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Is Gargantuan part of the Champions lore?

lezard21lezard21 Posts: 1,510 Arc User
edited December 2019 in Champions Pen and Paper RPG
I need to know​​
Post edited by lezard21 on

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  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    If you mean, can any official Champions character change to giant size if they want, the answer is, no. But there are most certainly supers who can become giants if their concept includes that power. Perhaps the most notable of those is the supervillain Gargantua (Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains), who can grow to up to 200' in height.
  • chaosdrgnz43chaosdrgnz43 Posts: 1,674 Arc User
    > @bulgarex said:
    > If you mean, can any official Champions character change to giant size if they want, the answer is, no. But there are most certainly supers who can become giants if their concept includes that power. Perhaps the most notable of those is the supervillain Gargantua (Champions Villains Volume Three: Solo Villains), who can grow to up to 200' in height.

    So you're telling me that growth powers are actually villainous?! Why can't heroes be giants??
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  • ealford1985ealford1985 Posts: 3,582 Arc User
    Because so far no one who wants growth powers seems to act heroic....
  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    So you're telling me that growth powers are actually villainous?! Why can't heroes be giants??

    I'm not sure why you would think growth powers have to be "villainous," just because one supervillain happens to have them. There's absolutely no reason why heroes can't be giants, and there are several official examples. Rashindar, a powerful mystic hero of India (Champions Worldwide), can call upon "The Stature of Vamana" to grow as tall as the aforementioned Gargantua, and in that form is even stronger than him. Atlas, a member of the Philadelphia-based hero team called the Liberty League, claims to be the actual Greek Titan of the same name (most likely an avatar of Atlas, common for mythic divinities acting as supers in the modern world). Both of those heroes have magic-based growth, but the Golden Age hero Vita-Man used chemical pills to become either giant or tiny (an homage to Marvel's Hank Pym). Gargantua himself is a mutant, and there are other examples of villainous size-changers, with various explanations for how they do it.
  • jonsillsjonsills Posts: 6,315 Arc User
    One of the characters in our 3rd edition group in college had several levels of Growth, but the GM wanted to discourage too many people from wanting the same power, so he enforced a certain amount of the cube-square law (Titan had a tendency to break streets just walking around, for example, and heaven forbid he try to change while on an upper floor. Dark Star, whose powers had to do with gravity and density, had similar issues).
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  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    Sure, that's been part of the rules description for running both Growth and Density Increase almost from the beginning of Champions.
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    Official Champions tabletop supplements didn't introduce all that many heroes, because it was assumed that the players wanted to create the heroes, and villains are generally more useful for creating adventures. As such, any power is more likely to appear on a villain than a hero, for the simple reason that there are more of them.
  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    Agreed, p-01. Published full Champions write-ups for villains far outnumber those for NPC heroes. The disparity is much less when one includes all the super characters who are only named in various books, but it's still imbalanced.
  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    Just to delineate the parameters of the official setting, to date the largest "super" actually given Hero System game stats is Astron (Champions Beyond), a living, sapient, mobile asteroid field which, when it gathers all its components into an aggregate form, has volume and mass comparable to the entire Earth. Astron is the setting's planet-eater, which in its case is literal. It pummels planets to rubble, then engulfs and assimilates the debris.
    Post edited by bulgarex on
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Posts: 4,915 Arc User
    Almost like a combination of Ego and Galactus?
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  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    Almost like a combination of Ego and Galactus?
    Sounds a bit like Gah Lak Tus, actually (Marvel Ultimate Universe; not well received by fans).
  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    Almost like a combination of Ego and Galactus?

    In terms of its niche in the cosmic ecology, pretty much.

    Roughly 3.5 million years ago, the advanced Vritani civilization discovered that their sun was emitting radiation that was rapidly poisoning the biosphere of their planet, Vritan. They developed a device they hoped would "vitalize" Vritan's biosphere enough to withstand the radiation, but its effect exceeded their hasty calculations. The entire planet came alive and self-aware. In stretching itself to move, Vritan shattered, killing all life on the planet. Finding itself hungry it crushed and consumed the other worlds in the system, then set off to find more food.

    Astron (a name it apparently gave itself) exists simply to exist. It's unconcerned with any being not powerful enough to challenge it, and doesn't care whether or not a world it takes a fancy to eating has sapient inhabitants. Astron has complete control of its own shape. It normally exists as a vast cloud of rocks, but usually adopts a roughly humanoid form when it wants to interact with or fight other entities.

  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    Sounds a bit like Gah Lak Tus, actually (Marvel Ultimate Universe; not well received by fans).

    Gah Lak Tus was a magnitude of threat almost comparable to Galactus, but in style and motivation was more like a cross between Brainiac and Ultron, with a dash of Unicron. ;)

    Come to think of it, the future of the Champions Universe holds a much closer analogue to Gah Lak Tus, also the second-largest Champions character ever written up for publication. During a battle with the Champions, Mechanon was caught in the explosion of its experimental dimension-warping weapon, and was cast across the galaxy and a millennium into the future. Discovered adrift by asteroid miners from the planet Zarnos, Mechanon killed them and piloted their ship back to their home planet. A peaceful people lacking any superhuman heroes, the Zarns were slaughtered within weeks by Mechanon and the robotic army it constructed from their own resources. It then created a new form to house its consciousness, resembling the head of its previous body but a thousand kilometers in diameter, and set out to carry its genocidal war against all organic life to the entire galaxy.

    That future Mechanon, designated "Mechanon 3000," is fully detailed in the source book for the next-millennium return of superhumans to the Champions Universe, Galactic Champions. And that book came out roughly the same time as Gah Lak Tus first appeared in comics, so it's extremely unlikely either one was a "ripoff" of the other. :p
  • legendarylycan#5411 legendarylycan Posts: 1,569 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    well, that's a first...i've seen sentient/sapient worlds, nebulae, stars, even black holes...but that's the first i've seen a sentient asteroid field​​
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  • jonsillsjonsills Posts: 6,315 Arc User
    bulgarex wrote: »
    That future Mechanon, designated "Mechanon 3000," is fully detailed in the source book for the next-millennium return of superhumans to the Champions Universe, Galactic Champions. And that book came out roughly the same time as Gah Lak Tus first appeared in comics, so it's extremely unlikely either one was a "ripoff" of the other. :p
    Similar to the phenomenon of Doctor Who's Weeping Angels being written up at roughly the same time as the creation of SCP-173 on 4chan (SCP-173 is a concrete-and-rebar statue vaguely resembling a seven-foot-tall fetus, which can only move when no one is looking, and will strangle or break the neck of anyone in the room who looks away or blinks; it also coats the floor of the room with a noxious substance whose fumes can cause people to sneeze and blink, and which will eventually eat away the surface if not cleaned regularly).

    As Charles Fort said, sometimes it's just railroading time.
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  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    To illustrate some other mechanisms by which characters in Champions may achieve giant status: Mechanon once attacked Millennium City in a body it had crafted for itself, fifty feet tall. Mechanon transferred its consciousness into said body, so technically didn't "grow," but the end result is pretty much the same.

    The follower of the Canadian master villain Borealis (Champions Villains Volume One: Master Villains) called the Landsman is able to control earth and stone when in physical contact with it. He can use that power to gather those materials around his body and shape them into a simulacrum of his real body which moves the same, but is much larger, denser, and stronger.

    These rationales for growing larger are called "Special Effects" in Hero System. They could be constructed using the same game mechanics, but the explanation for how they work, and how they "look" and "feel," can be very different.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Posts: 4,915 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    Tony Stark has on occasion built Mega-Destroid sized power armor suits in Marvel Comics.

    But if we're talking giant robots... Japanese media have more than I can count.
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  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    Note that growth in the tabletop game was a somewhat uncommon hero power because it was inconvenient; a lot of maps were built for human-scale characters and, unlike CO, clipping through the map didn't work.
  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    [Shrug] Depends on the game group, I suppose. The Growth Power always included how much area the character takes up per X amount of Growth, so if you're using a map you would just have it occupy the appropriate space. Of course for extremely large characters it's obviously harder to fit them, but that's the down side to getting really big being really large... I'm having trouble finding a non-suggestive way to write that. :3
  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    bulgarex wrote: »
    [Shrug] Depends on the game group, I suppose. The Growth Power always included how much area the character takes up per X amount of Growth
    It's more a problem with ceilings. Sure, some places have twenty meter ceilings (practical limit for starting characters with a 60 active point attack cap) but there's a fair chance that you're going to do something inside a normal size building with maybe three meter ceilings.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Posts: 4,915 Arc User
    So if you gimmick was to pilot a Zord, you could just leave the Zord outside the building if the team goes inside a building?
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  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    There are a variety of Hero System builds for that concept which would leave that option, and if entering the building on foot was tactically indicated, e.g. locating and retrieving an artifact or a hostage, you could certainly choose to. Otherwise the Zord can just smash down the whole building. ;)
    It's more a problem with ceilings. Sure, some places have twenty meter ceilings (practical limit for starting characters with a 60 active point attack cap) but there's a fair chance that you're going to do something inside a normal size building with maybe three meter ceilings.

    You're quite right. I was just responding to your assertion that Growth is rare in Champions due to that inconvenience. I never found that to be the case, since Growth does provide other benefits to balance its drawbacks. Moreover, it isn't necessary to use your Growth at full power if you haven't the room (unless your Power build demands that you do use it all). Mind you, some Hero gamers prefer to build primarily to concept, rather than for maximum combat efficiency.

  • pantagruel01pantagruel01 Posts: 7,091 Arc User
    I really meant large amounts of growth being rare. 1-3 levels (2.5-4 meters) was common enough.
  • jaazaniah1jaazaniah1 Posts: 5,424 Arc User
    Now I'm curious what earth heroes ever came upon Astron and if/how they defeated/thwarted it?
    bulgarex wrote: »
    Just to delineate the parameters of the official setting, to date the largest "super" actually given Hero System game stats is Astron (Champions Beyond), a living, sapient, mobile asteroid field which, when it gathers all its components into an aggregate form, has volume and mass comparable to the entire Earth. Astron is the setting's planet-eater, which in its case is literal. It pummels planets to rubble, then engulfs and assimilates the debris.

    Now I understand why so many of the buildings in Ren Cen have such huge openings and high ceilings. Pretty clearly the devs always planned on having huge heroes lumbering around ;)
    bulgarex wrote: »
    [Shrug] Depends on the game group, I suppose. The Growth Power always included how much area the character takes up per X amount of Growth
    It's more a problem with ceilings. Sure, some places have twenty meter ceilings (practical limit for starting characters with a 60 active point attack cap) but there's a fair chance that you're going to do something inside a normal size building with maybe three meter ceilings.

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  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    edited December 2019
    jaazaniah1 wrote: »
    Now I'm curious what earth heroes ever came upon Astron and if/how they defeated/thwarted it?

    There's no mention of any Terrestrial heroes encountering Astron, and definitely not of it coming to Earth. Champions Beyond lists it among the major foes of the Star*Guard, so I would assume they've dealt with it before, or are at least aware of it. Andre Almena, the Spaniard who is the current StarGuard for Earth's sector of space, may know about it. But Astron was statted to be a suitable foe for most of the Star*Guard, or of Earth's superhumans, at once; so it may not have been thwarted or defeated often before, if at all.

    BTW no one alive today knows Astron's origin as related above. Astron can travel faster than light, but it still requires about a month to cover one light year; so trips between stars can take years to decades. It may be that not that many in the galactic community have learned of it, or at least of the magnitude of its threat.
  • lezard21lezard21 Posts: 1,510 Arc User
    lol that this shitpost topic survived the purge and is getting so much activity​​
  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    :lol:

    The tabletop version of this game has so much lore and history behind it, you tap into that you never know how much will flow out. Plus I'm a chronic blatherer. ;)
  • themightyzeniththemightyzenith Posts: 4,599 Arc User
    edited January 2020
    lezard21 wrote: »
    lol that this shitpost topic survived the purge and is getting so much activity​​

    /shrug Because bulgarex thankfully changed the narrative and made it into an interesting topic about actual Champions lore, relevant to the subsection of the forums it's in :)


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  • bulgarexbulgarex Posts: 2,310 Arc User
    edited January 2020
    Another special-effect variation on becoming bigger is used by Psimon, leader of the villain team/organization PSI (Champions Villains Volume Two: Villain Teams). Psimon has both telepathic and psychokinetic powers. His full psychokinesis manifests as a roughly-humanoid "giant" made of pinkish energy, superhumanly strong and tough. The energy is translucent; it surrounds Psimon's real body, which can be seen floating in the center of the giant.
  • markhawkmanmarkhawkman Posts: 4,915 Arc User
    bulgarex wrote: »
    Another special-effect variation on becoming bigger is used by Psimon, leader of the villain team/organization PSI (Champions Villains Volume Two: Villain Teams). Psimon has both telepathic and psychokinetic powers. His full psychokinesis manifests as a roughly-humanoid "giant" made of pinkish energy, superhumanly strong and tough. The energy is translucent; it surrounds Psimon's real body, which can be seen floating in the center of the giant.
    In CO, he summons the psionic exoskeleton when his health starts to get low.
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