TheTemplar

Our new group has never actually gamed together as of yet...so it's impossible to know for certain how we would handle this situation, but I think I know how my character, a speedster named "The Tornado" would handle it. First, tackle the most obvious threat, the giant robot. He'd run all over the thing removing key screws and bolts ("Disassemble" - 3d6 Major Transform - mechanical object into disassembled mechanical object) until it fell apart. I'm guessing that would take him about 14-15 seconds (SPD 7, assuming no power defenses could transform average of 10 body per active phase, assuming a 50-60 Body robot, allowing for a couple of dodges and/or recoveries) After that, Would drop any agent/flunkie types with Sonic Boom attack (3d6 NND; Area of Effect: line) or a multiple move-by. Leaving the mentalist girlie and Impulse to deal with. Start by getting Impulse SUPER dizzy using the "Superspin" (6d6 Dex drain: SFX is that Tornado just spins the target around and around really fast) to keep him from blasting away, then he'd KO the mentalist w/ a few "Machine Gun Punches": (5d6 HA +STR: 8d6 total; 3 shot AF) once she is down, make sure she and Impulse aren't a threat by keeping them pinned against the ceiling using "F-5" (bought as TK, STR 45 - SFX: Tornado runs circles creating a massive vortex of air capable of lifting or slowing the fall of very heavy objects) until the authorities arrive to transport them both to a more secure holding area. -T

Well, hey Tiger! You're just down the highway from Mole and Me! Hope you and yours made it safely through last week's weather. That tornado that hit Lawrence last week was about 20 minutes or so away from my house when it broke up and that whole front got sucked into that supercell that passed through La Cygne.

Errrgh...well, yes. If the DC's have all stayed at the same level or increased, then that would be problematic. The GM that I play with uses very little "published" material for our campaigns (no Millenium City, no Champions, no battles w/ Dr. D in our last campaign, etc) so I'm not sure about how many DC's attacks are checking in at these days. What we're using has worked well for us, but it may very well be watered down from what you'll find in CU or CKC. The only reason I can think of why HERO would've gone with lower DEF's but same attacks might be that they felt the game was out of balance in favor of having a high Defense...I'm not saying it was or anything...that's just the only guess I can come up with. I'm currently working on the reconstruction of a Persistent World for a guild I belong to in the Neverwinter Nights Online gaming community (DnD based PC MMO in case anyone is unfamiliar w/ the title), so I understand how great a concern balance can be when you're trying to create a system, or an entire world for that matter... Maybe they thought heroes were having too easy a time of it? (They obviously never played in one of our old campaigns...hehe. My backside became very familiar with the ground in many, many battles after all the time it spent there.) -T

Well, to your point Hermit, bear in mind that the DC of the Attacks used needs to be brought down in proportion to the defenses. It's not necessary to abort to dodge to avoid a Stun situation if you've got a 20-25 DEF vs. attacks that are approximately in the 8-12d6 range ( Average of 42 STUN on 12d6 vs. a 25 PD would let 17 through.) Enough to hurt, sure, but not to Stun unless the super has a really low CON...in which case it would fit the character that a hit that strong would stun them. Now, if the defenses are low, and attacks stay in the 12-16 d6 Range, then yes..that is going to cause combat to take forever because everyone has to either Recover every other active phase or constantly abort. Also, I get the impression that the new Champions systems assume that KA's will not be the norm, provided the PC's don't have a tendency to use lethal force. Now, if you want to use more KA's, then you probably should increase the DEF's of most characters by 5 to compensate for the wildly unpredictable STUN multiplier. And to get to your other point about it killing concepts, I say ALWAYS go with the concept first. If a character wants to be heavy artillery, give them Brick like DEF (I'd say 30 is good) but also give them Brick like DEX and CV's. As long as the DC's in the villains attacks are comprable to the DEF's of the characters, then a 30 DEF Heavy EP is going to feel pretty studly most of the time (bullets bouncing off the chin, etc.) The great thing about HERO is that if you want to have higher DEF's, then you can, or vice versa. Personally, I think the benefits of keeping power levels in check are more numerous than having characteristics like DEF, Dex, and Con in the 35+ range, but that is simply my opinion. I certainly don't think there's anything wrong about the ways anyone else chooses to play, so please don't get me wrong here. -T

I actually don't mind seeing the DEX and Defenses a bit lower, for all the reasons mentioned here. In addition, it seemed like before most all defenses were in the 30-35 range...which makes it tricky from a villain creation standpoint. You want to be able to hurt the PC's without putting them at -25 STUN on each hit, and (using my old team as an example) having 4 players at 35+ DEF your villains had to be offensive powerhouses to be effective...and if they ever went after one of the other 2 characters, w/ DEF's in the 15-25 range, then they were toast. It seems to me that the way it works in the new system, the average DEF's are in the 20-25 Range, w/ 30 for a Brick, MAYBE 35 for one along the lines of Colossus or The Thing. Then your low DEF characters (traditionally Speedsters, Mentalists, MA's, etc.) can clock in at about 15-20 at the most, and not have to worry about getting killed (literally) every battle because the only attacks capable of damaging their teammates are 8-10d6 KA's. Same applies to DEX. It seemed like before, 26 was the average for most characters. This always seemed high to me. While a super would probably be more agile than normal, with the exception of MA's and Speedsters, would a beginning super REALLY be that much more agile than the most dextrous man alive? Using NCM as a model, the most agile normals in the world (olympic athletes, high-level Black Belts, etc.) would be a DEX 20. It seems to me that while most supers in the comics would be more agile than these Specimens of the Ideal Human, they wouldn't have more than maybe a +1 CV advantage over them. Dropping the average for most supers to 23 reflects this perfectly, and it allows for Speedsters and MA's, who by the very nature of their concepts should be higher DEX supers to fit in the combat order where they should w/out having to buy a 33-38 DEX. (To me, 38 is Spidey level...and nobody touches Spidey..IMHO, of course. What can I say. I'm a huge fan.) Speedsters and MA's can start out in the 26-28 range and will still feel like their character is the "specialist" in that area on the team, and still have points left over to buy skills/perks/talents/MA's whatever. Anyway, I've gone on WAY too long here. It just seemed to me like power levels were getting way out of hand (at least in my old campaign) and lowering the DEF's and CV's a tad will go along way to curb that (I hope so anyway...because my new speedster is a 15 DEF w/ 20 CON! He gets hit, game over, baby! Game over!! ;-) ) -T

If you've picked up the Champions genre book, Jester, check out the "Weaponmaster" archtype. It will pretty much give you everything you're looking for here. Other than that, everything Monolith advised is right on the money. Have a few sparring matches using premade characters to familiarize yourself w/ combat (something I REALLY wish I had done before I started playing..combat was lost on me for about 2 sessions, and I'm pretty RPG savvy.) It sounds to me like you've got your character concept pretty well nailed down. That's good. A lot of new players make the mistake of starting with their character sheet, as opposed to starting with their character concept. As far as your Characteristics ranges, and given that you are creating a "weapon master" type character (who are very skills and powers heavy) I would suggest trying to spend 125 pts. or less on your characteristics. The Energy in your body makes you a "metahuman" (as opposed to normal) so the Normal Characteristics Maximum rules don't apply to you...but you still want to save points here if you can. Based solely on what you've got here, I would go with: STR: 20 (10 pts.) DEX: 23 (39 pts.) CON: 25 (30 pts.) INT: 13 (3 pts.) EGO: 11 (2 pts) BODY: 15 (10 pts.) SPD: 5 (17 pts.) STUN: 40 (2 pts.) END: 50 (0 pts) Now, I've left out your PD and ED because I don't know what type of Armor you'll wear (be it Force Fields or Armor or Bulletproof Spandex, whatever.) As well as your movement, because I don't know if you're character has any special movement powers or not, but you've got the numbers of what in any campaign I've been in would be a solid weapon user here, and it only cost you 113 pts. Assuming you're playing a 350 pt. game, that leaves you 237 pts. to buy skills, talents, perks, powers, and martial arts with. I went high on your CON, based on your character concept. To me, a character with strong regenerative ability should have a Constitution that would be significantly higher than what would be considered "normal." This will help your CON rolls (which aren't TOO frequent..but it would fit your concept to exceed in that area.) And everything else is fairly modest, but balanced. You would want to pick up some CSL's with your guns, or sword, or martial arts..whichever you want to excel with. Hope this helps! -T

Sorry if any of these have been mentioned From our last campaign: Conduit Empath Mindfox Mindspark Myst New Man Tempus The Mole The Templar Trickshot Warlock From our upcoming campaign: Albatross Fantastic Man Justice Liberty (they're a duo..married in RL even...cute, eh?) The Tornado Other characters I've written up who have yet to see daylight: Dr. Impossible Frostbite Iron Maiden Megaton Mr. Mystical -T The Wraith

A few humorous Musically referenced characters I've seen Bennie and the Jets - Street level gang of Greasers who had a psych lim of breaking into choreographed Dance/Fighting (a la West Side Story) in combat. H.A.I.R. - The Heinous Assembly of International Renegades - a quintet of 80's Rock Band has-beens who have decided that since they can't conquer the music charts, they'll conquer the world instead. Wang Chung - a breakdancing Martial Artist; had a customized MA - Break Fu. Nasty. Combined Break Dancing w/ Kung Fu to get lots of maneuvers w/ OCV bonuses (he was always so busy dancing, you never knew wheh the attack was coming.) I can't remember the name of the villain, but he was very high class, dressed stylishly, and had an army of Fem-Bots who all looked like the women from Robert Palmer videos (Skin tight little black dress, short slicked back hair, all looked alike, etc.) I got most of these from other websites out there, but I don't have the URL's...if any of these are yours, step up and take credit! I think they're hilarious, and plan on ripping them off first chance I get. Especially H.A.I.R. Something about a bunch of veteran rockers deciding to bend toward World Domination absolutely kills me. -T

The last campaign that I was involved in used a mystic "Patron" NPC to bring the team together, which fit well because the overall tone of our team was fairly mystic. A couple of things I personally would like to try if I were to ever GM a campaign would be: 1. A mysterious patron organizes a group of local supers and sends them on Red Herring assignments all over the city, where they eventually discover that he is a master criminal and they've been eliminating his competition for him while he's been carrying out his criminal activities with no fear of being caught since the group's attention was so focused elsewhere. -OR- 2. A master criminal orchestrates a meeting of the heroes, but does it in such a fashion that when the heroes run into eachother, they believe that eachother are the criminals, and they fight...meanwhile the master criminal steals The Statue of Liberty, or some other unbelieveably outrageous criminal stunt. I've always found it fascinating that in the comics it seems like whenever heroes meet for the first time (whether solo or groups of heroes meeting) they almost always have to fight it out first. I suppose that's something that we as fans caused by the endless debates of "Who would win? Spider-Man vs. Batman? Namor vs. Aquaman? Galactus vs. Darkseid?" Anyway, hope this helps. If you like these ideas, feel free to rip them off...that's why I posted them, afterall! Oh...except for you, Frydaddy. You can't use my own ideas against me. That's just not cool..not cool at all. ;-) -T BTW: the correct answers are - Batman over Spidey, Aquaman over Namor, and...hmmm....I'm not touching that last one. My gut tells me Galactus...but Darkseid is wily, and wily goes a long way.

Hey....have you been reading my "Ultra-Top-Secret-Bring-to-table-and-substitute-for-my-normal-character-sheet-when-the-GM-is-distracted-by-food" Character sheets????? -T

What we've found to be most effective is to decide who on the team is going to fill what "archetype" - for example: I'm a speedster - my speed is 7, the cap for all other characters is 5, 4 for bricks; Our main brick's STR is 70, no one else is above 40, my max, being a speedster, is 20; We've got a Bird-Man style blaster (well, he's got lots of other abilities..but in combat I'd say he's primarily a blaster) who's VERY nimble, his schtick, so he's got 30 DEX; I'm in 2nd place w/ 28; the other blaster is capped at 26, and the two bricks are capped at 21. Characteristic caps do work really well in solving problems of Stat competition between PC's and it keeps the power levels of the game more under the GM's control. I know alot of people aren't fond of GM's putting limits on things...but it REALLY does make for a more balanced (and therefore more enjoyable) gaming experience, because it gives everyone a role to fill, in addition to preventing DEX races (I've found the same races to be very common among CON and DEF, which arent' typically as regulated as STR and DEX..but can be just as dangerous to game balance.) -T

Well, if he's REALLY being played as a Batman dupe, fake the death of an innocent bystander and make Bats think he did it. That should set off enough of a Psych Lim bomb that he wouldn't be able to do a blessed thing for at least a turn or so. More than enough time for the Giant Penny attack to be put in play. -T

First of all SS, I don't think there's a single person here who's impressed with your vast command of four letter words, so knock it off. Secondly, what's your beef w/ Steve? Seriously man! Were you standing in line to pick up the company when HERO was on the virge of disappearing for good? If so, then you should have tried harder. If not (which I HIGHLY suspect is the case) then Back Off. You didn't pony up the greenbacks to keep the HERO system alive, THEREFORE YOU really don't have too much room to be so rudely critical of the product line. If you've got THAT big of a problem with it, THEN LEAVE. People like you make me sick. You use discussion boards as your personal soapbox to gripe and complain about everything and everyone and make personal attacks at people like Steve and Darren and the rest of the company who are TRYING to create entertaining content for YOU to make use of. Yeah, they're doing it for a profit too. GOOD FOR THEM. You think you can do something better? Have at it. But until you do, keep your vulgar and insulting comments to yourself and stop taking up our posting space with your trash. -T

Using Caps as a way of maintaining balance among your PC's is a fine practice, and can even be done still taking Character Concept into account. The thing to remember is that everything must be relative across the board for NPC's as well as PC's. What the GM of my current campaign has set in place is a system by which a PC can shine in the area they chose, while being limited in others: conversely, the other PC's are limited in that PC's area of expertise. For example - Speedsters have lower caps in STR and DEF because of raised caps in SPD and DEX Bricks are Vice Versa EP's and MA's fall in the middle, but the cost of their powers or Martial packages tends to offset the amount of points the other archetypes get to spend on characteristics, and that prevents them from having DEX to rival a Speedster, or STR to Rival a Brick. We don't have a mentalist at this time, so I'm not sure what caps would apply to them, but I'm sure it would be along the EP/MA lines but using EGO instead of DEX as the primary attribute. The Caps are in place, but they don't feel particularly stifling - mainly because they are used to keep everyone's character concept in line with eachother, and to keep damage classes from getting out of hand. 14d6 is the current DC limit for any attack - strong enough to get the job done, but not so ridiculously powerful that it would simply obliterate anything in its path. Character concept IS the most important part of making a character, but unless you are running a game for just one person, then that character concept needs to be able to fit cohesively into a team. Caps (or "Suggested Guidelines" if you prefer) help to ensure that no one team member is going to be constantly outshining the rest of the team. -T

As soon as I started reading your concept, Multiform came to mind. I don't have my FREd with me..so I can't spout of any point totals for you or anything..but I agree that Multiform is the best way to go. And, OAF Immobile would seem to make sense for the machine that controls the robot, especially if it's anything like Cerebro..huge, hard to miss, and nearly impossible to move. -T

In the second session of the first story arc of the most recent campaign that I was involved in, the GM introduced the Supervillains team that would be the recurring thorn in our side - The Sinister Syndicate. In the very first encounter with them (which began at about 11 pm and didn't end until about 2 am) they had a mystic/mentalist character named Soul Ripper, who was a man dressed in a long Duster-type trenchcoat and wore a wide brimmed hat pulled down low over his eyes. After that first encounter w/ them, the GM decided that it would be cool to tie in one of the PC's backstory's to one of the Syndicate members. Now, one PC had a twin sister, who she hadn't seen in a very very long time...so, since she was the closest thing we had to a mentalist (TK powers) he decided to make Soul Ripper her long lost sister..thinking that if he bluffed his way through it enough, he could convince us that Soul Ripper was a woman in our first fight, and that we just weren't remembering clearly because it was so late when we fought him/her. Well..needless to say, he blew his Persuasion roll the first dozen or so times. SR was referred to as all sorts of colorful terms for a very long time. "The Horrible He-She", "The Androgenous Antagonist," and "The Sex-Change Artist." Finally..we started to buy it simply because the GM was so adamant that SR had been a female the entire time. Well, about three or four sessions after we unilaterally agreed that SR was and always had been devoid of Y chromosomes, the GM stops us as we're folding the Hex map and putting away the mini's and says, "Uh..y'all (He's from 'Bama...totally seperate thread worth of material based on that alone. ) y'all remember Soul Ripper, right? Well..uh..in that first fight way back in November, she was a dude." The uproar of laughter continued for a good 5 or 10 minutes. -T

I agree Blue! I am HARDLY suprised at this news, even in light of the Origins snub. However, it is certainly refreshing to have recognition given where it is so clearly due. Champions is definitely a superior product to the other Super-based RPG's out there. Bravo DoJ! -T

Ghaaaaa! Good Lord did THIS thread explode over the weekend! The one point that I haven't heard mentioned yet - I may have overlooked it, if so, my apologies - in regards to this character is that he has a high potential to frustrate the rest of your players. He can attack opponents while being completely invulnerable to all but some highly uncommon forms of attack - being Mental, Magic, or anything bought as affects desolid. That's an awfully powerful combo, IMHO. Ok, so his one attack that he can use while Desolid isn't all that terribly powerful. (How is all of this built, btw? Multipower? Some other framework?) Still, the fact that he will never be forced to go solid in combat gives him (again, IMHO) a tremendous advantage over the rest of the PC's. This advantage, in addition to the fact that he can walk through walls and the other non-combat effects of desolid. IMHO (lots of those in this post, eh? ) combat is the level playing field for your PC's..with the possible exception of Bricks, who typically don't get many other opportunities to showcase their talents. All players want to feel like their character is critical to the team, particularly in combat. Giving one player that huge of an advantage over the foes is going to inevitably cause at least one, if not more of your players, to feel like they simply aren't needed. To give a similar example: The campaign I was playing in most recently had a character with a Cosmic VPP. Yes, he paid the points for it, and it cost him alot. However, he was tremendously unbalancing - especially in combat - and that led to some feelings of resentment from the players toward that PC which tended to get played out by their PC's to his PC. (We're all good enough friends that there were no hard feelings between players, obviously..but in the case of a group that hasn't known eachother for a while, this could even lead to conflicts taking place totally out of the context of the game.) To sum up, we were asked how we, as GM's would deal w/ a character like this. My response was that , in the interest of game balance, I simply would not allow it. I'm certainly not trying to change the minds of anyone who would allow such a character, this is all just..(ready? last one!) IMHO. -T

The quote that my last PC, The Templar, will NEVER live down (nor will I, for that matter) occured when we were infiltrating the fortress of Tyrannon - our campaign's Galactus. Some of our number had been captured by him and were being held in his dungeons. We snuck in and initiated a systematic check of each cell, looking for our lost friends. The mood the GM created was great. It was so dark and foreboding..very little light, eerie sounds, etc. Well, that's when I looked into one of the cells and saw our friends manacled to the wall, hanging over what seemed to be a bottomless pit. Overjoyed at the sight of my lost comrades, I turned down the hall to the others and shouted, "I Found Them!" GM: "Mwa ha ha ha ha ha ha ha......." A 30d6 fireball later..... We all awoke to find ourselves manacled to the wall, hanging over what seemed to be a bottomless pit.... My GM said it's the first time he can remember a player screwing up what he had in mind where the players ended up suffering the consequences. Man. Getting out of that one was a b*tch. This gag actually carried so far as to show up on our team website, which is down currently...if you click on the link to go to The Templar's character page, you hear the sound byte from The Empire Strikes Back, where Zev (I think that was his name..) radios in to Echo Base saying, " I found them, repeat, I found them!"

ROFLMAO!! D'OH! Or, I could be TOTALLY wrong altogether! Sorry, all! Somehow...."Village Warrior" doesn't sound particularly intimidating...sounds like a kabuki theatre version of the Village People! Hope I didn't spread TOO much confusion here. Thanks for the clarification on that, BN! So, KA, that would make your ninja Ketsukage - Blood Shadow (or Kageketsu - Shadow of Blood..whichever is more grammatically correct...I've typically only seen Kage as a prefix..) -T

Well, per FREd, Desolid is to be purchased as being ineffective against a "reasonably common" group of attacks. This leaves the definition of Reasonably common to the GM's. In this instance, if the tone of the campaign is very mystical/magical/psi-powers based, then I think it could be made to work....however, in MOST campaigns, mystical/magical/psi-powers aren't all that common. Especially if he never has to revert back to a solid state to attack. IMHO, this is character has a high potential to unbalance the game. As a GM, I probably would set the active point caps on powers low enough so that buying Desolid w/ the +2 advantage of "Affects Physical World" required to attack while desolid would be impossible (that's 120 active points by itself w/ no other adv.'s or adders on, I believe..I'm at work and don't have FREd w/ me, but as I recall Desolid is 40 pts. and "APW" is a +2 adv.) The only way to make this POSSIBLY closer to balancing would be to make the player define additional instances where his desolid won't help him. (Like vs. Fire, or Cold attacks, for instance...something fairly common.) The alternative, is that you will find yourselves fighting nothing but Mages and Mentalists, because no one else will ever be able to harm him. my 2 gp. -T

D'oh! Sorry, mate. Totally misread what you were looking for there. As far as I can tell (by crossreferencing your site posted w/ ones that I have used for similar projects) your names are accurate, in terms of conveying the desired meaning. But, you may want to wait around for a more definitive answer from someone who can actually SPEAK Japanese, not someone who can just plug word fragments into a website translator, like me! Good luck! -T

Think of UNTIL, more or less, as G.I. Joe was back in the 80's. A highly trained special missions force. They are very similar in terms of equipment used....and since the Joes never really had to tackle "Supers"...(until the late 80's when Hasbro went REALLY wierd with the product line and it started to suck. *cough*Serpentor!*cough*) UNTIL might actually have slightly more sophisticated equipment than the Joes did - since Until has to deal w/ supervillains as well as Viper agents. Think of the Metropolis SCU as depicted in the WB's Superman animated series..that's a pretty close analogy to UNTIL as well...though in a more "SWAT" team street level sense. S.H.I.E.L.D. from the Marvel universe works well too. Plus, Nick Fury is a Baaaaaaaad Mamma Jamma. -T

Just hit me. Mura is blood. Kage is shadow..and Musha is warrior..(mushi may be plural...no knowledge of Japanese tenses. 3- roll.) So, Mura-Do would be Way of the Blood and Kage-Do would be Way of the Shadow ...neither sound particularly Heroic, per se....but it's a start. -T

Well, anyone - please correct me if I'm wrong...but "Do" as a suffix in Japanese means "Way of", correct? So, here's a few neat words I've picked up through Video games, etc. Kage (shadow) Oni (demon) Ryu (Dragon) Mushi (Warrior) I can't remember what Blood is...that may be Kage..in which case, I've forgotten what Shadow is...but, given those... Kage-Do would be "Way of the Shadow" or "Way of Blood" (sorry..wish I could remember which is which.) Oni-Do - "Way of the Demon" Ryu-Do - "Way of the Dragon" Mushi-Do - "Way of the Warrior" For more info (and the correct definition of Kage) try using any search engine (search.yahoo.com; http://www.google.com, whatever) and searching for English to Japanese translations. Very handy. Hope this helps! -T