Amazing Man Comics #6 - pt. 3

Returning to The Congo War-Drum serial, we see a special ability for natives that we've never seen before -- apparently they can hypnotize themselves so they will continue to fight without needing to roll for morale. It's an interesting premise, perhaps better for berserkers than natives, and I'm not sure if I'll add it to natives or not.

This is Chuck Hardy in the Land beneath the Sea. While finishing the mobster section for Hideouts & Hoodlums 2nd edition, I was routinely reminded of the lack of dangerous plant life in the earliest comics. But now we have, at last, the carnivorous strangle-plant. It actually looks a lot like the D&D monster, the roper, but without an eye. I would make this at least a 5-6 Hit Die mobster.

Chuck is in a particularly challenging campaign setting; not only is he encountering 5-6 Hit Die mobsters already at 1st level, but all he's got to arm himself with are loose stones he can throw. And finding fresh drinking water that won't kill him is even a challenge.

The Aquatanians are really just ordinary humans, with antennae on their foreheads for flavor text. They have an unusual steam-based technology. There's no indication yet that their rifles are particularly advanced (probably air rifles, given the theme), but the pneumatic tube subway is rather remarkable, unless Chuck is exaggerating its speed.

From the one-shot story, The Ivy Menace, I now have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to deadly plant life. These strangling vines are almost identical to the "creeper vines" in Book II.  Glad I called it!

The difference is, strangling vines keep growing at a crazy fast rate, as if it can regenerate lost hit points (even from fire), and grows through the cycle of large, huge, and giant. The only way to stop it is to destroy the plant at the roots.

Giants have keener than human hearing (3 in 6 chance to hear noise?).

I either need to upgrade the Movement rate for giants, or Mighty Man is using the Outrun Train power here.

Wrecking through the outside wall is like wrecking cars on the wrecking things table. Hoisting up the water tower is one of the Raise powers, though, and given how heavy all that water is it might be one of the big ones like Raise Bridge.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)

Amazing Man Comics #6 - pt. 2

Wrapping up our Shark story that I started talking about last year (don't you love how you can always make that joke on New Year's Day?), here we see The Shark using one of the higher level Leap powers, followed by his Speak with Animals power. It's unclear if he's speaking to the sharks in some sort of language or communicating with them telepathically.

This is from a short, one-shot filler story called "Forbidden Island," so I probably shouldn't let it get to me. And I know that combat in a RPG as random as Hideouts & Hoodlums could always go one way or another...but the implication here is that a single man with a club is more than a match for a bear. Now, maybe I was a little generous when I first gave bears 7 Hit Dice in Book II, but a bear should -- realistically -- still be more than a match for any one person to fight.

The one advantage this guy has that maybe explains how he won was having a missile weapon. Had he kept backing away from the bear and firing arrows as it charged him, this win would make complete sense to me.

And, lastly, just what is this guy supposed to be? A caveman? A madman? I've statted both (Book II and Supplement V respectively). The caveman stats seem to be the better fit, though there's no explanation given for how a caveman is on this island...

Here's the page that makes me think our caveman might be a madman instead. Also note how our Hero, Lew, decks a guy with one punch who just won a fight with a bear. Is Lew some kind of superhero? Not if our caveman/madman is at low hit points after his bear fight. More evidence that I shouldn't allow for rapid hit point recovery after fights.

This is Carl Burgos' Iron Skull. Now, normally, as game Editor, it would be your job not to leave a single hoodlum guarding a trophy weapon as valuable as a death raygun, even one that looks like an ordinary heat lamp. Of course, if you really want your players to have a captured death ray at their disposal, that's your call. And expect them to balk if it just happens to run out of charges or breaks down as soon as they have it.

Not sure why this hoodlum keeps shooting at Iron Skull's head instead of looking for a more vulnerable spot. Likely, though, Iron Skull is using a power that gives his whole body the same AC, though (like Nigh-Invulnerable Skin?).

That Iron Skull is vulnerable to sleeping gas shows that, like Burgos' other android hero, the Human Torch, Iron Skull is more of a synthetic human than a robot.

Next time, maybe Decor won't make a deathtrap that burns away the bonds before doing much damage to the Hero trapped in them.

I'm pretty sure you have to inject chlorotone to put people to sleep, but this is a huge amount of chlorotone, so maybe it also works by immersion?

It's kind of neat how big vats of chemicals are just lying around this hideout for Heroes to try and figure out uses for.

We learn that a 10-gallon vat of acid is strong enough to corrode a steel door (though we don't know what kind of acid it is).

The range on rayguns is disturbingly long sometimes, but on the other hand, you need a room-sized deathray machine to get a range like that, so it's not like a Hero can cart this baby around with him.

Silly Decor -- didn't you know Iron Skull would get a save vs. science for half damage from that explosion?

This is from the serial The Congo War-Drum. Normally, the Editor would roll for surprise once for each side in a combat, but in a mix of different mobster types it could make sense to roll for each type -- particularly if some have better chances to achieve or avoid surprise than others. Labu, for instance, is the one native on the good guy side, so here he gets a different surprise roll than everyone else on the good guy side.

(Scans courtesy of Comic Book Plus.)