Clonus

Option 1: Captured by an Asian warlord, an American genius inventor/industrialist is coerced into building weapon for his captor, a humanoid battlesuit, but dies of a heart attack before he can use it to escape. Instead, the suit's artificial intelligence avenges its creator and escapes, making its way back to the United States, where it modifies itself to be able to pose as human and dedicates itself to protecting the family the inventor left behind from all those out to steal their inheritance. Option 2: Accidentally exposed to the radiation weapon he created, a government physicist discovers the biofeedback technique he uses to fight off the cancer transforms him to a super-strong giant. But if he loses his temper or his nerve, he reverts to his previous scrawny self. Option 3: When he was approached by a mysterious man who wanted to take him into a cave, he did what any rational homeless boy would do. He ran for his life. But later he got curious and he and 5 of his street-kid friends returned to the cave, venturing inside to meet an old wizard who offered to give them the powers and identities of 6 legendary figures. Option 4. A police detective from Earth suddenly found himself transported to Mars by a Martian wizard's miscast spell. Unable to return to his homeworld, he discovered that the lower gravity of Mars meant that the natives were physically weak and had slow reflexes and law enforcement was only carried out by bounty-hunters. He disguised himself and became one of the bounty-hunters.

Re: What does HERO Games have against >30 DEX, INT and EGO? Why would someone's defenses be low just because they had a high DCV?

Re: What does HERO Games have against >30 DEX, INT and EGO? Because that reflects the source material. Characters who supposedly have no superpowers (or whose superpowers are not relevant to their INT and Dex) are only marginally inferior, if that, to almost all the superpowered characters when it comes to agility, precision, genius, and alertness (independant of actual super senses like those of Wolverine and Daredevil). The benchmarks are supposed to set how far a mere training based mortal can go. It just happens that when it comes to Int and Dex, the limit that the training based characters can achieve happens to not be far off from maximum that almost all super powered characters achieve as well.

Re: PA HERO - Japan Images http://www.pinktentacle.com/2007/05/neo-ruins-lithographs-of-post-apocalyptic-tokyo/

Re: Regrettable Disads Wasn't he a giant who wore a loincloth?

Re: What If? Empire Wins I read an adequate Sailor Moon/Star Trek crossover which had a great scene early on. The Borg have abducted the Sailor Moon villain and tell him that he's going to be assimilated and resistance is futile. The villain smiles and says, "Oh, I quite agree. Resistance is futile." Then he assimilates them.

Re: Make everyone fight at your level... a heroic fighter in a supers world.

Re: What If? Empire Wins Not likely at all. Vader was intent on betraying the Emperor from the moment he knew who Luke was and the Storm Troopers could only display competence if the dark side of the Force was dominant.

Re: [Video] Nazi Robot Attack

Re: Future Knowledge I deal with it by getting all the history wrong. Once the Germans have invaded England via a transatlantic tunnel they dug, players get out of the habit of assuming they'll know how World War II is going to go and that IBM will turn out to be a good investment.

Re: Make everyone fight at your level... a heroic fighter in a supers world. Yes, well like most people this guy considers it "fair" when he has the upper hand. But, more importantly, how does he get the upper hand? Given that he's a martial artist, I suggest giving him the knowledge of the sooper-secret pressure points that block use of superpowers.

Re: What the heck is "The Sigularity" (not black hole) It's the Rapture, geek-style.

Re: What If? Empire Wins The most likely "bad guy wins" outcomes at Endor are "Luke kills Vader in a rage, and succumbs to the Empire's mind control" and "Vader persuades Luke to join with him and kill the Emperor to take his place". In either case the Rebellion have been drawn out of hiding, committed their force to open battle and as usual when insurgents do that, have been annihilated. The new Deathstar can be completed without the convenient trick weakness. There are no Jedi left alive to "accept their fate", although I suppose it's likely that people will periodically try to reinvent it.

Re: Need a Name for a Temporal Prison Terminus

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO Of course they weren't. They weren't copying some social forms from 3000 years in their past. But these guys are the equivalent of some nation in 2006 adopting headresses over their shaved skulls and kohled eyes as they build pyramids to entomb their rulers.

Re: Ideas for Neo-Victorians in StarHERO Well genetic engineering fits with the idea of an extended-lifespan ruling class who are backwards-looking and averse to innovation.

Re: Regrettable Disads 14- Hunteds should be reserved for situations where the GM has decided you will always be fighting the same foe or organisation. He-Man versus Skeletor. Robin Hood versus the Sheriff. The Empire versus the Rebel Alliance.

Re: Worst. Hero. Ever. A sculpture is just a three-dimensional picture. She could bring paintings to life if she tried, but it would never occur to her. That's not her kind of art and she'd never use another artist's work that way. What if it was damaged? She'd never forgive herself. No, the real problem with my writeup is her gravity bolts. I fudged and genericised them.

Re: The Things That I've Learned Facing Bricks Unless of course it's a flying brick.

Re: Worst. Hero. Ever. The Phantom, the first character to wear a skin-tight costume while fighting crime started publication in newspapers in 1936. Super-powered crimefighters were already well represented in pulp magazines. But without Superman I don't think they would be called "superheroes", and it seems unlikely that they would dominate the American comic book industry the way they do.

Re: Worst. Hero. Ever. Dexterity and Strength are like basic black. They go with everything except paraplegia. Clinging and an entangle go to together quite well as well. They both have that "sticky" theme going for them. Danger Sense doesn't seem too terribly odd. (Although my Spider-Clone just has an enhanced sense of touch instead). The strange part is the combination of "desperately poor" and "gadgeteer". That I find hard to believe. I notice they dropped the gadgeteer thing for the movie. Susan Griffith was a sculptor. Obsessed by her art, she worked day and night on it, going without sleep or food for days at a time. She loved her boyfriend, sure, but her art was her life. Maybe it was his resentment at taking second place to her art that caused him to do what he did, or maybe it was because he was jealous that his career hadn't gone anywhere, and her work was now the new big thing. Corporations and the wealthiest men alive were lining up to buy her sculptures to decorate their property. But one night she woke up unexpectedly, from a dream in which her latest work was calling to her for help. She went down to her workshop and discovered her boyfriend in the act, raping her creation by drilling a hole and inserting a listening device no wider than a hair. The metal in the statue would conceal it from normal anti-bug sweeps. He'd gone into the business of selling corporate secrets and he was perverting her work to do it. From there things went from bad to worse, and in the ensuing beating he struck her down with one of the ingots that she used for raw material. Her scalp bled profusely and he fled, convinced that he'd killed her. When she awoke, she decided to work off her frustration. What could she do? If she revealed what had happened with her statues her reputation would be ruined. Worse, her children would probably be destroyed or discarded. She finished carving the new cast, a kind of self-portrait of the way she felt. The molten metal, with her own blood in the mix, had been ready for some time and she poured it in to the mold brooding on her frustration. Even more intense pain stabbed into her head. It belatedly occured to her that perhaps she should have gone to a hospital instead of working for the last 12 hours. Was she dying? One of those subdural whatevers? She held both her hands to her head and screamed, and at that moment the mold burst apart, turning into shrapnel as it exploded. She was bleeding again, and not just from the head. Her eyes widened as her creation stood up. What a beautiful and terrible thing she'd created, the shape of the fierce female warriour she wished she was instead of a mousy recluse who'd let herself be taken advantage of. It stalked over to where she lay bleeding and touched her wound. It thoughtfully looked at it's finger tip and then began to draw some strange symbol on her forehead. She wanted to ask it what it was doing, but everything went dark. When she woke up she was in the hospital and the police wanted a statement from her. She played dumb. If she told them what had happened then they'd want to know what started the quarrel and then everyone would find out. Besides they might starting down her huntress, and Susan was sure her living statue meant no harm. Her supposed memory loss of course was something the doctors tried to make into a reason for her to stay for "observation", but she threw a fit of feigned artistic temperament and made them let her go. She'd never approved of the way of her colleagues used being an artist as an excuse for turning into a bully, but she had to admit it worked to get your way. Back in her own flat, she had time to think. What could she do? She had no idea what had happened to her latest creation but it could probably take care of itself. But what about her other babies being used to spy on people like that nice Mr. Harmon? She went into her bathroom and splashed water on her face. Would she really have to tell him and her other patrons what had happened. She couldn't just leave them there. If she could...take them back. A metal face was looking back at her from the mirror. She looked down and saw the clawed hand she'd made and realised just where her creation had really gone. That night, the first in a series of thefts took place. A new supervillain, quickly dubbed "Galatea" was stealing, one by one, each of the very expensive sculptures created by Susan Griffith, even the gigantic multiton ones. As she approached them, they would come to life and follow her commands. When a hero tried to stop her, she caught him off-guard with some kind of force-bolt. The authorities feared she was creating a army of statuary. Actually she just planned to keep her work safe until she was sure she'd neutralised all the spy-devices. Then she'd let someone discover them and return them to their owners. Being a supervillain wasn't really something she relished, but it was the only way to save her babies. Have I mentioned I love randomly generated characters?

Re: Amore Infernale: The Graphic Novel I'd suggest you tone down the accents to something less of a caricature.

Re: The Champion Protocols (ie how to take down your character) Alchohol vapors would get him drunk as it was absorbed through the membranes.

Re: New Avengers are very Dark Champions I don't recall the Human Torch directly blasting any mundane thugs. He'd disarm them or encircle them with a wall of flame that strangely didn't seem to heat up the area inside.

Re: WWYCD: Ultimate Villian: Planet Earth! Wizard would try to get all the gadgeteers to develop methods of relocating humanity to nonsentient locales. Riptide would try to open negotiations with the planet to see whether a livable compromise could be reached. Hellfire will ask smart people where the Earth's brain or some other vital organ is so she can kill it.