assault

Re: WWYCD: Foxbat The Mighty! Assault would follow his usual plan: protect innocents, talk, get his butt stomped. At least it would be a long fight.

Re: What in genre bit do you like that no one else seems to enjoy ?

Re: What in genre bit do you like that no one else seems to enjoy ?

Re: JSA - Day One First: most of the characters had been around for at least a little while before the JSA was formed. Do you want them as they were when they had their individual debuts (as you suggested above) or when the JSA debuted? In either case, it's a bit tricky, since most of the reprints of the original material that is around is very expensive, and not all of the relevant stuff is available at all. On the other hand, I have a reasonable collection of the Secret Origins series from back in the 80s. These were derived from the original stories, but don't necessarily reflect the characters exactly as they first appeared. Also: which characters do you want? Strictly speaking, the original membership was: the Spectre, Dr Fate, Green Lantern, Hawkman, the Flash, Hourman, Sandman and the Atom, but Johnny Thunder and Red Tornado (Ma Hunkel) made cameo appearances in All Star Comics #3. What about the characters that joined later? And so on... Of course, someone else has already posted a link to the Great Net Book of Real Heroes, which is a good place to start. The most obvious problem with these characters is the extreme range of power levels. The Atom has absolutely no powers, and no gadgets either. The Spectre, on the other hand, is a cosmic powered entity... Mind you, you could probably cover a lot (though not all) of the Spectre's abilities with funny builds. The main scams would be to treat a lot of his abilities as illusions and/or as extra-dimensional movement. For example, the occasions when he grows bigger than the Earth could best be modelled as EDM, in much the same way the Shrinker in CKC possesses an "enter the microverse" EDM. Building a character like this on 250 points would certainly be possible, but calling it "The Spectre" would be a mistake. It would be much better to call it something else. But of course that's generally true - it's usually better to file off the serial numbers and produce homages than to directly use characters from the comics. A 250 point Spectre homage would be a detective type character with a bunch of mental powers, Desolidification, Invisibility and Flight. You could probably scrimp on things like Life Support to begin with. This kind of character would be able to slaughter normal criminals until the cows come home - just like the real Spectre. On the other hand, it wouldn't be able to trash battlefleets initially. In short, it's near enough for a starting character.

Re: WWYCD: The Basics Assault would instantly recognise it was a trap, pull out his anti-Mechanon bazooka, and vapourise the Hell-Kitten and its evil mistress. Either that or he would climb up the tree and get the kitten. Depending on my mood at the time.

Re: Good News For Time Travelers! That's easy. Time travel hasn't been invented yet. No time machine exists yet. Therefore, time travel to this point in time is impossible. (Unless some alien species has invented time travel, but we don't have access to their time machine(s).)

Re: Sharing the Campaign ideas you can't use... yet Kirby World! The PCs are caught up in the struggle between two groups of powerful, almost godlike entities. They may be members of one (or both!) groups, humans, or maybe even just "normal" Earth superhumans. The warring sides could be terrestrial "Hidden Lands" groups like the Empyreans and Lemurians, Aliens (Kree and Skrulls?), or even magical entities (Aesir and Giants/Trolls?). Or some combination - say Empyreans versus Space Dudes? The world looks like it was drawn by Jack Kirby. The Transplutonian Worldlets Not really a separate campaign, but rather an element in another one, such as the one above... Eons ago, the Forerunners messed with the human gene pool. Some of the resulting superhumans were transported to artificial worlds out beyond Pluto. Other such worlds were settled by more "alien" lifeforms, such as a shapeshifting species (Skrull or Durlan types). These worlds are, of course, reachable from Earth without necessarily requiring faster than light travel, although that helps. There are good reasons why Earth is the focus for so much attention from "aliens". If one of these worldlets was to be destroyed, it is entirely reasonable that a scientist might put his only child in a rocket and send it to Earth... Obviously, these worldlets just beg to be used in a Kirby World game, but could be useful in other contexts.

Re: a PC OOPSED Actually, I have very fond memories of that rule. If you worked it right, you could use it to munckinise your character's characteristics. "I don't like these stats. He joins the Scouts!" Sooner or later you would roll a character who was noticeably above average. Of course, you could end up wasting a lot of time in the process, and the character could turn out to be a dud in other ways, but there ya go. Not being able to scrap an unsatisfactory character is a bigger pain. But this is wildly off topic, isn't it? --- On the role of dice: dice are a tool. The GM's decision is final. On GM errors: since the GM in this instance actually talked about this situation _before_ whacking the PC, he presumably hasn't actually make any error. Of course, it's quite possible that he might have decided that he disagreed with us, and let the PC's fate ride on the dice, but that's his decision and his right.

Re: a PC OOPSED

Re: Is a Jedi reasonable in a Marvel Avengers campaign? My instinctive response is: Ewww!!! In other words: don't go there. It's mindnumbingly tacky.

Re: your campaigns "Superman". Assault is based on the 1938-9 version of Superman: strength, invulnerability to anything less than "a bursting shell", lots of running and leaping, and a bit of other stuff. His personality isn't too far off the original Superman's either! The major problem with trying to play Superman-type characters is the temptation to burn a lot of points on stuff that isn't directly combat related. It's quite easy to end up with a "Superman" who is not only not the most powerful super in the PC group, but is actually the least powerful, particularly in combat. To some extent, the best PC "Superman" is probably a rather single minded combat monster! The occasions on which he or she gets hosed would hopefully be more than offset by the occasions on which she gets to show how tough she is. (Memo to self: test this theory!) He can always buy extra frills later. NPCs, of course, have as many points to spend as they need. To be a proper "Superman" of course, you really need the personality. While, as I hinted above, the original version of the character didn't fully exhibit it, the rather overblown nobility and absolute integrity of the character is critical in winning the position of "World's Most Respected Superhero". Incidentally, we should note that the closest Marvel equivalent in these terms is probably Captain America. Personality matters more than powers in this sense. We should also note that this personality was a relatively late addition to Cap! His 50s manifestation was such a fascist thug that Marvel later felt the need to say that "that wasn't the real Cap!". In reality, of course, it was. There is a third "Superman" role of course. In addition to "world's most powerful superhero" and "world's most respected superhero", there is also the aspect of "world's first superhero". Again, if you note, Captain America plays that role in the Marvel Universe. On the other hand, of course, DC have voluntarily separated Superman from that role! But the role still exists. The veteran who is a role model and inspiration for younger, less experienced supers is an important function. So having analysed "what Superman is", my conclusion has to be that my campaign world's "Superman" - doesn't exist!

Re: Suggestions needed: Undead Civil War Of course the title of the thread had me thinking about skeletal Stonewall Jacksons and spectral Ulysses S Grants...

Re: Highest level Champions game you could play? I agree with "it depends on what you are buying". If every character starts to look like the Silver Surfer, your campaign is over. By that I mean: high defences against every kind of attack, damage reduction, a honkin' big VPP, cosmic awareness, and all the other stuff that makes a character a big, bland, pointless pile of points. Of course, you _can_ have characters that have all of this stuff in a viable game. As long as they have an "off" switch that allows them to be taken down by less powerful characters they are probably manageable. And, of course, as long as they are not the only type of character in the game. You can spend a lot of points on other stuff, as people have pointed out. One thing I would consider trying would be to limit the expansion of characters' combat abilities. Characters would be allowed to be incredibly versatile, and actually be a lot tougher than starting characters, but they wouldn't be unstoppable, or capable of doing things outside their character conceptions. There are some obvious problems with this. In particular, getting the balance right between characters and normal technology is tricky. Some characters should be able to smash tanks. Some should be able to bounce tank shells off their chests. Some should be able to do both. But all of this involves huge attacks and huge defences, and thus to character bloat and campaign death. Hmm.... what I would consider would be enforcing a requirement for all high-powered characters to have a way to be neutralised. I would also keep a careful eye on ensuring that each character has their own sphere of competence relevant to the others. No character should be totally invulnerable, or omni-competent. The game would still eventually break down, but hopefully later rather than sooner.

Re: Champs Worldwide Questions

Re: Champs Worldwide Questions Two quick not-so-random questions: 1. Is Brigade (from Australia) included in the book? 2. If so, roughly what kind of powers (and origin) does he have? I guess I'm asking Darren, if the playtesters are under non-disclosure agreements. I'm trying to tweak my setting a little to try and bring it a bit more in line with the official CU, mainly just to see if I can.

Re: Too many points? What's her origin? She might be able to go deeper into that. That doesn't work so well if she's a mutant or some other kind of vanilla character, but works nicely for an alien, a reincarnation of an ancient Egyptian princess, or something like along those lines.

Re: WWYCD: Anti- 'Authority'

Re: "Shallow" Purchases Assault's biggest waste of points is his 25 points of Life Support and his 15 points of Enhanced Perception. These are the main reasons why he has to be built on inflated points to be a decent combatant. If he could put those points into combat stuff, he could be easily built on 350 points. The 16 COM is pure vanity, too.

Re: WWYCD: Anti- 'Authority'

Re: WWYCD: Anti- 'Authority' After more consideration, I've concluded that my response to this was a bit too strong. If this was a team of supervillains, Assault probably wouldn't immediately go postal on them. So why would he do so against supposed heroes? After all, there's no difference between Authority type psychopaths and villainous psychopaths - they're both psychopaths. There's no need for a stronger response to one than the other. So scrap the bit about killing, unless it proves to be necessary. On the other hand, the immediate hostile response to these clowns stays. There probably would be a range of degrees of vehemence in the response - in some cases, Assault would go berserker, in other cases he wouldn't, and in a couple of cases he might even exhibit a certain amount of indifference. But he would never genuinely approve. In Assault's eyes, humanity needs to make its own future, and not be slaves to the whims of self-appointed godkings. Such rulers are far, far, far worse than even the most tyrannical of human rulers and need to be fought to the death. And he would go postal in certain cases. I'm trying to work out a set of disadvantages that reflect this. How do you buy "usually sane and laid back but will get ultra-violent in certain hard to define situations"?

Re: WWYCD: Anti- 'Authority'

Re: WWYCD: Anti- 'Authority'

Re: What Would Your Character's City Be Like? For Assault: Brisbane, Australia. OK, that doesn't help if you haven't been there, but he was pretty much built for it.

Re: Champions Characters DEX Inflation Why?

Re: WWYCD-Hurricane Katrina Assault would have helped with the evacuation before the event. Nobody would have been abandoned to die on his watch. He probably would have tried to fix the first breach in the (New Orleans) levee, but the second would have made this a bit pointless. Of course, that would be less so if other supers were on the job as well. If the levees were "fixed" soon enough, the flooding might not be as widespread. Failing that, he could act as a single person supply distribution system. He can move fast, and carry a big payload. Unfortunately, he can't fly, so he can't really carry much in the way of passengers. He probably wouldn't bother looters. People need food and water, and he's not the kind of person to stress about people stealing TVs. He would, however, intervene to prevent any violent incidents he came across, including ones involving the police or other superheroes. Ironically, I only bought Vibora Bay last week. Reading it while all the Hurricane Katrina stuff was happening was a bit freaky. There are, of course, questions of taste involved with this thread, but, like a lot of people, it seems, I had been thinking about "what my character would do". So thanks for starting the thread, philnicau.