Opal

Well, there was the team who were all anthropomorphic animals....

Are these from this or the Hero Theme Team thread? Or do we make up details on them as we go, too?

Hermandad de la Sangre All-female ("sisterhood"), all mutants ("of the blood"), and all from Spanish-speaking Latin America, each member has good reason to despise the American Imperialism that they oppose by every means possible, not shrinking from criminal acts and even terrorism, but ironically, sometimes opposing certain criminals (such as coyotes or drug cartels - since they're doing business with the US). They also target regimes friendly with the US and can count on aid, or at least shelter, from rebels and states hostile to them. Each of the 5 "sisters" is from a different country, the leader should be from Venezuela (or Cuba, or a prominent rebel faction if from a state friendly with the US). Some may have one name they use, while the American media has a different English villain-name for them.

MIRV An aggressive flying speedster who prefers move-throughs, MIRV can create up to 9 illusory images or 2 solid duplicates, but only while in the air. Upon landing or striking an enemy, the duplicates disappear.

Were they interdependent, somehow (in Tolkien, as already mentioned, orcs are made from elves is the closest I can think of to an example), instead of absolutely antagonistic like they are in D&D, sure. Though the consequent association of orcs with light & sun and elves with darkness wouldn't map too well.

Whether it's Jung, von Däniken, or some blogger asking "why does every civilization have similar myths?" the boring, non-racist answer is probably just "human nature." We're all humans, we have a whole lot in common, a lot of our vaunted differences are just made up. Orcs, specifically, just at a glance, do seem to represent something in humans that humans instinctively hate & fear: masculinity. They're bigger, more muscular, more aggressive and violent, they take or destroy rather than nurture or create, they're hypersexual, prone to criminality, and inveterate rapists... and they're ugly & stupid. As negative stereotypes go, it's kinda on the nose, really. In contrast, BTW, elves are gracile, agile, intelligent, beautiful, creative, live in harmony with nature and wield magic. You could say there's a mystique to them. I guess we could say "Orcs are from Mars, Elves are from Venus."

There's The Winchester Mystery House, for instance. www.winchestermysteryhouse.com/

Winter With mutant powers of cold & darkness, Winter chose the name in reference to the quaint 20th century belief that an Earth incinerated by a massive nuclear exchange would get really cold afterwards. Fortunately, no one ever actually proposed that as a solution to Global 'Warming.' Winter wears an all-black costume with loose folds and tatters instead of a cape, which flutter about dramatically in the winds that whip up as a side effect of evoking extreme cold in an otherwise normal temperature/pressure environment.

So, yes, I have done things like that in fantasy settings before. In old-school AD&D, magic armor (and presumably weapons) were made of meteorite-alloy, Tolkienesque mithril (mithral post-law-suit), or adamantine steel (no Marvel lawsuit that I know of, it's ancient Greek, afterall), and I ran with that back in the day, the one interesting variation I did was that adamantite was not a metal, but a rare earth (soft/frangible, like graphite, and grey-green) and it wasn't alloyed with iron to make adamantine steel, it was burned, like coal, to provide the heat necessary to make that supernaturally strong metal. I also used Orichalcum, but it was more a sort of solidified magic you used to power spells or empower items, and Lunargent, which was just another name for mithril. Much later I liked describing the "mithril" everyone was so hot for as having all the qualities of aluminum, included the riddle-like claim that it was "smelted from ice" (there's apparently an aluminum ore that's transparent and looks a bit like ice, including being virtually invisible in water - I read about that a long, long time ago, so IDK, IIRC.... hey google... OK, "Cryolite"... hm... that's interesting). Making steel with iron-age techniques is no mean feat, so attributing it to magic, even if it is 'ordinary' steel - let alone something like pattern-welding 'Damascus' steel or the like - is perfectly reasonable, and, in a fantasy setting, it can be actual magic, too. Like, steel is made by a few smiths here and there, but they have secret magical knowledge, or a supernatural bloodline, or the help of a spirit or deity. If you were to, say, just spy on them and imitate the mundane tasks, it wouldn't work - maybe you wouldn't be able to work the metal, maybe you'd craft an item but it would just be iron, or have inferior qualities, like breaking readily. Or, 'steel' in your campaign could be something superior to medieval or modern steel, and the 'mundane' version would get you mundane, realistic, medieval steel, which wouldn't pass muster in your fantasy world. Maybe they have a separate name for inferior attempts at non-magical steel like 'grey iron' or 'brittlesteel' or something? (BTW, Apparently, steel was around for a long time, a byproduct of working iron, just little bits of it, very hard, but too brittle to be of use for much? Any history-of-metallurgy enthusiasts an jump in any time....)

Special thanks to Quackhell for posting the color interpretations of the original pride flag, and for throwing down Pink. It looks like we should be able to do all 8! I'm going to take the always idiosyncratic indigo (which we can all thank Isaac Newton's mystic bent for). Why, not, I played The Indigo Incantantrix back in the day. Selene Named after the titan of ancient Greek mythology, so the final 'e' is pronounced, Selene is a very tall (6'6"), willowy, sublimely beautiful transwoman. She wears a deep purplish-blue costume seemingly studded with silvery sequins giving the 'illusion' of stars in a night sky. Her hair is long, straight, and so dark a black as to appear blue in the right light, while her face is luminously pale. In total darkness she actually glows enough to dimly light a modest area around her, in full sunlight, she is surrounded by shadow, not deep shadow, just cool, comfortable shade. Aside from that, she has few obvious superpowers. In combat, she evades attacks with smooth, sinuous movements that seem languid yet make her almost untouchable, like an Aki-do master, similarly, enemies sometimes find themselves over-committing and losing their balance when attacking her, even if she doesn't actually touch them. She can deflect energy and ranged killing attacks in a small area around her, or neutralize such attacks in a larger area if her power is enhanced...

Oh, hey, we need some old guys... Marble For 20 years, Marble was the big dumb brick of the Crime Cabal, the leg-breaking enforcer, the literal heavy. But he had two dirty little secrets. For one, he really wasn't that tough by superhero standards, sure, his flesh was literally as hard and massive as stone - but have you seen what a super can do to a stone wall? Faced with supers, he'd throw wild haymakers, toss around the bulkiest things he could lay his hands on, and generally try to intimidate enemies into dodging his attacks long enough for him to find a way out, failing that he'd roll with the first punch, play possum, then play dumb. Which brings us to the second: he wasn't dumb, not at all. In fact he was a scientist - technically a 1930s eugenicist, but a PhD is a PhD, even if your field was utterly discredited not 10 years after you earned it - who accidentally gave himself powers, and has grown over the decades into a classic mastermind villain. With the groups downfall and slide into second-rate status, he has taken over a lot of operational planning and mostly runs the organized-crime side of things (still playing the role of Cabal enforcer). He may not be the acknowledged leader (he prefers not to be - they do the most time), but he does a lot of leading, none the less. Finally, as he's much older than even his 40 year career would imply, he's painfully out of touch with the post-modern world of the 21st century. If a younger member can convince him some plan or idea of there's will work because 'social media' or something he'll often just let them try it, rather than try to catch up.

Rebel Gurl the Confederate-battle-flagsuited Renegade was a strangely popular villain in the 80s, maybe because The Dukes of Hazard were wildly popular at the time, maybe because he semi-successfully kept a sort of Robin Hood narrative going. He had modest powers - super-strength and regenerated rather than being invulnerable - which, combined with exceptional practical backwoodsy skills, like Stealth, survival, tracking, and the like, made him reasonably effective. Renegade 'retired' and vanished, leaving his teammates in the lurch right around the turn of the millennium 15 or 20 years later, a similarly-costumed young lady managed to track the current members of the Crime Cabal to a secret meeting and invited herself to join on the pretext that she was the "scion and rightful heir" of the original Renegade. Someone who can both lay down and take a beating for the team is always welcome, and her relative naiveté made her an ideal addition, someone who could be taken advantage of. She turned out to be fractious, though, for one thing, she manages to be simultaneously old-fashioned southern-democrat hyperconservative racist, while also being stereotypically millennial 74-genders/special-snowlflakeesque in ways that did not remotely add up - by all rights she should be hunting /herself/, twice - she seems to keep deeply-held convictions in her head simultaneous that are entirely contradictory. (in 1984, we call that doublethink) So, if she even has a good side, it's very hard to stay on. Rebel Gurl is not quite as strong, tough, or as outdoorsy as her 'father,' but her regeneration is faster and can apparently bring her back from death (at least, injuries that should have been immediately fatal), she has a little martial arts training, and is much more street-savvy. In addition, while not quite able to change shape, she can selectively change her features and body shape with continuous effort. She is extraordinarily good at short term disguises (she never lasts too long before either her form slips or she blurts out something out of character) and frequently acts an an infiltrator or scout in the groups' more carefully planned jobs. Her FBI file says "... with a great deal more training, experience, and discipline, could become a powerful figure in the underworld..." also "...shoot on sight - and keep shooting ..."

It seems obvious that a power that normally doesn't cost END nor need to be turned on or off would be limited by what you describe. The sticking point is that there might be other -1/4 limitations that seem more limiting. The Costs END to start you already mentioned, for instance does use some END, however little or infrequently - but It also stays up when the END reserve is depleted. There are also, oddly, -1/2 limitations that seem similar, like Linked if you linked a small 0END power to one that cost even 1 END to maintain, that would have the effect that you couldn't use the smaller power when out of END. (I think. ...the old Great Linked Debate left me with confused memories of how it officially worked in 4e or 5e - IDEK if it's in 6e.) 6e Unified power limitation also feels similar, since they're all powers that are part of one electrical system. So, I'd say 'Yes' to the -1/4 limitation as described.

Thats 5 (6 if you include my example), and nothing in almost a month. SKJAM! or anyone else who contributed, please, go ahead and suggest the next villain team.

Or maybe he got an endorsement deal with an off-brand roomba(tm) clone.

I suppose falling damage would be another close rule to look at. One consideration is that KB is instantaneous, falling velocity is per segment, and movement is per phase, so a hex of one is not exactly like 1" of another. (I've occasionally thought it'd be a good idea to standardize all movement on inches/segment.) I like the move-through and casual STR suggestions. Though it's slightly odd that a character making a concerted attack like a move through may do less damage to the wall than if he just crashed into it accidentally.

Giants were opponents of the Gods in both Norse and Greek (the Titanomachy) mythologies, so those are places to look for inspiration. In one setting I used, giants were an "elder race," slowly vanishing from the world, leaving behind ruins and cryptic monuments, and represented in the present by isolated individuals wielding strange powers that might be magic or technology, holding onto ancient fears, grudges, ambitions, or just habits, with tired monomaniacal zeal.

I totally wanted to do the original, but I thought 8 characters was too much to ask.

Before actually reading the thread, my knee-jerk thought on orcs was "Blame Tolkien" ..now, having read it... The Last time I thought deeply about orcs I was a teen designing my first D&D world. I was up in arms over the anachronisms permeating the game and the sophomoric ways players would try to abuse middle-school-science-class-factoids to get 'creative' results out of spells &c. So I quite sophomorically created a world that actually ran on unscientific beliefs. It was flat, for a start. Humors, miasma, Aristotelian physics.... So everything was made of the 4 classical elements in various combinations. Humans were balanced, elves lacked fire, and dwarves air, for instance. Getting to orcs, now: in the grey/drow war vaguely alluded to in 1e AD&D, the drow took elven prisoners, alchemically infused them with an excess of fire and created the violent, fecund, short-lived race of orcs, and bred, trained, and acculturated them for use as expendable troops. So, they were essentially evil, violent, destructive and rapacious, as a matter of essence, their elemental make-up and accursed origin. (It came out in the course of the 10-year campaign that followed that the grey elves had done the same thing, treating captured drow with balanced infusions of fire to create their own warrior-race, humans.)

Oh of course, your intent was clear. It's just what the name immediately suggested to me, because of my first impression being of Power Man (and yes, I even liked the costume they made fun of in the Luke Cage TV show - at the time, I plead the 70s) .... ...and I suspect it's hard to come up with an unironically heroic-sounding name for what you had in mind, anyway... ...though, it just occurred to me: Justice Warriors could be exemplars of "Warrior-style Policing" given super soldier serum or something. As usual, while it's varied with editions that I haven't been able to keep them straight for the last 30 years, Hunteds are pretty serious 'harshly punish'/imprison, kill, that sort of thing. Watched is good one fort the situation that I had I forgotten about, though.

Oh yes, I'm quite familiar, and thought I'd wade into it, once again, since I hadn't recalled seeing it brought up as a way of discouraging actions (often, as in D&D, it's a way of avoiding a bad rule to keep the game playable, sometimes, even in games like Hero, it's a way of shaving points by not paying for "things we'll just RP through anyway") - and since it was easier and more on topic to address. Punishing a player for straying into undesirable actions by changing resolution from rules/description/imagination/tokens to live-action calculated to make him distinctly uncomfortable has problems on other levels to. Not that players pushing the campaign out of it's intended thematic range is any better, in the first place. ;( That's my feeling - and has been my experience from both sides of the screen - and it goes further than that, IMHO, because for the whole range of character concepts and actions, at least on the TT side of the hobby, resolution can be handled abstractly, with rules, descriptions, imagination, with nothing more concrete than moving a painted mini on a play surface, some gesticulation, a little onomatopoeia. That means we can play characters very different from ourselves, which I think is one of the great things about our hobby, we get to live in other times, places, bodies, and, well, roles.

I like to keep my normals normal - 0 pts + maybe a minor psych lim or something, a few points moved around. A (one, singular) professional skill is enough to be a professional and have an ordinary career. I guess that's kinda old-school. But it means a background or secret id concept doesn't need to eat up a lot of points, so you can be what you want without being less super.

So, by leveraging the players' presumed homophobia? .... OK, keeping my nerd hat on, and not trying to peel that onion, I'll move on to amature RPG design theory, and ask, why would seduction - or any other PRE skill - go to live-action resolution? If you don't want the player fighting a certain DNPC, do you pull out the rattan & duct tape? It seems dreadfully common, even in comparatively complete systems, like Hero, to just toss the resolution mechanics when it comes to social scenes. It's always bothered me.

Here's another old saw: Choose your enemies wisely, for it is they you will come most to resemble.

In the fake-reformed villain trope the answer is obvious, since the good being done is just to set up greater evil, and the evil being done by the heroes the minimum possible to try to expose them. But in the rival hero teams posited by the OP, there's just good people, doing good, but unwilling to accept that because of their prejudices against eachother. Oh, and on the topic of conflicting old saws: All that is required for evil to win is for good people to do nothing. More evil gets done in the name of righteousness than any other way.