sticksandsharks:

faerie dragon

Welcome to my third character build guide. This time we’re focusing on the master of the battlefield—the Controller. Comic book characters like Ice Man, Cable, and Graviton are great examples of this archetype. A Controller’s role is to incapacitate their enemies, de-buff them, and well—control them. Key Abilities for a Controller are: Darkness Control, Devitalization Ray, Emotion Control, Grapnel, Gravity Control, Ice Blast, Mind Control, Paralysis Ray, Paralytic Poison, Siphon, Telekinesis, and Transmutation. I highly recommend the following Ability Modifiers: Area Effect, Duration, and Success Power. There are more ways to play a Controller than any other archetype, but like the others builds it pays to remain focused. I would strongly suggest building around one controlling Ability—two at the most. All your other Abilities should either support your choice of Control or provide you with some utility and protection so you can stay in the fight long enough to be effective. With that in mind, I’ll start with the Control Ability—Gravity Control.

In V&V, much as in real life, Gravity is O.P. It can bring down the biggest and toughest foes you’ll face, and it’s very hard to protect against. Even if a target doesn’t take much damage, they’ll still be lying on their back staring at the sky (or ceiling) and thinking about that time they were upright and mobile. Those were good times, they might think—I should have appreciated them more. Anyway, let’s dive into Gravity Control—just like things with a lot of uh, gravity—the mechanics are very dense and need some unpacking. To quote the rules, Gravity Control are a set of Abilities that “enable a character to modify the pull of gravity on objects or areas. There are three forms of Gravity Control: Gravity Decrease, Gravity Increase, and Personal Gravity Well.” The first version allows you to make a target weightless or even fall upward, the second allows you to make a target weigh more thus pinning them to the ground, and the third is a kind of gravitational distortion that makes you harder to hit. I’m choosing to focus on Gravity Increase. While I think it’s funny to make someone fall upward for a while, the subsequent fall seems cruel, and this is a superhero I’m designing.

To make Gravity Increase better, we need to understand how it works exactly. First off, it’s a Voluntary Attack Ability with a range of ST (Strength) and it covers a 1” square. The multiplier to the weight of targets within the affected area depends on your CPs in Gravity Increase. For example, if you have 20 CPs in Gravity Increase, you multiply the weight of your target by eight. If their new weight exceeds their carrying capacity, they are pinned and dealt kinetic damage equal to their new Mass Roll minus their HTH Damage Roll. There’s a bit of a unique twist to Gravity Increase, and this is where the build gets interesting. Remember Pushing? Yeah—that thing where you spend 2 Power to do things like gain a +2 damage bonus, double your maximum speed, or gain a Save bonus? Well, forget that measly +2 bonus or multiplier. Where this Ability is concerned “Pushing increases the Weight Multiplier by a factor of (Power Spent +2)! “So?” you might say “2 power for Pushing + 2 = 4, times 8 = 32”, and you’d be right. Unless we have Willpower C) Self-Control, which allows you to Push for more than the normal amount—a lot more. For example, if you have 10 CPs in Self-Control, you get a +4 bonus to Pushing for the cost of 4 additional Power. So now you’re pushing for a total of (6 + 2) times 8 = 64! This makes your Gravity Increase effective against even the strongest targets, meaning you don’t have to be content to smush small fry into the dirt. Moving on to the other support Abilities.

Gravity increase costs 3 Power to use, and to maintain. If we’re going to be pushing for more than the normal amount, we’re gonna need some Power. Let’s grab Energy, which gives us 2 extra Power for each CP we spend. Twenty CPs gives us 40 extra Power to play with, allowing us to Push our Gravity Increase to awesome limits. Let’s review our Abilities so far:

Gravity Control B) Gravity Increase

Energy

Willpower C) Self-Control

There are couple of build directions that present themselves: Find other Abilities we can dump ludicrous amounts of Power into, or make sure we don’t get pasted by the first villain that turns their attentions on us. Both? Both. Monkey House Games recently added some Abilities to the official rules, and there just so happens to be one that benefits from our Willpower Pushing Bonus. Inertia. I know this article is getting long but stick with me—this is a sweet build. Inertia is an attack that reduces the movement rates of characters and vehicles by applying a divisor. As usual, the divisor is based on your CPs in this Ability. However, you can increase the divisor by Pushing, adding the extra Power spent directly to it. Inertia makes the cut. Even if we don’t invest many CPs into it, our Willpower will more than make up for it.

Let’s get this hero some Defensive Abilities before they get pounded. Our Tank was tough as nails, and our Blaster was evasive, so I want to mix it up a little bit. I like the theme we have going so far, and I want to expand on it. We have a hero that can tap into unseen forces to manipulate gravity and slow enemies to a crawl, so I’m going with Force Field. I’ll spare you the description as this Ability is straightforward—you wrap yourself in an invisible Force Field that deflects damage. It’s Power-hungry, but our hero can handle it.

Lastly, we want to hit as often as possible with our Gravity Control and Inertia. Normally I would grab Heightened Expertise, but this time I’m going with Heightened Agility. It raises our hero’s Physical Defense, To Hit chance, and gives them a healthy chunk of Power. Sometimes the best choices are a little boring. Inventory time:

Gravity Control

Willpower C) Self-Control

Inertia

Energy

Force Field

Heightened Expertise

Just as before, our Core Abilities are in bold—those are the ones we’re allowed to start at 20 CPs. I’m going to go apply some modifiers and Weaknesses, and then I’ll be back with our hero…

Introducing, Gravitas!

Gravitas is a young mutant with the power to manipulate Earth’s gravitational field. He is able to slow or even pin his enemies in place or use this force to shroud himself in a protective barrier. His will to do good and protect the innocent provides him with a deep well of energy that fuels his powerful abilities. I hope you liked this build guide. If you did, please let me know. If you didn’t, I’m impressed that you read this far. See you next time.

While going through a storage unit back in Fall of 2016, I stumbled on my copy of V&V 2.0 and a stack of adventure modules. I was immediately brought back to 1985 and images of Mega Man’s adventures flooded my imagination. However, without a regular group to play with, I brought my books home, stuck them in a drawer, and didn’t think about them until Spring of the following year. In 2017 I discovered a browser-based tabletop simulator called Roll20, and suddenly got the itch to play something—anything to get back into TTRPGs. I had recently become part of an online gaming community—a small but very friendly Discord Server that belonged to a friend of mine. My first thought was to reach out to some of the other members to see if anyone was interested in trying to mount an online campaign. I was happily surprised to get over half a dozen responses, and our RPG Chat channel was born. There I spent time talking to my future players about the virtues of V&V–trying hard to sell a decades old RPG that none of them had ever heard of. I snagged a PDF copy of the 2.1 rules (which really went a long way to clearing up some of the murkier corners of the game’s mechanics) and an updated character sheet. Everyone started generating characters, and I was buzzing with the possibilities of a blank canvas–a new campaign and a fresh group of players!

V&V (pre-Mighty Protectors) is a harsh mistress. You roll a d6+2 to see how many Powers you get, and then randomize said Powers, plus one Weakness. You must discard one Power immediately, and if you want to get rid of your Weakness, you have to discard another. It goes without saying that finding a theme within those oddments is a challenge. However, in Mighty Protectors they remedied this by allowing all players to roll six Powers (now called Abilities), and encouraging them to pick up two Offensive, two Defensive, and two Miscellaneous to round out their character. I was excited at the prospect of helping my players update their characters. The lucky few who had a lot of Powers might lose one or two, but the ones that rolled poorly were in for a treat.

While our 2.1 campaign progressed, I was planning our transition to V&V 3.0 behind the scenes—trying my best to master the character creation process and familiarize myself with the updated combat system. My players were currently fighting their way through the classic Crisis at Crusader Citadel—teaming up with the Crusaders and facing off against the hated Crushers. It was a great hit of nostalgia, but I wanted a meaningful next step for them. When I played V&V it was less of a campaign and more of a series of combat-heavy episodes that had no overarching narrative. While reading the Guide to the Multiverse section of V&V 3.0, I came across the Crusaders entry. Jeff and Jack saw them moving on and forming an Academy for up-and-coming heroes. I found the foundation upon which to build my campaign. My players were going to school. (to be continued)

sosuperawesome:

Pride Dragons

Sonsational Creations on Etsy

See our #Dragon or #Pride tags

See more drawings by the artist here.

Artworks found at the Royal Academy of Arts.

10/2/2019 Finally completed my set of these guys and just in time because of the prices they are fetching these days.

These came in surprise bags released some time in the 90s or early 2000s.  There are 16 figures based on Greek mythology.  They are about 50mm, and are made of soft plastic.  Only released in Europe as far as I know.  Very rare.  Most people think they were made by Yolanda of Spain, but I do not know for certain.













8 Horrors







8 Heroes






















I found this picture on the net (MXD I think).
This picture is also from MXD I think
This picture is also from some place on the net.
Found this picture on the net a few years ago, I don't remember where.

This is the second in a series of articles for V&V 3.0 focusing on building character archetypes. I want to reiterate that these guides are for players who are already familiar with V&V 3.0, and that my ideas of how each archetype should play are a mix of what I’ve seen in comics, other TTRPGs, and my own opinions and personal play style. Moving on. The Blaster has been around since the dawn of comics in one form or another—Cyclops of the X-Men (1963), and Black Lightning (1977) are great examples. A Blaster’s role is to deal high damage at medium to long range with a high degree of accuracy. Some useful abilities for the Blaster are: Disintegration Ray, Electrical Bolt, Flame Blast, Heightened Expertise, Laser, Power Blast, Repulsion Blast, Sonic Blast, Special Weapon, Telekinesis, and Vibratory Blast. As for Ability Modifiers, I highly recommend the following: Area Effect, Armor Piercing, Autofire, Activation Power, Focused, Increased Duration, Different Damage Type, and Reduced PR.

When most people think of a primary damage dealer, they think of D&D’s Evocation Wizards, Sorcerers, Rogues, Rangers, and terms like Glass Cannon and DPS come up. In V&V combat flows differently than most TTRPGs—they can be over very quickly, or drag on as the offense of one side struggles vs the defensive powers of the other. With so many Abilities, and so many options in combat it’s hard to pin down a target if they play intelligently, and there are plenty of Defensive Abilities that can mitigate or even shut down incoming damage. So how do we make sure our Blaster is good at her job? While you can’t account for everything, you can at least make sure you’re hitting often, dealing consistent damage, and bypassing some of the more common defenses. Unlike the Tank, we’re going to start with our Offensive options.

The Blaster is concerned with Damage Types more than any other archetype. In V&V there are Full, Sub, and Specific Damage Types. For instance, Energy is a Full Damage Type, while its Sub-Types are broken down into Electromagnetic, Energy Beam, High Temperature, Light, and Radiation, which are broken down even further into Specific types like Electrical Shock and Flames. We’re not too concerned with the Sub and Specific types as much as we are Full, because most Protection will mitigate a Full damage type. The most common types of Protection you will run into are vs. Kinetic and Energy damage. Yes—Armor, Ice Armor, and Force Field offer flat damage reduction across four Full Types, but the most potent Protection Abilities like Invulnerability and Absorption Protection usually focus on one or two. In my experience, the least common type of Protection is Psychic. There just aren’t a lot of Abilities that deal Psychic damage, which is where the most potent Ability Modifier for our Blaster comes into play, and that is Different Damage Type.

If you flip to page 89 of your Mighty Protectors manual, you’ll see Different Damage Type on the top right. It states that “This changes an attack Ability’s damage type. There may be an additional charge depending on whether the new damage type is more (or less) expensive. Notice that there is no point cost for changing the damage type of an Attack Ability among Kinetic, Energy, Bio, or Entropy. However, there is a 5 point cost for changing it to Psychic and a 10 point cost for changing it to Other. That’s because these two damage types are hard to defend against. Let’s start by building our “Primary Nuke.”

Power Blast. Has there ever been a simpler and more iconic V&V Ability? I don’t think so. For the paltry cost of 1 Power you can deal double digit damage. In a game where non-superpowered crooks and criminals have an average of 5 Hit Points, this makes dealing with street crime a breeze. Verses other superpowered individuals, it’s still a potent offensive tool, requiring only a couple of well-placed blasts to take down most opponents. We’ll get into the build later, but just so you know, I’m buying Different Damage Type ‘Psychic’ as my first Ability Modifier.

Now we need to make sure we hit often and stay out of trouble. Normally I would go with Heightened Agility because you get the benefit of increased To Hit, Defense, Power, and Hit Points, but a Blaster should be fighting at a distance. This build really doesn’t need that much Power to function, so I’m going to go with Heightened Expertise and Heightened Defense. These powers in combination make her both accurate and evasive. To help her keep her distance, I’m choosing Flight because it’s useful for staying out of harm’s way, and for getting line of sight to targets that are using hard cover. Lastly, I’m going to invest in some Protection as you never know when a lucky roll will overcome her defenses. Armor is a great choice here, and I’m going to apply some modifiers to make it cheaper. Let’s look at our Ability list:

Power Blast – Modifiers: Different Damage Type ‘Psychic’, Body Part (Eyes)

Heightened Expertise

Heightened Defense

Flight

Armor – Modifiers: Gear, Light Partial Coverage

Our core Abilities are in bold. As a Standard Power Level character, we may spend a maximum of 20 CPs in our four Core Abilities. As always, some weaknesses help round out our character, and refund some points so we’ll have enough to finish our build.

Farsighted – Has only Basic Vision within a range of 5″

Now that all the details have been worked out, let’s meet Farsight! *rimshot*

 I’ve engaged in a little min-maxing, but nothing outside of our theme and nothing too overly powerful. I was able to afford 20 Points in Power Blast and change its damage type to Psychic (5 CPs) by applying the “Body Part” Ability Modifier for a 5 CP refund. This does means that a hit to her eyes could potentially disable her Power Blast, but an attacker would suffer a -6 for the Called Shot. Add this to her Physical Defense of 6 and a Called Shot to her eyes would suffer a total of -12 making it highly unlikely. Farsight can use Flight to stay at maximum range (12″ or 60 feet), nullifying the threat of melee opponents, and making her even harder to hit, while suffering little from the reciprocal Range Difficulty penalty. She even has decent Protection in the form of some light armor that I maximized using the Gear and Light Coverage modifiers. I even shuffled some of the Protection points around to afford her some Psychic Protection as that’s her only real blind spot in terms of defenses. Her Farsighted Weakness is flavorful without handicapping her too badly—she is supposed to stay out of close range after all, plus the wordplay was too good to pass up.

Our Blaster is finished! She’s accurate, deals moderate to high damage, she’s very mobile, and hard to hit. There are so many ways to go with this archetype it’s staggering. V&V has no shortage of ranged attack options, mobility powers, and modifiers that help with your damage output.

This is the first of a series of articles for V&V 3.0 focusing on specific archetypal character builds or roles. While V&V has no class roles, that doesn’t stop people from wanting to play Tanks, Healers, DPS, Support, Controllers, Speedsters, etc. This desire might come from the comfort and familiarity that other TTRPGs character classes offer, or it could come from the original inspiration for superhero RPGs themselves—the comic books that introduced us to the genre. No matter where it comes from, it’s worth nurturing because it helps flesh out the identity and motivation of a player’s hero and helps to get them into character. Since it’s not entirely obvious how to mimic all the classic class roles using V&V, I’ll outline some system specific ways we can accomplish our goal.

Enter, the Tank:

When most players think of a Tank, they imagine her being durable—able to take a ton of punishment for her teammates. The problem with TTRPGs is that you will need to force enemies to attack your Tank. If you’re extremely tough, then they will likely turn their attention to softer targets. That’s why every great Tank has a Taunt—an ability that forces enemies to focus on them. In V&V, that ability is Emotion Control.

Emotion Control is a Psychic Save Attack. In V&V terms, this means that targets hit by it get to roll to resist its effects. In TTRPGs this is commonly known as a Save, Saving Throw, or Save Roll. As this will be the ability that defines our Tank build, we need to make sure it hits, and that the target fails their Save. We can do that with other Abilities like Heightened Expertise to gain a bonus To Hit with Emotion Control, and Willpower C) Self-Control which will allow you to Push to impose a greater Save Penalty on your target. Self-Control is also a handy ability in a pinch allowing you to run faster, lift more, and hit harder. Sounds like a great Tank power!

So, we have Emotion Control, Heightened Expertise, and Willpower C) Self-Control. There are many ways to go from here, but now that we have our utility abilities out of the way, we should focus on defensive and offensive abilities. V&V smartly suggest that all characters roll or choose two offensive abilities, two defensive abilities, and two miscellaneous abilities. This makes your hero well rounded—able to deal damage, survive, and perform some other useful tasks. There are dozens of abilities to choose from, but I’m going to narrow it down into three styles of Tanking—the Evasive Tank, Thorn Tank, and The Brick. Let’s start with the Defensive Abilities.

The Evasive Tank aims to avoid being hit. Some useful Abilities for an Evasive Tank are: Glare, Heightened Agility, Heightened Defense, Invulnerability, Non-Corporealness, and Teleportation. The Thorn Tank uses Ability Fields to deal damage back to their attackers when they are hit. Useful Abilities for Thorn Tanks are: Chemical Body, Disintegration Field, Electrical Field, Flame Aura, and Reflection. While the first two types of Tanks can be fun and interactive, I’ll be building The Brick. What can I say, I like the classics. Useful Abilities for The Brick are: Absorption, Armor, Density Change, Durability, Energy, Force Field, Heightened Endurance, Invulnerability, Regeneration, Shield, and Stretching Abilities.

I’m going to go with Armor and Heightened Endurance. Armor provides a flat damage reduction against the most common types of attacks, while Heightened Endurance gives our Hit Points a nice boost while also adding a hefty chunk to our Power score which we’ll need to fuel our Emotion Control, Willpower, Pushing, and to Roll With damage. Now on to our Offensive Abilities. It is very likely that the targets we have goaded into attacking us have some way to attack us from range. Therefore, I’m skipping making a list and I’m going straight for a longtime V&V staple—Power Blast. Its Power cost is low, and it deals respectable damage. Wait. What? You want to punch things? Some useful Close Combat Offensive Abilities for The Brick are: Heightened Expertise, Heightened Attack, Natural Weaponry, Poison, Siphon, and Stretching Abilities. Actually—now that I think of it, Stretching Abilities offers some great utility and defense, while allowing you to punch things at range. Ok—new plan! We’re going with Natural Weaponry and Stretching Abilities, and we’re ditching Armor. This Brick malleable! Let’s look at our creation so far, keeping in mind this is a Standard Power Level hero. That’s 150 CPs (Character Points), eighty of which will go into our Abilities, while the remaining 70 will go into our BCs.

Emotion Control

Heightened Endurance

Heightened Expertise

Natural Weaponry

Stretching Abilities – Elongation, Oozing, Plasticity

Willpower C) Self-Control

I’ve used bold text to indicate which of our Abilities are our Core Abilities. In V&V a new character may have up to four Core Abilities which may start at 10, 20, or 30 CPs for Low, Standard, and High Power Level characters respectively.  The other Abilities must have less than 20 CPs allotted to them. To get some points back, and add some flavor to our hero, we’ll be adding some Weaknesses:

Can’t Feel Pain – “Pain don’t hurt” –Dalton

Compulsion – Our Brick must always challenge the toughest enemy and may not flee.

After some creative use of modifiers and tweaking of numbers and stats, I give you…

THE PLIABLE MAN!

Gaze at his gelatinous glory. To shave some points from his Emotion Control I applied the “Single Emotion” and “Requires Speech” modifiers. I feel like every good Tank should have to shout to get their opponents’ attentions, and he only needs to focus on one emotion, rather than a broad spectrum. After all, he just needs to make enemies focus on himself. As you can see, he has plenty of Power and Hit points, increased accuracy with his Emotion Control and melee attacks, and the ability to punch targets up to 6” (30 feet) away! He has the added utility of being able to ooze through small cracks, and his Plasticity gives him a whopping 9 Kinetic Protection! Finally, his Willpower lets him Push for a -4 to a target’s Save, +4 to his own Saves, +4 damage, x4 Carrying Capacity, or x4 Movement Rate. On the downside, it costs 4 Power, so use it sparingly.

Our Tank is complete. He has a Taunt, he’s extremely durable, and he’s a capable fighter with some added utility. I hope you enjoyed this character build article. Please check back as I will be creating more, specifically: The Blaster, the Controller, the Support, the Speedster, and the Infiltrator.

snagerdragon:

a batch of dragon artist trading cards for open swaps on ATCs for all

my available cards

Artworks found at the Sergei Sharov site.

Painting from Ray Bradbury’s art collection.





Photo from the Saturday Evening Post found here.

Artworks found at Rijks Museum.

The Apparition, 1973

The Hall of Spiders, 1973

The Dark Breakfast, 1973

Swelter Rehearsing, 1973

On the Way to the Doctor, 1974

The Flood, 1974

Steerpike at Bay, 1974

Titus's Tenth Birthday, 1974

The Skeletons, 1974

Frontispiece illustration for Uncle Silas, 1947.

Cover from "Ghost Stories And Other Horrid Tales" 1997.

Illustration from "Ghost Stories And Other Horrid Tales" 1997

Haunted #1 (March 1963)

Most artworks found at The Royal Academy.

Artist previously shared here.

emordnilap-fr:

took a break from comms for a couple days and drew Flechte! a good old favorite <3

These figures are amazing.   I cannot describe how cool they are.  Just look at the pictures.  60mmish.

Watcher of the South East

The Watcher of the North East

The North West Watcher

The Light

South-West Watcher

The Lesser Redoubt


Illustrations for "The Dream of X" written by William Hope Hodgson. The novel was originally released in 1912, these illustrations are from an edition published in 1977.

Artworks originally shared here in 2010.

Most artworks found at the Heritage Auctions site.
There isn't much there but Stephen's website can be found here.

I just found these three guys in an ebay lot from England.  I suspect that they are either bootlegs or a new run for the bags Toy Major sells them in with the pirates.  They seem to be just a little bit smaller than the original figures and the guy with two axes has his head in a slightly different position.  Now that I know they exist I will be obsessing about them until I find more.

galleytrot:

Smaugust 3: Pumpkin Drake

zakeno:

I’ve been drawing some dragons based on Medieval paintings to warm up today. ????