Jab’s Builds! (Miss Piggy! The Swedish Chef! Sweetums! Gonzo!)

Where in all of your character write ups will go.
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Ken
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Genis-Vell! Phalanx! Wolverine!)

Post by Ken »

Yeah, but the pros (Claremont, Cockrum, et al.) didn't really get discussed until part three.
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Genis-Vell! Phalanx! Wolverine!)

Post by MacynSnow »

Batgirl III wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 5:34 am You included such a thorough analysis of Wolverine’s pros and cons in your write-up that, frankly, there isn’t much to add.
I concure with BG,so we just switched to the(argurably) best Combat Leader in Marvel(when they did the crossover with New Teen Titans,Cyke had Grayson BEAT when it came to combat&field tactics.Scott's skill at it was so great that,when they went to Apokalypse to stop Darksied,Dick let Cyclops lead the combined group.)... :lol:
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Genis-Vell! Phalanx! Wolverine!)

Post by Jabroniville »

Batgirl III wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 5:34 am You included such a thorough analysis of Wolverine’s pros and cons in your write-up that, frankly, there isn’t much to add.
Well I do like to be thorough (he says, to the shock of no one, lol).
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Batgirl III
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Genis-Vell! Phalanx! Wolverine!)

Post by Batgirl III »

Jabroniville wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 5:57 am
Batgirl III wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 5:34 am You included such a thorough analysis of Wolverine’s pros and cons in your write-up that, frankly, there isn’t much to add.
Well I do like to be thorough (he says, to the shock of no one, lol).
Now, enough jibber-jabber Jabroniville. I expect a 9,000 word analysis of Draculaura’s new shoes on my desk by close of business tomorrow. Chop-chop.
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Genis-Vell! Phalanx! Wolverine!)

Post by BriarThrone »

Gotta admit, I was a Wolverine fan in the mid-late 90s and early 00s - the first time I had access to comics. I eventually got sick of the over-saturation and the power-creep, but I blamed Marvel's lack of good ideas, rather than the character.

After his adamantium got ripped out, he basically lost his healing factor for a while, because it apparently got overloaded by that fairly traumatic experience. He went through a few adventures without, and then Deadpool stabbed Logan through the lungs with two swords. This sort of... encouraged his healing factor to start working again, and at this point, it was revealed that most of his healing factor had been occupied fighting off adamantium poisoning, and he could heal from absurd damage in seconds.

And then later, he got the adamantium back, and the healing factor remained at the elevated level, because of course it did. Until it got reduced again for other reasons, and... wow, they ran out of ideas for this character. But that's what happens when you run him in five books a month for years.
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Batgirl III
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Genis-Vell! Phalanx! Wolverine!)

Post by Batgirl III »

I’ve always liked the “Flatworm Theory,” to explain how he could be on three different X-Teams, the Avengers, The FF, two solo titles, and gratuitous cameo appearances each month...Y’know how a flatworm split lengthwise or crosswise will regenerate into two separate individual worms?

Well, how many times has Logan been chopped in half, torn in half, had an arm chopped off...?
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Re: Jab's Builds! (The Flame! Charon! A Huge, Throbbing Genis!)

Post by Woodclaw »

Ares wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 3:34 am
Batgirl III wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 3:29 am I created a custom Benefit Advantage for Clark and Steve, which I call “It’s Superman!” / “It’s Captain America!” to reflect the instantaneous awe and respect those two men command in a crisis situation.

When Superman flies into a crisis or Cap comes leaping over the parapet, no matter how grim the odds, everyone just feels more hopeful. Hardass, grizzled old NCOs take a moment to chomp their cigars and rally their men to fave down the kaiju. Stressed out beat cops who were hiding behind their smoking squad car discover a new reserve of courage and start fighting back against the alien cyborg-soldiers... But it’s not just about fighting. Captain America can bring rival warlords to the table and get them to agree to cooperate. Superman is recognized as a neutral and fair arbiter by everyone from democratically elected presidents to tin-pot banana republic dictators. Alien civilizations from the opposite end of the galaxy know their reputations and occasionally send envoys asking for help.

Cyclops, on the other hand, doesn’t command that kind of recognition... Except from the people who know him. Within the mutant community (or the broader superhero community) he’s a known figure, but he doesn’t have the broader fame factor.

Or, at least, that’s how I think he should be written.
No, that sounds just about perfect to me.
Inmy old builds I used a 2E feat from the Silver Age sourcebook that provided similar benefits: Cult Hero, which provided a +4 bonus to Charisma-based skills toward those who respected the hero (similar), but a -2 toward those who didn't.
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Wolverine

Post by Jabroniville »

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Okay, someone explain that last one.

WOLVERINE (James "Logan" Howlett, aka Patch)
Created By:
Len Wein & John Romita
First Appearance: The Incredible Hulk #180-181 (Oct.-Nov. 1975)
Role: The Bad-Ass, The Anti-Hero, The Loner, The Protector of Little Girls, Claw Guy, Animal Guy
Group Affiliations: The X-Men, Weapon X/Department H, The Avengers, X-Force, S.H.I.E.L.D., The Hand, The Horsemen of Apocalypse, Alpha Flight, HYDRA, The New Fantastic Four
Avengers Grade: A-Level
PL 11 (230)
STRENGTH
4 STAMINA 6 AGILITY 5
FIGHTING 13 DEXTERITY 5
INTELLIGENCE 3 AWARENESS 5 PRESENCE 2

Skills:
Acrobatics 3 (+8)
Athletics 10 (+14)
Deception 6 (+8)
Expertise (Survival) 10 (+15)
Expertise (Streetwise) 8 (+11)
Expertise (Military) 5 (+8)
Expertise (Samurai) 8 (+11)
Expertise (History) 7 (+10)
Insight 4 (+9)
Intimidation 13 (+15)
Investigation 5 (+10)
Perception 8 (+13)
Stealth 6 (+11)
Treatment 2 (+5)
Vehicles 1 (+6)

Advantages:
Accurate Attack, All-Out Attack, Assessment, Benefit (Ambidexterity), Close Attack, Daze (Intimidation), Diehard, Fast Grab, Fearless, Great Endurance, Improved Critical (Claws) 2, Improved Grab, Improved Initiative, Improved Smash, Jack-of-All-Trades, Languages 3 (Several), Last Stand (HP to Ignore Damage for One Round), Power Attack, Precise Attack (Close/Concealment), Ranged Attack 2, Seize Initiative, Startle, Takedown 2, Ultimate Perception Skill, Ultimate Will Check, Ultimate Fortitude Check, Weapon Break, Well-Informed

Powers:
"Mutant Powers: Animalistic Physiology & Healing"
"Healing Factor"
Regeneration 8 (Feats: Regrow Limbs) [9]
Immunity 3 (Aging, Disease, Poison) [3]
Features 1: Can Be On More Super-Teams At Once Than Is Actually Possible [1]

"Animal Senses" Senses 9 (Acute, Extended & Accurate Scent, Extended Vision & Hearing, Low-Light Vision, Tracking 2- Scent) [9]

"Adamantium Skeleton"
"Claws" Strength-Damage +4 (Feats: Improved Critical 2, Split) (Extras: Penetrating 7) [14]
Protection 2 [2]
Enhanced Advantages 1: Withstand Damage (Trade Defenses For Toughness) [1]

Offense:
Unarmed +14 (+4 Damage, DC 19)
Claws +14 (+8 Damage, DC 23)
Initiative +9

Defenses:
Dodge +12 (DC 22), Parry +13 (DC 23), Toughness +6 (+8 Skeleton), Fortitude +10, Will +12

Complications:
Vulnerable/Responsibility (Brainwashing)- Wolverine can and has been brainwashed many times. His Will Check is often lower against this type of assault.
Vulnerable (Magnetics & Electrical Attacks)- With his metal Skeleton, Logan takes more damage from these attacks.
Involuntary Transformation (Berserker Rages)- Wolverine greatly fears falling into a homicidal, uncontrollable rage, resulting in him Power & All-Out Attacking anyone who gets too close.
Relationship (Various Women)- Rose, Jean Grey, Elektra, Mariko Yoshida, Silver Fox, Snowbird, Heather Hudson, etc. The ones he hasn't slept with, he wants to. Logan is a mack daddy.
Relationship (Jean Grey)- Among Logan's longest-term crushes was on Jean Grey- he and Cyclops loved the same woman, though Logan willingly stepped aside because he realized that Jean truly loved Scott.
Relationship (Storm)- The two have a quasi-romantic relationship that goes back a long time- Wolverine notably supported Storm against Cyclops, and respected her authority for years.
Relationship (Nightcrawler)- The two were old-school drinking buddies. Kurt is probably Logan's closest actual friend.
Honor (Samurai)- Logan follows the code of Bushi-Do if he is able to.
Relationship (Teenage Girls)- Others may raise eyebrows, but he has taken both Kitty Pryde & Jubilee under his wing and taught them about life, honor and fighting.
Rivalry (Cyclops)- At first competing over a woman, and Cyke's straight-laced leadership of the squad, the two never did quite get along. When Jean died and Scott went off with Emma Frost, things got worse, and finally hit a head when the X-Men suffered a "schism" and each formed their own school.
Enemy (Sabretooth)- Victor Creed is obsessed with hunting down and killing Logan or his loved ones. The two's blood feud has gone on for decades.
Enemy (Various Others)- Matus'o Tsurayaba murdered Logan's beloved Mariko on their wedding night, poisoning her to death. Bloodscream & Roughouse are recurring Jobbers. Cyber is perhaps Logan's most-feared enemy. The Hand hates him because... reasons. Lady Deathstrike is obsessed with killing Logan because he's using the adamantium-bonding process invented by her late father. His son Daken is a heartless murderer, and Logan was forced to drown him. Plenty of others out there, too- including many One-Shot foes.
Motivation (Discovering His Past)- The ULTIMATE "Mysterious Past" guy in comics, Logan did not know his own history for decades, and has suffered frequent mind-wipes. He also has a tendency to meet figures from his past who know him well, even if he's forgotten them (Maverick, Cable, Mister Sinister, etc.).

Total: Abilities: 86 / Skills: 96--48 / Advantages: 33 / Powers: 42 / Defenses: 21 (230)

-As expected, Wolverine is an expensive sort of character. He's shown SO many Skills that he could easily get 100 ranks of them, tons of martial Combat Advantages, his Claws are freakishly dangerous, and he regenerates. He can slice & dice with the best of them, having a powerful Strike that's Penetrating up to using Power Attack on it. He's got All-Out Attack, Startle & Power Attack, because he's practically the character who DEFINED all of those feats in the comics. He's also got the less-used Accurate Attack, because he's still really strong and can fight like an authentic Samurai when necessary.

-Generally a tough as nails scrapper, he's as good as anyone in a fight- the Regeneration pushes him over the edge. While not as skilled or as defensive as other martial artists, he is nigh-impossible to bring down permanently. Note his defensive weakness (PL 10 to Dodge, PL 10.5 to Parry)- Wolverine gets hit a lot. A. LOT. It's impossible to imagine him having great defensive capability, because he usually just wades into melee and takes all kinds of damage, counting on healing it all back later.
Last edited by Jabroniville on Sat Jun 04, 2022 10:55 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Genis-Vell! Phalanx! Wolverine!)

Post by greycrusader »

Yeah, Wolverine got power-geeked almost as the level that you usually see only in DC characters (looking at you, Mark Waid and Grant Morrison!); originally he could heal quickly from nearly any non-lethal wound, and even regenerate tissue (but this would take considerably longer), such as replacing a lost eye. The healing factor also made Logan largely immune to disease, parasites (like the Brood infestation), poisons, and venom, along with granting him an extended lifespan and greater endurance. The regeneration was what allowed his body to survive the surgeries which implanted the claws and adamantium plating to his bones. Even his enhanced senses were a subset of this, in a "hand-wave" sort of way, with Wolverine having an abundance of cell receptors in his eyes, ears, and nose, which never appreciably aged or lost sensitivity. But then...

As Wolverine's popularity SKYROCKETED (and YES, he is the ONLY demonstrably iconic character created after after the 1960s, as its just too early to argue the same for Deadpool or Harley Quinn), his repertoire was vastly expanded, and his healing factor amped up exponentially. At his most extreme portrayals in comics, he can survive almost total immolation, revive from suffocation or drowning, "heal" psychic trauma, is a highly trained special forces solider AND ninja (NINJAS ARE MAGIC!), accomplished world traveler and linguist with high-level government intelligence connections, has the whole "feral mutant" power-set (berserk rages, enhanced reflexes, tracking and night-vision, animal empathy), level-headed leader when he needs to be...

That being said, I'm not sure Wolvie being on so many teams along with a solo title really counts as feature in comics terms-heck, Batman runs Wayne Industries (even if a lot is delegated), keeps up the "playboy" image, works with the Bat-Family, has solo adventures, is one more than one incarnation of the Justice League and/or Outsiders, and has the occasional romance with Catwoman or another "bad girl". Many of the first-tier heroes have the same problem, with only the Flash really having an excuse.

All my best.
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Genis-Vell! Phalanx! Wolverine!)

Post by M4C8 »

Yep, I'm one of those maligned Wolverine fans (my two favourite characters are Wolverine and Spider-Man, shockingly original I know) so I have found myself at times defending the character from those who decry his power level. I think there was a vague explanation given that his healing factor adapts to damage so heals the same type of wound slightly faster each time, which is why he shrugs off bullet wounds and burn damage far faster than he did when he first appeared. Even ignoring that I have found myself pointing out that in his very first appearance, before he had any fans or even any link to the X-Men he was sent to fight the Hulk by the Canadian government and survived a three way battle between himself, the Hulk and a Wendigo. Now I know he was envisioned very differently back then and was treated as such in his early X-Men appearances but I like to use his first appearance to smugly allude that he's been at that high level durability/lethality since day one.
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Re: Jab's Builds! (The Flame! Charon! A Huge, Throbbing Genis!)

Post by HalloweenJack »

Jack of Spades wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 3:19 am I think my favorite period, for Cyclops and Wolverine was between Manifest Detiny and Second Coming. Scott steps ouf of Xavier’s shadow and starts actually accomplishing things for mutant-kind. He politically out-maneuvers Norman Osborn, then being treated as the greatest threat since Doctor Doom. He actually unifies the mutant people who’ve been factionally infighting since X-Men #1; Magneto actually kneels to him in recognition of what he’s done. He takes that skill set beyond just tactics into strategic leadership.
This. This is the Cyclops I care about.
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Genis-Vell! Phalanx! Wolverine!)

Post by HalloweenJack »

Anyways, I always liked Wolverine.

Probably didn't hurt that an issue of X-Men Classic was probably my first comic (though it was a Cyclops driven issue...hmmm) and AND I was very into nature documentaries as a kid and I loved seeing footage of real life wolverines fighting bears. So there's an immediate connection there.

Alot of Claremont's stuff really hooked me into what the character was all about. As a kid I'd always buy X-Men Classic as opposed to the then current X-Men comics. I had a tendency to go towards characters with a dark side, a justifiable dark side anyway, not dark for the sake of being dark, so guys like Wolverine, the Hulk, Batman, and at times the Thing were my cup of tea. I'm also a sucker for unrequited love (I'll always prefer Wolverine/Jean to Cyclops/Jean...provided they're never actually together if that makes sense)

Granted, I did get burned out on Wolverine alot in the mid to late 90s. Just like the Punisher, he didn't need to be in EVERY book. And there's no way on God's green earth, God's blue heaven, or Satan's red hell that Wolverine should beat Lobo....if he had his adamantium claws at the time I might have been able to get into it, but not the bone claws.

And honestly, I really started disliking X-books in general due to a friend (more like a friend of a friend) who was super into anything x-related. That other comics were just silly but X-Men were "reaaaal man". It was a constant. Only X-Men, and maybe Batman, had any value in her eyes and everything else was silly trash. This girl also thought the Matrix was super deep.

....At any rate, got back into X-Men thanks to Grant Morrison (yeah, that's right. you heard me) and I've been here and there along those lines ever since.


Wolverine's kind of an odd one though to me, as like Batman I never really bought his solo book, but always liked him on a team.


I'll conclude this by saying that the panda bear may look cute and cuddly, but they eat bamboo. Think about that for a second. Do you want to be bitten by something that big, that tears through bamboo, and has no desire to propagate its species? Pandas are nihilistic AF and they'll drag you to hell with them given half a chance.
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Ares
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Genis-Vell! Phalanx! Wolverine!)

Post by Ares »

In a weird way, Wolverine is very much like Superman. Not in terms anything character related, but in that I like the CHARACTER, but I really cannot stand a lot of his fans or fanboy writers.

Wolverine being able to fight the Hulk actually makes sense to me. It's a classic "strength vs skill" fight, only Logan is less skilled than most folks you'd need for this kind of match up (I tend to rate Logan lower in skill than guys like Batman, Shang Chi, Iron Fist and the like), but compensates with a healing factor, adamantium skeleton, and claws that let him potentially inflict real damage to the Hulk. It makes for a fun match up and rivalry, especially given how frickin mangry the pair can get.

Granted, the Hulk's healing factor ALSO got played up to stupid levels, to the point where it's less that he's really durable and more that he just heals from whatever punishment he takes. Is it any wonder modern healing factors annoy me?

But it's when the writers basically go all Jeph Loeb/Grant Morrison Superman Love on the guy that it gets annoying. Granted, I just might be bitter because frequently characters I like get shown up during such lovefests for the uber-popular characters, but I like to think I have some actual rationale there.
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Batgirl III
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Genis-Vell! Phalanx! Wolverine!)

Post by Batgirl III »

It’s hard to be a fan of a frequently “power geeked” character, especially one that isn’t just popular with the munchkin fan base, but just plain popular with everyone and a bit of a “pet” for the writers... Doubly so when those writers have “Protection from Editorial +5 Auras.”

Can you say “Bat-God,” boys and girls?

So I feel a lot of empathy with Logan’s fans. You want the guy to be competent, but not unfailibly skilled. You want him to be a good scrapper and clever fighter, not the world’s most deadliest martial arts master ever... You want him to be the best there is at what he does, you just wish the writers would remember that he doesn’t do everything.
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Re: Jab's Builds! (Genis-Vell! Phalanx! Wolverine!)

Post by MacynSnow »

Batgirl III wrote: Thu May 24, 2018 4:33 pm It’s hard to be a fan of a frequently “power geeked” character, especially one that isn’t just popular with the munchkin fan base, but just plain popular with everyone and a bit of a “pet” for the writers... Doubly so when those writers have “Protection from Editorial +5 Auras.”

Can you say “Bat-God,” boys and girls?

So I feel a lot of empathy with Logan’s fans. You want the guy to be competent, but not unfailibly skilled. You want him to be a good scrapper and clever fighter, not the world’s most deadliest martial arts master ever... You want him to be the best there is at what he does, you just wish the writers would remember that he doesn’t do everything.
There's a couple of issues of Marvel Two-In-One where Logan teamed with Shang-Chi and later Iron Fist.During the Obligatory "Hero vs. Hero" fight,Wolverine got beat-up BADLY by both guys due to their superior skills.

A couple of years later,during "Wolverine Mania",he admitted to jubilee that if he took on either guy in a re-match he'd STILL lose,as they were just that good....
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