JackValhalla

Among the golem-animated toys, there is power and skill and strength. But the Melog System Construction Kit takes the cake for versatility. These plastic bricks can reshape themselves into thousands of configurations, scooting around on wheels or walking along. As spies they are not as effective as the Mannequin, as combatants they will never beat Soldier John, and they're not as generally useful as Rainbow Sprinkles. But they can shape themselves into whatever the team needs, and in a pinch they can just scatter themselves across the floor and inflict terrible damage on anyone who walks over them.

Forgot a few. Drain or Suppress vs limited group, any elemental control. Because of how the section "adjustment powers and power frameworks" lays out the interaction, this suppress has double-effect. 8 penalty skill levels vs called shots. each attack is a headshot for no penalty. x2 STUN for regular attacks, KAs are automatically 5's for STUN multiplier. Cost 16 points, double your damage. Suppress vs INT. It's the cheapest basic ability that can immobilize an opponent at 0 that is rarely bought above 20. Powers w/ Side Effect: Drain vs COM. Having negative COM works like having positive PRE for PRE Attacks. Two phases in you're so horrific that you can petrify enemies in place, for free. Tunneling, ranged. Create a 8" pit under an enemy, then collapse the tunnel. Life Support: Water breathing. Transform: Air into water. The value calculations of air and water.. well, this power is best used indoors or you'll kill an entire city. 20pts to be the only person not drowning. Flash vs vocal sense group. For some reason, the ability to speak is treated as a sense. And nobody takes Flash Defense for it. If your enemy uses PRE attacks, Incantations, tactical commands or Mind Control, this'll shut 'em up. Mental Powers cannot be used with Autofire. Mental Powers with Based on CON, however, can be used with Autofire. Usable as Attack powers don't require CV rolls if they're used against inanimate objects not being held. Cars, floors, lighting fixtures, any environmental feature can be Grown, Shrunk, Desolidified, Teleported, Duplicated, made invisible, density-increased, stretched, etc. You don't have to be great at tactics to make this a power that changes the game.

Detect: Susceptibility and Vulnerability. The character's schtick is that they always know the best method of attack. Also an 8d6 EB w/ variable special effects. Find Weakness w/ the modifiers Sense and Rapid from Enhanced Senses. Make up to 10 attempts per phase w/o giving up your attack action. VPP: only for powers w/ Trigger advantage + Precognition. You can know what powers you're going to need, and give yourself them in advance. Damage shields w/ autofire. No to-hit roll, hits the max number of times per phase. So, like 20,480 1d6 NND attacks, 0 end. Desolidification, 0 STR w/ Works While Desolid for no cost because 0 STR. Then, Martial Arts and increased Damage Classes. 0pt Summoning, create a normal civilian from nothing. Faster-Than-Light Travel, Usable As Attack, x1,048,576 mass. Villain can grab an asteroid of ~100,000 tons and launch it at speed of c. 60pts regulation, would 100% destroy the Earth before anyone could possibly stop him. Transform, personal Focus into universal Focus. Jailbeak a phone? Nah son, jailbreak Mjolnir. Teleport, megascale, usable as attack, ranged. Go visit deep space. Naked advantage: Usable by others (simultaneous), usable by others. Allow someone else to share a power with someone else. Missile Reflection w/ linked Find Weakness

It's rare to find a reality warper whose powers manifest as a brick, but Brink is an unusual woman. Rather than affecting the larger world, her powers are limited to a thin field around her body. And rather than the sophisticated possibilities of her teammates, her powers only work against the base laws of physics, like gravity, inertia, friction, electromagnetic force, etc. She is more vulnerable than most bricks to power drains, suppression fields and mental attacks, but that matters little when her punches strike at several times the speed of light with no equal-opposite reaction. She made her reputation by shredding a wall that was physically impossible to damage, and there is literally no degree of kinetic force or conventional energy that can harm her. On her team of flexible, versatile powers, she is the big gun that holds the center line.

Next up, The Fateful Five. Each member of the team is a reality warper, and it is up to you to determine what that means to you. "Reality Warper" is an unusual description that means lots of things to lots of people, so it should be good for variety. Extra points for backstory and innovative power builds and power descriptions.

Okay, granted first of all that I'm a munchkin bastard. But... CVs of 15, DCs of 18, defenses 35-40.. I build that on regulation 350 pts with room left over for flavor, fluff and noncombat skills. What did you do with the other 650? What've I missed? Anyway, the trick to challenging a team is in the team itself. For a combat challenge: look over their character sheets and see what they don't have. No precognition? Put them up against a master-planner who has a new trap and a new trick for every occasion. No life support? Enemies from space or from underwater who can strike with impunity and make the PCs find a way to overcome their liability. No STUN-only attacks? Put them up against a villain who is dangerous but fragile, who will die if they hit him even with a pulled punch. This should not come up every adventure- if you do that, the players are within their rights to feel like you're picking on them by tailoring enemies to their weaknesses. But, for a master villain, someone who has an entire campaign arc devoted to them? It's a great start. For a more mental / roleplay challenge, look over the character sheets and see what they do have, in Disadvantages or Complications (whichever edition). A villain learns the PCs secret identity, but instead of threatening it directly he uses it to kidnap the DNPCs and start brainwashing them. If they have multiple Hunteds, form a Revenge Society and throw several of those Hunteds at them simultaneously. If all the characters have a shared origin, they probably have some shared Disadlications, so this may be pretty easy. And any villain with enough Contacts or Favors from the government or law enforcement is going to be a tough puzzle to beat. Most Perks- money, followers, networks of contacts and associates- are signs of a successful supervillain, and not for no reason.

Cleric: We need to figure out how to get past these civilians without hurting them. Rogue: (reaching into backpack) Horn of Blasting. Cleric: It's not a hammer! This is not a nail! (Five minutes laughter. Running joke about the super-stealthy rogue assassin who looks for excuses to use the horn of blasting.)

Brood is a dark, dystopic figure with a black-caped costume, a grimacing cowl, and an affinity for nighttime and rooftops. He is known for his edgy patter, his barely-restrained mental health issues, and his fighting skills, gadgets and theatricality. Also, his penchant for teen or child sidekicks dressed in flashy colorful costumes. Though the rumors of the underworld would make him out as a demon or powerhouse, among the super-powered set he is known to be basically unpowered, though certainly a very exceptional unpowered human. He likes them to think that. Under Stately Dayne Manor is a cave, a Brood-cave, where the hero does his work. All of it. All of him. Hundreds of Broods that design new costumes, assemble new smoke grenades, tune up the grappling swingline, work on the Broodmobile, and wait their turn to fight and die for justice. An exceptional athlete, a gifted inventor, and a superb detective, he is also a duplicator of the highest order, unbeknownst even to his own teammates. Whenever he fights for the USAT, and is struck by a lightning bolt or hovertank or carbide chainsaw, his teammates see him fly backwards and disappear in a cloud of smoke, only to reappear later from the shadows and attack the unwitting enemy. His fellows believe he is just that damn tricky, stealthy, and skilled. Rather, the Brood just lost another brother, and another reason to mourn and another reason to enact revenge on criminals everywhere. His very most well-kept secret is the teen sidekicks: they are the results of his failed attempts to clone himself younger and sustain his career further. There have been rather a lot of them.

On January first, 1915, a German U-24 was lurking in the English channel. In its torpedo bay, an experimental weapon was ready to deploy. High-ranked scientists from Germany were present to see the effects their one-of-a-kind device would have when it struck the British ship. The payload was a bomb centered around a piece of hyper-dense material, which the scientists hoped would crack open at the atomic level and unleash truly unique devastation. Their science was not all worked out, and they had spent weeks haranguing about the right way to construct the device, but the rush to production had caused... shortcuts. Jerry Stonedoubt was an engineer's mate on the night shift, and was more than annoyed at needing to be on his duty station without even time to take one drink of Ruther's smuggled gin when the clock had struck the beginning of 1915. He was leaning against the hull when the U-24's torpedo struck the HMS Formidable and gashed open the engine room, then activated. The Formidable probably could have survived the torpedo. But when the atomic payload inside activated, it transferred its hyperdense properties to Jerry instead. His weight, multiplied by the density of plutonium, was enough to buckle deck plating and tear the hole even wider. He grew denser and denser, heavier and heavier, as he lay panting and recovering on the floor of the flooding engine room. In minutes, his weight was sufficient to drag the whole ship under the waves, lost and leaving all its crew floating in the ocean waiting for rescue. All except one man, who was whisked away by Father Time to serve with the New Year's Evil. His mass is matched by his strength and toughness, making him an effective brick and a mainstay of the team, using the name of the ship he had dragged to its death. Formidable.

I keep forgetting that. Fifth is where I did the vast majority of my work and never converted over. For better or worse, 6thEd basically doesn't exist in my mind.

I haven't seen anyone here mention suppress. Suppress STUN, cannot be maintained (-1/2)? Base Suppress is 5pts per, so normal campaign limits give you 10-12d6. Applies against Power Defense that is normally fairly low. For one phase, their STUN drops by 30-40 pts, which will trigger a CON stun in all but the hardiest opponents. And at the end of that phase, their STUN shoots back up to normal value. It acts like STUN damage, until it doesn't. Suppress is ranged by default, 1 END per 2d6, normal attack roll, and perfect for this sort of situation.

"On a long enough timeline, everyone has an evil twin." "One way or another, the bleeding always stops."

Luthor's entire plan hinged on the following: that Superman would be able to find Lois in the five seconds that it would take for her to hit the ground. And that Superman would not be able to find his own mother in ten minutes in a deliberate search. He needed both of those things to be true for his plan to work. He needed Superman to hear Lois' scream and come to the rescue before she hit the ground so he could steer Supes to Gotham. And then he needed Supes to be unable to find Martha, so Batman and Supes would actually come into contact. It's probably the biggest single, most concise plot hole in a movie that was basically just a Russian nesting doll of plot holes.

Okay, I'm thinking of something that may be okay or may be too deep into "only at GM discretion" territory. Multipower 30 active pts, Extra time 1 Turn, real cost 13 pts Running 10" Trigger, real cost 1 pt Martial Arts 20 pts worth of maneuvers, real cost 1 pt Once per turn, defined as extreme need, you can use a combat maneuver or a burst of movement, outside your normal SPD progression.

Skill level, usable by others, indirect, linked to Mind Link. Yeah, I've modeled this one before too. Used creatively, it's almost embarrassingly effective.

Side effect? That's just the only option I really see, honestly.

The First Squad of the Zodiac Force is made of Libra, Aquarius, Gemini and Sagittarius, and serves as the main patrol squad for Zodiac. The tactical leader of the squad is Libra, whose birth name is Janine Tyler. She was attacked by The Monster during one of its rampages, and was rescued and healed by an unknown reality warper that she has never found since then. Whatever the hero did to rescue her, she acquired powers in the aftermath, including the psychic ability to sense evil intent or criminal actions, a missile reflection ability that works with a pair of hand-held portals, and the ability to mimic one other power in her line of sight. It's a grab-bag of powers, not cohesive, but it helps her guide her squad to stop crimes in progress, defend herself and meet criminals on their own terms. She is motivated by a driving need for justice to make sure that nobody is ever victimized like she was by the Monster. And under that is a pervasive fear that one day she will be helpless again. The reconnaissance and communication specialist for First Squad is Aquarius, who was born Steven Garrafalo. He tested positive for mutation as a child, but he powers themselves lay latent until he experimented with magic in college, driven by an urge he could not explain. He bonded with a pair of elementals, one of wind and one of water. He has fair-to-middling combat utility, with a wind-shield to defend himself and a blast of water like a firehose, but he shines best when he can use breezes to bring sounds to his ears from afar, or channel his vision through water to scout ahead at a distance. Where Libra detects a crime eminent, Aquarius peers ahead to see what the threat is. He has never questioned his motivations, he got powers and joined a team of heroes without hesitation and seems almost preternaturally suited to this role. The transportation and main combatant of First Squad comes from Sagittarius, an actual centaur from the faelands with a magic bow and horseshoes. He can carry a teammate on his back and run at freeway speeds through tight alleys and even up stairs, making his squad extremely mobile. With his bow he can launch arrows that can shoot down helicopters or bruise a peach, at his discretion, and his expert aim is unquestionable. He is a large target and vulnerable, so he relies on his teammates to keep him safe in combat. He was transported to our world by a witch from his homeland that wanted to get him out of her way, but he has fallen in love with mortal culture and music so he never wants to leave. He was invited to join Zodiac because of the theme he fit, and he joined for his own reasons that he has never disclosed. Gemini is backup and support for First Squad. She used to be Ashley Jones, a small-time thief who decided that super-science was where the real profit was. She was absconding with a crated device that she could not even pronounce or identify, and a pothole jarred it too much and it activated, sucking itself into a dimensional portal and spitting out another copy of Ashley. The two combined and she blacked out. As part of her probation she had to join a hero team, using her new powers to help. She can double anyone she sees, creating a perfect duplicate of anyone but herself, and both copies are healed largely or completely in the process. She often duplicates Sagittarius for travel or heavy artillery, duplicates Libra for defense or utility, or Aquarius to secure air superiority. Libra refuses to use her power mimicry to duplicate Gemini, it sets off her "crime sense" to even consider it.

In the new campaign I'm writing up (5th edition but easily transferred to other editions), there's a large numbers of supers whose powers are psionic in nature, mostly telepathy and telekinesis, but with a huge amount of variation and distinction. We're looking at Armor Piercing EGO Blasts, Autofire Telepathy, Cumulative Area Effect Mind Control, stuff like that. But it's rapidly becoming apparent that the bottleneck in this concept is in the defenses: Mental Defense is cheap and easy, and even with Hardened x2 and Inherent, it's easily possible for any character to all-but-guarantee that no mental powers will affect them. This immediately turns into an arms race, for any of these psionic characters to be even mildly effective against each other they need to have methods to bypass Mental Defense. And once they've bypassed the Mental Defense, there's no other countermeasures. It's a bottleneck that hampers the entire dynamic of exciting psychic-on-psychic combat. Now, non-psionic combat in Champions does not suffer this bottleneck because there are plenty of different angles of defense. And I'm looking at adapting some of those for my purposes. But the rules on BOECV are kind of vague, if applied to anything but a handful of attack powers. I'm looking at Damage Reduction BOECV to reduce the effective successes of Mind Control or Telepathy. I'm considering Missile Deflection (or even Reflection) BOECV. Combat Skill Levels for mental combat. A custom advantage for mental Force Wall so it can be transparent to both energy and physical attacks and movement. Persistent Invisibility, only vs Mind Scan. Or should I just stick with Mental Defense as written, let the arms race develop, and accept that this is the way the game is played? I want to collect opinions from the forum before I commit to any course of action right now.

Sounds like a Naked Advantage sort of situation. Or in this case a Naked Limitation taken as Usable As Attack. That is the cleanest and most direct build for what you're looking for, right?

STUN is twice as expensive as END, but it recovers in parallel with END. If your character has powers that use END, and others that run on STUN, then taking a recovery adds your REC to both END and STUN-used-as-END. There is a potential advantage to that, if you want to run your powers hard without taking lots of recoveries and you don't anticipate taking STUN damage from outside sources. I'd price it at -1/4 or maybe -1/2, depending on how the character was built and what I judged the actual limitation to the character would be.

It's been mostly good. Surviving the economy, got married. Been writing superhero novels but my current project makes it basically impossible to publish anything until the entire five-book trilogy (long story) is done. Never did fully adapt to 6E rules, been thinking about writing up some modules for Steve to publish. It's good to be back to this thread.

I'd be keeping this one simple. Telepathic mind control, probably cumulative, area effect megascale, with limitations. Should fit neatly into AP limits The bestiary already has write-ups for swarms and spiders, use those as need be. And a clairvoyance, only through another's eyes, only insects, with a lot of rapid multipliers to let you use it dozens or hundreds of times per phase to simulate the super-multitasking that Skitter demonstrated. Both of these should be relatively low-cost RP, and at or under AP campaign limits. Even lower RP if you take an EC, linked power or Unified Power, which is appropriate considering Panacea's interference at the bank. Unless the megascale telepathic mind control only let you give one command per phase?

The Suspense was laughed out of three villain headquarters but that never stopped him. He knew his powers were amazing. The ability to create perfect silence in a ten-foot radius was exactly the sort of thing that could leave superheroes trembling in fear and lead him to a life of riches and fame and beautiful women lounging around him in European casinos. After all, all the greats like Hitchcock and Romero know that silence is the scariest sound of all. Ever since that experimental auto-husher in the Millenium City Library malfunctioned while he was working on it, he knew his destiny was great things. And shockingly, he's proven himself right. Perfect silence and a little patience make for a perfect ambusher. He made his debut with the Faultless Four when they cut the power and backup generator for the local police station and broke into the evidence locker, making out with millions of dollars in impounded goods and enough labeled evidence to put many other villains in their debt. He stalked through the halls with nightvision goggles, while the cops all tried to navigate by sound and speech. It was a terrifying half-hour for them as they learned to fear the silence and the Suspense. Eventually though the heroes showed up, and learned the same lesson. An assault shotgun on full-auto with beanbag rounds may not kill most superheroes but it'll knock them down or knock them out, and he can often take down one or even two of them before they even figure out that they were under attack, let alone start looking for him. It had been a good night for them, putting them on the map. Not to mention all the banks he can break into with shaped demolition charges, looting the vault while nobody even knows they've been breached. The more tactical a hero team is, the more he shines, disrupting their communications with ease, and gods help them if they've got a sonic blaster on their team. Cops can't call for backup, alarms don't go off, his team operates in perfect stealth, and he is amassing those riches and fame with a speed that surprises those villain teams that laughed at him and blew him off.

Cetaceus didn't even want to stop thieving. But his hand was forced. Flipper. Whatever. God this takes some adjusting. There was no reason for the darn thing to be cursed. Who would curse a scrimshaw collection? Seriously? Sure, it was worth a few thousand dollars, but it wasn't a priceless antique or something. But somewhere in the past couple hundred years, someone loved this thing enough to put a curse on anyone that would steal it. And Tommy stole it. So then he was turned into a whale. A hundred-ton sperm whale. Well, a humanoid sperm whale. Sure, with some practice he was able to condense his form down to normal human size and back, but he was still not going to blend in anywhere ever again, and his old contacts and fences dropped him as soon as he developed superpowers. And the thing was, his only marketable skill was cat burglary. There was nothing for him to fall back on. It was either supervillainy or superheroism for him, no other options. And no villain team needs a cat burglar whose only asset was that he could grow himself too big to fit into most spaces. But he was surprised to find out that as a superhero, his inside knowledge of criminal procedure was a real asset, as was his giant size and his sonar powers. And the ability to hold his breath for five hours made him particularly adept at surviving many standard supervillain deathtraps. He'd rather be stealing. It was fun. But until he loses his powers, he'll be the superhero Cetaceus.

The problem with Suppress and Change Environment is that you would need to separately restrict movements for running, swimming, flight, gliding, leaping, swinging, tunneling, and maybe but not necessarily teleportation. It would be prohibitively expensive to cover more than a couple hexes with an effect that would slow the opponent by two or three inches. You'd be much, much better off adapting the Gate rules of teleport to Extra-Dimensional Travel. I normally don't like relying on EDM, I think it's used as a dodge for other effects that can be simulated other ways, but if the special effect of the power is to access areas and locations in which physics operates at fundamentally different ways, I think that extra-dimensional travel is the right way to go.