BoloOfEarth

Discovering that somebody has stolen the hubcaps. And the engine.

So, a divorced woman puts out a personal ad in the paper: "WANTED: a man who won't hit me, or leave me, and somebody who is a good lover." A few days later, her doorbell rings. When she answers the door, she sees a man in a wheelchair sitting there, without arms or legs. "I'm here to answer your ad," he says. "I think you must be mistaken," she says. "I don't think you fit the ad." "Of course I do," he replies. "I have no arms, so I can't beat you. And I have no legs, so I can't run away from you." "But what about the 'good lover' part?" she asks. "Lady," he says, "how do you think I rang the doorbell?"

Justin Bieber, Miley Cyrus, and Rebecca Black. (Which would also work for a worst possible musical act for the Super Bowl.)

An all-mime a cappella group. (Though to be fair, their air guitar bit is pretty impressive.) NT: The worst possible advertisement to air during the Super Bowl.

There have been nearly 300 teams created here. Believe me, we've already revisited numerous themes, and I'm sure it will happen many times in the future. As to Fun Sized... Carl Brown is the only child of a 6'7" tall, 350-pound professional football player, and he loved football just like his dad. Unfortunately, Carl topped out at a whopping 4'9" tall, and was skinny enough that other kids joked that a strong wind could knock Carl down. It didn't help that, what Carl lacked in weight and strength, he also lacked in agility and speed. He was still in high school when he reluctantly gave up his dream of playing football, but he decided he wasn't going to let other people push him around no matter how much they tried. And they certainly did try -- especially Andy Aaronson, the biggest bully at Central High. (There are rumors that Carl's dad was deeply disappointed in his son and was abusive, but Carl refuses to talk about it.) One day, Aaronson was shoving Carl around when the smaller boy finally snapped. The stress activated a latent mutation, causing Carl to lash out telekinetically and throw the bully across the school yard. Aaronson was badly injured and had to be hospitalized, but Carl didn't care. As far as he was concerned, the bully, like most "big, tough people" had it coming. Despite being only 17 years old, Carl is an incredibly strong teke, able to telekinetically lift and move tons of mass without effort. He can also resist being picked up or otherwise moved against his will. Realizing the power at his command, Carl left school and his family behind, deciding to take what he wanted regardless of what other said or the law dictated. He calls himself Lineman, after the position his father plays.

Vince Kramer was not happy to learn that VIPER had built a training and supply Nest right under one of his company's factories, especially since he only learned this when superheroes and government agents galore descended upon the factory en mass and the resulting battle between the forces of law and the Goons in Green destroyed much of his factory. The authorities weren't convinced that Vince was an innocent dupe, insisting that since it was on (or more specifically, under) his property, he must be a part of it. Finally, after years of legal battles, Vince proved his innocence. Unfortunately, the factory was a total loss. And even though the court found in his favor when he filed a civil suit against the government and the hero team, the amount awarded was nowhere near enough to restore the factory. But Nancy Kramer's little boy hadn't gotten rich by simply accepting bad situations. He had gotten where he was by turning bad situations to his advantage. And the VIPER Nest was in relatively good condition, even after the feds and heroes had stripped it of anything even remotely dangerous -- in fact, the Nest was in much better condition than the factory above. VInce wondered if maybe people would pay to tour an actual VIPER base. So he spent the proceeds of his civil suit to fix up the base. Old computer equipment was purchased and used to restore the Control Room to at least a fraction of its former high-tech glory. Plastic molded "blaster turrets," consisting mainly of laser pointers, web cams, and rotating servos, were fitted into the pop-down mounts in the ceiling. An old scrapped Herkimer Battle Jitney was bought, towed into the underground garage, and painted bright green and yellow. Actors and guides were hired and outfitted in faux VIPER uniforms with cheap plastic "blaster rifles". To Vince's surprise, people ate it up. Kids and adults alike loved donning cheap knockoffs of VIPER, PRIMUS, and UNTIL uniforms, or chose one of a wide selection of superhero-style spandex costumes, to run through The Gauntlet (basically, the VIPER Training Room converted into laser-tag). School groups came to hear a retired federal agent talk about fighting VIPER in the 1970s, or meet a reformed VIPER agent (currently on probation after serving 6 years of a 10-year sentence). Some people criticize Vince Kramer, saying he is "glamorizing" VIPER, but he insists that "VIPERWorld" shows a very balanced, and ultimately negative, view of the criminal organization. Others worry that the real VIPER will take umbrage at the site, but thus far they've made no move... at least, not yet...

As to useful, turning into the size of a small bug would be similar to having invisibility and desolidification -- you could get into places you otherwise couldn't, and can observe things (or do things) with minimal chance of alerting anybody. Great for information gathering and sabotage. I ran a Champions campaign that had a shrinking PC. She was great at scoping out hostage situations or bad guys' bases before the heroes attacked. Imagine how embarrassing it would be for the villain to push the missile launch or self-destruct button and have nothing happen, because somehow the wires got disconnected... And let's not even discuss sneak attacks. It's not as up-front and straightforward as, say, a blaster or a brick, or even a mentalist. But a little creativity can make shrinking pretty useful and heroic enough when all is said and done.

That's seven. Procyon, do you want to post a new team name, theme, and number of members?

Sealand - A trio of superpowered millionaires bought out the former "royalty" of this self-declared independent principality, originally built on a British WWII gun platform in the North Sea, and expanded it tremendously, building a combination hotel/casino and shipping port on the site. There are rumors that illegal activity is run from there now, though authorities have thus far not been able to prove anything.

And when the people all got in... it seemed bigger on the inside. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Some feedback on Screech (pun fully intended): First, a heads-up on something in Hero Designer: for the Endurance Reserves, you have to put Limitations on the REC separately, or you're paying full price for the REC. So for the Stage Keyboards, I put the END Reserve with an OAF Bulky limitation, and the REC with a Requires Electrical Outlet limitation on it, and for the Portable Keyboard, I gave the END Reserve an OAF limitation, and the REC has the Requires Electrical Outlet limitation. Second, by adding a Barrier to the Stage Keyboards, I realized that would get in the way of his own attacks, so I added Indirect (Source point the same, direct to target; +1/4) to all of the Stage Keyboard attacks. My thinking is that he spends the END to create the Sonic Wall, and then modulates his attacks to pass through it. (Note that with Barrier, you don't have to spend END every Phase and keep that slot active in the Multipower unless you give the Barrier a Costs END to Maintain limitation.) Also, on both keyboards, the book writeups had a mix of ultra and multi slots (fixed and variable slots in 6th ed.) but frankly their choices of which were fixed and which weren't seemed f---ed up to me. I see you had all yours as fixed slots, which is usually how I do Multipowers. For the Stage Keyboards, I bumped the pool up to 76 points, with the Barrier using the full pool when it's created. Then most of the rest of the powers are approx. 60 points, with the Darkness to Hearing at 15 points. Oh, and I moved the Force Field Usable by Other into the Stage Keyboards, since that made more sense to me. For fun, I also added an Images to Hearing group (AoE 32m radius) as a variable slot. At 16 points, it's only +/- 1 to PER, but at full it's at +/- 15 to PER, so he can do intricate orchestral scores and incredibly convincing sound effects. For the Autofire Blast, as with Heavy Metal you need to add the All or Nothing to the AVAD. In addition to Indirect, I also added Half END and bumped the Autofire up to 5 shots. That costs 10 END total but you can potentially hit multiple individuals, or hammer one person. On the Darkness, remember to change from hexes to meters. As to the Gadget Pools, note that 6th Edition allows you more freedom with VPP Pool and Control costs. I made the Stage Keyboard VPP a 48 point Pool + 60 points Control. With the -1 1/2 Focus limitation on any powers, the max pool cost for any 60 AcP (active point) power would be 24 points. So he can create two 60 AcP powers (24 + 24 = 48). For the Portable Keyboard, I made it a 15-point Pool + 30 points Control, and added an Advantage that he can change the pool as a Half-Phase action (+1/2) with at Gadgeteering roll. Since all powers in there have OAF (-1), the max pool cost for any 30 AcP power is 15 points. Speaking of Gadgeteering, you should have that as a Power skill, based on INT rather than a Custom Skill. Much, much cheaper. When I've got my HD version finished, I'll try to remember to post it.

Doesn't show for me in Firefox either.

Some more hopefully constructive feedback - on Heavy Metal: His Multipower has a Limitation of "Invisible to sight, not underwater or in vacuum". Invisible to Sight would be an Advantage, not a Limited Power. I dropped that part entirely and made the limitation "Does not work underwater or in vacuum". One could easily make the argument that sound still travels through water, so that should actually be two Limitations: Does not work in vacuum (-1/4) and Half damage when underwater (-1/4). His Mental Blast really should be bought as Alternate CV: OCV vs. DCV (+0). No point difference, but OMCV vs. DMCV doesn't really fit for a sonic attack. I added a slot: Ballad of Insanity. Basically the same as the Song of Insanity, but with AoE Cone. Moan of Death, as written you forgot the All or Nothing part if having deafness as the alternate defense. Personally, I'd make keep it an AVAD (vs. Flash Defense [Hearing], so Very Common > Uncommon), not NND, and add a Limitation that it doesn't work at all vs. deaf / deafened people. For the Roadkill Grenades AoE: Explosion, you should increase the radius to accommodate the decreasing damage. So, for an 8d6 Blast, that would be 18m radius. As to Complications, there's nothing saying you have to cut them down to 75 points or so, but that's all a 400-point character needs, and I've found that converting characters from 4th or 5th Edition to 6th Edition is a good excuse to get rid of some deadwood in the Disad department. So I'd drop at least the Hunted by father and the Addiction, if not others.

(Bolding added above) Because, y'know, with over 200 pages of character sheets and info, you need some fluff in there to bring the page count up. What Mike's not saying is that Foxbat hacked his computer, and 58,000 of the words are variations on "Foxbat rocks!", "Foxbat rules!", "Foxbat for President! For Real This Time!" and "Foxbat is so not lame, you poopy head Defender!"

Right after 6th Edition came out, I did a handful of character conversions. And I recently looked back at them and had a few "WTF Was I Thinking Back Then" moments. None of us are immune from the learning curve. And you're very welcome. Keep up the good work.

Hermit had an excellent idea in the SAT, WITCH, CLOWN, and Other Forgotten Orgs thread (http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/90124-sat-witch-clown-and-other-forgoten-orgs/) for updating CLOWN: I'm putting Hermit's idea into effect in my game. I've already added a news item about CLOWN to my in-game newspaper: after a major identity theft of account holders' private information from a major bank's credit card division, CLOWN covers the bank's skyscraper with pasted credit card applications during the night -- and then, while people gather to gawk the next day, CLOWN performs a fly-by and air-drops hundreds of credit card applications filled out with the personal information for the bank's major officers. I don't want to hijack this thread for CLOWN; I'm just pointing out that, with the right approach, a lot of unpopular groups (like CLOWN and Road Kill) can be perfectly useful in a game.

Ghost-angel has a fair point about the disparity of defenses. However, in fairness to rjd59, the original writeups were similarly broken. Heavy Metal had decent defenses (20/10 PD and 16/10 ED), Screech's were insane (38/30 PD, 37/30 ED force field from stage keyboards, or 23/15 PD, 17/10 force field from portable keyboard), Axeman and Boomer had no resistant defenses at all (if they didn't deflect a ranged attack, they'd be toast), Ted was brick-tough (36/18 PD, 20/10 ED), and Sparks was one superhero attack away from the ICU (6/0 PD, 5/0 ED). I got the impression that the original writer of Road Kill had very little sense of character balance, but this wasn't unique to that module. There were several modules that suffered from poor grasp of the rules (I recall a character, I think in European Enemies, who had an Energy Blast with an Increased STUN Modifier) or game balance. As with any published group, I used Road Kill's writeups as mere guidelines and redid 3/4 of the writeups myself. Critiquing the defenses in rjc59's writeups presented here, I'd replace Heavy Metal's Damage Negation with straight Resistant Protection; Screech's force fields really shouldn't be bought as Barriers but as Resistant Protection (though I'd add a Barrier slot into the Stage Keyboards as that is totally fitting); Axeman's defenses (or relative lack thereof) are completely true to the original character but I plan to boost them some; Boomer's VIPER force field fits the background (and I plan to include that in my version) even though it wasn't in the original writeup; Ted's Damage Negation is over the top (I'd go with a mix of Resistant Protection plus Damage Negation, though much lower than rjc59 has), and my comments on Sparks' defenses would be exactly the same as for Axeman.

Some superpowered individuals have the ability to summon copies of themselves from other dimensions, giving them the ability to seemingly duplicate themselves. Malcolm Archer has a similar mutation, though he summons his alternate selves into himself, making him increasingly fatter (and stronger and tougher) the more he pulls into himself. The process has an unusual side effect -- he also gains any skills and knowledge those alternate selves possess, depending upon which versions of himself he merges with. Others dubbed him Mammoth Mal, a name which has unfortunately stuck with him. An angry young man, Mal was more than happy to join the team when Tessie approached him.

Robert Morton used to fight crime as the brilliant tactician and skill mimic TacMaster, until an errant SWAT team's sniper bullet left him paralyzed from the waist down. He now works from a wheelchair, studying superpowered individuals (both hero and villain) and organizations (both government and criminal) so he can train teams of agents to work better with a client hero or team's tactics and exploit their more frequent foes' weaknesses. In addition to his ability to analyze an individual's fighting style, TacMaster can psionically imprint skills he has learned onto others on a somewhat temporary basis. (Transferred skills last about a month before fading, unless the recipient spends time training [aka spends points] to make the skill permanent.) Thus, he can quickly ramp an agent team up to a client's specifications, while having those agents start on a training regimen to keep those skills long-term.

The popularity and influence of the Kardashians.

New Team: We've had groups in the Villain Theme Team thread that provide services to villain groups -- but what about on the heroic side? The not-for-profit group Hero Support trains and provides agents, weapons, armor, equipment, vehicles, base construction, legal aid, financial and other services to hero groups across the world. Who are the four heroes who formed this organization? (Since this isn't in the Villain Theme Team thread, I'd prefer that they not have villainous intent, though members may have selfish reasons for doing what they do, if the poster so desires.)

William Wilson's grandfather (a very wealthy and selfish man) was cursed by a gypsy long ago -- "May you and all your descendants face woes and misery all the day long." The family soon became poor, with accidents and illness befalling each of them. It wasn't until William Wilson's father, Reginald, that anybody figured out that difficulties only happened from sunrise to sunset (yes, even gypsies have to be careful how they word curses). So he worked only at night, inventing things that he turned over to his in-laws to sell during the day (giving Reginald a cut of the profits). It took decades, but Reginald slowly but surely rebuilt his family's fortunes. William inherited his father's technical expertise and continues as his father did, working at night. However, William also traveled to Europe (flying at night) and consulted gypsies to find a way to break the curse. Eventually, one proposed that William might do so by positive action -- she said that selflessness and heroic deeds might make up for the wrongs his grandfather did, and the original gypsy's spirit might approve of this and free his family. So he built a battlesuit with which to fight crime and do good. However, to keep his curse from causing accidents with his battlesuit that might hurt innocent bystanders, Goodwill only works at night.

Think about it the other way -- so many villains with Unluck, all in one place. A natural disaster is bound to strike eventually.

In my upcoming campaign, I'm making Stronghold temporarily hamstrung. Much of the structure and defenses are badly damaged and are being rebuilt, most of the guards are new to Stronghold and fairly inexperienced in dealing with supers, etc. Basically, a plan by the Empress of a Billion Dimensions to remove the supers from the campaign world (to make it easier for her to take over) went awry. A bunch of supers disappeared from their cells in Stronghold, many of which were replaced by a bunch of new supers from another world. Unfortunately, those new supers had powers different from what those cells were designed to suppress or resist. Cue one mass escape and super-riot that destroyed much of the super-prison and left many of the guards either dead or badly injured.

Ha! Love it! Just curious, have you ever played in one of Dave Mattingly's BYOB (Bring Your Own Brick) games at GenCon or any other convention?