Avenger Assembled

Frankly, Sharl appreciated the diversion: this was much better than biting his tongue as people explained the logical groundwork behind their primitive superstitions. Kimber and Daniel had been nothing but polite and professional, respectfully, and avoiding the temptation to get into an argument with them was all for the best. "Hey, I didn't reveal anybody's secret identity but my own," he shot back, offended at the implication. "Eventually she was going to notice something. Maybe when Kimber floated through the wall to say hello, or when I glitched out when we got near her?" He folded his arms and added, "We shouldn't have brought Becky in the first place. I could easily have found that house with more time on my GPS, I could have communicated my findings to you before we got there, and we wouldn't have been putting a civilian in danger from...this!" he made a gesture at the alien woods all around them.

Street Avenger Abilities: 40 pp STR 30 [20] (+10/+5) DEX 14 (+2) CON 30 [20] (+10/+5) INT 12 (+1) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 18 (+4) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+10 Melee) DEF: +10 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +2 Grapple: +24 Saves: 8 pp TOU +10 (+10 Con) FORT +10 (+10 Con) REF +6 (+2 Dex, +4) WILL +7 (+3 Wis, +4) Skills: 76 r=19 pp Bluff 6 (+10) Diplomacy 1 (+5) Gather Info 6 (+10) Intimidate 11 (+15) Investigate 4 (+5) Knowledge (Streetwise) 14 (+15) Languages 2 (Chinese, Spanish) (Base: English) Notice 12 (+15) Sense Motive 12 (+15) Stealth 8 (+10) Feats: 17 pp All-Out Attack Attack Focus (Melee) 4 Benefit (PI License) Dodge Focus 4 Luck Move-By Action Power Attack Startle Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Well-Informed Powers: 42 pp Enhanced CON 10 [10 pp] Enhanced STR 10 [10 pp] Impervious TOU 10 [10 pp] Leaping 2 (x5) [2+1=3 pp] AP: Speed 2 (25 MPH) Super-Strength 4 (Heavy Load: 12 tons) (PF: Countering Punch) [9 pp] costs abilities 40 + combat 24 + saves 8 + skills 19/76 + feats 17 + powers 42 = 150 pts ------------------- Design Notes: Here's a badass streetwise powerhouse like Marvel's Luke Cage. He's not that fast, he's not that strong, but he's the toughest man on the streets. While the Freedom League takes to the sky and battles rampaging gods and crazed monsters, he's down there on the streets of Lincoln (Freedom City's largest black community) defending the weak and fighting the scum of the Earth with nothing but bulletproof skin, super-strength, and an uncommon devotion to the man and woman on the street. He has a tremendous force of personality, just the thing you'd expect from a fearless defender of the streets, and is best at being scary indeed in combat. He's got a PI license and actually is an extremely competent detective, a man with an ear to the ground in his native district and with his ways of finding out the secrets of the people who he lives among. Maybe he's had some trouble with the law himself in his past, but now he's on the up and up and ready to make sure that no one in his home area ever makes the same mistakes he did. He should have no trouble cleaving through the skells and drug dealers who are the scourge of his neighborhood. Against superhuman opponents, he's probably best off trying to get them flat-footed by fair means or foul before laying them out with an All-Out Power Attack. I've made him black, like most of his fellows in other comic book settings, but of course you could tweak him to be part of any minority group you want. That doesn't have to be race-based, either, maybe he's 'poor white trash' from a meth-addled trailer park on the edge of the city, fighting biker gangs for a community that most people in Freedom City hardly ever notice While most of your powerhouse builds focus on power (hence the name), this guy focuses more on very high skills and on his relationship with the community all around him. He's a good candidate for the Cult Hero benefit from the Silver Age book, representing someone looked down on by the larger world but much beloved by his own people. Team him up with my Afro-Vulcan build above thread. He can basically shrug off any form of attack he's going to encounter when dealing with street-level opponents, but he'll sweat once those drug dealers and kingpins start hiring supervillains to bring him down. That also makes a great time to team up with other superheroes and start making broader connections! A good way to compromise on the secret identity thing is to have him active under a 'real name' that doesn't actually appear on his birth certificate. People expecting him to be dumb muscle are in for quite a surprise. If your group needs a detective but no one wants to be Batman, giving them Luke Cage isn't a bad alternative. Maybe he doesn't have the smarts of someone with a full education, but very few people indeed are as savvy as he is when it comes to his community and the people who live there.

Having been raised with the heroes and monsters of the past as childhood breakfast conversation, Mark had an answer waiting for him. "Joachim von Streitcher was born in Bavaria in 1898 to parents who'd bought their way into the lower tiers of the nobility. He served as an infantryman in World War I and washed out of flight training thanks to his frequent insubordination. He joined the SA after the war and became close to Ernst Rohm, then an enthusiastic supporter of Hitler who volunteered for the Nazi supersoldier program. He survived the infusion of Ubermensch cells in 1942 and served as anti-aircraft defense. He murdered fifty American, British, and Free French pilots before Spitfire managed to break his back and knock him out of the war. In 1945, Comrade Bomb decapitated him by shoving an explosive charge into his mouth. I've seen the pictures." "Yes. That was the fate of one Joachim von Streitcher." Typhoon's masked face seemed to scowl. "But in another world, the mighty Meistermann was the dog of that vicious oaf Kal-Zed as the armies of the Third Reich swept across the world like a plague of filthy locusts. He had in his own world a vast estate in the Empty Quarter, and counted himself ruler of all the lands from the Indus to the Jordan in the name of his masters in Berlin. This was the criminal who dared threaten the daughter of Typhoon."

"Feh. Do not toy with the mercy of Typhoon," said the armored despot with a wave of his hand at Ace as the water behind him seemed to cascade faster, now in a tightly-controlled and confined waterfall. "To punish you now when you have come as the saviors of my desert flower would be petty. And Typhoon is never petty." "My superiors will ask me about that as well," Mark added in the respectful voice that his friends had heard him use when talking to Mr. Archer back at Claremont. "With respect, Doctor Typhoon, I would be grateful if you could tell me why a dead Nazi super-soldier was targeting you and your family. I'm sure Princess al-Darsah would be interested to hear as well." He shot a look down at Nina, who had not risen from her position on the floor during her father's speech. She deserved better than that, he knew, even if she wasn't the nicest person herself. At Mark's words, following up on the earlier question about the Nazis, Typhoon fell deadly-still. "Rise, Nina." Nina rose, a look o cool command on her face that hid the brief look of hurt she'd been masking earlier. "So, your guardian defends you even now. Excellent." He spoke, but his heart didn't seem in it as he bantered with the hero. A moment later, he raised his index finger. "Leave us!" At his word, the servants in the room did so, simply striding into the indoor waterfall all around them and vanishing as if they'd never been there at all. When the servants were gone, Typhoon rose to his feet as well, folding his arms in front of his chest in a move that mirrored his daughter's defensive posture of earlier. "Tell me. What do you know of Joachim von Streitcher, der Meistermann?"

approVED

Okay, the only thing I wanted to clear up is her age: We do prefer that PCs look 16. (Why am I insisting on that when she looks 15? Well if she goes through, the next person will want 14...) That keeps everything on the up and up. Make sure you are comfortable with her actually being (and treated as) a teenager.

Gorilla God PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 40 pp STR 40 [24] (+15/+7) DEX 14 (+2) CON 32 [24] (+11/+7) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 28 pp ATK: +7 (+5 w/Growth) DEF: +7 (+5 w/Growth) Init: +6 Grapple: +34 Saves: 10 pp TOU +15 (+7 Con, +4 Growth, +4 Protection) FORT +12 (+7 Con, +4 Growth, +1) REF +5 (+2 Dex, +3) WILL +8 (+2 Wis, +6) Skills: 48 r=12 pp Climb 8 (+15)* Intimidate 9 (+11/+15)* Languages 2 (French, Swahili) (Base: English) Notice 13 (+15)* Sense Motive 8 (+10) Stealth (-6) Survival 8 (+10)* Feats: 11 pp All-Out Attack Challenge 2 (Accelerated Climb, Fast Startle) Fearless Improved Initiative Move-By Action Power Attack Skill Mastery (Climb, Intimidate, Notice, Survival) Startle Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (olfactory) Powers: 52 pp Additional Limbs 2 (PF: Innate) ‘prehensile feet’ [3 pp] Growth 8 (Extra: Duration [Permanent] (+0) )(Huge size) (PF: Innate) [25 pp] (-2 ATK/DEF, +8 Grapple, -8 Stealth, +4 Intimidate, 16 ft tall, 4K-32K lbs, 15 ft space, 10 ft reach, x2 carrying capacity) Leaping 1 (x2) [1 pp] Protection 4 ‘tough hide’ [4 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Movement 2 (Swinging, Wall-Crawling) [4 pp] Super-Senses 5 (Accurate Acute Tracking Scent, Low-Light Vision) [5 pp] Super-Strength 4 (Heavy Load: 180 tons) (PF: Super-Breath [mighty roar]) [9 pp] Drawbacks: -3 pp Normal ID (free action; gorilla roar) [3 pp] costs abilities 40 + combat 28 + saves 10 + skills 12/48 + feats 11 + powers 52 -drawbacks 3= 150 pts -------------- Design Notes: Forget your psychic apes and gorilla mad scientists, here's a full-fledged giant ape as a PL 10 superhero: a mighty gorilla mountain who stands nearly fifteen foot tall at the shoulder! She's a very powerful powerhouse thanks to her tremendous strength, size, and prehensile feet, able to convincingly wrestle just about anyone at her PL. She's also a good tracker and very scary when she wants to be, as befits a gigantic gorilla. Since giant gorillas don't exist in nature (that we know about! ) I went with the idea that she has a normal human ID (which she's pictured next to here) that she transforms into and out of by roaring like a gorilla. She's very focused on natural skills as a gorilla, so presumably her human half is more focused on people things: feel free to adventure in your normal ID if necessary, but remember that it's a drawback, not the Metamorph PF. She should always be at a disadvantage when she's powered up, even if she's competent enough (perhaps as a badass naturalist/wildlife photographer) in her regular body. Maybe she's the avatar of an ancient and forgotten gorilla god, a champion of a faith older than the age when men learned to walk erect. You could make her the champion of a human gorilla god too, but then you get into some thorny questions about white people appropriating the cultural identity of indigenous folks. Just make sure you write her well and respectfully wherever you go with it. She makes an interesting variation on giant characters, since even most of them will probably have some issues with going hand-to-hand with a giant gorilla. She's not as bulletproof as your typical powerhouse, but then it makes sense that really high-powered rifles applied with sufficient skill and daring could bring down a giant super-gorilla: it very much fits the genre. As tough and fast as she is, she should have no problem sweeping away hordes of gun-using mooks anyway: with her high Notice, she's almost impossible to sneak up on by nearby gunmen anyway. (Though with her Stealth penalty, she's not sneaking up on anyone!) Perhaps she's horrified by the beast inside her; perhaps she embraces the power and freedom of her mighty simian half. Note that she can't talk to gorillas; she's not really the same species they are and anyway...gorillas can't talk. They're animals. Hey whaddya gonna do. Perhaps she's the great-granddaughter of a famous 1930s actress kidnapped to Gorilla Island who has inherited some of the power her mother absorbed there or even a mutant human who grew up on that island. Switch descriptors (and power durations) around a little bit and maybe her natural state is her gorilla self and she's only recently learned how to transform herself into a human. Either way, culture clashes ahoy!

Celebrity Hero PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 40 pp STR 30 [20] (+10/+5) DEX 16 (+3) CON 30 [20] (+10/+5) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 20 (+5) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+10 Melee) DEF: +10 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +3 Grapple: +21 Saves: 9 pp TOU +10 (+10 Con) FORT +10 (+10 Con) REF +6 (+3 Dex, +3) WILL +8 (+2 Wis, +6) Skills: 60 =15 pp Bluff 10 (+15) Diplomacy 10 (+15) Drive 2 (+5) Gather Info 5 (+10) Intimidate 5 (+10) Knowledge: Business 5 (+5) Knowledge: Pop Culture 5 (+5) Notice 8 (+10) Pilot 2 (+5) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Feats: 20 pp Attack Focus: Melee 4 Benefit 2 (Fame, Wealth 2 [realistically rich]) Challenge (Fast Taunt) Distract (Bluff) Dodge Focus 4 Luck Move-By Action Power Attack Takedown Attack Taunt Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Well-Informed Powers: 42 pp Enhanced CON 10 [10 pp] Enhanced STR 10 [10 pp] Flight 5 (250 MPH) [Dynamic] [10+1+2=13 pp] DAP: Super-Strength 5 (Heavy Load: 24 tons) Immunity 4 (disease, poison, suffocation) [4 pp] Impervious TOU 10 (Flaw: Limited [Physical Damage Only] [5 pp] costs abilities 40 + combat 24 + saves 9 + skills 15/60 + feats 18 + powers 42 = 150 pts -------------- Design Notes: Here's my build for a Celebrity Hero, a fame-hungry sellout who has used his superpowers to become rich and famous as well as act like a superhero. He's got his name on billboards advertising all sorts of themed merchandise, and probably has an annoying website with lots of Flash movies that autoplay when you click on them and spyware that makes sure you're buying his brand of product by steering you in the right direction. He's got a smile as bright as gold and a bankroll to match, making him as dangerous an opponent in social combat as he is in hand-to-hand. I made him a paragon because the handsome flying brick type often finds himself cast this way in slightly more cynical adaptations of the superhero story; though he's not as tough or durable as his mightier paragon cousins, his social acumen makes him equally as useful to have on your team (as long as he's not engaged in trying to steal the spotlight from everybody!) I know, he sounds like a villain, and this archetype certainly makes an effective antagonist, stealing the spotlight from your hard-working PCs and perhaps even hiring supervillains to stage fights with him to increase his personal glory. Selling out is not something that really respectable heroes do in the world of Freedom. However, I think you could make a decent case for playing this guy as a hero: maybe he was a little naive and sold his name to greedy businessmen before he hit the big time, and he doesn't really get why he makes other heroes uneasy. Another possibility is that maybe he has no choice: maybe in his secret ID he's a disgraced college dropout who can't find a decent job any other way, or maybe he's something more outlandish and is a time traveler with no legal identity and he has to sell his image to make enough money to eat! He might be an international hero too, perhaps from a country where they're more relaxed about merchandising. Note that he doesn't have the usual charismatic paragon feats like Inspire or Leadership. I figure those will come later in his career when he starts working more for others rather than himself; in other words, as he learns more about how to be the man he's always imagined himself to be. As it is he's more focused on the witty quips and combat tricks, which is certainly a respectable enough niche to fill. You can save points by moving his powers into a battlesuit, giving him more room for powers or maybe more feats and skills: you could give him various Overruns to make him more of a football player type, or maybe work up to a Blast APed off his Enhanced Strength to give him even more options in combat. Or Temporal Inertia and an equipment Time Machine!

Fixed

The Lor are not ruled by their empowered classes, nor are they particularly obsessed with eugenics. I assumed the above was a code for "On Rerczia, people with superpowers give up their freedom 'for the good of the community'", i.e., that they're basically enslaved in contrast to the Lor Republic. (Where psions tend to have jobs in the military or the police forces). I thought that made for an interesting take on the backstory; her people rejected peaceful cooperation with the Lor (who are basically the Federation from Star Trek, if not as nice) and learned that there are reasons that human offshoots in the galaxy stick together. And what I was mentioning there was just things like spacing and typing in the powers; it'll look cleaner if you go over it again and make it look like the sample sheets you see.

Sharl nodded along as Kimber explained that Daniel Storm was some sort of madman. No connection to the planet's electronic network? He is a savage. "Daniel Storm doesn't have a cell phone, no," agreed Citizen in response to Kimber's remark as he continued trying to reach outside the area. He'd noted how his radio link functioned better when the ghostly girl's freezing aura was turned down, and was glad she'd done it herself without him having to tell her. "But Bombardier has a computer built into his suit I can contact. And Verglas is fast enough to find anyone in Canada in a few hours." His new allies hadn't responded the way Tronik teenagers would to one of their number transforming into a slavering monster, which was certainly for the best. "We owe Becky better than the, uh, rural constabulary, and I doubt anyone in a place like this would have the resources to help her. We need to get her into the hands of people who can actually help her, and that means the local superheroic population." He hmmed at Corbin's words, but for the moment was too busy trying to get a satellite linkup that he didn't reply. Geez, what'd _I_ do?

And Speed of Thought + Improved Initiative; well!

Once suitably costumed by fair means or foul (Mark was clever enough to arrange a flock of doves to fly by as he temporarily changed Erin's costume into a near-duplicate of her new threads), the heroes headed up the hard water gangplank onto the high-tech ship. Socotran guards were everywhere in their ubiquitous purple full-body armor and carrying advanced blaster rifles, but they made way for the princess and her superheroic escort down below into the body of the ship where Dr. Typhoon awaited their arrival. Socotran soldiers were formidable, but they'd be no match for experienced superheroes in any kind of fight. Edge found himself keeping a position between Nina and his friends as they headed below; Mark Lucas was Nina's escort, but Edge the superhero should stand with Midnight and Wander. As they reached the audience chamber on the main deck, one set deep in the body of the armored ship, a herald cried "Hail, Princess Nina al-Darsah of Socotra! Hail, Mark Lucas, Agent of UNISON! Hail, Cannonade, grandson of Legionnaire! Hail, Ace Danger of Freedom City! Hail, Bombshell of Freedom City! Hail, Midnight and Wander, slayers of entropy!" The herald took a breath. "HAIL DOCTOR TYPHOON! MASTER OF SOCOTRA! MASTER OF THE SEA! EMPEROR OF OCEANUS AND EMIR OF NEPTUNE!" The holder of those esteemed titles sat in a gigantic white throne that on closer inspection was cut from a single pearl that had once been larger than three men put together, his traveling throne room all glowing blue walls and Typhoon Realist architecture that showed the wise protector of Socotra looming over a populace that looked grateful for his leadership. The man himself was not so big, but the armored figure on the throne was imposing all on his own. In a full body suit of blackly purple armor cut with a stylized face where his own should be, wrapped in a black and red keffiyeh, the lord of storms looked like something pulled from the depths of the sea. Behind him, a waterfall fell somehow indoors, the glowing purple at the tops and bottom showing where the Socotran technology managed the flow. At the sight of him, Nina kneeled and bowed her head, while the Americans in the room did no such thing. "Father! I knew you would come when you heard! I have faced great danger, but been saved by these brave-" "Silence." His hands on the arms of his throne, Typhoon did not rise to greet his guests. "We will speak of discretion later, my daughter." He was certainly no Omega, but there was still a deep power in the baritone growl that was the synthesized voice of the armored despot. He eyed the rest without moving his head, focusing at last on the two World War II heroes. "So. Ace Danger. Talya Browning. Both of you come before Typhoon as criminals in the ancient laws of the Socotran people. You know your wicked deeds! Typhoon will not waste his power on reciting tales of infamous theft and vice." He waved his hand. "But. You have done deeds today worthy of Socotra. In the infinite mercy of Typhoon, you are today pardoned for your crimes." He pointed at Edge. "And as for you, Marcus, you have proven Typhoon's wisdom in selecting you among the agents of UNISON to guard what is rightfully his. I am pleased."

Mastermind’s World Mastermind’s World is an eerie reflection of our own. There’s a Freedom City and a Freedom League, there’s a United States and United Nations. The newbreed of the Freedom League keep baseline humanity safe from the threats of terrorists, aliens, and anyone else who would dare harm the man on the street. It’s only on closer inspection that the utopia begins to drop; the haunted look on the faces of some, the carefully organized, heavily armed ranks of the Freedom League, and finally (if the visitor is lucky enough to avoid detection) a visit to the work camps and scientific laboratories of the interior will show the visitor to Mastermind’s World the grim horror behind the utopia. This is Mastermind’s dream and world, a metahuman dictatorship where superpowers grant rule and favor while the baselines on the street can hope for nothing better than status as favored slaves. In some ways, it’s even worse than the Anti-Earth it superficially resembles: the Crime Syndicate and their allies know themselves full well for the brutal tyrants they are. The Freedom League of Mastermind’s World believe themselves beneficient protectors of a humanity that has proven itself unable to govern itself. After all, they have the evidence of history! In 1945, The Centurion’s death during the nuclear-backed invasion of Japan via ‘friendly fire’ soured many superheroes on the US government, particularly as the evidence grew that President Booth had secretly put the Man of Adamant in mortal danger over Tokyo in order to remove a political rival. Faced with an radicalized postwar electorate full of disaffected veterans, Booth’s successor President Stillson used superhumans as a convenient whipping boy: after all, if superheroes were so great, why hadn’t they stopped the war before it started, or at least made sure the hundreds of thousands of American dead in Normandy and Japan had had superheroic backup? With the arrest of much of the Liberty League in the early 1950s on suspicion of being Communist agents, relations grew even worse: unchecked supervillains were met with brutal retaliation by embattled police and military forces, sparking further cycles of violence, gradually convincing more and more of the general public that humans and superhumans could never hope to live together in peace. Those few supers who did try to act as protectors of the commonweal were hunted and hated, many meeting deaths at the hands of the people they’d sworn to protect. Things finally came to a head in the 1960s with the emergence of the newbreed leader: Mastermind, the prime physical specimen, super-genius, and powerful telepath: promising a beneficient new world under newbreed rule, Mastermind attracted a wide host of followers; those who might have been heroes who wanted to protect the world, those who might have been villains who wanted to rule it, and even normal humans who wanted protection and the benefits of newbreed science that they couldn’t get from an increasingly corrupt, authoritarian government. After Mastermind stopped an attempt by President Ryan in 1968 to launch nuclear weapons against Mastermind’s compound in the California desert, public opinion turned against the civilian government. The War of Liberation was short and to the point, and when it was over Mastermind was the power behind the throne of the United States of America. The New Constitution with its new rights for superpowered individuals, its discriminatory laws that treated baselines rather like children had once been treated under the old system, and its all-powerful President, the Presidency became a model for the rest of the world thanks to some good old-fashioned gunboat diplomacy by Mastermind and his handpicked successors as leaders of the United States. The Communists were a tough nut to crack, but then the Chinese fell in 1989 and the Soviets in 1991, leaving only a last few small nations to gradually be empowered by Mastermind’s regime. By 2011, only an isolated few tiny, irrelevant republics and monarchies in the Pacific retain rule by legally elected baseline authorities. (And even they exist so that the rich and powerful newbreed of America and Europe have a place to enjoy vices outside the reach of the authorities in First World nations) It’s a world of aircars and space travel where every computer watches its user and reports on his doings, a world of cancer cures and designer drugs that helpfully remove wrong thinking from the minds of those who take them. Mastermind is in semi-retirement these days, allowing his ‘niece’ and protege Empath Psion more and more power in hopes that she may replace him when and if he chooses to leave the Earth to spread the gospel of power elsewhere. His regime is a benevolent utopia with a grim face, a world where those who speak out against his rule are _changed_ by psychic powers and advanced surgery until they do so no longer, where those who continue to resist are (so sorrowfully) used as lab animals by an immortal being who hopes to use their genes to unlock the secret of the human potential: one day, all human beings will have superpowers and the galaxy will be theirs. No more will humanity be the pawns of alien outsiders. They will have the universe, at the cost of their souls. And they will have Mastermind to thank for it. Only a select few now alive: Mastermind himself, Resistance leader Duncan Summers, and a very few more know the simple truth. Mastermind has been manipulating humanity since his awakening in the 1930s. The death of the Centurion, the incarceration of the Liberty League, the war between man and superman that ended in the latter’s victory; all have been engineered (some regretfully) by Mastermind in order to make a world where superbeings rule and believe they have every right to do so, with even many of their baseline subjects believing the very same thing. They are courteous and friendly to any stranded super-travelers from other dimensions; after all, they don't want to attract any unpleasant attention. Worse, they truly believe they're in the right. The triumph of the immortal is almost complete...

"I can help you," promised the saint. "A godly armor for a godly man." He took the bars, marveling at their workmanship, and promised to have breastplate smithed for Gabriel within the hour: far beyond the ability of any mortal craftsman, of course, but they were far beyond the realms of mortals now. When the trade was done, Heyzel walked with Gabriel through the busy streets. He was the only angel Gabriel could make out on the streets of Vanity Fair, but evidently beings like his friend were well-known enough here at the edge of Heaven that he attracted no special attention. "Yes, my father is the one mortals have dubbed the Angel of Death," he said after a moment's pause. "I saw him little while I was growing up, busy as he ever was with his important work. But he was a good father despite all that. He's always loved children, you know."

He's crying out for Speed of Thought.

Your HTML's a bit off. Make sure you've got your italics and such in the right place. Why not have him detect all kinds of magic (since he's an NPC and the points don't matter); that way he can be used in broader stories. Similarly, why not drop his Dex to 6 and get that Initiative penalty plus more points to spend?

An interesting variant, Nimue. So her race is basically militaristic jerks who enslave their powered people? I like it: she'll be much happier in Freedom City where that dog don't hunt. And what a surprise they got when they met the Grue! I really like this sheet and what you've done with it. Some details: Please clean up the HTML; you've got a lot of spaces run into each other in a way that makes the sheet hard to read. What's the design philosophy behind having the Snare be Perception range but everything else an actual ranged attack?

Nina al-Darsah PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 22 pp STR 14 (+2) DEX 14 (+2) CON 24 [14] (+7/+2) INT 12 (+1) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 32 pp ATK: +8 (+10 Blast/+15 Melee) DEF: +13 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +2 Grapple: +17 Saves: 10 pp TOU +7 (+7 Con) FORT +7 (+7 Con) REF +7 (+2 Dex, +5) WILL +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 56 r=14 pp Acrobatics 12 (+14) Bluff 10 (+12/+16) Intimidate 8 (+10) Knowledge (Civics) 4 (+5) Languages 3 (Arabic, Dravidian, English) (Base: Soqotri) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Swim 3 (+5) Feats: 21 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Melee 7 Attractive Benefit (Status) Dodge Focus 5 Environmental Adaptation (Underwater) Evasion Move-By Action Power Attack Takedown Attack Taunt Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 51 pp Enhanced CON 10 [10 pp] Flight 2 (25 MPH) (Extra: Affects Others; Flaw: Platform) [4 pp] Immunity 3 (drowning, environmental cold, pressure) [3 pp] Noahic Array 14 (28 points; PFs: alternate Power x4) [28+4=32 pp] BE: Blast 10 (PFs: Accurate, Improved Crit 2, Incurable, Knockback 2, Precise 2) AP: Corrosion 5 (Extras: Autofire, Penetrating; PFs: Extended Reach 2, Improved Crit) AP: Damage 5 (Extras: Autofire, Penetrating, Vampiric; PFs: Extended Reach 2, Improved Crit) AP: Damage 10 (Extra: Targeted Area [Cone]; PFs: Accurate, Progression on Area 7) Super-Senses 2 (Darkvision) [2 pp] costs abilities 22 + combat 32 + saves 5 + skills 14/56 + feats 21 + powers 51 = 150 pts -------- Design Notes: Here’s Nina al-Darsah, the daughter of Typhoon, as a PL 10 starting character. The basic idea is that she’s your standard ‘supervillain’s beautiful daughter’ type, with the caveat that she’s actually perfectly content with the kind of man her father is and the way he rules: all the world knows the wisdom and power of Typhoon! But she’s the youngest of the despot’s children, and has time to grow and realize that there are better ways she can spend her life than as a hanger-on at her father’s court, and systems of justice and honor that don’t rely on brutality and despotism. She’s in Freedom City for college at FCU, but as a jet-setting celebrity with superpowers she could turn up just about anywhere. She and her father are from Socotra, an island chain off the coast of Yemen that I’ve spun off into an independent nation that’s a mashup of Latveria and Madripoor. I figure her Enhanced CON is a result of her inherited mutant physiology; she’s not bulletproof, but she’s still pretty darn tough and hard to hit in a fight. (Ideally, her class resentment should be played for laughs as she gradually, if reluctantly, warms up to the people all around her: she’s not a bad person, she’s just had a weird childhood.) Like her father, she’s a hydrokinetic. Unlike him, she doesn’t do the “massive tidal wave” thing or the “grabbing people with the ocean” thing; instead she’s simply a straightforward combat monster: she can summon water out of nothing and use it to slice and cut at her enemies, she can rip the water out of people and stab them with it, and she can even do significant damage to objects by using water in the air to cut at them or just giving them the same dessication treatment. She’s fast, acrobatic, and with her sharp tongue she’s got a lot of great ways to lay opponents out. She could potentially be a lethal threat if you use her as an NPC, but you could easily have her powers used in a non-lethal way. I figure she flies around on a column of water, one that’s big enough she can give her friends rides on as she stays mobile in combat. She’s also quite effective underwater, enough that she easily could stage the visits to Atlantis that her father has in the past. (Though hopefully without the bloodshed) For more subtle uses of her powers, consider a Limited Noticeable Mind Control that lets her move the limbs of her targets around by manipulating the blood within, or a more arctic variant that lets her fire shards of ice at people. Shed of the backstory, she makes a fine martial artist/elemental controller for you Avatar fans. While she’s a fast, fluid fighter with water, she could easily function as a controller of any other element: perhaps even fire to stick with her inspiration, Azula. She’s very vulnerable to her own powers if she is hit given that she’s just a human with peak toughness, but OTOH that’s not necessarily a bad thing. She should probably consider countering if she’s fighting another water controller, or maybe just using lots of the Total Defense manuever to avoid getting zapped. You could also give her Shield in place of Dodge Focus, but as it is she uses her powers for offense, not Defense.

Kid Cthulu Abilities: 22 pp STR 10 (+0) DEX 10 (+0) CON 24 (+7) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 16 pp ATK: +4 (+5 Ranged) DEF: +5 (+2 flat-footed) Init: +0 Grapple: +4/+20 Saves: 13 pp TOU +15 (+7 Con, +8 Protection) FORT +7 (+7 Con) REF +5 (+0 Ref, +5) WILL +10 (+2 Wis, +8) Skills: 13 pp=52 r Concentration 8 (+10) Intimidate 13 (+15) Knowledge: Arcane Lore 15 (+15) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Feats: 11 pp All-Out Attack Attack Focus: Ranged Dodge Focus Environmental Adaptation (Underwater) Fearless Luck Move-By Action Power Attack Ritualist Startle Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 77 pp Eldritch Power Array 17.5 (35 points; PFs: Alternate Power x5) [35+5=40 pp] BE: Blast 15 (PFs: Affects Insubstantial 2, Precise 2, Variable Descriptor 1 [any cthonic]) AP: Damage 10 (Extras: Targeted Area [burst], Selective; PFs: Progression 3, Reverse Progression 2) AP: ESP 10 (Earth to Moon, visual and auditory; PFs: Rapid 4 [10k], Subtle) AP: Mind Control 10 (Extra: Conscious; PFs: Mental Link, Subtle) AP: Move Object 15 (Heavy Load: 360 tons; PFs: Improved Crit, Indirect 3, Precise) AP: Teleport 10 (1000 ft/Earth to Moon; Extra: Accurate; PFs: Change Velocity, Easy, Progression 2 [500 lbs], Turnabout) Flight 2 (25 MPH; PF: Subtle) [5 pp] Immunity 8 (aging, cold, disease, poison, pressure, starvation and thirst, suffocation) [8 pp] Insubstantial 2 (gaseous form; PF: Subtle) [11 pp] Protection 8 [8 pp] Regeneration 1 (Resurrection 1/week; PFs: Persistent, Regrowth) [3 pp] Super-Senses 2 (Darkvision) [2 pp] costs abilities 22+ combat 16 + saves 13 + skills 13/52 + feats 9 + powers 77 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: I did a hero powered by Lovecraftian mythos earlier, but that character was more like a pumped-up human sorcerer or cultist. This is a straightforward pocket avatar of Cthulu (or the Unspeakable One, as he’s referred to in Freedom City). He’s an extremely powerful character with many mighty abilities, able to shrug off most forms of mundane attacks thanks to his Insubstantial (perhaps exploding into a cloud of stinking green gas when hit especially hard) and his high base Toughness (thanks to a scaly green hide?). He’s capable of dishing out devastating punishment on his own: I’ve built him with the idea that he can hurl flaming blasts of star-vampire fire, summon grasping, reaching tentacles from beyond to grapple his enemies, and generally command the sorts of dread arcane power that your average cthonic monster should able to dish out. He easily could live in a sunken city underground thanks to his immunities and environmental adaptation, and watch the whole world from his lair before going out to battle his foes. (ESP and Teleport aren’t that problematic in an array; by the time he strides from one corner of reality to another, who knows what’s changed on the way?) He’s got Ritualist and a decent Arcane Lore score so he can come up with some magical effects on the fly and be familiar with magic artifacts, but for the most part he’s more likely to stunt off his massive magic array if he needs a new trick on the fly. He doesn’t have higher Arcane Lore or Magic-based Super-Senses because he’s not familiar with other magics; other magics are familiar with _him!) While seemingly weak with his low STR, his Move Object and Blast let him toss people around with the power of an elder god. He doesn’t fly that fast, those stubby little wings never looked terribly fast to me. He’s a lot scarier than most of your mortal mystics, specializing in terrifying his enemies into submission before laying them out with powerful blasts. His biggest weakness is that he can’t really do much other than being a powerful avatar of eldritch magic; of course, that’s not much of a weakness when you get right down to it. For a more modern change of pace, make his abilities about terrible science and mathematics rather than ‘simple’ eldritch sorcery. Obviously this character’s true nature is going to be one hell of a Complication for him! Perhaps he’s the scion of a family of Cthulu cultists, raised by someone else after the police and superheroes came for his parents, and only now is he beginning to understand his true destiny. (I’m working on a similar character for a Pathfinder game, so the archetype has been on my mind for a while now.) Make no mistake, what he represents is the dissolution of all reality into the maw of the Unspeakable One, but that doesn’t make him evil anymore than being an infernalist makes you evil. It just means that he’d better make sure to spend a lot of time fighting the sort of people who call him “master”. Or even better: “My son.”

"Thank goodness," said Sharl with some relief. "That was great work, everybody. And it's nice to meet you," he added to Kimber, his earlier suspicions of her displaced by the very real monster they'd just fought and the very real girl they'd saved. "I'm Citizen," he said, giving a little wave to the ghostly girl as he automatically gave his super-name while in costume. Miss Americana had trained him very well. "We're here to take you to school in the United States." As he talked, he took out his 'cell' and began trying to connect to the satellite network again. "I'm going to try and call True North again to get superheroes out here who can help Becky when we're gone. Unless you have a faster way of calling Daniel Storm?" he asked her curiously.

On the ground in Paris, the bound, unconscious Meistermann was taken into custody by the French authorities. He was a tough nut to crack, even tougher than he'd been in the 1940s, but the French authorities had plenty of practice holding Nazis behind bars. As he was whisked away to the orbiting Bastille Suprême, Edge and his charge turned to the others as they deplaned. "I've got to get Princess al-Darsah to the Socotran consulate," he said apologetically. "But once she's there and we've passed this news onto UNISON, we can talk there. There's a lot to-" Mark was interrupted, however, by a noise outside as the heroes reached the concourse: there was a boom like a distant clap of thunder, and a darkness in the sky. As the tourists rushed to the concourse windows to exclaim and point amid a flourish of cellphone cameras snapping, Edge's eyes popped as he took in what he was looking at. The Socotran flying cruiser looked like what it was: a World War II-era British destroyer repurposed with the advanced Socotran technology invented by Dr. Typhoon: the ship bristled with turrets and walls like an Arabian castle put to sea and sky, its hull glowing purple-yellow with the force fields on board. It had even brought that ocean with it, a massive bubble of ocean the size of a football field clinging to the base of the hull as if ship and sea both had been plucked from the sea. Hovering over the airport, the destroyer began its descent to the nearby Seine. As the Socotran ship landed, Nina exulted, "The lord of Socotra approaches!" For a moment, her tone seemed to slip as she added, "I knew he wouldn't forget about me!" "Well, it looks like Socotra has come to us...come on everybody!" And with that, and no further word, Mark reached out and grabbed everyone's hand to teleport them right onto the Parisian dockside! Though some people were running, the jaded Parisians were doing no more than pointing and exclaiming in surprise as the Socotran destroyer came to a neat landing in the river, the oceans brought with displacing the Seine in a wave that washed up and down the various docksides. As a gangway of hard water rose from the river beneath, the princess turned and gestured to the others. "Come, and have the honor of the company of Typhoon!"

Okay, he's edited. It's not important that Edge be at his caps all the time as it is for some PCs, so I'll keep him at PL 13 and buy him up with earned PP later.

Meistermann dropped with a crunch, the Nazi falling gracelessly to the plane floor like a sack of savagely beaten garbage. "Woo-hoo!" exclaimed Edge, clapping everyone on the back in triumph. Everyone else was cheering too at the good work the heroes had done. "I guess he learned a valuable lesson about picking his battles." With a nod to his charge, he said, "And thanks for your help too, Princess. I'm sure your father will be very-hey!" "Oh, my father will hear of THIS!" exclaimed Nina as she headed for the fallen Nazi, murder in her eyes. "When I present him this filthy piece of street trash to him in pieces! I will rip the blood from his body and use it to cut him apart one piece at a time!" Before she could reach him, Edge intervened, reluctantly interposing himself between the two. He had a feeling appeals to sweet reason or heroic morals wouldn't work, so he settled for appeals to her intelligence instead. "If you do that, we'll never learn where he came from," he told her. "Or if he poses a threat to your kingdom. Nazis are tough to get rid of. You cut one down, two more rise to take their place..." He frowned. "Why would Nazis target you and your father, anyway?" While she talked, Edge took the opportunity to repair the plane, gesturing over at the wall to seal up the cracks left around Erin's repair. After all, they had a schedule to keep! "They would target him because he is a great man!" Defensively, Nina crossed her arms over her chest and scowled. "All know that Typhoon is the mightiest ruler in all the Indian Ocean, a beacon of power and justice. There are many fools who would seek to tear down his glory, and your Nazis are the greatest fools of all." It was a very generous interpretation of the man given the dealings that Ace and Bombshell had had with him, much less the old League, but Nina evidently believed it. "But...I don't know specifically. I have been away for some months, and I am not privy to diplomacy when I am away," she finally admitted.

That beats his flat-footed defense by 13. Wander inflicts 15+5+10=45. (21:48:34) System: AvengerAssembled rolls 1d20 and gets 10. He's down, sports fans!