assault

Re: combat luck and armor........

Re: Defining Magic

Re: Rarity of Magic? Tunnels and Trolls, the second RPG to be published, had a "rogue" class that was something along the the lines you suggested. I don't know why clerics (kind of) filled that niche in DnD. If I was forced to guess I would look at the game's wargaming roots. It's still not an obvious connection, but in a game where PCs are rulers of baronies and so on, it almost makes sense that religious characters would possess both spiritual (magical) and temporal (fighter-like) attributes. Wizards, of course, were stereotyped as being more inclined to seclude themselves in their towers and so on. All nonsense of course, but those early style games would have been a hoot to play. I wonder if it would be possible to recapture their spirit...

Re: DC Animated Ground Rules "Heck yep! I would play in this game!" In the Real World I haven't had the opportunity to see all the stuff that is in continuity, but what I have seen, I like, and I'm trying to collect the rest of it on DVD. If this was a PBEM, I would be so into this that you wouldn't believe it. In fact, I would would be willing to play the freakin' Tasmanian Devil, if that's what it took to get me into this game! Calming down, this is pretty much the kind of game I intend to GM sooner or later. I just want it to be a "homage" game, rather than one in an "official" continuity. And my Tasmanian Devil would be the non-gay one from the Superfriends comic. Probably.

Re: Rarity of Magic? The origins of DnD were in miniatures wargames, specifically Chainmail. Chainmail was a lashup of wonky mechanics that none the less provided something like a balanced game. (I personally modified it heavily when I was playing it back in the day.) Amongst its other features was a magic system in its Fantasy supplement in the back. That fantasy supplement was the precursor of DnD, after being processed through and expanded in Arneson's Blackmoor and Gygax's Greyhawk campaigns. Judging from Arneson's accounts in various places, this expansion had a distinctly ad hoc flavour. The Cleric class was absent in Chainmail, but present in original DnD, so it must have been one of these expansions. It seems to have been intended as something of a compromise class, possessing some of the attributes of both the Fighter and Magic User classes. Its magic, unsurprisingly, is essentially a variant form of Magic User magic. So, basically, that's the answer. DnD Clerical magic was derived from a clunky magic system that was bolted onto the back of a set of equally clunky "historical" miniatures rules. There was no master plan. It is quite possible there may be a better way of doing things...

Re: combat luck and armor........ Yes, that's why I said it. Your point is? I admit that I ignored the chop-socky and Burroughsian variants. In these cases, I would allow multiple levels of Combat Luck. But I still wouldn't set up any fancy rules about stacking. I simply wouldn't allow PCs to wear armour in these settings! If I wanted to have Samurai type armoured characters running around, I'd make the appropriate adjustments. And this is my opinion too.

Re: What power sets do you like, but never play? After having sat here for a few minutes writing, this has ended up as my complete list of "characters I want to play in the future". First and most obvious: Flying Bricks. Partly through lack of opportunity, but mainly because I can't quite get them "just right" for any particular number of points. They're a very expensive archetype, once you start burning points on Life Support, Enhanced Senses, and so on. Swimming Bricks: This is one I am likely to correct in the not-too-distant future. I like Aquaman. I won't go with the full cheese, but I intend to play a similar character soon. Shrinking characters: I have a neat design inspired by the Atom. Unfortunately, he burns quite a few active points for his main Shrinking power. Furthermore, he needs a bunch of other powers to make him work. Mainly, though, this is a case of opportunity again. But then, they all are. Gravity based Energy Projector: this is partly a crossover with my hankering to play a flying brick. One of the cheaper options is to play a character like the Golden Age Starman. A martial artist with a magic wand is just fine by me, especially in a fairly low-powered game. A limited duration Brick: I am fond of both Hourman and the Nightfighter (http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/n/nitefite.htm ). The big advantage of these kind of characters is that they are (a) tough; and ( cheap. If you throw in some martial arts they don't entirely suck when their powers aren't working either. They both probably work better at the lower point level end. There are a couple of other heroes I want to design, but I doubt I would actually use them as PCs. The interesting thing about this is that all of these characters are related to models that were around in the Golden and Silver Ages. While the Atom was Silver Age, Doll Man, for example, was Golden Age. Hourman and Starman were Golden Age, but were revived in the Silver Age. They've all been around ever since, at least sporadically. In short, they're bog-standard classics. And mostly very cheap designs, except for the Flying Brick.

Re: combat luck and armor........ The thing is precisely that it is an enabler. It has a threshold effect - some resistant defence versus no resistant defence. It only takes the basic 6 points' worth for that. Beyond that you are getting into de facto invulnerability territory. "Hi, I'm Achilles" kind of stuff. Most "light" characters should still have to wear armour if they are going to get into serious combat. On the main thread topic: I'm quite happy to let Combat Luck stack with armour. The special effect is different, and characters pay points for the privilege. What's not to love?

Re: Rarity of Magic? "Why" of course is rather obvious: that was the way it was done in the first and most popular RPG. While it isn't necessary for Fantasy Hero campaigns to take the same approach, it seems quite a lot of them do. There is, of course, nothing wrong with that - fun is fun. But more sophisticated approaches can work as well. Going back to the source material is a good start. And no, I don't mean Dragonlance novels and similar game-derived twaddle.

Here is a link to a story about the insufficiently legendary Space Canine Patrol Agency: http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics65.html This was the first time I'd seen it, although I've no doubt that somebody else has linked to it before. So: character point totals? Krypto is obviously built on lots. The others are less obviously expensive. I'm tempted to use their slogan as my signature. I found this while googling to see if the name "Astroman" had been used by any serious character before. I found this: http://www.misterkitty.org/extras/stupidcovers/stupidcomics21.html The answer appears to be no. It looks like I'll be adding a character called Astroman to my universe in the next few days. All this nonsense reminds me: I need an idea for a robot character - one who can fit in with mildly stupid Silver Age characters.

Re: Show me the Water Powers

Re: Show me the Water Powers I personally would just use the standard invisibility, desol, flight, defences, life support stuff, but... Growth, only with a suitable water supply to draw mass from. Shape Change - fluid form. (Also ties into Greek mythological charactes like Proteus and Nereus.) I'd check out the USPD, though. Also bear in mind the "Golden Age rule": almost all characters can be martial artists in addition to their ostensible powers. How many points is this character going to be built on? The suggestions made so far would easily burn 350-450 points.

Re: WWYCD? "You are on a path..." Assault wouldn't be in this situation unless he was forced. He would be distinctly surly and possibly openly hostile to the shrink, and wouldn't be particularly cooperative or truthful in his responses. In short, getting a straight answer out of him would be exceedingly difficult, and even if you could it would be coloured by his (bad) mood.

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help I wrote: bigdamnhero replied: This is correct, but we both missed the obvious answer: The Barbarian PC is a Cimmerian! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cimmerians

Re: Queer heroes

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help

Re: Your personal comic book origins I rediscovered my old "comics box" a couple of years ago. Lots of "kid stuff". The earliest superhero stuff was Australian reprints of 50s and 60s DC material, including some fabulous classics. All black and white. I was rather underwhelmed a couple of years later when I first encountered Marvel's characters. It was like: "who?" I got back into comics after I started playing Champions. Most of the people in my group were Marvel Zombies, so I eventually went back to my roots and started collecting DC. Fortunately, DC was on a roll in the mid 80s, with the New Teen Titans and the various post-Crisis retcons, which, while annoying at one level, were actually rather good at others. They didn't really start systematically hosing their characters until the 90s, by which time I had stopped again, after moving to Papua New Guinea for a while. Oh yes: the most common title in my "when I was learning to read" comics box? Superman's Pal, Jimmy Olsen, of course. Get over yourself. If you can't appreciate a Giant Turtle Jimmy Olsen, you take life too seriously.

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help

Re: Batman vs Midnighter I wrote:

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help Yes, that's a good analogy. Just add a whole bunch of bows to the picture.

Re: Legion of Super-Pets

Re: Batman vs Midnighter Batman napalms Midnighter from the Batplane, and says "I normally dislike taking human life, but this guy was a real d*ck". The Golden Age Batman would have used machine guns, but I figured the Iron Age version would have napalm.

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help A little simplistic, but the account holds up better than I initially suspected it would. Yes, that's that "Scorpion King". I'd never paid any attention to him before, and therefore didn't associate him with the bad movie character until I started rereading about all this stuff yesterday. The Egyptians also invented pretty much everything that could be called "civilisation". The Third and Fourth Dynasty periods, in particular, saw massive and rapid development of all kinds of stuff. Most obviously, of course, Pyramids! A lot of their "conservatism" seems to be related to later periods of stagnation, and was, in any case, no greater than that exhibited by most other peoples. While this period does seem to feature the first recorded large scale military expeditions, there are pictures of bowmen in battle-reliefs on buildings associated with the Pyramids, that is, Fourth Dynasty. The bow was very early. Most of Egypt's earlier external conflicts would have been with Nubians in the South, Libyans in the West, and probably the odd Bedouin group in the East. Plus, of course, internal conflicts. Few of these groups would have much metal, if any.

Re: Life Support: Longevity? Assault has it at the one point level. He's also immune to disease, poisons and extremes of temperature. He's been active as a hero for about 25 years or so. This is just part of his flavour stuff, of course.

Re: Stone/Bronze Age help Limiting the question to hand to hand combat certainly makes a difference! For example, the correct response to your Thermopylae example would be to cite one of the numerous cases where hoplites were defeated by light troops - but obviously the latter didn't do it by closing with the hoplites! Staying away from the armoured Bronze Age guys and shooting/throwing things at them until they fall over would be a more viable option for the Stone Agers. Of course the answer to that in turn is for the Bronze Agers to field bowmen, chariots and/or cavalry. So the Stone Agers try to stick to fighting in hills and forests, forcing the Bronze Agers to develop tactics to deal with that and, and, and... After a while the Stone Agers will catch up with the Bronze Agers technologically anyway.