Avenger Assembled

Braincase PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 38 pp STR 26 (+8) DEX 14 (+2) CON 14 (+2) INT 20 (+5) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 10 (+0) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+12 Unarmed) DEF: +12 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +5 Grapple: +14 Saves: 14 pp TOU +8 (+2 Con, +6 Protection) FORT +7 (+2 Con, +5) REF +6 (+2 Ref, +4) WILL +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 19 pp=76 r Computers 5 (+10) Craft: Mechanical 8 (+13) Craft: Electronic 8 (+13) Knowledge: Life Sciences 8 (+13) Knowledge: Physical Sciences 8 (+13) Knowledge: Technology 8 (+13) Languages 2 (Latin, Spanish) (Base: English) Medicine 8 (+10) Notice 8 (+10) Search 5 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Feats: 17 pp Attak Specialization: Unarmed 3, Dodge Focus 6, Eidetic Memory, Fearless, Inventor, Improvised Tools, Master Plan, Online Research, Speed of Thought, Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 38 pp Brain-in-a-Jar Array [13+2=15 pp] Communication 9 (anywhere on Earth) (radio) (PFs: Rapid 3 (1000), Subtle) AP: Datalink 9 (anywhere on Earth) (radio) (PFs: Rapid 3 (1000), Subtle) AP: ESP 6 (20 miles) (visual and auditory) (Flaw: Medium [cameras]) (PF: Subtle) Immunity 9 (Life Support) [9 pp] Leaping 1 (x2) [1 pp] Protection 6 (Extra: Impervious) [12 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] costs abilities 38+ combat 24 + saves 14 + skills 19/76 + feats 17+ powers 38 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: This is a revised version of my earlier build for the Braincase archetype, which in itself was a significant revision of the book’s Braincase build. The character is a Ghost in the Shell-style cyborg, a normal human brain installed in a completely robotic body. This gives him a lot of robotic powers and immunities, but keeps him a normal being underneath. The book builds this as a Hard-to-Lose device with all the physical traits included, along with a Disembodied Brain drawback: that certainly makes sense, but I think it’s something of a stretch: is the character REALLY going to be without their body often enough that it’s going to be worth the discount? And then there’s how exactly you police that massive drawback... So instead, this lady’s unique nature is entirely a Complication! She was smart enough not to include an Eject button on her braincase, so you have to actually go in with tools and pop her out: changing bodies is a plot device or something that happens outside of combat threads entirely. Trust me, you would much rather get an HP for being reduced to a helpless brain in a jar with a little voder than get a couple of PP back at character creation! (I’d treat it as being helpless minus her Brain-in-a-Jar array, maybe figuring that it’s a result of the cybernetic implants in her brain.) I played up her gadgeteer roots in this build, giving her some weaknesses like (relatively) low Toughness and crappy exotic saves. You can make her better at combat if you want by dropping her INT some; maybe she didn’t build her own body, but instead is a police officer or other government agent who got issued one by her employing agency? (Take some notes from the Bionic archetype upthread for some hints about how to do that.) Give her some Blast if you want to make him less of a hand-to-hand fighter, or give her some pistols to use to bust caps in folks!

Avian Hero PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 28 pp STR 30 [14] (+10/+2) DEX 16 (+3) CON 30 [16] (+10/+3) INT 14 (+2) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 32 pp ATK: +8 (+10 Melee) DEF: +10 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +7 Grapple: +26 Saves: 12 pp TOU +10 (+10 Con) FORT +10 (+10 Con) REF +10 (+3 Dex, +7) WILL +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 15 pp=60 r Aerobatics 12 (+15) Knowledge: Life Sciences 8 (+10) Medicine 8 (+10) Languages 4 (Danish, English, German, Polish) (Base: Avian) Notice 8 (+10) Search 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Survival 4 (+6) Feats: 13 pp Aerobatic Bluff All-Out Attack Attack Focus: Melee (2) Defensive Attack Dodge Focus (2) Evasion Improved Initiative Luck Power Attack Takedown Attack Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 50 pp Avian Array [20+2=22 pp] Enhanced STR 14 and Super-Strength 3 (6 tons) ‘strength of the ostrich’ AP: Obscure 6 (visual and auditory) (250 ft) ‘flockswarm’ AP: Stun 10 (Extra: Area [Cone] (+0) ) ‘shriek of the kakapo’ Comprehend 2 (speak to and understand animals) (Limited: Birds Only) [2 pp] Enhanced CON 14 [14 pp] ‘stamina of the albatross’ Flight 3 (50 MPH) (PF: Subtle) [6 pp] ‘flight of the peregrine’ Immunity 5 (Disease, Poison, Starvation and Thirst, Suffocation) (Flaw: Limited [Half]) [3 pp] ‘resiliency of birds’ Super-Senses 2 (Extended Hearing and Vision) [2 pp] ‘eagle eye’ costs abilities 28 + combat 32 + saves 12 + skills 15/60 + feats 13 + powers 50 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: This is a build for a bird controller/themed hero, a generally common archetype that I don’t think we’ve seen around here. (No one cares about Freedom Eagle II, and anyway he doesn’t count) I’ve given her various bird-themed powers in the spirit of Spider-Man’s various spider-related abilities, some of them more loosely related to birds than others. She can punch like a powerhouse, shriek loud enough to stun legions of bad guys, and summon a huge flock of birds to hide her comings and goings. (I didn’t give her Animal Control, as that's actually a pretty crummy power, but I did give her Comprehend for when she needs to pump those pigeons ont he street for information) She flies about as fast as the fastest birds as a move action, but of course she can make herself go much much faster! I didn’t give her talons, but you can use those as a descriptor for her unarmed attacks if you want: similarly, she gets an HP if someone entangles her wings, since she didn’t take Restrainable as a drawback. In Freedom City, she might be an Avian from their society in Greenland (home of Talona, the local Namor expy). The Avians are cool, living in ancient buildings high in the mountains of Greenland, with a strong suspicion of humanity: after all, the ground-bound humans are so quick to dump pollution in their air! (Yes, they're a bit preachy, but so are your typical comic book Atlanteans.) Maybe this is Talona's sister. If you give her some bird-related character traits, you can have some fun; as someone who’s lived with birds for a while, they have just enough human-like traits to be really weird when they go do other things. She’s got that big array; as usual don’t be afraid to power-stunt a parrot’s audio Morph, an eagle’s Fearsome Presence, a vulture’s Nauseate, or anything else that suits your fancy. Like a lot of my builds, this is a fairly straightforward construction that could very easily get tweaked in all kinds of directions. What can I say, I like building generalists! Give her a big old mace if you want her to be more like JLU’s Hawkgirl (or like the Hawk-couple from the comics; add some Beginner’s Luck and Knowledge: History if you want to go THAT route, though), or a costume that helps her fly if you want to be more like Falcon from Marvel. You could make her themed for an entirely different flying animal if you tweak her powers even further, as well...maybe a very literal Batgirl?

Doc Metropolis II PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 24 pp STR 12 (+1) DEX 16 (+3) CON 16 (+3) INT 10 (+0) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 22 pp ATK: +3 DEF: +14 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +7 Grapple: +4/+20 Saves: 11 pp TOU: +6 (+3 Con, +3 Protection FORT: +6 (+3 Con, +3) REF: +6 (+3 Dex, +3) WILL: 8 (+3 Will, +5) Skills: 19 pp=76 r Climb 2 (+3) Concentration 10 (+13) Craft: Structural 10 (+10) Gather Information 5 (+7) Knowledge: Current Events 5 (+5) Knowledge: Streetwise 10 (+10) Languages 4 (Chinese, French, Russian, Spanish) (Base: English) Notice 10 (+13) Search 10 (+10) Sense Motive 10 (+13) Feats: 15 pp Beginner’s Luck Dodge Focus Evasion 2 Fearless Improved Initiative 2 Luck 3 Second Chance (Climb checks) Skill Mastery (Craft: Structural, Notice, Search, Sense Motive) Trance Uncanny Dodge (tactile) Well-Informed Powers: 59 pp Protection 3 [3 pp] Shield 5 [5 pp] Super-Senses 5 ‘City Sense’ (Acute Analytical Tremorsense) [5 pp] Urban Control Array [41 pp+5=46 pp] Create Object 10 (Extras: Duration [Continous], Selective) (PF: Precise) AP: ESP 6 (all senses) (20 miles) (Extras: Affects Others, Simultaneous) (PFs: Rapid 4 (x10000), Subtle) AP: Snare 10 (Extras: Area [shapeable], Selective Attack) (PF: Reversible) AP: Teleport 6 (20 miles) (Extras: Accurate, Duration [sustained], Portal) (PFs: Change Velocity, Easy, Progression 2 (25x25 squares), Turnabout) AP: Telekinesis 10 (Extras: Damaging, Range [Perception]) (PF: Precise) costs abilities 24 + combat 22 + saves 11 + skills 19/76 + feats 15 + powers 59 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: This is my attempt at building a city controller like Freedom City’s Dr. Metropolis or the Wildstorm Universe’s Jack Hawksmoor. In the Freedom City universe, this character may well have gotten his powers from the same mysterious source as Freedom City’s city elemental: either by direct inspiration or a gift from the man himself. Maybe he was injured in a super-fight and Metropolis resurrected him in the aftermath? Perhaps he was a long-time lover of Freedom City, a native turned city booster, and was thus empowered by Freedom in his own right. Either way he’s a natural legacy for the ‘workhorse’ of the Freedom League, and not one that the ‘construct’ Metropolis might have had a chance to leave behind any other way. (Not a lot of ladies want to get with the guy made of concrete: sorry, Ben Grimm!) Note that unlike typical builds for this character, he does _not_ have a Flaw limiting his powers to urban materials or a drawback that makes him sick if he goes outside city limits: since in our game we’re virtually always in city limits, that’s a complication for him, not anything worth actually getting points back at character creation. And he’ll want that HP, too. I figure he can do things like grow back damaged buildings with his Create Object, sense everything going on in the city with his ESP, walk through walls and across town with his Teleport, and grab and crush people with his Snare and Damaging Telekinesis. I didn’t give him a Blast: with Damaging TK, you really don’t need it! He’s got Luck 3 and a big array, if you need new tricks, stunt stunt stunt! Stunt a bigger Teleport if you want to go to other cities: as it is, you’ll be spending a lot of time at home! You might think a character like this would be a natural rival for a plant controller, but I don’t think that’s true: cities need parks and tree-lined sidewalks to survive. Think about buying some immunities (say, to urban pollution) or Permeate with PP you get in play: he doesn’t need those to function well as a starting character, but they might come in handy in play. (One advantage of Permeate is that you don't have to switch array slots when you walk through walls, which is one thing he’d have to do with his current system of urban transportation.)

He is staggered and stunned. Fleur is up.

A metallic shriek rose from the rapidly vibrating robot as Gabriel's sonic blow sent huge chunks of its armor plating tumbling off, Mecha-Maid's vulnerable inner workings now clear to everyone as gears and circuits whirred and hissed! As Gabriel finished shouting his battle strategy to the crowd, he realized that the robot was looking right at him: her eyes red and glowing now that her face plate had fallen off. "I'LL SHOW YOU BIG!" it shrieked, its voice synthesizer fried to near incomprehensibility by the damage it had taken. Suddenly those red, glowing eyes erupted from the robot's head, transforming into round flying missiles as they rocketed towards Carson! They both missed him, burying themselves in the concrete on either side, but a second later they exploded with such sheer force that they sent him hurling into the air! He landed badly, hearing things crack as he did so, and tasted blood in his mouth as his vision blurred.

Hokay, give me a DC 28 Tou save.

6 Welp, it's boned! The robot is now down 11 TOU. The bad news is, the robot is up. She's going to attack the person who attacked her: i.e.; Gabriel: 18 Normally, that would be a miss. But the robot's size means this becomes an area attack: give me a DC 23 Reflex save, Gabriel.

Well-Meaning International Hero PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 36 pp STR 14 (+2) DEX 18 (+4) CON 18 (+4) INT 14 (+2) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 16 (+3) Combat: 32 pp ATK: +8 (+13 melee) DEF: +13 (+4 flat-footed) Init: +7 Grapple: +15 Saves: 11 pp TOU +7 (+4 Con, +3) FORT +7 (+4 Con, +3) REF +9 (+4 Ref, +5) WILL +6 (+3 Wis, +3) Skills: 25 pp=100 r Acrobatics 11 (+15) Bluff 12 (+15) Climb 3 (+5) Intimidate 7 (+10) Knowledge: Civics 3 (+5) Languages 5 (English, French, Hebrew, Russian, Spanish) (Base: Arabic) Notice 12 (+15) Pilot 6 (+10) Sense Motive 12 (+15) Stealth 11 (+15) Survival 8 (+10) Swim 3 (+5) Feats: 25 pp Acrobatic Bluff All-Out Attack Attack Focus: Melee 5 Dodge Focus 5 Environmental Adaptation [Desert] Evasion Improved Crit (swords) Improved Defense Improved Initiative Luck Move-By Action Power Attack Startle Takedown Attack (2) Taunt Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 21 pp Device 1 (Flying Carpet) (Hard to Lose) [4 pp] -Flight 5 (250 MPH) (Flaw: Platform) {5} Strike 7 (Extra: Autofire) [14 pp] 'magic scimitars' Protection 3 [3 pp] 'toughness of the desert' costs abilities 36 + combat 32 + saves 11 + skills 25/100 + feats 25 + powers 21 = 150 pts -- Design Notes: Back in the late 1960s and early 1970s, superhero comics began noticing that people who weren’t white existed, some of whom had money. More to the point, their largely white male audiences were noticing that too, and some of them were liberal-minded enough (or their parents were) that they wanted to read about those non-white people. The rise of African-American superheroes is famous enough, but I’ve always been interested in the international heroes: the acknowledgement that nations besides America also had their superpowered champions. They were all nice and well-meaning, like the half-naked Brazilian pyrotechnic, the Irish luck controller, or in this case, an Arab champion with a flying carpet and wielding magic scimitars. Of course she is. But hey, she’s actually fairly good at her job! Her swords are very effective at slicing and dicing: I figure they’re magic blades passed down through her family line, with her as the first female heir in who knows how many hundreds of years. She flies along at nearly jet speeds, slicing with her swords, staying mobile with her carpet to really go to town. She’s really good at surviving and navigating in the deep desert ‘of course she is’, and not a bad host for superheroes from other lands come to visit her home, as well as powerful enough to do well for herself even if her mission forces her to leave her motherland. In a world where she’s not likely to face anything more than mundane military and maybe PL 6-8 low-rent super-thugs, she really is the most powerful person in her nation. A lot of ways to play a character like this: you don’t have to do any deconstruction at all! But maybe she’s smarter than she lets on, and consciously plays to stereotypes of the repressed sword-wielding Arab in order to get her enemies to let their guard down. She may have permanently relocated to the US if her home country has suffered something topical like a military coup d’etat or similar disaster, or maybe she’s just recently come back to the United States after staying long enough to deal with a problem like that. Either way, her home country is always going to be on her mind...

Just as Fusion arrived at the battle, the GBN tower creaked loudly before falling over in the wake of a small but powerful explosion, the story-high assemblage of girders landing right on that giant, disgusting robot! As the concealed octopus champion watched, the robot staggered beneath the massive impact. Joan was hero enough that she breathed only a small sigh of relief at the sight: the destruction of the tower meant Otaku's transmissions had stopped, but that didn't help the heroes dealing with the giant robot! The Mecha Maid staggered against the impact, bracing the mass of metal up with its robotic hands while trying to disentangle its machine-gun array from where it had gotten caught in the enfolding steel mesh. "OOOOH! WHEN I GET OUT OF THIS, I'M GONNA BE REAL MAD!" the robot shouted, something in its mechanical voice making clear that this was a pre-programmed comeback.

I'll say the tower takes 10, fails automatically, and topples. Boom! The robot is hit! The robot is unhurt But we'll say it's entangled, since that was a cool move that deserves something!

Fusion shook her head, the water slowly getting sucked back under her shiny black costume by the action of molecular fibers. "I took to the streets and fought the Grue where I could, nothing besides that. I admit my mindset wasn't the best, but I don't take alien warlords showing up to try and kill my family particularly well." She smiled thinly, her look fierce through the mask. "I don't know the Grue who donated the cells I'm wearing, but apparently he's a superhero. It's strange to think of one of them on the side of justice, but I've seen a lot of strange things over the years."

The two young men walked back to campus together, talking about the school and all it could do for Corbin, before Mark dropped the other teen off at the dorm. "I'm headed to study," said Mark, "sometimes it's our workload that's the most super thing about this place," he said wryly. "I appreciate the chat, Corbin, I'm glad we were able to get together. If you ever want to know anything more about the school, or just hang out, look me up. I'm here most of the time," he said with a little smile.

Supervillain Legacy PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 34 pp STR 16 (+3) DEX 16 (+3) CON 16 (+3) INT 16 (+3) WIS 16 (+3) CHA 14 (+2) Combat: 28 pp ATK: +8 (+12 Ranged) DEF: +12 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +7 Grapple: +11/+20 Saves: 9 pp TOU +8 (+3 Con, +5 Protection) FORT +6 (+3 Con, +3) REF +6 (+3 Ref, +3) WILL +6 (+3 Wis, +3) Skills: 19 pp=76 pp Acrobatics 12 (+15) Climb 7 (+10) Craft: Chemical 7 (+10) Gather Information 8 (+10) Intimidate 13 (+15) Knowledge: Physical Sciences 2 (+5) Knowledge: Streetwise 12 (+15) Languages 1 (Spanish) (Base: English) Notice 7 (+10) Sense Motive 7 (+10) Feats: 17 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Ranged (4) Dodge Focus (6) Evasion Improved Initiative Luck Power Attack Startle Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 43 pp Glue Array [25+3=28 pp] Move Object 8 (Extra: Damaging) (PF: Improved Crit) AP: Snare 8 (Extra: Autofire) (PF: Reversible) AP: Snare 10 (Extra: Area [Line] (+0)) (PFs: Precise, Progression 2, Reversible) Leaping 1 (x2) [1 pp] Protection 5 [5 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Movement 4 (Slow Fall, Swinging, Wall-Crawling 2) [8 pp] costs abilities 34 + combat 28 + saves 9 + skills 19/76 + feats 17 + powers 43 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: You had no idea you had superpowers till the cops busted down the door during dinner. From the startled look on your father’s face as you blasted the guys tackling him across the room, neither did he. But you were new to your powers and surprised by a guy with a taser, and when you woke up you were in power nullifiers and the people from Social Services were having a talk with you. You’d always wondered what your parents did for a living; your father’s “scientific career” and your mother’s “consultancy gigs” were getting more and more vague even for a sixteen year old. But now you know: your mother was the famous assassin Triggerari, the deadliest gun on the Eastern Seaboard, and your dad was Glue-Gun-George, slightly goofy supervillain turned super-scientist for hire. Your folks had both settled down after your birth, sticking to hired-gun jobs to keep bread on the table, and truthfully they might have gotten away with it except for some good police work. The hell of it is, though, they actually raised you with fairly good values: when you saw the fiendish devices your father built and the body count left behind by your mom, you were shocked enough that when a man named Duncan Summers came to meet with you, you listened to what he said. And now you’re at Claremont Academy, putting the powers you absorbed from your mother’s training and your dad’s science to work for justice. But sometimes you think about your dad in his cell, and your mom. She’s still out there. Is she looking for you? Season to taste, obviously. This is one archetype we don’t have at Claremont, and it’s one I think would be worth exploring further: supervillains have a history as rich as superheroes in-setting, after all. Teen heroes are all about having complicated relationships with their parents, and you don’t get a more rich series of complications than one parent in jail, one parent on the run, and a family name that’s going to get all over the school as soon as someone makes a Gather Info roll. That’s going to suck. Maybe you should make them _pay_.

Peering through the vines, Stesha was confronted with a scene at once incredibly mundane and at once incredibly bizarre. Inside the gigantic room her vines peered into, she was confronted with what looked like an unhappy group of prisoners: with downcast faces, they moved around the perimeter of the big layered cone where they lived, some listening to music from a built-in speaker system inset in the translucent yellow plastic walls, others watching television, still more tending to one round, stately prisoner who looked a lot like their mother. Outside, their guard sat at her own computer desk, a bored look on her face as she filed her nails. But on closer inspection, the site was actually as bizarre as could be for all those prisoners were gigantic bees, kept in a mighty artificial hive the size of a multi-story building, looming as large as the high-rise which contained Stesha's flowershop on the bottom floor. The bees did not look particularly happy, but based on Stesha's knowledge of the giant bees she knew, none of them looked sick, not even the queen complete with shiny gold crown attached to the top of her head. As for the jailer, it took Stesha only a moment to recognize an apified version of herself; a representation of Fleur de Joie cast as a bee-humanoid! (It also might be her imagination, but robot-bee-Stesha appeared somewhat more curvy than the woman she saw in the mirror in costume.) Bee-Stesha's shiny metal wings flashed as she hummed tunelessly, looking like a bored secretary in an office produced by a madman's dream, her desk set in the wide space that held the gigantic artificial hive.

Hepcat II PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 28 pp STR 26 [16] (+8/+3) DEX 24 [14] (+7/+2) CON 26 [16] (+8/+3) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 18 (+4) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+12 melee) DEF: +12 (+3 flat-footed) Init: +11 Grapple: +20 Saves: 9 pp TOU +8 (+8 Con) FORT +10 (+8 Con, +2) REF +10 (+8 Ref, +2) WILL +6 (+2 Wis, +4) Skills: 18 pp=72 r Acrobatics 8 (+15) Bluff 11 (+15) Craft: Artistic 12 (+12) Intimidate 4 (+8) Knowledge: Current Events 5 (+5) Knowledge: Pop Culture 5 (+5) Perform (Hip-Hop Poetry) 11 (+15) Notice 8 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Feats: 21 pp Acrobatic Bluff Attack Focus: Melee 6 Distract (Bluff) Dodge Focus 6 Improved Initiative Move-By Action Power Attack Quick Change Takedown Attack Taunt Uncanny Dodge (visual) Powers: 45 pp Enhanced CON 10 [10 pp] Enhanced DEX 10 [10 pp] Enhanced STR 10 [10 pp] Leaping 4 (x25) [4 pp] Speed 1 (10 MPH) [1 pp] Super-Senses 10 (True Sight) [10 pp] costs abilities 28 + combat 24 + saves 9 + skills 18/72 + feats 21 + powers 45 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: The Bouncing Beatnik doesn’t get a lot of love on this site, or in Freedom City lore in general, so I thought I’d build a PL 10 playable version of Hepcat to try and raise awareness. Hepcat was a defender of the West End back in the 1950s and 1960s, a fast, acrobatic guy with a patter of taunts derived from beat poetry: no surprise, since he was a beat poet empowered by the spirit of freedom embodied by the movement itself! He gets a lot cooler when you realize that he was basically the Lee/Ditko Spiderman, roundly disliked by the authorities because he was operating in the mid-1950s in the period when superheroes were widely distrusted by the Freedom City public after the dissolution of the Liberty League after the McCarthy investigation. So it wasn’t just because the Freedom City public were big jerks, no indeed! My assumption here is that this build is basically Hepcat II, not the Silver Age hero returned from the dead but rather another young artist empowered by the spirit of artistic freedom that the Hepcat spirit represents. Adjust her artistic style however you want; I made the assumption that she’s the modern day equivalent of a beat poet like the original: aka, a hip-hop artist, but you can tweak as necessary. She’s a very good poet, equally good composing or performing. In costume, she’s a fast, charismatic acrobat the way the original was. I added the True Sight with the fluff that the power of artistic truth lets her see right through the lies of the world straight through the pure untarnished heart of the matter! Legacy heroes are always fun to play. One twist that might be interesting is taking the angle that this lady has no idea who the previous Hepcat was, but is engaged in her private investigation to find out about the last hero to bear her current name. Cross-generational legacies also open you up to time travel stories and ‘living up to the name.’ That’s worth thinking about Think about ways to keep up the legacy: Hepcat was a radical figure in his own era, how does Hepcat II measure up? Just make sure that if you play a political character that their poltiics are part of their story, not the point of their story.

Refurbishing a D&D character is not the way to go for your first superhero character.

Horus the Avenger PL: 10 (150) Abilities: 48 pp STR 24 (+7) DEX 16 (+3) CON 24 (+7) INT 10 (+0) WIS 14 (+2) CHA 20 (+5) Combat: 24 pp ATK: +6 (+8 melee/+10 Blast) DEF: +10 (+3 flat-footed) Grapple: +16 Init: +7 Saves: 7 pp TOU: +10 (+7 Con, +3 Protection) FORT: +7 (+7 Con) REF: +5 (+3 Ref, +2) WILL: +7 (+2 Wis, +5) Skills: 19 pp=76 pp Bluff 5 (+10) Diplomacy 5 (+10) Intimidate 15 (+20) Knowledge: Arcane Lore 5 (+5) Knowledge: Theology and Philosophy 10 (+10) Languages 2 (Arabic, English) (Base: Ancient Egyptian) Notice 8 (+10) Pilot 7 (+10) Ride 7 (+10) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Survival 4 (+6) Feats: 20 pp All-Out Attack Attack Focus: Melee (2) Challenge (Fast Startle) Dodge Focus (4) Improved Initiative Inspire (5) Luck Power Attack Startle Takedown Attack (2) Uncanny Dodge (auditory) Powers: 29 pp Device 5 (Ankh of Horus) (easy to lose) (PFs: Restrictedx2 [Horus]) [17 pp] -Blast 10 (PFs: Accurate 2) -AP: Dazzle 10 (visual) (PFs: Accurate 2) -AP: Flight 5 (250 MPH) and Strike 5 (PF: Mighty) (Extra: Penetrating) -AP: Nullify 10 (deceptions) (PFs: Accurate 2) Immunity 1 (aging) [1 pp] Impervious Toughness 6 [6 pp] Protection 3 [3 pp] Super-Strength 1 [2 pp] costs abilities 48 + combat 24 + saves 7 + skills 19/76 + feats 20 + powers 29 = 150 pts --- Design Notes: This is my attempt at a PL 10 Horus the Avenger, the Thor analogue of the Freedom City universe who was active as a superhero in the Silver and Bronze Ages. This build assumes a new avatar for Horus, as before a mortal man imbued with the powers and memories of a god, but retaining his own basic humanity underneath. Thus, not a lot of immunities, since Horus’ divine essence is still technically in Heliopolis. (This is necessary in the Freedom City universe, since gods _can’t_ come into the mortal world without being invited, and even then generally only through avatars and other vessels. The nice ones do so voluntarily, the not nice ones...well.) Horus has CHARISMA! After all, gods should chew the scenery a little! With his massive Intimidate and Startle, he’s very good at reducing all but the sternest bad guys to quavering jelly. After all, the Avenging Son of Heliopolis has come to Earth to crush them! He has a light-theme to his powers, shooting out blasts of blinding sunlight, hitting people with the power of his mighty ankh, and otherwise making a spectacle of himself in the way only a scenery-chewing god can. Does he speak in Shakespearean English? Hey, it makes about as much sense as a Norse god doing so! (Maybe that’s when he learned the language, or maybe he just thinks it makes him sound more impressive!) You can build plenty of divine PCs, I have a couple on this very thread. Horus is fun, though, because of the connections to both Freedom City’s relatively recent past and Earthly mythology: why has the Avenger returned to Earth only a few decades after his last appearance? Is he eager to resume his relationship with the Freedom League, or does he seek to forge a new path this time? How does a god’s responsibility balance with a man’s, not to mention a hero’s? It’s a complicated road for the Avenging Son, one that he walks with considerably fewer friends these days...

Fusion, 12; Giant Robot 23 Giant Robot: 23 Midnight: 21 Gabriel: 18 Fleur de Joie: 14 Fusion: 12 The robot holds her action till she is attacked. (The cops opened fire...) Midnight is up.

Initiative!

Outside the Global Broadcasting Network building, the arriving heroes were assaulted by the sight and sound of one of the more horrible monsters any of them had yet encountered. It was a giant robot a good twenty feet tall, cast in the shape of a woman, no, a girl of perhaps fifteen or sixteen, wearing a bizarrely cut French maid costume, right down to little white hat perched on her head far above the ground. Marring her humanoid appearance was the gigantic machine guns positioned over her chest, fixed directly to her solid steel body. "I am the guardian of Otaku-san!" she chirruped in a high-pitched, breathy voice loud enough to shake the glass all around them. She wasn't talking to the heroes, though; she fired another sternum-level bombardment at a burning police car nearby, the two officers who had been inside visible taking cover behind a large truck. "No one will lay hands on his august personage before the show is over! NO ONE!"

OK, the math appears to hold up, and I like the backstory. Approved

"Uh, hello?" The man on the other end harrumphed and said, "This is, uh, a friend of Fusion, the superheroine. I have that you're a contact of hers, right? Well, I'm a friend of hers, and...did you see the broadcast? Is it still going on? Damn. Listen, uh, she just left here and she looked really, really angry. She can have, aheh, kind of a temper sometimes, and she really hates that Solo Takashi guy even on good days. If you could maybe get out to that station, see if you can find her, or maybe just stop Takashi, you could keep her from making a really big mistake. And maybe stop that guy before...before he has a chance to show that terrible show."

Stesha can see the 'battlesuit' parts are actually for some sort of humanoid robot; there's no space for a person to go inside, but there are parts she vaguely recognizes from pictures of celebrity androids and the like. As for Taylor, she can make out a pattern visible in a metal molding machine by the parts that looks exactly like an imprint of Fleur de Joie's face.

The thread where Doc O goes down.

It was the day after Black Friday, and everyone in Freedom City was exhausted. Everyone who was a smart shopper, anyway, and Joan Collier certainly was a smart shopper. Normally she found it too stereotypical to do a lot of shopping for the family herself, especially given Charlie's skill at coupon-fu, but the truth of the matter was that he lacked a certain iron will that was necessary for serious shopping on Black Friday. You had to be willing to mark your territory and guard it by whatever means necessary, and that was something Joan Collier was certainly willing to do when it came to shopping for her family. She'd picked up a track and field set for Lois and a new set of running shoes, along with the Playstation 3 games Lois had actually asked for (and hadn't _that_ taken some manuevering!), and gotten Charlie the collected Martin Scorsese DVDs he'd been asking for. All in all, it had been a very successful day, though it had left her very tired. She was sitting at her desk typing away at a story about Young Freedom and other heroic teen teams when she heard her daughter call her name. "Mom! Come quick!" Joan was on her feet in an instant, recognizing the urgency in her daughter's voice, and was soon in the living room to see the leering face on network television. "Takashi!" she spit, recognizing an old nemesis from her days in Japan. "Looks like...that's Liberty Park, so that's the GBN building he's in! Honey," she said on instinct, "go into your room." "But Mooo,-" "GO!" Lois retreated, knowing better to argue with her mother when her blood was up, and Joan reached down, turning up the volume as Doc Otaku went back into his rant. "...silly gaijin and your silly notions of morality!" said Otaku, a leer on his face as he stared directly into the camera attached to whatever piece of super-science he was using to hijack the CBS station, and then probably all of Freedom City's channels through that. Freedom City's TV stations. His face was close enough to the camera that Joan could make out the spray of blackheads across his cheeks. "I've done enough to show you how your cops are fat, stupid Zenigatas and your superheroes musclebound freaks straight from the pages of Harmony Gold! So now, I think it's time to show you how stupid your blue-nosed censors are and your stupid notions of morality." He grinned. "So I've decided to hijack the airwaves and give you a little taste of Nihon!" He leaned back, the camera pulling back as well, and Joan briefly went blind and deaf from sheer unadulterated rage as she saw three black-clad, shapely figures surrounding Otaku worshipfully, tentacles wrapped sinously around him in multiple caresses, three recast versions of her own costume and arms smeared over what were obviously new versions of his Angel Androids. When she could hear and see again, she heard him saying, "...that's right, folks, with the help of my lovely friends here, I've got the whole run of "Beautiful American Tentacle Woman Heroine", even the second season that was too hot even for Japanese TV!" He snickered, and it was a sound that made her feel like she was standing under a leaking septic tank. "And I'm going to make sure everyone in Freedom City gets a chance to see the whole thing! Hahahah!" The androids laughed with him, girlish voices modded to sound oddly like Joan's herself in costume. "I've tied up the Freedom League with a little thing I like to call Dragonball BombZ, so don't count on anyone stopping this signal! Hope you've all stocked up on pocky!" And suddenly Otaku had disappeared, and the nightmarish strains of a horrible J-Pop tune Joan thought she'd forgotten assaulted her ears as a terribly twisted cartoon version of herself appeared on screen, dancing before she...Fusion grabbed the television with one tentacle and smashed it through the wall, the explosion of the rupturing parts loud enough inside to have Lois and Charlie both in the room, staring at their costumed mother and wife in shock. "Honey, what's-" Fusion wasn't listening, not really, instead she was boiling to the window, jerking it open with outstretched tentacles as she prepared to launch herself out the window. "I'm going to the GBN building. I'll be back later." _I'm going to kill the son of a bitch._ And with that, she vanished, rocketing herself out the window as tentacles unfurled into sails, her body rippling into near-invisibility as she turned on her camouflage cells. Inside the house, Charlie Smith hugged his daughter before heading for his wife's desk. He'd only seen her that angry a few times before, and it was hard not to be a little afraid as he dug through her cards before he found a phone number. Gabriel. I guess that'll work... And with that, he dialed.