Nagisawa Takumi

Re: Which is your least favorite archetype to play?

That's what pommel strikes are for. Or blunt arrows' date=' or rubber bullets. Or gas grenades for my coastie...[/quote']

 

The problem with constant Pommel Strikes is that there's a point where it's easier to just put on some 'sap' gloves (They have a set of 'brass knuckle' like wieghts around the knuckles for extra power) and just PUNCH people.

 

Seriously, a pommel strike, pistol whip or similar move SHOULD give one a penalty because that's NOT how the weapon is supposed to be used constantly.

 

If you DON'T want to kill, then don't carry a lethal weapon.

 

This has been my opinion, nothing more.

Re: Poison's Champions Art Thread

Welp, I'm jealous. Why does everyone draw better'n me???

Re: Which is your least favorite archetype to play?

Characters pigeonholed into just one archetype.

 

I'd love to play Martian Manhunter in a game just because he fits into so many.

Actually, the problemn is that some 'archetypes' have several differing powersets. Like the Gadgeteer and Power Armour. Most Gadgeteers have several items that can mimic anything from Blasters to Bricks to Mentalists.

While most Power Armours are usually flying Bricks and Blasters.

I tend to dislike Energy Projectors. I find them somewhat staid and boring.

 

"I blast it"

"I blast it with a different slot"

"I blast it with a third slot in my MP"

 

When you are up close you have movement, attacks, choosing dcv over ocv... when you are range, you just sit and shoot.

 

I had one rather fun time with an energy projector recently, but that was partial because the GM (who tends to favor them) helped me get into versatility (A big MP and ranged martial maneuvers so I could do tricky things like disarm or trip at range).

I agree, most Blasters just don't... Do it for me. They are my least favourite archetype. I just can't play them 'right' I guess.

Or the various characters that use swords and other "realistically" lethal weapons...

I'm remembering an old issue of Green Arrow (Before his marriage with Black Canary) where Ollie was missing an eye, and was shooting a perp. He even mentioned that he was AIMING TO KILL but his depth perception was too damaged, and ended up in the guys leg or arm. It's been a while.

But if you HAVE a lethal weapon, I expect you to use it as such. I'm sorry but if you carry a SHARP SWORD to stun people with, expect me to laugh at you, hard.

Re: Help me get into Bricks.

- Throw a car.

- Throw the villain.

- Throw the villain into the giant electrical generator.

- Throw the villain into the massive tank of water.

- Throw the villain into his henchmen.

- Wrap a streetlight around the baddie, effectively entangling him.

- Drop something heavy on the baddie, pinning him.

- Pound the ground to knock the baddie off his feet.

- Pound the ground so you knock a whole in the road and the baddie falls through into the path of an oncoming subway train.

- Hold the baddie in place so the rest of the team can blast him.

- Pick up a nearby water tower, storage container of Freon / Aviation Fuel / Weird chemicals, school bus, and throw that.

- Grab a streetlight - Batter up!

- Frisbee a manhole cover at him.

- Grab the baddie, leap off the nearest building, using your momentum to drive the baddie into the ground.

 

Basically use the environment. Take a look around you and see what you can do. There's lots you can do, you just have to look at things other than your character sheet.

Exactly. As a Brick, the ENTIRE WORLD is your arsenal.

Re: Help me get into Bricks.

Dude.

DUDE!

Bricks are EASY. They are like weapon masters and martial artists. Their abilities aren't JUST internal, like super strong and tough, but external in ways that other types aren't.

Need a range weapon? Pick up a car, a man hole cover, a tree, the neighbour's house, and boom you're ready. Need reach? Light post. Want to sweep several targets at once? Light post, tree, battleship.

The SCENERY is your weapon, being a brick is all about not caring about property damage. After all, what's money when you're saving lives?

Re: Super Psychos

Anything your players will make...

Re: THE BOOK OF THE MACHINE: What Do *You* Want To See?

These Fembots are built on 75 pts plus 75 pts of Disadvantages, suitable for a standard heroic game. They feature unspent points left open for customization options. Available for sale (75 pt follower for 15 pts) or lease (Summon 150 pt Fembot 30 pts, (+1 advantage for slavishly devoted 60 pts,) delivery to reasonable locations only (-1/2 limit “must inhabit locale”) allow 4 to 6 weeks for delivery (-5 limit extra time) Check out our special rates for matched sets and harems with Teamwork skill! (each 5 pts doubles the number for either Follower or Summon)

 

Lucius Alexander

 

Coming soon from Palindromedary Enterprises: Interdimensional Babes!

"Nice software, Stephanie..." Johnny 5, Short Circuit.

Aaaaaaaand... Repped.

Re: What do you call "Four Color"?

For a villain' date=' sure. Villains do villainous things. But Robin wasn't a villain. Not until Jason Todd showed up.[/quote']

 

At the time, neither was Dick Grayson a 'Hero'. He was, along with Batman at the time, a VIGILANTE. But no one seems to realize this, wanting them to conform to a more serious version of the 60's show, or the 90's Animated Series.

Re: What do you call "Four Color"?

Nor is Silver Age synonymous with nobody gets killed.

Perhaps not, but a lot of the 'deeper' or more 'personal' aspects of humanity and the horrors that they cause are often glossed over. Plenty of romance, but it's mostly playful and sex is ignored or barely alluded to. A fight between power houses usually has someone prefacing on how all the civvies are safe from harm, or it's in an 'abandoned' location, so they can go crazy, or the heroes are ALWAYS successful at preventing any major damage.

And when someone dies it's a HUGE thing, bigger than it should be, usually causing more angst that a Vampire the Masquerade convention full of manic depressives on a down swing.

Again, the big thing is how happy and light it all is, to the point of being cheesy and sappy 80's kids cartoons. I admit, I liked the Care Bear movies, but the shows were insipid and treated kids like idiots. Idiots they are not. And this does not interest me.

Re: What do you call "Four Color"?

Whose parents did Robin kill?

The other way around. The Flying Graysons died in front of several hundred people during a time of happiness and joy. But apparently, THAT'S OK, while throwing the people that did the deed off buildings in the dead of night, where no one else will get hurt by falling people bits, is somehow WORSE.

They're BOTH horrific to me...

Re: What do you call "Four Color"?

"The story" is wrong.

 

The Killer Batman phase didn't end until after the introduction of Robin. Robin avenged his parents rather messily.

 

Come to think of it, the idea of a kid throwing people off skyscrapers is a bit icky. The code against killing bit doesn't sound so wrong in that context.

But killing parents in from of several hundred people is perfectly fine.

Re: What do you call "Four Color"?

Now this is new to me. I remember reading that he was very much not the big blue Boy Scout originally and more of a vigilante and proactive doing things like forcing crooked contractors to build up to code housing by demolishing substandard buildings personally and dangling wife beaters off roofs by their ankles until they had a change of heart. But I didn't know he was meant to be a villain originally.

That's something I heard on a TV special about the History of Superheroes. And both he AND the Batman were killers in the early years, before the Comic Code. They used to kill crooks and Nazis (Remember the era they were created in.)

Re: What do you call "Four Color"?

Which of A-C particularly makes it boring for you? What changes do you need to make before it's fun to play in?

 

(Not getting at you, just curious.)

maybe he's more of an iron age type comics fan

This. I am an Iron Age fan, but I prefer a more... Thoughtful? approach to it. People will die when building levelling power blasts are thrown about, or strong men are strong enough to level small bridges.

One one hand, I have no problem with Punisher types, but at the same time, it's when the character starts to see killing as the ONLY option do I feel he's gone into 'villain' territory.

Four Colour makes everything safe and harmless to me, taking a lot of the potential pathos/angst/feeling out of it. It turns the game into an 80's cartoon, and although I have great memories of Transformers, G.I.Joe, Thundercats and He-man, I remember thinking back then on how 'fake' it felt when the villains, even minions, never really got hurt. And that kills any sort of fun for me.

Now, CvK's has the same place in an 'Iron Age' style game as a four colour one, I think but, it's worth MORE in an Iron Age because sometimes, you just can't help or even fix the situation while adhering to a CvK...

Re: What do you call "Four Color"?

Also, keep in mind that Doc Savage didnt grossly predate Superman....he was first published in 1933, the same year that Seigel and Shuster cooked up the "Superman" concept and tried to sell it.

 

Doc Savage was even called a "Superman" as part of the ad copy. "Superman..Doc Savage--man of Master Mind and Body..."

 

Other similarities, Doc Savage was named Clark....and so was Superman.

 

Doc Savage was called "The Man of Bronze!", Superman was called "The Man of Steel!"

 

Doc Savage had a similar sidekick who was his female cousin. Superman eventually got Supergirl.

 

Doc Savage had a Fortress of Solitude in the Artic....Superman eventually got his own Fortress of Solitude, also in the Artic.

 

Doc Savage fought super-villains, so did Superman.

 

Gladiator may have been an influence, and the mythological strong men too, but they just influenced the scope of Superman's strength and toughness. It's just an order of magnitude change. The Basic definitive ideas however borrowed most heavily from Savage and pretending that Superman was "original" because they made him extra-strong and put a tight outfit on him is pretty thin.

 

Just as if you went out and stripped the body paneling off your car and repaneled and repainted it, and put a glass pack on it to make it louder wouldnt make it an all-new all-original car, so to does reskinning a character not make it new and original.

 

Another point, I strongly suspect that one of the main reasons for the tights on Supes was because clothes are much harder to draw than spandex, and Shuster wasn't that good of an artist at the time, all things considered. His early drawings are pretty crude, IMO. The tight suit approach must have been much easier for him to draw than clothing, and likely played a strong role in that aspect of the character's design IMO.

You're forgetting one key point. Although it may not entirely be well known, but Superman was originally designed to be a villain.

But then the Joker was supposed to have died after his second appearance, and we all know about that character, ne?

What I know of "4-Colour" games:

A) Morality is Clear Cut. There are very little shades of grey. Like all faery tales, the villain gets his just deserts in some fashion.

No one really dies. The Heroes don't kill, and the Villains usually get thwarted before anything REALLY lethal occurs, if anything. Bank Robberies are more or less the typical crime.

C) Most topics are in the PG-13 range, sanitized for your benefit.

And finally D) which is a TOTALLY PERSONAL AND SUBJECTIVE OPINION: Utterly, utterly boring to play in.

Re: Ninjas in a Champions game

I finally saw Batman Begins, and I really liked the look and style of the League of Shadows.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

Dude, that's just mean. Shooter wasn't THAT bad.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

The women have manish shoulders...

Not to mention the men being incredibly broad.

Re: Going from Champions to Mutants and Masterminds

The thing that interested me in Mutants & Masterminds was the ability to create characters who more closely resembled many comic book characters without a) spending hundreds and hundreds of points, twisting the rules all out of shape with complex builds to simulate something the system doesn't cover, or c) creating an unbalanced combat monster.

 

M&M lets you build high-end supers more easily and cheaply than Champions, in my experience, and without making them unbalancing in combat.

For me, this as well as one thing.

The Damage Save Mechanic. FOR ME, and JUST FOR ME, it works better than a hit point system, even with a stun track for knock outs. The idea that two bricks might end up wailing on each other for a while, or that one drops the other in a single shot resembles a lot of what I remember from comics.

I prefer M&M over HERO, but I'm willing to play in both.

Re: Ninjas in a Champions game

That's an aspect of anime I was not aware of. I mean, watching the film, the female ninja looks to be around 5'6" to 5'8", with Jubei around 6'. Anyway, while Tsukikage should be a touch taller than normal, if I re-wrote it, she's be around 5'4" or 5'5 tops.

 

On the other hand, if she's in a full-blown fantasy setting, where exact height isn't an issue (such as Weapons of the Gods -- even if it's Chinese), then her being 5'8" isn't that much of an issue. So perhaps, she needs a note, with a realistic height and a fantasy height.

One thing about Boys' Anime is that they really like their David vs. Goliaths. The main hero will usually be either an 'everyman' which make him short, and average looking, compared to the really 'cool' people, or if he happens to be somewhat badass in his own right (Kenshin from Ruroni Kenshin, Naruto from same, or Jubei from Ninja Scroll) the villains will be taller, heavier and physically more imposing. The females will vary, but a hero class female will rarely be taller than the men around her, despite being more of a badass than they are, while the villains will be taller than them, but not from their male counterparts.

Female villains tend to be sharp and sleek, while male ones are more imposing, broad and often ugly. Amazingly like American comics.

That's all I'm sayin'. Of course all this talk of Ninja makes me want to play a Martial Artist in a Champions game. Seeing as the move revealed some long hidden scrolls of Martial Arts master that I owned. Namely the 5th Ed. Ninja Hero and my Copies of The Ultimate Martial Artist.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

Meh, this one isn't to my tastes. Oh well, so much for this.

Re: Ninjas in a Champions game

For missing an eye' date=' it's hard to say. If it's just a visual, then it's a DF, if you play up the effect, then it's a Phys Lim. As for her height... I think I was going off stuff like [i']Ninja Scroll[/i], where everyone looks to be around 6' tall.

Actually, no. In Ninja Scroll, most of the 'tall' people are villains, a common feature in anime. Jubei himself is around 5' 8" or so. The Japanese of that era (And something they like to keep for most anime) are short, and having a giant woman as Tsuki as a heroine (Which is what she's depicted as) rather than an irredeemable villain (Like Explosive Powder Girl or Snake Woman) makes it odd, and makes Tsukikage a little awkward to those of us who are anime fans.

Again, this would make her to pull a Superman disguise effect if everywhere she goes, she's taller than the Samurai (Good and Bad) that she's facing. Sort of snapping the Suspenders of Disbelief.

She is however, one hell of a badass given her power set.

Re: Ninjas in a Champions game

The issue I had with Tsukikage was that her Physical Limitation of missing one eye would have been better as a Distinctive Feature. (I have/had an old character that was missing an eye, but compensated for it completely, so that's what I listed it as.)

As well as being way too tall for her era, especially as an Anime character. If the designer wanted her tall, but not towering over 90% of her supposed clientele, which by the way would make disguising herself nigh-impossible outside of always being in the shadows, something her character sheet says she doesn't do, at her tallest, Tsuki should have been 5' 4", and even then, that's pushing it if she wants to remain hidden.

But other than that, she's cool.

Re: Ninjas in a Champions game

Interestingly' date=' the [i']second[/i] place my eye was drawn to in that picture was her highly developed upper calf muscles. That woman has excellent definition!

Those her THIGHS, not calf muscles.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

And What Would Chirstmas Be Without

 

Happy New Year

 

I didn't need to see that... >.<

Repped.

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine

Working under Holly and Ivy as the new Chief of Security, the robot is now known for his two most unusual features:

 

 

Missile-Toe!

THAT'S HORRIBLE! OH MY GOD! Repped.

... Er, someone get him for me?