Avenger Assembled

12 pp is way too many in drawbacks for a PL 10 character. As with our sample vampire builds, the need to consume blood should be a complication. 6 is lower than I'm comfortable with as an ability score for a PC, even CHA.

Makes sense, descriptor-wise. APPROVED

APPROVED

APPROVED

I took off the second level of tracking [and made his Area Targeted and added Old Norse as a language]).

Character Name: Comrade Frost Power Level: 12/13 (205/205PP) Trade-Offs: None Unspent PP: 0 Alternate Identity: Dr. Dimitri Ivanovitch Peshkov, the "Ice Commissar" Identity: Public, though the fact that he is a vampire is not known to the general public Birthplace: Moscow, Russia Occupation: Liaison between People's Heroes and Freedom League Affiliations: People's Heroes, Freedom League Family: No blood relatives living In Brief Ex-Soviet cryokinetic vampire supersoldier turned occult investigator Description Age: 100 (Born August 1, 1913) Apparent Age: 30 Gender: Male Ethnicity: Caucasian [turns extremely white when using his powers] Height: 5'8" Weight: 150 lbs Eyes: Light blue [pink when using his powers] Hair: Light blond [white when using his powers] Comrade Frost these days dresses in a blue, white fur-lined parka over a dapper white suit. He wears a blue domino mask with black eyepieces and usually keeps the hood up, and white gloves in situations where he knows he'll need to use his powers (using them for any length of time generally makes his hands very cold to the touch). His skin turns extremely white while using his powers. In more formal occasions, he loses the parka and mask and simply rocks the suit. In very formal occasions, he'll don the modified blue and white uniform he wore as a zampolit in World War II. That's also the only time you'll see him wear his medals, and between one thing and another he's got a lot of those. Power Descriptions Comrade Frost is a cold manipulator only, unlike many other cryokinetics who can summon large amounts of ice and snow. He can drain the heat out of large groups or individuals, as well as brittly freezing solid objects or paralyzing someone's muscles with a touch. He can heal his own injuries by draining the heat from the environment around him, but only when he focuses his attention on a single target: otherwise the heat becomes lost to him. He can fly by transforming himself into icy fog; he can make himself tougher by freezing himself solid. His eyes turn an albino's pink when he's actively using his powers, and his hair frosts white like snow. Personality and Motivations Surprisingly warm for a century-old Communist vampire, Comrade Frost has an avuncular relationship with young people, especially young heroes. He's ultimately a gentle man who enjoys a joke, even one at his own expense, and is only really roused to anger by Nazis, pseudonatural creatures, and other unholy monsters. His decades of unlife have taught him to respect magic, but he fears it in the wrong hands, and won't be afraid to utterly destroy some mystic artifact rather than let it fall into the hands of evil. History Born in a small town outside Moscow in 1913, Dimitri Peshkov was not an attractive man in life. A bright student, he grew up lazy and a little jaded, convinced of his own intellectual superiority over his fellow students in high school and college. He became a veterinarian, tending to the animals in collective farms, out of a mild interest in helping those less fortunate but mostly for the chance to be the smartest and best-educated man in the room. When war threatened his country in 1941, he joined the NKVD, not the Red Army, not out of a special patriotism, but because he thought it would keep him away from the battlefield. He was wrong; and that would be the death of him. The old Dr. Dimitri Peshkov died beneath the sacrificial blade of the Thule Society in the spring of 1942. The NKVD doctor had been captured on the Arctic front during the defense of Murmansk and had, under the Commissar Decree, been handed over by the Wehrmacht to the SS for execution. He might simply have been shot, but a passing group of Thule mystics needed him for a special task. Operating in the far north under Kantor's commnd, the Thule circle had found an ancient Norse altar, consecrated to Hel and her father Loki, and had learned they needed human blood to open the gateway to another world. And so they did. But as Peshkov fell into darkness, a voice came to him. The life-long atheist found himself floating before Hel, the guardian of Niflheim and ruler of the Norse underworld, one of the first new arrivals in her realm in a long time. Hel explained to Peshkov, as one would to a child, that she could not be summoned to Earth by such powers the Nazis had. In the heart of the greatest war the world had ever known, Death already stalked the land, and no wizard could hope to control it. But she had seen the capture of her haughty uncle Donar, and knew the plans of the Thule Society for the world of men, and she loathed them for the blasphemers they were. So she offered Peshkov a choice. He was a descendent of Rurik and had died at the hands of her enemies; if he stayed in Niflheim in her palace, he could have a place at her side to tell her about the world above, and perhaps as master of those few Thule sorcerors who had fallen into her hands when they had died of disease or accident after taking up the worship of the Asgardians. Or he could walk the Earth again as a draugr, a being of great power and might, with the heart taken from him by the Nazis replaced by a gateway to the icy realm of Niflheim. Given the choice, Peshkov chose to live. If you could call it living. Dimitri awoke on the altar and froze his captors solid, burning their shrine down behind him and feeding on the heat within as he began the long, painful walk back to Soviet lines. He learned how to control his powers and feed from the heat of the sun, from burning fires and life's heat rather than life's blood, and when he arrived back among his own people (and immediately, wonderfully, was plunged into a hot bath...that he immediately froze solid), Dimitri Peshkov was ready to begin his new identity: Comrade Frost, costumed defender of the Soviet Union! But of course it wasn't that easy. Dimitri was the only one of his allies familiar with magic, something which his own government denied the existence of. Comrade Frost rapidly became the Peoples' Heroes' magic expert, a role he had to play very subtly. He took every chance he could to team up with the Allies of Freedom and the Liberty League, desperately trying to pool his resources with those better-connected and better-educated in these matters as he tried to stave off the threat of magical darkness at home. And there was the war, grim and terrible. Comrade Frost was one of the first Soviet super soldiers into Berlin, and was there for the last great convulsion of the Reich. His superiors denied his request to join the hunt for Kantor, and so he wasn't there when the Allies of Freedom were betrayed and murdered by the forces of darkness. It was a hard blow for the super-soldier and he slipped into a deep depression after the war. Only a battle against the snake-cultists of Lithuania roused him from his funk in 1948, the mystic-trained hero recognizing the cultists of Yig for what they were! If the cultists of the Unspeakable One and his dread allies had come to the Soviet Union, there were urgent matters to deal with indeed. His war wasn't over. Comrade Frost was not one of the better-known Soviet super-soldiers to the general public; he was just there in the various engagements with American heroes, German holdouts, Baba Yaga, and the other famous battles of the Peoples' Heroes but he was well-known to superheroes. Sometimes he was an enemy to mystic heroes in the United States and elsewhere, stealing mystic artifacts out from under their noses for the Soviet Union's use but for the most part he was an ally: a fellow enemy of darkness who could always recognize that there were threats to the universe as deadly as any nuclear missile. Briefly imprisoned in 1953, he was freed after Stalin's death. He was a busy man in the 1960s as Stalinist controls lapsed and the world of magic became more and more powerful in the Soviet Union, taking time out to fight Superior in Cuba in 1962 and war against the forces of Baba Yaga in the 1970s. Dispatched to Afghanistan in the late 1970s to help battle undead warriors summoned to life there by Muslim clerics, Peshkov was horrified at the violence and pointless waste of yet another war; when he returned home in the 1980s, he let others take over his role as magical champion while working to support Gorbachev's reforms. With the fall of the Soviet Union, Peshkov resumed his work as a defender of the world against magical threats, for the first time working regularly in countries besides the land of his birth now that he was free to travel. There was a whole world out there! Peshkov is currently assigned to Freedom City to act as the liaison between the Peoples' Heroes and the Freedom League, as well as deal with the worrisome reports he's heard about magical activity in Freedom City. Barriers he helped erect many, many years ago now are beginning to melt. Complications: Is very old [a hundred year old Russian] Is an Ice Vampire [a terrible ice monster, albeit one who can pass for men] Has made a lot of enemies over the years [has fought a lot of terrible monsters from beyond space] The ladies (can't touch this!) [very solicitous towards women whose powers might let them actually have a relationship with him, though he is capable of dimming his cold aura] Niflheim's Champion [What else does Hel want with him?] Abilities: 0 + 0 - 10 + 10 + 4 + 2 = 6PP Strength: 10/24 (+0/+7) Dexterity: 10 (+0) Constitution: --- Intelligence: 20 (+5) Wisdom: 14 (+2) Charisma: 12 (+1) Combat: 8 + 8 = 16PP Initiative: +0 Attack: +4 Ranged/+8 Melee, +8/12 w/ Thermovore Array (Ranged/Melee) Grapple: +15, +18 w/ Frozen Armor Defense: +12 (+4 Base, +8 Dodge Focus), +2 Flat-Footed Knockback: -6, -11 w/ Frozen Armor -4, -7 w/ Icy Armor vs. blessed/holy, magic, or silver Saving Throws: 5 + 7 = 12PP Toughness: +12 (Impervious 10 w/ Icy Armor) +8 (Imp 6 w/ Icy Armor) vs. blessed/holy, magic, or silver Fortitude: --- Reflex: +5 (+0 Dex, +5) Will: +9 (+2 Wis, +7) Skills: 60R = 15PP Bluff 9 (+10)SM Concentration 3 (+5) Handle Animal 4 (+5) Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 5 (+10)SM Knowledge (History) 5 (+10) Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) 5 (+10)SM Languages 6 (English, German, Greek, Latin, Old Church Slavonic, Old Norse, Russian [base]) Medicine 7 (+9)SM Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Feats: 18PP Attack Focus Melee 4 Benefit (Security Clearance [Russian]) Dodge Focus 8 Eidetic Memory Jack of all Trades Ritualist Skill Mastery (Bluff, Knowledge [Arcane Lore], Knowledge [Theology and Philosophy], Medicine) Uncanny Dodge (Infravision) Powers: 1 + 14 + 3 + 8 + 5 + 13 + 30 + 20 + 8 + 4 + 3 + 2 + 4 + 29 = 144PP Comrade Frost's thermovore powers have the descriptors 'cold', 'dimensional', and 'magic'. His vampire powers have the description 'vampiric' Drain Constitution 2 (blood drain; Flaw: Requires Grapple) [1PP] Enhanced STR 14 (Vampiric, to STR 24/+7) [14PP] Environmental Control 1 (Cold 1 [severe], 5 feet; Extra: Action 3 [Reaction]; Flaw: Range [Touch]) [3PP] Gadgets 1 (5PP, magical trinkets, Extra: Action [Move], Flaw: Hard-to-Lose) [8PP] Healing 1 (thermovore; Extras: Action 4 [Reaction], Total; Flaws: Personal, Source [Fire/Heat Attacks]) [5PP] Icy Body 6 (12PP Array; Power Feat: Alternate Power) [13PP] BE: Flight 1 (10 mph/ 100 feet per Move Action, Extra: Linked [insubstantial]) {2PP} + Insubstantial 2 (icy fog; Extra: Linked [Flight]) {10PP} {12/12PP} AP: Impervious Toughness 6 (frozen armor; Extra: Duration [sustained,+0]) {6} + Super-Strength 3 (Effective Str 39) {4} {6+6=12/12} Immunity 30 (Fortitude Effects) [30PP] Immunity 40 (energy vampire; lethal energy damage) [20PP] Protection 8 (icy flesh) [8PP] Protection 4 (vampiric flesh; Extra: Impervious; Flaw: Limited [not against blessed/holy, magic, or silver]) [4PP] Regeneration 6 (Recovery +0 [5], Resurrection 1 [1 week]; Flaw: Source [blood or heat 37°C/98°F]) [3PP] Super-Senses 2 (Infravision [Enhancement: Tracking 1]) [2PP] Super-Senses 3 (feel magic, Detect Magic 3 [tactile; enhancement: Ranged ) [4PP] Thermovore Array 12 (24PP Array; Power Feats: Accurate 2, Alternate Power 3) [29PP] BE: Drain Toughness 12 (brittle cold; Extras: Affects Objects, Range [Ranged]; Flaw: Limited [Objects Only]) {24/24PP} AP: Damage 12 (mass heat drain; Extra: Area [120 ft. Cone, Targeted]) {24/24PP} AP: Paralyze 12 (freezing grasp; Extra: Alternate Save [Fortitude, +0] ) {24/24PP} AP: Strike 12 (thermovorous touch; Extra: Vampiric) {24/24PP} Drawbacks: -4PP Vulnerable (Cold [Common], Major [x2]) [4PP] DC Block: ATTACK RANGE SAVE EFFECT Unarmed Touch DC 22 Toughness (Staged) Damage (Physical) Brittle Cold Ranged DC 22 Fort (Staged) Drain Toughness Freezing Grasp Touch DC 22 Fort Slowed/Paralyzed Mass Heat Drain Touch [Area] DC 27 Toughness (Staged) Damage (Physical) Thermovorus Touch Touch DC 27 Toughness (Staged) Damage (Physical) Totals: Abilities (6) + Combat (16) + Saving Throws (10) + Skills (15) + Feats (18) + Powers (144) - Drawbacks (4) = 205/205 Power Points

Looks solid. Fix up the power notation, would you?

Why is his Reflex save so high? (To be badass is a good reason, but what's the descriptor for it?)

Backstory's still good. Power notation needs some significant cleaning up.

Seems legit. APPROVED

"Yes. Oh, yes." Steve kissed Gina again, dry lips on hers, and they didn't talk again for a while after that. In her bed that night, deep in the darkest hours of the night, in the darkest part of the house, he held her as she slept and remembered her words from before. Whatever the future held for either of them, he knew the words were true. I can live with this. That night, for the first time in a long while, Steve Murdock slept without the company of horrors, and in the first moment of morning's light, before he moved and felt the inescapable weight of cold steel armor deep down in his very bones, awoke without the past.

Once everyone was in, Ms. Harcourt favored her students with a smile, raising her voice to call attention to herself. "Okay, everyone, welcome to your first field trip of the year. As some of you already know, dealing with alternate dimensions is an important part of being a superhero. That's especially true for Claremont students in the last few years, when it seems like we've been falling into, or out of, every dimensional anomaly that's passed through Freedom City." She shook her head ruefully. "As a result of that, we've initiated an exchange program with, er, a brother Claremont in another dimension." She used the wall projector to call up a map of Freedom City, one that looked eerily familiar yet somehow subtly different. "This summer, the Next-Gen played host to their counterparts, and so this fall it's our turn to travel to another dimension. We'll be visiting a world actually discovered by Claremont students, the first Young Freedom, where you'll be meeting some of your counterparts. This is a safe Earth close to Earth-Prime in alignment; different, but not actually dangerous. I know some of you have experience with this already, but you'll find a planned trip is far more instructive than an encounter with dimensional castaways, or being castaway yourself." "So what other dimension is it?" asked Sharl, frowning behind his shades. Unbidden thoughts of Erde flashed through his mind; he'd requested additional training on other dimensions, and assumed this was part of it, but if the school was aware of their plans for a secret expedition there, he was going to have to change things up in a hurry! Getting suspended, or worse, before he could save his people was not how he planned to finish out his high school career on Earth. "Earth-A-Gender-1," replied Harcourt. "A dimension very much like Earth-Prime, except with a complete biological gender inversion. Our theory is they're the result of a quantum mirroring effect at some point early in our history...but of course they think the same about us, so scientists are still investigating the situation on both sides." she added.

"I promise to you," said Steve, speaking in the name of one of the people that mattered to him the most, "in your name, that I will not go to the Terminus alone. And that I will do all I can, everything within my power to always stay with you, here on Earth, or anywhere else. For as long as I live." He thought of loves lost and gone lifetimes ago, and said, "I cannot promise to be a normal man for you, Gina, or normal in any other way. But I can promise to be a man for you, as best I can be." He took a deep breath as he looked up at her, altered eyes clear and dry, waiting for her reaction.

Yes, this is what you deserve, isn't it, Steve? came the voice in his head as clear as a bell. You've killed and killed and killed until your hands drip with blood and your nights with the screams of the dying. It's good you chased her away. You don't deserve her. How dare you love when so many lovers have died at your hands? How dare you know joy, when you have destroyed so much happiness? For a moment, he felt a gulf of emptiness open beneath his feet, the yawning darkness of the soul with which he was only too familiar. The yawning darkness he had known almost all his life. It was very hard to be alone in the dark. "...the past cannot be changed. The dead cannot be brought back to life."" He fell silent again, a stricken look on his lined face. "I had thought there was nothing more I could lose. But I don't want to lose you, Gina, or all the things that we have together. I will live."

"There is no glory in it. No triumph. Simply fate." His voice didn't so much as break on the last word, but Gina could see the look in his lined eyes for a long moment, as he looked past her to the deep darkness of the past. "And I do not wish to die. There are a great many things about this world," he went on, reaching over to put his hand on hers, "that I want to make part of myself, so that there is something in me besides all that has been. Things that I want to have with you...But I cannot live without trying to save those who were left behind. Those who live in death, with their own wills or without. And I think that effort will probably kill me. To war against the Terminus is to one day die. Today, tomorrow, in a decade. It is simply a matter of time."

"AWWW, I WAZ JUZT KIDDING," hummed Super-Bee good-naturedly as she ducked her massive head at her 'teacher's' chiding. "ANY FRIEND OF FLEUR DE JOIE IS A FRIEND OF OURZ, RIGHT GIRLZ?" The other bees nodded at that, one of them making a deep bass noise that might have been another chuckle. She leaned over the Bee-Keeper and extended a massive limb for him to climb, a mighty chitin leg as thick around the waist as he was. "EVEN IF YOU DO LOOK ZORT OF ZILLY," she teased. "COME ON AND CLIMB ON AND I WILL GIVE YOU A RIDE. BUT YOU BETTER HANG ON TIGHT, I CAN GO PRETTY FAZZZT..."

"BEEZT FRIENDZ, EH?" Super-Bee hmmed at that, loud enough to briefly rattle Baxter's teeth inside his armor. "WE COULD ALWAYZ UZE ANOTHER FRIEND? WHAT CAN YOU DO?" she added in a booming inquiry. "GAIAN KNIGHT HELPZ UZ MAKE HOUZES AND GABRIEL HELPZ UZ ZING, AND FLEUR DE JOIE HELPZ MAKE GIANT FLOWERZ FOR UZ TO EAT! WHAT CAN YOU DO FOR UZ?" "HE LOOKZ VERY PRETTY," said Bee-la as she loomed over Baxter from behind. "MAYBEE HE CAN HELP UZ DECORATE FOR WINTER. WE HAVE TO KEEP THE HIVE LOOKING PRETTY WHEN WE ARE MOZTLY ZLEEPING. OR HE CAN TAKE CARE OF THE BAY-BEEZ!" The bees laughed at that, a deep, earth-shaking sound, seeming the find the image very funny.

YF 3.0 takes a little trip.

September 7, 2012 Sharl wasn't sure what to make of the assignment he'd gotten from Ms. Harcourt, Claremont's hardworking science teacher, but he was there anyway for the "special team project" she'd invited him for. As more of his teammates arrived, it soon became clear that most of Young Freedom, and even one or two faces outside of it, had been invited along for the elective. They were in one of Harcourt's science labs, and Citizen found himself studying the homemade equipment with undisguised fascination as more people entered. _Could she really have made one of these out of household items?_ he thought with a little amazement as he drifted around a big kitbashed cylinder of electronic parts in the center of the room. "Come on in, everybody!" called Harcourt as more students entered. "Those of you who were asked to bring bags, and that's everyone who could, make sure you have those before you find a seat. This will be an overnight trip, and you need to be self-sufficient."

"When Officer Danson awakes, she will again be herself. Brilliant, but no longer neurologically unstable. Most of those I have empowered have maintained their stability even with the influx of new powers and knowledges. Many even have...grown from it. With guidance for those who remain, all will be well." Turning to address Wail again, the cyberintelligence said, "You misunderstand me. I do not strike the hand you have extended into history. Instead, I take it." TOMORROW extended its hand to Wail, reaching closer and closer, and then finally faded from view as it had never been there at all.

Steve looked confused himself for a moment, then got up again and sat next to Gina. "I have been dead a long time, Gina. I had thought before I met you that I would never live again, even for a moment." He looked away, then went on, "When we are together, I can usually forget the past and what has been, but other times, I close my eyes and I remember..." His hand on the table squeezed tight into a fist. "I feel guilt for what we have. That we have happiness. That I have happiness. When so many have suffered. When I have made so many suffer. So I remind myself that I will not die old, nor will I die in a bed. I will die fighting the Terminus."

Koshiro didn't know enough about Lor science to interpret what he saw down below on the delivery deck, but he'd watched enough science fiction movies to recognize big, dangerous-looking machinery when he saw it: a massive cylinder lined with pulsing red circles of high-tech energy was aimed "below" the ship, while banks of computers all around displayed whirling Lor syllabry and readouts of information on whatever the 'thing' was that was at the heart of the delivery deck. Up on the command deck, the three heroes walked into an ominously silent, albeit well-lit 'bridge.' It was a narrow, elongated room with a view of the Javelin station out the front viewscreen, with a rail and computer stations in the back (albeit with no seats) and another row of stations (these with seats, the big, capacious crash couches the Lor preferred) up front by the screen Sharl explained what they were looking at for the benefit of the two non-experts, but his mind was obviously elsewhere. "This is standard for older Lor military ships. There was a lot of political infighting in the old Republic, so the captain's station was such that he saw everyone else's back, but no one could see his. Unless they used an old design on purpose, this ship must be at least 500 Earth years old." He walked up to the nearest computer station and studied the readout. "It says 'repairs complete'."

The game was exciting enough if you had emotion invested in the team or the sport, with the Heroes fighting hard on their own turf against an offensive onslaught from a surprisingly powerful team. Freedom City didn't have the money that bigger markets did, but they had a tradition of excellence stretching back decades and they had a lot of heart, and when halftime hit they had pulled themselves back from an multi-touchdown deficit to a hard-fought tie. For her part, Quo-Dis watched the game as if she was watching a war, her knuckles white on Corbin's hand and her teeth drawn in a hard smile as she watched. "Yes! Soon we will crush them!" she exulted. There was a special celebrity guest for the halftime show; the heroine Gossamer joining with the cast of a recent off-Broadway revival to sing "Hair"., and soon the show on the field was in full swing.

"Yeah, yeah, I'll do that," said Mark, nodding as he picked up his hamburger and taking another bite. "I don't think she means anything by it, really, it's just how she relates to people." He still didn't look entirely happy, but instead he did his best to change the subject. "Anyhow, that's not important. What is important is questions of taking the team international," he went on, looking around at the others. "There are more legacies of the old days out there than you'd think, especially if you look at Europe and Asia. If we are going to say we stand for something about how things were back in the beginning for people like us, we might want to think about including them. Speaking of travel, how's the Night Cycle these days?"

A trio of semi-truck-sized bees landed in a triangle shape around Baxter and Stesha, their faces taller than either of them as they loomed down over the two heroes. Stesha knew these bees well enough; Super-Bee (who only went by Ab-bee when she was in her 'secret identity' on Earth-Prime), Bee-la, and Bee-linda were three of the young, up-and-coming bees who were the future leaders of the hive. They had, perhaps fortunately, never actually met the Bee-Keeper face to face. Of course, one of them, being a very good student, had taken the chance to memorize his face. "HELLO THERE," said what was to Baxter, giant bee with what was distinctly a gold tiara resting incongrously atop her massive head, her voice like the buzzing thunder of a jet engine as she loomed over them. Their wings were still, but they were loud all the same! "WE MIZZED YOU TODAY FLEUR DE JOIE. IZ THIZ WHO IT LOOKZ LIKE?" Super-Bee added, massive compound eyes seeming to stare right into Baxter's soul. With the other two bees behind him, there was no escape from the suspicion that was somehow unmistakeable on the face of the massive apian!