BoloOfEarth

Alternately, you could set an active point cap for all powers except 1-2 "specials". A "special" could be a Nova attack that wipes the character out, or a Once-A-Blue-Moon attack that is severely limited in other ways (Only vs. Dragons or some such). The GM puts extra attention on approving the "special" attack, including all EP expenditures (to make sure the limitations on END or frequency-of-use don't get bought down or off). Never really tried this, mind you; I had hard active point caps for over a decade, and turned 180 and am trying a no-caps campaign right now. IME, those who number-crunch and point-shave their characters are more combat monsters, while those who don't care about such mundane tasks are more interested in the noncombat game aspects. Not a hard-and-fast division, but generally it seems that way to me. Also, IME, the number cruncher is the one (at least in my campaign) who spends points on skills that will only be useful once a decade, but fit the character concept.

ROFLMAO! Do you think, if I leave my books lying around, one of them might fall into the trap and let me play for a while? I don't have a problem with OOC knowledge because (a) half of my players barely know the rules, let alone the villains, and ( the other half are good enough roleplayers to avoid using too much OOC knowledge. Actually, they don't even use OOC knowledge about each other's characters. I ran a battle between the heroes and Cy-Force (rewritten for Fifth Edition rules), and at one point a character initiated his self-destruct (don't ask) by announcing, "Team evacuate. Self-destruct initiated." Even though most of the players knew he couldn't actually explode, they faltered and some acted as if they thought he might. My only problem, and it wasn't intentional on the players' parts, was when I changed Champions campaigns. Their old characters had crossed swords with Mechanon, the Ultimates, etc. but their new characters hadn't. Yet they not only acted as if they had battled them before and knew their powers, the new player characters even said some of the same taunts as their old characters. It was just a little mental slipup.

If you strictly look at time spent in play, I'd say it's about 60% roleplay, 40% combat. If it's time that I spend as GM preparing for the game, it's the reverse. (That includes updating the NPC character sheets, making the speedsheet, etc.) My players are about half role-players, half combat types, so I always try to have some combat in every session, even if it's a throwaway against thugs or agents just to lure them into a situation. There is plenty of role-playing potential within combat. How the characters resolve a hostage situation, or handle stray shots putting innocents in danger, can add lots of RP fun.

My first GenCon, I played in a game (Minutemen / China Doll) where all of the players were so intent on figuring out the mystery that, if China Doll had turned herself in to the police, we would have continued investigating just to figure out why she was doing what she was doing. The climax was pure role-playing -- no combat at all -- as we talked her out of shooting the guy who effectively destroyed her life. As a GM, it would probably be the time a player talked Icestar out of killing Ravager, who had apparently killed Icestar's teammate Gargoyle. (Background: in my world, one hero team in NYC was known as the Guardians, made up of the characters from the cover of Champions II and, I believe, the Champions comic books. The PCs, also based in NYC, were out of town on 9/11 and most of the Guardians were killed trying to stop the second plane or saving people from the twin towers. Gargoyle was left in a coma, and Icestar was guilt-ridden over his teammates' deaths.) Ravager had drained the remaining life essence from Gargoyle, and Icestar was out for blood. I made the player work to talk Icestar out of committing murder. To me, the best role-playing tends to remove the need for combat...

Speaking of susceptabilities, I had a friend who drew up a character (Micron) who had Shrinking, really high defenses (including Mental and Power DEF), and life support. He also had Susceptible to oxygen (that's why he had the life support) and a bunch of other munchkin disads. Basically, you practically couldn't find him, and even if you could, you could barely hurt him. The GM said, "DENIED!"

USS Macon National Geographic had an excellent article on the discovery of the wreck of the Macon, including some photos and a cutaway showing locations of crew areas and the airdock for the planes. It was in the January 1992 issue. My personal favorite was some of the history, like when the captain of the Macon sent his planes out to locate the cruiser USS Houston (President Roosevelt was aboard) and drop off newspapers. Of course, since the planes were taking off and "landing" at the Macon, there was no need for landing gear, but they attached a fuel tank to the belly of each. Now, imagine what the crew of the Houston thought when two planes appear, far from land and with what look like bombs on their bellies, and make a low pass over the ship... Anyway, the crew quarters were located along each side toward the bottom. There was a secondary control room in the lower aft fin, a walkway down the center bottom, and at least one hatch on top. The Macon had propellers that swiveled 90 degrees, making it the largest vehicle to take off and land vertically, and carried 5 biplanes that latched onto a hook on the underside and could then be lifted inside. In the design, don't forget water and fuel tanks throughout. If you're going for realism, it would need ballast to maintain stability.

Great post, TheMonster! The Akron and Macon are definately must-check-out for a zeppelin flying base. I used them and the Hindenburg as partial inspiration for my modern Champions campaign fixture, an airship casino. There was a website for a neat-looking airship design, at www.quantumaerostatics.com , but I can't seem to pull the site up right now. Basically, the frame was a geodesic design rather than the standard rib-and-ring frames. I can't remember when Buckminster Fuller's heyday was, but I think this could be applied in that time period. Their design also had no fins, instead relying on 30 rotatable engines for maneuverability. This allows higher maneuverability even at lower speeds, which fins don't provide. However, IMO it just didn't look quite right without the fins... The big thing, if you're interested in reality, is keeping the frame's weight down. A super-alloy (like Lord Liaden suggested) could go a long way here. Also, increasing the diameter does wonders for increasing volume (and the lifting capacity for all that extra LTA gas). The Hindenburg also had plastic fixtures (yes, plastic existed then -- the first plastic from cellulose was presented in 1862, and the first totally synthetic plastic was patented in 1907). I'd replace The Monster's wood/paper walls with wood/cloth walls, though, just to keep the PCs from running right through them. BTW, I believe the Hindenburg's piano was an aluminum frame with cloth covering, to save even more weight. Also, the Hindenburg had a smoking room with an airlock-type entry and negative air pressure within the room, plus the only lighter or matches on the airship. (Passengers had to turn over all of theirs to the purser before boarding.) There's lots of stuff on the web pointing out the pros of using hydrogen. It has more lifting capacity than helium (15% more by volume, IIRC), can be easily extracted, etc. The initial design for the Hindenburg and Graf Zeppelin may have been for helium, but when the Germans couldn't get any from the US, they redesigned for hydrogen, taking advantage of this greater lifting capacity to add more internal passenger/crew area. Also, if you use hydrogen to power the engines, you only have to return to the ground for food. (Use water condensers to collect water vapor.) Actually, you can use both hydrogen and helium, since the lifting gas is held in multiple gas bags. (Hindy had 16 gas cells.) That way, if the players are the destructive types, you can say that the bag they're trying to light up is filled with helium. You don't need to tell them that only one of every three gas bags is helium-filled, and the others contain hydrogen...

Oh, as far as weaponry is concerned, how about a Wind Vortex Cannon (patent pending). I'm thinking a huge hull-mounted thing that is hard to aim, but sends a blast of air that, focused, does damage, or wide-spread (read: AE Cone), causes flight problems for airplanes and helicopters/gyrocopters (Flight and Gliding Dispel, only vs. wing/rotor craft; the pilot needs to make Combat Piloting rolls to recover from the stall and spin). Heck, turn the Cannon aft and it provides a brief burst of acceleration. Of course, smoke projectors (white smoke to look like clouds) is another given.

One suggestion, though not for the zeppelin itself: have a huge base carved out of the side of a mountain. Nice and inaccessible, but the heroes can investigate the thefts of explosives from all over the region, maybe hear of odd blasting in the mountains, etc. If they haven't encountered the zeppelin yet, that would be an interesting way to see it for the first time, and if the location is not accessible by the team's plane, it allows for the Baron and his zeppelin to get away.

A lot depends on the characters' skills, powers, etc. but here goes: (1) Natural Disaster: Hey, you can't fight Mother Nature. How would they deal with flooding, fire, or anything else you come up with? (2) Illness: An epidemic is sweeping the city, and the heroes (who may be affected themselves) have to track down the cause to hopefully find the cure. It could be anything from bio-terrorism to a lab accident to a new pharmaceutical's unforseen side effects. (3) For an odd change of pace, have the players play some normals (or maybe agent-level characters). This works especially well if it's a lead-in to something the heroes will later investigate. I ran a two-parter once, where the first part was the six players split into several teams. One player was a go-between buying a mysterious stolen micro-disc of information; another player was the bodyguard for the seller; two were agents of the person the disc had been stolen from; and the last two were FBI agents tailing the other two agents. Then, the heroes ended up talking to the characters they had played as they tried to figure out what the disc was and what happened to it. (When the heroes met the FBI agents, I had the players who had played the feds play their parts.)

If you want to do an at-home game, you can always deal with black marketeers stealing rationed goods (tires, gasoline, etc.). Even pro-US supervillains might let greed take hold. A group of German saboteurs arrive by U-Boat and have to be tracked down. When you get to Nov. 30, 1942, you can run the Cocoanut Grove fire in Boston. Over half of the 800 patrons of this popular club died, IIRC due to flammable fixtures, no sprinkler system, unmarked and/or locked exits, and general panic.

Some things that slipped by me over 15 or so years of Champions: Mental Defense, Usable By Others at Range. At first, the Mental Defense was only to help one other, but with EP the player bought it up to 4 others, conveniently covering the entire team. Made every mentalist completely useless. Telekinetic Force Field, UBO at range. The intent was to protect normals, but it soon got used far too often by the team brick, making him completely unstoppable. Between this and the Mental DEF above, I ruled that defenses will no longer be UBO in my game. 1d6 NND, Autofire (5), 0 END. Seems pretty innocuous, right? Well, the character, Hummingbird, also had a high SPD (I think it was 9-10 at the start) that quickly got bought up to 12. And since this was his only attack, enough 2-point levels make it certain that all 5 hit. In 2-3 of his phases (one phase for your average character), he's done 10-15d6 NND. And on the other side of the coin, I let one hero have Absorption and a Force Field (only up to amount Absorbed) in an EC. Genocide hit him with a Suppress, taking both a bit below half power. However, since the Absorption was cut so far, it really hurt the Force Field. Then a group of agents opened fire on him with 2d6 AP RKA, killing him in one phase. I had no idea his defenses had been lowered that far, and I was as shocked as he was.

No problem there. He can't Deflect/Reflect AOE or Explosions (unless the SFX are a grenade or some such, and unless that had Ranged and you didn't list it). Also, it wouldn't take long at all for word to get around, and nobody targets him directly. If all he did was stand around, great, that's one less hero to worry about. Take out his teammates, then drop grenades all around him.

A GenCon Moment I was at GenCon a few years back, and was involved in a game where one player was the type to dominate the entire game. You know the type, giving orders (even though his character wasn't team leader), verbally pushing around those who dared question or, God forbid, not follow his orders, etc. Another player was new to Champions and didn't know how things went, so he tended to listen when Mr. Type A gave him directions. The Newbie was playing a brick-type character. We were in the climactic battle, and one character grabbed the main bad guy. We knew he couldn't hold him for long, and he was both hard to hit normally, and hard to damage. Newbie had something he wanted to try, but Mr. Type A instructed him to perform a haymaker on Big Baddie. While Newbie's idea may not have been the best idea mathematically, it was creative. But Mr. Type A insisted and insisted until finally Newbie agreed to perform the haymaker. So Newbie winds up and... rolls a critical failure. In one shot, he KO's the teammate who was holding Big Baddie. I only wish it had been Mr. Type A's character who had gotten KO'd.

Naive Player One of the players in my game is a wonderful person, a great player, but is woefully naive. Two stories about her: 1) The heroes are attending a trial for three supervillainesses they had captured robbing a bank, when VIPER breaks in with the apparent goal of kidnapping the defendents. The player in question has her character chase one of the defendents who was making a break for it, seeing her get into a van outside the courthouse. The superhero gives chase, unaware that she has become the victim of a mental illusion. After the first few moments of the chase, however, all of the other players have figured this out. She catches up to and grabs the van, wrenching open the back door to climb inside. To her surprise, the van is not only missing the person she is chasing -- there's nobody in the van, not even a driver. As the van gets onto the highway, she goes up to the driver's seat and notices that none of the other cars on the highway have drivers, either. Eventually, the player had to be told that it was a mental illusion, whereupon she wakes up sitting in the middle of traffic where she first saw the van. 2) The player missed the second part of an adventure where the heroes' powers were removed by Infinite Man just before they had to go rescue one hero's family from a British member of ARGENT. The team had travelled to England, without weapons, and now had to invade an offshore ARGENT base, so they were trying to get some weapons from London's criminal element when the first part ended. When she called and said she wouldn't be there for part 2, the other players and I decided to pull a prank and tell her she was captured by the police while getting the weapons. The next game, she shows up and I have a fake scenario set up where she is in her cell when IRA terrorists blow a hole in her jail cell wall (they picked the wrong cell). I'm running this, just for giggles, and she's believing it's all real. Not sure who her "rescuers" are, she makes a verbal slip and asks, "Are you with the IRS?" All of us cracked up, and I couldn't even go on with the gag. I'm thinking of making a paranormal arm of the IRA with the initials IRS, just to rub salt in the wound.

Setting the Scene A public place probably means the public will be around. Consider that Binder has Demolitions skill (which means he should be able to handle normal explosives). Imagine if he glued up a bunch of people with a bomb on a timer stuck in there too... Things like that give the players something else to deal with in addition to the villains. Or it can be a trap -- a psychotropic gas bomb disguised as normal explosives, say. Or even a complete red herring to waste the heroes' time.

Flash It depends. If Binder had a Flash attack (defined as a blob of glue in the target's face), it would be his OCV versus the target's DCV. Ankylosaur's Flashbang (sight and hearing) is an Explosion, so it is targeted on a hex. The effects rolled are the number of phases the target is blinded (minus their Flash Defense, if any). Look at p. 226-227 for details on Flash effects. Basically, it all depends on (1) whether they have targeting senses that aren't affected, and (2) whether they make a non-targeting PER roll. In general, the target is 1/2 OCV if they don't have a usable targeting sense, and either 0 DCV, 1/2 DCV, -1 DCV, or full DCV depending on the circumstances and PER roll.

I ran a game where one player would roll his dice individually, and after the first two would say "only a 6 can hurt me now." And of course, he then rolled a 6 almost every time. Eventually, as a freebie I gave him an Overall Level with Incantations ("Only a six can hurt me now").

Forgot some things Consider some team-ups. Both Cyclone and Ankylosaur have Radar, so if Anky dropped smoke on the heroes (your listing didn't mention many enhanced senses), they can blast them. If you position Cyclone so that a wall is behind the target, that 10d6 Double Knockback against a blinded target (after Anky's Flashbang) will do double duty. "I hit you... you hit the wall." Check out Knockback Damage on p. 281. Oh, and UP BINDER'S DEFENSES! I mean, really. I've seen VIPER agents with better armor. Forget trying to hurt the brick. Hit him with a Flash, then a good Entangle. Blackstar can Grab and crush somebody with his DI on. With all levels on OCV, he has an effective OCV of 9 with a Grab. (Don't try this on Spiritwalker; teleport beats a grab any day.) Also, his DI puts him at 36 PD/ED. Just make sure the floor can support him in this form. Or he could throw the grabbed character at another character (like Brimstone with that Damage Shield) to hurt two at once.

Making the characters easy targets If the player characters' high DCV is a problem, here are several ideas: First, as somebody pointed out, is using Area Effect attacks, of which the Ultimates have plenty. I would have one Ultimate throw an AE attack at a hero (or heroes) who have already acted that phase, while the other Ultimates hold actions. If the target(s) decide to Dive for Cover, note this text on p. 260: "...regardless of what form of movement the character uses, he is considered to be prone at the end of the Maneuver... He must spend a Half Phase to get to his feet (or get his bearings) and is at 1/2 DCV until he does so." And if the heroes had to Abort their next action to Dive for Cover, that means they don't get to move for a while, all the while sitting there at 1/2 DCV. Voila! Instant, easy-to-hit target. As soon as the target (or targets) dive for cover to avoid the AE attack, the other Ultimates target the sitting duck(s). Warning: this will really only work once, maybe twice if the players are tired or dim, so make it count. This is a good way to start the fight, since all of the Ultimates will be up and can be waiting for the heroes (holding a prior action). Next, use some secondary powers to throw your players for a loop. Few people remember that Blackstar can turn Desolid, too. If he held his action until the hero starts to throw his punch (or better yet, tries a move-through), then turns Desolid... Slick's Change Environment should make it hard for running players to move around, and if they miss their DEX roll, they end up prone (and 1/2 DCV). Third, set the stage. The Ultimates should pick the fight location to take advantage of their strengths. An area with lots of metal railings or a metal floor for Thunderbolt to teleport along. Wide open spaces for Slick to move, and for Anky to shoot plenty of Explosions. High ceilings for Binder and Cyclone to stay out of reach. (It looks like most of your players' characters are ground-bound.) Fourth, villains get Experience too. Don't be afraid to add a skill or power to surprise the players. Clinging for Thunderbolt, or a small gadget pool for Binder, or DCV levels in flight for Cyclone. Don't forget Starbird, either. Some hired goons firing from above can be a real irritant. Finally, note that most of the Ultimates have Teamwork skill. A few coordinated attacks can make a world of difference (especially against the aforementioned sitting ducks). I hope this all helps. (Also, I hope your players don't check out this thread...)

Universal theories I introduced my players to a for-hire villain named Dr. Discus (borrowed from a friend). Dr. Discus has a rather versatile disc gun and other gadgets, along with a pet theory that he believes answers everything from the sun's low neutrino emissions to what happens to socks in the dryer. Throughout combat, he tries to interest the players in this Theory of the Universal Discal Constant. This immediately started irritating one of the player characters, which caused two other player characters to ask Dr. Discus questions about his theory mainly to make the first guy mad. It didn't help any that Dr. Discus was doing pretty well in the fight, especially against that first player character. Finally, the player mutters, "That's it. I'm going to introduce him to my Theory on Gliding Hotel Furniture."

Hard-luck Thief I played in a Fantasy Hero game long ago, and drew up a half-elven thief. On paper, the character was pretty good. Too bad that I couldn't roll worth beans whenever I played that character. We were exploring a dungeon with numerous traps. All of the other characters, including those without Stealth and Concealment, managed to avoid every trap. My character got his foot chopped off by a floor trap, a crossbow bolt in the forehead (luckily he wore a helmet), and an arrow in the shoulder. We had to make two trips back to town, each time visiting a priest with healing spells, just to keep my character alive. In a later game, my character was grabbed and taken before the top guys in the Thieves Guild because we had found the Master Thief (already dead) in the aforementioned dungeon, and my character had taken his (magical) lockpicks and thieving tools. When the guild accused me of killing the Master Thief, I showed them my wounds and scars, then said, "Do you really think I'm competant enough to kill anybody, let alone the Master Thief?!" They let me go.

Newspapers I also (try to) have a newspaper for each game session, for many of the reasons noted by others. I used to just read news blurbs at the start of every game, but a newspaper allows me to provide a bit more detail, as well as flesh thoughts out in my mind. It also allows the players to read them at their leisure, since all six are rarely paying attention at the same time. And as somebody else pointed out, sometimes the players are more interested in the "filler" articles than what I planned to run, causing me to go in a different direction than I expected. Jayde, I love the idea of players submitting articles for extra experience points. Consider the idea stolen... er, I mean borrowed. In addition to covering what they had done before, perhaps some articles could be GM challenges -- the player writes up something that the GM has to turn into an adventure. Unfortunately, I can't attach an example of one of my newspapers, as they are PDF files and that file extension is not supported by the boards. Perhaps it's all part of Foxbat's Master Plan...

Faster Combat I'd like some suggestions on ways to handle mass combat, the VIPER way. Some way to deal with 40-50 agents duking it out with a superhero team, without having to roll 40-50 times every phase, but without fully losing individual agent flavor or weapons variety. I love VIPER, and have used them in every campaign I've run. The 4th Ed VIPER sourcebook was one of the best, IMO. But it's hard to run scores of agents without bogging down the combat slower than normal. For sidebars: the flavor bits from the 4E book were great. My personal favorite was the CLOWN punching bags. Oh, and a list of possible things VIPER (as an acronym) stands for.

From players in my game: (already rolled two dice, about to roll the third) "Only a six will hurt me now." (When the players are running out of ideas or bored) "We go to Paris, France." (Facing off against her Hunted) "He's MINE!" (just before she got blasted into unconsciousness)