Scott Destroyer

Hello, Going through Champions Villains recently, I noticed that Dr. Destroyer has bought the "Hardened" Advantage on the naked "Resistant" Advantage he purchased for his PD and ED. However, unlike the old seperate "Damage Resistance" Power, nothing in the 6E descriptions for Hardened, Resistant, or Defense Powers in general actually seems to require this (unless I've missed something). Can defenses be Hardened in 6E without taking Hardened on any Resistant for them? If they can, does buying the Hardened anyway on Resistant grant any benefit, or does declining to buy it cause any drawback (perhaps Hardened defenses without Hardened Resistant would still be halved by Armor Piercing Killing Attacks)? I suppose the same questions would also apply to the new "Impenetrable" Advantage, seperated out from Hardened in 6E (and which, by the way, the dear old Doctor seems to have forgotten about - Penetrating attacks will rapidly get his attention... )

Re: Istvatha V'han - why can't she conquer Earth? Hi all, Yeah, because giving Third Worlders who have known only violence and corruption in government access to modern (or super-science) technology and time away from subsistence labor to plot is sure to engender nothing but gratitude. This is the big flaw in Utopian scheming in general - people have desires beyond the material, many of those desires (power, revenge, etc.) are incompatible with the Utopia, and any Utopia that provides people with anything that is at all useful in attaining those desires will either be cast down by those who succeed in attaining them, or turn oppressive in trying to preserve itself. The Empress has been around a while, and presumably knows the score - does anyone think she really wants to take up the Teal Man's Burden? Is this really being taken seriously as an excuse for dismissing the Empress out of hand? Has no one around these parts ever read the definitive classic of Dimension Travel, Zelazny's Chronicles Of Amber? Like the Amberites, the Empress is an immortal dimension-shifter; unlike them, she does not even need to sleep. So she only needs to do what Amberites do when they need more time - shift to a dimension where the flow of time is faster. 30 million seconds a year? A six order of magnitude difference in time flow will provide her with 24 million hours a day! Granted, that is an extreme difference - much more so than was ever used in the Amber novels - but this is a comic-book multiverse, and it seems plausible that a forward-thinking dimensional conquerer would have gone looking for just such a dimension early in her career for this exact purpose. The real answer to the OP's question - "why can't she conquer Earth?" - is pretty obviously this: she can. The inevitable follow-up question - "then why hasn't she?" - is also pretty easy: the cost would be too high. The really interesting question underlying these is, "how could the cost of conquering one tiny planet possibly be too high for someone with the resources of a hundred million dimensions at her command?" It is with this question that we really get into fascinating details of logistics, strategic positioning with regard to her rivals, and (of course) bribery with delicious fruit pies.

Re: Gigaton question... Hi again, Epiphanis: I'm really looking more for amusing in-universe ways to explain the apparent error, than for straightforward GM advice on which path to take with Gigaton. And while you are certainly right that one could run with him appearing in '94 with little consequence to the CU at large, the implications for his own character seem a bit more significant. His schtick has always been "Destroyer's most powerful and favored servant"; a change to "dude who somehow convinced Destroyer's old crew to follow him" seems kind of drastic. Lord Liaden: the robot thing is very cool and Destroyer-ish. This whole issue, though, got me to thinking on the broader question of retcons in the CU, and it seems to me that these sorts of fixes are the kind of thing Captain Chronos was born to do. Need a retcon? The good Captain charges his powers into his fist to punch the walls of the Champions Universe, creating temporo-spatial ripples that cause Seeker to make a deal with the Dragon to erase the timeline in which he is married, which in turn brings about a subtle yet inexorable series of events (likely involving Foxbat) that lead, with four-sigma probability, to [desired retcon X]. Unless, of course, those pesky PCs intervene...

Hi all, Recently got my hands on CV 1 and 2, and found them in general to be very well done indeed - I was particularly happy to finally see a write-up for Dr. Yin Wu. But recent revisions to the CU seem to have left the background of Dr. Destroyer's servant Gigaton a bit muddled. The "common knowledge" about him, available even without any Skill Rolls, has him well-known as Destroyer's chief henchman while Destroyer was alive. Yet, in the current CU, the secret military experiment that gave Gigaton his powers did not even occur until 1994, two years after Destroyer's "death", and his recruitment of course came even later. Reconciling these different versions of the facts is left as a No-Prize-ish exercise for Mr. Long and interested parties here on these boards. Perhaps the blast which empowered him also time-shifted him, Captain Atom-style, and part of his current background was fabricated to cover this up... Anyone got any other interesting theories?

Hi again, Hmm, just dug out and examined my old BBB, and mechanics essentially identical to the Breakout Roll are indeed scattered among the descriptions of the affected Powers, with a passing reference to them in the Mental Powers overview. The problem is even older than I remembered... Buying appropriate defenses seems perfectly satisfactory for mental attacks as well - I did suggest something of the sort above. But after reading this thread some more and pondering, I'm having second thoughts about the usefulness of additional minuses to the Breakout Roll (however determined) as a solution to the problem - they could very easily tend to make Mental Powers too good. I'm starting to think that a better solution would be simply to delay the initial Breakout Roll until after the victim's first Phase of Control/Illusions/Scanning/whatever. This would consistently give mentalists one Phase of effect for the points they spend, as other characters get one shot of damage inflicted per hit for their spent points, while avoiding Breakout Roll adjustments that could consistently let a single attack keep someone out of an entire fight. A Breakout Roll penalty to only the initial roll would have a similar, though lesser, effect. For those mentalists with GM's unwilling to tweak the rules, there's always the old standby - throw a "direct attack to the will" (BOECV EGO Drain) in the old Mental Powers Multipower, and hit the target with a few shots of it before clamping on the Mind Control. Cheaper now than before, with Drain ranged by default, and with a good enough MCV edge, you can try Rapid Firing with it to minimize time wasted before getting to your main attacks...

Hi all, I've loathed the Breakout roll since I first saw it; among changes from the 4E rules in 5E, it was probably the one I disliked the most. In the 6E forums that were up while it was being developed, I suggested dumping it outright, or at the very least giving the Breakout roll a minus equal to the margin by which the attacker succeeded on his mental combat attack roll. After reading this thread, I see that my hopes that 6E would take any step to make Mental Illusions, Mind Control, or Telepathy worth something close to what characters pay for them were apparently utterly without foundation. Ah well, I suppose I never really expected that just because a designer asked for feedback during development, I'd somehow get a system that never required a house rule. At least it seems no worse than 5E, so far. Why should there be? It isn't in genre. I seem to recall a scene from Secret Wars in which Spider-Man, after overhearing some disturbing talk from the X-Men, single-handedly wipes the walls with their entire combat roster. After which, his memories of said talk, and of the entire fight, are matter-of-factly wiped from his mind in the space of one or two panels by Professor X. Maxwell Lord is no Professor X, but Superman himself fared no better against his mind control in Infinite Crisis. Coming up with an excuse to buy Mental Defense or improved MCVs is trivially easy - Wolverine and Rogue are no mental giants but have scads of MD, and in the Champions Universe, psi-shields are industrial products. If characters are too cheap to buy them, let them take the consequences, don't punish the mentalists. This reminds me eerily of a similar approach taken in the 4E Mystic Masters supplement. Mental Powers, even without the Breakout roll, were found to be woefully incapable of producing genre-appropriate effects under typical AP limits. Rather than recosting the Powers, or tweaking AP limits or build point totals, it was decided simply to give everyone in the world a Vulnerability to Magic-sfx Mental Powers - and, IIRC, to give them no points for it. That was a horrid kludge, IMHO, and while I think yours is a bit better, it still requires modifying everyone but the characters with the problematic Powers. It also won't endear you to those who have grumbled of character point inflation with each new edition. I think if you're gonna house-rule at all, you may as well attack the problem at its source - in this case, the Breakout roll.

Re: 6th Edition Character Sheet Hi all, Sheet seems nice enough, I guess; I'm sure it'll serve pretty well. But to look down at a HERO character sheet and see STR, DEX, CON, and then...something other than BODY as 4th stat...really jarring after so many years and editions of the same order; drives home more than all the debate I've followed on these boards that this really is a new edition, and the biggest departure from the past yet. BODY's current place in the stat order makes more logical sense, and I like what I've heard of the new hotness, and I'm sure I'll pick up the books once hardcopies become available, but there's no denying my first look at the characteristics block threw me for a loop - much more so than when D&D shuffled their stat order around from the old Str/Int/Wis/Dex/Con/Cha... Ah well, "the old order changeth, yielding place to new/and God fulfils himself in many ways/lest one good custom should corrupt the world". At least the changes seem to be for the better, this go-round.

Hi again, You know, I was wanting something like that myself, and had a few spare minutes, so here you go. It's kinda long, and not necessarily taken verbatim from those to whom I credit them. I've grouped related questions together in the same list entry, but done no other sorting; they're pretty much in the order in which they were asked. What is Mechanon's origin? [steve Long] What is the origin and nature of Kelvarite? [steve Long] What is the conflict between Takofanes and the Crowns of Krim? [steve Long] What is up with the Hzeel? [steve Long] Why is Earth so important to them? [Hermit] What is the overarching DEMON scheme? [steve Long] What is up with the machinations of the Elder Worm? [steve Long] What happened to the original Champions? [Cygnia] What's the "final fate of Seeker" mentioned on p. 52 of MC? [bobGreenwade] Is Ironclad in trouble for going AWOL? [Hermit] Did Vanguard have a Fortress-of-Solitude type base that might still be around? [Hermit] What's the deal with the Qularr, their invasion attempts, and their biology/description? [bobGreenwade] What's CLOWN up to? [supreme Serpent] How does "magic" get turned into super-powers? [gojira] What's the deal with Andromedans/Nebula/Vibron? Are more Andromedans coming? Is there a way for them to get back? [bobGreenwade] How will various members of the Crime Lords (from VVV) react when the conflicts between Tiger Lily and Morgaine the Mystic become overt? How much do these conflicts affect Tiger Lily's decision-making as group leader? [TygerLily] Where did Teleios' notes come from? [Killer Shrike] How will the ascension of the next Archmage proceed? [Lord Liaden] How will the Heaven/Hell/Robert Caliburn conflict in Vibora Bay proceed? [Lord Liaden] Who is GRAB's patron, and what are his motives? [Lord Liaden] What happened to the Empyrean Ancients? [Lord Liaden] Does Thalya ever save them or the Silent ones? [ghost-angel] What is the source of the meteorites that empowered the various Meteor Men? [Lord Liaden] What is the Monster [Lord Liaden] Who created Leech, and why? [Lord Liaden] Who and where is the third child of Nama? [Lord Liaden] Are there any other superpowered children of the Zodiac Working? [Lord Liaden] How's Dr. Yin Wu progressing on creating the Jade Mirror of Transcendence? [Lord Liaden] Who is Krim, really? [ghost-angel] What's the deal with Captain Chronos, his true mission, and his connection with Timelapse (from VVV)? [wcw43921] What's the relationship between the Dragon and the Nagas? [Lord Liaden] What's the origin of the Nagas? [ghost-angel] Where are the Serpent Lantern, the Basilisk Orb, and the Hellstone? [Lord Liaden] How close in the Mandragalore to being reassembled? [Lord Liaden] What's up with the Cult of the Red Banner? [OzMike] What's Sovereign up to in the 20th-century CU? [Lawnmower Boy] What else happens at the end of the superhero era when "the magic goes away", and how does it happen? How do events run from there to the Alien Wars era? [basil] How's Cateran doing in the Galactic Champions era, and how good is she? [Pyre-Archer] What's the deal with the Drifter? Who's his patron/creator? Is there any connection between him and Entropy (from VVV), whose origin is quite similar to his? [scott Destroyer, Lord Liaden] Who are the Progenitors? Where did they go, and why? Are they ever coming back? Why did they create the Empyreans and meddle with human evolution? [Lord Liaden] What's the deal with The Witness? He seems similar in many ways to the Drifter, but different enough to not necessarily share the same goals - have they ever been at cross purposes? [scott Destroyer] What's the deal with Adrian Vandaleur? [scott Destroyer] What's the deal with Archimago and his post-mortem plots? When exactly did his Zodiac Working take place? What relations did he have with the Sylvestris or other power groups in the Mystic World? [scott Destroyer] And while I'm at it, a few more... How many Cosmic Gems like Galaxia's (from VVV) are there? What is their origin? Do they all have the same powers, or are there variations between them? Who was the alien who gave Harold Jackson the power-bracers the vagrant stole from him to become Orion (again in VVV)? What connection might there be between this alien, his bracers, and the Star*Guard and their staffs? How was Leviathan (VVV once more) being groomed for generalship in Lemuria, and leading open assaults on Atlantis as recently as 1976, when King Arvad had long before decreed that reptilian throwbacks like him were to be destroyed? What are Galaxars, Corelords, and other nigh-omnipotent cosmic entities from Galactic Champions up to in the 20th-century CU? In particular, why do they always seem to be out to lunch when extradimensional conquerors like Tyrannon or Skarn show up and threaten to merge the Earth's dimension with their own home dimensions, which would seemingly affect these entities pretty profoundly? What's the deal with this "Chaos-Beast" who was smacked down by the Justice Squadron in '88? Is he related to any of the other known dimensional conquerors? Did he have servants or cultists on Earth before or since his invasion? Enjoy!

Hi again, Yes, Frag herself still doesn't know her origins, or even that her powers are magical. And the beauty part is, the working involved 12 different demons, and was interrupted, so, as you say, there's no real need for consistency among SFX or power levels. This is part of what I meant when I mentioned Archimago functioning as a good source of character ideas. Let's not forget that Archimago kept selling his soul to worse and worse entities, until he served the Solipsist himself; he could well have been outright compelling the devils against any interest of their own, the way DEMON now has to. The "incarnate at full power" idea sounds a lot like what Bocal MacFarlane is doing for the Dragon; it's taking him a lot of special study and time and effort, though of course, his patron is a bit more powerful than "random arch-devil X". Makes me wonder about potential connections between the Sylvestris and Archimago - when Archimago's soul was sold to demons, the Sylvestris would probably have regarded him as owing them obedience, and when he wormed his way out of those pacts by selling himself to Brialic or Qlippothic beings, they likely regarded him the same way they now regard DEMON. Perhaps pressure from the Sylvestris helped lead him to the decision to pact himself with viler but more powerful entities... The Orc/Lord of Chaos thing is certainly a possibility, though IIRC the Unraveling is a Qlippothic concern, rather than a Chaos concern. No particular rivalry between the Drifter and Entropy is anywhere mentioned, though Entropy seems fairly new in the CU, and our speculations on their patrons are still just that - speculations. As to Entropy being less powerful than the Drifter, it would seem appropriate to the Lords of Chaos not to concentrate their efforts in a single champion - perhaps there are other, unknown characters who draw on the same power as Entropy; perhaps Avant Guard or other chaotic superhumans, in moments of Harmony With The Chao, could draw on the power of Brialic entities the way they used to allow some gods to (I believe Coyote drawing upon the Trickster was the example in The Mystic World). And the question also arises of how many other mystic entities might be seeking similar champions/avatars, perhaps in preparation for some upcoming arcane Armageddon in the material plane... As you say, quite a few plot possibilities.

Hi again, Lots of possibilities there. Gods of Faerie or Elysium concerned with justice are of course candidates, but they tend to show up with all their mythical trappings - hearts and feathers for Osiris or Ma'at, wings and flaming swords for St. Michael, etc.. So my best guess here is higher up in the Four Worlds - Urizen, Prime Avatar of Order. (BTW, I love the use of the William Blake mythos for 5E CU; it's cool, fairly obscure, and the Doctor Strange writers themselves borrowed from it a couple decades back, so using it is definitely in-genre.) The origin story of Entropy, in VVV, bears more than a passing resemblance to that of the Drifter, and the same question could be asked about him, but his patron's mention of the Unraveling points a finger pretty hard at the Solipsist. I'll admit that does surprise me a bit; his role as "arcane mystery man who shows up anywhere at any time to get the PC's into big magical trouble" seems kind of redundant with the Witness. OTOH, he is much more powerful than even the Witness (who is no slouch) and much more willing to directly use his power; this hints at different patrons for the two, and thus at probably different ultimate goals. Makes me wonder if they've ever come into conflict... The mystic side of the CU is going to be inherently heavy on the unresolved question stuff; hidden wisdom and suppressed knowledge of "secrets man was not meant to know" are at the heart of the genre. But with Steve still around in the thread, I'll dare to ask two of the unresolved questions I'm most curious about: What's the deal with Adrian Vandaleur? Are you guys cooking anything up with him, or is he one of those mysteries that'll be left in the dark to help GM's keep players uncertain? What's the deal with Archimago and his post-mortem plots? Just a convenient source of random evil artifacts and character origins (like Evil Eye)? Or something you're planning on running with, perhaps tying into the Robert Caliburn stuff? (and while we're on the subject of Archimago, can we nail down a definitive date on his Zodiac Working? The Mystic World says it was in 1989, the entry on Frag in Arcane Adversaries, who is a result of the Working, says 1979.) Of course, if Steve thinks the safety and sanity of the world depend on extreme discretion with secrets of such mind-shattering potential, I'll, like, totally understand.

Hi all, Let's not forget all the mysteries associated with the enigmatic Drifter, like... How does a mystic considered by some to be on par with Takofanes, who has been active in the CU since the 1940's, rate not a single mention of his name in The Mystic World? (My guess - Drifter wasn't made a mystic until the writing of CU: NoTW, when it was decided to explicitly turn the early Justice Squadron into a JSA homage, with Vita-Man as Hourman, Skygirl as Stargirl, Brawler as Wildcat, and Drifter slotted into the Phantom Stranger/Dr. Fate role.) How does someone unable to disguise himself have two different alter egos named in published CU products (Alexander Caldwell in the description of Brainchild in CKC, Jonathan Keyes in CU: NoTW)? For that matter, since the Drifter in Brainchild's description is described as having "weird extradimensional powers" rather than as a mystic, is it possible that at some point there were TWO Drifters in the Justice Squadron? Perhaps Vanguardboy Prime has been punching the walls of the CU....

Hi again, Referring to my earlier RSR question in this thread, OK, the -1/4 value comes from the "roll based on a Background Skill". But why does it not suffer a reduction for ignoring the Active Point penalty? At -1/2 less of a Limitation for ignoring the Active Point penalty, it would actually be a +1/4 Advantage if not for the rule that caps Limitations at -0 (i. e., you never have to PAY points to limit your power). I had thought the auto-fail thing might be some rules option for RSR I had missed (maybe from Digital Hero or somewhere), that compensated for this, but you say it's just for flavor. So what happened to that other -1/2? Thanks again!

Hello, The "Dim Mak" power on page 123 of The Ultimate Martial Artist says, "(6) Characters must buy Dim Mak powers with the following Limitation: Requires a Chinese Healing Roll (no active point penalty, but 16+ automatically misses; -1/4)." This is a very interesting construct, to me. The Requires a Skill Roll Limitation is normally worth -1/2, eliminating the Active Point penalty to the roll makes it worth -1/2 less (reducing it to -0), and choosing a Background Skill (like KS: Chinese Healing) as the skill is worth a further -1/4 less. So without the auto-miss caveat, the Limitation would save no points at all. My question is, just how is the Limitation value for this interesting new option for Requires a Skill Roll calculated? I notice that the Limitation as presented above has the same value as the Activation Roll 15- Limitation, which also always fails on 16+. Could it be that the Limitation value of the equivalent Activation Roll is considered the minimum value of an "always fails on X or higher" RSR Limitation? Thanks in advance for the answer!

Hello, In Hero System, weapon masters of various sorts can represent their skill by buying Attack Powers that add to the damage of the weapons they use, usually with an OIF (any weapon of appropriate type) and other Modifiers. The Deadly Accuracy ability of the "Zen Riflery" style in The Ultimate Martial Artist is one example of this. My question is, what happens when a character with such an ability picks up a weapon that has Advantages they didn't buy for their additional damage, like a large-caliber gun with Increased STUN Multiplier, or one with Armor Piercing ammo? Some possibilities include: The extra damage gets the weapon's Advantages "for free" (seems unlikely); The extra damage cannot be used at all unless its Advantages match the weapon's exactly (seems a bit harsh); The extra damage may be used with the weapon, but if it is, the weapon loses any Advantages that were not bought for the extra damage (also harsh); The extra damage is converted into raw Active Points, and used to buy that many extra Active Points of the weapon's Power with all its Advantages, in a manner similar to that used for calculating extra STR damage for HKA's with Advantages (seems a fair solution, though complex, and perhaps a bit VPP-like). Nothing I've seen looking over the rulebook and the FAQs seems to really nail down what the answer might be to this specific question, though there are some kinda-sorta similar situations that could maybe be used to support the cases for one solution or another. (A similar question could be asked about Limitations that one of the Powers has and the other does not; the Deadly Accuracy ability mentioned above has the No Knockback Limitation, for example, while most guns don't.) Thanks in advance for your answer!

Re: I have Hidden Lands! Hello, Picked up Hidden Lands myself recently. Here are a few quick thoughts on the book... The sections on Arcadia/the Empyreans and on Lemuria and its denizens are the main reasons I wanted the book, and they are all I had hoped they would be. Good, detailed CU-canon background stuff, racial Package Deals and common power sets, and brimming with Kirby-esque flavor, especially in the sample Lemurian super-weapons (the Mandragalore, the Ultra-Coruscator, the Solar Tormentia, the Aeroreme Armada, and the Lunal-Kinesis Projector). The Empyrean racial Package Deal, though, seems to be paying for Damage Resistance on more PD and ED than are actually bought in the Package Deal itself. The section on Atlantis and the Atlanteans is also nicely done, with treatments similar to those given for Empyreans and Lemurians, plus the addition of several pages on underwater adventuring and the game effects of its perils and challenges. The treatment of Shamballah and Agharti in the "Other Hidden Lands" section of the book is my only real disappointment with Hidden Lands; it seems to depart quite radically from the previous presentation of these two cities in Champions Universe and The Mystic World. In the earlier products, Shamballah and Agharti are depicted as being locked in an ancient and finely balanced struggle of potential cosmic significance, and as being deeply involved in the Mystic World, or at least its Asian side, for obscure reasons of their own, presumably related to the conflict between them. In Hidden Lands, any real equality or conflict or interest in the outer world seems to be over, with Shamballah an insular city far more inclined to martial arts than to magic in general, and Agharti an outright prison for its inhabitants. Among the remaining "Other Hidden Lands", Beast Mountain is a nice nod to the public-domain Victorian literary stuff that has found its way into CU canon, Doyle and Stevenson and Verne and, in this case, H. G. Wells. Sunday Pond has a proper Stephen King/X-Files vibe to it, with the Witness having an definite Phantom Stranger-ish aura, and the Well of Worlds seems to have a lot of potential for '70's horror-comic style adventures with a dash of Australian flavor. The art, about which some other posters have remarked, is a bit of a mixed bag, but doesn't seem any worse to me overall than any that in any other Hero 5E product. The cover in particular is quite nice, as are the portaits of Prince Marus, Arvad the Betrayer, and Commander Karn, and all of the maps in the book. Even the worst of the art is about at the level of some of the stuff in the 1st Edition AD&D books - the only piece I thought really should have been better was the portrait of Queen Mara of Atlantis; it looks a piece that loses more than most from being in black and white rather than color, if that makes any sense . Let's see...standard Empyrean racial Package Deal is 377 points. The only things that I wouldn't really cut at all are the Life Support, Lightsleep, and Universal Translator. So we trim back STR by 10 (-10 points), BODY by 3 (-6), PRE by 5 (-5), Damage Resistance to 4 each for PD and ED (-6), Mental Defense and Power Defense by 5 each (-10), his Powers Template by 10 (-10), drop Reduced END Cost on his Flight (-7), and drop his Contact with the other Empyreans to an 8 or less (-3). That will drop him to 320, giving you 30 for custom-tailoring; call him a young "Teen Champions" Empyrean, and there you have him. Hope this helps!