Leviathan (PL 10) -- Hulk Expy

[Blarghy]

Some notes and questions to follow in the next post. 

 

    

 

Player Name: Blarghy
Character Name: Leviathan
Power Level: 10 150/150PP
Trade-Offs: -5 Defense / +5 Toughness
Unspent Power Points: 0
Progress To Bronze Status: 0/30

In Brief: If Bruce Banner really, really wanted to be the Hulk.

Residence: A fantastic Midtown apartment comprising the top three stories of a high-rise complex.
Base of Operations: Secret lab owned anonymously in Riverside, disguised as an isolated apartment building.
Catchphrase: None

Alternate Identity: Doctor Tristan Delacroix
Identity: Secret
Birthplace: Freedom City
Occupation: Biologist, geneticist, non-practicing doctor, and all-around rich kid.
Affiliations: The Freedom Cross Institute.
Family: Alexander and Delvin Delacroix (older brothers, ages 31 and 28).

Description:
Age: 21 (DoB: May 7, 1994)
Apparent Age: Anywhere from his actual age to mid-teens, in the right lighting and outfits (to say nothing of when he Morphs).
Gender: Male
Ethnicity: Caucasian (French ancestry)
Height: 5’ 9” / 9’ 6”
Weight: 118 lbs. / 700 lbs.
Eyes: Brown / White with long, black, rectangular pupils
Hair: Black / None

In his daily life, Tristan is a slim, well-dressed, bespectacled young man with a face that will force him to show his driver’s license for every age-restricted purchase until he’s roughly sixty-five.  Most bars and nightclubs refuse to let him in at all without a bribe, thanks to his general demeanor of intelligence that screams “I can probably make fake IDs.”  His clothes, shoes, wristwatch, and personal electronics are visibly expensive, and so combined with his unintimidating appearance, he rarely walks alone at night for fear of being mugged or kidnapped (for which he’s had a special insurance policy since he was eleven years old). 

 

Leviathan, on the other hand, is a great big scaly monster with fists like cinderblocks.  Unsurprisingly, he very rarely gets mugged, and not just because he has no pockets. 

 

Power Descriptions: If you’ve seen one gang member get punched through a wall, you’ve seen them all.  More interesting is Leviathan’s regeneration.  His flesh knits itself back together with incredible speed—and first, any attack must pierce his thick plate-scales. 

 

Tristan, in his human form, also has the useful ability to mold his features as he wishes.  It was a stepping stone on his way to mastering the Leviathan transformation; these days he mostly uses it to leave his apartment complex without alerting the other tenants, and then onto some isolated place where he can fully become his hero self, away from prying eyes.  It’s also handy for avoiding his pesky older brothers.

 

History: Private tutors from the time he could talk, Cornell by age twelve, Harvard Medical School by fifteen (mostly to prove he could; both their hockey teams still hate him, of course), and at eighteen, the star of R&D at his family’s company, The Freedom Cross Institute…Tristan’s natural intellect let him zip through life from child prodigy to wealthy scientist so fast that he hardly had time to mourn his parents’ passing.  His father died when he was seven (bone cancer) and his mother at nine (tripping on her way out of the shower; not the most glamorous death).  A series of nannies, teachers, and full-time house servants primarily raised him anyway, which helped ease the transition. 

 

His parents had their hands full with the FCI, funded by old money dating all the way back to their family’s origins in Freedom City during the Revolutionary War.  They nurtured it better than their own children, hoping to make the world a better place via lifesaving pharmaceuticals and various biotech.  Finding tumors scattered up and down Wyatt’s spine probably redoubled those efforts.  Had they kept their eyes turned closer to home on occasion, though, then perhaps Tristan would be less independent, and his brothers less sour. 

 

Today, Alexander Delacroix owns the old family mansion on Lantern Hill.  The middle brother Delvin grudgingly accepts an equally opulent but less historic home in North Bay.  They manage the Institute with their combined majority shares, including Tristan’s, as he has no interest in the tedious board meetings and other tasks.  The brothers occasionally drag him out for public functions, but for the most part, he’s the cow whose milk supports their operations.  So long as he occasionally turns in a new piece of useful research, they’re content to let him hide in his lab or amuse himself in the city.  His distain for business and his ignorance concerning the end results of his hard work suits their purpose very well.

 

And thus, the problem: unbeknownst to him, his older brothers have eaten the core of something potentially wonderful and are slowly rotting it from the inside out.  The FCI was never a charity, but Alex and Delvin took whatever pretenses of goodwill it may’ve once had, stretched them into a thin veil to hide from public inquiry, and now use the corporation to rake in vast amounts of wealth even beyond their ancestral standards.  Greed consumes them; the Institute’s applications of Tristan and his fellow scientists’ research are paltry compared to that of the many shadowy groups that purchase anything they might find useful.  Biological weapons, controlled mutations, designer drugs—it makes no difference to the brothers, not that they typically know the outcomes at all.  Sometimes they’re unaware of their clients entirely—such as the Labyrinth, which has a casual interest in this useful, though ultimately expendable, pawn.

 

Meanwhile, Tristan has long been motivated not just by pride in his work (a factor, still) but by his own secret use of it.  He spent his childhood largely isolated from the outside world, yet still aware that he lived in the center of Earth’s superhero activity.  His lack of natural talents—beyond intelligence, which he couldn’t appreciate without an outsider’s perspective—depressed him for years, until he at last decided to take matters into his own hands.  If nature wouldn’t give him what he needed, then he’d create it himself.

 

He chose deliberately to specialize in biology and genetics, with a particular interest in marine subjects.  One discovery led to another, and another, and another—he leapt from fine-tuning his immune system onto manipulating the operations of his cells, and then to his very genome.  Finally, early this year, he achieved true transformation (and slightly less important, the reverse back to his original self).  Since then he’s enjoyed a handful of “field tests,” which he performs with a level of glee he feels isn’t proper for a hero who wants to be taken seriously.  He does his best not to giggle when he places anonymous calls to the police and races off into the night, leaving behind wrecked warehouses full of unconscious gang members. 

 

Personality & Motivation: Leviathan’s foremost motivation is heroism in and of itself—not so much for the goodness of a deed (which he feels to an extent and tries to cultivate in his heart), but the pride he takes in having, at long last, joined the ranks of Freedom City’s many defenders.  He worries he doesn’t live up to the ideal he pictures (in particular, he envies the Cowls and tries to emulate them, with mixed success).  Thanks to a decent amount of self-awareness, he realizes that being a hero is the sort of thing one achieves by having heroic goals, rather than the goal being heroism.  That only frustrates him all the more; the breakneck speed of his youthful education hasn’t cultivated much patience, and he’s accustomed to more straightforward endeavors thanks to a lifetime of school tests and neatly-contained classes.  Trying to be spontaneous is the opposite of spontaneity, and it drives him up the wall.

 

His lifelong fascination with heroes causes him to react predictably to them: anyone who’s well-established, or just vaguely familiar, is bound to get a positive (if deliberately gruff; he tries to maintain his image) reception.  Even unproven heroes like himself should have no problem making a new friend, although in their case, Leviathan finds it easier to see them as equals rather than heroes to a hero. 

 

In contrast, Tristan in his daily life is relaxed, confident, and dry.  He’s surprisingly personable for being so isolated; growing up fast meant he spent his time with older children, and then full adults, and so, his attitude seems more mature than his face. 

 

He loves his work, so he naturally spends hours upon hours in his lab (either publically at the FCI or privately in his smaller, personal facility, where he conducts Leviathan-related studies), but at least once a week he wanders through the city.  Often he wears a different face, but this habit began even before that talent; his brothers have long-since come to terms with him turning up in random places, Bill Murray style.  In doing so, he clears his head and entertains himself by meeting unfamiliar people.  Now that he can become the mighty and terrible Leviathan, he tours also in the hope of stumbling across something dastardly so he can punch the problem until it magically turns into a police report.

 

Powers & Tactics: Leviathan’s body is full of “smart” stem cells and a redesigned nervous system capable of directing them.  At their most basic, they allow him to change his features; lately, they repair grievous injuries and let him transform into a much larger, stronger, tougher version of himself—and even in his regular form, Tristan is hardier than the vast majority of humans. 

 

In terms of tactics, his are elegantly simple for someone who’s clever enough to normally get tangled in elaborate systems: find the bad people and punch them.  He’s yet to find someone who can hit back hard enough to make him regret this decision.  Thanks to deliberate exploitation of his muscle memory, Tristan is very good at physical abuse, and not terrible at range or weaponry.  At least he recognizes the potential for situations he can’t knuckle his way through, but it’s just so satisfying.

 

He’s nonetheless eager to expand on these core abilities.  From sea life alone, he has a wealth of inspiration: will he next try to make his scales change color like an octopus, to hide his enormous body and pounce on criminals unseen?  Will he take on the electrical touch of an eel?  He already modeled his scales after limpet teeth, and his regeneration on the humble starfish.  All kinds of sources are possible, but it’s traditional to stick with a theme, he supposes…

 

Complications:

“Aaaaaaahh!”: Leviathan sits on the fence between imagining himself as a brooding, outcast-by-the-society-that-misunderstands-him Cowl and wanting to be recognized and beloved by Freedom City for his good deeds.  He leans toward the latter when civilians and cops alike see him, assume he’s on the wrong side, and greet him not with cheers, but with screams and gunfire.

 

Foolhardy: There’s something about being able to take a rocket to the face, get back up after a moment, and walk away that makes a person overconfident.  Combined with his burning need to prove himself as a hero, Leviathan can easily jump head-first into more than he can handle.  His reflexes and willpower aren’t nearly as good as his physical durability, and there are ways to defeat a hero without leaving a scratch.  Leviathan is more likely to underestimate such threats than most; he probably won’t take this lesson to heart until he’s learned the hard way a few times.

 

Secret Identity: Tristan rightly suspects that his board of directors, let alone his brothers, wouldn’t appreciate knowing that he occasionally spends his nights as a punch-happy lizard monster.  He takes great pains to hide his activities, and a credible threat to his privacy will scare him more than any gun in the city.

Abilities: 0 + 0 + 10 + 10 + 0 + 4 = 24PP
Strength: 10/30 (+0/10)
Dexterity: 10 (+0)
Constitution: 20/40 (+5/15)
Intelligence: 20 (+5)
Wisdom: 10 (+0)
Charisma: 14 (+2)

Combat: 8 + 8 = 16PP
Initiative: +0
Attack: +10 Melee, +4 Ranged, +10 Improvised Throwing Weapons
Grapple: +10/+24
Defense: +5 (+4 Base, +1 Dodge Focus), +2 Flat-Footed
Knockback: -2/-11

Saving Throws: 0 + 4 + 4 = 8PP
Toughness: +5/+15 (+5/+15 Con, +0)
Fortitude: +5/+15 (+5/+15 Con, +0)
Reflex: +4 (+0 Dex, +4)
Will: +4 (+0 Wis, +4)

Skills: 64R = 16PP
Bluff 4 (+6)

Computers 4 (+9)

Diplomacy 4 (+6)

Disguise 0 (+2/+12)

Intimidate 5 (+7/+9)

Knowledge (Earth Sciences) 5 (+10)

Knowledge (Life Sciences) 15 (+20)

Knowledge (Physical Sciences) 5 (+10)

Knowledge (Technology) 5 (+10)

Language (Latin) 1

Medicine 8 (+13)

Notice 4 (+5)

Sense Motive 4 (+5)

Feats: 20PP

Attack Focus (Melee) 6

Attack Specialization (Improvised Throwing Weapons) 3

Benefit (Wealth) 3

Dodge Focus

Equipment 2

Improved Grab

Improved Grapple

Interpose

Takedown Attack 2

Equipment: 2PP = 10XEP

Headquarters: Private Lab

Size: Medium [1EP]

Toughness: +10 [1EP]

Features: [8EP]

Computer

Concealed

Fire Prevention System

Gym

Laboratory 2 [Masterwork]

Library

Security System

Powers: (All Mutations) 62 + 4 = 66PP

 

Leviathan Transformation Container 12.6 (Active, Drawback: Activation (Move Action) -1)  [62]

• Enhanced Ability 16 (Constitution) [16]
• Enhanced Ability 12 (Strength) [12]
• Growth 4 (Large, Strength +8, Constitution +4) [16]
• Regeneration 15 (Bruised, Injured, and Staggered 1/Round w/o Rest) (Feats: Regrowth) [16]
• Speed 3 (50 MPH, 500 Ft./Move Action) [3]

Morph 2 (Any Humanoid) [4]

Drawbacks: (-0) + (-0) = -0PP

DC Block

ATTACK        RANGE      SAVE                 EFFECT
Unarmed       Touch      DC 25 Toughness      Damage (Physical)

 

Totals: Abilities (24) + Combat (16) + Saving Throws (8) + Skills (16) + Feats (20) + Powers (66) - Drawbacks (0) = 150/150 Power Points

Edited December 24, 2015 by Blarghy

[Blarghy]

The only mechanical question I have (at the moment) is if there's a way (or a need) to tie his transformation abilities together, so that one of them doesn't get nullified by itself and leave the rest weirdly sticking around.  I considered the Normal Identity Drawback, but I can't think of a way he'd be reasonably prevented from transforming, so it doesn't seem to fit.  Though if I could get a full-round changing time in some fashion, that'd be suitable. 

 

The rest is fluff:

 

Looks like there have been a few other Leviathans over the years here, but they're all in the Archives, so I assume the name is up for grabs, yes?  If not, I'm open to other suggestions on a name.

 

I picked the name of his family's company without much enthusiasm; I'm only tentatively attached to the Freedom Cross Institute.  It's a blend of the city's name and the family name (Delacroix to Cross), and it makes me think of the Red Cross (a public image of goodness the two older brothers want to cultivate), so I guess it's functional.  But if anybody has other ideas, I'd appreciate it.

 

I think that's it for now.  He should be fun to play; there's a lot of potential for trouble from his civilian life (kidnapping attempts ahoy!), and he's basically in the hero business for the same reason I signed up: because he thinks it's cool.  Lots of room to grow into new abilities or just expand old ones, and the first Veterans award I get is going to net me a tricked-out underwater lab just off the coast, with uplifted aquatic minions.  I'm thinking some shark guards and a talking octopus Alfred Pennyworth. 

[N/A]

Attack Specialization (Unarmed) doesn't add to your grapple bonus.  Only base Attack, Attack Focus (Melee), or Attack Specialization (Grapple) does.

 

"The only mechanical question I have (at the moment) is if there's a way (or a need) to tie his transformation abilities together, so that one of them doesn't get nullified by itself and leave the rest weirdly sticking around."

 

You could put all his powers into a Container (see Ultimate Power for details).

[N/A]

Also, I would invest a point in Interpose.  And possibly some Leaping, so he has a faster way of getting around than just walking.