assault

Re: Consequences ...

Re: Consequences ... Historical Golden Age characters were extremely likely to use telepathy in this manner. It's part of the black and white aspect: they do it because the bad guys are eeevil and have forfeited their rights. Of course, it sounds like it wasn't roleplayed particularly well. I'll just post a few panels from a Golden Age title, just as an example. It's from an Australian series, but US series would be similar enough. Sorry about the poor quality of the image, and the fact that it's slightly crooked! My errors...

Re: Iyo: The Most Underrated Or Underused Character In Comics

Re: Marvel's Exiles: Hyperion Challenge--build a team to beat him! OK, revisiting my team in these terms... 1. The FF are my favourite Marvel team. (I mainly read DC). Therefore, my initial instinct is to use them as a core. So that's "sentimental favorite characters" there. 2. However... Reed is the master of the Plot Device. He is the absolute master of "whipping out a gadget" in the Marvel universe. That's really what makes the FF a top grade team, even though their actual powers have seen plenty of inflation over the decades. So the FF have the power to do the job. 3. The FF have lots of experience fighting cosmic weenies. Even this inflated Hyperion is nothing special compared to all the other cosmic weenies they have fought. 4. I've only specified four slots. There's still plenty of room for tweaking beyond that. Artistically, it would be best to draw from established allies of the FF - perhaps the Inhumans, maybe the Silver Surfer(!), Namor, or, heck, even Dr Doom! There's plenty of power there. (Even Uatu the Watcher might tag along to see what happens.) Failing that, you could add the Avengers to the mix, or stick in some oddbods like Dr Strange. He's crossed over with the FF at least once. In fact, however, any of the major Marvel Universe groups ought to be able to handle this situation, because that's what they do. The FF, the Avengers, and the X-Men should all be up to the job. They've all fought and defeated all powerful weenies before, and, no doubt, they will do it again. It's really just a matter of picking the team (and lineup) that you prefer.

Re: Marvel's Exiles: Hyperion Challenge--build a team to beat him! My team: 1. Reed Richards 2. Sue Richards 3. Ben Grimm 4. Johnny Storm 5+: Anyone else.

Re: Essential Bad Bronze Age Sadly, I can't rep you at the moment. Dazzler is another fine example of this kind of nonsense. The Teen Titans fought a bunch of people called the Rocket Rollers (or something like that) who rode rocket powered skateboards. This is the "fad showcase" thing mentioned in the Champions Genre book (5th Ed, of course). The cool thing about all of this stuff is that it narrowed the gap between Hostess Twinkie ads and the comics they appeared in. A Bad Bronze Age game would be simplicity itself. You can find pretty nearly all of the Hostess ads at http://www.seanbaby.com. *Warning: this site is not work/child safe*. Just stat out the villains, and there ya go.

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill?

Re: How do you feel about Superheroes that kill? Yep. Golden Age lethality is different from Silver Age is different from Bronze Age is different from Iron Age... Early killer Batman is no more or less a hero than the later child-safe version, or the Dark Knight Returns version. His CVK makes no sense whatsoever, but he has no defences against editorial decisions... World War II era Captain America is no more or less a hero than the 50's fascist-minded Commie Smasher, or the later blander version(s). (I find the fascist version amusing). The Walt Simonson/Archie Goodwin Manhunter was a killer (back in the 70s). I don't regard him as any less of a hero for that. Wolverine began as a hero too. He had his dark side, but he attempted to resist it. And so on... Except, of course, that many Iron Age characters are just exercises in pandering to the immature tastes of pointless fanboys. The issue here, however, isn't that they kill, but rather that they're rubbish in general. And this extends to earlier characters who get worked over in this way too. For what it's worth, Batman is one of the many victims of this. He gets caught between two factors: the increased Iron Age bloodthirstiness of his villains, and the greater attention paid to continuity in recent decades than in earlier times. Continuity gets him, because it means that Arkham Asylum really does have revolving doors, and the Joker really does have a monstrous body count. The increase in bloodthirstiness means that that body count mounts up faster and faster... Frankly, he isn't any less of a hero for this. He's just being pooched by hacks. Unfortunately, that problem seems to be shared by a lot of characters these days. It seems that writers like Alan Moore and so on have spawned a huge crop of really cr*ppy imitators. They're the real villains.

Re: The Essential Bad Silver Age

Re: The Essential Bad Silver Age I object! This is a feature, not a bug. Unlike the other things you listed. --- Hmm... Bad Bronze Age might be a laugh too... "Brother Power, the Geek".

Re: What makes a good villian?? I thought that the definition of a villain involved them being bad... As for Slade.... Bah! Just because he was in one of the Best Storylines Ever* doesn't make him a great villain. Although it helps. --- * The Judas Contract, of course.

Re: The Essential Bad Iron Age Even the title is a winner! I'm appalled Keith Giffen was involved in it though.

Re: Punisher Vs Batman Well, he did have a Legion flight ring. Seeing him fly isn't a problem. Nor is seeing him survive in space, for similar reasons. On the other hand, his combat abilities are just a teensy bit overboard. But he provides a good rationalisation for why Duo Damsel, Bouncing Boy and Matter Eater Lad are viable superheroes. Let's face it: You could be a viable superhero if you trained with Karate Kid for a few years.

Re: Batman vs Midnighter Wiser words have never been said. On the topic: Batman would kick Midnighter's plastic a** the second time. The first time, Midnighter is just another one of the supervillains that slap Batman around the first time. Blah blah blah. Another supervillain that can take out Batman in combat. (Yawn...) Incidentally, isn't Ed Brubaker working on the Authority at the moment? That could potentially be good. Or at least as good as an essentially sucky title can get.

Re: X Men Colossus and his Osmium Form

Re: X Men Colossus and his Osmium Form It all looks fair enough. Colossus has clearly had combat training, so knock yourself out with the MA and skill levels. Or you could build an early version of him and give him little or no such stuff. Just for a laugh... if you wanted to give him some odd skills, you could assume that he had done a bit of military training before he joined the X-Men. The Soviet military was a conscript force, after all. Of course, this is the beginning of the road towards creating a "homage", rather than a "true representation" of the character.

Re: X Men Colossus and his Osmium Form The problem is that he has a disadvantage. His powers aren't usually available to him, and go away when he is unconscious. But he doesn't get a points break for it. That's not necessarily unacceptable, except that he may be associating with other characters that _did_ get points breaks for their disadvantages. None of this matters for an NPC, but you could reasonably expect a PC to complain about it. Ultimately, of course, this problem is a result of trying to exactly model a published character rather than building your own character that's similar. Building your own character would allow you to use OIHID, which is the traditional technique for building characters like this. Mind you, I've built some rather interesting characters with Multiform. My Ultra Boy homage worked particularly nicely. So nicely, in fact, that I banned him.

Re: X Men Colossus and his Osmium Form Nah. Give him a force field, and link everything else to it. He activates it, and everything turns on. He gets stunned, and everything turns off. It sucks to be him, sometimes. But he gets to buy a lot of stuff for his points. He just needs to make sure that some of it is Combat Luck, for use when his powers aren't activated.

Re: X Men Colossus and his Osmium Form Easy is good. More importantly, never use exact "copies" of published characters in your campaign. It just encourages rules lawyers. "But Colossus can't/wouldn't/whatever do that!" As far as the character goes, I would use an old-school OIHID design. It's easy, and the +1/4 modifier means he's acceptably tough. Unfortunately, Colossus' super-form isn't Persistent. This can suck hugely in a game. Getting Stunned happens. You might be able to build a character with almost everything linked to his defences, if the latter aren't persistent. That might work almost as well as OIHID. A kind GM might let you stack Linked and OIHID. I wouldn't, but it would be a good scam if you can get away with it. Two priorities are involved here: simplicity and minimaxing. If you keep it simple, you are less likely to be accused of munchkinism.

Re: Western Champions Adventure

Re: Balancing of the Green Lantern

Re: Balancing of the Green Lantern That reminded me... I've got a reprint of John Stewart's first appearance. It was during the early 70s "relevance" period. Stewart was, of course, a blaxploitation Angry Young Man.

Re: I want to run a Bad Comics game Catch! (Assault throws a truck at you...)

Re: The Unusual Suspects How about a cheerleader who hunts vampires? Oh wait! That's been done.

Re: I want to run a Bad Comics game Acronym: Paranormal Intelligence Network - Human Enhancement and Augmentation Department. Paranormal Intelligence National Headquarters - Executive Action Division. etc. P.I.N.H.E.A.D. agents can be readily constructed from published Champions material. The Champions genre book will provide suitable costumes and some relevant gadgets. VIPER provides suitable training packages (change the names a little to lose the snake theme), as well as heavy weapons that can be used as P.I.N.H.E.A.D.'s Fusion Blast Guns. Hmm... A typical P.I.N.H.E.A.D. agent will be a mutant ninja cyborg with a FBG. You probably wouldn't get that into 350 points, even allowing for their ninja training being provided by the Wannabe clan. You would probably have to go with 450, perhaps with standard superheroic guidelines for DC limits and so on.