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CrosshairCollie

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Everything posted by CrosshairCollie

  1. Me, I just wondered why Standard Effect is 3 points a die instead of 3.5, which would be the actual mathematical average. Obviously, 3 per die is easier to compute without a calculator, but c'mon, we make Champions characters, of COURSE we have calculators!
  2. Heh ... All the old mathematical conundrums on this one. How much is Infinity plus one? This is one of the reason I'm glad Champions doesn't have 'infinite' or 'absolute' powers. No 'total invulnerability' or 'can cut through anything's.
  3. Shocking! Hmm ... well, if quite literally every villain the PC team is going to encounter over the next 4 adventures or so is going to be packing someone with electrical attacks AND knows exactly who to use them against, you might want to go ahead and boost the Frequency of electrical attacks on his Disads, akin to the 'Silver isn't that common, no, but I'm a WEREWOLF. Everybody knows silver hates werewolves!' theory. What you do with the 'extra' Disad points is up to your style, though.
  4. E.V.I.L. XP I also give XP to the villains, though how I spend it depends on the villain. The dullards do more of the 'cover the weakness that directly got me beaten' technique, though smarter villains often try to get a new power that capitalizes on a weakness of the heroes who beat them, or cover some other weakness. Imagine the look on their faces when Power Crusher (a 4th Ed villain with strength and lots of no-range Drains and Transfers through gauntlets) threw a lightning bolt at a flyer who was certain he was safe! However, maybe I'm being overzealous here, but I give my villains about 10 XP per appearance, unless they're going to be appearing in consecutive games, then I trim it back to 5. It seems like a lot, but after 2 or 3 games, odds are, win or lose, that villain (or team) isn't going to be seen for a bit, and the PCs will have gained even more XP than that.
  5. Oh yeah .. A nice fresh chunk of cheese for Embarassing Moments. Game I was in earlier this week (how could I forget this?), the GM trusted everybody to make their own characters, make them fair, make them good, etc etc (Cue all board browsers responding: "THE FOOL!") Well, of the six players, only two of us had noncombat skills besides a simple PS. One nimrod, the focus of our story, didn't name his character. "I wanna do that thing where the media or my opponent gives me a cool name based on my powers and what I do!" I suspect he wasn't imaginative enough to come up with one, and wanted us to do it. This guy, however, had an AREA EFFECT DAMAGE SHIELD. He thought that meant he was surrounded by a field of energy and nobody could go near him without frying ... but the ruling was that anybody could hit him, but the Damage Shield would go off in the Area Effect when he was hit. So, in short order, someone with a good STR wanders up and belts him. *BOOM* He goes flying back. Into a cluster of teammates who haven't gone yet. *BOOM* Heroes scatter like bowling pins. Oh, and it's a KILLING PENETRATING damage shield on top of it, so various and sundry Enrageds were triggered (actually just one, but everybody else got ticked off at the damage and wailed in on the guy anyway) and the other guy who made a character instead of a wad of points was out cold and nearly dead (he likes lightly-armored fast martial-artsy types). I just threw the other guy over my shoulder and walked out of the battlesite, since we'd basically lost before we got started. This, of course, gave me the perfect chance to talk to the media first. His name was 'Captain Brain Damaged Inbred Dip.' More amusing, to me, was that I mentioned to the GM, offhandedly, that since that was an Area Effect power, and he didn't by personally immune, that he was affected by it just like everybody else ... Result: Villains win, heroes do more damage to the battlesite than all the villains combined. Ironically, the last one standing was Explosion Man ... who my character, in full view of the media from every local station, casually KOed from 40' away with a laser gun, and the headline quote: "THAT'S for having a stupid super-power." I 'encouraged' the GM to review the characters more closely in the future.
  6. Intriguing ... Were I GMing this, I'd require some examples of 'Malicious Intent'. For instance, are the following people 'Malicious': People who think fighting is fun? He's not trying to hurt you, just getting a few kicks. A Zen Master, nigh emotionless, fighting you? A bounty hunter for whom killing you isn't a pleasure, just business? Does it require 'intent for bodily harm', or is someone pulling their punches and trying not to injure you immune? If it weren't 3am, I'd probably think of more, but you get the idea.
  7. Hmmm ... I'm guessing what you're trying to create are 'super-skills', for lack of a better term. For instance, the Batman Teleport-when-nobody's-looking thing (Teleport, RSR: Stealth, other limits), or invisibility to sound, RSR Stealth (SNEAK LIKE NINJA!), and that sort of thing. I'd go for a 1/2 limitation, because it's insanely versatile, but still limited (You can't, say, actually teleport or actually turn invisible, and most attacks are right out).
  8. The theoretical problem with assigning a disad to 'how other people treat you' is that's kind of forcing other people's actions on them. Distinctive Features are just 'there'. The Thing has 20 or 25, and people do tend to be very afraid of him because he's big and scary looking. Would he get a social limitation for it also? Besides, not everybody would react the same way, even ignoring blind people. Wouldn't that depend more on the Psych Lims/personality of the people around the character? Rather than body/mind, I usually use the 4th Edition variant for Physical/Psychological LImitations: Physical is something you *can't* do. Psychological is something you *won't* do. So Social is ... something people do to you?
  9. Confusion This might not be the right place, but I have to admit, 'Social LImitation' is something I don't quite ... grasp. Especially looking at the Master List page. Just on the first page (the As and Bs), I see things I'd call other kinds of Disads: Always Angry And Hostile: Psych Lim Amnesia: Phys or Psych Lim (depending on if it's due to injury or hysteria). Atavism: Distinctive Features Bigmouth/Braggart: Psych Lim Bounty: Hunted (the party is still responsible for hindering/harming the PC, even if it's through a third party). I've read the book, but I still don't get just what a social limitation is. It seems more like a responsiblity you accept, like it or not (Secret ID/Public ID, joining the military to become Subject To Orders). But I'm not sure where the 'line' is ...
  10. Wrestling ... A lot of it depends on whether or not you're going to make your wrestlers pretend to be fighting, like the real WWE, or actually have them pummelling each other for real. If it's just pretend, well, really, just make some Acting rolls and PS: Wrestler and maybe Oratory and you're done. If it's intended to be actual combat, then I figure ... Pin: It's a Grab on a prone opponent (you also become prone). If they're unconscious, you don't have to really worry about the hold being broken unless they wake up in mid-count. Submissions: I have seen submissions that purportedly knocked the opponent out (Sleepers, Million Dollar Dream), which would be NNDs, but most of them (Boston Crab) would likely just be the effects of applying Strength or a Crush-style maneuver after a Grab. You can submit to avoid suffering Body damage, if that much is being doled out. 'Wear Down': Back in the day, wrestlers actually, y'know, wrestled rather than punching and kicking. Classic Bret Hart and Mr. Perfect kinda stuff. One of the things I did with a 'technical wrestler' character was having a Strength Drain that only applied to one limb, had to be targetted, etc, to represent wearing down that part of the body (an arm to prevent damage, a leg to reduce mobility, etc.). Finishers: Bonus Damage Dice (however you feel like doing it ... Combat Levels to Damage or a limited Strength bonus) with performing one particular maneuver. For instance, I'd call the Rock Bottom a Sacrifice Throw (since Rock goes down at the same time). But there's lots of other visuals for Sac. Throw. So, take, say, +4d6 damage (+20 STR), only to Sacrifice Throw, then put a limitation on it like lots of END or some 'inaccurate' limit so it's not something you'd want to do all the time. For a submission finisher like a Figure-Four or Sharpshooter, put the limit on that you have to be grabbing the legs. That sorta thing. Just my two cents. Just don't forget to give all the Referees 5 Ego, 5 Intelligence, and the 'Gullible' and 'Poor Vision' Disadvantages.
  11. My greatest moment ... There used to be a little con run by the gaming group on the nearby college campus every year (I both played and ran at it a lot). One year, since this was back in 4th Edition days, the six player slots were filled by ... The Champions! I think Starburst and Crusader were available if the Champs were filled and more people showed, but we got six. Always having an affinity for the animal-looking heroes, I chose Jaguar. The opposition was Project: Sunburst. Sunburst, Ray, Radium, and Armadillo. Now, I may not get all the details right, so bear with me, it's been a while and I don't have my Classic Enemies with me. But this is what I remember ... Ray went first. He promptly attacked me with his claws, and with minimal rPD, I took body. Ray goes *Berserk* at the sight of blood. Meanwhile, the Body was high and the Knockback dice low, so I went sailing backwards ... directly into Sunburst, to the total of, I think, 15d6 of Knockback, doing enough damage to Stun him. Meanwhile, Ray attacks whomever happens to be closes to him ... which turns out to be Radium. He cuts open Radium's suit, so he starts combusting and taking damage. Radium stays up about two more phases before falling over and radiation leaking all over the place. While he's stunned, his Force Field is down, so Sunburst becomes easy prey for a Quantum-Obsidian teamup. Defender wraps up Ray with a Bolo-thing, and Solitaire and Seeker slap him senseless in short order. Which leaves 5 Champions to dogpile on 1 Armadillo. To which, all I could say was ... "I have accomplished more in defeat than most superheroes do in victory!"
  12. Conversions ... Conversions here seem pretty difficult because of the way that most V'n'V powers just do set things. All characters with Power Blast deal the same damage, all characters with Fire Powers deal the same damage and have the exact same 'power applications' ...
  13. Powers A good point made about Bond, etc, is that if Goldfinger has his hand on the switch to activate the chosen-destructive-device from across the room, Bond doesn't have much choice other than to pull out his Walther PPK and cap GF in the head, because he's Heroic Level. Superheroes, however, almost *always* have options. Batarang-bola, webshooter, super-speed, mind control, telekinesis, illusion. Can't stop the bomb, they can outrace the bomb, absorb the energy, a variety of things. With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility and Many Options. This is particularly true in the Hero System, where it's usually faster and easier to knock someone out over killing them (unless they just don't have much resistance). But I'm not talking about 'heat of battle', where the 'kill or be killed' thing can come into play. I'm referring to 'villain is down, let's kill him while he's helpless'. You can't call self-defense, because he's not threatening anybody while he's out cold. Admittedly, my Silver Age sensibilities have seeped into every other game I've played ('My Crinos Garou is going to punch out the Black Spiral Dancer' 'Your claws ...' 'Not claws. Punch.'). My Fantasy characters try to take people alive whenever possible, and I don't let people whack the guys affected by my sleep spells. My last Cyberpunk character used drugged-up flechettes to KO people. You get the idea. I think I'm going to go along with the 'If Captain America or Superman wouldn't tolerate having you around' theory, since that's a lot more open than many people think. Hawkeye's really abrasive. Quicksilver and the Scarlet Witch were both former criminals. Wonder Man plotted with Baron Zemo to kill the Avengers. Iron Man's insubordinate. Tigra's a colossal flirt. And I just realized how stupid it'd be to try to list all the Avengers, so I'm stopping there.
  14. Cybernetic? The last game I was in where 'cybernetic' was a limitation applied it in a very interesting way ... effectively, your body became the focus. It was a -1/4 limitation, and whenever you took Body damage (in the days when foci were more susceptible to being damaged), you randomly checked for a 'broken' power. Games with the Hit Locations charts laid out where the powers were ('Forearm shot, got your popup blaster'). There was also phys lims available if dismantling/damaging/removing the Cybernetics caused severe problems (Wolverine and his metal skeleton wouldn't; Cable and his cyber-arm would).
  15. Burn out ... I feel this pain, too. I'm virtually wallowing in it. My group meets every week (barring emergencies, etc), and I run 2.5-3 of them. Not just Champions, but always something. Superheroics is my favorite genre, but I'm always running it, never playing it. The rest of the 'core' group ... Player A: My wife. Not particularly proficient with the Hero System. Tried it before, but had trouble 'prepping' villains and NPCs. Player B: Too insecure to run *anything*. Player C: Superheroes aren't his 'thing', though he still plays and has fun. Runs the other 1-1.5 times, fantasy genre. Player D: Just not that good at running. He's improving, but he can't grasp the character creation system of Silver Age Sentinels d20, so Hero System is a bit beyond him. I actually find Hero creation easier because you don't have those PMV/Progression tables to reference constantly, but that's me. But I digress. I'm about ready to just say, 'I'm not running for a month, someone else do it'.
  16. Sapphire ... First off, someone has to die from that pun. I must admit, I don't like *any* of the new Champions as much as their 4th Edition Counterparts (I suppose Defender didn't change much, but I preferred his old armor!). Seeker had more personality in his non-resistant-PDed pinky than Nighthawk. The concept of someone using their powers simultanously both for good and for fame isn't too common, though, that I'm aware of (Public ID in a world with Mechanon BAD ). Besides, if you want to punish her for vanity, just let her get hit in the face with a Killing Attack or something. Or create a new magic weapon, The Ugly Stick (Hand Attack with linked COM drain). Then find out if she's just in it for the fame, or if she's serious about it. PLOT HOOK!
  17. Points, Counterpoints. So far, I like 350. I was in a campaign ... heck, several really ... based on 250, 4th Ed. NOBODY had inherent, full-time powers. Everybody was Focussed or Hero-IDed, because you had to shave those points if you wanted to have more than six points of Background/Noncombat Skills. This was fine for people who just like playing combat wombats, but I've always had a flare for scientists, which takes a fair chunk more. This also frees up some points for appropriate perks and Senses and other things that lots of people *should* have had, but just couldn't squeeze in. At 350, I recommend (I'm loosening up on 'hard requirements' for characters) 10 percent of the points to be spent on non-combat skills/perks/talents. Despite what one nimrod seems to think, Breakfall is not a noncombat skill, but that's another story. Another thing to consider, though ... if someone can slap their entire character together on 250 points, let him. If he takes more than 50 points of Disads, write the excess on his sheet as 'Mystery Powers' and drop them on him when you come up with something good. But, above all, make people stay in concept! In almost any point-based system, it's possible to create a character who can do anything ("What's your guy do?" "He's a Brick/Speedster/Martial Artist/Psychic/Blaster/Mystic!" "You have a Variable Power Pool, don't you?"), that's not likely to be your concept. Yes, Captain America might be better off in many cases if he carried around a laser rifle, but then it wouldn't be Cap, it'd be some guy with a shield and laser rifle. Hmm ... something else that occurs to me is that Jacks Of All Trades, as it were, are the proverbial 'Masters of None' as well. Someone who focusses on particular traits/abilities/techniques will be better at them than a flyby-night wannabe. Furthermore, in honor of what happened in my first Champions campaign, there's always 'The Set Syndrome'. Set was a brick ... at first ... eventually, he worked his way up to a whopping 32 or so Dex. So he was really strong, really tough, and really *fast* ... and being the most dangerous sucka on the team, he invariably got mass-targetted and flattened first by everything the opposition could muster, usually in a Flash or Entangle followed by a gigantic Coordinated Attack.
  18. This is something that's come up a couple of times in games I've been in, and I'm curious what other people do. Moreso than in other games, Champions games have 'lines' ... standards of moral/ethical behavior that characters are expected to not cross. The most obvious one is the 'No Killing, CVK or not' line. I'm wondering what you guys do when someone crosses that line. Do you simply stop them, saying as I did once, 'No, that's not kosher' and deny them the action, or do you let them go through with it and get in In-Character (IC) trouble? I'm torn between letting the PCs have free will with their characters, and knowing that someone could take my NPCs reactions to their line-crossing action as being 'vindictive' or 'singling them out'. The people I play with know my tendencies. If one were to apply an era tag to my Champions games, it would be Silver Age. They should all know this by now, and yet, there are still ... issues. How do you think I should handle it? Refuse to let the action occur, or let them deal with the consequences of being 'in-character', even though they may take it as being 'out-of-character'?
  19. Taking the thread title literally ... I was witness to this, not actively involved. Had I been in the game, I would have been laughing too hard to play anyway. A kind of psycho character had the infamous 'Enraged when Takes Body Damage', representing the wounded-animal-going-apeslag response that the typical comic-book psycho has. Well ... one time, this guy ran into someone with a Penetrating Killing Attack Damage Shield (I think the guy was porcupine-y) and didn't realize what it was until he punched the guy. Damage Shield did Body Damage, of course, and the psycho started going nutzoid, punching away at the guy who set off is Enraged, taking more Body, and never getting to recover. The guy literally killed himself on the villain's Damage Shield because he couldn't calm down.
  20. I was kind of annoyed/upset about some of the altered origins and the like in CKC myself, so I know whatcha mean. On the other hand, I like Scorpia and Feur better than I liked White Flame and Pantera, so I'm not sure what to do. Anyway, what I was thinking was that, after being in that battlesuit for as long as he was, especially with the stress he had to have been feeling at the time of 'death', somehow the brain-wave engram readers in the cybernetic battlesuit absorbed/copied his whole brain pattern instead of just being an 'extension' of his body. The Armor now *is* Muerte. Of course, Muerte won't want to admit he's dead, so he'll never take his helmet off now. There's all sorts of fun limitations he could get (like a BODY Susceptibility to being convinced that he's dead!).
  21. Unluck Storytime! I think Unluck will be the beaut of this thread. Anyway, I wasn't in this game, but boy did I hear about it. The team was a government task force. Most of them I can't remember, save for the Mentalist, who was a pyrophobic, and a robotic dog. This Mentalist had 4d6 of Unluck. Well, the game had been going really smoothly, so while the team was doing some shots on a pier, the GM had the player roll it. Four 1s. While I think the GM might have been a *little* overzealous, it was still amusing. A stray shot hit a docked speedboat, which blew up its gas tank and set the dock on fire. The Mentalist was now surrounded by fire. The Robotic Dog, being somewhat heavy, then fell through the pier and sank like a rock and started taking damage from a 'submerged' Susceptibility. Somehow, *everybody* got shafted by that. And that player swore, and stuck to that vow, NEVER to take Unluck again.
  22. SMT Of course, given Supermegatopia's unique population structure, it wouldn't necessarily be that unusual to actually find a Rat in a Cape.
  23. Oh, goodness, where to start? This wasn't a Champs game, but it was Supers. A villainess had bribed some college frat guys into being 'thugs' for her, basically, and they ripped off an SUV and drove it into the middle of college as a distraction while she got what she was after. The Team Telepath gets into the driver's head, and starts screaming 'Stop the car', then someone inside shouts 'step on it!' over and over, so the car stop-start-stop-starts. Eventually, the driver just screams 'That's IT', gets out, and shoots both driver's side tires. This car is not going *anywhere*, between two flats and being on dirt. Blaster Guy (not his real character name) decides to start shooting the car, despite the lack of necessity. The other teammates flatten the thugs, so they're not going to get away, and he's *still* shooting the car. First shot caves in the side. Second one SCISSORS IT IN HALF. And he's still shooting. "Why are you still shooting it?" "I'm trying to get it to explode!" "Why?" "So they can't escape in it!" "It's BROKEN IN HALF, and they're all UNCONSCIOUS!" "But I wanna blow it up!" One of the other players, and characters, also realized that blowing up the car would likely mean setting a building or two on fire, to say nothing of likely KILLING THE THUGS, so she proceeded to cover the car with a Force Wall. And the player kept trying to blast through the Force Wall. While the PCs were 'fighting' one another, the Villain got away.
  24. Powers that make you go '$*@(?' Two of my favorites were things people did on speedsters: Taking Personal Immunity on Running, so that they didn't suffer backlash damage from Move-Throughs/Move-Bys, and putting Invisibility to Sound on it, so they wouldn't hear you running or whooshing. "No, that's Extra PD, or armor, or Force Field with a limitation, and Invisibility or Images to sound." "But this is cheaper." "What's your point? That just makes it more *wrong*." My other is Accidental Change when you don't have another form allocated via Multiform, Shapeshift or the like. One guy had an Accidental Change into a falcon 14- when he was captured or tied up or the like. (He had no other even *remotely* related powers, so it was obviously twinking). I was feeling vindictive, so I let it go. He promptly got entangled, and it triggered. "Okay, roll your accidental change." "A 12, I changed. Now I'm free, and I'll ..." "Actually, since you didn't pay any points to actually have a form with stats, you turned into an ordinary bird, which means you're scared silly, and after leaving a pile of (censored) on the pavement, you start flying away as fast as your wings can carry you." "That's not fair!" "Neither is taking a disadvantage that doesn't fit your concept, and is illegal because you don't have another form to change into. Now, you're away from the stimulus for your change, so we roll *clatter* and you change back. I think falcons can reach altitudes of a mile or better ..." "But I can't fly!" "Pity you don't actually have a falcon form, isn't it?" Quite mean of me, but he had it coming. His whole character was like that ... not a character, just a pile of points.
  25. Velocity Defense One of my old rules of thumb for conditional limitations was that a 1/4 should cause you some hassle about 1 in every 4 games, a 1/2 every other game, and a -1 every game, give or take. And given that, by his very career choice, a super will be attacked virtually every game, the fact that some of his defenses won't defend against someone else clobbering him with a tractor would be worth a -1, I'd say.
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