assault

Re: Skills? How many points are normal? One idea I have considered is to systematically try to build characters who only ever need to spend their experience points on skills and perks, (and maybe the odd multipower slot). In other words, characters who have their full power sets and characteristics right from the beginning of a campaign, with subsequent growth only being a matter of refinement. When doing this, of course, it becomes very tempting to cut back on starting skills, since these are precisely what is going to be bought "later". I haven't quite gone over to the Dark Side on this, but I'm still tempted. The main thing that stops me is my tendency to build excessively complex characters who can never afford their whole power sets!

Re: Which characters would you enjoy playing? Unfortunately, my favourites didn't make the transition to the current edition. With a little gentle tweaking, Seeker, Crusader and Starburst could all rock! Villains: Shamrock. (Perfect). Red Shield (from Red Doom). (Challenging).

Re: Skills? How many points are normal? Still, he was technically a cop. He could definitely have Forensics as well. Sometimes it is reasonable to buy them up. In some cases, too, like Ben Grimm, and Superman(!), characters could buy multiple PSes. No good reason, except that a lot of this stuff is plausibly implied by their backgrounds. In fact, you would be essentially telling the GM: "actually he had them all along, but they never became relevant". Either way is fine by me, of course. I don't insist on all characters being skill monsters. Actually, I'm kind of fond of (partly) using Perks instead... Good old Commissioner Gordon - what would Batman do without him?

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

Re: Skills? How many points are normal?

Re: Skills? How many points are normal? This is actually quite correct. There are quite a lot of characters that don't really need much more than their everyman skills. In fact, even when I do spend lots of points on non-combat skills, a lot of them are simply spent on upgrading everyman skills from their base level to three points. Contacts and other Perks are something else. To put it simply, a lot of starting characters are pretty much "everymen". At most they need a KS or two. I do usually buy some other stuff, but I don't think it is necessary, and I didn't usually bother to do this back in earlier editions. Also: Repped, for daring to express a controversial opinion.

Re: Skills? How many points are normal? While I obviously follow the guidelines set by the GMs in games I play, I have a default standard of 25 points of Skills and Perks for 250 point characters, and 50 for 350. I don't include Combat Skill Levels and Martial Arts in that. I include Perks in there since things like Contacts and so on are as much part of the roleplaying side of the character as "non-combat skills". Since I rarely play Martial Artists and so on, I don't generally go for a lot of detective-type skils, shadowing, climbing and so on. Those I do take I tend to roll in with the others.

Re: Help with some African Supervillains please ! How about a character called Koevoet? Apparently that's Afrikaans for crowbar.

Re: CHAMPIONS OF THE NORTH -- What Would You Like To See? This is essential. My suggestion: a list of prominent landmarks. There isn't much point to sending PCs to another country and having them end up in Generic Warehouse #852. What are the Canadian equivalents of Uluru and the Sydney Opera House?

Re: Vampires in Supers Setting

Re: Vampires in Supers Setting Part of the problem here is the difference between Champions and the source material. Very few of the X-Men, for example, have serious defences. Dracula can tear them apart just as well as he can with humans. In Champions, that's less likely to be the case. On the other hand, if he was to go up against the JLA, he would have to mind control Superman and use him to beat up everyone else... (good old Claremont and Byrne )

Re: Wanted - Comprehensive Western Martial Arts Design

Re: Vampires in Supers Setting I'm not terribly impressed by vampires as heroes. They are possible, but... As villains, the thing to consider is their immortality. Check out other immortal villains like Vandal Savage, Ra's Al Ghul and so on. Vampires can do everything they do. You know all those Nazi super-science toys that went missing at the end of WWII? Guess who's got them... If you want to go with the hero vamp, and don't want to go overboard on his strength, just throw in a bit of martial arts. Pretty much any experienced fighter can justify a Martial Strike and/or an Offensive Strike. Most of the other monster characters would probably work better at lower power levels, but there's scope for pushing the threshold. "Loose adaptations" work fine. For example: the critter that inspired the Frankenstein legend might have been a superhumanly powerful golem or something of the sort. It might have even been some kind of android...

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help I would say that the situation would generally be more a case of loosely defined and overlapping borders between particular territories. This would often still be the case in the Bronze age, even in relatively well organised societies.

Re: What is Munchkin?

Re: A multipower question for you all. I tend to regard "Flying really really fast" as being a Flight Trick in its own right. Hmm... I threatened to write up Marvelman in another thread. I was originally going to base him on Enforcer84's version of Captain Marvel, but if I hybridised him with my generic Speedster/Brick, we would have an example of a character that does the kind of stuff we are talking about...

Re: Wanted - Comprehensive Western Martial Arts Design

Re: CHAR: Captain Marvel (Shazam) When you finish, I may whip up a version of Marvelman. "A recluse astro-scientist discovers the key word to the universe, one that can only be given to a boy who is completely honest, studious and of such integrity that he would only use it for the powers of good. He finds such a boy in Micky Moran, a newspaper copy boy, and treats him in a special machine which enables him to use the secret. Just before he dies, he tells Micky the key word, which is 'Kimota!'. Micky stays as he was, but when he says the word he becomes Marvelman, a man of such strength and powers that he is indestructible". I might even do the Australian Captain Atom too, since he is basically a Captain Marvel ripoff (with a touch of Captain Triumph). Unfortunately he suffers from a singularly unfortunate name in his secret identity...

Re: Char: Power Girl Looking at her earliest appearances, she was originally at the "nothing less than a bursting shell" level of invulnerability, a fact which hurt when the Gotham City cops used a fancy high tech weapon against her. On the other hand, she was also shown as being as fast as the Flash (Jay Garrick), and having greater stamina, although lacking his control.

Re: A multipower question for you all.

Re: Neolithic Hero

Re: A multipower question for you all. Make the pool big enough for you to run some of his flight as well as the other powers. That means (assuming a multipower rather than a VPP) that you would have to make the flight slot a multi slot, rather than an ultra slot. eg: Multipower: 60 Pool 12m Flight slot 10u Suppress fire 5u something else etc... You could do something similar with a VPP.

Re: Char: Power Girl The word "Kryptonian" says that she is really that powerful. She was downpowered a bit in the early 90s, but we all know that kind of thing never sticks. DC have occasionally claimed that the Earth-2 Superman was less powerful than the Earth-1 equivalent, but that portrayal has been extremely inconsistent. Furthermore, the current Superman isn't supposed to be the Earth-1 Superman either... This version is pretty much right, IMHO.

Re: Need Help with a Name Let's see: some similar characters... Amazo Martian Manhunter Amalgamax (already mentioned) Replikon (kind of) You could possibly look at more general shapeshifter type characters too. Metamorpho and E-Man's powers cover a lot of ground, for example.

Re: Neolithic Hero