Fox

Player Name: Fox Character Name: Power Level: 8 (120/120pp) Trade-Offs: +1 Attack / -1 Damage, +2 Defense / -2 Toughness Unspent PP: 0 Progress to Bronze Status: 0/30 In Brief: Badass Semi-Normal. Alternate Identities: Identity: Birthplace: Occupation: Affiliations: Family: Age: Apparent Age: Gender: Ethnicity: Height: Weight: Eyes: Hair: Description: Power Descriptions: History: Personality & Motivation: Powers & Tactics: Complications: Abilities: 6+12+8+8+2+6= 42pp Strength: 16 (+3) Dexterity: 22 (+6) Constitution: 18 (+4) Intelligence: 18 (+4) Wisdom: 12 (+1) Charisma: 16 (+3) Combat: 10+8= 18pp Initiative: +6 Attack: +5 (+9 tonfa, boomerangs, needles) Grapple: +8 Defense: +10 (+4 Base, +6 Dodge Focus), +2 Flat-Footed Knockback: -3 Saving Throws: 2+0+4= 6pp Toughness: +6 (+4 Con, +2 Costume) Fortitude: +6 (+4 Con, +2) Reflex: +6 (+6 Dex, +0) Will: +5 (+1 Wis, +4) Skills: 80r = 20pp Acrobatics 4 (+10) Bluff 7 (+10) Disable Device 6 (+10) Escape Artist 4 (+10) Gather Information 7 (+10) Intimidate 12 (+15) Investigate 6 (+10) Knowledge (current events) 1 (+5) Knowledge (streetwise) 3 (+7) Knowledge (tactics) 6 (+10) Notice 9 (+10) Search 6 (+10) Stealth 9 (+15) Feats: 27pp Attack Specialization (Tonfa) 2 Attack Specialization (Boomerangs) 1 Blind-Fight Challenge (Fast Startle) Dodge Focus 6 Equipment 5 Evasion Jack of all Trades Luck Master Plan 2 Power Attack Quick Draw Skill Mastery [intimidate, Investigate, Notice, Stealth] Sneak Attack Startle Uncanny Dodge (audio) Powers: 3+4= 7pp Device 1 (Black Steel Tonfa, 5dp; Flaws: Easy to Lose) [3pp] A pair of black custom-made steel tonfa. Strike 2 (Feats: Improved Critical 1, Mighty) [4dp] Improved Disarm [1dp] Super-Senses 4 (Postcognition) (magic) [4pp] DC Block: ATTACK RANGE SAVE EFFECT Unarmed Touch DC18 Toughness (Staged) Damage Unarmed (Sneak Attack) Touch DC20 Toughness (Staged) Damage Tonfa Touch DC20 Toughness (Staged) Damage Tonfa (Sneak Attack) Touch DC22 Toughness (Staged) Damage Boomerang 200' DC20 Toughness (Staged) Damage Boomerang (Sneak Attack) 200' DC22 Toughness (Staged) Damage Paralyze 140' DC17 Fortitude Slow Abilities (42) + Combat (18) + Saving Throws (6) + Skills (20) + Feats (27) + Powers (7) - Drawbacks (0) = 120 Power Points

Dragonfly made a bit of a face at the smell of his breath, turning to spread her parts and what few tools she'd brought out on a workbench. "" she replied, casting her eye around for a proper soldering iron. ""

Over how large an area?

She took a deep breath, nodding and biting her lip before stepping back up to the projector and the hidden security setup. The finger kept tapping away on her arm as lights danced behind Dragonfly's eyes; her mind reached out for the security system, building on her last semi-success to worm her way into the checks and alarms. No more games. Who I am - who we are - is not important. Are whoever and whatever I want us to be. You belong to me now....

Computers Roll vs. Security System, DC27 (Datalink, Mental Quickness) (1d20 + 15=32) ...goodness.

Sounds good to me.

Mara blankly blinked for a moment, and then looked...fairly relieved, actually; close as they were Ellie would almost certainly feel her relax a little bit, muscles becoming just a little less tense as if she'd previously been waiting for a problem that hadn't come. "That's - no. No problems," she replied, shaking her head a little. "Want to, of course, but not sure how - mean, not sure when or what...mmmmh." She scowled, took a moment to collect her thoughts, and tried again. "It...I like this," she said, wiggling up against her girlfriend a little. "It's...comfortable. Anything else...tempting but shouldn't be rushed? Instinct versus wisdom. Not worth screwing up, for any reason. Best to err toward comfort. Besides," she added with just a hint of teasing coloring her voice, using the arm around Ellie's waist to pull their snuggling a little closer, "still need to work on some verbs. Boire is irregular. Je bois, tu bois, elle boit, mais nous buvons, vous buvez, elles boivent."

Lightly blushing, Mara pulled Ellie closer to steal just a few more seconds out of that last kiss, a hint of a smile playing at the corners of her mouth. "C'est bon," she noted, in as teacherly a tone as she could manage. "Seemed like a useful verb. And motive clearly worked," she emphasized, feigning scolding. "Learned the verb very well. Pronunciation good. Will know the French tongue in no time." She paused, blinking. "Not...what I meant. Exactly."

Dragonfly crossed her arms, frowning and tapping a finger as she studied the projector. "Could...try again. Convince it we're more important than it thinks we are right now, try to get us in that way. Don't know the odds. Suspect they're not in our favor - mmh." She tilted her head, shrugging. "Crack might lead to injury, exposure, or dead end. Hacking might lead to a security alert, but no injury, and no dead end. Try the computer first, slip through the crack if it fails?"

Mara nodded, bringing up a variety of pictures in turn, some of them practical, some less so (but more interesting). She made sure to take her time, though - every image was a chance for Ellie to learn or remember a word (and, often, how it was conjugated), and old words got revisited fairly often or, if possible, tied into other words. She wasn't the greatest or most experienced teacher, but she was patient, and having learned a couple languages herself she did what she could to make the lesson less dry.

"Wh- ow! Hey!" Gaian Knight tried, rather unsuccessfully, to shield himself with the rock he was riding on; it didn't spare him much abuse, though, and his vision swam for a moment when one of those pieces of scenery hit him right in the temple. There was time for headaches and disorientation later, though: for now, he grit his teeth and called up a new set of spikes from the earth, with about the same success - most of the spikes just went clear through the blobettes without harm, but the two he'd hurt earlier seemed a hair more worse for wear. "I am starting," he scowled, "to really hate these things."

A successful experiment! Though they lacked eyes (or any discernible sensory organs at all, come to think of it) all six of the oozy creatures shuddered, milling about for a moment in what was clearly blind confusion. Then came the rage - oh, the rage. Gaian Knight had apparently been spending all this time making the smaller group very angry, because even in their blind state they managed to grab nearby objects and lob them at him with disturbing precision; one missed entirely, likely due to the blindness, but the other three pelted him with rather large debris, at least one or two of which looked like they gave him a sound knock upside the head. Apparently lacking a better option at the moment, the giant blob followed suit, hurling a bench at Supercape, but not having any more luck than it had the last time.

ROUND SIX: 9: Gaian Knight - 1HP - 3 bruises 6: Supercape - 2HP - unharmed 2: Blobettes x5 - all blind; unharmed, unharmed, unharmed, 2 bruises, 2 bruises -2: The Blob - blind; unharmed Also: ow. GK goes for the area attack again, because I am the fool and gave the little ones burrowing and insubstantial, so he can't just trap them. DC25 Toughness saves all around. Toughness Saves vs. Gaian Knight's Area Attack (1d20+15=26, 1d20+15=32, 1d20+15=33, 1d20+14=20, 1d20+14=23) Save, save, save, bruise, bruise. Invisible Castle! Round summary up above updated. Supercape's up.

The Blob Hey, it worked so well for the blobettes.... Ranged Attack Roll vs. Supercape (thrown improvised object, blind) (1d20 + 6=15, 1d2=2) Swing and a miss, though the blindness didn't hurt him any. He's gonna have to try something new next round.

An impossible save! All the blobs are blind. Blobettes The mini-blobs follow their leader's example and lob things at GK (who physically hurt them earlier, and who's been fighting them all the time!): Ranged Attack Roll vs. Gaian Knight (thrown improvised object) (1d20 + 6=21, 1d20 + 6=24, 1d20 + 6=12, 1d20 + 6=26) But they're blind! Blind Modifier (1d2=2, 1d2=2, 1d2=1, 1d2=2, 1d2=1) Should have been four rolls, not five. Ah well. Math fried my brain, I guess. So blobette 3 misses him outright, 4 is just now recovering from stun. 1, 2, and 5 all hit him, because Invisible Castle hates me (and #5 is a crit!). Two DC25 Toughness saves for GK, and one DC30. Toughness Saves vs. Blobettes' Thrown Objects (1d20 + 14=24, 1d20 + 14=17, 1d20 + 14=24) .....I hate you, Invisible Castle. Why do you hate me? That's bruise, stun+bruise, stun+bruise. Hero point to shake off the stun (and not fall out of the sky).

I'm honestly in favor of using an actual deck, myself. Rolling's faster, but not really simpler, and the duplicates are going to start piling up - and cause confusion if they get missed. Math time!* Assuming everyone has a two-card hand and there are five cards face-up on the table (standard Texas Hold 'em): if there are four players and everyone rolls up their cards, there's something like an 80% chance there's a duplicate in play. With five or six interested people so far, it goes up to around 90% - meaning that there's a nine in ten chance there's at least one duplicate somewhere in play. That's a lot of duplicates, which means a lot of rerolling (only once they're caught!), and a lot of rerolling means a lot of delays. Plus, using an actual deck and PMs provides the advantage of keeping hands secret, but verifiable. *Man it's been a long time since I did card-based statistics, and I haven't played much poker. Showing my work in case it needs correcting:

Mara pouted a little bit, but nodded. "Fair," she admitted, pondering. "Have an unnatural advantage there. Mmh...." She almost shifted position, but was apparently loathe to remove herself from couch and comfy companion; instead, lights danced behind her eyes and the television switched over to the computer's feed, which in turn was used to pull up Google image search. "

Dragonfly (as Dragonfly, or as Mara if Jill O'Cure attends) might be interested. As social things go it's relatively low-key, she's been told a little about Grim, and it's a good chance to apply her studies in Sense Motive.

Blinking back to being fully awake herself, Mara was fairly glad the low lighting hid the worst of her blush at the nuzzling. "Have...no complaints. It's nice," she observed, with a little smile. "Company. Closeness. Usually not...comfortable with people in my warehouse. But you aren't...I don't...." She frowned, not nearly good enough with words to properly express herself; rather than continue to frustrate herself trying to phrase something that sounded right, she completed the thought by leaning over and brushing her lips against Ellie's.

On the bright side, they weren't the only new arrivals: Gaian Knight was not far behind them, shooting up out of the ground on a rock platform. His coat had seen better days, and his breastplate looked tarnished, like someone had dumped acid on it, but otherwise he seemed not too worse for wear and wasted no time in sweeping out a softly-glowing hand, jagged spikes of rock erupting out of the ground under the blob quintet. Some fared a little worse than others, but at least two seemed to be a little hurt, and a glancing blow of a spike on one of those's rock cores seemed to disorient the thing. The earthmover grimaced, though, sparing a glance at the physicist's sparring partner. "Oh good," he grimaced under the face cloth, pulling himself a little higher into the air. "They come even bigger. Pro tip, friend: I dunno what that big one's like, but don't let the little ones touch you. It stings like nothing else."

If at first you don't succeed, try, try again - the creature's shifting chemistry managed to elude Supercape's attempts yet again, but its second rock volley didn't fare any better - another hurled boulder, another miss, another wince-inducing landing, though this time it sounded like a tree broke the ammunition's fall...'broke' being the operative term. The strange noise finally made sense, at least - a group of five, smaller blobs, darker green than their bigger companion, broke out of the ground not too far from the fight. All of them were making a higher-pitched keening noise, which Supercape's enemy responded to with its own low rumbles - reinforcements were here!

ROUND FIVE: 9: Gaian Knight - 2HP - unharmed 6: Supercape - 2HP - unharmed 2: Blobettes x5 - unharmed, unharmed, unharmed, stunned+bruised, bruised -2: The Blob - unharmed GK attacks with an area attack - 50 5-foot cubes. For the sake of not having to try to map this stuff out, I'm gonna say the little blobs aren't close enough to the big blob to hit both groups at once. So that's DC20 reflex for the mini-blobs....which with their reflex modifier they're actually incapable of making. DC25 Toughness saves all around! Toughness Saves vs. Gaian Knight's Area Blast, DC25 (1d20 + 15=26, 1d20 + 15=33, 1d20 + 15=25, 1d20 + 15=20, 1d20 + 15=22) Sounds about right. Note that they aren't minions, but they do have lower stats than the big guy. Free notice check (no roll necessary): the blobettes DO corrode everything they touch. The littler ones are, apparently, acidic.

Fortitude Save vs. Supercape's Drain Toughness, DC20 (1d20 + 10=26) Good lord. The Blob chucks another rock! Ranged Attack Roll vs. Supercape (improvised weapon, thrown) (1d20 + 6=13) Swing and a miss. A NEW CHALLENGER APPROACHES: the blob quintet spend their round getting here and emerging from underground, with GK hot on their heels.

Though a little disappointed that she hadn't managed to take out Knuckles herself (not guns - nobody will take them from me), Dragonfly didn't miss a beat, rotating her outstretched arm to point at the gun-wielding goon and, without so much as turning more than her head to look at him, unleashing a tight, twisted shockwave straight at his chest. "Sit. Down."

Bad Goon! No shooty! Ranged Attack Roll vs. Goon (blast) (1d20 + 9=29) ...bwahahahaha. Well, if he's a minion, that's an auto-KO. If he's not, I'll go right ahead and go for the straight DC bonus: DC29 Toughness.