brainstorming on a PL 7 Claremont character

[souffle_girl]

I just had an idea for a Claremont character, with a twist.

 

The basic idea is: take a shapeshifter mutant infiltrator (kind like Mystique). This woman has been working with some shadowy organization (secret services, black ops, you name it) for years, working under deep cover. One day, her employees decide she knows too much and has to be eliminated. She's ambushed under the pretense of a false mission, and attacked with a poison designed to strip her of her powers and severely weaken her.

 

Only, the woman survives, but as I said there's a twist: her powers are now severely limited and she can't change into any form older than a teenager. Maybe that was one of her last forms, or is somehow easier to keep, or perhaps she never was able to change into anything but a young woman in the first place.

 

Anyway, she only barely gets away. She's stuck as a kid, with no ID or money, and all her contacts would sell her away at a moment's notice. She needs to lay low as much as possible, so she decides that the best hiding place for a mutant teenager is - a school for mutant teenagers!

 

She manages to forge a convincing identity for herself and enrolls at Claremont, ready for the covert mission of her life.

 

There's potential for a lot of good writing and roleplaying here: she has to pretend being a normal teenager, fake the existence of said teen, keep a low profile on her real powers while trying to get them back... And, possibly, stopping a bunch of overeager teens from blowing her cover!

[Thevshi]

Well, there are a couple of possible issues with the background.

 

First, Claremont's existence as a school for metahuman teenagers (not specifically mutant) is not common knowledge.

 

Second, parts of the backstory are a bit of a stretch, given the headmaster of the school is the setting's Batman (ie the original Raven). 

[souffle_girl]

Well, he might be in on the thing. Maybe she called back an old favor from him

Edited September 30, 2014 by souffle_girl

[Thevshi]

Well, that is problematic in another way.  While Summers has certainly allowed students on campus that bring a certain amount of potential danger to other students with them, they were/are still teenagers/minors and usually not to blame for the situations they are in that create the potential danger.  It would be a bit uncharacteristic for Summers to allow an adult to come hide among his students, bringing potential danger to them due to circumstances that she is at least in part responsible for.   

[KnightDisciple]

Second, parts of the backstory are a bit of a stretch, given the headmaster of the school is the setting's Batman (ie the original Raven). 

 

To emphasize this point, his daughter, Raven II, is soon to become the headmaster at least part of the time, meaning that effectively you've got 2 Batmen running around, with their student (aka Robin/The-Batman-To-Be) also dashing about. 

[souffle_girl]

Moving on to option b then:

(Noooothing to do with me being in Ireland, or having just finished reading Neverwhere by Neil Gaiman )

Young girl is a changeling, her mother tried to tell her but she doesn't believe in magic, until the day she turns 16 and her full powers come online.

Problem is: she's the most unlikely fairy ever. She a rebellious, foul mouthed punk girl that goes around in leathers and band t-shirts.

Player Name: Souffle_girl

Character Name: Trailblazer

Power Level: 7

Trade-Offs: +2 Attack / -2 DC (unarmed), +3 Defense / -3 Toughness

Unspent Power Points: 0

Progress To Bronze Status: 0/30

In Brief: Teenage teleporter badly in need of a course in being a fairy.

Residence: Claremont High

Catchphrase: "Let's see where this door leads..."

Alternate Identity: Angeline Ross

Identity: Secret

Birthplace: The spirit realm

Occupation: High school student

Affiliations: (People and/or groups you work with)

Family and friends:

- Deirdre Ross: Angie's adoptive mother, owns a curio and books shop in downtown Freedom catering to the needs of the Arcane community.

- The Traveller: Nothing is known about Angie's real father, except for this nickname. He belongs to a once well respected, now declining, fairy clan and his powers are supposed to have to do with travelling through realities.

- Oliver: Oliver is Angie's cat... or at least that's what she thought. Until she found out Oliver is actually an underling of her father's, a fairy in cat form sent to Earth to watch over her. Oliver can telepathically communicate with Angie and can (and often will) take an incorporeal, invisible form to watch over her as a disembodied spirit. He provides her with protection against magic and watches her back, but also constantly reports to her father and is a hopeless prankster.

- Michael Forrest: Angie's boyfriend, Mike is literally obsessed with anything connected to superheroes. He's a nice guy, but quite nosy, and plays bass guitar in a band. The Traveller thinks he's not worthy of his daughter.

Description:

Age: 16 (DoB: Year [Optionally, Day & Month])

Gender: Female

Ethnicity: Apparently Caucasian

Height:

Weight:

Eyes: blue

Hair: blond, dyed dark red

Angie is quite tall, slender and usually dresses in denim and leather, in a typically punk style. Her blonde hair is dyed a deep red and she sports piercings in her right nostril and left eyebrow.

When in fairy form, Angie is a humanoid silhouette radiating golden light, with only eyes and mouth as defined features.

Power Descriptions:

-can turn any door or similar object into a portal for the spirit world, and she can travel through the spirit world to any other door. Similarly, she can guide people through the spirit world.

-can make short teleport jumps by "hopping" into the spirit world then back in the material world. When moving like this she can only bring inanimate objects with her.

-can 'shed' her human shell to gain an alternate fairy form, at the cost of being very noticeable and gaining weakness to iron.

-followed around by one or more guardian spirits that grant good luck and a few passive defenses (vs. Magic, uncanny Dodge...)

History:

Angeline, or Angie as everyone calls her, is Scottish in origin. She was adopted as a baby by a woman that everyone considered crazy, as she practiced a religion that drew from her homeland's pagan traditions. This meant Angie grew up as an oddball, the target of lots of stares and talking. On her part, while her mother truly believed in her stories of fairies and elves, Angie thought it was all a bunch of superstitions, but she still loved her mother.

When her mother lost her job, Angie and her moved to Freedom City, where her mother opened a small bookshop that sold occult and new age books. Once again, Angie was considered the odd kid. Growing up into her teens, Angie became less and less tolerant of her mother's quirkiness, completely disregarding all her talk about magic and the 'old ways', growing restless and rebellious.

All her view on the world changed on her 16th birthday. Her mother was very nervous that day, and Angie couldn't figure out why. She told her, however, that on that day she was meant to meet her real parents.

At noon, a strange man dressed in a traveller's clothes showed up at their door, claiming to be Angies's father. At lunch he told her he was simply known as the Traveller, and that he, like Angie, was one of the fae.

Of course, Angie barely managed to hold back her laughters, thinking this man must have been another crazy hippie her mother happened to sleep with, or even worse, one who abandoned his daughter to a friend.

Her amusement didn't last long. Her father smiled and, looking at the clock, he just said "It shouldn't be much, now."

Exactly 16 years after her first breath, Angie exploded in a flash of light as her human disguise crumbled, revealing a being of pure magic radiating an aura of awe. With a good amount of effort, Angie managed to pull the magic back and return to her "normal" form, but the magic was her to command, now.

Her father explained that she had been left on Earth, in the care of someone who still believed in the supernatural, to protect her. Her real family had many dangerous enemies that would undoubtedly target her if they could find her. Her time on Earth was not done: she had acquired her powers, but she needed to learn how to use them. And that's how Angie came to Claremont.

Personality & Motivation:

Angie is a fierce girl, used to fight for herself, and very proud. She naturally tends to take charge of things if left on her own devices and is usually at odd with people she sees as a threat to her freedom.

She has no desire to become a superheroine, but sees her time at Claremont as a necessary evil if she wants to learn how to protect herself and the people she loves from the enemies of her family.

Powers & Tactics:

Angie's powers allow her to travel through Arcadia in either short jumps or longer, more difficult journeys. She can also use doors as a medium to open portals to other worlds... virtually to any world, even if she's very afraid to venture further than Arcadia, as that would be a dangerous thing to do.

In a fight, Angie will typically apply a hit-and-run tactic based on short teleport jumps followed by a quick flurry of unarmed strikes. If she needs to fly, or when cornered, Angie can "shed the mask" of her human form and turn into Fairy Form, something she does warily as she's more easily detected by her father's enemies when in this form.

Complications:

Oathbound: Due to the nature of her people, Angie can never consciously break an oath or promise.

Oliver's pranks: Oliver is good hearted, but is a hopeless prankster and tends to cause mischief unless Angie keeps him at bay.

Hunted family: some other dangerous force is openly at war with her family in the spirit realm. Great displays of power or too much time spent in the spirit realm will attract their attention.

Nosy boyfriend: Angie's boyfriend Mike is a superhero fanatic and she absolutely needs to keep her superpowers from him.

Abilities: 2 + 2 + 4 + 4 + 6 + 6 = 24PP

Strength: 12 (+1)

Dexterity: 12 (+1)

Constitution: 14 (+2)

Intelligence: 14 (+2)

Wisdom: 16 (+3)

Charisma: 16 (+3)

Combat: 6 + 8 = 14PP

Initiative: +1

Attack: +3 Melee, +3 Ranged, +9 Magical Blade

Grapple: +3

Defense: +10 (+4 Base, +6 Dodge Focus), +4 Flat-Footed

Knockback: -0

Saving Throws: 5 + 6 + 4 = 15PP

Toughness: +4 (+2 Con, +2 [Defensive Roll])

Fortitude: +7 (+2 Con, +5)

Reflex: +7 (+1 Dex, +6)

Will: +7 (+3 Wis, +4)

Skills: 12R = 3PP

Diplomacy 4 (+7)

Knowledge (arcane) 2 (+4)

Knowledge (cosmology) 1 (+3)

Concentration 5 (+7)

Feats: 11PP

Attack Specialization (Magical Blade) 3

Dodge Focus 6

Defensive Roll 1

Power Attack

Powers: 12 + 12 + 11 + 5 = 40PP

Dimensional Walking 5 (10 pp array; magic, dimensional, Feats: 2 Alternate Powers) [12PP]

Base Power: Teleport 3 (Dimensional Backdoor, magic, dimension; Feats: Change Direction, Change Velocity, Turnabout, Easy) {10/10PP}

Alternate Power: Teleport 3 (Doorstep to Arcadia, magic, dimension; Extras: Portal, Accurate; Flaws: Long Range, Medium [door or similar object], Drawback: Must be in Fairy Form) {10/10PP}

Alternate Power: Super-movement [Dimensional movement] 3 (Dimensional Walker, magic, dimension; Extras: Affect Others, Flaws: Limited [requires a door or similar object as a medium), Drawback: Must be in Fairy Form {5/10PP}

Alternate Form 3 (Shedding the Shell, magic, Drawbacks: Action 3 [Full Action]) [12PP]

Alternate form features:

Enhanced Charisma (+10) {10PP}

Enhanced Feat: Fascinate (Diplomacy) {1PP}

Flight 2 {4PP}

Container (Oliver, 11PP Container, magic) [11PP]

Power Resistance 3 (Magic) {6PP}

Super Senses: Danger Sense (Mental) {1PP}

Enhanced Feats: Luck 2, Uncanny Dodge (Mental), Evasion 1 {4PP}

Strike 4 (Magical Blade, Magic, Feats: Mighty) [5PP]

Drawbacks:

Iron Vulnerability (+50% DC) [2PP]

DC Block

ATTACK RANGE SAVE EFFECT

Unarmed Touch DC16 Toughness (Staged) Damage (Physical)

Magical Blade Touch DC20 Toughness

(NOTE: The easiest way to get your DC Block to line up is to write it out in a word processor in a Courier font, then just copy/paste it into your post.)

Totals: Abilities (24) + Combat (14) + Saving Throws (15) + Skills (3) + Feats (11) + Powers (40) - Drawbacks (2) = 105/105 Power Points

Edited October 3, 2014 by souffle_girl

[KnightDisciple]

The one about door portals sounds like a Super Movement (Dimensional Travel [Limited: Doors or similar structures]).

Traveling through the spirit world to other doors sounds like a Teleport power, maybe with some flaws about long-distance only, time it takes to travel, something like that.

Teleport is easy, and I think there's an existing flaw that says you can't bring passengers.

Alternate form is easy, though if she's only PL7 you might be facing an issue of being pretty low PL if she can't transform. Unless the "Combat Form" is actually just swapping around your combat caps, from defense/attack shifted to toughness/damage shifted? Go from a lean and mean acrobatic machine to a big hulking fae brute? Up to you, either way. 

-The guardian spirits sound like a power or group of powers, perhaps in a Container (which is just a structure that doesn't add cost). The Complication for them sounds pretty solid. 

Edited October 1, 2014 by KnightDisciple

[souffle_girl]

I figure the travel through the spirit world would be actual movement, and could be narrated if necessary. It's really a walk through another place, where you could make encounters. Also, there's the matter of figuring out where and when you are, compared to the real world, something that will likely take a check of Knowledge (Cosmic). So I don't see it as a power as much as a narrative device, but since it would be arrayed with the dimensional gates and basic teleport, I'm not sure its actual point cost would matter.

 

Being in fairy form could actually be a prerequisite for her to use her more powerful stuff, such as opening gates, and would give her a boost to some stats (enhanced charisma and fascinate (diplomacy) comes to mind) but at the cost of giving her fey-specific weaknesses (iron weakness) and being *very* noticeable, especially for the bad guys looking for her and her family.

[Raveled]

I would ask what sort of end-result, what sort of effect, you want to achieve with these powers. Being able to step into Arcadia and step back somewhere miles away is a fine trope, but if everytime you Teleport a group the GM has to come up with a mini-adventure featuring the Fae, this PC isn't going very popular with GMs.

 

My suggestions: Array'd Teleport. One is short-range and normal speed, where she just steps into Arcadia for a moment, like how Kurt Wagner only spends moments in the Hell dimension when he teleports. The other is long-range and the Action is Flawed down to, let's say 1 minute; then you can narrate a little trip through Faerie-land when your use it.

 

For the combat form, I'd borrow a line from Captain Marvel; use Alternate Form with the Activation Drawback; that means there's a gesture or spell she has to cast to activate the form. Saves some points and opens up dramatic options when she's bond & gagged.

[souffle_girl]

OK, first draft of a real build. Criticize me!

It needs a lot of optimizing, I'm afraid.

Edited October 2, 2014 by souffle_girl

[Thevshi]

So, glancing at the character SG, see a few issues.

 

First, you need to fix the formating for your teleportation array.  It should be: Dimensional Walking 5 (10 pp array; magic, dimensional, Feats: 2 Alternate Powers) [12PP]

Similar for the Container.

 

More of an issue though is the limitation on the portal teleport and dimensional super-movement that you need to be in Fairy form to use them.  Given that you control changing into the alternate form, I am not sure this truly limits your use of the powers enough to qualify as a flaw.  Maybe a drawback.

 

Finally, in the container, there is no Luck Manipulation power, though there is Luck Control.  However, you cannot buy zero ranks of the power.  What you probably want there is Enhanced Feat: Luck 2.  You can tack on some ranks of Luck Control down the road when you get points to add to the Container.

[souffle_girl]

Corrected, and actually finished spending her PPs. However, the skill department could use a couple of extra power points. Someone sees a place where I can optimize?

[Thevshi]

Okay, looking a bit more closely at things, there are a few more errors/issues.

 

First, there is no Knowledge (Cosmic), there is Knowledge (Arcane), Knowledge (Galactic Lore) and Knowledge (Cosmology), the last two being houserule created.  Given your characters background, Knowledge (Arcane) is likely the most appropriate (as Cosmology includes a wide knowledge of various dimensions, and things like the Cosmic Coil and the Terminus, but your call).

 

There is no athletics skill, there is Climbing, Acrobatics and Swimming though, all separate.

 

Under feats, you have 8 ranks of Dodge Focus, but only use 6 in your defense, so you have two extra points spent here.

 

As to Angie's martial arts training....that seems just a tacked on way of meeting offensive PL caps and rather at odds with the character concept.  Her background and powers are all about magic and fae, but you make her only offensive abilities based on her having martial arts training that makes her a rather skilled hand to hand fighter, at 16.  While it is not uncommon in comics (or on this site) for a 16 year old to have such skills, it is usually the result of years of dedicated training (sometimes overly intensive training) and is often the core focus of the character.  This is even more unusual as your character lacks any of the feats that often part of being a skilled martial artist (other than the Attack Specialization Unarmed and Dodge Focus).

 

[souffle_girl]

What if I just swapped it with a magic blast? Or a magic short range attack, such as a magic blade?

Edited October 2, 2014 by souffle_girl

[souffle_girl]

I finally managed to scan a page of a comic featuring the characters I ppicture Trailblazer as looking like.

 

 

Myriam Leclair is one of the main characters in the italian fantasy comic Jonathan Steele.

She's the human incarnation of the Queen of Fairies, and as such she has a fairy form with a ton of magical powers.

 

The last comic of the first series, the one these tables come from, is a "fifteen years later" story where we're presented with Jonathan and Myriam's twin children. It looks like the girl twin, Lauren, took after her mother, and has a fairy form too.

 

I picture Trailblazer in fairy form as looking a lot like her.

 

For your reference: in the second panel Jonathan and his son are quite surprised at seeing Lauren like this, and the boy had never seen his mother in fairy form either. In the third panel, Lauren is wondering why she's suddenly glowing like a light bulb, and in the second page Myriam summons her magic sword and and tells her daughter to "do what I do and we'll eliminate this horror from the face of Earth"

Edited October 18, 2014 by souffle_girl