JDRook's Character Kitchen

Where in all of your character write ups will go.
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JDRook
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Victor Primeaux - Dreamer, Leader?

Post by JDRook »

Victor Primeaux - PL 10
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Image
Strength 8/0, Stamina 1, Agility 1, Dexterity 2, Fighting 2, Intellect 8, Awareness 6, Presence 2

Advantages
Accurate Attack, All-out Attack, Assessment, Close Attack 6, Connected, Fascinate (Persuasion), Speed of Thought, Interpose, Jack-of-all-trades, Move-by Action, Well-informed

Skills
Expertise: Business 8 (+16), Insight 4 (+10), Perception 4 (+10), Persuasion 8 (+10)
Note: thanks to JoaT, also has Investigation, Technology and Treatment at +8

Powers

Unity Armor (Removable)
. . Armored Shell: Protection 8 (+8 Toughness; Impervious)
. . Comm System: Radio Communication 2 (Feature: Can dial into cellphone networks)
. . Defense Amplifier: Enhanced Trait 16 (Traits: Dodge +4 (+9), Parry +4 (+8), Fortitude +4 (+7), Will +4 (+10))
. . Sealed Systems: Immunity 10 (Life Support)
. . Sensors: Senses 2 (Extended: Vision 1: x10, Infravision)

. . Gravity Drivers
. . . . Flight 7 (Speed: 250 miles/hour, 0.5 miles/round)
. . . . Space Flight: Movement 2 (Environmental Adaptation: Zero-G, Space Travel 1: within solar system)

. . Weapon Array
. . . . Electrified Shell: Damage 6 (DC 21; Reaction 3: reaction)
. . . . Electro-Stunner: Affliction 10 (1st degree: Dazed, 2nd degree: Stunned, 3rd degree: Incapacitated, DC 20; Accurate 4: +8, Alternate Resistance (Dodge), Increased Range: ranged)
. . . . Plasma Blast: Damage 10 (DC 25; Accurate 4: +8, Increased Range: ranged)
. . . . Strength and Accuracy Booster: Enhanced Trait 24 (Traits: Strength +8 (+8), Close Combat +4 (+6), Advantages: Close Attack 6)

Offense
Initiative +9
Electrified Shell: Damage 6, +8 (DC 21)
Electro-Stunner: Affliction 10, +10 (DC Dog/Fort/Will 20)
Grab, +8 (DC Spec 18)
Plasma Blast: Damage 10, +10 (DC 25)
Throw, +2 (DC 23)
Unarmed, +12 (DC 23)

Defense
Dodge 9/5, Parry 8/4, Fortitude 7/3, Toughness 9/1, Will 10/6

Power Points
Abilities 44 + Powers 76 + Advantages 10 + Skills 12 (24 ranks) + Defenses 8 = 150

- The beginning of the numbers and everyone's first impression of the archetypes, the Battlesuit. I was originally going to go with some kind of 1-themed name, so Unity works. I also started to refer to him as Tony Prime or Prima, but while going through lists of student names at the school where I worked I came across (forgive me, real person) Victor Primeaux, and I simply couldn't NOT use that name after having it fall in my lap.

- His Powerset is pretty vanilla; all the basics you'd expect to find in any powersuit PC. The only things worth mentioning are the Stun Blast and the Electrified Shell (which might almost be better as a Power Stunt). I did tweak a few things like the Feature in the Comm System to access cell towers, and added Close Combat to the Strength & Accuracy Booster to get his Unarmed Attack up to PL in the suit.

- For me the most intriguing part is how his skills and advantages turned out. Using the 1s, he got a combat focus for advs (no second option), and a "People Person" skill set doubled up, so his Business Expertise is an unbelievable +16! He's a genius with no Inventor, a gifted businessman with no Wealth, and I kinda like him that way. With the extra points I got him Jack of all Trades to capitalize on his INT (as well as swapping out Improved Inititative with Speed of Thought), Assessment for his excellent Insight, and Connected, Fascinate and Well-Informed all tying into his Persuasion.

I'm trying to imagine how this character works. He's supernaturally intelligent, so I can see him getting involved in a lot of different things but not necessarily seeing them to the end, being more interested in processes than outcomes. He's got a few years of engineering, law, and medical training under his belt, but just has a knack for business and drops out of programs before they get too boring, treating ventures like problems to solve.

How does he get the suit? Maybe as payment for his services from companies that end up failing for unrelated reasons, and he soups it up using connections and favors from all over the place.
Why does he start heroing? Because it's a problem he wants to solve? That's a kinda weak motivation compared to most.
Why would he lead a team? He'd make a fantastic face for any team, but what would be the catalyst?
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JDRook
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Re: The Guardian known as II

Post by JDRook »

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The Guardian known as II - PL 10

Strength 8, Stamina -, Agility 0, Dexterity 0, Fighting 6, Intellect 0, Awareness 4, Presence 2

Advantages
Chokehold, Fast Grab, Improved Grab, Improved Hold, Power Attack, Prone Fighting

Skills
Close Combat: Grab 4 (+10), Intimidation 14 (+16)

Powers
Eye Blast: Damage 8 (DC 23; Accurate 6: +12, Increased Range: ranged)
Inhuman Brain: Immunity 10 (Common Descriptor: Mental Effects)
Makeshift Handholds: Movement 1 (Wall-crawling 1: -1 speed rank; Limited: surfaces with material Toughness less than Strength modifier)
Serpent Body
. . Leaping 1 (Leap 15 feet at 4 miles/hour)
. . Movement 1 (Slithering, Advantages: Prone Fighting)
. . Senses 3 (Acute: Scent, Infravision, Tracking: Choose Sense 1: -1 speed rank)
. . Speed 1 (Speed: 4 miles/hour, 60 feet/round)
. . Tail: Extra Limbs 1 (1 extra limb, Advantages: Improved Grab)
Stonescale: Protection 10 (+10 Toughness; Impervious)
Unliving: Immunity 33 (Aging, Critical Hits, Fortitude Effects)

Offense
Initiative +0
Eye Blast: Damage 8, +12 (DC 23)
Grab, +10 (DC Spec 18)
Throw, +0 (DC 23)
Unarmed, +6 (DC 23)

Complications
Monstrous: II looks like a 7' humanoid cobra covered in polished stone scales.

Defense
Dodge 8, Parry 10, Fortitude Immune, Toughness 10, Will 4

Power Points
Abilities 30 + Powers 95 + Advantages 4 + Skills 9 (18 ranks) + Defenses 12 = 150

II is one of the more interesting departures, although not necessarily a great PC. The all-2 rolls on the QCG made for a very specialized brutish Golem with a lot of Grab capacity and laser eyes. The overall build gave me a sense of hunt and capture and somehow I got the idea of an anaconda, but of course cobras are the most visually interesting of snakes. I had trouble finding art until I thought to use 'weresnake' as a search term, and the top piece is the closest I could find to what I imagine, with the hood flaring down to the waist, humanoid arms and torso but all snake-tail otherwise. II would be made of stone and asexual, but otherwise it's a suprisingly good fit.

As is II is PL10 in Close Defense and with the Eye Blast, PL9 with Grab and Ranged Defense, and only PL7 in close combat. The Will 4 looks bad, but the Immunity to Mental Attacks keeps that from being terrible, although II will probably get tricked in combat more easily than most.

I still like the build overall, but if I made any major change it would probably either changing the Eye Blast to make it cheaper (maybe a Line Area with 5 uses/day) or removing it entirely and bumping up STR and other close range stuff.

As a PC, II is pretty limited, but I think they would make a good Summon or Sidekick for another character. Maybe a reverse-Sidekick with II protecting a relatively weak person, like a wizened scholar with ancient knowledge or a child with a powerful destiny. It could even be a Johnny Thunder-type relationship, with a normal human in command of this powerful golem.
AtomicSamuraiCyborg
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Re: JDRook's Character Kitchen

Post by AtomicSamuraiCyborg »

Hey JDRook!

I dig your Nightbane conversions, and I actually just started a game using them! Only had 1 session so far, but just wanted to let you know!

I had my players play all Nightbane on Dark Day and roll up their characters randomly, use your template for a base and customize from there. We ended up with two combat monsters (a bear Morphus covered in baroque armor and barbed wire and a skinless version of Mecha King Ghidorah) and a very weird one (a double undead table that ended up the mummified ghost of Marilyn Monroe). So the first two are pretty straight forward, Growth to Large, Protection, Energy Aura for barbed wire bear and Blast for Mecha Ghidorah's breath weapon. Our ghostly bombshell was harder, they had to sacrifice some basic template abilities for Insubstantial. Trying to work them to give them all some combat ability while being true to the basic template.

They're about to have their first encounter with the Hounds this session so we're gonna see how it goes!

I was a little disappointed by having them have a brief fight with some looter gangbangers in their Morphus during Dark Day, and man, any levels of Impervious Protection that our Mecha Ghidorah has makes him basically immune to small arms, so thugs with guns aren't much threat.
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JDRook
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Re: JDRook's Character Kitchen

Post by JDRook »

AtomicSamuraiCyborg wrote: Sat Apr 17, 2021 3:16 am Hey JDRook!

I dig your Nightbane conversions, and I actually just started a game using them! Only had 1 session so far, but just wanted to let you know!
Awesome! If at least one person gets some fun and function out of these, then I know it was worth the effort.
I had my players play all Nightbane on Dark Day and roll up their characters randomly, use your template for a base and customize from there. We ended up with two combat monsters (a bear Morphus covered in baroque armor and barbed wire and a skinless version of Mecha King Ghidorah) and a very weird one (a double undead table that ended up the mummified ghost of Marilyn Monroe). So the first two are pretty straight forward, Growth to Large, Protection, Energy Aura for barbed wire bear and Blast for Mecha Ghidorah's breath weapon. Our ghostly bombshell was harder, they had to sacrifice some basic template abilities for Insubstantial. Trying to work them to give them all some combat ability while being true to the basic template.
Nice! Did you set PLs or point budgets then? I never really put a limit on PCs but I figure most of them are going to start in the PL6-8 range and slow build up to around 9-10. Would you and your players be willing to share your builds?
I was a little disappointed by having them have a brief fight with some looter gangbangers in their Morphus during Dark Day, and man, any levels of Impervious Protection that our Mecha Ghidorah has makes him basically immune to small arms, so thugs with guns aren't much threat.
That may be an artifact of the conversion. Palladium's Armor Rating (AR) system is overcome by the strike roll, so it sort of functions similar to a Defense bonus, like most shields in M&M, making the target harder to hit but still taking SDC damage when hit. M&M as a superhero game at heart is all about bouncing bullets off chests, so Impervious is designed to ignore low-rank attacks, and since minions can't get critical hits, your tougher Nightbane are going to be practically invincible to them unless they upgrade somehow (explosives, traps, vehicle attacks, military weapons, etc).
They're about to have their first encounter with the Hounds this session so we're gonna see how it goes!
Would love to hear about it. I haven't tested any of these builds and I'd love to see how they work out.
AtomicSamuraiCyborg
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Re: JDRook's Character Kitchen

Post by AtomicSamuraiCyborg »

I set PL at 8, so they had points to play with to customize their Facade base character and give themselves some powers and such. I haven't been enforcing the Talents system as it seems like another layer to add on to them, and the current players (adding some new ones currently) don't know M&M or Nightbane so don't really wanna confuse them further. But I've been pushing the idea of adapting the talents for them.

Yeah, the Impervious Protection is a lot. I might talk to the player about toning it down, because I want NSB goons with assault weapons to be of some threat to them.

I will try to figure out how to export the roll20 character sheets to see show you what they came up with.

I have two new players who are going to join, one's playing a martial artist Nightbane (knew martial arts before their Becoming, so we're gonna see how that works.) The other is playing a Templar Slayer from WB 4, so we're gonna have to adapt a lot ourselves...unless you happen to want to adapt that as well...j/k

My starting NB are both big tanks so we're gonna see how things shake out with less tanky characters. Thankfully, the new players characters can cover for some of their drawbacks (like the fact they're both Large and have no hands...).
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JDRook
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Micro-Heroes: The Icarus Project

Post by JDRook »

Back one of the old boards there was a poster named Icarus who made a bunch of hero archetypes at PL4. I really liked how compact they were, and they also reminded me of some of the build challenges the even older grognards may remember doing, like Batgirl III's PL4 Mini-Thor.

I've also seen some people on the Facebook M&M group mentioning minimum viable PLs for play, and I feel like PL4 is kind of an ideal minimum for starting characters. PCs can potentially be more powerful than most of the lower minion-type humans like street thugs or cultists or your smaller D&D-style monsters, but still need to use teamwork and ingenuity to handle bigger threats like trained assassins or even wild animals. There's also a lot of growth potential, both in play and using a PL4 PC as a very basic template to build up on.

Unfortunately, those posts have been sucked into the void, but I did actually go through and help Icarus edit several of them, so I have them in Hero Lab .por format. I'm planning on reprinting them here with my own notes to provide a resource for potential low-PL games or character prompts, but let it be known they were all originally done by Icarus. I don't know them by real name or face (they might have lived in South America?) and don't know how to contact them, but if credit needs to be given, start there.


Icarus's Micro-Heroes (PL4)

Battlesuit
Crimefighter
Mystic
Paragon
The Warrior
The Rogue
The Sorceror
Last edited by JDRook on Wed Feb 15, 2023 3:08 am, edited 1 time in total.
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JDRook
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Re: Micro-Heroes: The Icarus Project - Battlesuit

Post by JDRook »

Battlesuit
Image
This picture is yet another reason I wanted to post some low-PL builds. This guy is perfect!

BATTLESUIT - PL 4

Strength 5/0, Stamina 0, Agility 1, Dexterity 1, Fighting 2/0, Intellect 2, Awareness 1, Presence 0

Advantages
Improvised Tools, Inventor, Ranged Attack 2, Second Chance: Technology checks

Skills
Expertise: Engineering 2 (+4), Insight 1 (+2), Perception 1 (+2), Persuasion 1 (+1), Technology 3 (+5)

Powers
Battlesuit (Removable)
. . Armor: Protection 5 (+5 Toughness; Impervious) - 10p
. . Boot Jets: Flight 3 (Speed: 16 miles/hour, 250 feet/round) - 6p
. . Life Support System: Immunity 10 (Life Support) - 10p
. . Power Management - 11p
. . . . Force Beam: Damage 5 (DC 20; Increased Range: ranged) - [10]
. . . . Servo Motors: Enhanced Strength 5 (+5 STR) - [1]
. . Sensors: Senses 5 (Darkvision, Direction Sense, Radio, Time Sense) - 5p
. . Tactical Computer: Enhanced Trait 8 (Traits: Dodge +2 (+3), Fighting +2 (+2), Advantages: Ranged Attack 2) - 8p

Offense
Initiative +1
Force Beam: Damage 5, +3 (DC 20)
Grab, +2 (DC Spec 15)
Throw, +3 (DC 20)
Unarmed, +2 (DC 20)

Defense
Dodge 3/1, Parry 2, Fortitude 2, Toughness 5, Will 2

Power Points
Abilities 10 + Powers 40 + Advantages 3 + Skills 4 (8 ranks) + Defenses 3 = 60

This build gives a very simple inventor (PL2 / 20p w/o the suit) with a relatively powerful suit (40p Device with Removable), hitting caps with Force Beam Damage and Ranged Defense only.

At this level,you could almost believeably see someone building this in their garage as a personal invention, or even a theatrical or movie prop or particularly detailed cosplay. The armor could be shaped thin iron plates or other alloys, even moldable high-impact plastics or graphite composites. The Force Beam is probably too comic-book science-y, but is on par with a standard shotgun or rifle, which could be swapped in just by changing the descriptor. The Sensors are common enough (compass, clock and radio) with the exception of Darkvision which could be replaced with other night-sight options.

The hardest things to realistically pull off would likely be Flight and Full Life Support. Current jetpack tech is possible, but has issues with fuel (Complication), and complexity (Concentration to use Standard Actions for control), not to mention size, weight and noise. "Jump Jets" built as Leaping with the Unreliable 5-charge Flaw might be more feasible. Individual Life Support options aren't that hard, but all at once would be tricky, so picking a few like heat-proofing or independent air supply would be a more likely loadout.

How is this useful? It's a decent low-level Battlesuit with all the basics, so you could use it as a template to build up to whatever PL your game is (which IMHO is easier than trimming down); with this particular one you could choose to build up the pilot in addition or even instead of the suit. You could also use the Battlesuit design as something common in your game-verse, maybe as a basic suit made for the police or military designed to engage "enhanced opposition"; in that case it can be a 50ep piece of equipment (or less with a little of the above trimming) that could be available to SWAT teams, villanous minions or almost anyone with some military or black market connections.
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