Rigel's blue blast connects with the shadow shield projected by Auroch's bands, rattling the bull headed creature.
He rolled a 17 vs a Toughness DC of 25, failing by 8, which is 2 degrees of failure. He is now dazed (free and 1 standard action only) and has an additional -1 penalty to saves vs damage, for a total of -2.
Reminder that there is a map and some reference images in the slides link at the top of the page. I just added some tokens.
The door from the hangar into the factory slides open, revealing an industrial tripod robot walker. Floating above and behind it is a minotaur-like alien warrior clutching an axe made from pure darkness.
This is Auroch, a high ranking leader within the Blackguard.
The Blackguard are pretty much a Sinestro Corps expy. They are led by a villain known as Blackstar, and wear Shadow Bands that give them powers similar to a Lantern.
The bull man bellows and says, "Well, what have we here. A couple of troublemakers. This is a private installation. We don't take visitors..."
I think they are making a mistake even having a "villain" for this multiverse saga. If I were in charge of charting this course, I'd do an X-Men movie, a FF movie, and then bring everyone together in Secret Wars. You don't need a villain. Have the Beyonder bring everyone together, do the old "winner universe gets to continue existing, everyone else dies." Then they somehow talk Beyonder out of it and universes get smushed together.
Having completed extensive training in zombie boot camp, the crowd responds almost instinctively, moving slowly toward the SUV. The other two MiB move toward the escaping UTV, joining their partner in the chase, not paying you any attention at the moment.
I'll go there. Spiderverse is a legit work of fine art. The animation is brilliant and amazing. It supports the storytelling in a way that live action wouldn't. And the story is so much more nerdy and comic booky than any live action movie.
As for The Marvels, it is fine. Act 1 was great. Iman Vellani is AMAZING as a person, as a fan, as an actor. I enjoyed it, but I am an easy get for any comic book movie. I loved the family. Act 1 was good. Act 2 was fine. Act 3 was weak. Captain Marvel does an awesome Silver Age Superman sort of thing that is yada yada and should have been a big deal.
Ultimately putting these three characters in the same movie is probably too much too soon. But at least Nick is back to being Nick. Lord, Secret Invasion was bad. I'm deleting that from my mind canon.
Put a very rough and terrible map in slides. You are filming in a sort of elevated bowl mostly surrounded by a broken ridgeline. The road up here is just a dirt track. You could also drive around that north east edge of the ridge. Where the brown line is is pretty rough. You would have to go on foot there or could probably drive one of the production four wheelers or atvs. I know none of you are Rambo and aren't likely looking to disappear in the wilderness, but just wanted to point out the situation since it was kind of vague.
This is such a crazy idea. Love it. You can either work your way to the trailer or jump cut if you prefer.
Customize for your particular senses and defenses. It is a little tricky to make a template for this game. Just anything that is passive that I need to remember. (Insubstantial, Immunities, Senses, etc.)
One of Flow's tentacles lifts a control PAD of some sort. Again telepathically: "We can work in my office, but your ship might be more comfortable, and certainly dryer! I can beam the information to you from here. There is video of all of the thefts, records of what was stolen, and then there is the sabotage. We have statements from workers and managers in those facilities."
Rigel, can you put your build in your alias, please?
Crocodilian General Raffar rises and croaks out, "I speak for President Kuusm, who cannot attend these proceedings, but I also speak for the military of Krine, who were smugly disrespected by these invaders. They are clearly vagrants! But I am impressed with their bravado. I give them a vote of Confidence!"
At that the blue skinned Governor Endara says, "So be it. These Champions will be given access to our files and security holos of the various crimes that have been committed in our systems. Attache Flow will assist you and grant you whatever access you need, Champions."
At that, you are approached by a six tentacled Hexxim (who looks like an octopus wearing a glass bowl full of water. He clearly breathes the water, but his appendages allow him to interact with the air breathing world.) In your minds, you hear, "I am Flow Synvadix. I will facilitate your investigations." Flow somehow possesses the power of flight, which you know is not typical of his species (Hexxim).
I really don't know where Pan is and honestly, I've had a hard time finding my voice with this character in this setting. It's probably time for me to bow out of this game. I appreciate the opportunity, GM ST. Sorry I couldn't make more of it.
Sorry to hear that, Therenger. We seem to have bad luck staying in a game together. Best luck gaming and hope to see you in another game.
I'm not completely sure this is the right spot on this for this on the forum. If it belongs somewhere else, please move it. But I wanted this to post in the most general forum.
I have been a Paizo follower since the earliest days of Dragon and Dungeon magazines. I loved those 'zines and subscribed to them with as much passion as I could have. I still miss the monthly feel, a deep dive into a topic that didn't have to be attached to something else.
When 4E came along, my face to face group and I decided to stick with 3.5 and the Pathfinder extension of it. We played the Alpha, the Beta, and moved on to Pathfinder as a game system. Since then, we have stuck with Pathfinder 1. No need to move to Pathfinder 2nd edition. While I agree with some of its design goals, we are still playing 1E adventure paths and have no need to move to a new edition.
We are currently level 16 in the Return of the Runelords adventure path. I'm sure we will go to level 20 and maybe to the optional extension where we fight Sorshen. I can't get on board with
Spoiler:
Sorshen
coming into the world in Peace. I've been setting her up as a big bad for several adventure paths.
I don't know what we will play once we finish this campaign. I don't even know how much longer I'll be able to play tabletop games past this campaign. But Paizo has given me more than a decade of gaming joy. I just wanted to be sure that I said Thank You.
One consequence of the intense fatigue and brain fog I'm experiencing is that I can barely read or even watch new shows on streaming. I'm not much for tv fluff like reality shows or competition shows, and even Ahsoka and Loki have proved challenging.
So I've been watching lots of old shows. Which is to say that this campaign is currently being informed by The A-Team, The Fall Guy, and The Greatest American Hero. Only 2 seasons of Fall Guy are on Amazon. Haven't found the other three yet.
Sapphire stood up. She had got what she could from the dead.
"Welcome, If you need some kit let me know, got a load of stuff we looted and some may be of use"
Says the android killbot,
As she stood there her body and clothing cleaned and fixed itself, as her nineties did there work.
She used Prestidigitation and mend to clean and fix her clothing and gear FLavered as her nanites
I'm almost 100% sure that that was an accidental crosspost from a different campaign. Let's ignore that.
When you are ready to drop out of N-space:
The twisting motion of returning to the probably is suddenly jarred by explosions as you enter normal space between two opposing warships!
With a second lurch, two hailing beacons simultaneously ping on the ship’s command console, and before they can be silenced, two angry visages appear—a craggy, yellow-eyed reptilian with rows of vicious teeth and a snake-like woman covered in glassy scales.
The first voice, low and gruff, booms, “I am Sky Commo-dore Em’Thellethet, of the Krine Congregation, and I demand your surrender and the return of our property!”
The second voice, several octaves higher, emits from a scaled mouth and competes with a hiss, “You won’t fool me General, call off your mercenaries, admit your theft, or suffer the Matriarch’s wrath.”
Still feeling terrible and that is likely to continue for at least 6 weeks. Did get some slightly better news this week. Just doing some scans to rule some things out and then surgery and recovery. Thanks for the patience.
Absolutely ... and I finally have some time to sit here believe it or not.
I will update my profile shortly, AND I owe you a POR file.
Rigel, (and anyone else with opinions) let's talk about rings and Lanterns. In the Freedomverse, there is a group called Star Knights who are pretty much Green Lantern expies who wear special armor and have swords. Little dash of Jedi thrown in.
I've never been much of a fan of some parts of them. I'll still use Star Knights as the name and organization for a group of Galactic cops.
Do you want to be part of that group, a lone lantern whose ring came from another universe, a lone lantern spontaneously from this universe, something else?
You know, when I first developed Rigel, my vision of him was basically as a proto-Guardian. Like an otherwise human guy who formed a Ring & Lantern out of nothing and tapped them into the Emotional Spectrum. The principle of that could totally still work with him originally being (or still being) a Star Knight.
What's left then is figuring out the broader infrastructure that Rigel is plugging into, because while the database & communication powers aren't expensive or anything, they can be highly impactful. A plugged in GL has access to universe-wide data, but that comes from the Guardians long long presence in the galaxy.
Not to give too much away, but I do intend to have some multi-versal intrusions, so it could be that he has a Blue Lantern but that there otherwise aren't such rings and lanterns.
This leaves you with three points and gets you what you posted above. I'd probably go with another alternate effect for the gun/sword. Maybe an entangling power, or a sort of plasma cutter thing to cut through hulls, or an area attack to represent mowing down minions with autofire? What else could an advanced multiweapon do.
Alternately you could blow it on a utility belt and just buy some equipment. You can buy equipment in a utility belt as an array, so you can only use one item at a time but that doesn't come up that much. Just don't put handcuffs in the array because then you use smoke bombs and the cuffs disappear!
I'm guessing that most of you are not deep fans of Freedomverse lore, so this is going to need a sizable info dump. I'm going to post that in Discussion and eventually I'll put some more info in the Campaign Info.
Absolutely ... and I finally have some time to sit here believe it or not.
I will update my profile shortly, AND I owe you a POR file.
Rigel, (and anyone else with opinions) let's talk about rings and Lanterns. In the Freedomverse, there is a group called Star Knights who are pretty much Green Lantern expies who wear special armor and have swords. Little dash of Jedi thrown in.
I've never been much of a fan of some parts of them. I'll still use Star Knights as the name and organization for a group of Galactic cops.
Do you want to be part of that group, a lone lantern whose ring came from another universe, a lone lantern spontaneously from this universe, something else?
Usually you get two skill ranks per power point, but I changed that to be 3 skill ranks per power point for this game.
Each ranged weapon is its own skill. So you can spend 1 power point and (with our houserule) improve ranged attack by 1 with three weapons. Or improve 1 ranged weapon attack by 3.
Advantages cost 1 point per advantage. Some advantages can be bought in ranks. So buying ranged weapon advantage is more expensive if you are only applying it to 1 weapon (or 2 with the house rule). I figure your guy isn't specialized in just his weapon but could pick up any weapon or use a ship based weapon just as well. The advantage applies to all ranged attacks. Of course, if you want to be just specialized in that one weapon (array) we can switch it back.
Praetorian, I'm going to build you from the ground up in Hero Lab so I can more easily talk about moving points around.
I'll get back to you about the shield array, but it isn't too hard. Basically you build a version that is always providing some passive defense and (in an array) another version that requires concentration but is better.
The goal being like if you think of Captain America, he can fight with his shield and it helps his defense, but if he just gets behind it and sort of turtles up not much can get past the shield.
These are fine for moving around. Movement is pretty cheap in the game, so vehicles that can only move are pretty cheap. As long as you don't want something to fight with. Then they start to get more expensive as you give them shields, weapons, etc.
Rockhead and Sled can use the shuttle to get around.
Rigel also has moveable constructs, so he can do the Lantern trick where they put someone in a bubble and fly with them.
For 1 equipment point you can have a "galactic cell phone" that allows you to communicate on a galaxy wide holographic communication system. This may not work on remote planets or in deep space.
For 1 power point you can have a comm link that will communicate with the ship as long as it is in the same solar system and there isn't "ionic interference" or whatever other technobabble would block it. Basically a Star Trek communicator but with a holographic interface.
Rockhead has Communicate at Rank 5. That is pretty much telepathic communication with anyone in the universe.
That is quite a bit different from what I was expecting, so it may take me a few days to get up to speed, but I can begin to see how all of these stories come together.
I think what works best is if everyone is already together and feels like that is the way things should be. I may mess with that as we go.
If you are building in Herolab, you can send me a .por file at GMSupertumbler@gmail.com. Makes it easier for me to help with builds and power stunts and such. If you don't use herolab, I'll build your character in it to make my life easier.
Happy to have you Rigel. I wasn't sure you were going to get a submission in. Happy to have a Lantern. I'd like to work Lanterns into the setting as more than just a one off.
I'll post more thoughts on things generally later tonight.
Rosa finds that Garret is looking better. His pulse is stronger, his color more typical of a human than a ghost.
Jorge says, "We have a sonogram. Probably we could manage an emergency chest tube. It will take forever to get him to an emergency room, and who knows if an ambulance can get here with what is going on on the road back there..."
Garret grimaces and says, "I can...talk ok. I need to get back to what I was...doing. Where is the, chimpanzee?"
The Black Rock Desert provides a stark and picturesque backdrop for Alien and/or Zombie Invasion in the Dunes (Working Title). There aren't actually dunes, so much, but it is a desert, and the rocks and hills are beautiful. Base camp is a variety of trailers and campers. A crater with a "meteor" set into the bottom is waiting for the day's shooting.
GM SuperTumbler, with 'Tess' as part of the crew, do we contribute the 5 points to improve her? Or can we use the five points for for 'team related' things, like communication gear. Apparently, it's really expensive to communicate. Or something else? I just realized Roy's 'senses' are still strictly human. Not that I don't have other points to spend still
Also, I know some things are limited by the PL, is the 'offense' one of those things? Presently I have his weapons array at + 10 (+ 5 dex, + 5 combat skill) can he spend more points on combat skill making it: + 15 (+5 dex, + 10 combat skill)?
I'm going to have to ponder how the ship works. What if someone is on the ship but Tess isn't? Since it is an alternate form, it would (narratively) cease to exist. That probably isn't exactly what we want.
What are you seeing that makes communication expensive (I'm not discounting the possibility I'm missing something)? For 5 points you can communicate at pretty much any range. A comm-link is a 1 point feature.
For offensive things, your attack and damage are limited to twice your power level. So at power level 10, the combination of those things can't exceed 20. You can build things with any combination that adds up to 20.
I usually let equipment break those limits. If you suddenly gain access to the Death Star Laser, you can use that weapon at full power.
Setting wise, I'm thinking interstellar travel will use something along the lines of star lanes, hyperspace corridors, or something like that. Not just warping through space.
The Universe is in trouble. The Universe is always in trouble. And you are one of the idiots who lives in it!
This is a Recruitment for a campaign using Mutants and Masterminds 3rd Edition. The spirit of the campaign is high adventure space opera in the style of Star Wars, Battlestar Galactica (not the dark edgy one, well, not too much), Flash Gordon, Guardians of the Galaxy, Green Lantern, Legion of Super Heroes, Starjammers, Adam Strange. Not full on silliness like Hitchiker’s Guide and Buckaroo.
The Player Characters will be a team of adventurers (may not start out as a team, but I’m leaning that way). They should be overall heroic, but an assassin or mercenary or smuggler would not be a problem. An alien or AI just trying to figure it all out is also fine. But overall the adventures will lean toward saving planets, fighting evil overlords, defeating living black holes, and otherwise solving troubles and standing up for the little guy.
Build rules:
PL 10
170 power points
(the party will have an additional pool of points to pay for a ship, something like 75 Equipment points)
House/Special rules:
3 Skill points per power point instead of the standard 2
Technology Level 3 from the Cosmic Handbook. So you can have equipment at roughly a Star Wars/Star Trek level of tech.
Note that I will mercilessly destroy and break equipment and make it not function for dramatic purposes. If you want something to work almost all of the time, buy it as a Device.
Skills:
Expertise: Astrogation skill (as described in Cosmic Handbook) is in effect. What this means is pretty much that all uses of Space Travel power (whether ship or personal) will require this skill check to navigate effectively. Of course with the Technology level you could also build it into a ship, droid, or other equipment.
You don’t need to specify expertise skills to apply to spacy things. For Example: Expertise: Biology will apply to Xenobiology. Possibly with penalties based on weirdness. Vehicles will apply to all vehicles. With a possible penalty for vehicles at different technology levels or of much alien strangeness.
Ranged Combat: Vehicular Weapons is a skill you can take.
We will begin with the published Prodigal Sun adventure.
Setting:
Base setting will be the Freedomverse setting as described in the all of those supplements. Earth will not play a big role but might come up. Elements of other settings may wander in either at your inclusion or mine. Star Knights will be more like Green Lanterns and less wearing power armor. Jedi or something like Jedi would be fine.
I am looking primarily for good players and strong and compatible concepts. I am happy to help out with builds, and I'm entirely comfortable with accepting a character who isn't completely built. I also tend to allow rebuilds once the character is in play. Sometimes things in this system just don't play like you thought they would and need tweaking.
No need to create an alias unless you are accepted.
I will accept up to 6 players.
Recruitment will be open for two weeks until October 1.
All necessary rules are in the core 3E book or the d20herosrd. All books are allowed. The Cosmic Handbook is useful.
I will use a Power Stunt to add Swimming to my Strength Array if that is acceptible. Then a Hero Point to buy off the fatigue. That gives me Swim for the duration of this scene.
"Yes, I understand. Cavitation. I can hear all of it. Even better than before. Sound propagates through this medium quite well...I find almost everything about "everyone else" strange. People seem to lack purpose. I know exactly what my purpose is. And most of you waste so much time. Sleeping, studying, snacking. Most of their existence is devoted to these trivial matters. It is maddening. I can understand the pleasure that they experience when eating pizza. But everything is so slow to them. How can they stand it?"
I would think that to make something like Voltron feel right, the combined form would share some points between all members (some sort of alternate form that everyone pays for). It would probably also need to function at a higher PL (Power Level) than the loose people.
I've seen games where people played characters at one PL and Mechs at a higher PL.
In other thoughts, I hope I haven't skewed people too far in the sci fi direction. This is definitely space opera/space fantasy/high weirdness campaign. No reason you couldn't play a more savage character brought into the setting. From a primitive planet, frozen for years, Planet Hulk, etc.
The setting will be space operatic and comic book space. Probably primarily set in the cosmic version of the Freedomverse but with elements of DC, Marvel, and other universes intruding. If someone wants to go all in and create a Jedi or a Green Lantern or something, those intrusions/Incursions could become a plot point.
Did Galactus eat Krypton? I think that happened in one of the crossovers.
I'm not a huge fan of the Star Knights in the Freedomverse as space cops. They use all of the parts of other space cops I'm not that excited by. So I'll probably do something else.
Single biome planets, hyperspace travel, very soft sci-fi.
I am capable of building anything and roleplaying anything and my first question is always to the GM -- what might I role play that would help the game that you are thinking about running.
Like I said I have often created a character that would allow the characters to communicate with one another sort of like having separate communication devices going through a central hub - this is the operator how can I help you - the central hub being my character which when the other PCs are using them as a mental relay station it is a bit distracting but there should always be something that makes a very useful ability have a limitation to it... being all powerful is kind of pointless in a game.
For this campaign, I'm not going to exactly have a plot planned. You will make characters, hopefully with interesting backgrounds, and the plot will grow out of those characters. The first adventure will be a published one, and so will have some rails, but those adventures really have just set ups and opponents.
Mutants and Masterminds characters have so many abilities that it is almost impossible to railroad them.
For tone, I'm looking at Star Wars (the original trilogy), Guardians, Starjammers comics, and a sort of Modern age version of Silver Age cosmic weirdness.
To study for this I sat and rewatched all three 'Guardians' yesterday...
I've been reading the rules, I probably should skip the idea of playing a 'ships avatar' but I'm still stoked. So many character types to choose from, I'll probably wait until we get a little more description on the 'universe' we'll be playing in and the set up.
Obviously, I can't take everyone who has expressed interest, and I'm not even really thinking about who to recruit at this point, so take anything I say here with that in mind.
I think the idea of playing a ship's intelligence is pretty cool. Whether as a hologram or an android. You could also have multiple vehicles that serve as forms. Lots of possibilities there.
Oddball could absolutely talk us into something different. Sentry is not suggesting tactics I think are a good idea. And OMAX-23 is on the same frequency, I think. We are just playing our programming. And I'm pretty sure Mariner just wants to get the plot moving. Which probably we all do.
The genius of this game is that your character's flaws help to power their heroic behaviour (by often granting hero points). This encourages more interesting and realistic play. :)
For those new to the system, what this is talking about is Hero Points. On the d20herosrd site these are called Victory Points because the whole system is under the OGL except for Hero Points and one other thing I can't remember.
You get Hero Points at the beginning of each session (which is something you have to tweak in PbP, naturally), for Luck powers.
But most importantly, you get Hero Points whenever your Complications come up. Complications can be people, attitudes, or pretty much anything that causes you a restriction in the way you behave.
So Superman gets a Hero Point when Lois is in danger. Peter Parker when he needs to make rent, or MJ is in trouble, or Aunt May, or something thinks he is a menace. One of the reasons I love this game is how well it models comics. The reason Spider-Man is so awesome is he has so many Complications he is a Hero Point machine. You can have a Complication for having enemies, so every member of your Rogue's gallery gives you a Hero Point.
These can also be more abstract things, like a Code of Honor, Green Lantern's code, Last of your Kind, things like that.
From a GotG perspective, (in the first movie) Gamora and Drax have Thanos, Peter has Hunted by Ravagers, Wanted, Obsessed with Walkman. Rocket has a thing for robotic limbs, is a racoon, overcomplicates plans.
The most fun thing is that you can invoke your complications (with GM approval). So you can add a villain to a scene or change a scene to make it interact with your Complication.
"The Best of Both Worlds" cliffhanger codified the season finale cliffhanger ending.
While it was awesome, I hate what it created. So many series ended with cliffhangers and were cancelled.
I'm not sure that the cliffhanger with Picard as a Borg was the first, but it was the wildly successful one that everyone copied and still copies.
And if you don't know, it wasn't known to the creators (or the fans) that Stewart was coming back after that finale, so the episode was left open so they could write him out. The plan if he didn't renew his contract was to make Riker the captain and Shelby the new XO.
First and most important: This is just an interest check. I'm not at all ready to run this campaign. Lots of personal stuff going on right now and school and work happening. Actual recruitment wouldn't happen until late September/Early October.
Second: I'm looking to run a Cosmic style campaign in the vein of Guardians of the Galaxy/Star Wars/Buck Rogers/Flash Gordon/Starcrash/etc.
This campaign would start with the published Prodigal Sun adventure (which is written for PL 12) but we would start at PL 10. There is a forthcoming Cosmic adventure path called "Event Horizon" that I might use parts of or might not.
Characters would be weird and quirky. Star Lord, Rocket, Groot, Green Lantern, Jedi, Star Wars characters, Gamora, Nebula, Nova, Lobo, Kryptonians, and weird things would be appropriate.
Recently wrapped up a Mutants and Masterminds campaign, and since it is my favorite system, looking at doing another one.
This would be 3rd Edition.
The design hook for this campaign would be something James Gunn said about GotG. To paraphrase, I wasn't looking to recreate Star Wars, but to recreate the feeling I had when I first saw Star Wars.
