assault

Re: Schmucks?

Re: Schmucks? The situation is a case of circular logic. The megavillains exist in the CU to provide opponents for high powered PCs. Now we are being told that PCs have to be higher powered to be able to deal with the megavillains! Obviously the alternative solution is to ignore the megavillains. Yes, there is a discrepancy in power levels between the villains and the heroes in the canonical CU, but that's really only a problem for those who care to make it one.

Re: Schmucks? No, this is twaddle. 350 points adequately covers most of the characters in the source material, at least at the beginning of their careers. Flash, Superman, Batman, Green Lantern... all 350 points or less. Ditto Thor, Spiderman, Captain America, the X-Men, the FF, and so on. Yes, some of these are a bit shoehorned, but they preserve their essential capabilities. There is a "problem" with point bloat in the current version of the CU. Because the CU has to be able to handle PCs built on almost any imaginable points total, there have to be insanely powerful villains. That means that Dr Destroyer is built to deal with cosmically powerful characters, not 350 pointers. The solution to that is simple: ignore Dr Destroyer. He simply doesn't exist in my CU. Mechanon does, but he is based on an earlier edition's version. There are a few issues involved in balancing characters against "real world" weapons and materials, but these are manageable. The biggest problem is actually that most superheroes aren't bulletproof! I'm tempted to suggest something insulting about the proponents of the "350 point characters are schmucks" theory, but it's pointless.

Re: I don't get no respect... I'm a great believer in Skill God Animals. Rex the Wonder Dog rules. There are quite a few other characters whose powers seem lame, but who could be quite interesting. The key to this is that non-powered characters are viable, so a character with lame powers is also viable. Some examples: * Zan from the Superfriends: can turn into water, and is written as an idiot. First of all, if he wasn't written as an idiot, he could be as effective as any non-powered character of his age. OK, he isn't as well trained as Robin, but he has some training. Second, his powers aren't actually useless. He can turn into water vapour, steam, or liquid water. In other words, he can desolidify and become invisible, or at least very stealthy. He can also fly to at least some extent. These are not inconsequential powers. This guy could be quite dangerous. * Airwave: this guy can make a phone call from anywhere. He can tap phones, and he can rollerskate along phone lines. No, really. This guy was originally a Golden Age character, so his abilities were a lot more impressive then. And mobile phones weren't really around before the 80s. Making him viable is easy. First, he is your basic two-fisted adventurer type. I wouldn't make him a super-martial artist, but he isn't useless in a fight. He'd probably be more suited to a Golden Age setting, but you could tweak him for later settings. His roller skates could be changed into some kind of magnetic levitation thingies. With a bit of work he could get away with quite a bit in this area. He could be an enormously dangerous investigator: he can tap phones, hack into computers, use surveillance equipment, and generally be an electronics genius. After all, if he invented the mobile phone in the 40s, what would his technology be like in 2004? And all of this ignores possibilities like giving him a forcefield to boost his defences, or a taser to boost his offensive power. Or a gun.

Re: Official Champs Uni = Marvel Uni? I'm not sure, but the gems he was trying to get hold of in his first appearance were magical, and would have made him really tough. He had been able to find out that they existed and presumably was a good enough wizard to be able to use them, if anything beyond having them in his possession was necessary. This doesn't necessarily imply very much. On the other hand, he had managed to build a time machine. He was certainly no slouch as a scientist.

Re: Official Champs Uni = Marvel Uni? July 1962. I haven't been reading the FF since the 80s. I've got into Ultimate FF recently, though. It's not the original stuff, but it's not horrible either.

Re: Official Champs Uni = Marvel Uni? As far as Doom goes: he seems to have experienced significant escalation in power levels over the years. In his first appearance one of his robots was fairly offhandedly shredded by the FF, while he himself ran (flew) away rather than fight. And at that point there was no particularly good reason to consider the FF as being especially powerful. In fact, Doom's relative lack of power was supported by his desire to find artifacts that would make him more powerful! Of course he had a time machine and other mastermind toys, but his _personal_ power level didn't seem that over the top.

Re: Who was the LAMEST? Hmm. I must stop reading this thread. It is bringing back far too many hideous memories...

Re: Official Champs Uni = Marvel Uni?

Re: Official Champs Uni = Marvel Uni? You've listed at least two from Flash already. Let's add: Vandal Savage (very nasty), Captain Cold (very silly) and, oh, the whole Rogues' Gallery. Let's face it the Rogues are probably more memorable collectively than individually. How about: Professor Zoom, Abra Kadabra and Dr. Alchemy, for characters at the more serious end. OK, the LSH: the Time Trapper (and Glorith), the Fatal Five (Validus, the Emerald Empress...), the Legion of Supervillains (who killed Karate Kid?). Mordru, while tough, doesn't quite rate for me. Instead, I might suggest Evillo of Tartarus, if only for the story with Sugyn, Polar Boy and Matter Eater Lad.... Green Lantern: uhh, I haven't read much of his stuff for a long time. Let's see: Sinestro, Star Sapphire, the Manhunters... Golden Age characters: Solomon Grundy (an old favourite of mine). The Ultra-Humanite (the Golden Age miniseries should just how scary he can be). There are a bunch of others that should up in memorable stories, even if they aren't so flash themselves. The Wizard comes to mind, since he was in the "Earth-2 Superman marries Lois" story. New Teen Titans: Brother Blood, Trigon, Deathstroke the Terminator, Terra, H.I.V.E. (possibly the only global criminal conspiracy to ever be defeated!). There's enough stuff there. Granted, there maybe a higher proportion of decent Marvel villains, but, then again, there is a very high proportion of Marvel rubbish as well. And nothing DC currently produces sucks quite so hard as the thousand and one X-titles...

Re: Official Champs Uni = Marvel Uni? For my money, Marvel overdoes the "heroes with problems" bit. They go beyond 'human' into soap opera. Of course, these days Batman is as messed up as Spiderman, the Hulk and the Thing combined. On a slightly different note, I like the FF and original X-Men a lot more than the original Avengers. Thor? Iron Man? Ant-Man? Yawn. I don't even know who are in the Avengers or the X-Men at the moment. I presume the FF are pretty much the same as always.

Re: Official Champs Uni = Marvel Uni? Hmm... Vandal Savage, Gorilla Grodd(!), Brainiac, the Ultra-Humanite, Solomon Grundy, the Wizard, the Fiddler, Deathstroke the Terminator, Lex Luther, Metallo, the Parasite, Two-Face, the Phantom Zone Villains... A couple of these are personal favourites rather than to everyone's taste, of course. As for the Marvel villains you listed, the only ones that do much for me are Dr Doom and Magneto, although all of them are OK. I will concede your general point though: Marvel is probably better at churning out cartloads of vaguely interesting villains. On the other hand, DC has better heroes, IMHO. As far as my Champions games go, my favourite villain concepts all boil down to: a silly costume, a mad laugh, a pack of flunkies and a superweapon. Who needs powers? You might want to give some of them a way of escaping when their plots are foiled, but others might just simply be arrested. Check out Dr Doom's first appearance - the only personal power he actually used was flight, and that was when he was escaping. PS: I also think your list of cool Marvel villains is deficient. Where is Namor, the Skrulls and the Hulk?

Re: Who was the LAMEST?

Re: Who was the LAMEST? It took me a while to realise you were referring to G'nort. I was a bit worried that you were referring to Hal Jordan as a "lame-ass dog". Hal, of course, had his own title. But anyway, I _like_ G'nort. As for phoned-in nonsense... well, nothing really comes to mind. I've read some pretty lame stuff over the years, but, let's face it, I liked it.

Re: How to encourage role playing Actually the Titans originally had the best of all reasons to hang around together - they met and became friends while hanging around with various members of the JLA. The New Teen Titans (the ones in the T-shaped building) were a bit different, since they were assembled to save the world from Trigon the Terrible. (It wasn't made clear why the JLA couldn't do the job, IIRC, but there ya go.) At least some of them were members of the old network, so they had a reason to hang around, and Raven insinuated herself into it by mind controlling Wally West. So, really, they had quite strong ties of friendship, aside from the professional relationship. Infinity Inc had similar characteristics, being composed of the kids and proteges of the (original) JSA. I guess the current JSA is a bit like that too. Then again, once a team has been up and running for a while, it might well take on a life of its own with its members developing friendships and so on. So I guess any team that has been together for a while is fine. The new ones are a bit more of a problem. Then again, they are also more likely to be the ones where the characters clash with each other, making for potentially more interesting roleplaying. As a general point: scenarios don't just have to be about combat. Personally, I find combat rather dull, for a bunch of reasons that includes my aversion to excessively heavy minmaxing of character designs. A bit of mystery and problem solving can go a long way towards allowing the PCs personalities to develop. And then, of course, there are always subplots involving those pesky DNPCs...

Re: Official Champs Uni = Marvel Uni? Franklin Stone - Lex Luther Black Harlequin - The Joker Viperia - Supergirl(!) Nighthawk - Batclone Meteorman - Green Lantern Kinetik - Flash Doubtless there are others. Funnily enough, today I was thinking about the characters presented in the first edition of Champions. They occurred to me as being a mix of DC heroes and Marvel villains. I'm not quite sure what I am going to do with that thought, but I think there is an idea in there somewhere.

Re: 80's Champions Of course, there were a lot of people who rejected and were appalled by the aspects of the 80's that are being highlighted here. My tastes (in the early '80s) had been firmly shaped by the '60s and '70s: big guitar bands, moderated by punk and reggae influences. I regarded yuppies as scum, Reagan as the greatest and most evil threat to humanity ever, and Madonna, Duran Duran, Kylie Minogue and so on as his musical equivalents. Later on in the decade I moved away from the big guitar bands, and grudgingly began to accept the legitimacy of Madonna and Kylie (but not Duran Duran) after they failed to vanish like the rest of the wannabes. A lot of the bands I was listening to in the late '80s were local (Brisbane) live acts. Usually the choice was between tacky thrash or hippy-ish folk, with a few decent acts in between. I pretty much dressed the same way I dress now. I never bothered to follow fads. I didn't have a mobile phone. I don't have one now. I didn't have internet access then. I do now. That's probably the main difference that isn't directly related to my age. The main one that _is_ related to my age is that I was playing a lot more Champions then.

Re: Hulk Smash: What is your favorite version? I like the way he was in his very first appearance. His skin was grey, his powers activated at night, rather than when he became angry, and he wasn't necessarily all that strong, or dumb. The version that was a founding member of the Avengers was pretty cool too. He doesn't seem to have been quite as dumb as he was at other times.

Re: WWYCD? #126: For Whom the Bell Tolls Assault:You mean, they found the body? Whatever memorial gathering the survivors feel like, but strictly no religious content. And make sure there's a revolving door on his grave, just in case.

Re: Super Villainy on a Budget? Think: Batman villain. Don't be obvious. Use indirection. Out think the heroes. (That's rarely difficult.)

Re: Early "What do you want to see?" for Teen Champions Hmm. I'm not so sure about that. Actually, that raises a couple of points. Different places have different legal ages for drinking, driving, voting and so on. Since, theoretically, Teen Champs covers 18 and 19 year olds, as well as younger teens, issues like these can be relevant. Here's an example: a bunch of 19 year old Australian superteens go into a bar in (some state) in the US. The bartender asks to see their ID, and then says: "sorry, you kids are under 21. According to this state's laws, I can't serve you." Hmm. Maybe this should be made into a "what would your character do?" thread.

Re: Early "What do you want to see?" for Teen Champions Well, actually, I would need quite a bit of detail on US high schools if I wanted to make maximum use of Teen Champions. I _went_ to an international high school. So, how do US schools work? When are their terms (semesters, or whatever)? When are their holidays? When does the school year start? What kind of schools are there? You get the gist. Yes, I guess that would suggest that similar information for a bunch of other countries' systems might be nice. It's been a while, but my experience of high school had very little in common with the "TV Californian" system. The status games weren't anywhere near as intense. The various cliques tended to run parallel to each other, often having little or no contact. Everyone wore school uniform, so there wasn't much room for fashion wars. Of course, I was the kid of a teacher, and one of my best friends was the son of the principal, so it's perhaps not surprising that I didn't see a great deal of bullying.

Re: Early "What do you want to see?" for Teen Champions The 200 point figure comes from Champions Universe. It gives this as a suggestion for a Ravenswood Academy game. Of course there's no reason why you can't build Teen Champions characters on any point total you care to mention. After all, it worked for Superboy. Still, I personally like the lower totals. They make character building more of a challenge. But that's a general prejudice of mine. Finally, on those occasions when I'm designing characters just for fun, I like to follow published guidelines, simply because they represent "impartial rules". But that's just one of the minor games you can play with the Hero System.

Re: Need ideas in Native American mystic... Here's an odd but interesting site: http://www.hunterbear.org/navajo_witchcraft_and_the_skinwa.htm The guy who wrote it fits into "odd but interesting" too.

Re: Alternate Earth #24: Iron Age I was just thinking about what I wrote about Assault. Essentially, what I wrote suggested that he would become a truly Iron Age character - a politician! Yeah. It works for me. Especially since he would be the kind of politician that has his own militia. Hmm....