[OOC] Four Horsemen [Finished]

[mrdent12]

Still recruiting for a bit, so you have a week and a half to get a character made. If you are going monster, keep in mind the base form is human. Morphing into a monster is fine though.

[mrdent12]

For the mind swap on death, unless you have some instant die power, at PL12 a normal gun or even damage power at rank 12 or 17 even isn't a certain four degree of failure unless you have low toughness or can disable your toughness.

[Bladewind]

hey Spec... for your power, a little late but what about:

Summon 12
Heroic, Triggered - Death of Character
Limited to Prepared Thrall, Character Must Die for power to activate.

That would be 3 points per rank and a little pricey... I could see it dropping to 2 points if you added the "self-powered" flaw to represent that the new character doesn't just appear next to the dead character...

[mrdent12]

Summon 12 could work, but as I understood it the idea was the thrall didn't need to be right next to the character on death in addition to it only being the mind. So, I imagine the idea is to die in some fashion, than jump their mind to one of their thralls somewhere else.

[Bladewind]

Which would justify the "self powered" flaw... but, as I said, just an idea.

[Spectrum]

I need to tweak the concept some. The key power ended up costing around 130 pp. *gasp*

[mrdent12]

Whatever you come up with, I suggest you hit PL for defenses and offenses. Just because the world hasn't had super powered people before doesn't mean there won't be a balance lurking out there for the mergence of the horsemen. Also, they don't need to be a one person world destroying machine. Thats why there is four horsemen. The structure of the game will be to hit three milestones ie break three seals if possible and then have the final battle after the initial coming together.

[FuzzyBoots]

I feel a bit bad that we already have someone with a swarming power, but I figure Zzzzt is distinct enough.

Zzzzt - PL 12


Strength 0, Stamina 0, Agility 0, Dexterity 0, Fighting 2, Intellect 2, Awareness 3, Presence 0

Advantages
Close Attack 8, Fearless, Hide in Plain Sight

Skills
Expertise: Entomology 6 (+8), Insight 6 (+9), Perception 8 (+11), Stealth 21 (+21)

Powers
Alternate Form (Swarm) (Activation: Free Action, Advantages: Close Attack 8)
. . Affliction (alt): Concentration Cumulative Affliction (alt) 12 (1st degree: Impaired, 2nd degree: Disabled, 3rd degree: Incapacitated, Resisted by: Fortitude, DC 24; Concentration, Cumulative)
. . . . Damage: Burst Area Damage 6 (Alternate; DC 21; Burst Area 4: 250 feet radius sphere, DC 16, Selective)
. . . . Damage: Shapeable Area Damage 6 (Alternate; DC 21; Shapeable Area 4: 250 cft., DC 16, Selective)
. . Flight: Flight 2 (Speed: 8 miles/hour, 120 feet/round)
. . Immunity: Immunity 7 (Critical Hits, Interaction Skills)
. . Inhabit Other Bugs: Teleport 6 (1800 feet in a move action, carrying 50 lbs.; Extended: 60 miles in 2 move actions; Medium: Insects)
. . . . Remote Sensing: Remote Sensing 12 (Alternate; Affects: 2 Types - Hearing, Smell, Range: 16 miles; Medium: Insects)
. . Insubstantial: Insubstantial 2 (Gaseous; Progressive)
. . Hide as insects (Advantages: Hide in Plain Sight)
. . . . Change Composition of Insects: Morph 2 (Linked; +20 Deception checks to disguise; Narrow group)
. . . . Enhanced Trait: Enhanced Trait 7 (Linked; Traits: Stealth +21 (+21))
. . Senses: Senses 7 (Detect: Insects 2: (Ranged, Acute, Analytical, Extended 2 (x100), Rapid (x10))
. . Enhanced Trait: Enhanced Trait 36 (Traits: Dodge +9 (+15), Parry +6 (+7), Stamina +8 (+24), Will +5 (+11))
. . . . Large Form
. . . . . . Enhanced Trait: Enhanced Trait 12 (Traits: Dodge +9 (+6), Parry +3 (+1))
. . . . . . Growth: Growth 12 (+12 STR, +12 STA, +6 Intimidate, -12 Stealth, -6 active defenses, +3 size ranks, +12 mass ranks, +1 )

Offense
Initiative +0
Affliction (alt): Concentration Cumulative Affliction (alt) 12, +2/+10 (DC Fort 24)
Damage: Burst Area Damage 6 (DC 21)
Damage: Shapeable Area Damage 6 (DC 21)
Grab, +2/+10 (DC Spec 10/22)
Throw, +0 (DC 15/27)
Unarmed, +2/+10 (DC 15/27)

Languages
English

Defense
Dodge 3, Parry 4, Fortitude 4, Toughness 4, Will 6

Swarm Form: Dodge 12, Parry 9, Fortitude 12, Toughness 12, Will 12
Giant Form: Dodge 6, Parry 1, Fortitude 16, Toughness 16, Will 6

Power Points
Abilities 22 + Powers 142 + Advantages 1 + Skills 7 (20 ranks) + Defenses 8 = 180

Complications:

• Inhuman — When transformed, Zzzzt is noticeably longer human
• Instincts — Zzzzt can be distracted if the things appeal to the insects that he is currently inhabiting.
• Vulnerable — Zzzzt has additional weakness in accordance to the insects he's inhabiting. Insecticides will hurt him more. Smoke will make him sleepy.
• Power Loss — Zzzzt depends on masses of insects to grow in size. His attacks, especially the Affliction, are also dependent on what insects are making him up at the moment.
• Disability — Zzzzt has limited fine control, dependent on getting the insects to move precisely in concert. The GM can invoke this to give him additional skill checks or penalties for tasks involving fine motor control when in swarm form. Also, he effectively has no additional lifting strength from Growth, as even insects working in concert have difficulty moving much.
• Responsibility - Zzzzt feels called to purge the Earth of the pollution of humanity, and to otherwise conserve the world.

Background
Melvin Throckmorton was a relative nobody, a self-styled "eco-warrior" who never really accomplished a great deal for the cause despite his best efforts. He protested. He wrote stern letters to his congressman. He posted daily on Facebook. And then, one day, a golden opportunity fell in his lap. He heard online that the downtown University of Pittsburgh's campus was engaged in an attempt to genetically modify honeybees. They claimed it was to protect the bees against the varroa mite and neonicotinoids, but Melvin knew better. Anything GMO was evil, and probably funded by Monsanto to destabilize the local ecosystem so that they could better market their pesticides. In a daring nighttime raid that involved breaking a windows and crawling in (cutting himself rather badly on the glass), he found the lab and released the bees. He wasn't entirely certain which species were being modified and so he released them all, and crawled back home to bandage his wounds and sleep the sleep of the just.

That night, nothing much of event happened. A few weeks later, the world was still merrily ticking along, saved by Melvin's actions. And then, people began to die. One of the swarms Melvin had released were hybridized Africanized bees, which proved unusually adept at displacing the native swarms. They then started attacking the interlopers in the locations they had colonized, which happened to be residential neighborhoods. People went to sleep, and never woke up, covered in blankets of bees that smothered and stung them to death, and then used those houses as staging points to expand. Too late, the city realized what was happening and tried to exterminate those bees, but it was too late. Resistant to traditional pesticides, an entire neighborhood was lost before the swarm was drowned in poisonous gasses. The measures taken salted the Earth, leaving the area uninhabitable, and Mother Earth moaned. And then, the contagion spread. The descendants were less aggressive against humans, and thereby escaped notice initially, but they still supplanted the native population, and they were not geared to pollinate as the prior species had. Mother Earth grieved again, and something cast out for the one to blame.

One night, Melvin went to sleep, and died, suffocated by a swarm of insects that cocooned his body. What arose was no longer entirely Melvin, but rather an intelligence that recognized the greatest threat to Earth, humanity, and very willing to use any method to protect the remaining biosphere.

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[FuzzyBoots]

So tempted to use this image from this article as Zzzzt's picture...

[mrdent12]

I like the second picture fo Zzzzt myself. Makes it feel creepier. As for the character as a whole, it is different enough from the other swarm type character well enough with each filling a specific type of role despite the overlap. The back story is also interesting so long as the area effected by the bee's is small or remote enough to not draw too much national attention to be the main story. Maybe the scientific/activist circles would go on about it, but the rest of the world would see other stuff as bigger.

Complication wise, there is some good ones to work with to tie the character into the story well. "Vulnerable - Physical Area Attacks bypass his Insubstantiality as they smash large parts of the insects that make him up." is already built into insubstantial 1. Its insubstantial 2 would give you immunity to physical attacks, but not area. Insubstantial 3 would give you immunity to all physical attacks. 2 and 3 though would require affects corporeal extra on all the attacks though. That is if I read the sheet right, it is a bit late.

Other than the above, I don't see anything off right now with the character. Despite it's low defenses, growth plus the regen should help compensate for always being hit.

[Flynnarrel]

Kaito will think of him as the Horseman of The Heebie Jeebies, who rides the Buzzy Horse.

[Tony Jones]

OK, here's my idea for a character:

Extinction
Power Level 12, 180 points

Background
Cécile Agbepa is a young woman from the eastern part of the Democratic Republic of Congo, essentially the worst place in the world. Along with many others she was captured, orphaned and enslaved by one of the many warlords of the country, abused, made pregnant several times, giving birth to a girl each time, and forced to work mining the minerals that the rest of the world found so valuable. She was intelligent with a good memory, which helped her with the work she had to do, but made things, if anything, worse. She gradually came to hate all people, but hid her hatred deep inside as it would do her no good. It was only when she had the opportunity to sabotage the mining work that she let her hatred out. Many people died in fire and water, including her family and children, but she did not care. She expected to die too, and in fact she did. But she got better and awoke filled with the power to make humanity pay for the evil that it was so very good at...

With no official identity anywhere, and no money, she lives by theft, taking what she needs when she needs it.

She reads a lot - this is how she has used her newly enhanced mind to educate herself - and usually carries a high end ebook reader.

Description
In her default form she is a small, wiry young woman, apparently in her early twenties, with an unsmiling face. Her eyes seem much, much older than the rest of her, with thousand yard stare. When she uses her powers she can look like anything or anyone.


Powers
Her powers consist mainly of control of her own body, including changing its shape and size, including the ability to gain other powers by shapeshifting appropriately, extreme toughness and healing abilities, and a highly enhanced sense of smell.

She can also create an independent creature from herself, a large, savage monster. When she creates it, It forms out of her (usually from her hand), coming from the same place she gains and loses mass from as she changes size, then detaches as a separate entity; it has its own mind, but she has a mental link with it, and it can take damage for her if necessary. It is not hostile to her. If she lets sends it away it quickly shrinks down to nothing and disappears. She calls the monster Samael, after the angel of that name found in Judaism.

Her powers have also enhanced her intelligence to superhuman levels. As part of her enhanced mind she can now learn languages inhumanly quickly.

ABILITIES
Strength -4*/0/16**, Stamina 1/17**, Agility 0, Dexterity -1,
Fighting 0, Intellect 12, Awareness 7, Presence 0
Total: 38 points
* When Shrunk, ** when Grown

SKILLS
Close Combat: Unarmed 8 (+8), Intimidation 6 (-2*/+6/+14**),
Perception 15 (+22), Stealth 0 (+16*/0/-16**)
Total: 11 points (taking into account 3 ranks per point for non-combat skills)
* When Shrunk, ** when Grown

ADVANTAGES
Diehard, Eidetic Memory, Great Endurance, Hide in Plain Sight,
Jack of All Trades, Takedown - 1, Well Informed
Total: 7 points

POWERS
Monstrous Body (40 points)
Immunity - 6 (Ageing, Disease, Poison, Sleep, Criticals)
Regeneration – 10, Persistent - 1; Immortality - 1
Protection - 15, Impervious Toughness - 6

Shape/Size Shifting (73 points)
Morph - 4
Variable Descriptor on Strength Damage - 1 (Bludgeoning or Slashing)

Array: Shapeshifted Configurations (20 points)

1. +10 Impervious Toughness (10 points)
   [Armour plated form]
2. Insubstantial - 1, Movement: Slithering, Elongation - 3 (60 feet at human size) (1 point)
   [Blob form]
3. Damage - 6 (Str Based), Variable Descriptor on Damage - 1 (Bludgeoning or Slashing),
   Elongation - 1 (15 feet), Fast Grab, Improved Hold
   [Armed Form; damage tops out at PL limit as she grows]
4. Swimming - 9 (250 mph), Immunity: Water Breathing (1 point)
   [Fish-like form]
5. Speed - 8 (500 mph), Quickness - 2 (1 point)
   [Cheetah-like form]
6. Flight - 8 (500 mph), Winged - 8, +2 Impervious Toughness (1 point)
   [Chitinous insectoid form]
7. Swimming - 1 (4 mph), Movement: Environmental Adaptation: Underwater, Extra Limbs - 2,
   Immunity - 3 (Pressure, Cold, Water Breathing), Accurate Hearing (1 point)
   [Squid-like form]
8. Movement: Wall Crawling - 2, Extra Limbs - 4, Speed - 2 (8 mph) (1 point)
   [Spider-like form]
9. Leaping - 7 (1000 feet), Movement: Safe Fall, +1 Impervious Toughness (1 point)
   [Leaping form]
10. Burrowing - 7 (8 mph), Direction Sense, Accurate Hearing (1 point)
    [Burrowing form]
11. Extended Vision - 2, Infravision, Ultravision, Low Light Vision,
    Extended Hearing - 2, Ultrahearing, Accurate Hearing (1 point)
    [Extreme sense organs; compound eyes, strange ears etc.]

Array: Transformation Powers (34 points)

1. Growth - 16 (32 points)
   [+16 Str, +16 Sta, +8 Intimidation, +2 Speed, -16 Stealth, -8 Dodge, -8 Parry, +4 Size Ranks (120 feet tall)]
2. Shrinking - 16 (1 point)
   [-4 Size ranks (4 inches tall), -4 Str, -2 Speed, +8 Dodge, +8 Parry, +16 Stealth, -8 Intimidation]
3. Summon - 10, Active - 10, Mental Link, Sacrifice (1 point)
   [Summon Samael]

Senses (6 points)
Olfactory is Acute, Ranged, Accurate, Tracking, Extended – 1 (6 points)

Ear for Languages (3 points)
Comprehend – 2 (Languages) [Speak and Understand], Quirk: Takes a Scene to Pick up a new Language (3 points)

Horsewoman Powers (0 points)
Communication Link: with Other Horsemen (0 points)
Awareness: Sense Other Horsemen (0 points)
Total: 124 points

DEFENCES
Dodge +8*/+0/-8**, Parry +8*/+0/-8**, Fortitude +1/+17**, Toughness +16/+32** (Impervious vs Damage Rank 6), Will +7
Total: 0 points
* When Shrunk, ** when Grown

OFFENCE
Initiative +0
Unarmed +8, Close, Damage -4*/0#/+2/+6##/+16**, Critical 20
* When Shrunk, # when Shrunk in Armed Form, ## normal sized Armed Form, ** when Grown

COMPLICATIONS
Motivation: Hatred of Humanity; humans are evil scum to be wiped from the Earth. All of them. Even children as just growing into their evil.
Temper: People in uniform put her on edge, and if they do anything that she perceives as hostile, either to her or to others, it can send her into a rage.
Quirk: Loves to Gloat; she wants to return to the scene of her crimes to revel in the deaths and what she has done. She does this in different forms, but someone might might notice a pattern.
Penniless: With no official identity anywhere, and no money, she lives by theft, taking what she needs when she needs it, including places to live.

STRENGTH
Lift 3 lbs* / 50 lbs / 1600 tons**
* When Shrunk, ** when Grown

POWER POINT TOTALS
Abilities 38 + Advantages 7 + Skills 11 + Powers 124 + Defences 0 = 180

[Spectrum]

Hey there.

Figured out that my initial mechanical concept isn't going to work out with point costs. A little sad because I had a bunch of ideas on how to theme the concept and was just going to need to pick which one of those to go with.

That opens things up considerably and I have three ideas. I'm curious what other ideas you folks have first or if you have any suggestions.

'Toxic Masculinity'- (Henry Rollins is model) uberbully, violent criminal, a powerhouse build. Strength, durability, maybe some enhancements for damage and/or terror. I love playing a good stupid brute.

Speedkills- sin: running car into a mass of Others at a rally, goes really really really fast, kills people by crashing through them and enjoys the feel of blood splattering over their skin- never lasts long enough.

The Doctor- sin: medical experimentation, Mengele is inspiration, not cruel rather intensely fascinated by the way that the human body works and how to improve it. They would have various abilities related to vivisection (damage and affliction) and a headquarters to create monsters.

Anyway, I hope that at least one of those ideas is worth further pursuing. Let me know. Thanks!

[catsi563]

Still working on Death got some mechanics in mind just fighting this cold/flu or whatever it is

[mrdent12]

I'll look over Extinction when I get home.

For the three ideas Spectrum.

1) The dumb brute could work, but not too British as the response the the PCs actions will be proportionate and getting too brutish will elicit a greater show of strength in the future. Also, it might give the overall goal of the PCs away to the wider world.

2) The speedster is always good idea as well. It's a classic trope and turned full evil could be fun. Like the first idea though, restraint should play a part otherwise it will make it thougher for the subsequent mission.

3) the mad doctor idea shows promise. Technology is where it is at now, so any monstrous creations would flow from your power.