assault

Re: Schmucks?

For those who haven't been paying attention, the NPC Hero Brigade has been calling for the existence of *teams* of heroes who can take on megavillains, one-two teams per megavillain, and at least not get themselves killed.

 

Thats one team of ~six heroes versus one villain. We want the heroes to be at least reasonably capable of driving the villain off without needing either a borrowed nuclear weapon or a Gift from the GM.

I'd be happy with one or two teams who can deal with the megavillains.

How powerful should they be? Well, they don't have to be as powerful as the megavillains. You don't defeat megavillains by flying up to them and punching them in the face. At least, not until you've messed with them a bit.

They do, however, need to be able to cope with the megavillains' flunkies. 250-350 point characters would be stretched to do this.

Ultimately, megavillains can only be defeated through roleplaying. That's pretty much part of the definition. NPC heroes don't roleplay, but at least can be assumed to be doing it offstage if necessary.

I should point out that while I am one of the advocates of the possibility of building JLA/Avengers type characters on 350 points, I am actually saying _starting versions_ of these characters, not experienced versions. For example, the version of the Flash I would build would be the version that appeared in Showcase #4. He would be able to do what that character did, and thus be a faithful portrayal of the Flash, but he wouldn't be able to do many of the things that the Flash was later protrayed as doing.

Similarly, it is possible to create an accurate rendition of the Batman from Detective Comics #27 on 200 points. He can't do all the stuff the present day version of the character can do, but he is a faithful rendition of the Batman at a certain point in his career.

As for Thor and Daredevil, well, I doubt that my version of Daredevil would be able to deal with my version of Thor in combat. Then again, Thor doesn't have a whole lot of skills...

If you are doing faithful renditions of the characters on low point costs, their relative power levels should actually be maintained. If Daredevil can't hit harder than a tough human, that's all he should be able to do. If Thor can, well, he can. Of course, there are enough bugs in my designs that Thor would probably need to use an area-effect attack to hit DD, but once he did...

Back to the main point: what we need might not be NPC hero teams so much as NPC "space gods". That is, we have various powerful but inactive beings hanging around, who, if they are tracked down, cajoled, bribed and flattered by the PCs, might actually condescend to provide assistance in neutralising the Bad Guys. Wanambi Man might be a good canonical example. He probably just sits around in his interdimensional limbo, but if you find him, and ask very nicely, he might provide you with some useful assistance or information against Takofanes.

Similarly, going and hassling the Empyreans might be of some use in dealing with other threats. Or the Atlanteans, or the Perseids, or whoever...

The Big Bads don't try to conquer the world every month. When they do, it should be important. Fobbing the job of stopping them off on a bunch of faceless NPCs seems wrong.

You stop the Big Bads by roleplaying, not by combat. Trying to do it the other way around gets you a bunch of bruises, and doesn't work. And that's true whether you are built on 250 points or 2500...

But yes, we do need a team or two of megaheroes. Just Because.

Re: Schmucks?

Yes' date=' but common Hand held ordanance (guns) should not be a problem for most supers, however most will be KO'd by a lucky roll (2d6 RKA=60 stun on max roll), this is not including: AP, AF, Pen, etc...[/quote']

 

There are a couple of different factors operating here.

 

1) Many, if not most, supers in the source material aren't "bulletproof". Theoretically, if they get hit, they have a problem.

 

2) Of course, in Champions, we tend to use things like Combat Luck and similar fudges to get around this.

 

3) I don't use the Stun lottery. It doesn't particularly reflect the genre, and is an odd mechanism that works a little differently from the rest of the game system. Your Mileage May Vary.

 

On a different note, people have described 350 point characters as being like the Teen Titans. That is, as being like Robin, Kid Flash and Wonder Girl. I'm not quite sure what their point is.

 

I will also reiterate that the JLA members themselves largely began at the same power level. Check the source material.

 

Ditto for the Avengers.

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?

The opinion was voiced recently that 350 point character are "schmucks" in the Dark Champions forum. Not my choice of words, but there you have it. How many people share that opinion?

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...

Being a talking animal. No other powers, just being a talking animal.

 

Coolness: Make the Animal your Skill God!

 

Alternative: Make the Animal your DNPC.

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?

But, back to Doom. What were Doom's Arcane powers like back then?

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?

How recently are you talking about with regards to Doom's power escalation?

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?

"Team America?"

Hmm. I must stop reading this thread. It is bringing back far too many hideous memories...

Re: Official Champs Uni = Marvel Uni?

I can't name that many JLA villains (and yes' date=' i read te title)[/quote']

 

I agree as far as the current JLA go. The only villain that really attracted my attention "recently" was Kanjar Ro, and that ended up as a bit of a letdown. But then, I haven't read the whole run.

 

The original JLA was something else, of course. And the JLI was something else again...

 

Oops. Memorable JLI villains? Oh dear. I've tried very hard to suppress those memories.

 

Let's see: the Scarlet Skier, Mr Nebula, the Injustice League, _those_ penguins, Manga Khan, Funky Flashman, Queen Bee, Jack O'Lantern...

 

Argh! The pain! The PAIN! And it's all your fault!

Re: Official Champs Uni = Marvel Uni?

There are a few, but not many

 

-Sinestro

-Gorilla Grod

-Darkseid & minions (who started out seperatly, even if Supes meets them alot)

-Weather Wizard

 

Still, your right. All the DC baddies that jump up do come from the two big books.

 

Almost every long running Marvel book as 5+ memorable baddies.

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?

Basically, Marvel's heroes were more 'human' than DCs ... which I think is important.

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?

When I run through a list in my head of cool villain concepts Marvel villains always pop up first. Dr. Doom, Magneto, Loki, Ultron, Juggernaut, Mephisto, Masters of Evil, Green Goblin, ect. The only DC villains that really pop into my head are Ras AL Ghul, Sinestro, and Darkseid.

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?

Power-wise' date=' the lamest had to be Jimmy Olsen, since not only he did not (usually) have superpowers....but he didn't even have any great skills like Lois Lane, who was a great investigative reporter (despite missing the biggest story around every issue).[/quote']

 

Actually Jimmy had more skills than you can poke a stick at. He was a master of disguise, could drive/fly/operate _anything_, and had a mean Sunday Punch (on at least some occasions).

 

His main power, however, was maintaining a straight face during some of the most ludicrous plots ever.

 

It was a great title. And then Jack Kirby came along and added all these lame characters like Darkseid.

 

Finally, I will raise my hand in Power Pack's defence. They weren't even nearly as bad as some of the other works of "art" that have been mentioned.

Re: Who was the LAMEST?

Who was the lambest superhero to get their own title?

 

I'm not talking about that lame-ass dog Green Lantern. He was lame, true enough, never had his own mag.

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

This might also be called a Teen Titans game, although there really isn't any reason the Titans are all together in that "T" shaped building is there?

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

One good thing about Teen Champs is that few adventures will start with, "You're all in a tavern."

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

(1) There'll be some box text about international "high schools," but it's going to be brief... mainly just some quick background in case a player wants to play an exchange student or a GM wants to send the PCs abroad as exchange students, etc.

 

My question is are people honestly curious about this sort of stuff? Or, at least, are you curious enough to see it take up more than a page or so of the book?

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.

So do folks want a sort of primer on high schools circa 2004? Or would they rather a description of high school more familar to likely players, like say something circa late eighties or nineties? Or a sort of cinematic combination of the two, setting details that don't delve into the nitty-gritty of real-world high schools? All of the above.

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

In otherwords: Many people are reading this backwards (Gm's will make it 200 points, Low powered games are Teen Champions Games, therefore 200 points 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.