Haerandir

Originally posted by Wanderer

As a side note, what about (as plot seeds suggest) a team-up between Gravitar, Holocaust and Viperia (the real "Ultimates") ?? I pity the city where they would show up.

 

Holocaust probably belongs on the list. He's individually powerful (like Gravitar), and has wealth, megalomaniacal ambitions, political skills and contacts, though he's a little bit lacking in the fanatical follower department. Plus, he's described as a 'master villain' in his 'Campaign Use' notes, albeit a second-stringer.

My first Champions character was Asbestos, the man who could survive in a burning building. Remarkably useful power set, actually. I've played him several times since.

Originally posted by Redmenace

He may have sleeper agents that he has returned, they might kidnap metahumans and take gene samples possibly spliced into his own genes making him something like the Silver Age superman.

Kim Jong-Il... Kim Jor-El? Does that sound like a coincidence to you?!?!?

Originally posted by McCoy

But neither Ravens nor Magpies are brightly colored. These are both black birds.

 

How about Flamingo?

Mallard Lad?

Originally posted by Stormraven

Not one of my supervillains scares my players. Ever.

(snip)

But if I send in a five-man agent team, written up on 100-150 points each (against 4-5 300-350 point heroes) suddenly they're white-knuckled, and worried about staying conscious throughout the combat.

Sounds like what you need is a team of supervillains with basic agent training, blasters & armor.

Let's see... I've got a bunch, all from the same GM.

The Flying Headsman... Just what he sounds like, a guy with an executioner's hood, a giant axe, and the power to fly. The axe was a multipower with, I believe, a 4d6 HKA and Missile Deflection. Bear in mind that this is one of the first villains we faced in a 250-pt. 4th ed. game where the GM had specifically asked us not to build tweaked-out combat monsters. So, all of our characters were slinging about 10d6 attacks, had moderate CV's and low defenses. 4d6 Killing damage is scary when you've got 10rPD and 10 body. Especially when the guy just loves to do flying move-throughs with it. You can imagine how we felt about a homicidal maniac who could kill us with a single (albeit moderately lucky) shot, deflect all of our ranged attacks and simply keep out of reach of the brick who was the only character with any hand-to-hand ability. And he was a homicidal maniac. His only motivation was to kill the PC he was Hunting and as many other people as he could reach in the process. But at least he was actually a mystical entity that possessed anyone who put on the hood, so we could never be permanently rid of him.

Major Opposition... We called this guy Opposite Rhyming Lad. In addition to being extremely difficult to hit, with all the DCV, he had a giant cosmic VPP, which could only be used to produce effects that were metaphorically 'opposite' to whatever he was fighting. And he had to recite incantations in rhyming couplets to activate his powers. And the GM did, in fact, manage to come up with poems for every single thing he did. And they were terrible. About his only virtue was that if you did manage to hit him, he went down hard. He had a number of annoying sidekicks, too, like Wide Load (the 16 Ton Man) and Immaterial Girl (a singer with sonic powers and the ability to go desolid). Mostly hated this guy for the humiliation and frustration factors. We had to fight him 3 times before we could catch him. He was our campaign's Foxbat, I suppose. Only with a giant cosmic VPP. I suppose he doesn't really fit the original request, but we hated and feared him.

DOOM - The Dictatorial Organization Over Mankind... The campaign's villainous agent organization. Pretty straightforward AIM/Hydra/Viper/Cobra clones. Only all of their agents had a 'dirty tricks' multipower that allowed them to do things like murder innocent bystanders to blind you with arterial spray. That made us, as heroes, very sad.

The 90-Foot Ninja(s)... Pretty ordinary ninja, only they were 90 feet tall and radioactive. Let me tell you, the 5-foot-wide shuriken is not your friend. But at least they came in groups of 6 or more. Plus, you'd think that at 90 feet tall, they'd be fairly easy to spot, but ninja magic is powerful stuff. Different campaign, several years later, but same GM. We'd hoped he'd learned his lesson from the general player insurrection that ended the previous campaign, but apparently not.

I am never going to South America.

Originally posted by Agent X

You needed to have looked at what Ragdoll was planning on using the Gadget Pool for. We weren't high.

My apologies. I haven't read the original thread, so I was responding to the posts on this thread. From what Ragdoll said, it sounded like the primary objection was to the size of the VPP, rather than its intended use. In my experience, a 20-pt. VPP can be extremely effective, in terms of cost, utility and character growth potential. If, however, there were other factors involved, that could change things.

Well, obviously you're already familiar with Yeoman. I wouldn't use any of the automaton powers on a PC for the same reason that Yeoman's writeup dispensed with them. They're intended to make mindless robots/zombies threatening and easier to run in large numbers, but are potentially unbalancing when used by an intelligent & independent PC-type character.

As for the VPP, I've used VPP's ranging from 20 - 100 points, and they've all been useful. Dr. Phantasm, the character I'm using as an avatar, had a 40-pt. VPP and it was great. Those guys who told you that a 20-pt. VPP is useless were high. Sure, if you're planning to only use it for 5 or 6 different things, then a multipower is either cheaper or more effective (or both), but if you use it extensively and/or creatively, the advantages of the VPP quickly appear. Plus, the hidden advantage of a VPP is that it allows you to 'add' to your character without spending experience by dreaming up new things to put into it.

Best of all, with a VPP, you need never have this conversation:

Scarlet Sorceror: "Well, Golden Guardian, I'd like to help you out by casting a Minor Spell of Healing on you, but you'll have to wait until next game session so I can buy a new ultra slot in my Multipower..."

Golden Guardian: "What?!?!?! What are you talking about? Ultra slot? Game session?"

Scarlet Sorceror: "Oh, sorry. I meant to say that I can't heal you because, um, Venus is in the house of... Cancer, yeah that's it. And we all know there's no cure for cancer, so you're boned."

Golden Guardian: "I really hate you, you know that, right?"

If Peter Parker can have a kid, then anyone can!

I'm a player by preference. Quite frankly, I'm not sufficiently organized to be a GM. Plus, I'm one of those people who has more ideas than I have time to implement them, which means that I'm knee-deep in unfinished campaign setting ideas. If I waited until I finished one of them to the point where I'd feel confident running it, I'd probably be able to recruit my grandchildren to play in it (I'm 30 and unmarried at the moment)...

Like DocMan, above, I have GM'ed before, and I'm told that people enjoyed the games that I ran. However, they were very difficult for me, to the point of being actively unpleasant. I love designing worlds and NPC's and all that sort of thing, but actually running the game makes me nervous and after a session, I spend a lot of time kicking myself because I forgot something, or missed something or screwed something up. Which interferes with my preparation for the next session...

My characters tend to be either Betas or passive-aggressive Alphas. Depends on what the definition of 'is' is, I suppose. In my current campaign, I'm definitely directing the course of the team's development, which is very unusual for me, but my character is clearly not the team leader. It's just that I've managed to sell my plan for Ultimate Power to the rest of the group for once. Now, I do all the planning and their characters do all the heavy lifting... What could be better?

Originally posted by Kristopher

Even if genetic supers tend to breed more successfully, their tendancy to get themselves killed, and their general inability to have a functional social life, might make up for it.

 

A long lifespan and stable social life are not needed for reproductive success. There's a reason the human body is genetically programmed to start decaying after prime child-bearing age, you know. And romantic turmoil is not necessarily a barrier to reproduction so much as to good parenting.

Ever read Powers? The issues focusing on Olympia (collected with some other stories in the TPB 'Little Deaths') contribute a theory on this subject.

Two words: Superhero Groupies.

I'd go a little easy on the 'former acquaintances' angle. So far it's been suggested that, out of 6 people, 3 have some personal connection to the target. This seems statistically improbable, and is the kind of thing that the other players in my campaign would notice and feel compelled to waste half an hour of playing time explaining how unlikely it was.

On the other hand, we could once again resort to the old 'lumping them together' trick. Have the female former romantic interest also be the rival (they broke up after he embarrassed her in some fashion, got promoted above her or whatever). I'd pass on the family member, though. No sane military organization will send a sibling to apprehend an escaped criminal. Not if their culture has any notion of familial loyalty, anyhow. The 'brother tracks down brother' plot works better if the brother doing the tracking is operating on his own initiative.

Now, if the brother went AWOL on some personal crusade to bring Ironclad in, and the superteam was sent to round them both up, that has potential.

Originally posted by Lightray

Even with experienced players it is absolutely necessary that someone with a VPP has things written up beforehand. I'll allow my players to handwave the little things (conjuring up food, changing everyones clothes, etc.). But ALL of the big powers need to be statted up beforehand.

I agree. And that's coming from someone who is running a character with a VPP. I don't want to ruin everyone's fun by slowing the game down every half hour so I can write up powers. My current GM requires a list of pre-approved powers for VPPs, but even if he didn't I'd have one and wouldn't deviate from it.

I'm not really against VPPs -- I just think they allow you to be lazy when making up your character. A multipower forces you to think about what spells you're going to need. I've allowed players with experienced supermages to later convert their multipower points into a VPP.

Another good point. Ever since I wrote up Empyrean (my first pure VPP character), I've found that all of my new character concepts consist of a few stats & skills, one or two powers that I'll always want (defenses and movement, mainly), and the rest of the points in a VPP. I'm thinking that I may have to forbid myself to use VPPs for a while.

Originally posted by Speedball

Personally, I think I like "2.0" the best.

I'd expand that to 'Adam 2.0', myself.

Out of the characters I've actually played (and thus have full write-ups for), I've done:

Academic/Scientist (usually researcher, inventor or student, not teacher/professor)

Stage magician

Firefighter

Air Force test pilot

Movie stunt man

Ex-con

Private detective

Retired CIA agent

The only real repeat profession has been student. I guess that's the one I default to.

My current character doesn't really have a profession. Mostly he just works whatever minimum-wage job he can get for as long as he can before his extracurricular activities or a sudden need to hide from his hunteds get him fired. Fortunately he's got Life Support & Instant Change. If things get really dire, he can subsist indefinitely and always have clean clothing.

When possible, I like to tailor my background to the campaign I'm in. In several campaigns, I've been part of a government-sponsored group, in which case the only restriction on my background is how it ties in with my character's origin. In others, knowing that everyone else in your group is playing a penniless drifter may influence whether you will decide to play your billionaire playboy battlesuit character ("Looks like it'll be up to me to pay for everything...") or your fish-out-of-water alien martial artist ("We're all broke! Today's adventure: Acquire and eat lunch without committing any felonies...").

90-foot ninja. That's all I have to say on that topic.

I'd call it SFX unless it had a noticeable impact on combat or skill use. I've come across the situation of a character using a random power to conceal his Secret ID before, and they're usually pretty balanced and a nice change of pace from, "No one can recognize me because I'm not wearing my glasses!"

My favorite example is the character who'd bought Visible on his END Reserve, which he defined as a swirling mass of stars that orbited his head. Not only did this mean that opponents could tell when he was running out of juice for his powers, but if he ever used up all of his END, his Secret ID would be compromised.

Psi Knights & Psi Lords

I once played a character named Saber, who was a Psi Knight. The Psi Knights were a galactic 'organization' which used psionic powers to promote the ideals of democracy, freedom and the rights of individual sentients. They typically displayed powers of telekinesis, telepathy and physical self-enhancement, and carried psionic weapons which could, among other things, reshape themselves into whatever weapon the wielder wanted them to be. Saber's weapon typically took the form of a glowing blue sword made of light, naturally. Any comparisons to the GLC or the Jedi Knights are, of course, ludicrous.

Their opposite numbers were the Psi Lords, who believed it was their duty as superior minds to arrange the universe in as orderly a fashion as possible. Orderly being defined as, "Psi Lords in charge and everyone else doing our bidding." 'Cause the Psi Lords know best, after all. Though they generally preferred to rule as powers behind the throne, acting as viziers and 'counselors'. So, generally, a Psi Lord would either work through minions or appear to be the lackey of an Emperor or something. Any suggestion that they might be a conflation of the Vorlons and Sith Lords are, naturally, also ludicrous.

You people and your suspicious minds.

Originally posted by James Gillen

It explains much.

 

What do people think about the general thesis at the end- that the comic book industry is dying (due to overspecialization and lack of young audience) and the medium may survive by moving to the Internet?

 

JG

Well, people have been predicting the death of the comics industry since, um, forever as near as I can tell. Certainly there was a great deal of concern about it in the '80's and '90's. And, of course, there were the '50's and '60's. As near as I can tell, the only extended time periods where comic book industry wasn't considered in imminent danger of collapse were the '30's and the '70's.

And yet, they're still kicking around. I shouldn't worry too much. You may have to wait out another 'doldrums' period, but I strongly suspect the rumors of comics' death are, as ever, greatly exaggerated.

Oh, and Hermit, the only mention I saw of the Death of Superman were a few shots of the funeral issue that were shown during the bit about special issues, alternate covers and the speculators' market. And, as Killer Shrike says, Doomsday may have appeared.

Originally posted by Enforcer84

I thouht you were going to make FH versions of the Ultimates... *sigh*

Yeah, I thought that, too. Might be fun to do up a variant for alternate history/alternate universe/time trouble adventures. Probably more appropriate to the Champions forum, though.

Originally posted by Gannok

BTW Darren, it occured to me a few days later that I believe WotC made a Magic card with a bunch of gorillas on it called the Apes of Wrath. It was from a set a few years back. Just a heads up.

Actually, it's a card for Shadowfist, from Z-Man Games. WotC's not that cool.

Originally posted by winterhawk

This was actually this first thing that came to mind...except Wind of Change doesn't exactly roll off the tongue, and Changewind is a bit confusing...something like Man of the People...but shorter. Keep 'em coming!

Everyman? Not very super-human sounding, but maybe he's more interested in his 'Man of the People' role.

Originally posted by Nato

You guys do all know that this is just something I threw together, not an actual official Hero publication?

 

Just wanted to clarify that just in case.

 

Glad you like.

That's why I call it 'padding' my resume...

Sweet! Now I'm (kinda-sorta) a published Hero author! Time to go pad the resume!