Victim

Re: Idea: Super Hero "Morality scale" I disagree. If you to examine any sort of issue like the corruption of power or humanity/cyberware, then any sort of rating is defeating the point. It means that you've already decided on those issues and are simply grading characters based on your interpretation. Is what makes a hero a hero really something that abstracts itself into an easy 10 point scale? Especially since a mechanical scale lends itself to gaming the system.

Re: WWYCD #124 or so:Peace on Earth I'm playing in Pbp (eg, slow) so personal nemeses haven't really come up. The major recurring villain so far likely has enough social ability ability to break Shooting Star if she had to spend 24 hours talking to him and couldn't flee. She needs to grow a Sense Motive, but I'm cruel and don't plan on funneling any points into that area.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... One might think that being underneath a semi truck would confer significant defensive benefits like cover and limiting the number of melee attackers that can reach the character. IIRC, even the normal characters in Jurassic Park stuff can fend off dinosaurs for a bit by getting underneath their vehicles.

Re: Expendable? Who would want it? Independent is like renting a power.

Re: What happens in Vegas... It sounded to me like the attack on the casino was an unplanned interruption, not whatever the group and Captain Zapper had been in Vegas to deal with. If he was ditching the group on the whole reason they were in town, that's more serious. Shooting Star would be a little annoyed that he was a no show, but not enough to go looking for him. His personal life is not her problem - she has plenty of those herself. She doesn't really want to know. When they next met up, she'd be "Next time, make sure we have a way of reaching you in case there's a real emergency." It was no big deal - but if it had been a serious matter with better villains or a doomsday device or something, the group still would have no way of reaching him. But she wouldn't be comfortable with harassment of the Captain, because she doesn't want to be held to a 24 hour standard of readiness either.

Re: Why should I care? Not really, since even DnD characters need to take plot hooks to have adventures. Even without a true hero spirit, there's still plenty to reason to engage in superheroics. Fame, for one thing. Ultimately, the players have to agree to buy into the hooks the GM is offering, or the GM needs to change the hooks. For traditional superheroics, the characters have to be self motivated to some extent. Characters that aren't into that sort of thing aren't really acceptable. You can go after them instead (sort of like the situation with the Xmen) but that's quite different in tone. Another thing is that the sort of disinterested loner is often a cool character in media. But A) that character doesn't work so well if most people are brooding loners instead of only having 1, and those characters generally end up being not nearly so disinterested as outward appearances indicate.

Re: Was the GM right or wrong in limiting my Gadgeteer? In combat jury-rigging in M&M is best served by uses of Extra Effort or Hero points, rather than the 'fast' version of inventing. Maybe you were using the wrong mechanic. But a broad concept like tech expert can lead to a character that doesn't have much limits (like magic, or cosmic power). As you say, that can be problematic from the GM's PoV, and the other characters. If they have somewhat narrower concepts anyway.

Re: I'm going to make a big noise...BOOM! Shooting Star assumes that he's either lying or mistaken. If he actually intended for her to explode inside the city, then there's no way someone would give her a whole 10 minutes - she could fly miles away in just a few seconds. So he might be lying about the exact duration (we already had the bomb set to explode with about half the time remaining on the countdown ). Or he's mistaken: with 10x normal metabolism, Megan might explode in 10x the normal time. So she's out of the room before the body hits the ground, heading out to sea (and up) at hyper sonic speed. Then she'll start to call teammates, and then her friend/family in case things don't work out.

Re: WWYCD (kind of): Advice Time for Scarlet! Shooting Star: "Since you were a semi famous athlete and don't have any sealed armor or forcefields, there's probably enough photographic or forensic evidence to blow your identity anyway, now that you've attracted serious attention. But how easy do you want to make things for them? If your enemies have to dig for things, then only the more disciplined, connected, or smart villains will be able to find things out without help. The kind of people who might think twice about killing people close to you out of spite. Working on a plan for going public might be a good idea, in case someone tries to force the issue." "What about just telling your parents, instead of the whole world?"

Re: Mis-matched Team Members The funny thing is that in a game context, BMX Bandit might have insane CVs, Hand Attack OIF (from hitting people with his bike), martial arts and extra DCs and be the overpowered one.

Re: WWYCD: "He'll be back." I was assuming that emotional functions of the brain would simulated (otherwise there's not really much being transfered), but that the uploaded individuals would end up being different on that level. If they're interacting with basically any imaginable virtual environment or capable of imposing any desired emotional state upon themselves (they can sort of hack and modify their own minds directly), then the transhumanists would probably quickly become alien. The humanists wouldn't want that transformation, and would consider the benefits to be cheating - the struggle of life is what's important, not simply skipping ahead to have whatever you want, feel however you want.

Re: WWYCD: "He'll be back." Shooting Star: "Look, any arbitrary set of background data could be loaded into these drones, there's no reason to assume that we're being provided with accurate information. It's not like advanced robots can only come from the future. A combat drone doesn't need all these records to do its job, so it seems likely that it was intended that we'd salvage this data. It's not reliable at all." "And I'm not going to let someone get executed for something that they haven't attempted or even thought about doing yet. We should focus on figuring out the comm system and protocols so Optic will be able to access the main robot." Ironic, because Shooting Star wouldn't mind even a destructive upload as long as the technical specs were convincing and there was no evidence of super villain involvement. Temper: Begins a more in depth study of computing. No need to have all the eggs in one basket. Much of her general preparations should also be applicable in a revolution against machines.

Re: Twist off the WWYCD Shooting Star buys super-speed related abilities to go along with her hypersonic flight. Probably a "faster than the eye" sort of invisibility.

Re: 'Divine' Characters The reason not to be grateful is if the character sees the bestowal of power as an investment, not a gift.

Re: WWYCD voluntary super registration Shooting Star: Shooting Star gained her powers at a young age, and rather messily at that. The government agency covering super related stuff already has sufficient records to link her civilian and super IDs. As such, she has no problem with registering. However, she's atypically sloppy about covering her secret ID. Since she feels that anyone doing their homework would be able to uncover her identity, she sort of regards it as a lost cause and is unwilling to make sacrifices to protect it. With that attitude, of course it wouldn't last though.

Re: WWYCD: Dead before your time... Shooting Star: Either try to limp back to 'her' apartment (mostly paid for by her roommate), or borrow someone's phone - which might unlikely given the unfriendly reactions. Then she'd call her mom, and her doctor. If both of those approaches fail, then she'll call 911. She's very much stunned and confused by the whole affair. Especially since with her normal low grade superspeed working poorly, she'll see everything as happening unnaturally quickly around her. Eventually, she'd try to get in touch with the patrons of her team since they could probably explain alot, but she doesn't know their phone numbers and her comm gear was trashed.

Re: Wwycd Oops! Shooting Star is of little use here - she doesn't really know what she's doing either, especially in areas of actually being a hero. And she'd be somewhat relieved that she wasn't taken out in the fighting too - so far she's 2/2 on nearly dying. "I'm not sure what you were supposed to do. Even if you let us know right away, we've kind of been busy dealing with another mastermind, and because of him there aren't lots of other options for help right now - if there ever was a time for you to step up and handle things on your own, now was it. And since the initial attacks were the worst, even a small delay on our part would have ended up with the same result. I'm sorry. Sometimes you just lose. At least you didn't run away."

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Funny quote from a PbP I play in: DM: Nitro grabs the hand as tightly as possible, and pulls against the struggling motor. Nekro flies towards Nitro, but the rope breaks as Nekro hits the building, then bounces off, flipping in the air and landing on his head. Nitro is left holding the Zombie's hand and some of the cord. (Nekro is down) Nitro: "And to think of how ugly you were already! You should probably get a hook- chicks dig the pirate look- you might meet a nice zombie lady and abandon this life of crime." "Lady Liberty, Nekro is down. Do you need a hand?"

Re: [Villain] Threshold It seems weird that someone who's power is being immune to pain has such strong defenses, especially since the intro text clearly mentions that he still takes the injuries, he just doesn't feel them. Slapping a Stun Only lim on some of his defenses seems like a perfect fit. Or even go the automaton route and buy Take No Stun.

Re: WWYCD: Fuel for the fire Shooting Star would be unwilling to activate the flaming force field/damage shield power - it's way too close to her own uncontrolled plasma aura which badly burned her many times. So she'd have been knocked been by the first few hits without its defensive benefit.

Re: WWYCD: Collected Shooting Star is easily taken in the bald man's ruse. Fortunately, escaping actually shouldn't be too difficult for her. Her plasma orbs are indirect in that she can both create them at a distance, or route them around obstacles. It's possible that the collector missed her remote projection ability since she usually starts them out at close range. In that case, she'd work on attacking her cell from the outside (after trying to blast her way free from the inside of course), or attempt to defeat the containment on the super opposite her - since she'll probably have different (and probably stronger) default powers, the 80s heroine should be able to release Star if freed from her own prison. Shooting Star also has amazing acceleration and manueverability on her flight, so she'd attempt to ram the walls a few times if her basic attack proved ineffective. Finally, she can unleash a far more destructive blast (especially against objects), but it can really hurt her. As a last resort - after attempting to use any of the mundane devices carried with her costume - she'll fire that off, aiming the cone to blast away her cell and clip that of the heroine across from her. With luck, she wouldn't dangerously injure herself using it. Shooting Star would only release supers that she recognizes as heroes (or that have another hero vouching for them). She'd probably try to find away to access the computer system to get more information - she's pretty good at Computers.

Re: WWCYD: Lethal Force is Authorized Shooting Star is not especially commited to non lethal force, even though it is her basic approach. She's mostly a superhero to do something useful with her powers and because it's what society generally expects of powered indviduals - and maybe because it's a good way to get killed. Pushed hard enough (or in the right ways), she'd drop superheroic conventions. Temper basically always attacks for lethal damage. Her control over her power is such that it's a bit of gamble whether her 'safe' attack would actually be so. An alien invasion is something she'd be willing to kill to stop (including any human sympathizers).

Re: Istvatha V'han - why can't she conquer Earth? Because the fabric of space must distorted sufficiently in order to open stable dimensional portals? So it'd only be possible to cross over near a planet, star, etc and not in vast empty space.

Re: The Mind Controlling Hero I wouldn't say that it's unethical. Well, it does seem reasonable that some supers would have some issues when dealing with normal criminals for that reason. It's not like the police get attack helicopters and such - some levels of force aren't really necessary or desireable for law enforcement. Granted, most supers are far better at scaling down damage than conventional attacks. But it seems reasonable that there may be an aversion amongst a few supers to using their powers on normals - or normals without heavy (or superscience) weapons anyway. Even if intervention is moral, that doesn't mean a hero wouldn't feel like a bully afterwards.