DoctorImpossible

I would see this less as a dictate on what you do and don't do, but more as a simple fact about you. This is the ideal Distinctive Features description for any setting with a "Hell" that some beings are native to. This is basically just a sign that while you may never do anything immoral (and therefore evil), you still set off any demon detectors around you, glow red instead of blue when angel/demon vision is used on you, and so on and so on, because you are Evil (but in the setting specific, allied with hell variety) even if you save the world every day and heal sick puppies every night. 

Mortals who care about morality and kind deeds will want to know more about you, but Angels who will serve certain gods, clerics and paladins who have bought into those Gods and all of their "divine word", and even some of the mortals who simply don't know better than to judge you based on shiny magic spells that say "this is a thing of pure evil, kill it now", will all murder your current form on sight, but other demons and hell-oath mortal mages will not necessarily ally with you, because they know that simply being aligned with "Evil" together does not mean that you two have the same goals or moral codes. Hence why it is a disadvantage.

Yeah, the Tick is actually a great example. Code of the Hero would mean that, like the Tick, you assume that authority figures are likely to be good guys, but you don't then have to automatically obey every authority you meet, especially not if you think you're doing something more important than the law currently requires of you (you wouldn't allow yourself to be arrested, if that meant that the villain is able to carry out an evil scheme right now, on the other side of the city, for example).

I'm not sure if it is strictly *pulp*, but I did recently start the Skullduggery Pleasant books. Quite good modern fantasy crime in the noir detective style.

I don't think the specific era is important to whether it is or is not pulp. It being pulp is more about the action adventure, the fact that the heroes never even question their own decision to do the right thing, even when it gets them into danger, the wide exploration of the setting, and so on. 

I've done the inverse sometimes, when I was in a D&D campaign as a D&D character (a Human Fighter, specifically) and played them as a superhero (took the folk hero background, played the leader of a rebel village of nomadic refugees, fought with no weapons, using a luchadore style masked vigilante hero identity). 

You say fireball is not necessary, and I know that D&D has some very specific ideas about what a fireball spell is, but honestly, I tend to encounter a more apt form of what I would call a "fireball" spell generally featured in a *lot* of fantasy. That being the depiction of a mage who holds out a clenched fist or spreads out their fingers and suddenly those fists are wreathed in flame or their spread fingers are cupping a hovering ball of fire, then they either punch the air towards their target or vaguely flick their open hand towards their target, and the ball of fire is sent flying into the opponent.

Rather than exploding and taking out a room grenade flamethrower style, these common fireballs tend to simply "punch" the target, along with a little bit of damage from the fire itself, but only enough fire to cause a problem for extremely flammable targets. Otherwise, the main point of the spells is just to produce a very hard punch at a long range.

That seems like a fairly believable spell for all sorts of magic-users to learn and teach their apprentices as the most basic form of attack, even if only for self-defence. You're an academic who doesn't want to get into melee with your enemies, so you learn how casting an element at your enemies works, and of course everybody picks the element that is the most easy to learn how to cast.

Basically just a Blast with Energy Damage and No Endurance Cost.

Bruce Lee, of course, the master of the martial arts, as our heavy hitter. 

White Death (Simo Häyhä) brings his own super identity, is our weapons master.

Harry Houdini, the master debunker, is our expert investigator and escapologist.

This might sound strange, but what is actually in that folder? Because I am honestly loving the look of that character build lay-out. Is there a PDF copy of those write-ups that you could share with the forum? (Obviously not if that is an official product or what-have-you, but since that looks like a Batman image in there, I was inclined to think that it was a fan-made thing.)

It is not so much a single quote as a rough paraphrasing of a running joke that is not at all in character (at least, I don't think so) in canon, but we do jokingly say it in the voice of our characters, whenever a supervillain gets pushed off a high place and can't fly, or gets blasted unconscious with a beam:

Oh, no! NOT WILHELM!

Honestly, since that's Alyson Tabbitha, it wouldn't surprise me if she was just actually Mystique IRL. I mean, have you seen her Jack Sparrow? Or her Lestat? Or... Well, you get the idea. Shapeshifting powers IRL don't seem unlikely.

Maybe that's the secret. The successful super-villains who you hear from, because they keep cropping up to do villainry, are the crazy obsessed types. There are plenty of the previously lower level but then got a power up or some training or just a sack full of treasure, who you simply stop hearing of and you tend to assume that they finally died off after Punisher found them, or got sent to the Suicide Squad, or whatever. You know, basically the word on the street is that they finally got big enough to draw too much attention for their power level/smarts and got killed. But what actually happened was that they got all they ever wanted.

Somebody with the small pocket dimension powers that let them smuggle weapons and cash and stuff as a mercenary, retires once they figure out how to make a whole extra pocket universe, because instead of smuggling *an army*, they'd rather make a lot less money much more safely by simply letting supervillains retire to a pocket world mansion. 

Some sort of immortal who only became a supervillain from boredom finally reaches the end of the century that they promised themselves they'd spend as a supervillain, and disappears, with nobody realising their connection to the new superhero who rises on the other side of the world, being a hero for the next hundred years.

 The evil wizard that everyone was so worried about finally kills their good guy archnemesis... and promptly resurrects them, joins the their team and is revealed to have been that hero's mentor all along, not having turned evil but merely trying to test the hero's worth and having found it wanting, but with potential.

Basically, in a comic, heroes and villains tend to keep coming back the same as they ever have been, with any changes (even good, well-written, famously popular changes) being retconned or simply ignored by some later writers who either didn't do their research or just refuse to acknowledge the changes. 

But in the real world, with those heroes and villains added, there's much more scope for long-term redemptions, or a retirement for a super-villain, or just an illegal deal actually going well.

8 hours ago, Tjack said:

That’s “Feels so good” by Chuck Mangione.

How did I miss that one? Literally the scene that it shows up in, he says that! Gah!

I'm tempted to say that Robert Downey Jr and Chris Evans would end up being similar to their fictional counterparts. Not because of their portrayals but because of the stuff they've done outside of that.

In RDJ's case, visiting lots of amputees with new, advanced prosthetics. In some kind of Super-hero universe, I could see his influence in that field being able to get all sorts of hyper-advanced prosthetics, to a "winter soldier" level, ending up making lots of people into cyborg super-heroes.

In Chris Evans case, his crusading against the resurgence of actual Nazis, which, in a super-hero universe, means that he's going to end up as a super-hero, fighting the forces of, for example, the Red Skull.

On 7/13/2021 at 3:52 AM, Lord Twig said:

Wisdom from The Sphinx:

From the same film (Mystery Men), The Shoveller's one liner just before entering the climactic mission that will near certainly be a suicide mission to save the city (so it is a phrase to used about a very big, hero mission but one which will be very difficult to pull off and you might all die, or worse, fail to save the city):

We've got a date with destiny! And it looks like she's ordered the lobster!

Very much appreciated. (Polite applause.) I suspect I might have a very grateful totally not the Sorcerer Supreme to play sometime soon, which will be wonderful. Literally. As in it is "full of wonders".

I am curious whether any given company chooses to publish RPGs with the specific version of their characters from particular periods or storylines, or if they produce an "overall" version of the character, that tries to be a sort of generic ideal of them.

Marvel seems to tend more towards the "specific iteration of the character based on current storylines" more recently (Marvel Heroic RPG Civil War sourcebooks and the like), while DC have gone for more general archetypes (DC Adventures with a Mutants & Masterminds 3e based system) although DC have also had a system made specifically for just "Smallville" as an RPG.

I kind of like the idea of the ghost of the dead twin sticking around, but just having had them once be actually twins, power wise as well as the usual kind. Like maybe two extremely gifted martial artists who also know a bit of magic and study monsters (because their superhero careers started off as becoming monster hunters) and who are both mutants with the same slightly enhanced normal abilities (their mutations are all just slight improvements on normal senses, slight super-strength, slightly faster speed, slight toughness, etc) and both an extremely slow flying ability and a very low strength, slow telekinetic ability. But then one of them died, became a ghost to keep on being the living twin's partner, and now both must adapt to one being a ghost (none of the physical training or powers are much use very often, so they need to find uses for their intangibility and such instead, while the living partner has to get used to not having their life-long partner there, physically, to assist in the stuff that needed two people with similar training and powers to be able to pull it off.

On 6/24/2021 at 5:04 AM, Jhamin said:

They were basically a bunch of superpowered conmen that decided it was easier to play hero and pocket some of the loot they "saved" than it was to keep fighting superheroes all the time.

...

would shame them publicly for having such delicate egos they couldn't handle another superteam in town when it was clear that they needed the help with all the crime going on.

To be fair, if they were actually stopping crimes, even if only minor crimes and even if they would then loot the criminals, at least they were contributing to the efforts. You might resent them for taking more of the credit that they're really earning, but they do cut down on some of the work for you and the police.

With regards to the nature of the other team in the OP's question, I think it should depend entirely on each individual PC or NPC to choose for themselves. What do you, individually, all want from this specific group of NPCs? A major rival team to show you up when they swoop in to save the day better than you could? An enemy team who are trying to accomplish the same goals as you, before you can achieve them? Or even just a bunch of other people that you hate but you have to tolerate them? 

Yeah, I've always been perfectly happy to give stories the same glossing over for the super-heroes, super-villains, super-powers and so on, that I give to police procedural stories for their 100% closure rates and to wackier sitcoms for having consequences for their shenanigans never come up.

When I read about the modern day and real world, except for super-powers, I accept the fact that the world is as similar to, or dissimilar from, the modern day and real world as the people who created it wanted it to be.

3 hours ago, mattingly said:

I've been rewatching Chuck. I'm halfway through the third season now. It's still as delightful as I remember.

Ooh, nice. I really liked that when it was first on. Got a little to dramatically serious for me at times, but otherwise very good.

More recently, I've been watching, and just finished the latest (2nd) season of the new DC animated "Harley Quinn". I loved it! Very different interpretations of a lot of the DC world, but as long as you're on board for it, then it is a lot of great comedy and great super-hero (well, super-villain protagonist) action. 

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- the complete lyrics of the 1812 Overture

(Sorry, not sorry)

7 hours ago, Pattern Ghost said:

Hope everyone had a Happy Pride!

Happy, yes, but over way too fast. Who's up for making July into Pride Month 2: Electric Boogaloo, this year?

I heard of a biker once who had a solid black furred rabbit called Lucifer. Apparently, he only had the thing because he'd taken it by force from his former friend when his 'friend' had started to neglect it.

Also, there is a breed of chicken somewhere which is solid black, all the way, from tip to toe.

A playlist mix of the heavy rock from the Iron Man films, the mixtapes from the Guardians Of The Galaxy, and the jukebox music of Captain Marvel. Oh, and the one Jazz hit with the flügelhorn from the start of Doctor Strange.

What, did Elphaba go to the beach? (A "sand witch", get it? Oh, hohoho. So funny.)