Doctor Agenda

Re: The Things I Learned Playing A Villain... Right, Jay Garrick, my bad brain. I know SOME speedster got his powers from the River Styx, I remember reading it and being struck by him getting super speed instead of invulnerability. Anyone know what I'm talking about, as I evidently don't?

Re: The Things I Learned Playing A Villain... I thought Jay Garett got his super speed from the River Styx?

Re: Tuala Morn Pretty good, I'm not really interested in the rules, more in the geography and ancient civilizations. Mediterranea is now Europa, and there is more on cool First Age Atlantean technomagic devices: submarines, flying platforms that look like manta rays, fire lances, that kind of thing. I'm stealing ideas from the Turakian Age to apply to the Citadel of Tok in Draconea. It is a good fit for my campaign, which features balloons, black powder, and steam power.

Re: Tuala Morn That's the one! Thanks for the tip, I am now the proud owner of the new electronic edition!

Re: Tuala Morn I'll do my part. Looking forward to buying the book and hope you do more with the time period. Currently I'm limping along with a twenty-something year old 2nd-age of Atlantis game book for my prehistoric-but-suggestive-of-historical-cultures-to-come fantasy setting.

Re: Marvel's Best Martial Artists Just got here and haven't read the whole thread, but no Yellow Claw?

Re: Review of Hidden Lands Define the Missile Deflection as bracing for impact and it won't require finesse. 20 resistant hardened Def should be enough to make him tank-proof, the remaining non-resistant PD & ED should be enough to take care of the Stun. He already has enough skills. His technical skills imply a level of former geekiness. A Watched by Ashima, Archon, or/and the authorities would all be appropriate, IMO. I'm unclear as to what effect he actually has on his surrouding environment when he uses his powers?

Re: Review of Hidden Lands Thanks for your insights, Wanderer! I'll be glad to see TH if only because my campaign is set in North Detroit and one of the PCs is a benefactor of RW, and I've been kind of avoiding it while waiting to see what comes out. Just like I held back on revealing one of the characters is an Empyrean until the Hidden Lands came out. It is actually kind of good for my game, keeps me from rushing subplots.

Re: Review of Hidden Lands I agree Archon should be 100 or 200 points more powerful than most of the other Sentinels. Is he not?

Re: Review of Hidden Lands Looks interesting, I'm looking forward to seeing Teen Hero myself. That first set looks especially appropriate for a typical Empyrean teenager.

Re: Review of Hidden Lands You definitely took care of the discrepancy between Irithion and Archon! I think Johnny's pretty reasonably powered for a New Mutants/Sky High or Low-powered Champions game. The point was really to bring a Young Empyrean down to 250 points...start with Johnny as a base (reworking the skills) and you can have a perfectly playable 350-point standard hero. It's a heck of alot easier to add points than take them away. It also means that not every Empyrean is going to overwhelm a 350-point opponent. I don't think Conversation implies refined speech patterns, I think it implies the ability to get people to talk about themselves, but another social skill would have been fine. Johnny is just good at getting people to open up. I avoided Seduction cause he's so pretty the girls are after him, he never had to learn it. I didn't mean it to be the only relevant social skill for a teen, it just happens to be the one he had. Lots of folks don't have any. I was dubious about Empyrean as a separate Secret ID too, that's why I combined them. I haven't seen Teen Hero yet, is it any good?

Re: Review of Hidden Lands

Re: Review of Hidden Lands That was my take, that most teenagers would have fewer skills than the average adult, and you could consider Johnny to have a 0-point PS like Student or Metalhead or Jock or Popular Kid. I think his skills are about right for an Empyrean teenager who was fairly normal before his powers 'came online' and spent a summer with the other side of the family before returning to home and school. I just don't think a suite of athletic, social, and technical skills is realistic for a teenage character who isn't supposed to be a polymath prodigy. PS: Thanks for the post, Questionman!

Re: Review of Hidden Lands

Re: Review of Hidden Lands Wow! That's quite a teenager! Is he really a teenager (13-19) or relatively a teenager (20-99)? I agree it is a perspective thing. The highest point level I've ever GMed was around 500 points and that was supposed to be mythically powerful. I understood changing the standard hero to 350 points because so many powers not directly related to combat or movement became more expensive it is harder to make a distinctive superhero on 250 points (although you can still build a combat-effective one on that). I also think low-powered heroes and villains are under-represented in the 5th edition, like there is a 'must be at least 300 points to wear spandex' rule. Hopefully Teen and Golden Age Hero will help in that area. So, to reiterate, I am coming from a different angle and think Joe Empyrean being 250 points would still be pretty awesome for an entire RACE of beings. And, IMO, these sorts of things should be designed to fit in lower-powered as well as high-powered campaigns so more of us can use them without extensive rewriting.

Re: Review of Hidden Lands

Re: where would I find Sentinel and Justice Squad write ups? Cool, something to look forward to! Not just the writeups, but the update. The previous Champions Universe sorely needed one but stopped publishing before it came out, I'll take it as a good sign that this one has more longevity.

Re: New Avengers? Now THAT's funny!

Re: Review of Hidden Lands Knock 5 points each off Power and Mental Defense and knock the customized powers down to 70-80 points and Empyreans become alot more player-friendly...could indicate a less experienced Empyrean. Issues with the folks could easily reduce the value of the contact. IMO, Universal Translator should be replaced with languages to avoid the accent and randomized understanding problems OR should have No Skill Roll (+1/2), No Accent (+1/2), and Only Previously Learned Languages (-1).

Re: Marvel Second Stringers. Help me out. Nomad was training his own sidekick for awhile: Vagabond. She was a little acrobatic and alot cute. She'd probably have to train up a bit to be second string, though.

Re: I have Hidden Lands! I would (and did) drop Light Sleep and add 1 point to the Life Support package for 8 hours of sleep/week. My character never had Universal Translator (neither did Thalya and Archon until a minute ago), and I'm not going to add it...besides, he doesn't have an Empyrean mind anyway. No contact, since he doesn't even know he's an Empyrean (yet). The Enforcer can't find him because 'he doesn't have an Empyrean mind anyway'. I cut back the (50 active point) multipower slots he hasn't used yet (all the mental stuff, basically). Retroactively, no visible change. He actually winds up being pretty close to your 'Teen Empyrean'. The teen idea works really well, even for adults...it should take a long time for Empyreans to come into their full power...50 or 100 years easy.

Re: I have Hidden Lands! I agree totally, especially with the Universal Translator. These guys have no language skills! Assuming they have a native Empyrean language (rather than all speaking English) most of them travel the world with a 12- chance of communicating and a guaranteed accent! 'Ever notice how many rich and powerful beautiful people have that same strange accent?' That 20 point Universal Translator is probably (as it is not explained) supposed to represent linguistic talent combined with exposure to hundreds of languages. A better representation would be to get linguist and a bunch of languages, OR Universal Translator with No Skill Roll (+1/2) and No Accent (+1/2) and Only For Human Languages Previously Learned (-1). Also, I note that the Empyreans in the Lemurian Section are built with Flash Defense (Empyrean Eyes), Armor (Empyrean Skin), and Full Life Support. They resemble the write-up for Thalya in Galactic Champions rather than the Empyreans in the Arcadia section. Armor and Damage Resistance are fairly interchangeable, and no reason why an Empyrean can't tweak out that last bit of Life Support, but why don't other Empyreans have 'Empyrean Eyes'? I think the Lemurian section must have been completed before the Empyrean section was fleshed out. Rewriting my character to fit the new package (sans Universal Translator and Empyrean contact), I dropped his Empyrean Eyes (copied from Thalya) to pay for other things in the package I didn't have. Another inconsistency which I have to resolve in my campaign: it was established in the Viper book that the Commandant of Viper Academy is half-Empyrean with peak human characteristics and powerful telepathy. Now it is Writ that Empyrean-Human crosses produce somewhat superior humans or (1 in 1000) full-fledged Empyreans, never intermediate-powered supers. Sigh. It is inconsistent AND blows away the half-Empyrean character concept (except as an interesting background and justification for competent-level stats). I suppose we can resolve the inconsistency by calling the Commandant a mutant who happens to have an Empyrean parent. I would have preferred, say, 1-in-500 births to have intermediate powers. I DO like the direction they went with Empyreans having a basic template on which a variety of super powers can be fit. I think they could have squeezed the package down to 300 points so an Empyrean could be fit into a standard 350-point game, but then I guess we would have missed the fun of all this tweaking. Look for PCs who are renegades/amnesiacs/for some reason undiscovered Empyreans who haven't got their full powers for various reasons.

Re: I have Hidden Lands! That IS helpful. I've been waiting for Hidden Lands for years, because I'm so taken with the Empyreans, I only wish the section was longer. I'm currently running an Empyrean character, fortunately he has the mind of a 19 year old human from North Detroit circa 1949, so he doesn't yet know who the Empyreans are (yet-no 18 point Empyrean contact) and I gave him Armor instead of Damage Resistance and put it in an Empyrean Toughness Elemental Control along with the Life Support. The result is a bit squeezed (only skill is 1940s trivia), but Optimus II is pretty close enough to the package that I won't need to make any serious revisions. Just a bit low on Power and Mental Defense and high on End for flying, compared to the template. The Lemurian section rocked, that's the kind of detail I would have liked to have seen in the Arcadian section! However, since my main complaint is that I would have liked there to have been more book (and the artwork was variable), I'm glad I got it.

Re: Mystical Hero Team Archetypes What about an open-ended spell, a curse for instance, that incarnates into a human-like form to carry out its purpose (eg, rid the world of evil)? An astral entity formed by a psychic crime victim's burning desire for justice? A hero inhabited by a magical symbiote that allows him or her to feed on magic? A scavenger, collector or trader who has acquired multiple interesting magical artifacts in order to be able to fight evil magic on equal terms. I'm kind of straying from archetypes, though. What about a streetwise PI who has lots of connections and favors owed him in the Occult Underground? Sometimes the kind of favors you can cash in by calling a Name? Maybe he has some unusual mystical knack that makes him particularly useful (analytical Detect Magic, high defenses against magic, can Dispel Magic, is really lucky, etc.) to supernatural types. He could know a little magic himself, or rely on a kevlar vest, a heavy handgun, and his charm.

Re: Villainy Amok In my campaign, The Futurian (II) is married to a Malvan princess who is searching for it. Hopefully she can figure out how to get in to the darn thing so I don't have to stretch credibility by having all the conditions filled by coincidence.