Balabanto

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? I'm still kind of hoping that Viggo Mortensen's portrayal of Alatriste will make it to DVD. Those books rock. And I really don't want to pay 50 bucks for the subtitled import. I will if I have to, but if you thought the swashbuckler genre was dead, pick up Captain Alatriste Purity of Blood and The Sun over Breda There's two more coming

Re: What Have You Watched Recently? BBC Robin Hood, Season One. Oh...my! This is the best !@#$%@!ing version to come down the pike since Errol Flynn. Plus, the guy they got to play the Sheriff of Nottingham was SO EVIL in character that I HAD to steal him for a D+D game I was running. The heroes are troubled. The Sheriff is Evil. There's an interesting Holy Land subplot that keeps coming up, and I simply cannot get enough of the fact that Robin Hood has realized that he cannot beat the Sheriff simply by killing him, that he has to, in fact, win the hearts and minds of the people of Nottingham. It's smart, it's sassy, and for the first time in a really long time, I REALLY feel like I'm looking at Robin Hood for real. The DVDs cost a bunch, but you can buy them, then spread them around and give them to your friends. Can't wait for Season Two. Plus, if you are running a Robin Hood style game in any system, the soundtrack for this (Available on Amazon) is a MUST!

Re: The Fatherless Five Isvatha V'han is the mother. They are all from alternate futures.

Re: "I shoot the escape pod!!!" I just let it happen. Free will is a big part of the game. But if they do something that is, in your opinion as a GM, really dumb, you have the power of GM smackdown to make them aware of their mistake. The problem is when the player doesn't realize they made a mistake even after the consequences have been shown to them.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Balabanto not know, Enforcer. Balabanto only pawn in game of life. However, in my Champions Game tonight, sadly, The Oligarch got off another classic line with devastating consequences. The Oligarch draws an iron rod, crackling with electricity, moving to attack Mesa, the team brick.... Oligarch: Now, cretin, behold as I strike you with the very power of Zeus! Mesa: Don't be ridiculous, that stupid rod doesn't have the power of...ACK!!!!! Oligarch rolls 22 Body and 88 stun on a 5d6 RKA. Mesa is bodily hurled out of the room and falls onto the sand of the nearby beach, with electrical burns all over him. (7 Body...) He is totally unconscious....

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Yeah, it's D+D, but.... Jhessail Melshimber, Sorceress: You know, Blazenar, you really should have been more diplomatic with the inquisitor. Taelin Olthalos, Elf Warrior/Wizard: Calling someone a git is not diplomatic!!!!!

Re: Design Challenge: The Internet Chuck Norris When you build the ultimate Champions character, you build something only a hundredth as badass as Chuck Norris.

Re: Design Challenge: The Internet Chuck Norris Chuck Norris is a Variable Power Pool with an uncontrolled, continuous aid to his Variable Power Pool outside it.

Re: The Best Deathtrap ever Actually, I thought the best deathtrap ever was "The Whipped Cream Pit" from one of the catalogs of Grimtooth's Traps, but this one is clearly also in a class by itself.

Well, I don't know if any of you have seen this trailer yet, but this is a link for it. It's called Hellboy II: The Golden Army http://www.hellboymovie.com/ It's superheroic enough that people should go see it.

Re: Who are the top 5 most powerful characters in your Campaign. #1 Archyve, Master of Time. Archyve is possibly the most dangerous supervillain the PC's have ever seen, which is why he doesn't appear very often. The last time he was seen, Millennium Guard fought him in Athena's Parthenon on Mount Olympus, and disarmed the Spear of Destiny from him while he was desolidified. There was an explosion. A large explosion. A temporal displacing explosion. No one has seen him since, but he's still out there. #2 Warstar...The world's mightiest master villain is THOUGHT to be dead. A smarter, more patient version of Doctor Doom style armored masterminds, death really isn't a barrier for this guy, is it? #3 Abraxas: This six and a half foot tall humanoid alien sperm whale creature's sheet can be found in Digital Hero #27. He threatens the world from his base in the Marianas Trench. Since the PC's can't get down there with any degree of certainty, he can plot against the world until they do. #4 Set, Lord of Evil, Serpents, and the Night: Well, he's a classic evil deity, complete with cultists, necromantic wizards, and guys in hoods who follow him and do his bidding. I've always loved that "Yes, Mighty One, No Mighty One" and taking orders from weird pools of green water stuff. #5 The Psiconic Man: You'll have to read Mind Over Matter when I finally get it out to discover the secret of the Psiconic Man.

Re: Was the GM right or wrong in limiting my Gadgeteer? Just as a side note: These are the 5 moments of "Are you sure?" I've enshrined forever. 5. Mike, I swing my monofilament Katana at the rocket. 4. I jump on the back of the Dragon Turtle. 3. I leave the base and take out the garbage. Me: Did you put your clothes on? Player: No. 2. I step over the ten foot wide pit. 1. I land on the Dragon's head.

Re: Was the GM right or wrong in limiting my Gadgeteer? My answer to this question is based on another question, unfortunately. How deadly were these encounters? Was everyone else pretty much running around kicking butt and taking names while you were a sideline project? Or were you the only guy standing at that point while everyone else was hacking up blood at negative body and wobbling around the battlefield saying "Help...dying..." If the answer to either of these questions is "Yes..." then your GM did you dirty, though for different reasons. 1) If he sidelined your character and made it weaker and less effective, then it wasn't fair to you vis a vis the others. 2) If you were the only guy standing and everyone else was basically about to die, it is a superhero game. He should have allowed you the ATTEMPT, and I stress this, the ATTEMPT, to jury rig something. The flaw in this situation is that he outright said no. For mechanical stuff and asking the GM may I buy this power, I always feel free to say no. When a player asks me if they can take an action as their character, this is the correct response: "You can try it." I won't tell them what the chance is for success or failure, but that's not my business. A good GM always lets his players make the attempt, unless it's so obviously stupid that he has to use these words instead. "Are you sure you want to take this action?" If the PC says yes, then all bets are off.

Re: No combat respect Your +3 Overall levels are destroying you. That could just as easily be +3 with Energy Blast (6 points) +1 with Elemental Control (5 points, and you can use those for DCV) +8 CON (Raising it to 23, also costing 16 points, raising your END) That also raises your REC to 8, while spending nothing, and gives you 2 points of ED, which raises your combat respect level. It also gives you 5 points of much needed stun. Then buy +2 Range Skill levels with Energy Blast for 3 points. Now you don't take a -2 from the first 8" and have a -2 out to 16". Your DCV is now twice as effective, because your 8 is effectively a 10, assuming you keep the EC level in DCV, and you should, unless you're going to finish an opponent off. Your massive movement allows you to zip up to people and fire at them with an OCV of up to 11 from 8" away. The 2 points of ED will also help you here because it makes you slightly harder to hurt, enabling you to take a 14d6 energy attack once without being stunned. It will hurt like the devil, but you'll still get another action in. Your goal with this character is to stay away from hand to hand combat, you don't have the strength to face off against grabbers and martial artists, and you have enough EB to spread the martial artist out of existence. That's what I'd do. I'd also never have bought this character a suboptimal martial art in a superhero game in the first place. That's a complete waste of points. As roleplaying oriented as it may be, the way the hero system is set up, joe guy at a dojo doesn't really have any maneuvers. Those points would have been better spent on his DEX, or his SPD. As it stands, you have 17 experience points you can spend. If you want to keep the Overall Levels...they're nice, but they're not really appropriate for an energy blaster. You really don't have enough of a skills list to justify their need. And really, only the mightiest of heroes should be able to go "Have to...concentrate" and throw their levels into ECV if they're not mentalists themselves. You should spend those 17 points as follows, regardless of whether you rearrange the levels. Buy +2 Range Skill levels with the EB for 3 points. Buy 2 levels with Flight for 6 points. Those you can use for DCV, or to alter your turn mode, and trust me, with the distance you fly in a turn, you NEED to alter your turn mode. That leaves 6 points for CON, which will raise your END and your ED, and leave you with 2, for +1 with energy blast.

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... It's D+D. Sadly. The situation: A knight of a faraway land (Also a PC) has hired PC's to come with him into the jungle in order to find a family heirloom that was lost in the jungle over a hundred years ago. He cannot speak the local language, or read the map. My female PC has attached herself to this character, because he is a noble knight and has a title, along with (She thinks) money and postion. Regrettably, his character is broke, though he has yet to tell her this. So she calls him "My brave hero!" and attempts to butter him up all the time. Finally unrolling the whole thing after multiple battles with highly dangerous creatures, my character, who CAN speak the language, looks at him and says "CITY OF THE BONE SCORPION? You're taking us to a place called CITY OF THE BONE SCORPION?" Him: I guess so. Primitive Jungle character: No good. Dark gods strong there. Bad magic there. Paladin/Bard: That sounds like an excellent place to destroy evil! Dwarf Swashbuckler Rogue: Couldn't we destroy evil in a TEMPERATE clime? The Knight in Question: I hate this jungle! One day, we'll go back to Cormyr. Me: Will I get a big house, and beautiful furniture out of it? Dwarf: Shouldn't you be more worried about our survival? Me: There's no point in surviving without my brave hero...(Feigned Romantic Sigh...) WHY DIDN'T YOU TELL US ABOUT THE EVIL SCORPION CITY?... That was when it finally dawned on her that he couldn't read the map.

Re: Star Trek’s 10 Cheesiest Classic Creatures Uh, no. That's not the worst alien ever, trust me. There are several Doctor Who candidates that win over that one by far. The Krotons? The Mechanoids? The Zarbi? Oh, yeah, and the most iconic Doctor Who alien is a pepper pot alien with a lever on it's head. I love the show, but if you look at it bereft of it's mythology, all of those suck worse than the oil slick.

Re: Star Trek’s 10 Cheesiest Classic Creatures Wow. Spock's Brain did NOT make the list. I'm stunned.

Re: C.l.o.w.n. It really depends. Every so often, I run a scenario so dark that an appearance by CLOWN shortly thereafter is a welcome break.

Re: C.l.o.w.n. Well, the thing is that I only use the ones that are appropriate to the scenario. If they all show up, some of them don't actually shoot anything. Once I had Spotlight sit around and just hold up a sign that said "Don't shoot the baby." Apparently people feel the need to shoot at these folks anyway.

Re: C.l.o.w.n. There's a few players though, who just HATE getting captured. HATE losing fights, no matter how much it would advance the plot for the villain to win, and then complain when they do lose, claiming I stacked the deck against them. And when the world does turn against them because they resented that loss so much that they overreact and do something stupid, then they build their character to be invincible except in certain specific situations, which requires me to tiptoe around them, or the other players all get screwed. The problem with this is that if the player(s) who do that just didn't build their characters that way, fights would be fairer, and I wouldn't have "The purpose of the justice league is to kick the Kryptonite out of the way for Superman effect."

Re: C.l.o.w.n. Well, my players hate losing, but they'll lose every dustup to C.L.O.W.N. and not care. I still haven't figured this one out.

Re: Twist off the WWYCD Wow, if I had 25 XP to spend on most of my characters, I'd either buy off limitations, disads the GM didn't feel like addressing, or add points to the character's bases, vehicles, and skills lists. I don't like it when my character gets a new power and it suddenly comes "free" or out of the blue. New skills that freshen up concept, sure. But I like doing things the hard way, so I probably wouldn't spend any of those points on combat.

Re: Suppress CSL You don't buy that as negative skill levels. Here's how you buy that "Steely Gaze" kind of power. Steely Gaze: Change Environment, -3 OCV and -3 DCV, Cone (0), X16 hexes, 0 END (+1/2), Total Real 75 points. Without Emotional Impact: -1/4, doesn't work versus blind people or creatures that can't sense it. Company of Equals: -1/4, doesn't work vs. Soldiers, Assassins, and the similarly ruthless and/or experienced Similarly Focussed: -1/4, doesn't work vs. martial artists or similar "badass" characters. Focussed by Hatred: Remove the 0 End limitation and make them pay END for it. I still think you shouldn't do it. It's kinda broken.

Re: Suppress CSL Yeah, I wouldn't do anything. The classic comic book situation here says this. "Hah, fools, I have suppressed all of your powers. You can do nothing to stop me!" tap...tap...tap... "Excuse me? My name is Golden Phoenix Fist. I have no powers. And you need a dentists appointment..." POW!

Re: Quote of the Week from my gaming group... Thankfully, I don't run in the CU. Personally...I thought the moment where the cybervulture was threatened with a rear spoiler was worth money in and of itself.