Armory

16 hours ago, Lord Liaden said:

I don't think we should underestimate the eagerness with which the black movie-going audience around the world is anticipating Black Panther. It looks to be a cultural touchstone for that community, like Wonder Woman was for women. Every black person I've spoken to, read, or watched online, who is aware of this movie, displays a "finally, one for us" excitement (for particular reasons I described earlier on this thread).

Exactly right.  One episode of Robert Kirkman's History of Comics was devoted to the story of the Milestone Comics imprint, and everyone interviewed on the show described their excitement and pride when the Black Panther character first debuted, then got his own book.  Now they, and a new generation, are feeling the same thing with the Black Panther movie.

I agree, too dark.  Hopefully that's her father's design, before she applies her sartorial flair

http://marvel1980s.blogspot.com/2012/06/many-costumes-of-janet-van-dyne-wasp.html

The local CW station was pimping the crap out of it this morning, so somebody at the network really wants it to work.

I too am unsure about the look (the glowing almost-codpiece, for one thing) but I'm willing to give it a shot.  I like the premise of a retired hero being pressured back into action, although a backstory like that pretty much guarantees he's not in the main Arrowverse, since nobody there (nor in Supergirl's universe) has ever mentioned him.

I may not watch it tonight but I'm recording it.

 

Those were the Grenadier sets.

We still use these.  I got two of the good guys sets back in the day, just after they first came out.  We painted most of them as our then-PCs.  After six or seven moves, including to Germany and back, many of them are broken now, but we're still using those that are in one piece.

We had a three-female group years ago that we called Factor Three.

8 hours ago, Cassandra said:

Jodie Foster says Superhero Movies are destroying the world.

As if we needed more evidence of the persistent sense of self-importance that is Hollywood, now we're told that movies have the power to destroy mankind.  Only Jodie Foster knows what our viewing habits should be.

1 hour ago, Jagged said:

I read that as "it was cool in Captain America, let's do that too." 

 

That was my thought as well.  So they picked WWI instead of WWII perhaps to avoid comparisons to Cap, then they go and do an unsubtle version of the Howling Commandos.  

See, I expected this thread to be about property destruction, not the Avengers' carbon footprint.  Cassandra's right, Stark's got this, with the Department of Damage Control's Zero Emissions Initiative.  Even Ultron has pledged that his next robot army will be solar-powered.

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2) See the red text, above, in this post as to why - craning his neck around the corner (which entails bending it in a way it's not articulated to bend) means he doesn't also have to put his torso around the corner -- resulting in retention of more cover.  Thus, craning the neck around the corner is useful ... in the form of providing ~2-4 effective DCV (10-20 Active Points in effective DCV) the character would lose if he tilted his torso around the corner.  And you want to give away that effective 10-20 Active Points worth of DCV ... for 2CP (the cost of 2m Stretching)?  Why is 7 CP (2m Stretching + 1 Extra Limb) so outrageously unreasonable given how many active points worth of benefit I just showed you is conferred?  You're talking a huge give-away in active points, here .... that's the 'utility'.

 

Barring GM fiat, the neck is not a limb like an arm or a leg ... so it should fall into that 'much more rarely' category.

 

Yes, craning the neck around the corner is useful.  That's why he paid points for Stretching, it's a result of the situation and the SFX of the Power combined with common and dramatic sense.  If the PC is defined as being able to stretch his neck, then IMO he gets to poke his head around corners when that situation presents itself. 

In addition, I don't get why twisting one's neck from side to side doesn't fall under normal neck movement.  It's how I would normally peek around a corner, by turning my neck.  I'm just doing it with a six-foot (or whatever) neck.  So I don't see that as handwaving anything.  If I wanted to snake my head through some plumbing, then we're talking bending it in a way it's not articulated to bend, but that isn't this. 

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  i.e. Per RAW's guidance, if you have 100 stretching characters all show up in your game, most should be stretching arms ... less often there will be some who can do legs ... and much more rarely, other body parts like the neck should be stretchable by some of those characters.  (And probably only with good reason/justification -- i.e. the character is a Contortionist with appropriate skills, is Double-Jointed, is an anatomically different alien species, etc.)

Sure, okay.  So in this case we're talking about the one guy in the universe who can stretch his neck.  So, to me, that means this one guy can use his Stretching to stand back from a corner, stretch his neck out, and turn his head sideways to see what's what.  I don't think there's much danger of imbalance.  In fact, statistically there will be many more of those Stretchers who can elongate their legs to peer over the top of the wall instead of around it.  I'm not seeing that a stretchy neck is any more of an advantage than stretchy legs in this scenario.

I wouldn't go with Extra Limb unless the player intends to use it as such; e.g. wrapping it around things and squeezing or throwing them.   

I'm not trying to convince you that I'm right and you're wrong, I'm just explaining the way I see it.  If you believe this to be some kind of exploit then by all means adjust accordingly.

6 hours ago, Surrealone said:

And people don't feel this sort of penalty avoidance is worth any CP?  

 

I don't.  It's just peeking around a corner.  If you have to slap a Limitation on Extra Limb that prevents you from using it like a limb, that seems to make the power itself extraneous.  This is a situational use (and benefit) of Stretching, I doubt it's going to come into play much at all, except for Stretch Armstrong to see around a corner once in awhile.

If Stretch Armstrong can stretch his legs a few meters and see over the top of the wall, without having to purchase Extra Limb, then I fail to see why craning his neck around a corner should be any different.

I finally caught "War for the Planet of the Apes".  I need to amend my Best Movies of 2017.  It wasn't perfect, but I thought it was exceptionally good.  Include me in the calls for Serkis to get some awards.

I enjoyed it.  It felt to me like it was the first part of something, with all of the history that was touched on.  I hope there are more, although I'm sure it won't be with Will Smith or Joel Edgerton.  Yes, Will Smith played Will Smith, but I was impressed by Edgerton's acting through all that makeup.  I have a hard time believing Smith would agree to do a Netflix movie, I'm thinking this was a planned blockbuster that somehow ran off the rails in some exec's eyes.

I thought the elves were perhaps more badass than they needed to be, but then that helps to explain why they run the world.  And maybe all elves aren't like that, maybe these are just the supervillain elves.  We didn't see the elven Fed do anything other than glower and smirk.

Yes, I would like to see more from this world.

On 11/17/2017 at 4:44 PM, Cantriped said:

Steve Long is incorrect, and obviously did not review the 6th edition rules carefully enough before replying to that rules question. His entire basis for argument regarding DPSLs is that "maneuver penalties" are not a "condition" and therefore PSLs do not apply to them.  [/quote]

This might be heresy when talking about the Hero System, but I don't think it's that deep.  I'm perfectly happy preventing PSLs from being applied to Maneuvers, since that's explicitly RAW, without having to delve into the etymology of the word "condition".

We're just starting to use 6E for our fantasy campaign, we're still using 5ER for our supers.  I figure DN isn't appropriate for a Heroic-level campaign, but I don't think I'd allow it at all even in Champions.  Something about it seems too meta to me.  Plus the aforementioned clunkiness.  It sounds more like a power for a time manipulation SFX:  "I'll turn back time one second and the damage that was just done never happened."  If we ever port our supers to 6E I think I'll just pretend it doesn't exist.  Still, I appreciate threads like this, I do understand it much better now.  Great discussion.

I think there's much ado about nothing where both are concerned (Disney and net-so-called-neutrality).

Personally, I'm looking forward to the Fantastic Four done right.  I don't even care if they cross over with the rest of the MCU, just get them right.

One of our PCs is a strange mutant (or so she thinks...hehehe...) whose body is nothing but water, code-named Torrent.  Not your typical water-based hero; she can't summon water or blast it or control it, she's just made of it.  Apart from modified Desolidification, her main power is to absorb objects of opportunity into her body, then propel them with tremendous force and accuracy.  Last weekend they happened to be battling inside a restaurant at the Guardians, Inc. company Christmas party, so when the bad guys attacked she absorbed a bunch of random utensils from the table.  Her first attack was to fling a spoon.  Now, she can do some decent damage even with a spoon, but she missed her shot.  So she was about as intimidating as the Blue Raja in Mystery Men.  The bad guys then scoffed at her, of course.

One of her teammates said, "Racists!  You're just biased against Aqua-Americans!"

I'd agree, JL was pretty good.  The humor fell a bit flat at times, but the attempt was there.  I will say I'm glad I saw Ragnarok after Justice League, else my opinion of it would probably be worse.

On 11/19/2017 at 2:19 PM, Cantriped said:

You would be correct in that it is a semantic argument (I.E. "logic concerned with the meanings of words). All rules debates are, by definition, semantic arguments (yours are no exception), so calling my "interpretation" semantics is little more than an ill-reasoned attempt to attack my credibility. Regardless, the issue is that you clearly do not understand which part of the rules for Holding Actions are optional rules, and which are not. You may Hold An Action "until a lower Dex", or "until some event occurs" (CC 138, 6e2 20). Period. Those are not examples of Held Actions, those are the basic rules for declaring Held Actions. "I wait until he strikes" and "I wait until he comes around the corner" were the examples given of legal Held Actions (they even put them in both quotes and parentheticals in 6e just to make it crystal clear which section was the explanatory text). 

What you are describing is the Optional Rule described in 6e2 on page 20 (bottom of the 4th paragraph): "With the GM’s permission, a character can Hold his Action “generically,” without declaring any sort of precondition for acting, and then may perform whatever Action he wants to whenever he wants to."

It wasn't an attempt to attack your credibility at all, calm down. You said yourself, "under the strictest reading of the rules".  I just stated that I thought you were reading too strictly.

I maintain that it doesn't make sense to me to rule that a Held action cannot be used until after a specified event (unless that's what the player intends; and even then, it doesn't compute to disallow him the use of his held action if circumstances change).   To me that violates common sense and dramatic sense.  So what you call optional, I call essential to the maneuver.  And I'm my GM. 

I think Cantriped's interpretation is simply semantics.  To say that "until an event occurs" means a Held action can't be used offensively until after a certain event has occurred is way too strict a reading.  In fact the player doesn't have to lock in a condition at all when he holds an action, he simply states that he's not using his action just yet, but he's ready to.  Seems to me that means he can act at any time, under any circumstances, until the beginning of his next Phase.  That includes attempting to interrupt an attack.  That's the whole reason of delaying an Action, to see what might happen between now and his next Phase that might require a reaction.

You seem to be reading "until a lower DEX or until an even occurs" as a list of only two specific options, when they are just two examples.

My group still uses 5th ED Rev for our superhero game.  Welcome aboard!  You'll find this community to be more helpful than you could possibly imagine.

I recently created an entire family of villains, the leader of which was based on Boyd Crowder (well, Walton Goggins, mainly), from Justified.

My first Champions character was/is a powered armor type (yes, I'm still running him...he should be about 60 by now, thank God for comic book time..).  I did at one time use Multiform but he ended up never changing suits in combat, so I just went with a VPP (once it was invented) as mrinku mentioned:  I drew up different suits, each with pre-defined, specialized powers, then I just picked one before each scenario.  He can still change the powers in the VPP of the suit he's wearing during combat, of course.  To swap out a whole suit he'd have to head back home.

The mention of Stanley Steamer just reminded me of a character I created waaaay back in the pre-4th edition days.  Dr. Lou Kirby, aka Vacuum.  He basically had a backpack mounted super-vacuum cleaner which he could use to suck things up or blow them away.  Actually saw use in the game.  

One of my players years ago had a PC called Thermo, who could project a heat ray and a freeze ray.  Poor guy; in addition to being stuck with the nickname "Thermos", his arch-villain was decidedly silly:  Captain Coffee, who claimed to have invented the whole backpack-that-shoots-hot-and-cold concept.  First he sued the hero, then in the courtroom strapped on his own backpack (one nozzle steaming coffee, the other iced mocha) and went nuts.

Stanley Steamer, Vacuum, Captain Coffee...we have the makings of The Brotherhood of Evil Appliances...

Never seen the movie lol .

I highly recommend it!  It's one of my all-time favorite movies.  In fact, every time I buy a new DVD/Bluray player, that's the first thing I pop in.