Mutant for Hire

The core issue is that HERO has two characteristics, COM and PRE, and has never really thought about how these things fit together and how one affects the other. My opinion, often stated is that either COM should be used more or it should be dropped. A simple house rule is to make PRE a figured characteristic based on EGO and COM: PRE = COM/2 + EGO/2 That encoruages players to pump up COM and bring them up to the levels that you tend to see in the comics. It's based on the idea that attractive people tend to stand out more and have a greater presence than average looking people. And people who are stronger willed also tend to have more presence than those who do not. Another idea I came up with was the idea of a Social Interaction Modifier (SIM). The SIM is added to any PRE rolls made by one character against another. A SIM to some extent measures how receptive one character is to another. Total strangers have a SIM of zero. A husband and wife have a very positive SIM towards each other, out of proportion to other factors. COM is used as a 'first impressions' rule and yes, I do take the somewhat cynical view that people have a much better first impression of attractive people than ugly ones. The starting SIM for a first impression is: SIM=(COM-10)/3 A SIM can be modified by reputation. The Thing for example, has a negative SIM by default but he is a member of a popular team and so that positive reputation probably eliminates the negative factor of his appearance and gives him a positive SIM to people who know of the Fantastic Four (and like it). And of course SIMs can be modified by history. Even if the Thing is a stranger, if he rescues a child from a burning building, that goes a long way to modifying his SIM with the boy and his relatives. What do people think?

1. We're years away from SHRed. This is just free-ranging speculation about what we'd like to see in a next edition game. 2. Of course not.

Okay, here is a list of some of my recommended comics, for those of a gaming bent. I picked those comics that could actually either be a good setting or have interesting background material: Schlock Mercenary: http://www.schlockmercenary.com/ This deals with a band of mercenaries in the far future and their misadventures. Sometimes it reads like a SF RPG campaign done as a web comic. Sluggy Freelance: http://www.sluggy.com/ The great classic webcomic. Maybe not the first but one of the longest lasting and one of the most consistantly funny. If you're ever running low on campaign ideas, take a stroll over to this comic for source material inspiration. The current storyline has some great RPG potential. College Roommates From Hell!!! http://www.crfh.net/ A group of college roommates who deal with haunted appliances, useless mutations, the Devil, Cthulhu's pet and sadistic calculus teachers. People who like Sluggy Freelance will probably want to give this one a look. Like Sluggy, the art/storylines are pretty weak at first but grow a lot better over time. Starry Ones: http://www.weirdass.net/ I've plugged this one before. An incredible combination of Lovecraftian Horror with Space Opera. Amazing art, amazing storyline. It's amazing how the author can seamlessly fuse so many different cosmologies together and yet make it feel coherent. Yin and Yang: http://yinandyang.keenspace.com/ He's a demigod shapeshifter, she's a powerful sorceress. This is the soap opera of their lives. Errant Story: http://www.errantstory.com/ From the creator of Exploitation Now. In some ways the protagonist bears a strong spiritual resemblence to Lina Inverse of Slayers, except with slightly different vices.

One of the New Mutants was Cherokee, I believe. I don't know what tribe Forge hailed from.

There are two points to consider: 1. DO YOUR RESEARCH If you're going to do superheroes and villains from a given culture, really sit down and ask yourself what those people would consider significant and meaningful heroes and villains to themselves. Not how other people see them but how they see themselves, for better or for worse. For the English, for example, there is the whole Arthurian mythology, obviously. There is also the fact that the Elizabethian period and the Victorian period are viewed as high water marks of their history. Then there is the concept of the modern gentleman, along the lines of James Bond or even John Steed. French history, however, is totally different, even though they also had Arthur. But they had their own history of knighthood and chivalry. Besides the knights there are the three Musketeers, and then the French Revolution and the concepts it brought, and so on. A Frenchman wanting to be a hero with deep ties to French culture has a lot to choose from in variety. In the end, these people to some extent represent their culture. You have to ask what that culture really wants to show off about itself. 2. Make them worthy of respect. This means not making them a potential cast member in an ethnic joke as much as possible. They need not be brilliant and highly educated, but a lot of steroetypes tend to focus on making the person stupid, unsophisticated or deeply flawed in some way. Now obviously a villain has flaws, and even do heroes, but one should try to avoid making the flaws stereotypical one.

He has an accident with his equipment and becomes a living glue monster.

On characteristics: 1. Eliminate figured characteristics Obviously, this may involve some adjustments of the STR and CON values, but possibly not. It makes bricks less cost efficient in some ways, but by eliminating figured characteristics, there is now the bonus that Bricks are not punished for putting STR into a Multipower with other Brick Tricks, which makes it more cost efficient to buy lots of STR. 2. Either eliminate COM as a characteristic or make it a more significant part of the game. COM is really dead weight at the moment in terms of characteristics given that PRE is carrying the load for social stuff. I prefer something along the lines of an Advantage (gives bonuses to PRE rolls for the purposes of influencing others) or a Disadvantage (gives penalties for positive interactions but bonuses for negative ones). 3. Compress PD/ED into a single DEF stat Of course players can by Armor with a "Physical/Energy Attacks Only" limitation. Why? A lot of people keep their PD/ED values at the same level, and I'm inclined to think that it probably would be easier to simply define DEF that way and then handle the exceptions of when physical defenses are different from energy defenses. The book keeping is a notch simpler for a lot of characters.

My big alteration, if we're going to go all the way to a sixth edition is to take the basic powers and break them down into their component parts. That is, instead of having separate powers for Armor and Force Field and Force Wall, for example, there is a base effect Armor and then you figure out whether or not it costs END to use, whether or not its personal or on a wall, how it gets invoked, etc. Essentailly to build every power from the ground up. This can ultimately shrink the power list considerably and make it easier to build new and interesting power such as a wall of flame (using the Force Wall with the Armor effect ripped out and a KA used instead). The idea is, HERO is really about having the ultimate power construction toolkit and I'd like to see it go to the logical conclusion. Instead of advantages like Constant and limitations like No Range, why not make choices like these part of the power construction process?

Can we get a general description of the characters? In English rather than numbers, and with a general description of the powers. They're all going to have to be boosted to 350 points anyway...

I trust you've seen the movie "Mystery Men". If not, you need to rent and see it immediately.

So to actually make this thread useful to a Champions campaign, we can actually look at the reasons for old structures in the underside of a city: 1. Old subway/sewer tunnels. This works especially well when you realize in the basement of some buildings there are occasionally boarded up entrances to these old tunnels and then sometimes connect to newer tunnels. This allows one to enter a mundane building and come out any subway exit. 2. WWII/Cold War structures A lot of governments built a lot of fallout shelters. Places deep in the ground, defensible, designed to hold quite a bit. As a result, a lot of these places would probably make pretty good bases in terms of basic layout and positioning.

It's cheaper but the character also has a power that is visible to three sense groups as well. Usually sight and sound. This character is going to attract a lot of attention wherever they go. Even if Force Field is bought 0 END, its inherently an END power and so unless it is bought with invisible special effects, it is nastily visible.

It also helps to shower now and then.

Actually, it's more along the lines of "life imitates anime" category, but here's something amusing if the characters ever go to Tokyo: http://www.japantimes.co.jp/cgi-bin/getarticle.pl5?fl20030301a1.htm Or at the very least it's a lot easier to justify "understructures" to a given campaign city.

Re: Librarian? "Ook" *hands Karma a banana*

There should be a cadre of top level minions. 1. A good second in command who is almost as effective as the leader in terms of brains and tends to command out in the field for any serious operation involving more than one high level minion. Often wants the boss' job. Is usually set up as a 'hero in everything but morality' type. 2. The strong guy. Strong as an ox, tough as an ox, almost as bright as an ox. Usually always stays near the master villain as personal bodyguard. 3. A really good thief with good stealth, disguise, and thieving skills. Tends to be a gutless coward with no fighting skills but very slippery to hold onto. 4. The master driver/sailor/pilot. May have poor hand to hand skills but is a whiz with a vehicle. Often pilots the getaway vehicle. 5. If the top figure is not a scientist, then you need one scientific lunatic who is inventing all sorts of crazed devices. 6. The seductive woman. A mistress of disguise and having a full set of dirty tricks concealed in her makeup kit. Another possibility is the animal trainer type. Someone who keeps a kennel of animals of all types. Might have a good scar collection and maybe an eyepatch to indicate the sheer lethality of the charges.

Re: Hmmmm.... Not to mention the Centipedemobile. Now has anyone tried to build Foxbat's ping pong weapon?

Re: Another thought For the record, your friend was discussing a rail gun, though the half the speed of light business is a trifle exaggerated. I don't know how many times the speed of sound they get the projectiles up to now, but its nowhere near a percentage of the speed of light. And incidentally, I expect that from air friction the penny would vaporize really fast.

Look at the X-Men movie. Realistically, even American superheroes wouldn't wear the masks and the brightly colored skin-tight costumes either. In general I feel that more realistically speaking, all superheroes would wear some sort of paramilitary uniform or some outfit traditionally associated with fighting such as the traditional outfits martial artists have worn. Or even just regular clothes.

You're missing senses and limbs.

Personally, I would have been happier if they advanced the old 4th edition universe. Have some supervillain teams fall, other ones arise, shakeups in the lineups and so on. Have the 4th edition Champions as background characters in the universe and have a new team as the presented team in the book.

You are what you eat One of the main areas of variation are in feeding habits. Humans are at their base a hunter/gatherer species, and a good chunk of our evolutionary behavior can be traced to instincts coming from the tens of thousands of years (if not hundreds of thousands counting our evolutionary ancestors) when we hunted and gathered. A purely gathering species is not going to have the hunting instincts that we and more predatory species have. This is not to say that the creatures of such species are not going to be capable of killing. The traditional duty of males in many herbivorous herd species is to fight off predators. However there's going to be a far lower level of bloodlust in that species. The species on average will be less violent, though even among herbivors, males compete in displays of prowess to impress mates. Gathering also tends to be a matter of patience and careful observation rather than the thrill of the hunt. A gathering species doesn't need to thrive on challenge the way a hunting species does. What a gathering species needs is the ability not to get bored easily, to spot small details. A good memory of what is edible and when it is edible also helps. There's also an instinct to aquire rather than an instinct to hunt. As a purely herbivorous species develops civilization, I expect that the species will have more of a general will towards aquisition and accumilation. I expect their rate of technological progress to be slower. Males of a herbivorous species competing for the attention of females are likely to do it through showy displays of wealth. The males are going to have a strong inclination to aquire wealth. Capitalism, trading and so on will probably come very naturally to this species. Their vision will be adapted to color and the spotting of small details. Expect color perception to match if not exceed ours. Likewise smell and taste are going to be sharper since they have to worry about being poisoned much more than a hunter species does. A purely carnivorous species is going to have an interesting time of it advancing technologically. Remember that the development of agriculture was a big deal on the way forward. For a carnivorous species, agriculture is purely for feeding the animals that they hunt on, and an emergency food supply the rest of the time. As for the species' behavior, the traits that make for good gatherers are minimal and both males and females of the species have full sets of hunter instincts predominating. Hunters need to thrive on challenges. Hunter species will be constantly looking for ways to test and challenge themselves. Incidentally, hunters also need good deductive facilities. Whereas gatherers primarily observe, a hunter needs to spot spoor, tracks, signs of grazing and so on and deduce what passed through and how long ago and where its likely to be now. Hunting down prey also is a test of planning skills as well. I expect faster technological progress since a lot of the instincts of hunting and capabilities of hunting can be sublimated in technology. On the flip side the species is going to be a lot more warlike and that can slow down progress as well. Expect a society where there is a lot of brawling. As they grow more "civilized" it becomes increasingly non-lethal and things like sports, gambling, and so on replace the old fashioned brawl, but I expect a lot more acceptance of casual brawling, especially among males trying to impress females. Their senses are going to be focusing on spotting patterns of all sorts. Spotting the patterns that indicate tracks, grazing, or the natural camoflage of some animal hiding in the brush. They're also going to be sharper on tracking motion as well. So to a purely gathering species, human beings are going to seem horribly prone to violence and dangerous thrill-seekers, doing risky activities, lacking the patience and observational skills that mark their own kind. Of course that's how a hunter species is going to look to us. They're going to be even more violent, even more adrenaline addicts than the rest of us are, probably less incliened to patience and having a need to vent their hunting instincts in all sorts of ways. To them a barfight is a routine way to blow off steam. Going hunting together is a common bonding activity. The hunter species will see us the way we see the purely herbivorous species: dull. The males are almost violent and competitive enough to be interesting but otherwise the species tends to lack drive, the thrill of the challenge.

Re: Another brain buster of a Power. Help! Try "Summon" with a Trigger. It's easier than just about any other method available. Technically its more along the lines of a Transform, but Summon is the easier way to build it.

Re: Re: New Power Framework Idea: Yes and no. Your method gives no benefit to having as many powers as possible in a power group. If I have four powers, it's no more expensive to have two power groups than to have one. My system, the more powers you link together, the greater the benefits. As to whether or not Multipowers and VPPs can go in a power group, I don't consider it any more cheasy than all of a character's powers and a pile of their characteristics bought OIF, including a multipower.

*starts driving a stake through the heart of this thread really hoping it will die now*