Mephron

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease It pretty much worked that way, yes. The character wasn't going to die, but was going to be out of action for an extended period of time. I found out about the entire situation returning with some Chinese, and, well, Balabanto said what happened later. I rolled with it, and I'm going to honestly say it revitalized the character, making her more fun to play post-gender-change.

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease The PC's gender changed, basically. That was the primary big difference physically. There's more that happened, but I don't want to mess up Balabanto's NDA. Frankly, we need him to get published so he can buy his own pizzas. (He's eaten an entire sausage pizza, by himself, and not noticed it. It's scary.)

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease The gadgeteer in question was at the time known as 'Gomi-no-Sensei', or just Gomi to most people. (I say 'at the time' because, due to another PC deciding that they could use the character's gadget pool without having the gadgeteeriing skill, or the inventor skill, or even some of the relevant complementary skills, the character is now called 'Gadget Queen'. Frankly, I could turn my PC into a vigilante supervillian taking out those who misuse technology with very little argument.) And by the time Gomi found out about the fact that Shadow Lord had given the technology out, it was already being used for medical applications. The counteragent Gomi created also required touch contact - it was an injectable. Warstar's most powerful advancement was making it airborne, which Gomi had worked out was possible, but had too many possible side-effects to make worth the danger to others. Finally: Hugh, why is funding education in third-world companies with a lot of money, raising their educational standard, not heroic? If you want them to increase their standard of living, education is one of the major starting points. As I said, first you teach them how to do things, then you introduce the technology to them. Anything else is creating a cargo cult or a client state. Changing the world, in the Gadget Queen's eyes, is a long-term project. The adults may not be the ones to improve the world, but the children will. In a way, this is one of the larger disconnects in the game: some people want the world to change immediately, to be better and shinier overnight. Other people want to change the world, but think it takes time to make those changes self-sustaining in the parts of the world that need to be improved most, using the power of education to bring them up. Shadow Lord is the first camp. Gadget Queen is the other camp.

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease Are you honestly being that completely bald-faced mad about this? An alien technology is released with no controls AND the seeds of its own annihilation included into the data pool of humanity, with the person releasing that knowing all of this, and we're not supposed to worry about the misuses? I don't think it's heroic to just TOSS it out for anyone to use without knowing side-effects that wouldn't be seen through the relative short-term local use. No idea about it's pollutive effects, no idea about environmental impacts, no idea about what long-term changes it may give to humans... it's between foolish and idiotic to just LET IT OUT THERE. Once there's a reasonable margin of safety, yes. But just throwing it out is irresponsible, because there's a lot of world out there. The character was planning on doing work, but once it was set out for the world to use... continued to do work on it, trying to unlock all the secrets of it to insure safety. Unfortunately, my character lacked the resources of an entire high-tech nation to do the work, which Warstar, the uber-villain, had. In the meantime, the gadgeteer's own personal inventions were used to create new nonlethal and purely restraining weaponry for conflicts, improved body-armor for police officers and troops, and fund numerous charitable organizations that worked in those third-world countries to teach them sustainable actions to raise their level of living. Things like a rollout of a low-maintenance fusion cell that could be used was planned for the future, once there were people who COULD do the research. Just giving people things doesn't work. The concept for a lot of the stuff that was being done was "give a man a fish, he'll eat for a day; teach a man to fish and he'll be eating every day". If you give them a fusion cell, they'll draw power from it. If it breaks, everything they built falls apart. If you teach them how to maintain it, then... if it breaks and they don't have a tool, then everything they build falls apart. If you teach people the underpinnings and create an infrastructure, then if it breaks... they fix it. Or make a new one. or come up with something BETTER. But if you think just tossing high-tech out is the cure to the world, go read up on cargo cults and leave me alone.

Re: I Need A Gadget If you want to keep the hand motif, how about a gauntlet? 35 Turbo-Gauntlets (52 point reserve Multipower), all slots OIF (-1/2) 3u Turbo Blast Energy Blast 6D6, Double Knockback (+3/4) (52 active points) 1u Hardened Knuckles Hand-To-Hand Attack +3D6 (15 active points), Hand-to-hand attack (-1/2) 6m Turbo Propulsion Flight 20", x4 Noncombat (45 active points) 8 Turbo-Gauntlet Power Pack Endurance Reserve (50 END, 5 REC) (10 Active points); OIF Gauntlets (-1/2).

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease He believes that all information should be free for all, and therefore put it into the public domain immediately after the threat of the aliens who brought the technology to Earth was dealt with. This caused a great deal of strife between characters which has driven a lot of plot forwards. Shadow Lord's release of this information this caused a number of third-world nations to develop the alien nanotechnology to increase their standard of living. Then the world-conquerer Warstar released the counteragent for the nanotechnology's power source - which my character created, and put into the notes that were given to the other heroes, so they could fight the aliens effectively - as an airborne counteragent, crashing that tech base, causing riots, and killing at least one thousand people using experimental medical versions of that nanotechnology. (My gadgeteer, whose stated goal is "make the world a better, safer place" went LIVID when he heard about this.) This character has godmodded more than a few times - he was a vampire, then he wasn't; he was a Senator until he was revealed as a vampire, which meant he couldn't legally hold US office; he started his own cable network on supers and ran a reality-TV show that caused a huge amount of problems for a number of PCs, including revealing a PC's secret ID to the world (and there's more than a couple people who think that it was done as a way to get ratings). He's just the worst offender at this time. He's also one of the oldest and longest-played PCs in the game, and beyond the power level of any single super to take down. Getting an entire team to do it would be hard, and there's no obvious crime there to stop him. The other character came out of nowhere with 15 points of Wealth. Apparently it was gotten by corporate raiding. I talked about it for a while with Balabanto, and I think we're going to see some stuff with that in the next arc of that campaign - when you raid corporations, someone's going to be a bit twitchy and angry, and I think that someone's going to be a major opponent in the next arc.

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease Some heroes do think that shanking the asshole in the alley isn't going to solve problems. I happen to play one of them with my gadgeteer. Now, mentioning the horrible lack of sense of humor he's showing to my 11- Contact MerryAndrew The Foolmaker (Leader of CLOWN), that may be more up the line. Except the PC has also been shown to go completely nonlinear when horribly embarrassed, and watching them be slaughtered by him would probably ruin him, but also result in people dying that I'd prefer not to see die. And he probably would try to kill them all; the player has said that the PC has become more dark and a bit villainous in his methods (which means that hopefully he'll slip up and we'll catch him and legally kick his ass into Tomorrowland). But my gadgeteer has sighed and decided that he can manipulate the legal system just like he manipulated the press, and until something can be done to make his trouble obvious, I just need to sit and wait for him to buy the wrong thing. (Actually, a third PC has information that will bring his world crashing down when it's revealed, but no one else knows about it yet.)

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease The issue with the Player #3 type is that he does things and then goes, "I should be able to do that, I have Wealth", when it's more for things that he doesn't have the XP to buy right away. Also, I openly admit part of my issue is that one of his characters used his Wealth to buy lawyers to defeat one of my characters in a lawsuit, after he took my gadgeteer's research on the alien nanotech and put it out on the Internet for anyone to use... including my character's derivative research on how to shut down the nanotechnology. He had the ability to insulate himself from the repercussions of supervillian technology curve boosting and used it to his fulest extent, and that, sir, irritates me tremendously. He uses his wealth to shield himself from plot hooks. Another issue is one of the oldest PCs in the game, who runs an aerospace corporation in the Secret ID and is a beloved hero in powered armor. Another PC showed up about three years ago, also powered-armor, same level of Wealth, similar motif in corporation. There are a few times when you just shake your head and go "...why?" and this was one of them. There was no reason for a new PC to go stepping on that character's toes. (The fact the new hero is now agitating to raise INT to my gadgeteer's based on 'well, I came up with all this stuff', and the new hero's INT is the same as the old power-armor character's INT apparently notwithstanding. This person is currently on a shortlist of people I have considered writing a "why this person needs to go from our Champions game" essay to Balabanto about.) (Hell, my Gadgeteer's corporation has a branch that is basically "a bunch of smart guys sit around and wait for people to bring them a question, which costs $5 million to answer, no matter the question". I see this as deliberately NOT stepping on toes, and trying to work in the gameworld, instead of setting up a conflict through OOC knowledge during character creation.) A great deal of it really does become us going, OOCly, "why do you need that?" and the answer being "...because." We'd like a better answer than just "Because." I had some great RP with the leader of my gadgeteer's team, because my gadgeteer FUNDS that team, but doesn't think she can lead worth beans and therefore doesn't do any leadership things. But when one of the people on the team performed a MAJOR screwup, she had to go and say, "Listen, I stay out of team politics because I don't want to be seen as undermining you as team leader, but I do fund this team, and we have to deal with this." It made some good RP, totally based on my character having the Wealth to fund a superteam. It CAN be done, but there are people who expect to just be able to wave their hand and their Wealth magically does things. And that's a problem, because they forget that in a modern world, Wealth is just as much a power as Flight or Energy Blast, and they refuse to remember the Parker Lesson Of Powers.

Re: Richest Man in the World Disease I play in Balabanto's game, and he's going to be mickle annoyed at me a tad, I think. The prime motivator for a lot of this is, really, one or two players. They insist in having characters who are the ne plus ultra, the best of the best, the top of the top. One of them has a character who owns an entire top-tier cable network; another character of the same player is a minor European noble with luck powers who is, for all intents, almost unstoppably rich. (He's also famous, handsome, and photogenic, which is why he doesn't get thrown out gambling places; he's good PR.) I have a character who I spent some points on Wealth (2) on to represent the ability to rent a three-bedroom apartment on the East Side (not even the Upper West Side!) of Manhattan and be a 'consulting occultist'. Another has zero and is in fact has 'poor' as a disad, after lawsuits and government problems based on a lab equipment failure that some crusading journalist blamed on her as an accident. A third, a gadgeteer, has bought 10 points of Wealth over the years, just to deal with the side effects of being just about the smartest person on Earth, and a compulsive inventor. Part of the wealth is actually being used for ANOTHER PC'S BACKGROUND. (He's a hero/extreme sports type, and the corporation the gadgeteer runs is one of the character's sponsors.) I'm going to briefly quote from the rules in the Sidekick here, which I have easily at hand: It doesn't indicate EITHER WAY whether this is before or after you 'upkeep your equipment' or 'train' or whatever. The rule is a bit wobbly when you get down to it. I think a lot of it comes down to interpretation. Balabanto and I have had a lot of rules debates/discussions/arguments over the myriad millenia of our existences, and this will continue to be one of them. But my feelings tend to me that the problem is that there are people who will go 'ooh, and WEALTH!' just for the shiny factor, over those who go 'and my concept needs me to have a bit more cash than most people, so I should grab a couple points of wealth to model that, even if it causes me some issues right now'. The problem is that those who go "ooh, shiny" are really very annoyingly shinychasing, and it drives those of us that more want it for the purposes of "well that explains x y and z on my sheet in a sane and rational manner" rather mad. I am one of those with the madness; Balabanto is as well, just a tad more that way. (Frankly, if Mind Over Matter goes the way it looks to go, we're going to have at least one of the Big Shiny PCs with most of his life in ruins when it's over, and since he's been a pain in the butt for years and years, I don't think a character of mine will cry.) And JUST to cover things: I was there for the Last Great Stronghold Breakout, when a superhero woke up a Malvan war-robot disguised as an ancient statue, and it went to find the nearest Malvan: Firewing. Who was, you guessed it, in Stronghold. That was a HELL of a fight, including Thok's still-record STUN negatives (martial artist Shoryuken's Thok, elevator falls on Thok, elevator falls on Thok again, The Monster falls on Thok and then the Elevator on them both, then the explosions), Giganto getting 2" of knockback with 1" of mesa left before he fell to the ground, and all the fun stuff. Not every supervillian gets out easily, y'understand. Except those damn Pomegrante Brothers....

Porn Hero! ....no.

Especially if you consider the appearance as described. It pretty much seems to be the Serpent Crown. Which is fun. As long as they keep out Viper-La, I'll be happy.

Last I looked, Cyclops's eyebeams just go straight out. Sure, he can use the visor to slap a cone advantage on them, but they're all based on him. Same with the Darkforce - the power itself is not chasing the person. The eyebeams there are more based on Darkseid from the DC Universe, who has the Omega Force - the eyebeams can follow anyone, anywhere, and eventually catches up... at which point it may destroy them or just teleport them.

Hmmm. My GM would never run this. Too much darkness in it. Not that he's against darkness, but this is the kind of stuff you find on Law and Order: Special Victims Unit, and not what you'd find in his campaign. That being said: Ultra Gadget Queen G: Medicine 16-. Neurosurgery 16-. Bioenergetics (the study of superpowers and how they work) 16-. Gadgeteering 20-. 72 point gadget pool. I'm sure you can do the math. Steel Thunder: Ponder whether the use of powers is an immoral act in and of itself, compared to the use of real children. Contact Gauntlet (team leader) and Psiclotron, team smartass and media hound... and media owner. Work out best way to give this information to the police anonymously, in order to insure that he is watched to make sure that he does not graduate from these energy-clones to real children. Bestiary: ...someone with self-control issues is not someone who bothers to do things like 'hold back' in situations like this. He'd have to deal with a creature that's as fast as a cheetah, with the claws of a tree sloth and the armor of an armadillo. She'd feel terrible afterwards

If you have a copy of the UNTIL Superpowers Database around (and if you don't, why not?!), check out the 'Luck Powers' section. She manipulates probabilities through chaos magic, and 'luck powers' are great for that. You might be able to do it as a MP with a Focus of Opportunity (OIF, -1/2). EB, RKA, Darkness, Flash, couple other things in it (like a Change Environment - in an old issue of Avengers, she helped fight a fire by casting a hex at a building that made the chance of new oxygen entering the building drop to 0%.) Putting in 'Variable Special Effect' may also be suitable or required by GM, as what you have to work with will vary. (Focus of Opportunity is such a great disad, really, for modeling things like this. I mean, it comes with limitations built into it like the fact that you have a maximum you can work with, and if you don't happen to have something useful for a particular power around you can't use it. But sometimes, it's better than VPP for making things like this work.) Oh, and my favorite Avenger? Hank Pym, when he's not being insane.

Hrm. This is hard... Dr. Destroyer: Dead Warstar: brain-dead Golden Avenger/Adolph Hitler: Dead The Drs. Pomegranite: oooh, we yell when they show up. Usually 'cause they have SCADS of genetically engineered agents to help, too. Vorpality: Warstar's former assassin, you can guess her special effect of her powers. Never Good to see. Master of VIPER Japan: 1200 point ninja. I think that really says it all. Damien and Peter Bose: we're waiting for them to come on stage. They're the twins that run the ARES Corporation. Which was formerly run by Adrien Bose, AKA Ares, God of War. Phobos and Deimos will, I expect, be making a move soon. Abraxis: humanoid human-size sperm whale with massive psi powers who is at least 75,000 years old, and who claims his people 'seeded' earth to allow it to create sentient lifeforms. The Zodiac: yes, the ones from 'Zodiac Conspiracy', rewritten for the game. Because of them, we got to put Foxbat into Stronghold! (Protective custody) DEMON is out there, VIPER is out there, VOICE is out there, the Lord of the Four Deaths is out there... we've got a lot of baddies, really, when you think about it.

In the game I play in, VOICE managed to take over half the world behind the scenes. THey took most of Asia and a good chunk of Africa over, forming them into an 'Alternate United Nations'. Lung Hung ran everything from behind the scenes. The only Asian country that didn't join the World League was Japan... which is where we came in. (Incidentally, I should note that this all happened as the result of my GM looking to re-cast VOICE in a less VIPER-ish form, and me lending him the Gatchaman OAV DVD. So I only have myself to blame.) My character in that campaign is a martial artist - well, an anime-style martial artist, with chi talents and uberleaping, and who is from Japan. While the Golden Avenger was busy turning the US against its superheroes (it was really Adolph Hitler in a new body - I'll tell that one later), our team went to Japan to use my character's contacts to learn the arts of stealth and disguise, to infiltrate and fight them. We're on the train from Hokkaido to Kobe (figured no one would be watching any of the airports in Hokkaido, and we were right) and that's when the VOICE Terror Weapon #4 showed up. A giant flying robot centipede. Which picked up the entire Shinkansen (bullet train). My character, Steel Thunder, leaped up, broke the window on the cockpit, and landed in the control room. A fight, as you might guess, broke out. When it was over, most of the team was busy keeping the train (which had been dropped when I knocked out one of the VOICE agents) from crashing and killing all the people aboard; the Centipede had flown a quarter-mile away and was crashing... and I had just knocked Graf von Grausum out of the cockpit window. Armor did not activate for my initial punch, and he was stunned for CON. Two teammates of mine tried to catch him: failed. He hit the ground, and his armor still didn't activate. Then the centipede landed on him and exploded, and it STILL refused to activate and he ended up dead. (STeel Thunder ended up at -11 BODY, too... and she's got a 12 BODY. I didn't dodge the explosion well EITHER.) Recently, another supervillian destroyed the World League (long long story ending with an all-out assault by most of Earth's heroes on his base), but all of VOICE is still there, in their base in Mongolia (which we're pretty sure they rule), and being eyed as people wonder... what words will VOICE next speak, to bring terror to the Earth?

I haven't been able to actually track down any Hellboy comics around here - I mean, not even the big NYC stores have the trades in stock any more! - but in the movie trailer (I know, I know), Abe touches a door, then says, "Behind this door... ancient evil!". In the comic, does he show any kind of psi talents or psychometry? (Incidentally, the response to taht moment is great: Hellboy cocking his pistol and saying, "Well, guess I better go say hi.")

I'll admit it: That joke I DIDN'T get. Can you explain it to me?

He-Man's strength can be easily calculated using the following formula: "How strong does he need to be to do the big strength thing this episode?" We've seen him trapped by rock and unable to escape, and then we see him throw stone towers into the sun.

In our campaign, someone sent out a spam: "DEFEAT ANY ENEMY! OUR NEW BOOK TEACHES YOU HOW!!" Then we beat up Bulldozer. And then he escaped. And he went to find the guy who was sending the spam. You guessed it.... Foxbat.

This is what I love about the current DC-based cartoons. There's little things that make the long-time readers crack up with the little references. For example, that one. I nearly wet myself laughing at the reference. And yes, the 'mutant kids' RFG was annoying, but hey! it was nice to see the voice actors for the Teen Titans working. (Ten/Cyborg, Jack/Beast Boy, King/Robin, Queen/Raven, Ace/Starfire - we checked.)

I'd go with the lockout from Clairsentience. If you could see AND use the sonar simultaneously, I'd say you could drop in the 'flashed as' lim.