Balabanto

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far Actually, my answer to that question is a resounding "No!" There is no need to make people advance faster than they already do. In fact, a slower advancement rate might actually promote mastery of the system. If you gain XP too quickly, the curve might bend a little too fast. In some games XP gain isn't even noticable.

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far It should be a POWER, not a Talent. A "Talent", for the most part, should be able to be trained for. It should be a power. You can learn to speed read. You can learn to feign death. A Boob Job is not considered "Training."

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far That's because in a game where people are normals, your max resistant defense is like 5-6. Load a gun up with AP bullets and fire away. What's your Con Score? 13-15? If you're a huge bear of a man, 18? Roll that 2d6 RKA. See whether or not you're stunned. You still have a pretty good chance to be. In super powered games, however, the wheel turns. It's harder to knock you out, and the range is such that it's commensurate with the high average damage of EB at the high end. Really, guys. I've never seen anyone roll a 72 on 12d6, and I've been playing Champions a long time. Remember the Ultimate Super Mage playtest. 4d6 RKA was more broken than almost anything else they could come up with because of the stun multiplier. This is fine.

Re: 6E Rules changes confirmed so far The other issue is that for those of us who freelance, it really doesn't MATTER whether or not we like the changes. If we wish to remain professionally committed, learn or die. Therefore, since I'm already professionally committed, I must learn or die.

Re: Top 5 Champs books of all time I would rather eat glass than give any of the VIPER sourcebooks more than a wink and a nod. They've ALL been bad. All of them. Who cares about the fluff when the characters in every version of this sourcebook have been excessively overpointed?

Re: Naming the baby I'm still going with "SexEd." There's no way to deny it anymore. Anyway, the problem I found was that every clean acronym had negative connotations that turned people away from the system. I'm not going to say the one that first came to mind, but people can message me if they want. Marketing-wise, I'd rather have "SexEd" than this, and I don't want to be responsible for a purchasing downturn.

Re: Naming the baby Technically, though, the Shadow and the Phantom were merely "Pulp heroes" Technically, they still obey those rules. Doctor Occult was the first character with real "Super Powers." An argument can be made that the Shadow had one superpower, but other than that, he didn't really meet all the requirements.

Re: Naming the baby I am referring to the first character to put on a weird costume and fight crime: Doctor Occult. 1936. He ditched the costume soon after, but technically, he still retains the title of the first costumed superhero.

Re: Naming the baby There is nothing wrong with scantily clad superbeings. It's worked for 73 years!

Re: Naming the baby Yes, Sean. It's a completely backhanded marketing technique. But YES! Who cares if the majority of the people who log in use the system to make Porn Hero? It doesn't MATTER. Making the system KNOWN matters. It's a toolkit. No pun intended.

Re: Naming the baby I reiterate that we should call it SexEd. It's latin and it's porn. What more do we need?

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Millennium Guard: Hyperdrive hires a therapist for Gibraltar, because Gibraltar has no genitals and wants to understand how humans reproduce. Meanwhile, Gibraltar is building his underground sanctum below the hero base. He has done this by learning how to tunnel with another person by placing them inside his elemental chest. So the sex therapist, Kyle Johansen, arrives, and asks if Gibraltar is in. Gibraltar: Yes! I'm right here. Kyle: Do you have a private place where we could discuss this? Gibraltar: Sure! (opens his chest) Come inside me. Kyle: Cough! Gibraltar: We're going down! Kyle: AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA! Gibraltar: Welcome to my private room! Now we're alone! Kyle: Ummmm... So after the birds and the bees conversation, and Kyle is rudely deposited back on the ground floor of Millennium Guard headquarters... Kyle: Hyperdrive, could I use your phone? Hyperdrive: Sure! Kyle: Hello, Mr. Robinson. Yes, it's me. I need to come in for some therapy. No...not tomorrow. Now. Right now! Yes...I'll be right there...

Re: Champions Universal Deathmatch! Final Round Preview!!!!!!! Well, I'm just going to take their sheets and let the dice decide what happens, LL. I really do roll all of these out. No fooling.

Re: Top 5 Champs books of all time 5) The Island of Doctor Destroyer. This adventure pointed out that not every adventure was based on a direct assault, or your PC's might fail to survive it. If you snuck in, you stood a chance, if not...well...fight Doctor Destroyer and eat it. 4) To Serve and Protect: Scott Heine's classic adventure where you have to battle other corrupted Superheroes. 3) Ultimate Martial Artist: This book has seen so little editing between editions that I fully expect it to be an instant classic every time. 2) Strike Force: Aaron Allston's classic Champions Game 1) Champions 1st Edition: Because it started it all.

Johnny: There have been many battles.... Nick: And there have been many corpses! Defender in a Jar: But there is one battle they always talk about! Johnny: One battle that has inspired more debate, more hatred, more knock-down dragout brawls than any other! Nick: And at Origins, the last major convention before the release of Champions 6th edition, this argument will finally be settled! Defender in a Jar: Planets will be ravaged! Seas will be destroyed! Johnny and Nick: The Earth Will TREMBLE!!!!!!!! Nick: Live, from the Convention Center in Columbus, Ohio, on Tuesday, June 23rd, the Ultimate Battle of Champions will be decided, chosen by you, the fans of Hero System! Johnny: Yes, Live, the ultimate contest of strength and power will be unveiled! Defender in a Jar: Can I say it? Nick: No! That's our job! It's Doctor Destroyer.... Johnny: Versus Takofanes! In the battle of the Millennium. No, not the New Millennium! Fuzion is for bigger pansies than me! The winner goes to 6th edition!!!!!! Nick: And the loser...goes home in a pine box!!!!! Champions Universal Deathmatch, 5th Edition, goes out with a BANG at Origins! Be there online!

Re: History question The reason why Cryotron is drawn on the back of the 4th edition enemies book and never actually appears inside it is because of Dennis. He wanted to make comic books with the characters, and sued them to retain the rights to his creations. At the time, Hero didn't have things like Cryptic's attorneys, so somehow, Dennis won. About a hundred characters disappeared. Marksman, Flare, Giant, Rose, the Corruptors of All, the Black Enchantress, Doctor Arcane and many others. He even has a version of Foxbat called Flying Fox. And it's EXACTLY the same character. My game is filled with, therefore, tributes to many of these characters. Some of them are vicious and backhanded, others are more subtle. Nonetheless, the thing that annoys me the most about what Dennis did was that in so doing, he effectively created "Negative History" for the history of the game itself. It's like the ABA. (The American Basketball Association) But that's a story in and of itself. The NBA took what they could and ditched the rest. This is the same story, just with Champions.

Re: History question Yeah. Dennis Malonee really, really screwed Hero. Every day, I pray that a bolt of lightning from the blue will give him a conscience and some honor. And if not, there's always meteors from space.

Re: Mind Scan vs. The Detective A typical baddy still has an Ego of around 15. 10d6, +10 to the roll. Well within the range of a starting PC. The problem is that the scanner can roll again and again until they DO succeed. I try twice a turn, I take a recovery, that's 12 attempts a minute. That's 720 attempts in an hour. That means that within 20 minutes, assuming a minimum chance of 1 in 216, the bad guy is discovered.

This problem has been evident in Champions for many years, and no one has ever bothered to fix it. There is no limit to the number of times you can mind scan for someone. By the time the Detective is still examining the first clue, the mentalist has already discovered where the villain is and the heroes are on the way to defeating him. In my personal opinion, Mind Scan beyond the immediate area should take much longer to use. It's cool to have it work the way it does for the player, but it's a total plot derailer at only +20 to know exactly where the person is.

Re: The Emergence Of Superhumans The answer is, that the presence of supers has only changed events after their reemergence in the 1930's. 9-11 didn't happen. I couldn't justify the terrorists flying over the base of the most powerful superhero team in the world (It's about 100 yards from the WTC), and crashing planes into it. The PC's in that group work in shifts, patrol in pairs, and always have someone on duty. In the time it took those guys to crash the plane into the WTC, the most powerful heroes in the world would have been onboard, flown the first plane away, and saved the people. Plus, there's the "Grim and Terrible response factor" That makes a bad comic book story. It isn't worth running a story where the PC's go after Osama Bin Laden and beat him up, that's not what comics are all about. Also, Supervillains messed with stuff. Prior to that, in game, a supervillain militarily conquered most of Africa and the Middle East. Because he was a villain, he saw no reason not to use his legion of cloned telepaths to locate the terrorists and kill them. He didn't miss very many. Ironically, he did this by reversing the fast building technology and using it against countries that used it exclusively. Presidents after 1988 are fictional. This is for two reasons. One, my group has some pretty radical left and radical right people in it. Two, supervillains messed with stuff.

Re: How Many "Super-Cities" is too many? One. I don't have a single city that has a super under every rock. New York would be the closest, that's got about 2-3 superhero teams at any given time and about 50 independents. I think "Super-cities" detract from the player characters and eat their spotlight. (And this is coming from "There's no such thing as an NPC" lad.) Super-cities make it impossible to have plot-driven archenemies because the villain has to plan for too many additional opponents. If you live in a city with the mightiest of the mighty, you have to be prepared to face the mightiest of the mighty, or you get your block knocked off.

Re: The Emergence Of Superhumans I run a world where the premise is "Once, everyone on Earth was super, created by Alien Humanoid Cachalot Whales to battle an alien race that looked very much like humanity. After the war ground to a stalemate, the supers expended most of their collective power to rebel against and trap their alien whale masters, effectively making superbeings an extremely recessive gene." So, do supers "emerge" in the 1930's? Yes. But in a sense, they were around long before that, too. It really depends on what kind of world you're going to run. The hardest thing for people in my world to accept is that Man Created God in His Own Image. But I wanted that to be there so that Superheroes had their own kind of importance, because that kind of IS the basic concept of the superhero.

Re: Superbeing Rights Debate 1) So that players understand that this requires a special skill that very few have. 2) I run a world with around 1200 villains or so. This means that if the PC's are up against one of these cloning masterminds, I want them to be sure they understand that the list of suspects is small, and that the plot is solvable without chasing after a million brilliant burgundy herrings. 3) If a PC has the right sciences, they can purchase the skill, however, this is risky, because developing it on your own is illegal, and finding one of the others to teach you will likely have unpleasant consequences. (Getting captured, being cloned yourself, etc) If you have the skill, your opposed roll doesn't have any penalties, which can be a godsend in the right situations. Clones can wear masks, too. They can wear ninja suits and invisibility belts. 4) In addition to "Plot control, hey guys, this is what you know." and "I'd really like to notice if this guy's blood sample makes him a clone", there's also "The villain can fail his roll." This means that if the villain doesn't make his roll, the PC's might just get a clue or information they wouldn't otherwise get. If the villain fails his roll badly enough, he may accidentally create his own enemy. (Always funny, especially when your PC's figure it out.) It creates additional ways the plot can go. Because there's no such thing as an NPC.

Re: Why the dislike for Find Weakness? You guys aren't reading the time chart rules correctly. He doesn't have to study for another minute to bring it up to 12-. Once his roll is 14-, it's 14-. This assumes a base 11-, the minimum that you're allowed to buy with the power. He then rolls Find Weakness. Having studied the target for a minute, his roll is now 12-. He doesn't have to do it twice. That's a convenient misreading of the way the time chart governs skill rolls. It implies that it's a separate use of the skill against a different target, which it isn't. It's simply an acquired penalty against his new base roll of 14-, because that's what Find Weakness says. The problem here is that a 14- is something like 90 percent of the time, and a 12- is something like 68 percent of the time. A 10-, which is the next number on the chart, is more or less about 52.5 percent of the time. My real issue here, of course, is the cost of Armor Piercing relative to this power. If you buy Armor Piercing, you get the shaft, because it's more expensive to harden your defenses than it is to buy Lack of Weakness (A VERY difficult power to justify for most PC's). And, Armor Piercing only works once ever. Find Weakness works until you stop finding weakness. The higher powered the game, the more mighty Find Weakness becomes. Steamteck is absolutely right. When your average defenses are 8, halving them to 4 is not that exciting. When your average defenses are 50, halving them to 25 is REALLY exciting. And in a game like that, Find Weakness is dirt cheap.

Re: Why the dislike for Find Weakness? I dislike Find Weakness because if you want this power, it should be armor piercing with an activation roll, not a separate power. Sniping and Find Weakness is absolutely disgusting. THe problem with Find Weakness is that if you take one minute to study your target, in most games, the character's average defenses will be 2-3 points. That's right. 2-3 points. The base time for Find Weakness is a half phase, so the rules for the time chart now apply. So, on pre phase 12, I find weakness. Keep in mind, this doesn't trigger Danger Sense, because I am not attacking him. Phase 12, I find weakness twice more. He now has 1/8 of his base defense. That means if he started at 32, he's got 4 now. Phase 2 or 3. BANG. Target is down. Next action. BANG. Target is dead. Make a new character. No other ability in the game, that's right, in the entire game, is so valuble for so little point cost.