Grow-Arm-Hair Lad

Thank you! Okay, don't nobody take this the wrong way. And, I ain't lazy. But I am having trouble finding DC villains in the Downloads. And in the herogames.com forums. Normally I am a wizard at this. My first instinct was to go to Google and do a search of the site (site:herogames.com) with some key terms, such as "harley quinn" in quotation marks, along with "disadvantages." It's not working. I guess I could search character-by-character using my DC Who's Who books, or an online list of DC villains.... If anyone has any suggestions, or, if you remember a specific villain that was written up, please post the name on this thread and I'll do the rest! : ) PS: Another thing I could do, I realized, is take any posted villains from any franchise (Champions, Marvel, homebrew, etc.) and then just identify them as a new villain. That might actually be the smarter play, because it would allow the players to develop the personality how they see fit. I could leave some Psych Limits open and then paste them in once I see how it's going...

Surbrook seems like the natural choice for this. : ) I've used the original Strike Force for inspiration, and Surbrook's site is always part of my campaign planning. Seems like a match made in heaven.

Hiya! I'm looking for DC villains that have been written up in 5e or 6e. I love Surbrook's site but it seems like mostly heroes. I'd be happy with links but also reposts of DC villains that have been done here on the herogames forums. (I'm running a Suicide Squad campaign and I just want some characters ready for the non-Hero players to grab rather than spend a lot of time in character creation.)

Yeah, the shapeshifters and the Malvans. I have the corrupt, invulnerable superhero ready to seize control--a former teammate of the PC superteam. The stuff with the aliens will play well with what I was already building, and having a gladiatorial spectacle like Hulk vs. Thor in Ragnarok as a finale will fit perfectly. And I'm already seeing how the plot-building skirmishes will play out, a little like The Great Supervillain Contest.... Thank you!!

This is exactly what I needed. You hit the nail on the head that the inspirations are contradictory. I usually do pick two semi-contradictory elements and try to weave them together. This was the most extreme. But your brainstorming really got my neurons firing! Bringing in the gladiatorial angle is what I needed, plus all the other suggestions. Very cool, and this was exactly the help I was dreaming of. : )

It's weird. I've been GMing Champions for....30+ years. I just can't seem to get this one together. Here are the inspirations I'm playing with: Something like Brandon Sanderson's Steelheart, which is a bit like The Boys, but I'm leaning toward Steelheart as the inspiration.(Click on the link if you want a synopsis of Steelheart.) But also, themes of alien invasion. More like an infiltration, like They Live or Marvel's Secret Invasion. I just can't seem to come up with set pieces and plotlines that draw these ideas together. I also need escalating events and a nice "Season Finale" battle or scenario My world is a homebrew with some Champions villains thrown in. The world feels like Marvel, but has no Marvel characters. Does any of this get your neurons firing?

Yeah, I'm interested. : ) Hey, could I play a teen version of Man-Bat? Summary: He drank the Langstrom serum and he also has some gadgets. He can transform back and forth. Yes, he could in fact be called "Teen-Bat"

I'm interested!

...which somehow made my mind jump to a safari. Which I dislike but perhaps it could be a cryptozoological safari.....with tranquilizer darts...?

Digging it, Duke! I'm trying to come up with an opening for my players, and this is definitely in the right vein. The PC's have been together for a few adventures but there has been a short break and this seems like a good time for an Indy opening scene to get everyone in the right mood. I have been thinking about Bond openings too, or set pieces from modules, but I still have some time before the session.

Indiana Jones always has a cool opening scene. Can you think of a cool 1935-era opening for a pulp game? There are some criteria: -Imagine it is for a group of low-powered PC's, meaning there have to be obstacles, rolls, and a feeling that they are doing something and making decisions rather than passively experiencing something -It should have some element of spectacle, like, I think every Indiana Jones opening has that element -It should have a pulp feeling if possible Thoughts? Ideas?

Yes! This is very interesting. You're right in that I would use the HAP as crutches or training wheels at the beginning to make sure everyone feels they have some control and they are having a good time. But once they get into the spirit of the game, I think the training wheels would be removed. Definitely how I would hope it would go. I like the GURPS idea. I'll have to take a closer look at that. Kind of like Cramming but more immediate yet more temporary.

I want to be clear about presenting this Fate Points idea--I think it could really work and improve the game. I re-offered it as a mental exercise because I still wanted to utilize the brain power of those turned off by the idea itself. I am honestly, as a player, closest to Doc Democracy and Scott Ruggels and Duke Bushido. I have blown my rolls many times. I have even had superhero PC's die from a bad roll--when I first started gaming in the 80s--but as my group got a handle on the spirit of Champions, that kind of thing never happened. I am very much a "let the chips fall where they may" type person in Champions, as a player. My current quest for this new "xp as Fate Points" comes from playing a lot of Champions games online. I find this group of new players really wants more narrative control as compared to players who have grown into the system. I don't think that's a bad thing or a game breaker. So this is a compromise that might allow for more new players to join in. This has been my experience and I'm offering up this anecdotal data for analysis and attack. GMing is an art. If you have someone new to Champions, a new GM, they don't often GM it the way I would. You will usually get a very literal "the roll is the roll" style of GMing. So a situation like the example I keep referring to with Christopher happens. And what is the solution? We all see that the GM should step in and make it more narratively effective, or else go with "the roll is the roll": i.e., the hero fails and we move along and work towards a win later in the story instead of the cool moment that would have tied it up nicely. But the other kind of player, they want the scene settled with the nice, immediate resolution. You're still building trust at this point. So, since I don't have any Hero gamers in my area and I play online, I have to find a way to work with the players that I pull together. So I'm GMing and often everyone wants the rolls on the table for everyone to see. Some of us here do it that way. When I GMed a lot of tabletop I kept the rolls hidden 95% of the time and rolled sometimes in front of the group and went with "the roll is the roll" when it was a visible roll. But, when I play with the online players, if I do a "roll is the roll" and their character fails...sometimes they just kind of quietly quit the game. Not because they are sulking, but because we've put all this work into the game (building a Champions character for the first time!) and we reach this critical moment and they are constantly evaluating whether the game is worth their time investment. So a failure early on is a downer and it's read as a "so this is how the game is going to be" moment. So I thought about a way that could prevent that icky moment from discouraging new players. If I was playing with my old group, we would have giggled the heck out of this idea. But I really like the fresh players who turn up for my games. I want them to stay. They often make decisions and comments I would never have considered. They are hilarious. They are brave. They get the genre. But we are not a group of people who sit at a table in the real world and have a social contract with one another. I used to go to the same school as all of the players in my original group. Champions was maybe 15% of what we did together. That's a different situation, is what I'm saying. People wonder why it's challenging to attract new players to Hero, why everyone doesn't embrace Champions as the One True System. (It really is. I love it to death.) But many of us adherents started with these groups where we were socially attached, socially obligated. I'm currently playing in games where this is the first exposure to the Hero system for half or more of the players, and I am finding it wanting in this exact way. I'm not at all annoyed or bitter when I write all of this. (In fact, I may not even be right.) As always, bouncing an idea off you folks has led me to a moment of better understanding, I think. If I asked this question anywhere else, I wouldn't have figured out anything. PS: The xp as Fate, that's just because I really don't worry that much about xp as a player anymore. A good GM can have a freshly-made character and one with 100 points of xp operate together seamlessly. However, most people do care about xp and character advancement. I realize I am in the tiny minority on that. I think that the players I am trying to keep wouldn't like xp as Fate, because they do want character advancement. So I'm seeing Doc's idea as probably what I will go with:

Maybe. But that's why the cost should be prohibitive is what I'm saying. Like, looking back at Christopher R Taylor's example of the cool moment that was ruined by rolling all ones, if his character had 3xp that he hadn't spent, and he saw those ones and the GM said, "Hey, if you burn those 3xp, I'll let you have your moment," I'm thinking some players would take that offer. I'm seeing it less as giving the player the driver's seat and more as a very rare moment where the player can pull a victory out of her butt. It would work well in my campaigns because I do have PC death on the table. I do let the characters fail sometimes. But there have been times in the past where I misread the importance of moment to a specific player, and that player has been crestfallen, and this mechanism would be an ace-in-the-hole to make sure everyone feels heroic at the most key moments. For me personally, I don't use xp so much as a player anymore. So I would have 100% burned 3xp to make (i.e. "fix") that roll that Christopher Taylor mentioned earlier on this thread. I think the FASERIP developers had a good idea, and that I want to adapt it in my Champions game. So, even if you wouldn't do it yourself as a GM, I'm asking y'all to put on your thinking caps and consider it an intellectual exercise. How much would you have the player burn in Christopher R Taylor's example, would you allow it after the fact, and what value/power would 1xp have?

Some of the resistance is the idea of it being a guarantee. I understand that, and I have mixed feelings about that. But I think that's what Karma or Fate Points kind of promise? I could be wrong. Maybe Fate and Karma and the Hero points in 6e only give you an increased probability of succeeding at something important. I agree that a guarantee is not the right word or mechanism. I don't really want to add a new type of points to my game (like how 6e presents it, if I'm understanding that correctly). I think I do want Hero xp to act like FASERIP Karma, which, IIRC, can be used to improve your character or instead be "burned" to do something cool. So, if I were to use xp like Karma, how many xp should be used to accomplish what die bonus? (If you're dead set against the idea, coolcoolcool, but if you're seeing how this might be along the lines of Karma instead of bringing in a new currency in Hero, help me make this close to FASERIP.)

Fair point. I was thinking the same thing, something more like one xp buys a +2 or 2 sixes...? (For a rewind.) And +4 or 4 guaranteed sixes if declared before...? And you could mix and match--you could say I want a +1 to my roll and to flip one damage die to a six for 1xp. Or is even this too dear? Honestly, over the years I have worried less about advancing my character with xp points. It's been stated many times on these forums that supers rarely change in comics. Sometimes they get a car or a new sidekick or a new gadget, but nothing like what the Hero system provides. And I like that our characters evolve in Champions. It's cool. We're not writing a comic, we're playing an rpg. I get it. But for me, I'm seeing situations where I'd like to see xp used to make a guaranteed heroic action work rather than depending on the GM to fudge the dice rolls for dramatic effect.

This is exactly the situation I am thinking of. Honestly, I've been playing Champions a long time. I respect that everyone has a different take on this. But after reading the responses so far, I really believe the "one xp to raise the roll by one" is the answer here. In Christopher R Taylor's example, I would say you could use one xp to flip any of those dice from a "1" to a "6". So my rule would be: "Use 1xp to raise any roll by 1 or to flip any die on a damage roll to a 6." And, using xp in this way will be allowed after the fact. So if you blow the roll, you can rewind and use as much xp as necessary to make it a success. I would consider an additional rule: You can use xp to raise your roll by two and flip two dice to 6 if you declare before the roll. So you get a better deal if you worry about it ahead of time than rewinding after you have failed. Thoughts?

I feel like I've seen people talking about this in the forums, and that there are a few people who do this, but I'll be darned if I can mine up any threads. I want to start using xp as Fate Points or how Karma is used in Faserip. I think I want it to be that you can burn an unused xp to increase a roll by one. Does anyone do this? If so, how does it work in your game?

I was just reading that the artist was roommates/friends with Aaron Allston. I was just wondering if the artist (Denis Loubet) did work for Champions, if the pics used in Enemies were the same as these miniatures. Like, it looks like Howler and Armadillo and Mechanon are the same pics used in the 3rd edition book: I guess I want to know: did you ever use them in-game? I had a DM that used the Cardboard Heroes for Fantasy. It's just such a big part of the start of my rpg-ing.

I played a lot of Boot Hill in the Eighties. And a lot of Champions. My group switched back and forth between these two games before Champions won out. At that time, it would never have occurred to me to combine the two. To be successful, I think you'd have to be very careful how you run this. I would handle the powers very, very carefully. A rule like "only 25 points for powers or abilities beyond normal human." I remember reading Rawhide Kid and Kid Colt and Cheyenne Kid. The stories didn't have supernatural elements for the most part. I was well-versed in these comics before I tackled Boot Hill, and that was the reason the games were successful: I got it. I watched a lot of westerns but the comics really were the sources I went back to when I was running Boot Hill. It's been mentioned already but when the heroes outpower the opponents, it eventually ruins the game. The idea of swarms of opponents--maybe a cavalry outpost, all the soldiers possessed--that energy runs out and wears thin. If the PC's are very close to the level of the opponents, or even inferior in power, it's better. Like, you could have a bartender (the PC) who is good with a scattergun (who isn't?) but he's no sharpshooter, he's not that fast. The opponent could be a Billy The Kid type. Billy has no superpowers, but he seems inhumanly fast, very accurate, supremely confident (Presence). But your bartender PC might have one power that puts him just about on par with Billy, say, maybe the bartender has a very minor Magneto power, a VPP based on metal control. Up to 10 Active points. You could do a lot with that, maybe throw up a force field "only vs metal" which is fine for bullets. How much is 10 points of this VPP going to help you versus Billy the Kid? Well, the bullet might still hit you but maybe most of the Body is blocked and you don't get knocked out because of the Stun you absorbed with your Force Field. Billy is positive he hit you square on, now he's a little shaken, and you're set up for your blast from your scattergun, or maybe you draw your revolver and use your VPP to make the bullet swerve to find its target. Maybe the bartender got his start in a traveling freak show, he could bend spoons at a distance. Met a woman in one of the towns and settled, told everyone it was all parlor tricks and mirrors.

My own trope comment led to to search TV Tropes. Found this. It will help: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AtopAMountainOfCorpses

Thought this would be the place to ask. I'm looking for images of piles of dead superheroes. Like, the whole DC roster, or the Marvel roster, or even a pile of superheroes from other creators. I thought this would be an easy search: I'm positive 10% of my comic collection has covers like this*! But my collection is in storage. It's for a Champions campaign I am running, long story, but that's all I got. Please post here if you find any! *I mean, it's a trope that there is a pile of defeated/dead superheroes with the lone villain posing on top of the pile, victorious. Often used to entice readers to buy the comic.

I don't think I ever knew this: can you have more than one move connected to a martial maneuver? Like, let's say I have Martial Strike and Offensive Strike. Can I say that Martial Strike could be a snap kick or a snap punch, and that the Offensive Strike is both a roundhouse punch and a roundhouse kick? Or is it more appropriate to buy the maneuver twice? (i.e. in this example I would have to buy Offensive Strike twice and Martial Strike twice.) I can see the justification for buying twice: your arms are Entangled so you just say, "Well, my Offensive Strike is a kick then" etc. Seems like a cheat. Thoughts? Comments?