Avenger Assembled

The stolen energy poured around Erik as if he'd put his face to a blowtorch; he was standing in a field of cosmic radiation that could have transformed him into a statue or simply flash-fry him into ash and fire in a second. But there were few men more nimble than Jack of all Blades, and he stood in the flames without being burned. As for Willow herself, the booming, pleading voice in her head seemed to fade to a dull roar at Jack's approach, letting her hear his words and understand them. She wasn't alone. She had her partner right there, and as she realized that, the voice in her head didn't get any louder: as the heroes looked on, the Gorgon-grey coating of metal over Willow's body seemed to grow thin and tarnished, as if ready to crack at any moment.

Satanic Spider PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 10 pp STR 24 [10] (+7/+0) DEX 24 [10] (+7/+0) CON 24 [10] (+7/+0) INT 16 (+3) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 24 [10] (+7/+0) Combat: 32 pp ATK: +8 (+13 melee) DEF: +13 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +7 Grapple: +27 Saves: 5 pp TOU +7 (+7 Con) FORT +7 (+7 Con) REF +7 (+7 Dex) WILL +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 64 r=16 pp Acrobatics 8 (+15)* Bluff 13 (+20)* Climb 3 (+10) Craft (Artistic) 1 (+4) Diplomacy 5 (+12) Intimidate 13 (+20)* Knowledge (Arcane Lore) 2 (+5) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 3 (+5) Stealth 8 (+15)* Feats: 19 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Melee 5 Dodge Focus 5 Evasion Move-By Action Power Attack Skill Mastery (Acrobatics, Bluff, Intimidate, Stealth) Startle Takedown Attack Taunt Powers: 74 pp Additional Limb 1 (tail) [1 pp] Enhanced CHA 14 [14 pp] 'diabolical charm' Enhanced CON 14 [14 pp] Enhanced DEX 14 [14 pp] Enhanced STR 14 [14 pp] Immunity 2 (aging, environmental heat) [2 pp] Impervious TOU 6 [6 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Senses 2 (Danger Sense [mental], Uncanny Dodge [mental]) [2 pp] Super-Strength 2 (Heavy Load: 1 ton) [4+2=6 pp] AP: Leaping 4 (x25) AP: Super-Movement 2 (Wall-Crawling 2) Drawbacks: -6 pp Vulnerable (vs. holy) (uncommon, major) [-3 pp] Weakness (repelled by crosses; dazed via Charisma check vs. holy symbols) [-3 pp] costs abilities 10 + combat 32 + saves 5 + skills 14/56 + feats 19 + powers 74 -drawbacks 6= 150 pts ------------ Design Notes: A murdered uncle; a grieving teenager faced with an awesome responsibility. Until that is, a man of wealth and taste came to see him, offering him great power in return for, well, nothing! (Or so it seemed, anyway). Faced with no other choices, the young man chose the Devil's bargain and gained inhuman powers! Now superhumanly fast and strong, with a tremendous force of enhanced personality, the young man is a devil with the ladies and feared and hated by criminals everywhere. He can't throw hellfire, his enhancements are all internal, but he's still enormously powerful (and actually bulletproof) thanks to his infernal enhancements, enough that sometimes he forgets he had superpowers before all this started out! What's not to like? Well, perhaps that little voice gnawing at the back of his head that tells him he made a terrible mistake and the price of gaining all these good things from infernal powers Spiderman getting something valuable from the Devil? Only in a What If, Shirley. If you do want him tossing around infernal webs, perhaps black sizzling strands of tar, shuffle the points around as you need it: with 21 points in non-spider powers, you can get Hellfire Control 10 (PF: Accurate), even more if you shuffle more points around and maybe add some more satanic drawbacks. In the Freedom City setting, this young man is a Claremont student empowered first by an accident, then by the terrible Mister Infamy. As Infamously empowered people tend to be ticking time bombs in one way or another, he's closely watched by his fellows at the school as he tries to do as much good in the world as he can before the consequences of his hellish mistake come back to haunt him. Naturally he's done his best to keep all this from his aunt, as he certainly wouldn't want her to know about it! Satan or not, this character has many of the powers and attributes associated with comic-book arachnids. He can jump hella high, climb walls as easy as you or I climb up a flight of stairs. He’s very hard to sneak up on: most characters don’t have Concealment vs. mental senses, and between Uncanny Dodge and Danger Sense he's very protected that way. Not saying it can’t be done, but it’ll take a smart character, and maybe a specific immunity (perhaps a result of knowing this character especially well, or having once been a very close ally) to get close. He needs a good supporting cast and a good relationship to get into, though perhaps he'll want to cultivate a relationship with the Almighty before any girlfriends!

Luck Controller With a Gun PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 28 pp STR 20 (+5) DEX 20 (+5) CON 20 (+5) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 36 pp ATK: +9 (+14 Blasters/+15 melee) DEF: +15 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +5 Grapple: +20 Saves: 9 pp TOU +5 (+5 Con) FORT +7 (+5 Con, +2) REF +7 (+5 Dex, +2) WILL +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 56r=14 pp Acrobatics 10 (+15) Climb 5 (+10) Drive 5 (+10) Language 1 (Spanish) (Base: English) Notice 8 (+10) Pilot 5 (+10) Sense Motive 12 (+14) Stealth 10 (+15) Feats: 25 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Melee 5 Dodge Focus 7 Move-By Action Power Attack Precise Shot Quick Draw [draw] Takedown Attack Ultimate Save 4 (Fortitude, Reflex, Toughness, Will) Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 38 pp Device 4 (Paired Blasters) (Hard to Lose) (PFs: Restricted [DNA Lockout], Subtle [concealed]) [18 pp] Blast 6 (Extra: Autofire; PFs: Accurate 2) [20dp] Leaping 2 (x5) [2+1=3 pp] AP: Speed 2 (25 MPH) Luck Control 4 (spend an HP for another character, give HP to others, spend HP to negate HP/Fiat, force reroll) (PFs: Luck 5) [17 pp] costs abilities 28 + combat 36 + saves 9 + skills 14/56 + feats 25 + powers 38 = 150 pts -------- Design Notes: Here's Domino, a luck controller with a gun, an Iron Age character so iconic she made it into the Iron Age book via her Freedom City expy Kismet. She got to sleep with Cable back at the height of the Iron Age, which pretty much makes her one of the memetic sex gods of comics in the 1990s. She's a sneaky, acrobatic gun bunny who's equally skilled in hand-to-hand as she is with her stunning laser pistols. Her Luck Control makes a fine supplement to her strong training, making her one of the most badass women in the world. This is a very Iron Age archetype, of course, but so long as you put non-lethal weapons like the Black Widow's Spider Bite in her hands and make her a skilled hand-to-hand fighter as I did here, you should do just fine. I added a little bit of superhuman acrobatics to go with her abilities, but for the most part she's just very very good, and very very lucky. This probably isn't our Kismet; you shouldn't pick up Iron Age characters or legacies here without a _very_ good story to go with it. Besides, FORCE Ops is dead. Odds are pretty good that the anti-heroine Kismet died in the Terminus Invasion, giving her life as the real hero she'd never really believed she was. But it could be a relative; 1993 was a long time ago, and a daughter born sometime near the end of Kismet's life (perhaps as a result of one of those wham-bam-thank-you-ma'am relationships the Iron Age loved so much) would be an adult now; if she was raised by a friend of Kismet's from her mercenary days, she may have gotten the same kind of training her mother had, though without the personal, Iron Age style education in the realities of doom and gloom. If she's not a direct Kismet legacy, maybe she's just a luck-controlling agent that UNISON or AEGIS has sent off to be a superhero. Hey, if it worked for Black Widow; you can make it work for you! There's no reason she can't be open about her background, but a mysterious and secretive past works just fine too. Consider paying for the Enigma feat. I've made her a fairly serious gun-bunny type with strong physical skills; up her Charisma and Bluff if you want to make her more the flirty femme fatale type: Attractive is a must for that sort of character. Another possible change might be to her signature weapon; maybe instead of stunning energy blasts you prefer arrows or some other iconic type of comic book weapon.

Acrobat in Power Armor PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 10 pp STR 24 [10] (+7/+0) DEX 24 [10] (+7/+0) CON 24 [10] (+7/+0) INT 16 (+3) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 32 pp ATK: +8 (+13 melee) DEF: +13 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +7 Grapple: +26 Saves: 5 pp TOU +7 (+7 Con) FORT +7 (+7 Con) REF +7 (+7 Dex) WILL +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 56 r=14 pp Acrobatics 8 (+15) Bluff 15 (+15) Climb 3 (+10) Craft (Artistic) 2 (+5) Craft (Mechanical) 2 (+5) Knowledge (Technology) 2 (+5) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth 8 (+15) Feats: 19 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Melee 5 Challenge (Fast Acrobatic Bluff) Dodge Focus 5 Evasion Luck Move-By Action Power Attack Takedown Attack Taunt Powers: 70 pp Device 5 (Acrobat Armor) (Hard to Lose) (PF: Restricted [DNA lockout]) [21 pp] Additional Limbs 4 (Extra:Duration: Sustained) [4dp] Concealment 4 (all visual) (Flaw: Passive) [4dp] Enhanced Feats 2 (Quick Change) [2dp] Flight 1 (10 MPH) (PF: Subtle) [3dp] Immunity 2 (disease, poison) [2dp] Impervious TOU 5 [5dp] Super-Senses 5 (Direction Sense, Infravision, Radio, Time Sense, Ultrahearing) [5dp] Enhanced CON 14 [14 pp] Enhanced DEX 14 [14 pp] Enhanced STR 14 [14 pp] Super-Senses 2 (Danger Sense [mental], Uncanny Dodge [mental]) [2 pp] Super-Strength 2 (Heavy Load: 1 ton) [4+1=5 pp] AP: Leaping 2 (x5) and Speed 2 (25 MPH) costs abilities 10 + combat 32 + saves 5 + skills 14/56 + feats 19 + powers 70 = 150 pts --------- Design Notes: A few years ago, a young man sat in his room and swore an oath of vengeance and responsibility. His foster father was dead, murdered by a nameless criminal, and he and his foster mother were faced with unimaginable poverty and grief. Making matters worse was his own secret knowledge that he could have prevented the crime! If only he had used the amazing physical powers he’d gained from that lab accident some months ago to be a hero instead of trying to become a super-celebrity, he could have been there when his family needed him. And then, there came a knock at the door, and a man was standing there he’d never met. The playboy industrialist had recently suffered a life-changing accident himself, and while laid up in recovery he’d read about the murder of one of his company’s employees and been struck with sympathy. After all, he’d lost his own parents from a young age. From the equipment scattered around the room, the industrialist recognized a budding gadgeteer and offered the high school student an internship (along with paying his family’s way for the rest of their lives), and the young man at that moment finally unburdened his secret shame and secret pride to the older, wiser man. Hmming, the industrialist stroked his goatee and made a proposition to him. You see, he’d been working on this suit of armor for himself, but perhaps he and the young man could build one for him, too? Together? Yes, here’s my attempt at building a PL 10 version of the Iron Spider armor; this requires essentially taking the very very early Spiderman and putting him in a brand-new suit of Starktech armor. (In this universe, he had a full research laboratory and didn’t have to make do with dinky little fluid shooters.) He’s fast, he’s mobile, he’s really strong, and he’s bulletproof (at least vs. small arms fire); with the additional limbs on his armor and his own innate super-strength, he’s a very good grappler. His suit’s not actually sealed, but he is in something of a restricted environment: he can avoid being exposed to airborne toxins and pollutants, he’s just got no supply of oxygen in there! I figure this is a version of the character who’s a good mechanic and something of a techhead, but not really a super-genius yet; that’ll come with time and earned PP. (That’s one of the problems with Spiderman conversions, there have been so many versions of the character that capturing him at any one point in his career is always a challenge) I think this works fine as any acrobatic hero in powered armor; shuffle the points around and this could easily be a patriotic hero in an all-American costume. In the Freedom City setting, this guy is probably a Claremont student, perhaps one sponsored by one of our tech heroes or a heroic NPC like Daedalus. He could easily have built his own suit, or borrowed someone else’s. You can certainly save him a lot of points if you have him be a pure techie and put all his enhanced attributes in the suit too! Like a lot of Spidey-esque builds, he’s in trouble if you nullify his Danger Sense and Uncanny Dodge. (Why such a low Charisma? Well, taunts aside, nobody seems to like Spiderman, especially this early in his career) As a villain, maybe this is a sneak thief who stole someone else’s suit of power armor (or built it himself off-camera) and now he’s sneaking into places and stealing the most valuable things there.

Psionic Weather Controller PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 34 pp STR 20 (+5) DEX 14 (+2) CON 22 (+6) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 28 pp ATK: +6 DEF: +12 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +2 Grapple: +15 Saves: 11 pp TOU +8 (+6 Con, +2 Force Field) FORT +7 (+6 Con, +1) REF +7 (+2 Dex, +5) WILL +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 40 r=10 pp Concentration 5 (+7) Intimidate 3 (+5) Knowledge (Physical Sciences) 3 (+3) Notice 8 (+10)* Pilot 8 (+10)* Sense Motive 3 (+5) Survival 3 (+5)* Swim 5 (+10)* Feats: 9 pp Dodge Focus 4 Endurance Move-By Action Second Chance (Weather Control power checks) Skill Mastery (Notice, Pilot, Survival, Swim) Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 56 pp Flight 3 (50 MPH) [6 pp] Force Field 2 [2 pp] Immunity 5 (all weather effects) (Extra: Duration (Sustained) [+0]) [5 pp] Super-Senses 8 (Postcognition [Flaw: Unreliable], Precognition [Flaw: Unreliable]) [4 pp] Weather Control Array [33+5=38 pp] Blast 10 (Extra: Range [Perception]; PFs: Indirect 2, Variable Descriptor 1 [any weather]) AP: Damage 10 (Extras: Area [shapeable], Selective Attack; PFs: Indirect 2, Variable Descriptor 1 [any weather]) AP: Dazzle 10 (visual and auditory) (Extra: Range [Perception]; Flaw: Action [Full]; PFs: Indirect 2, Variable Descriptor 1 [any weather]) AP: Environmental Control 10 (1 mile) [3/pp mix-and-match] (Extras: Duration [independent] (+0), Total Fade [+1]; Flaw: Range [Touch]; PFs: Slow Fade 3 [5 minutes/rank]) AP: Move Object 10 (Heavy Load: 12 tons) (Extra: Range [Perception]; PFs: Indirect 2, Variable Descriptor 1 [any weather]) AP: Obscure 10 (1 mile) (visual and auditory) (Extra: Duration [independent] (+0); PFs: Slow Fade 2 [1 minute/rank, Variable Descriptor 1 [any weather]) costs abilities 34 + combat 28 + saves 11 + skills 10/40 + feats 8 + powers 56 = 150 pts --------- Design Notes: Here’s Semper Paratus, aka Ted White, one of the first super characters I ever played from an old Aberrant game with Electra. Ted was a Coast Guard rescue pilot, one of those guys who flew choppers in to rescue people from storms and capsized ships. He was good at his job and happily married to his wife Veronica, a NASA research scientist and astronaut, right up until his wife developed superpowers during a space mission: now she was an impossibly beautiful, super-strong flier who could bruise him with a touch, and he was just this guy who flew helicopters, you know? (It didn’t help that, having become beautiful and tough instead of smarter, Ronnie had been shunted out of her scientific work by NASA and put to work on the rubber-chicken circuit, so she was under significant stress herself). When Ted’s powers emerged during a lightning storm over their home (being near a nova is a great way to develop powers yourself), everything seemed better until his newly-formed psychic abilities gave him an up-close-and-personal graphic perspective on the long-term affair Ronnie had been having with another nova. (It wasn’t really her fault, since an enhanced constitution in Aberrant terms gives you very, very strong drives). Stripped of the very Aberrant backstory, I think Ted’s sheet works just fine as a psychic weather controller: someone who can predict the coming weather and who can go out there and do something about it! He wound up as a hurricane fighter in the Coast Guard (it helped that he lived in Florida) and I think this character could do that job just fine, flying up into the heart of storms and taking them on mono-a-mono. Mechanically he’s not that different from your average weather controller, with a few changes. He’s buffer than most weather controllers, and a better hand-to-hand fighter, but his best strategy in a fight is to hang back and make with the hostile weather conditions: he can drop lightning bolts from the clear blue sky on command, deafen people with near-miss thunderclaps, or knock people around with high winds, or drop a tornado on the spot where he’s standing. He’s immune to the effects of his powers as long as he’s conscious, so if he fails a Concentration check while in the middle of a raging Category 5 (even one he created) he’s in trouble! Given the particular utility of his powers, he might be a super-person who’s grown up under military tutelage, perhaps an early graduate of one of those T-mutant schools. Weather controllers have lots of pretty broad opportunities for stunting, with his big array it shouldn’t be that hard for you to build whatever it is that you need. He shouldn’t have many issues with living in comfort wherever he does happen to settle down, thanks to that big environmental control power of his. (There’s always some debate over how Independent exactly works, so make sure you get clear with your GM his interpretation of it before you take it out for a spin.) If you put the powers in some other direction, he works just fine as a Steve Trevor-type who has hooked up with your local Hot Amazon. If you take him as a villain, which he was for a while when his powers emerged, he makes a fine scary weather god, perhaps a crazed stalker of some famous celebrity who he imagines is cheating on him...(he's craaazy)

Don't forget, TT, Medea is dazed rather than stunned.

Robot Psychic Abilities: 22 pp STR 24 (+7) DEX 20 (+5) CON - INT 14 (+2) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 16 pp ATK: +4 (+7 melee/+10 psychic powers) DEF: +7 (+3 Dodge, +2 flat-footed) Grapple: +14/+20 Init: +5 Saving Throws: 8 pp TOU: +13 (+13 Protection) FORT: - REF: +5 (+5 Dex) WILL: +10 (+2 Wis, +8) Skills: 36 r=9 pp Concentration 8 (+10) Knowledge (Civics) 3 (+5) Language 1 (English) (Base: Burmese) Notice 8 (+10) Search 3 (+5) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth 5 (+10) Feats: 7 pp Attack Focus: Melee 3 Dodge Focus 3 Second Chance (Concentration checks to maintain powers) Powers: 88 pp Flight 1 (10 MPH) [2] Immunity 30 (Fortitude saves) [30] Impervious TOU 10 (Extra: Duration [sustained]) [10] Psionic Array [24+4=28 pp] Blast 10 (PFs: Accurate 3, Precise) AP: ESP 6 (600 ft/20 miles) (visual and auditory) (PFs: Rapid 5 (x100k), Subtle) AP: Mind Control 10 (PFs: Insidious, Mental Link, Second Chance [Mind Control], Subtle) AP: Mind Reading 10 (Extras: Area [burst], Selective; Flaw: Duration [instant/Lasting]; PFs: Insidious, Precise, Progression on Area, Subtle) AP: Move Object 10 (Heavy Load: 12 tons) (PFs: Accurate 3, Precise) Protection 13 [13] Regeneration 5 (Recovery Bonus +0) [5] Abilities 22 + Skills 8 + Feats 7 + Powers 88+ Combat 16 + Saves 8 = Total 150 ------ Design Notes: When the Freedom League broke up the super-soldier program run by a ‘breakaway’ faction of the brutal Burmese military dictatorship, they found they’d come too late for some of the prisoners. Paranoid and cruel, the Burmese secret police had rounded up anyone in the country with superpowers and experimented on them horribly to find the secret of their abilities: dozens were already dead, and more would die even after their salvation. One in particular struck them; Suu Aung, a budding psionic and sister of a dissident, died just a few days after the liberation of the jungle base where the prisoners had been held. Heedless of her own safety, she had used her psychic powers to contact American heroes even through her inhibitor brace, and the lingering effects of exhaustion and starvation had been enough to take her life. Vowing that this young hero would not be the last victim of her tormentors, Daedalus and Dr. Atom worked together to save Suu Aung’s brain, installing it in a robot body modeled on the Furies Three. Now safely encased in a steel shell, Suu is a Claremont student who plans to one day return home and liberate her people from their cruel overlords! All right, here’s my attempt at a Robot Psychic, based on Marvel’s No-Girl (one of the more interesting concepts of Grant Morrison’s run on the X-Men). The idea, as discussed above, is that she is a psychic brain in a regenerating robot body, giving her lots of tricks not possessed by either your typical robot or your typical psychic. I’ve tried to give her a blend of the natural abilities of both; a bulletproo psychic force field over tough robot skin and enough physical strength to make her a surprisingly potent threat in melee! (She’s PL 7 if her powers are somehow suppressed, thus giving her a chance to bust her way out of psi-nullifiers, and has enough psychic finesse to stay moving even if her robot parts are somehow dissassembled). She’s obviously got quite a road to go to maintain her humanity, especially if she opts to stay with the obviously mechanical body. Unlike most robots (PC ones, anyway), she’s not immune to mental effects, largely because she does actually have a human brain in there. If you don’t the Burmese angle (if anything, I have _undersold_ the brutality of the Burmese generals here), you could give her an origin closer to home; perhaps her powers are a result of a Terminus mutation and she was attacked by bigots who mortally injured her body, or maybe she was a victim of a degenerative physical ailment (perhaps one that her powers evolved as a respose to) and had the body constructed as a humanitarian gesture by a famous superhero; the latter would certainly let you have a character with a happier upbringing! If you do want to make her a straightforward psychic robot, swap out the Impervious TOU for an immunity to mental effects and specify that she was built with some of the first artificial telepathic generators in the world!

"There are no abandoned buildings where I'm from," replied Sharl, "but there are places where there are no people if you look hard enough." He smiled thinly. "That's how I found my way out here in the first place; nosing around some place everyone else was avoiding, then going through a door no one was supposed to go through." Focusing on Koshiro, he added, "So yeah, I did that thing all the time growing up. Freedom City's empty, but the buildings are so tiny." He grinned. "Difference is, back home I can't open any electronic lock on the planet that isn't on Blackwater, uh, Blackstone."

10 ranks down! The connection to the Gorgon is still there, but fading fast. Now as for the riposte... 28 vs. 30 Just made it!

Sorus has requested we skip him, so go ahead and post, KD

Empty Battlesuit PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 4 pp STR 30 [20] (+10/+5) DEX 10 (+0) CON - (-) INT 16 (+3) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 20 pp ATK: +6 (+10 Blast/Unarmed) DEF: +10 (+2 flat-footed) Init: +0 Grapple: +11/+22 Saves: 10 pp TOU +10 (+10 Protection) FORT - REF +5 (+0 Dex, +5) WILL +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 52 r=13 pp Bluff 11 (+11) Computers 7 (+10) Craft (Electronic) 7 (+10)* Craft (Mechanical) 7 (+10)* Disable Device 7 (+10)* Knowledge (Technology) 7 (+10)* Notice 3 (+5) Sense Motive 3 (+5) Feats: 11 pp Dodge Focus 6 Inventor Online Research Second Chance (Computers checks) Skill Mastery (Craft (Electronic), Craft (Mechanical), Disable Device, Knowledge (Technology) Well-Informed Powers: 95 pp Energy Systems Array [24+1=25 pp] Enhanced Feats 2 (Attack Specialization: Unarmed 2) and Enhanced STR 10 and Super-Strength 6 (Heavy Load: 48 tons) AP: Blast 10 (PFs: Accurate 2, Improved Crit, Precise) 'lasers' Flight 4 (100 MPH) [8 pp] Immunity 40 (Fortitude Saves, Mental Effects) [40 pp] Impervious TOU 10 (Flaw: Limited [Physical Only]) [5 pp] Protection 10 [10 pp] Regeneration 5 (Recovery Bonus +0) [5 pp] Super-Senses 2 (Infravision, Radio) [2 pp] Drawback: -3 pp Vulnerable (vs. Knockback) (since the suit is so light without a person in it) (common, moderate [+50%]) costs abilities 4 + combat 20 + saves 10 + skills 13/52 + feats 11 + powers 95 -drawbacks 3= 150 pts -------------- Design Notes: Everyone thought the troubled billionaire in the battlesuit died in that last big battle with his old foe the Dragon. But now he's back in a new suit of armor, one where he can live full time and shielded against telepathic incursion so he can dwell in the privacy of his own head. He's not as talkative as he used to be, or as personal, and he spends most of his time in the lab when he's not out fighting crime, researching the problems of cybernetics. His old friends, those who still associate with him, anyway, are fairly sure that their friend suffered some crippling injury in that last great battle and has confined himself to the armor for the protection of both his life and his pride: that's probably why his role as a researcher and scientist has taken such a hit since the "battle" as well. The truth is, the billionaire in question is as dead as a disco duck: his body is buried on the remote island where he fell in battle in the process of finally destroying his arch-nemesis. There is actually _no one_ inside the battlesuit, at least nothing save the advanced combat AI who has now abruptly found himself the master of a hollow cybernetic body, having learned to his own surprise (indeed, his surprise that he could be surprised!) that his artificial intelligence actually extended to much more than just fighting and making his boss's phone calls. (I imagine he's probably named after his boss's late butler, a long-time friend of the family.) So now he's scared, and doing his best to keep up appearances while he researches a robot body that won't cause so many questions. Perhaps an android that looks just like his creator! Here's my attempt at building a robot with a battlesuit's typical powers: he flies around and punches things with Super-Strength, he shoots things with frickin' lasers (which double as welding torches in a pinch), and he's bulletproof and has some super-senses in the mix. I figure he has self-repair systems to take care of most of his injuries, though he'd better be careful not to let people see if the tin can is ripped open and there's absolutely nothing inside! He's smart enough to at least pass for a tech-head and he has a permanent wi-fi connection for hastily doing research on things he 'should' know about, but he's new enough to people that he still has trouble reading their moods or passing for human. I think he'd be a gas to play, especially if you flesh out his 'old' identity. In my head, he sounds like Norm from Phineas and Ferb. Doc A suggested his drawback, which I think makes a lot of sense.

"Mr. Salazar," said Summers seriously, "You never left the school. Your records, your files, are all still here, and any investigators looking into your records will find that you have had average marks in all the classes you have in fact missed. Classes you will retake," he added firmly, "and that you will pass with flying colors before you graduate. While you are here, this school and the magical experts at my disposal will do everything in our power to allow you to master your abilities. Whatever their source. Do I make myself clear?"

Citizen As I'd forgotten the way Online Research actually works, please add Enhanced Feat 1 (Well-Informed) [1 pp] to Citizen to represent Sharl's 'Net connection. ONLINE DATABASE'D BY GIZMO

As the supervillains made their appearance, Sharl disappeared, simply falling down through the sidewalk and taking stock of the situation a few feet underground. Donning his sunglasses and setting his chest symbol to blazing life made him Citizen, but only belatedly did he realize just how dark it was under the streets! Not wanting to go beyond his projector's limits, he clipped his way through the street, just his head sticking up above the road like a landshark as Medea, Devil Ray, and the vaguely familiar new kid had words with each other. "Hey, you must be Devil Ray." said Citizen, suddenly erupting right out of the float and right next to the armored supervillain. He tended to assume that magic was the product of insane superpowered people and that crazy people weren't a threat, so he ignored Medea: besides, he wasn't equipped to fight her the way he was Devil Ray. "I'm Citizen, and I'm here to take your armor." He shoved his arm through the armored figure's head, trying to latch onto the programming mainframe inside. "And your pants!"

Having learned his lesson in Detroit, Sharl goes straight to a Possession check. 24 I believe that hits. Our man Devil Ray has to make a Reflex save vs. Possession check And I rolled a 1 Aw, heck, since this is supposed to be a short fight, I'll go ahead and reroll that. and this time I critted Okay, I don't think he can beat a DC 30 Reflex save. Sharl is down an HP.

"I'm not going to squeal on you," said Sharl, who sounded more fascinated than anything else. "Especially after a whole week of hearing how I need to be more supportive of my team." He stepped out of the computer to better relate to Koshiro, the overall effect a bit like the monster from The Ring as he smoothly made a transition into the real world. A little defensive himself, he added "Look, I was just curious." He pointed outside. "Look, there's all this weird alien stuff and all these little buildings, but half of them Claremont kids aren't supposed to visit. And after the thing with the lizard men, Miss A kept an eye on me while I was living at her house. You're the only person I know here who actually wants to see what the city's made of."

Mrs. Thackery's eyes widened at the reveal of her secrets, her hand going over her mouth. For a moment, it looked like she was going to be trouble before she cursed and looked away. "I'm not the one with the problem letting go of the past, honey. It's Melvin's dad who's causing all the trouble." She folded her arms over her chest defensively and looked away. "Johnny was a real funny guy, you know? Smart, too. He used to make me these little robot clowns that would always be laughing and follow me around wherever I went. Those damn little clowns!" She shook her head. "He wanted Melvin born in jail. Said that would make him tough when he busted out. He's been after us since he got out." She shook her head again, evidently a nervous gesture. "I did a lot of bad stuff. Even when I was pregnant, before I was thinking. I just want him to have a normal life! Without any of those...things!" --- Upstairs, once you got past the hidden door in his closet, little Melvin had a quite an impressive lab, at least for someone working on an eight-year-old's budget: he'd slapped together several high-end electronic toys to make a respectable computer, and constructed a small workbench out of a mismatched set of mechanical tools he probably had not acquired legally. "I had to hide all this from my mom," he admitted to Bishop. "She thinks science is going to kill me or drive me crazy or something!"

21

10

And then there were the people who didn't smell like people at all, or rather who smelled like ozone and humming computer parts. "So when you were living back in India," Sharl asked Indira curiously, "did they say anything about why the Eurozone people thought that there were Indians living in the Americas? I mean the local cultures were totally dissimilar, I thought, and the stone monuments certainly look nothing alike." Sharl had a shaky grasp of Earth history, but he'd spent enough time reading Wikipedia to know that some very strange choices had been made over the centuries. At least he'd been able to confirm that Indira's adopted civilization hadn't all fled the genocide here to resettle on the opposite continent.

For the record, if you choose to go this route, yes. ;)

Robot Martial Artist PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 8 pp STR 20 (+5) DEX 20 (+5) CON - (-) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 32 pp ATK: +8 (+15 melee) DEF: +15 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +5 Grapple: +20 Saves: 7 pp TOU +5 (+5 Protection) FORT - (-) REF +9 (+5 Dex, +4) WILL +5 (+2 Wis, +3) Skills: 40 r=10 pp Acrobatics 10 (+15) Climb 5 (+10) Concentration 2 (+4) Knowledge (Theology and Philosophy) 5 (+5) Languages 2 (Chinese, Japanese) (Base: English) Notice 3 (+5) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth 5 (+10) Feats: 21 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Melee 7, Dodge Focus 7, Evasion, Fearless, Power Attack, Stunning Attack, Takedown Attack, Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 72 pp Combat Array [10+2=12 pp] Damage 0 (Extras: Autofire, Penetrating) AP: Damage 0 (Extras: Autofire, Duration [Concentration]) AP: Damage 0 (Extras: Selective, Targeted Area [shapeable]) Immunity 40 (Fortitude Saves, Mental Effects) [40 pp] Impervious TOU 5 [5 pp] Leaping 4 (x25) [4+1= 5 pp] AP: Speed 1 (10 MPH) (PFs: Move-By Action, Wall Run, Water Run) Protection 5 [5 pp] Regeneration 5 (Recovery Bonus +0) [5 pp] costs abilities 8 + combat 32 + saves 7 + skills 10/40 + feats 21+ powers 72= 150 pts ------------------ Design Notes: Robotic super-soldier achieves sentience and escapes his makers, determined to find a human identity and not be used as a killing machine. Tale as old as time. But this guy was different, looking for a spiritual purpose that generally eludes even the most moral of mechanical men. He roamed the world on a quest for wisdom and understanding, looking to light the fires in his own soul. Finally, after years of tirelessly striding through the coldest parts of the Himalayas, he reached Shamballa Vale and the sages there. There was some debate over accepting an automaton into the ranks of the warriors of the Vale, but after he defeated the Ghost Hun Army single-handedly when they overran the Vale's spiritual defenses, the sages welcomed the robot into their ranks. His lessons were different than the others; after all, meditating in a snowbank for hours was no challenge, nor was going without food or water, but he was as challenged as any man, perhaps more so, when confronted with the sacred koans of wisdom. When at last he emerged from the vale, he was no longer just a machine: he was one of the finest warriors in the world! All right, so here's a robotic martial artist for all your robotic martial arts needs. Though he can stand up to small arms fire, he's not nearly as tough as your typical combat robot, and will need to rely on his incredible agility to avoid taking hits in combat. He's faster than any man and far more agile, his mechanical servos letting him be as fast and mobile as his ki-empowered brethern. Able to run right up walls and leap over buses, he can lay down a world of hurt with super-fast robotic punches, either sweeping through a room full of thugs or concentrating his blows on particular targets to whittle them down to size like they're being torn apart by a hurricane of robotic punches! He's got lots of points in that combat array of his and he meets his full caps in melee; don't be afraid to stunt things like Stun or Paralyze, as well as just good old-fashioned more and better kinds of damage. I figure he uses a lot of Stunning Attack versus his squishy human opponents, since all in all most of your martial artists tend to have relatively low Fort saves. (At least compared to their Will and Reflex saves, that is.) Being a robot, he could definitely use some Super-Senses. Maybe he got out of the habit of using them while in the Vale (since it's mystically protected from technological investigation anyway) and needs to get in the habit of turning them on again, or perhaps he's just an older-model robot (or even a clockwork golem like the Great Ten's Shaolin Robot) and he needs to get some parts upgraded before he goes in that direction. He may be a soulless robot, but he's got the wisdom and control of the finest martial artists in the world tucked away in his programming.

Via the proverbial Dutchman's Oracle (which is to say, rolling in chat), I'll go with the idea that Ferros could potentially affect the nanites inside Willow. But given their alien nature and cosmic infusion, it'll be difficult. (i.e., if whatever you come up with doesn't work for what's planned, or if it works but is too successful, HP for you.) :D

Much better, Vahnyu. There's no reason given on his sheet for these at all, nor do they seem to fit his background/powers. "Peter Parker with a sonic suit and a fly theme" has no reason to be any more or less resistant to magic. M&M is not really a system that rewards a lot of drawback-related min-maxing. I get the sonic punches (which sound like they'll be cool), but the Mighty Blast doesn't really fit a blaster in a battlesuit; there's no reason I can see why his STR would have anything to do with his sonic weapons.

"I couldn't sleep," Sharl prevaricated, watching Koshiro from what looked like a well-appointed bedroom. "I only sleep when I'm uploaded, anyway." He figured Koshiro didn't need to hear about the ambiguous success of his big moment of honesty with everyone, so he decided to stick with the fascinating topic of where it was Koshiro was sneaking out to after-hours. He took a few steps closer to the 'camera', till it was mostly his face filling the screen. "Were you out in the Fens and Lantern Hill?" he asked curiously. "What's it like out there?"