zornwil

Well, I'll just go for what I'd like best for my campaign, this is off the top of my head: for tense, mystery, or suspenseful scenes: some Curve a little bit of Moby Ni Ten Ichi Ryu (did Two Swords Technique) for those more tranquil as well as more emotional moments at the base lots of Yo La Tengo for the really emotionally intense scenes some Mission of Burma snippets some Roni Size/Represent some Tricky for the more comedic and light-hearted scenes some Cornelius for the fight scenes some Chemical Brothers bits of Nine Inch Nails some Damned for scenes specific to our robotic hero Neumann Krafterk from the Radio Activity album lots of Raymond Scott's music for toddlers mixed with a little Spike Jones only subtly put in some Depeche Mode some Morton Subotnik for scenes specific to our super-scientist/mage Troll lots of Throbbing Gristle a little Danny Elfman (from his soundtracks) for scenes specific to our world's-greatest-detective who shifts into strange elemental/chemical shapes sometimes inscrutable dead silence (even the incidental sounds disappear) some Edgar Varese some Japanese noise music a la Mosada for scenes specific to our mentalist with an inner voice Miles Davis Ornette Coleman some of that guy who did "Sleep Tonight" for scenes specific to our shape-shifting child-like mimicry artist lots of Elvis Presley (he specializes in imitating him) They Might Be Giants' music for children for scenes specific to our newest member, the woman of steel (literally), I'll have to see her more in play, but at least for her intro a little Metal Machine Music but moreso maybe Devo?

A character in my current campaign, basically a super-scientist-turning-occultist who can turn into a troll form, has a sentient hand which for now is his DNPC. The troll's body can rip apart in places, for example an eye can rip out and go see something around a corner, and in this case his hand can do that so often goes about on its own. One of the PCs gave it a "toy" (size-wise) little car it could drive.

Wow, this was most interesting, thanks!

Whoops, forgot to mention, but in my own games I don't allow > 75% damage reduction but I DO allow a much more powerful +1 for DR applies BEFORE defenses. This as you might imagine is with a big STOP sign. I've used it for a couple NPC villains (mainly though for convenience, I didn't want to fiddle with a lot of numbers and left their regular defenses on the mediocre side while making the DR a bigger factor this way) and have yet to be asked for it by a PC.

Regarding invulnerabilties against SFX, I just created Invulnerability as its own power with points per commonality of SFX< purchasable multiple times. Basically, it works as 10 points for invulnerability to an uncommon or very specific attack (eg, earthquake or acid rain attacks), 15 points to a common or specific attack (eg, water or laser attacks), and 20 poitns to a very common or general attack (eg, heat or blades). More info is available at http://www.asterick.com/realschluss/x-champions/house_rules/ch_powers_invulnerability.htm The values are debatable. I used to price it double and found it too limiting. Some would argue it's too low now, and I'm not sure they're wrong, but so far I'm okay with the results in MY game.

Re: Champions Board Character Creation PRE 5 (-5) Disad - Looks like a big iron sculpture, concealable, feature is always noticed and causes major reaction 15 points Multipower 60 +1/4 lim must be somewhere remotely near iron or exposed to iron, powers in MP are all iron-based

As far as I could see, I didn't answer this one, maybe it was another thread. Magic is not common among the "regular" world but it is well known as some sort of force among the more powerful supers. Recently 1 PC is getting more into magic so I've addressed it in more detail in my campaign. Information is at http://www.asterick.com/realschluss/x-champions/x-champions_setting/x-magic.htm As far as general mechanics, supernatural forces have their own attacks and defenses (Supernatural Defense (SD), based on INT). I've done this for some time. I used to have supernatural attacks as fairly cheap, now I've been told they might be overpriced. That latter statement is probably true among powerful supers but because supernatural powers bypass all but SD, they can be very powerful against most mid-level supers and entirely useful against normals, so I'm not sure. In any case in this current campaign I wanted to discourage magic a little bit so that was another reason to cost it higher. By the way, I based SD on INT rather than EGO not just to differentiate it from mental powers but also because it always seemed to me that brainy guys like Reed Richards and Batman held up against mystical powers fairly well (though granted they tend to have some considerable EGO too), and moreover some hard-core "science only" guys who might be higher INT ignore magic and aren't affected by it seemingly related to their "grounding" in science. Of course also it seems to me that magic would be the application of quick-wittedness and cleverness and ergo INT.

Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Re: Evil Magic I'm aware of this re the 16th century and, along those lines, read Durkheim's interpretation of the "witchcraft" crisis of Salem which notes how oddly exceptional the accusation of witchcraft was by then, it was an aberration not just in the colonies but certainly in Europe at that point. However, wasn't there an extended period during the early Middle Ages (like just pre-Renaissance) where there was ongoing conflict between the Catholic church and the pagan holdovers? If not, would you please cite some sources as I'd like to read more on this. On a related aside, would you also say that the adapatation of preexisting holidays/seasonal rituals by early Christianity did not occur and is either a misconception or purely coincidental? I am not ascribing motive for that - I for one don't see any evidence it was done to displace the pagan religions (at least not early on) but was rather a matter of simple convenience. I am not interested in arguing the points, I am interested in texts (online or paper) from scholarly or otherwise accredited sources.

I'm sorry if I'm not answering directly, but if the characters' death should be very rare, like maybe once a year real-time or even less, I'd just visit it as a "radiation accident" (large changes to character) when it occurs and not build it as an ongoing mechanic.

As GM, I have used tactics primarily, as far as I can remember, in two ways. The first has been to do a simple roll for something I think the character really should notice that the player may not. The second has been to answer questions by a character with tactics like, "do I think this has a chance of working" or "can I reach him in time?".

I did a post-apocalyptic setting and game, I'd have to go put my hands on the animal listing but it was fairly extensive. Many were frankly a little boring, but here's the ones I liked that I can remember off-hand in no particular order: Vicious Flying Squirrels - of course they could fly rather far and they could "dive bomb" adventurers in the woods; they roved in great packs and were quite a threat in larger masses Vicious Deer - very big deer with sharpened massive antlers and a fighting disposition; a few were domesticated in the great city-states' armies; those few city-states that had stores of "ancient" machineguns that functioned had vicious deer-mounted machinegunners that were terrifying Talking Bluejay - I'm fixated on this one as such a mutation exists in my current superhero campaign, but anyway in the woods of the post-apoc world these talking bluejays would give advice and take things; the advice might be very good or very bad; you had to cultivate a relationship with them Vicious Rabbit - as in Monty Python, just couldn't pass it up Skunk - aside from being noxious enough to knock people out, they would more importantly rob people blind as they slept or were knocked out by fumes In the "dungeons" (ancient industrial and business sites) more bizarre animals existed. There were a few monster classes comprising of plastic, glass, metal, and other such materials. I'll have to dig out my encounters charts/descriptions to find what else there was.

Most of my super-villain teams aren't all that stable, at least from my current campaign, many are one-shots. When he's alive, Bogeyman (based on the V&V cutout, but not the actual character since I didn't know anything about him until I got the comic book after I first conceived what I thought Bogeyman would be like) usually recruits some number of villains to join him. The team names vary according to whatever Bogeyman thinks is some great idea he's found. Mocker (again from the V&V cutout, same conception process) is his perpetual syncophant sidekick. They're both entirely insane and neither are human: Bogeyman is an elemental supernatural entity (essentially he's the evil version of the Great Pumpkin) and Mocker is a robot though he's completely unaware of that, believing himself human. The other team members vary greatly, and have included the now-reformed Bud Girl, the infamous and best known of the group Artless Dodger (the arch-enemy of Flaming Carrot), and professional criminal Mosquito. Mosquito has been known as part of an insect villain team conscripted by Kingpin, including Bee Queen, Wasp, and the Mute Ant. The Game Show Host's gang was really just all of his followers, the desolid invisible Announcer with the Game Show Models. Fox Force Five has been an enduring mercenary team comprised of hyper-skilled normals, only once directly facing the super-hero team that is the center of the game and managing to escape. They are based on the Pulp Fiction movie description, five "foxes" each with an area of expertise. They really aren't villainous per se, they're simply amoral and work for the highest bidder. Sometimes the highest bidder might be a good guy.

There was Scissorsman who was based on the XTC song. He had a "Book of Names" of bad guys; he was advised by the Fly on the Wall (from another XTC song); he had a partiality towards saving runaways. The Surrealist was an LSD-addled superhero who could alter reality in surreal fashions, animating things inappropriately. He would sometimes get lost in his own reality/have acid flashbacks. He was accompanied by a tough gun-toting woman known simply as Bitch, I don't know why really. Someone was poking fun at the stone character from the Legion of Super-Heroes; we have such a character in our current game and he's pretty useful actually, but indeed he does just turn to stone and doesn't move. When he started that was all he did although his human ID was/is extraordinarily brainy ("the world's greatest detective") so he had lots of other stuff going on when not in stone form. He could also turn people into stone, though only one person at a time and when he himself turned to stone it released whoever was stone last. Since then he's diversified his forms quite a bit. He isn't really that zany at all, I just brought it up given the comment in the other thread about the stone guy and some feeling that was rather whack (if not whacky).

Re: Re: Supers in the Third World Along these lines, I forgot to post in my last message Magneto rallied mutants to the cause of establishing their own independent community, Origin, in the Mohave desert of Arizona, not too far from Yucca. He did not get involved as a direct government leader but dabbled in the city-states' politics. It ended in a Waco to the power of X disaster. The 1 year anniversary of the founding of Origin is coming up; a civil suit against the federal government is pending on behalf of the 719 dead mutants. Magneto in my world would scorn any human attempts to involve him in geopoltiics, he's far too idealistic, but I like your idea a lot.

Re: Supers in the Third World I haven't done much with it in games even though I find it interesting. In my earliest coherent campaign world Dr. Doom was the ruler of Scilla and Charybdis. He had them created out of the Pacific and they were sort of an ultra-capitalist (free market with almost no rules at all) dystopia reflecting Doom's own obsession with capitalist might-makes-right anarchy. Correspondingly, he ran a vast international criminal network semi-covertly from there. In my next campaign world which was largely a derivation/fix of the first there wasn't anything going on as far as metahuman rulers/conquerors. In my current mostly non-derivative world Dr. Doom is actually the ruler of Russia (and although he's popularly known as Dr. Doom in the West, he has a real name and is not Dr. Doom to the Russians). He is trying to rebuild Russia but he isn't known to be using his rumored mystical powers or his scientific prowess. In fact he basically has to appear not to be doing so as that would trigger more tension with the West than he needs or wants right now. So he hasn't done anything like offer the rebellious Magneto a haven or some-such, and is not known to be engaged in any schemes to take over the world. But he is much more effective and scary than Putin and is perceived to be a threat by the US. Throughout all of my games supers have had a large role in 3rd world strife, though, as they are often mercenaries or cause-oriented and can be highly disruptive in a small state with limited resources. In particular during the post-colonial era many metahumans fought throughout the 3rd world, capitalizing on and further fueling the instability. In my current campaign in United States political history supers have had significant roles. Nixon employed a mentalist to illegally control enemies and a virtual civil war of metahumans ensued once the discovery was made.

Re: Re: Kitchen Woman What a bizarre rule. This is your game so no objection, just strikes me as odd, given in particular that Too Much Coffee Man is one of the coolest names out there and a decent book.

Re: EEEK, it's an ALIEN! There is no public acknowledgment of aliens but many people believe they exist, moreso than in the real world. No supers have claimed to be aliens and I don't think any of the current major ones are (or I won't say) though there have been a very tiny number. Akin to the X-Files though there is some sort of subsantial involvement of aliens in the world somehow, but unlike the X-Files it is not (at least apparently) a theme or central issue.

Although the optional rules make things more realistic, HERO is still not a miniatures or tactical wargame, if that's what you're looking for. I don't think it would be well-suited to such a purpose. The way weapons work is not as granular in HERO as in tactical (squad-level) games, there are many other simplifications. But if you are looking for a role-playing game in WWII that is not just military (e.g., has sleuthing, personal interplay, dramatic moments), it probably is well-suited.

Re: Super Names What in the world is wrong with Kichen Woman? I don't mean in any PC way, either, I just mean it's easy for me to envision a superheroine possessing these powers.

Jericho Lad Beach Ball Bud Girl Dampener Existential Man The Game Show Host Mover Shaker Octal Fist The Pterydactyl Stigmata This is a lazy list, it's all NPC supers I've used before that aren't as likely to have been listed yet.

Even though it's visually hard to follow, I could imagine using it if you're just calling off who goes when from a computer program, which is what I do, though it's not fractional. The problem of course comes in when drains and such enter the picture, so I wouldn't go to this, but it is cool.

I hastily browsed the responses before doing my list just to help remind myself of heroes without getting into too many inspiring details - in other words, balancing memory versus ripping off anyone. As you asked for "favorites", that's how I approached as opposed to the "best". I left off Gaiman's Sandman just because even though I think it's one of the greastest stories and greatest concepts in general, the character itself was never as intrigueing a concept to me intrinsically. Here's a shot at it, I ended up with 20: 20. Dr. Doom - Mr. Ultimate Villain to me, only read less than a dozen of Doom stories but his relationship with Reed Richards and his whole bizarre circumstance of techno-mage ruler of a country - have to love it 19. Doom Patrol - while not often effectively written, I liked the weird pre-Vertigo and into-Vertigo versions with the relationships and bizarre powers and mentalities 18. Phantom Stranger - yes, it's easy to be Mr. Mysterious shadowy do-gooder but something about this character was always intrigueing to me 17. Wild Dog - the ultimate "realistic" vigilante, typical back story but as a character very well fleshed out and "tangible" 16. Inferior Five - not for the not-so-good comedy but the notion of second-generation AND second-tier heroes, with an interesting mix of (dis)abilities and such 15. Metal Men - silly and over-the-top for sure, but I always found the Metal Men to be old favorites for the archetype personalities and, as I got older, the satirical take on super-teams 14. X-Men - never read more than a handful of the comics and not at all interested in them (the comics) since the mid-70s but the basic idea of student mutants and what it spun into really is a great concept 13. Fantastic Four - to me the quintessential team, diverse personalities and problems; I actually probably only ever read a dozen of their comics actually, I've never been a fan of those but of the concept itself and the personalities 12. Axel Pressbutton - great idea with the vegetable-scarred more-than-half mechanical assassin with the "pressbutton" pleasure device 11. Those Annoying Post Brothers - the mad ultra-violent dimension-popping brothers with their artistic bent and fleshed out friends and relations are a long-time favorite The Top 10: 10. Ragman - Jewish myths, the dead souls angle, the mystery, nice character 9. Wombat - a one-shot character in the PIs mini-series, really caught my eye with its costume, vengeance, and intensity; I altered the story but have used the character as a frightening ultra-Punisher sort 8. John Constantine - the ultimate bastard hero; I was going to say anti-hero but that doesn't exactly fit; anyway thoroughly compelling with his attitude and underlying sense of right-and-wrong filtered through shades of gray 7. Rorshack - great background, compelling characterization, both sympathetic and horrifying at once 6. Spectre - YIKES! when done as the murderous wrath of unwielding, unfeeling justice he really got to me 5. Mr. E - DOUBLE YIKES! not as much for the limited series but his portrayal in the Books of Magic mixed Rorshack and Spectre in a non-derivative way into a terrifying and complex character 4. Flaming Carrot - a combination of mystery, absurdity, and actual heroism, fantastically interesting with the slight (or great, depending on the year) retardation, beat poetry, lifestyle, surrealistic take on life 3. Concrete - as a character, wholly believable, and entirely sympathetic while engaging in heroics 2. Jesse what's-his-name from Preacher - a guy with an entirely messed up family life and a ne'er-do-well with the voice of God, seeking the almighty; what's not to love? the comic may not have always lived up to the character (though it is still one of the best series) but the concept was unbeatable 1. Batman - we all know this one...it's a concept that when done well I have found to consistently be a favorite for me, and while I don't read the regular Batman comics I'm always keen to see when a writer does something special with him

I think the multiform changes in 5th were a good attempt at consistency though I'm still not sure if they are good or bad. As someone stated, the "true" form paying the cost may be a violation of the game's design though as it is enforcing an SFX to be a mechanic. The problem with the line of logic that this is just an accounting issue and that "true form" is simply SFX is that it then counters the whole way that duplicates and summon and followers are done - the true character form pays for those things. So for now I'm willing to play it the 5th ed way, I think it may be okay and creates different challenges to be kept track of. As far as gaining XP, I find it simplest and not unfair to grant the points ot the true form and let the character decide. But I do like Monolith's approach of granting XP to each form as according to deeds. The problem I have with implementing that is that a multiform character may change several times in a combat as well as an adventure, so this gets way tricky. I dunno though it is a potential issue that a true form bulks up the commonly used form with the 1/5 spend. But the same can be said of a follower or a summoned character. The interesting thing about the true form is that it gives the GM a lot of plot play, being able to yank it into play and such. So if a character wants to go ahead and leave his true form way behind the curve on points, when crunch time happens and he's stuck in it, well then he pays the price. And no I do not mean that as the "cruel GM" tactic, I mean it as good storytelling and simply a logical environmental circumstance. It even works by gamist standards. All three should be happy. Oh wait, wrong thread. Back on topic, I'll be observing this first-hand as we have a strange multiform character in my current game. He certainly knows how to abuse the rules but chooses not to (at least most of the time!) and we've gone over his character quite a bit. We'll see how it grows. On a related note, and I'm sure many think this is way too lenient/abusive, but I do NOT count disadvantages against forms (same with followers, duplicates, summons, etc.) as long as they are real disadvantages when the form appears. The reason is simple enough, I think they work against the form. So in other words, if you have a 200 point form at 40 real poins to the true form and you have for that other form an additional 50 points in disads, you have 250. I used to do the same with all base characters but am not currently. I may go back to that someday.

Re: once again i need help!! I don't seem to be in sync with others, but I'd just give it a -1/4 (or at best -1/2) limitation "only works when in presence of hate/anger/rage" (it's pretty common given a super-hero world so I wouldn't go further than 1/4 myself), and it works when that attribute is present. Someone mentioned a Detect, and I'd agree if the character's conception is he's aware of it even if it's just unexpressed, then link the power to the detect I suppose. But mostly I'd go with a simple lim. If the character "build up" the absorption, you could go with a delayed power, have it gradually build up by having limitations on portions of it according to their delay.

Okay, the topic name is a joke and I know it wouldn't be an "Ultimate" book, but some source book with tons of details on disads would be useful and fun to read. Sections on each of the main types, their uses, examples, and then some laundry lists for each one. What do people think?