Haerandir

Re: Opinion: EuroStar I admit, I mostly made that post as an excuse to use the phrase "Martin Blank with deer rifle". Man, that was a good movie. Edit: I agree that it's vanishingly unlikely, but anything's possible. As a thought exercise, I spent some time last night working out a scenario under which Eurostar could track down Gravitar. As you've pointed out before, UNTIL hasn't managed it, neither has Interpol, and they've got far more (and more directly useful) resources to commit to the job than Eurostar does. So the first thing Eurostar needs to do is raid UNTIL and Interpol headquarters and steal all the data those organizations have on Gravitar. Then, they need to hire a bunch of professional intelligence analysts to go through that mass of data, along with all publicly available Gravitar sightings that occur after the raids, plus whatever they can collect from their underworld contacts (which is probably not much, as Gravitar has no underworld connections in any case, and even if you rule that she hangs with Viperia and Holocaust, neither of them is likely to give Eurostar the time of day, much less stab their only real friend in the back)... Then they need to hire a bunch of field operatives and flood those countries most likely to be Gravitar's home nation with observers. Once they've amassed enough data, they can probably narrow it down to one country, then one region, then once city, then one neighborhood, then one house. Shouldn't take more than a couple of years and a few hundred million Euros. At that point, a normal hit man with a sniper rifle doesn't add much to the bill. Piece o' cake! And, in another no doubt vain attempt to return this thread to it's original purpose, this just underlines the need for Fiacho to turn Eurostar into an effective intelligence network if he's really serious about conquering Europe, or anything else, for that matter.

Re: Opinion: EuroStar To those just tuning in, or who haven't been paying attention, the reason Chuck insists on this sort of engagement is not because he doesn't think it's possible for Eurostar to ambush Gravitar, but because he thinks it doesn't prove anything. I agree. This is one of my baseline test cases: If Martin Blank with a deer rifle can succeed in the same circumstances as your 350+ pt. combat monster metahuman, then it doesn't matter what powers they have. $50,000 and a Swiss bank account is all you need to take out Gravitar if you can arrange the ambush.

Re: Opinion: EuroStar

Re: Opinion: EuroStar Incorrect. Firstly, Chuck's initial post included the rationale for running the test as a straight-up fight. You ignored this, presumably because you couldn't come up with a vaild counter-argument. Or you just didn't bother to read his post carefully. Secondly, his response to you includes a fairly comprehensive list of flaws with your 'thought out and reasonable scenario', which you also haven't addressed, presumably becausee you've since realized you didn't actually think it out and it's not that reasonable. And third, no, his response wasn't essentially LALALA, I'M NOT LISTENING, but yours was.

Re: Superhero Images Yes, The Champ is from Alien Enemies. He's an alien gladiator who became too popular back home, so they sent him to Earth to remove him as a focus for possible unrest. He's got a completely unrealistic and naive world-view which boils down to, "People shouldn't be poor." And, he's designed to be wildly aggravating, with the Fully Invisible Missile Deflection ("My attacks are just bouncing off of him and I don't know why!"), the extra armor that kicks in only when he's below 10 STUN and good amounts of KB resistance and Lack of Weakness. Plus, where other characters got a 'Villain Bonus' or 'Experience Points', he got a 'Pain-in-the-Neck Bonus'...

Re: The Blood Well, since you asked, I walked all the way into the next room and dug up my copy of The Circle and METE. You're thinking of Moonsilver, I believe. Generally, I've been in favor of the updates, too. Though I admit that I'm a child of the Big Blue Book, and all of my old 3rd edition supplements are the products of eBay, so I don't really have much to say about that set of changes. But, yeah, I tend to like the changes to the 5th ed. CU. Though I still miss Solitaire.

Re: The Blood They make a good source of rivals for heroic PCs, too. Reading through the material on Ean, I see a lot of parallels to White Wolf's Exalted. Possibly also The First from CrossGen Comics. Even the 'heroic' Blood are prone to arrogance and elitism, which can make for fun RP moments of the "I really want to punch this guy, but technically he's helping me defeat Ripper at the moment..." variety.

Re: The Blood Yep, METE is written up Alien Enemies, but that's a 4th ed. version of the material that originally appeared in "The Circle and METE". As it happens, I also have Alien Enemies ready to hand... I'd dug out all of my old Champions supplements looking for inspiration about a month ago...

Re: The Blood The Blood are the superpowered descendants of a prehistoric wizard named Azor, who took his people to an alternate Earth (called Ean) approx. 20,000 years ago. There's some complicated backstory, but essentially, Azor turned out to be evil, his descendants banished/destroyed him and rule their world as demigods. A few decades ago, a small number of them crossed back to Earth for various personal and political reasons. I happen to have my old skool "The Blood & Dr. McQuark" (circa 1985) here at my desk. They aren't really an 'organization' at all, so much as a group of supers with a common origin and blood ties. Several of the 11 characters presented are dead and only appear for reference purposes, and the rest are split between independant heroes, independant villains and a couple of neutrals.

Re: The Blood I suspect that both publishing rights and the fact that the Blood don't really qualify as an 'organization' or even a 'team' will keep them from being re-published, but a lot of unpublishable characters get rewrites on these boards. I've considered doing it myself, but the essential character trait that best defines me is 'procrastination', so I don't hold out much hope.

Re: The Blood I haven't seen any 5ed updates for the Blood, either. I was just reading The Blood & Dr. McQuark, a few weeks ago, though. I'm pretty sure the Kings of Edom would work as the evil gods with whom Azor made his deal, so it shouldn't be hard to work them into the current continuity.

Re: Captain Canada! Y'all have officially lost me. Edit: I've read a bit of the linked synopsis... I'm having trouble deciding whether or not having your first superhero adventure be 'picking up chicks' is a good or a bad sign...

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... If he was really talented, he'd have managed to work in a mention of whether or not it was Accessible.

Re: Mystic Team Vehicle? How about a cloud that's been enchanted so that it's solid and permanent? Call it a cloudship, put some nice deck planking and railings on the top so nobody falls off or gets their feet wet... That'd be cool.

Re: WWYCD: You the Jury Any character I have ever played would get out of jury duty in this scenario. It's not that hard. Just raise your hand every time they ask if there's some reason why you would be biased in the case. You'll be telling the truth, and you can easily come up with half a dozen justifications without revealing your SID.

Re: What Are You Listening To Right Now? LaunchCast just segued me from Guns 'n' Roses (Patience) to Coldplay (Shiver).

Re: Musings on Random Musings I'm told that Dr. Atkins suffered from a congenital disorder that contributed to his heart attack, and that his diet wouldn't have helped him.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group...

Re: Robotics in the Marvel Universe What's Black Widow up to these days? She should be pretty good at finding people.

Re: Liefeld's Titans Just the guy who does the vocals for the Yu-Gi-Oh! theme song. Have you ever watched that show, BTW? It's a trip. For a bunch of people who've dedicated their lives to playing a card game, they're sure surprised whenever someone actually, you know, reads his cards and builds a deck based on what they do.

Re: Which villain needs an overhaul? That would be the Clans from Battletech. Or the Lizards from Harry Turtledove's Worldwar series. Actually, in both cases, it's worse than invasion with no intel. The Clans' answer to pre-invasion scouting is to ASK the target what he's got. The Lizards' plan is to show up, realize that the enemy is vastly more powerful than you expected, and invade anyway. Still, in V'han's case, it could be nothing more alarming than that the calibration on her dimensional gates is a little off... "Oh, we wanted to invade Universe 1,298,379! Sorry, this place looks just like it. Catch you guys... ::checks invasion schedule:: Next year, looks like. Toodles!"

Re: Are the 5th edition heroes to weak? I gather from this that you're treating HERO's decision to focus on a particular style of gameplay as a personal affront. It isn't. I believe that DoJ cares about both their universe and their fans. They just don't share your priorities. If you're not happy with it, maybe that's just a sign that you're not the target market. Happily, you have alternatives. That's how the free market economy works. Now, given that all we've accomplished is prove that this issue is as irresoluble now as it was last time it came up (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=23494), I intend to leave it at that.

Re: Are the 5th edition heroes to weak? You're right. It would be great if every RPG company were to pick the same customer base to market to, leaving everyone else out in the cold. Then it would be just like the computer game industry, with much lower profit margins! Glad to hear you're enjoying M&M. Personally, I make my game purchase decisions based on the system, not the universe. Vive la difference!

Re: Are the 5th edition heroes to weak? How hard is it to change Dr. Destroyer into Professor Protector? If hero writeups and villain writeups can be used interchangeably, then they can be used interchangeably. If they can't, they can't. None of that changes the fact that this isn't an argument over 'right' vs. 'wrong' decisions, it's an argument about priorities. And the Champions Universe isn't a real place at all. It's a fictional universe created for the specific purpose of showcasing the adventures of the PCs. Anything that makes it a 'living, breathing' place is great, so long as it doesn't detract from its primary function. Encounters that the PCs will face regularly within the context of the game universe hold a higher priority than encounters they will face infrequently. The 'villain of the week' is a staple of the source material and a large number and variety of villain writeups supports the GM by removing the burden of statting out a bunch of random combat encounters. The 'rival/ally/benchmark/iconic hero group' is a much less frequent encounter, and is a social encounter, which will likely recur with the same NPC's, rather than new ones every time. Thus, it is both a lower priority, and benefits much more from personal GM attention. In the end, this discussion is moot. There are already, by your count, 95 hero writeups, with more coming, including some that apparently meet your expectations. You're getting your wish, albeit slowly. That slowness is a result of those priorities I mentioned before, so I'm getting what I want, too. Huzzah! Everybody plays, everybody wins! All praise Steve Long!

Re: Are the 5th edition heroes to weak? And for all those villains you can change Hunted: UNTIL and Casual Killer to Hunted: VIPER and CvK and have more NPC heroes than you can shake a stick at. And I agree about normal writeups. If you're not gonna fight them, they don't need stats. But stats for normals you don't fight are marginally more useful than stats for heroes you don't fight. And yes, I know, you want to fight heroes. For the one time a year that you do the 'meet a new hero and rumble' scenario, you can use the published writeups, write your own tailored to your play group, or file the serial numbers off of a villain.