Edsel

Re: Anyone wanna do my bad guy stats for me? That would be far too many points.

Re: Jokes Die Hard Deer Hunter A hunter and his friend were sitting in a tall tower stand near Highway 481 in Maverick Co., TX, early one cold December morning. Suddenly, a huge buck walked out over the corn they had spread in the shrub with a tailgate feeder. Moving quickly, the hunter carefully aimed the Leupold Scope on his .300 Winchester Magnum at the unsuspecting Buck. As he was about to squeeze the trigger on this deer of a Lifetime, his friend alerted him to a funeral procession passing slowly down highway 481. The hunter pulled away from the gunstock, set the rifle down, took off his hat, bowed his head, and then closed his eyes in prayer. His friend was stunned. "Wow, that is the most thoughtful and touching thing I have ever seen you do. You are indeed the kindest man I have ever known, and I feel lucky to call you a friend." The hunter shrugged. "Yeah, well, we were married for thirty-five years."

Re: Shades Of Black Does this differ from the PDF of the same name? Which by the way is an excellent adventure.

Re: Blasters in Dark Champions In the old Omega Team campaign we mainly played real-world stuff but there were the occasional supernatural menaces and we also allowed some blaster style weapons. All were considered cutting edge stuff and thus highly restricted (unavailable for public sale). Of course PCs with the right connections could manage to get one or two but they were hard to get and hard to replace if lost. We used a couple of laser rifles and a blaster sort of like what appeared in the old Tekwar TV series.

Re: Omega Team Update There were never enough player characters unstunned or conscious to use any teamwork. Basically you hop in the room and discover that the villains were (A) Either blessed with enough defenses to shrug off your attack and had enough exotic defenses that no exotic attack would work, or ( Had such high DCV that they couldn't be hit. I am not sure if the enemy Martial Artist with brick-like defenses and mental immunity was the nasty one or if the enemy speedster with invisibility was worse. Of course the enemy Mentalist with Martial Arts who could soak up full powered EBs was pretty bad too.

Re: What Fantasy/Sci-Fi book have you just finished? Please rate it... I just finished Island on the Sea of Time by S.M Stirling. This is a prequel of sorts to his Dies the Fire series of novels that I have not yet read. I really enjoyed this book and have managed to snag copies of the other two books in the trilogy from a local used book store. Island in the Sea of Time deals with the story of the Island of Nantucket, its people and the US Coast Guard ship USS Eagle and crew. One evening a mysterious Event takes place and the Island and ship find themselves transported far back into time. By studying the placement of stars they are able to determine that they have been thrust back to about the year 1250 B.C. The Islanders and Coast Guard crew must struggle to survive in their new reality on Bronze Age Earth. The first novel covers about the first three years of their adventures as they adapt and overcome the new problems that they face. They make friends and enemies among the people of the time and, of course, some of their own end up becoming enemies as well. I think that the novel works because it is set far enough back in time that the historic record is very sketchy. The author is then able to fill in gaps in history in plausible ways and it makes for a very believable story. The story gives you the point of view of the Islanders, displaced in time, and the view of some of the important characters indigenous to the era. I recommend it.

Re: Which is better for a beginner: Champions or Dark Champions? Just to pile in on the advise here. Champions is a pretty much everything goes style campaign. The characters are going to have access to every power in the book and so will any NPC Supervillains that they have to face. This means that it would be in the player's best interest to know all of the rules and all of the powers. Dark Champions, if run as modern action adventure, would severely limit the number of powers that are available to the players. In which case it could be easier to learn since you would not have as great a need to be familiar with certain powers. To run and play in Champions you really only need the rulesbook (5ER or Sidekick), to play Dark Champions you really only need that as well but having he Dark Champions book is an extremely useful addition.

Re: Omega Team Update It is already written up. Just look at the Weekend Warriors thread.

Re: Omega Team Update Thanks for the compliments. My current campaign is Weekend Warriors which is really pretty similar. However that campaign is on hold right now while one of our other GMs runs a Champions game. Too many games too little time.

Re: THE ULTIMATE BASE -- What Do *You* Want To See? It has been mentioned previously in this thread but I want to add my vote as well. I want to see an updated version of the old Danger Room rules. The version from the long OOP Champions III was wonderful and we still use it to this day. I would love to see an updated version of this classic. It is definitely my number one wish for this book. I also would like to see more discussion of Labs for bases. Rules (or guidelines) about how many hexes space a lab occupies. What is and is not possible with a base. Is a Deduction Lab possible? If so how would it work. That sort of thing.

Re: A Thread for Random Videos 1000 Flaming Skeletons. This year in Oklahoma City we actually had about 1300 take place in the annual event. part of the Ghouls Gone Wild parade in downtown and Bricktown. One of my coworkers participated. All of these folks paid $35 a head to wear a skeleton costume, paint their face, and carry a torch. The front man of the Flaming Lips follows the parade in his bubble, not shown in this video.

Re: "Neat" Pictures As bad as the wild and feral pig problem is getting in Texas I kinda' thought that this was a standard tractor from the area.

Re: Foods for those that just don't care anymore The Heart Attack Grill This is a burger joint in Tempe, AZ. If I ever get out there I gotta visit this place. The News link on their website contains assorted videos of the place and their food.

Re: Blasting Mental Blast I pretty much agree with this. I see no need to mess with something that I see as essentially not broken. It adds flexibility so I like it. If anything, in our games, we have found Mental Defense to be so common that Ego Attacks are not worth it. People who buy Mental Defense usually buy enough to protect themselves from Mental Illusions, Telepathy and the like. As a result the Ego Attack which costs twice as much is often to weak to be really effective. Our group has had to be a lot more strict about character rational in order to limit the amount of Mental Defense in the game. It was getting to the point that Mentalists were becoming little more than annoyances. This was my view but others in my gaming group may have a different opinion. One thing that we have used in the past is buying Mental Defense with the Limitation Not vs. Ego Attacks (-1/2) to simulate those who have been trained to prevent intrusion into their minds. Often a Mentalist character will have perhaps 10 or 15 Mental Defense with an additional 10 or 15 points with the limitation.

Re: Famous People Super Heros Rush Limbaugh -- NND Sonic attack (could be considered a villain depending on your POV). Since he is deaf he has Flash Defense Hearing, the appropriate defense. You could give him dependence as a disad.

Re: A Thread for Random Musings I celebrated World Vegetarian Day (October 1st) by only eating herbivores.

Re: 4th Edition Champions Seeker Cool... Thanks and repped.

A character has a 100-point VPP. The control cost for this VPP is also 100-points due to various Advantages. If the character has a Minor Side Effect Limitation and blows his skill roll, thereby triggering the Side Effect, what happens? 1. The character suffers a 25-point Side Effect since that is one quarter the points of the VPP. 2. The character suffers a 25-point Side Effect since that is one quarter of the control cost. 3. The character suffers a 50-point side effect since that is one quarter the total cost of the Pool and its Control.

I figure I will ask this here first for a quick answer. If I get conflicting answers then I will post if for Steve. A character has a 100-point VPP. The control cost for this VPP is also 100-points due to various Advantages. If the character has a Minor Side Effect Limitation and blows his skill roll, thereby triggering the Side Effect, what happens? The character suffers a 25-point Side Effect since that is one quarter the points of the VPP. The character suffers a 25-point Side Effect since that is one quarter of the control cost. The character suffers a 50-point side effect since that is one quarter the total cost of the Pool and its Control. EDIT: Since this didn't seem to be attracting a flood of answers I went ahead and posted the question in the 5th Edition Questions Forum.

Re: Watchers of the Dragon vs. Ninja Hero I am so happy I got a copy of Watchers of the Dragon way back when. It is one of my all time favorite Hero supplements.

Re: A Thread for Random Videos Mr. Ellison certainly has no problem telling you exactly how he feels. It is sort of refreshing.

Re: Cost of Elven Silver In our fantasy campaign "Last Dominion" there is a similar sounding metal called Luminum. In our setting a longsword, depending on the style, costs between 1,250 and 1,525 bp (Bronze Pieces roughly equal to $1 each). To have such a sword well-made incurs an additional expense of about 3,000 bp, to have it in outstanding quality requires a master swordsmith costs an additional 7,500 bp. Lastly it could be magnificent quality this would take one of the best swordsmith's in the world (perhaps there are 10 of them) and cost an additional 15,000 bp. The metal Luminum, if used for the blade, tacks on an extra charge of 9,000 bp and grants the blade the Affects Desolid Advantage. So if I want a Numerian Longsword it would normally cost 1,525 bp. If I had a magnificent specimen made with Luminum it would cost about 25,525 bp. As you can see we really don't use a cost multiplier. Weapons have a base cost and then there are added charges for things like quality and materials. Hope that is of some help.

Re: Order of the Stick I was happy to see this story arc end in such a decisive manner. Bless V, the only book I ever got autographed by the author I had him do a little drawing of V. Now I hope we get the group back together again. I want to see Roy back and the whole group back together again. This started out as a story about the Order of the Stick. I want to see the Order of the Stick finally reunited.

Re: [Campaign] The Last Dominion I hate to bear bad news but... Eosin's work schedule has been killing his ability to run his face-to-face game. He has been coming out of long ER shifts and then having to run games immediately afterwards. Our group's current plan is that this Saturday will be a wrap-up game to put the Last Dominion campaign at a good stopping point. Hopefully some day in the future the game will resume when his work schedule is better. Our group plans to go back to a Champions campaign that has been on hold for several years.

Re: The Holy Hand Grenade Let's see... It would be Range Based On Strength since it is a thrown weapon. I'd give it a 1-hex AOE, and probably Takes No Range Modifiers. It seemed to bounce right on to the target bunny, despite the poor throw, and it certainly destroyed it. Its a full Phase attack since you must pull the pin and count to five... er, three. So that might make it an Extra Phase attack. Using the Absolute Effects information on page 251 of Fantasy Hero we see that a absolute death spell effect is an 8d6 RKA, NND, Does BODY. I guess the defense would be not being naughty in God's sight. All in all pretty nasty.