Blue

I'll start by admitting that I didn't read that entire post (Sorry). I'm more of a 'skimmer' once they get that big. You make a valid point on it being more of a martial arts trained thing. AverageGuy being attacked by a thug on the street (a thug who is swinging a pipe) has three options: plain ol' vanilla DCV, dodge (which is what anyone smart would do if a pipe were coming at them in REAL life), or block. In real life a block would be putting your arm up to absorb the damage, not so much to really deflect the blow aside. An untrained fighter has no real talent for this. So an untrained combatant would likely be using block analogous to "superman putting out his palm and catching someone's fist". He's really absorbing impact more than anything else. While Champions is not "Real Life", when it comes to normals fighting each other who do not have training, STR doesn't seem to make that much of a difference in the blocking anyway. Humans are so nearly on the same level in a superheroic campaign that to me it invalidates any STR issues. As for the heroes, they're pretty much all "trained fighters" or else why the heck are they heroes? And if they aren't trained fighers, why are they attempting a block? I know it's weird logic. I'm not sure my own players would even follow my logic on that one, and they're used to this sort of thing from me.

A uni-mind power? Awesome I was working on something like that last night. Now I may just have to hold up that/those characters and see if you've got a better take on it. Bring it on! I'm a character making fool lately. With this I'll be doing it twice as fast.

1) Maybe something about being the next stage of law enforcement. A snappy name like "Genesis Squad", or simply "Evolution". Though an argument can be made for a good acronym (The government LOVES their acronyms). 2)That's a Good suggestion about giving her a secondary purpose in the group to start out with. If mutancy is "detectable" you could have a Professor-X type mentor call on her to come work with him. Any characters on the team who are "psychic"? It's a fun little GM device that he/she could have visions of this girl's powers coming about and therefore they approach her or keep her under surveillance. Or you could have the vilain find out about the character's potential first, and in that way the other heroes are drawn in by virtue of he villain's activity.

If you're going the dancer route: Pirouette (Which is a basic spin on your tip-toes) Spiral or Death-Spiral Nutcracker (Okay, I put this one in just to see if anyone is reading this) If you're going the catgirl route: Kitten (I know it's obvious) Wildcat Alley cat Tigress P***y, the cat who doesn't land on all-4's (Okay, again just testing you)

D20 is an illuminati plot. Grays get blamed for everything. (Well, grays get blamed if you do the cover-up right.) Okay, that wasn't worthy of a post. But it's Friday afternoon and the boards are slow, I've got an hour to kill before I can go home, and I need to boost my post total so I can stop being a "standard normal".

I only purchased about a dozen hero clix and yet managed to get a surprising number of duplicates. So I'm altering all the dupes in strange and freaky ways. If I come up with one worth showing I'll post it here.

Wolverine has the reach advantage, but the chihuahua can distract him with tasty treats. The mutant is strong and agile and heals rapidly, but the dog has nearly 7,000 locations (bases) worldwide and you don't get that many without being able to kick some mutant butt. It's one of those fights that comes down to a few lucky dice rolls. But if I gotta go with one, it's wolverine. Why? Because I can always go to Del Taco if I piss of the dog, but if I piss off wolverine I can't exactly replace my spleen.

The Sentinels operate out of the fictional city of Lazarus, whose location is irrelevant (Since the campaign is contained to the massive city and it's surrounding environs). But if you have to put it somewhere, it's on the central california coast.

Aw c'mon, Storn... You know we love you! Not sure Acroyear's comment deserved a full-page rant. The very fact that you are a sought after artist says enough. Personally I look forward to seeing more.

Here's a few approaches: Built as a Power: A KA or EB, throw in the focus, and the massive limitation that it only goes off when the End Reserve is dispelled (Easily a -2 Limit). You could also build in a 1phase delay, like you know it's gonna blow, and if you were lucky enough to have your action next you could pitch it away to safety (for a nice dramatic effect) or throw it at the bad guys for that matter. Build it as a susceptibility. It means only you take damage, but it still simulates a nice "backfire" effect. You take damage whenever your END reserve is fried. Practically unrelated effect that just popped into my head: Make it Damage shield electrical attack that happens when your END reserve is attacked, built like a pesistent power that has no effect until you are attacked. The effect would be that it vents some kind of built up static charge to anyone in the radius around you. It wouldn't be useful every day, but when someone attacked your reserve there would be a nice special effect. And you'd make some decent limitations for really having no control over it. Just spitballing. Guess the caffeine kicked in finally.

Yeh, well, you can chalk that one up to my ignorance. My knowledge of this hero (and pretty much most non-U.S. heroes) does not extend beyond this thread.

Nice to see someone outside of the U.S., England, and Japan getting in on the superhero thing. Half naked women of the world unite! Any word if this book will be in English or will it be in Tagolog?

Hehe... I give up. Even the suggestions I make are things I've already done too. So it's not like I'm capturing lightning in a bottle. (Though that would be a neat power too.) I'm sure Lightning-in-a-bottle-man has that covered though.

It's only been about a thousand years since I read the combat manuvers, so I might be suggesting something already accounted for... If he's going to be hung up on the word BLOCK as meaning that full contact is made but lessened by the defensive manuver, then he'll have to start subtracting STRs from one another. The 50 STR brick swings at the 25 STR Martial Artist. Implementing the Block manuver would subtract the 25 from the 50. The net would be the roll made. Maybe levels in block could be earmarked to lessen the damage further. Would certainly make it more dangerous to block a weapon than a bare fist. That 50 STR brick swinging a telephone pole should inspire a Dodge instead of a block. But then you are getting into the realm of house rules with all this; something I try to avoid.

I won't suggest any names, since it always feels more personal when you name them yourself. But here are a few ideas off the top of my head. I'll warn you first that I am better at original backgrounds than at original powers. An extra-dimensional summoned creature whose contract or binding is broken with his "master", and therefore would not be bound to perform the evil deeds for which he was summoned. He'd have a built in hunter (Master), evil reputation, distinctive looks, vulnerabilities/susceptabilities based around things that hurt demons. You are inexplicably linked to an alternate world version of yourself. As a result, you have multiform. One of you is present, then under certain circumstances another version of you is swapped into place. Could even be more than two of you. I like the idea that there's some cosmic balance that keeps two of you form being in the same universe at the same time by swapping you. There'd be a certain amount of disorientation each swap as you got your bearings. To others you'd appear skizophrenic, though your powers would change as well. A VPP type, you'd have a power to read images from people's minds of things that they've dreamed, then you could reproduce those things through use of your pool, as if you conjured their dreams/nightmares into being. Obviously you'd have problems with things that don't dream, but nobody said it was all easy. Lunchtime is over. I'll post more later if I think of them.

Thanks, that was very informative. I bought "green stuff" after seeing articles about people sculpting their own miniatures. Turns out that despite some minimal artistic ability, I have absolutely NO talent for sculpting. So I've been using the green stuff in a similar capacity to this article, modifying miniatures I already had. I'm nowhere near as good as this guy though. Sheesh!

Superman lands in France... teaches the French new unheard of speeds at which they can surrender. No? Okay, then maybe he lands in the wilderness and is raised by wolves. Maybe I'm thinking of somebody else...

Block is essentially a parry manuver. You aren't necessarily "getting out of the way" of the attack so much as deflecing it. I have no problem with a martial artist or well trained fighter deflecting the massive blow of a brick. It's not purely strength. I tend to think that if anything the "special effect" would be catching the person's fist in a show of strength.

... if superman starts sending you fanmail. ... if you have to send your character spreadsheet to NASA to have them verify the accuracy for you ... if the other players wear earplugs when you roll dice

Generally speaking, the iconic characters are intended to be examples of common heroes like the ones you will build when you buy the book. Accounting for experience everytime they republished the book would make them overpowered examples. Adopting a new set of iconic starting level characters each time gives the game less identity. I think the beatdown was well orchestrated but I'd like to make a suggestion for next time they do this sort of thing: Have players write the showdowns and then submit them to the publisher of the respective games. The publisher picks one and submits it for the beatdown. It's technically more work for the publisher, who'd have a lot of reading to do, but it gets the players involved more.

I think the suggestion of rolling a random character is a good one. Ever played Villains & Vigilantes? The thing I always liked about that game was that if you used the charts to roll you'd wind up with powers that had absolutely nothing to do with one another and the art then became making the powers have something to do with one another. You might come up with something you might not have otherwise thought of.

Well, that's the thing with copyright issues. You can contact anyone with a copyright to seek permission; but if they turn you down you have to go along with it. Because by contacting them you've kind of conceded that there might be some similarity. Or you can ignore their character and claim there's no similarity, in which case you risk litigation later on if they decided to be vindictive about your use of the name. Or, you can do what they did, and play it safe. Change a few names and hope you escape notice on anything you missed.

I'll be honest in saying that I don't spend a lot of time studying the heroes and villains from the book unless there is one I have a use for. So when it comes to judging the SASv.Champions fights I've been going based on the author's interpretations of how each handles the other character's powers. So in most cases I'm swayed by the person's ability to tell a story. I think both authors did a great job of telling the story of the fight between Mother Raven and Witchcraft, and so when it came down to it, I was pretty much split. In that case, tie went to champions. (Sorry, SAS.) In the new one however I definitely like the SAS story better. I've just resisted voting for a whole day now because I hate to turn my back on the product I like better. But I may have to break down and vote for the SAS hero. I think Steve & Co. can respect that.

Re: Re: Uhm... LOL

Whatever I can find. I've got Superfigs (Nearly all of them), I-kore's VOID miniatures, Bobby Jackson's THUGZ, and anything I think I can paint to make look "heroic". Not to sound too much like a shill, but New Wave Games is a great place to SEE the selection of miniatures out there because they have tons of pictures. I do my research there, even if I often buy a the local game store.