Comic

The team looks like it could use a unifying theme. As it stands, three of them have animal names and three mystic.. What's the common connection? Also, why would anyone like them? I don't mean as in drool over pictures of them, but why would any five year old child feel protected by them, run toward them, draw crayon pictures of them for mommy to put up on the fridge? Who is their paragon, and what are they paragons of?

See, when folks do awesome like this, it just makes that unscratchable itch to play Champions so much more intense. I have got to get a regular gaming group.

Great work! I'm a bit confused by Scatterbrain's OMCV. Isn't half her suite of attacks based on an effective combat value of only 3, except for her modest TK and ability to deliver a 2d6 slap to the face at OCV 6?

The Hulk's strength is rife with complications. It's not always there, and when it becomes reliable it's generally too much. He's faced with Red Hulk and a reliable stable of opponents who can take the worst he can dish out -- and then some -- in general, and can hurt him with little trouble faster than he can get mad about it. And then there's the whole split personality, writer can't decide if he wants Hulk strong or smart or both or neitherness that makes the franchise nearly impossible to typify. And he's still a better character than the ones I was thinking of who are more often written to always have as much strength as they need, can always dodge or block any attack with no fear of being outmaneuvered, always solve the obscure riddle as if they'd looked up the answer on the back of the bubblegum wrapper, and so forth. It's not having a gimmick that does it for me: it's having gimmicks that fill the reader with wonder, excitement, and thoughtful reflection.

She's rich, talented, brainy and totally hawt. The question maybe ought be why isn't she hunted by more losers who think the opposite sex is there for conquest? Alternatively, Greenie's fresh out of Gwen Stacy?

Well, now that we have the Black List, there's the rest of the Grey List to fill out.. the Brown List.. the Red List..

It varies. Drunken Fist was a so-so martial artist, but his drunk movement and use of drink-themed improvised weapons gimmick made him memorable, and virtually unbeatable. Bruce Lee brought professionalism and science to the art. His 'gimmick' was thinking things through. Jackie Chan's gimmick appears to be comedy, but anyone who watches him knows he backs that humor up with incredible depths of discipline, hard work, and no small amount of personal sacrifice. One Belgian high kicker's gimmick for a time was reputedly nose powder, according to his detractors; a certain grim American student of Aikido's was that he could project total unlikability according to those who are no fans of his, apparently. A particular Texan's gimmick was that he was just personally humble enough that his never-failing martial arts effects didn't make him seem as big a jerk as that other guy. The Five Poisons had distinct gimmicks: Poison Toad Master could move his 'gate' depending on the time of day, so had apparent invulnerability even from those who understood the secret of Toad style super-blocking was to find that one small point that had to be left vulnerable; Viper Master moved and struck like a serpent; Scorpion Master favored back-kicks; Lizard Master specialized in acrobatic climbing.. yet none of these assassins for hire seemed to much use poison. So their ironic gimmick was to embody poisonous critters completely toxin free. The best gimmicks come with a bit of a twist like that. I'm pretty sure Doc Ock was a terrible swimmer, all-in-all, for example, and the Grey Hulk's deal was that the madder he got, the meaner he got. Twilight vampires' gimmick is that they don't explode into dust when struck by sunlight.. and here's the problem with gimmicks. You can love them, but you'll generally hate them. Spiderman's web shooters are his gimmick; if they always perfectly worked solving every problem every time, however, they'd be Mary Sue level *blech* and so would he. It's that they run out, fail, melt, spark, break, even from time to time embarrassingly misfire that makes them an interestingly complicated gimmick. Just imagine a character with a gimmick like he always has as much strength as he needs no matter the challenge, or one who can always dodge any attack, or one whose blades can cut anything: those sound uber-cool, and no doubt will make some fans drool, but without meaningful complications that pull these ultraisms back, make them thought-provokingly, heart-poundingly unreliable some of the time, without their own anti-gimmick, they'd be dull aspects of dull beings.

Wow. I'm liking the Blacklist. I propose Falling Starlette, perpetually fading flower of indeterminable age, she wields the Power Cosmetic, and bears its curse of Faddish Forgettability. You may have known her as that model from that magazine, that actress from that commercial, the one who sang that song that made the top 40 once. You know, the one who dated that famous person.. uh.. what's her name? With time, episodic memory even of the physical manifestations of her passage vanish, so none realize she's immune to the outward manifestations of old age. This affects Starlette herself, too. She cannot remember, for example, the name she traveled under when she seduced the tyrant (or his name, or the details of her dalliances with him, his staff, his allies and his enemies, also forgotten) who taught her to fire her first fully automatic weapon, though her skills with automatic weapons remain perfectly intact all these decades later. Falling Starlette has some.. distasteful habits, besides her attraction to bad guys and weakness for dictators and world leaders; her serial kleptonesia has led her to pilfer state treasures (and sometimes state secrets) and leave them.. she's not entirely sure where. It's the adventure and petty sin that keep her going in her long descent through the ages, unmarked by the passage she makes. She also retains the values, attitudes and beliefs of bygone ages, at their worst: superstitious, racist, sexist, a religious bigot who cannot remember the name of her own religion, imperialist, Falling Starlette can be counted on to express the most odiously outdated notions, and not shyly. She's kept alive ideas that long ago ought have fallen, by simply blurting them out with complete tone of conviction. Falling Starlette's recuperative abilities allow her to party poisonously, enduring bouts of drink and other excesses that could kill ordinary people.. and has. She's learned, and retained skill with, virtually every weapon and combat technique of virtually every outlaw, military usurper, assassin, spy and seductress in history. She merely forgets the circumstances of when she picked them up and employed them. For all that, Falling Starlette has no more physical strength, intellect or strength of will than any incompetently ordinary person; she does not exercise and avoids manual labor, puzzles or books of actual learning. Her beauty is of the perpetually faded variety, and her presence never outshines the truly talented, to her great frustration. Oh, and she's bitterly envious about that. From time to time, Falling Starlette sinks onto the List of Substitute Celebrivillainy, aka the Grey List.

Funhouse Mirror that Summons distorted opposite equals is a classic trope too. Tunnel of Love.. 'nuff said? Expanding Candy Floss entangles.. Candy Apple grenades.. Popcorn that teleports you randomly up into the air if it pops onto you? Shooting Gallery that shoots back.. Do you have a speedster? Can they run fast enough to stay above the whirling scythes at the bottom of the Roundabout? Change Environment.. of.. some.. appropriately arcadish type.. Like shaking the pinball machine of rolling death? And of course giant fuzzy sweet cuddly stuffed robot animals with claws and fangs. Bottle toss, where the heroes find themselves inside power-negating glass bottles they have to use their skills to work their way out of.. particularly those non-combat, character skills like KS: trivia, eg.

My Inner Munchkin is humbled, and bends its knee in awe, and a bit of shock.

Fairly recently: FanWars, Ep. 6, August 13, 2012: https://www.facebook.com/realstanlee/posts/346883188729129 It's been decades since Secret Wars, the significant last time Titania defeated She Hulk (and that had been by ambush with the help of the entire Wrecking Crew). Does anyone seriously consider Titania a worthy adversary for Wonder Woman? That asked; I wonder who would win? Phoenix or Wonder Woman?

Now available as the Apple Dick Tracy Watch.

Yes, a list of improbabilities of dubious credibility.. about the same scale as Wonder Woman towing the Sun using her lasso from the wing of her plane, flipped to show how entirely credible by comparison She Hulk winning some sort of fight under some sort of circumstance might be. Though the event was recorded live as a bit of LARPtertainment.. also packed with Marvel fanboys.. and a Wonder Woman who seems to have never actually read an issue of any DC comic, ever. However, there is one thing Stan Lee did say, directly in the introduction to this presentation: She Hulk is "by far the strongest female in the Marvel Universe." Period. Taking Stan Lee at his word, that's stronger than goddesses, heralds of Galactus (which she has been), Entities, Phoenix.. we have to ask, is the strongest female in the Marvel Universe weaker than the strongest female on Earth in the DC Universe?

Not a single power, but a suite of them: a.) Detect, Analyze Defenses, Penetrative 15 AP, details of limitations left to the circumstance b.) Detect, Analyze Susceptibilities, Penetrative 15 AP, details of limitations left to the circumstance c.) Detect, Analyze Vulnerabilities, Penetrative 15 AP, details of limitations left to the circumstance d.) Telescopic +30 vs Range penalties, details of.. Use a.)-c.) via d.) to determine what defense of the target is weakest.. from pretty much anywhere in the solar system. e.) Detect, Analyze Enemies of Target, Penetrative (as above) f.) Mind Link, Only to convey weakness and location of target to enemies of target, Inobvious. So from pretty much anywhere on the planet, you can see your target, and communicate their whereabouts and weaknesses to their worst enemies in less than two turns, all while sipping coffee and checking your lottery numbers.

Even knowing cover art is often, if not always, misleading (Wonder Woman whimpering in tears on the ground? She Hulk needing to call herself a 'New Wonder Woman'? I don't think so.).. Stan Lee's Facebook page has a link to a fan vs. fan She Hulk vs. Wonder Woman debate-off, with a unanimous She Hulk win. Though let's put that into some perspective. Of the two, which do you think in her own continuity has been shown standing on the wing of her invisible plane towing the Sun back to the solar system with her golden lasso, after it was stolen? You could gamma irradiate and anger any Hulk forever, and that level of unPhysics still would not be an outcome. Even though that feat is entirely within Wonder Woman's concept and story and entirely outside She Hulk's, because it's a better story, She Hulk should beat Wonder Woman at some point when Wonder Woman is in the wrong, in a match surpassing Gilgamesh and Enkidu. That win -- not some purposeless throwdown -- is conceivable, and would be worth reading.

The first Martial Art move I learned! ..somehow, I never got quite the same effect.

Crazy power I saw once, 1d6 RKA & 3d6 Heal, Roulette Bullet. There were some advantages/limitations added so you couldn't get the healing without being fully vulnerable to the RKA. Roll a six and three ones, not happy times. Roll a one and three sixes, happy indeed.

I'm thinking about a Hollywood Villains team, all with SID's as celebrities of some sort who secretly have powers and use them for kicks, or to pursue villainous objectives and agendas. Any suggestions?

Special powers need GM's permission to be put into a Multipower in part because a Multipower is very versatile and meant to represent a specific mechanism, and some powers either make no sense in a Multipower for that character, or are potentially game unbalancing. But then, special powers need GM's permission anyway, and a GM has final say on the build allowed in any campaign too, so it's not a big deal. Would you allow Regeneration and RKA (gun) in the same Multipower, for example? They share no common special effect for most character concepts (except perhaps a character like 'Gun Moll' who literally sweats bullets and can pull a gun out of her own flesh that instantly forms a barrel, trigger, stock etc.) So sure, the special case of Gun Moll might have a reasonable special effect for those two powers in the same Multipower. But she'd have no reason to also have Telepathy in the pool. And while Gun Moll might be a robot who Takes No Stun, there's no reason to allow Takes No Stun into the Multipower at all. Either you do, or you don't take stun from attacks. Likewise, because Frameworks give structural advantage, they aren't intended to be combined to stack structural advantage, as that's getting advantages for points spent from the same source, a form of double-dipping. Also, you can't stack two different powers in the same Framework to get a larger power than the total of the Framework reserve: two 30-point EB's in a 30-pt reserve can't be added together to make a single 60-pt attack from it, as the reserve limit is meant to reflect the overall power of the powers it contains. Likewise, two attacks from different pools can't stack that way either, and there are specific rules about powers that adjust pools, all for the sake of balancing the math and fairness.

Well, if we're going for historical figures, the super-spy William 'Intrepid' Stevenson, founder of Camp X (plausible inspiration for the X-Men Academy, and a host of other super secret training facilities in fiction) would be a natural choice. Howard Hill, the highly acclaimed Hollywood trick archer, would also be a good nominee. And let's face it, Angelina Jolie is clearly a mutant.

To my thinking, any number of specific 3-point characteristic-based skills for complements isn't a problem, but exactly the point of Champions, the infinite game. By and large, it takes a huge investment to get complementary skills with any mathematical advantage to a specific roll, and in the case of those rolls they are entirely at the discretion of the GM as to whether to allow the supplemental rolls. I don't see the slope as anything but uphill against advantage, except where it works as it ought, to well-define what a character is good at, and adapt to a changing world that didn't exist when the game was first designed?

You've cited many of the inspirations for this idea.. including your own character! Propaganda is to Persuasion as Transform is to Telekinesis. Persuasion takes a subject and tries to move them. Transformation takes a subject and tries to change them. With Persuasion, you can make a person believe something that is false and convince them to act on it. With Propaganda, you can make it impossible for a person to even conceive of some particular truth, and convince them that people attempting to speak that truth are their deadliest enemies. While you might be able to get some of the same effects with each in the long run, Propaganda propagates, turns the target into a hub repeating the propagation itself; Persuasion has a single target (Oratory a mass audience) that may be persuaded of an idea and motivated to act but are not transformed by it into repeaters incapable of even hearing contrary views (until counter-propagandized or deprogrammed). The problem with Propaganda compared to Oratory is immediacy. You may not see the effects of Propaganda across an audience for weeks or months, while Oratory can get immediate results. I think they're different. Otherwise, why do we have Transform and Telekinesis?

50d6 Luck? Extra-Dimensional Movement 20 AP Only to corresponding location (inside of refrigerator;-3 AP) 17 AP, Gate Physical Manifestation (Refrigerator; -1/4), Large OAF (Refrigerator; -1.5) Only in Presence of Immense Nuclear Radiation (-2), One Charge, Continues One Turn.. If I think about it long enough, I believe I can get it down to 1 CP for 17 AP, and if I really work on the Control Cost, I can get that down from 9 AP to 1 CP too. Total cost 2 CP; I already have a character with "Two Bit Inventor" who could pull it off, if I tweaked his Control Cost some.

A sucking chest wound is how the Universe tells you it's time to fall into that vat of oddly-glowing chemicals and gain super powers.

I made this change this morning - have to check the math on it - and would like to credit whoever I stole the 'Two Bit Inventor' idea from, if they're still about. Anyone recall seeing this build before?