Energy Blast with lots of skill levels to bounce it multiple times to accomplish the same effect.

Re: Opinions On Being An "Ex-Viper Member" Hmmm.... Depends on how big Viper is, and how far up the chain the character got. I had a character who was involved in an isolated cell of a Viper organization, and doesn't have Viper as a hunted at all. The cell structure prevented his identity from "going up the chain." Alternatively, you can have a mid level cut-out, where sure the guy had access to sensitive data, but to take him out, would validate any information he gave to an opponent, whereas "scrubbing the data" is more effective an easier. This character had an 8- Hunted, operationally defined more as "If Viper shows up, they'll kill him on sight, but they're not really looking for him." Or you could have someone like Revenant who was deep in Viper, but went postal on the station chief, and everyone else, when he learned they were selling kids into slavery. He is hunting Viper with a near paranoid obsession (he's got "issues" with folks what are abusive to kids) but only the biggest and baddest of Viper operatives are sent after him, because he's proven so effective at bouncing anything less. Hunted by Viper 8- Zilara, a gifted engineer and weapon designer, built weapons for Viper for years believing that they were helping liberate her country from foreign invaders. When she finally discovered that Viper was merely reselling the weapons she designed for insane profits, she donned her power suit, smashed the lab and headed straight for the U.N. providing them with all of the "backdoors" she designed in all of the weapons. Hunted by Viper 11-. Psilint. The rogue psychic has a nasty tendency to "convert" agents, causing them to provide governments and intelligence services with names, dates, places, code names, ciphers, etc. Using his telepathic and other abilities he has compromised more missions than any government, law enforcement, or supergroup combined. He even caused, or so it is "official holy writ" the defection of King Snake's own son. Hunted by Viper 14- As far as hunted less than "to kill" there are probably justifications for it, but the character I make tend to "burn their bridges as they jump off of them." Peace

Re: Voidwarp Fun Sorry mate, I like the effect and all, but the Only in Darkness, when the character has the ability to create it is not worth a limitation at all. I think Steve had an example of almost precisely that (mag. fields and a buddy who produces them, but similar concept). Peace

Re: Favorite Damage Shields? Indeed you are correct BNakagawa, a typographical oversight (that is, it was in my notes, but I forgot to type it in.) In any event, the auto-knockdown damage shield is essentially murder on melee types. And they have enough woes already, don' ya think? Peace

Re: Damage and Defenses GeekySpaz, Where are you getting Normal damage does more than equivalent Killing damage? 6d6 Normal Damage, Max 36 Stun, 12 Body 2d6 Killing Damage, Max 60 Stun, 12 Body The more DC's you roll, in my experience, the more likely the Killing Attack, over time, does more damage. In my experience, normal dice tend to do more consistent damage, but Killing attacks to more "burst damage." I also think your perception might be colored by the tendency for Killing Attacks to kill or otherwise seriously injure anyone they knockout. But in any event.. You want a bit of lethality, but not over much: Options: 1. Have some NPC's walk around without resistant defenses, that should get plenty lethal. 2. Limit resistant defenses to 1/2 or less of the Max Body damage of the allowable killing attacks. 3. Everybody gets reasonable resistant pd, and Damage Reduction Stun (non resistant), the reasoning that folks do practice "taking it on the chin" but not the systemic shock of getting "stuck like a pig" 4. Raise the damage cap for Killing Attacks over normal attacks. And your perception of restraint, I think is a little off. I have a mentalist with 2 mind controls, one is limited to "Sleep" the other is limited to "Kill yourself" both are justified by the campaign, character etc. The "Sleep" Mind Control works in 2 or 3 attacks (it's cumulative); the "Kill Yourself" takes at least 10 and often 20 or more to work. Which is exercising restraint? Alternative, hand the Hulk a dagger. Which would you rather be hit with, the Hulk using a dagger (max 2d6 Killing dice) or Hulk with a Punch (20d6 normal, minimum). Personally, give me the knife, 'cause I might survive that, may even stay conscious, but the virtually guaranteed 20+ Body of the punch is going to leave me, at best, unconscious and bleeding to death. Knocking people out is restraint as opposed to killing them. And if it's not, then I'm not sure yours is a traditional Dark Champions campaign. Peace

Re: Voidwarp Fun Lord Chuckles, I'm not sure I understand the effect that you're going for, but I think it creative, so kudos! A few thoughts: 1. Why not an abort to Desolid? Character comes in for the move through, you abort to Desolid, and he little moves right on through. 2. If you're doing a twisting wyrmhole effect, so that instead of the attacking character moving through you, you twist space time so that he ends up, subjective, making a huge curved movement, how about... x" Teleport Usable as an Attack [Defense is X dimensional Movement, Teleport, or Desolid], Continuous, Damage Shield, and +30 rpd Forcefield, Reduced Endurance, linked with Damage Shield, Lim. Power, only attacks move through, move by, grab by attacks. This should negate most, if not all of the damage from the attack, and sling the attacking player somewhere else. 3. I think Mega Scaling teleport as an attack is over the top, and I don't think most GMs would allow it. Alternatively, Dive for Cover + x" Teleport, usable as an attack, trigger "Dive for Cover" S'up to you, but the Mega Scale, I think has to go, unless Mega Scaled Movement is very, very common and the villain is on the epic side of things, i.e. one of those that an entire team of heroes gangs up on and it's still touch and go. Peace