Mendou

Re: Superman through the Ages Reborn I've been missing this site for some time now. It's a pleasure to read long-forgotten Superman stories, and a very good resource for plots should one desire to run a Golden Age or Silver Age campaign. Thank you for posting the link!

Re: Synonyms for Superheroes In an Orwellian setting I'm currently running in another system, people with superhuman abilities are called Anomalies. There's a severe negative connotation to the word, of course, and a lot of discrimination based on being one.

Re: Eurostar delayed! Pyrie's powers are destructive in nature, so saving anyone's life directly (as opposed to taking out the threat to the person's life) is more-or-less out of the question. She'd therefore have to concentrate on stopping Eurostar and hoping that her teammates can get the innocent bystander to safety/medical treatment. At the very least she'd try to keep Eurostar's members away from any civilians if at all possible.

Re: Making a character too efficient? Given that I think the version of the character I'm happiest with so far was built on 100+150 points, I'd agree with that sentiment. My character just needs to produce fire and do a couple of tricks with it; there's no reason that should require a Multipower, and in concept doesn't really need an EC either.

Re: The Everquest Taunt Honestly, I'd be tempted to build the Taunt as a Presence Attack, with additional PRE only for getting the enemies focused directly on you. That wouldn't be expensive at all, and you could then afford Invisibility without having to worry about being a mentalist otherwise.

When I first joined this board a couple of months ago, my first posts were asking for advice on a character concept I'd been working with for some time. I got some wonderful advice (and thanks to all who offered advice to a mostly-clueless poster), and redesigned Pyrie appropriately. However, I recently reconsidered the character sheet in relation to the character concept. I'd built a wonderfully efficient character with multiple attack powers concentrated in a Multipower and all sorts of neat abilities; however, I'm not sure that that was the character as originally conceived. So I revisited the character build, and came up with something much less efficient but a lot closer to the original concept. So my question is this: Has anyone gotten so carried away with the sheer possibilities of the system that their characters have ended up quite far from the original concept in the name of efficiency, and what do you do to avoid the temptation to get "full value for every point"?

Re: [Worst Ever...] Reasons to be a superhero "Because I can't afford an indestructible costume without the subsidies superheroes get, and when you suddenly burst into flame without warning, clothing gets expensive otherwise......"

Re: WWYCD: Mirror Universe Pyrie's counterpart in this world would be a spoiled Mafia princess who may have used her powers to enforce "Family values" from time to time. So all she'd really have to do is ask sweetly for Uncle Gino to call in a couple of favors--if she can actually convince anyone there that she's that world's Empiria Donati. Given Pyrie's temper and her habit of leaping before she looks, that's not happening ;; So probably her only option is throwing herself on the mercy of the authorities and trying to convince them that she's not from this world, and is in fact on the side of law & order. Her abrasive personality might actually come in handy for that, as she obviously doesn't have the social graces which come from growing up in a Mario Puzo novel

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine Wouldn't that be "witless protection"? ^_-

Re: Prisoner Exchange If the powers-that-be in charge of the good-guy side of the trade had any sense at all in the matter, Pyrie would be bound and gagged with fireproof bindings and left in the back of an armored vehicle so she couldn't do or say anything which would cause anyone to open fire. She's young, headstrong, and stupid enough to start trouble in that situation--or in any situation where diplomacy is called for.

Re: Halloween! Pyrie would try and make sure the chocolate didn't melt all over her costume as she consumed nigh-impossible amounts ;; As she's a seventeen-year-old with a body temperature of 200 degrees (or more) and a metabolism which has to keep up with both, she's probably going through chocolate like it's going out of style anyway......

Re: A DC Animated-style HeroMachine This is a bit of a detour from the main point of the thread, in that the image wasn't created in Fabrica de Herois. Instead, I scanned one of my sketches of Pyrie and converted it to pixel art--with rather more standard proportions than my avatar

Re: Theme song for characters There's only one problem I can see with giving each character a player-chosen theme song server-side: royalties. If you're uploading a professionally-recorded song to the server so that everyone who plays with your charcter can hear it, someone (probably Cryptic/2K) is going to have to come up with compensation for the original artist (and probably the composers/lyricists as well). Assuming even 20,000 players with five characters each, that would be one hundred thousand songs, each of which require some amount of payment to the creators of the music. At even $500 per song (lowballing the estimate by at least one order of magnitude!) that would be fifty million dollars in expenses for a feature which honestly wouldn't add all that much to the game...... Honestly, I see character theme songs as more a professional-wrestling concept than a superhero one. Maybe that's because my comics don't come with soundtracks, though ^_-

Re: Meta-Backgrounds The actual origin of Pyrie: I was in the process of preparing a superheroic setting for a campaign, and trying to recruit players, though at the time I didn't have a specific system in mind for said campaign. While describing the world to one potential player, I threw out a description of "Happy Shiny Flaming Death" as a possible character type. That description intrigued the potential player, though she decided not to play in the campaign. Later, while sketching character ideas, I came up with a sketch based on the earlier (rather catchy) character tag I'd mentioned. This sketch owed as much to the Superman Animated Series villain Livewire as to the original idea (or the Human Torch, who will always be the archetypal fire character), but was a start for the whole character-creation process. By this time I was running the superheroic setting, in which my players were playing villains of rather-unexpected power level (at least partially because I still hadn't decided on a system). I wanted to throw in a new heroic character, and turned to the basic concept mentioned above. I decided to tie the character to organized crime, and have her get her powers through her first interaction with her cousin from Atlantic City. Along the way her personality started to develop, and the "happy shiny" part got left by the wayside. So I ended up with a spoiled, hotheaded teenage girl with the power to throw balls of fire around, but who couldn't completely control her powers, and who was very durable--as she needed to be, since the first villain she encountered was a speedster who used bombs (and was not shy about body counts).

Re: You Are President! Pyrie is seventeen, so she's not qualified. Besides, I don't think anyone would want someone with a temper like hers to have the power to declare war...... ^_-

Re: WWYCD Political chaos! Pyrie has a slight advantage in this, as she's (barely) too young to vote. So she won't take quite so much flack from the frontrunner's party or from the media. (Assume for all of these that the evidence is being carried in a fireproof briefcase or other method which will prevent it burning up before she gets it to the authorities.) Situation 1: Pyrie swoops into the frontrunner's campaign headquarters (or wherever he happens to be at the moment) and grabs him, then flies out without a word and carries him to the nearest FBI office, where she drops him and the evidence off with a terse explanation. She probably waits until someone in authority has a chance to look at the evidence, then rushes off. Situations 2 & 3: Pyrie swoops into the frontrunner's present location, loudly accuses him of the crime to his face (in presence of the media, preferably live media), then carries him off to the nearest police station. There, she gives him and the evidence to officers (preferably ones she knows/trusts/has been arrested by), and sticks around long enough to explain the arrest. Situation 4: Pyrie lets herself into the frontrunner's hotel room after he's finished his public appearances for the day, armed with the evidence of the embarrassing situation. She pulls up a chair (blocking access to the door), waves the embarrassing report/photo/etc. in the frontrunner's face, and says "So, tell me about it. All about it." (evil grin in place, of course) If he's honest/persuasive enough, he may wind up with a new campaign volunteer, if she finds enough in common with her juvenile-crime experience or with the way her life's gone recently. She's (understandably) not going to judge him by the mistakes he made in his teens (depending on how serious it is; given the "embarrassing" description, I don't think it'd be bad enough for her to arrest him). Pyrie doesn't care too much about the political ramifications; after all, no matter how she felt about him, his policies, or his party, she still couldn't vote for him. If there are riots, well, it means she's got something to do. (Yes, that means she's really not making any friends over this one.) If she'd liked him, she'd be upset, but he still needed to pay for his crimes (except for the juvenile scenario, in which case she's gained a lot more respect for him since he'd "been there" too).

Re: More fun with Morty the Incompetent Mugger *rolls d6; result: 5* Pyrie blinks twice in disbelief, then falls to the ground laughing. When she's suitably recovered, "Granny" is out of reach, so she walks over to Morty, and says, still snickering, "You need some help? I'm sure the cops are going to love hearing about this......" She'd then proceed to taunt Morty until the police arrive, whereupon she'd take great pleasure in recounting the incident

Re: WWYCD: Magic Fishnets? Pyrie's costume is a full bodysuit, so they wouldn't affect her at all. Though if she happened to try them on with appropriate civilian garb (and if they didn't catch fire/melt from her superhuman body temperature) she might well modify her fighting gear to allow for the newfound abilities.

Re: How would Stronghold imprison your character? For Pyrie, you'd just need to keep her immersed in water/hosed down, and she couldn't get out of a standard cell. If that's deemed to violate her civil rights, then a fireproof cell would do--as long as you keep her from attempting to fly away during meal/exercise periods (then again, that's when the fire hose comes in handy).

Re: Guliver Syndrome part 2: The Amazing Colossal Character! To post what I'd said when the question first came up in the other thread: Pyrie doesn't have a secret identity, so that part isn't a problem. The problem she'd have is that she's now six and a half times taller than she was, which means she needs 275 times the already ridiculous amount of food she needs to sustain her high-temperature metabolism. So she's going to try and round up a constant supply of food until someone (anyone!!!) can shrink her back to normal size. To continue the idea and take into account her powers and the problems therewith: Given her constant radiating of heat, she suddenly becomes a major fire hazard downtown, and would have to retreat to somewhere more open (and less flammable). So she's probably spending the next week or so in Death Valley, receiving constant airlifts of food until someone can figure out how to get her back to her proper size.

Re: The Olympics As Firewalking isn't an Olympic sport, Pyrie's out of luck. Her flame abilities don't really grant any real assistance to any Olympic sports, and her skills are more-or-less useless in any sporting event (though she could be an Indy or Formula One racer if she so desired, and if any sponsor would want someone with fire powers like hers anywhere near racing fuel). Given her volatile temper (not to mention her volatile powers) I doubt that the Olympic team would want her there as a spectator, let alone as a participant ;;

Re: Fire Powers Technically she was doing that before she became Sailor Mars, and that owed more to her mystical/spiritual background than her than her Sailor Senshi power suite. Likewise the two crows she could talk to......

Re: Which super-powered villain would be dumb enough to work for the Black Harlequin?

Re: Fire Powers I'd feel remiss not adding my two cents on the matter, especially as a fire character is what prompted me to post here in the first place http://www.herogames.com/forums/showpost.php?p=1651747&postcount=11

Re: Bearing Witness Pyrie's probably not the right person to ask about this, as she's got a very short temper and not-overly-controlled powers...... --What has it been like for you to have superpowers? It's been a living nightmare! I can't touch anyone without hurting them, clothes burst into flames on me, I can't even use hairspray without causing a fireball! But flying is fun, as long as I don't run into a wall or something... --Why did you choose to use your powers the way you have? When you're being shot at, you don't think too much about how you're using them. You just do to survive. After I got away from them, I decided that they needed to burn. All of them. It's easier to do that when you're not being arrested, y'know? --What do you think you would be doing if you didn't have superpowers? I'd have been killed in an explosion. Not much fun, is it? --Do you ever wish you didn't have superpowers? Constantly. Then I see people whose lives wouldn't have been saved, and I think it's not so bad... What are you looking at!? --What would you decide if you were in my place? Is humanity ready for superpowers, or not? %$%#^!!! Don't force this decision on me, shrimp! There are a lot of people out there who do the wrong thing with their powers because no one can stop them. But they'd do that even if they didn't have powers. And the people out there who fight the nutcases-not me, the real heroes-they're more than ready. I can't control my flame well enough to say I'm ready, but those guys-without them this city, and the world probably, would have been trashed a long time ago. If you look at those guys, they're ready. --Is there anything else you wish to say? Where do you brats get off asking me all this $#$!! about "humanity being ready for superpowers"?!? If you're not part of humanity, keep your %##%@!! noses out of our %#@*&!!! business!!!!