Haerandir

Honestly, I have difficulty believing that any superhero who engages in hand-to-hand or flies through obstacle-laden environments on a regular basis wouldn't design their cape to tear away easily. Or not wear a cape, of course. Now that I'm playing CoH again, all of my caped characters have brooch/pin fasteners, rather than the obvious choking hazard that is the full mantle.

I also thought of the original Captain Marvel, as Billy Batson was a teenager. But he's a bit of an outlier, as well, given that his alter-ego was physically an adult and had the Wisdom of Solomon, making it hard to tell whether he still qualifies as a 'teen superhero'. Superboy is an interesting wrinkle I hadn't thought of. IMO, he makes a better candidate as a template for the Teen Champions genre than Spider-man. He's explicitly a less powerful, less experienced version of a 'standard' superhero. One who, at least initially, deals with smaller-scale issues in a relatively restrictive environment. I might also reference the original Wonder Girl stories, but I don't need the continuity headache that would result right now.

I once played in a campaign where this was the initial session. Bonus points to VIPER in that the big event at the restaurant was the official reception for us being welcomed as the new hero team for the city. I felt that was bold. After the session, the GM told us they'd brought along a weapon specifically calibrated to target our brick's weakness, but because he kept trying and failing to break through the hatches in the flying ship, giving up and moving on to the next one, the crew spent the entire fight laboriously hauling the weapon from hatch to hatch, only to set it up and hear that he'd switched hatches again. They were quite put out. In a later session, we were raiding a VIPER base in South America, and they had lined the entire wall of the base with this same weapon, only to have him simply leap over the wall before they even realized he was there. This had the effect of making him enemy #1 for the entire organization. They were gonna tag him with a 'zero-zone projector' if it was the last thing they did, dagnabbit!

I tend to agree. I know there's been a lot of comments to the effect that Spidey's initial villains were a pack of losers, but they were pretty typical for the time. They tried to get Big Wheel and Stilt-man over, too. If you want to talk about a world-class hero having trouble dealing with an otherwise-ordinary dude with a gimmicked weapon, can I interest you in the Flash v. Captain Cold? Or Captain Boomerang? And it wasn't uncommon for writers to... adjust... the power level of villains and heroes for the sake of drama. I seem to remember hearing that one of the lesser bones of contention between Stan Lee and Jack Kirby was that Stan would take Dr. Doom, a villain intended to fight Thor, the Silver Surfer or the Fantastic Four on equal terms, and have him job out to whichever new scrub he wanted to hype that week. Also, I don't think "Teen Champion" vs. "Regular Superhero" is really a lens that can be boiled down solely to power-level. I feel like I could make a much stronger case for the core five original X-Men being Teen Champions than Spider-man. They lived in a school, had romantic entanglements with one another, and hung out at the local malt shop. Even their villains tended to come from within their own social circle of fellow mutants, and having a limited social circle is a pretty teenage theme. Sure, Peter was a student, but he also had a grown-up job in a professional field. He fought gangsters and assassins. He never had trouble getting to places outside of his neighborhood, or had to worry much about a curfew. He graduated from high school and went to college fairly quickly. He hung out with the Fantastic Four, Daredevil, and Captain America. Tony Stark had to fit in his crimefighting around board meetings, Peter Parker had to fit his in around his class schedule, but if you made Peter 10 years older and gave him a job at Oscorp, his stories wouldn't really change much. When I hear "Teen Champions" I think "characters whose costumed career & social life both revolve around teen issues and concerns". To me, the occasional story beats where him being a teenager came up at all always felt more like secondary elements within the larger complications of his secret identity and down-trodden everyman-ness, rather than core themes that were uniquely difficult for him because he was a teenager. I'm talking about in aggregate, mind you. I can think of a few stories where him being a teenager mattered. His origin, for one, obviously. But overall, he moved in the same circles as Daredevil, and had pretty similar stories and struggles. Edited to add: Naturally, minutes after posting the above, I thought of a better way of expressing the point I was trying to make: To me, Spider-man feels like an ordinary starting super-hero who is a teenager, rather than a character designed to be played in a campaign within the 'Teen Champions' subgenre. Now, you could make a case that Spider-man's popularity led Marvel and later DC to create many more teenaged superheroes, and that the Teen Champions campaign subgenre is based on those heroes, and thus Spider-man was Patient Zero for Teen Champions. I would agree with that. But teen superheroes weren't really a thing prior to Spider-man. There were teen sidekicks, certainly. But a hero who was still an adolescent who fought crime and had adventures independent of any other team or character? I can't say definitively that Spider-man was the first without doing more research than I have time for at 1:00 PM on a work day, but he was definitely the biggest.

Future, you say.

Now that VIPER can control snakes, they finally have a use for all of those genetically-engineered giant snakes they've got in storage. Extortion: corner the market on a rare anti-venom, then send mind-controlled snakes (of the appropriate breed) after prominent/wealthy figures and their families, sell them the anti-venom for 5000x the previous rate

Eurostar and the Warlord have both been on my 'Book of...' wishlist for years. To the point where I've contemplated taking a stab at them myself. Never got past the spitballing stage, though.

A Multipower is a pool of points that can be assigned on the fly to a limited selection of pre-defined powers, and usually represents either a set number of frequently-used abilities/gear or a single power that can be used in different ways (often known as "tricks" or "stunts"). Some examples: -an archer with several different types of trick arrow (Green Arrow or Hawkeye) -a gun with several different firing modes (regular bullets, grenades, flamethrower, etc.) -a wizard who knows a handful of spells which he uses repeatedly -someone who can project and control a specific type of energy for varying applications (Human Torch) Essentially, a Multipower is a discount offered to the player for accepting a restriction on how much of his various powers he can use in a single action. The Human Torch is a classic example. He has one basic power (the ability to create and control flames) that can produce a myriad of effects. If he tried to purchase all of those effects as separate Powers, he wouldn't have any points left over to spend on his unstable molecule costume, but the character "should" have them. Worse, if you did manage to squeeze them all onto his character sheet as individual Powers, then he could conceivably activate them all on a single Phase which would make him wildly overpowered compared to, say, Spider-man, and ISN'T something the published character is capable of doing. Multipower allows Johnny to have the ability to do goofy stuff with his flames, like projecting them in different shapes or at different intensities, but he can only use one 'stunt' at a time. It's a bit more useful than a straight 12d6 Fire Blast, and it costs a bit more, so it all balances out. A Variable Power Pool is broadly similar to a Multipower, in that it's a pool of points that can be assigned to different Powers. However, it's far more flexible, in part because the powers in the VPP don't have to be pre-defined. VPP usually represents a character with complete mastery over a broad category of power or ability. Some examples include: - an archmage who knows every spell in the book, and routinely writes his own (Dr. Strange, Dr. Fate) - an inventor who can whip up a device to defeat an alien invasion out of the stuff in his garage (Reed Richards, MacGuyver) - a dude who is so well-prepared that he always 'just happens' to have the right tool 'for just such an occasion' (Batman) - a character who can copy other people's powers (Rogue) - a shapeshifter who can turn into almost anything (Plastic Man) Essentially, the only limits on a VPP are: the number of points available, the imagination of the player, the special effects of the powers, the character's skill in manipulating the powers, the player's knowledge of the rules, and the GM's patience. Which means there actually are fairly sharp limits to a VPP. They tend to be more expensive than an equivalent Multipower, at least up to the point where the costs of the individual slots in the Multipower become significant (as Hyper-Man says above). VPPs are far more complex gameplay-wise than Multipowers. Even with experienced players and GMs, a VPP can slow down the game while the player tries to concoct a brand-new power on the fly in combat, and the GM has to determine (again, on the fly) whether or not it fits the character concept, is legal, and is fair/balanced/appropriate to the setting, etc. VPPs also have the potential to derail plots and overshadow other PCs. For all these reasons, they are not recommended for inexperienced players and GMs, and some GMs just disallow them entirely. Other GMs allow VPPs, but ask players to only write up new powers during down time. Multipowers are much less dangerous, though they do deserve to be reviewed occasionally to make sure they are built around a legitimate special effect and aren't just a fudge to get lots of combat powers for low, low rates. They're also simpler in most ways than VPPs. In most cases, if you're having trouble deciding whether a VPP or a Multipower is appropriate for a given character, my rule of thumb is, "If it CAN be built with Multipower instead of VPP, it probably SHOULD be built with Multipower instead of VPP."

One of my friends played a heroic mummy/super-mage in a Champions campaign a while back named Sanakht. Since his primary feature as a pharaoh is that no one knows much about him and can't even agree when his reign was, or how long he lasted, I'd find it amusing (on a purely personal level) to know there was a villain out there claiming the same name and origin.

I was toying with variants on 'Sorceror Supreme' to find the silliest one (Enchanter Extreme or Conjuror Consummate? I still can't decide.) Then I came up with Thaumaturge Transcendent, which I actually kinda like.

I'm in. Sticking to the Luster level, though. I'll leave the $100 stuff to you big spenders.

Apparently you've never played 'Florida or Germany?' The way it works is: You read crazy news headlines aloud, with all the place names redacted, and your friends have to guess whether they happened in Florida or Germany. It can be a very challenging game.

At this point, I'd take either one.

Nite Owl: "I want the truth!" Ozymandias: "You can't handle the truth!" It actually works pretty well.