Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

[Memona]

I've made my share of strange characters over time. One of the ones that I've always wanted to try out was MMOGIRL, a character who gains her powers from playing too many Online Games. She was empowered by a Singularity that sucked her into the game yet at the same time placing her soul outside of the game. It just doesn't make sense!

I have also made one other character that would measure as strange. He whole concept that he knew he was inside of game and thus he metagamed! His stats were odd and his powers even stranger. He even had a nice power metagame power. What was it you ask? Detect Character Sheet. His name was, you guessed it, the Character Sheet.

Anyways:

MMOGIRL

Value Cost
15 STR 5 HtH 3d6 Lift 200kg END (3)
20 DEX 30 OCV 7 DCV 7
13 CON 6
10 BODY 0
10 INT 0
15 EGO 10 ECV 5
10 PRE 0 Presense Attack: 2d6
30 COM 0
3 PD 0 10 (20) rPD/13 (23) PD
3 ED 0 10 (20) rPD/13 (23) ED
5 SPD 30 Phases:
7 REC 0
26 END 0
36 STUN 0

MMO Powers

11 Mana Pool: 60 END, 2 REC, 6 REC if sitting
20 Link Death: Invisability to Sight, Hearing, Smell, Touch, Taste and Radio groups, Cannot Move, OAF
8 l33t Speak: 3d6 Suppress INT, OAF
30 Nerf Powers: 3d6 Suppress Powers, the highest point power a character has, OAF
10 Lack of Customer Service: 6d6 Mental Illusions, only to show that something failed that seem to be your fault but was because something suddenly stopped it, OAF
23 /tell: 5d6 Telepathy, Megascale, Anyone on Planet Earth as long as you know their FULL name, Communication Only, OAF
30 Macro Attack: 8d6 EB, Autofire: 5, OAF 3
3 /shout: +10 to PRE attacks, Can speak loudly over a mile, OAF
15 Spam shout: 25" Darkness to Hearing Group, OAF
18 Utility Map Programs: Radar: +14 to PER checks, OAF
3 In game Clock: Absoulate Time Sense, OAF
15 Alkhazam's Realm: Find Weakness, 14- with Macro Attack, OAF
67 Respawn System: 20 BODY Healing, Regeneration, Trigger PLUS Teleportation, Megascale, Gate, Leaves a Corpse Behind that must be retrieved to gain any powers back, OAF
8 Fully Buffed: 10 rPD/10 rED Forcefield, Extra Time to Activiate: 1 minute, OAF
15 l33t Purple Epic Armor: 10 rPD/10 rED Armor
3 Con: Analyze: General Power 11-, OAF
15 Lag: 3d6 Drain SPD, OAF

Disadvantages
10 Physical Limiation: When in hero form, pestered by idiots and horny teenagers
10 Distinctive Features: Large bosumed woman with 1 and 0s around her spandax costume
25 Hunted: The GMs
20 Hunted: Code Versus Killing
15 DNPC: Code programmers, 16x
20 Secert Identity
5 Rival : Men dressed as women

[wcw43921]

Most of my strange concepts are villains rather than heroes. This is one of them--


SLEAZEBALL--The ultimate slob. So disgusting is he in his appearance, manners and demeanor that people desire their utmost to ignore him. He is able to psionically tap into this desire to make himself, for all intents and purposes, invisible and inaudible. He uses this power to take just about whatever he wants or needs to survive (not unlike Christopher Eccelston's character on Heroes) and to observe beautiful women in the act of undressing or fornicating.

[Hermit]

Spyder-Robots can make good superheroes, but most of them look, act, and want to be human. Spyder looks like its name sake (admittedly much bigger) and while it does not hate things of the flesh, it has no desire to be one.

I know, that may not seem weird, but I've never played it or seen it. :)

[Bloodstone]

Long ago, we played a game where the GM said you could play anything you wanted.

Tom: Can I be a sentient sphere of energy with the power to warp reality?
GM: Sure. So , Dave, what do you want to be?
Dave: I'd like to be a giant cube that eats sentient spheres of energy...

[DocSamson]

I am currently playing a Sewer Worker turned Superhero. He was exposed to toxic radiactive waste that was discarded into the sewer system. He has the ability to create and project a super-adhesive glue-like substance (based on the USPD II section on Glue Powers) and is the self proclaimed protector of the city against sewer alligators. He also has a high level of the Access Perk to represent his ability to navigate the city using its sewer network. His name is...Sludge.

[Lord Liaden]

Gibraltar was my superhero PC for a short time years ago. He had great power to commune with, animate and control earth and stone, being one with them. That's because "he" was a rock. A real honest-to-Betsy piece of granite, roughly spherical and about half a meter in diameter. Not a magically-animated elemental, not someone turned to stone. He'd been around for billions of years, gradually evolving to sentience. He moved over most of the planet due to glaciation and tectonic shift, and had "seen" the whole panoply of life evolving on this world. He long had a fondness for the short-lived organisms, but only became directly involved in their affairs when an intelligent species (humans) emerged. Gibraltar was the basis for a number of legends about enchanted stones around the world, such as the Omphalos and the Stone of Scone.

Gibraltar was generally benevolent and protective of life, but took a long-term, "greater good" perspective that occasionally put him at odds with other PC heroes. I always played him as calm, patient and methodical, which aggravated a couple of the more impulsive PCs (in a good role-playing way). ;)

[GoldenAge]

Though my characters have been relatively mainstream, I've GMed some silly (and great) characters:

Mr. Squeak: Originally "named" subject J-296, Mr. Squeak was just a hooded lab rat used as a test animal for the World War 2 (WW2) super solider program. One of the few test animals to survive the process, he mutated into an intelligent telepathic rat. After "talking" with the scientists he was assigned to fight the Nazis and saw some limited direct combat action though his forte was intelligence gathering and subterfuge.
Current day Mr. Squeak secretly roams the walls of the Viore Mansion keeping careful watch over Epic City's new brand of hero.

Caffeine Girl: Powered by the mighty combination of continuous triple espressos Caffeine Girl uses her "jitters" and titanium travel cup to zip around Epic City combating crime (and single-handedly supporting no less than 6 independent coffee houses in the 3rd 4th and 7th districts)

NOTE: These characters were created by Barton (a regular on the HERO site) and his wife. Though they only played a limited time, their characters are still a fun part of my game.


BTW Bloodstone... Mr. Squeak WAS traipsing around in the Viore mansion walls at the same time your team resided there. Unfortunately, he never found an appropriate moment to reveal himself (though once he did send out a subtle mental message to Quartermain). ;)

[GoldenAge]

Oh, I forgot about Scrap!

Scrap was an inner city youth with the ability to create anything from junk. Unfortunately, all of his constructs immediately entered into an accelerated state of decomposition and would only last a few seconds before they turned to bodiless rust, dust or goo.

[Cancer]

Fulminus was a warped villain (He didn't think he was evil, but he'd been, shall we say, exposed to way too many explosions) who could make inanimate objects explode (bought as an RKA, limited to nonliving matter, with an explosive effect equal to the Body of the object but happened only if the object was reduced to zero Body by the RKA). His main shtick was robbery, where he'd do stuff like make cops' guns explode in their hands, and explode the tires of the vehicles chasing after him. Once he put a toilet seat around a hostage's neck....

[Certified]

Long ago, we played a game where the GM said you could play anything you wanted.

Tom: Can I be a sentient sphere of energy with the power to warp reality?
GM: Sure. So , Dave, what do you want to be?
Dave: I'd like to be a giant cube that eats sentient spheres of energy...

Funny you should say that...

After playing a ton of CoH I wanted to do something that could not be emulated in the MMO and so Fallout (http://www.herodesigner.com/viewCharacter.htm?id=205324) was born. He's your run of the mill giant mass of radioactive energies held together by force of will.

[jkwleisemann]

Hmm... well, Sparky's pretty clear, as is Puss in Boots (at any rate, most people thought that Puss was a strange concept). Links can be found elsewhere, or I'll hunt 'em down and repost by request.

A lot of my strange concepts actually come out of Lovecraft and similar things, so I don't know if it's fair to include them....

Though, actually, Fred the Nameless Extra's always been a fun one. Never actually *played* him in a game, but I've had him show up here and there, and he's always enjoyable to play - the guy's pretty much resigned to his inevitable fate by now.

A couple others were odd more by culture than by base concept - particularly my aliens. More than a few people have been weirded out by Mjolnir's long-standing refusal to accept that he actually *has* a personal identity (or, for that matter, that he's actually a person in more than the strictest biological sense - everybody just calls him Mjolnir because that's the model of power armor he was issued by his home planet), and while I never got to play Stranger long enough, I often found myself wondering how the other char's would have reacted to the fact that "he's" one of three genders from his world that literally had no equivalent on Earth.

Of course, if you count psychological instability as making for an unusual concept... well, then we'd never get out of here. :p

[Plex]

The oddest character I created was for our Aqua Force team. I created Man-O-War, an alien from a water planet that looked a lot like our jelly fish here on earth, except roughly humanoid shaped. (Picture a large jelly fish on top of a humanish body.) The jellyfish on earth were actually something akin to our satellites and rovers for exploration for this species, so he could communicate with them. Unfortunately no one called him Man-O-War, they just called him Jellyfish Man, and it stuck. I'll have to see if I can find the write-up. If I remember correctly, he was pretty effective but couldn't get too far away from the water for extended periods without help.

[Mister E]

Here's the quote from StarHERO that inspired a strange character idea from me:


Can the character work with others? A water-breathing alien in a crew of air-breathers is going to have problems, as will a dinosaur-sized being aboard a ship built for Humans.

Dinosaurs belong in space, even if it takes affirmative action to make it happen.

So, I envisioned a cyborg Tyrannosaurus Rex that can remotely operate a synthetic human as a handy interface for dealing with the 'people-world.' He's originally from an alternate virtual reality where dinosaurs rule "Planet of the Apes"-style... a world that functions way faster than the shared default reality of the campaign. He's been fitted with the memory engrams of his paternal ancestry back to the genesis of his native virch, which makes him something of a Bene Gesserit among T-rex's... and his skin has been enhanced with a bright glowing thought-reactive video material so that he can radiate whatever amusing images he wishes to, right on his massive body, just like it's a dinosaur shaped movie screen.

I was thinking he'd make a great brick for a cyberpunk space-opera. The kind of crewman that's known for biting the heads off Wookiees when he's not waxing on about some bizarre ancient Saurian allegory that he thinks is pertinent to the situation. Plus, I like the idea of potential romances his synthetic human body might have. It's sad, but Tyrannosaurus Rexs in fiction don't get many chances to do mushy scenes normally. You might even think of it as a glass-ceiling for dinosaurs trapped in this 'Man's World.'

[Balabanto]

Well, actually, the weirdest concept in Legacies is Lady Polarity, who has the power of Weak Force Control. That's right, she controls submolecular cohesion.

It sounds stupid, but sadly, she's phenomenally powerful for her point total.

[Spidey88]

Spyder-Robots can make good superheroes, but most of them look, act, and want to be human. Spyder looks like its name sake (admittedly much bigger) and while it does not hate things of the flesh, it has no desire to be one.

I know, that may not seem weird, but I've never played it or seen it. :)


Ha! It's obvious you've never roleplayed with me before!

(3 or four Rifts/Heroes Unlimited characters I've played have fit that summary pretty well...)

[Hermit]

Ha! It's obvious you've never roleplayed with me before!

(3 or four Rifts/Heroes Unlimited characters I've played have fit that summary pretty well...)

Heh. :) Fair enough

[Zeropoint]

I guess this isn't all that strange, but for a while, I've wanted to play a character who got eaten by a shoggoth . . . but somehow in the process, his consciousness over-wrote the shoggoth's. This would create a human in a shoggoth's amorphous shape-shifting body, but with a shoggoth sub-conscious.

I thought it might have interesting roleplaying opportunities.

[Mister E]

I guess this isn't all that strange, but for a while, I've wanted to play a character who got eaten by a shoggoth . . . but somehow in the process, his consciousness over-wrote the shoggoth's. This would create a human in a shoggoth's amorphous shape-shifting body, but with a shoggoth sub-conscious.

I thought it might have interesting roleplaying opportunities.

This seems totally plausible to me. A wicked concept for a metamorph.

[AdamLeisemann]

Well, if I were to get into any discussions of strange hero concepts, I can't ignore Renn "Reinard The" Fox, who could best be described as having the mind of Batman and the body of Roger Rabbit (though, actually, he's a fox, but you get the idea)

Another brainchild that my brother put into stats was K. Dogma, originally a mutant canine M. Bison (a' la Street Fighter). This one was a villain, however.

And then I have Lab Rat, who while far from strange in concept (a genius genetic throwback who resembles a Kangaroo Rat and has the powers of infosponging and invention), he certainly could be considered wierd for the ways his geekiness comes into his gadgeteering, like a Nintendo Wii-mote becoming a lightsaber, The Powerglove becomming a telekinetic device ("I still gotta work out some flaws." "Flaws?" "Yeah. It's still crap for games.") and the fact that the pestbots are stored in devices that look uncannily like pokeballs. And soon, he may be converting a Robosapien into something.

That's all I have to say for now.

[DocSamson]

I guess this isn't all that strange, but for a while, I've wanted to play a character who got eaten by a shoggoth . . . but somehow in the process, his consciousness over-wrote the shoggoth's. This would create a human in a shoggoth's amorphous shape-shifting body, but with a shoggoth sub-conscious.

I thought it might have interesting roleplaying opportunities.

Repped for coolness.

[Arkham]

I have a few that may or may not qualify as strange. I hadn't thought they were ( mostly ) when I wrote them up, but others I've shown them to have.
I've a character similar to Caffeine Girl above, called appropriately enough Javaman! He is a barrista who when he ingests caffeine gains Totally Awesome Powers of Running Hella Fast, dude. Sounding much like Keanu Reeves, he, with his partner and best friend Fidgit, save the day, and the hotties from the evil forces of Baron de Cafe.

Bingo the Clowno is a detective, investigating crimes as he travels with his circus. He also metamorphs into a GIANT CLOWN, or a micro clown. He shoots rockets from his belly button, his head inflates into a hot-air balloon ( and a propeller pops out the back ), and his shoes inflate for great bounciness, and he has a circus in his pants ( which he only pulls out on special occassions ). His archenemy is the vile Ku Klux the Klown!

Senor Mysterio is a luchador, and one of the greatest masters of the ancient secrets of the Mexican Mystic Arts.

And though he wasn't a PC, Landshark is often quite entertaining. A shark who swam into the SF Bay and swam through a cloud of toxins that had been dumped in there, he gained sentience, arms, incredible strenght, and the ability to... move, somehow, on land. Kinda like Jabber Jaw, we don't really question how he walks on his tail fins. He was a villain for the longest time, but has since reformed, having taken inspiration from a film. "People are friends, not food." is his new motto. He's on parole, working as a delivery boy at various places. He was the UPS driver that delivered to the West Coast Supers. *knockknockknock* Landshark!

[T. K. Bertram]

In the current supers campaign at the Rat's Nest the title of "strangest superhero in Millennium City" goes hands down to Hardpoint: an invulnerable seven foot tall Scottish-born Chinese soccer hooligan. :doi: Utterly without fear (or for that matter anything even within shouting distance of a self-preservation instinct), Hardpoint would head butt (his signature fighting move) Galactus if that entity ever showed up.:eek:

The truly sad part is that despite his utter inability to even consider a plan and his complete incomprehensibility (the rest of the team is mostly of Northern American extraction and have difficulties with his exceedingly thick Glasgow accent), Hardpoint is the de facto team leader. :jawdrop:(Of the other characters on the team, Doctor Cranium (the mentalist/psychiatrist) is the subject of too many rumors concerning his moral character [he's been accused of being an extra terrestrial who keeps a harem of beautiful earth women]; Jammer (the gadgeteer) has a well known romantic fixation on a local supervillan; Jack (the team brick) actually has a day job; Dr. Pope (now retired from the team and working for the MCPD forensics department) was disqualified during her tenure for being an android; Zero Strike (the martial artist/detective) is too new to the team; and Mage is trying to keep as low a profile as he can, being an immortal.)

[Zed-F]

Scissor Queen, his partner Rockhard, and their adopted son Paper Boy.

[yamamura]

Ariel and Jinx, Two teen-age girls with one mind between them. Actually Jinx is built as a duplicate for Ariel with a mind link that even other dimensions can't break. Ariel tend to use her Jinx body as way to release urges that she would not do as Ariel. Basically practical jokes and general wildness.

[Kevin Schultz]

1. An anime-themed character I'd like to play (in a villian game) is as someone who has a polymorphic aura - it always returns positive when queried by a magic spell, regardless of the question. The practical effect is that he can use any piece of mystical gear, as most magic only queries for the positive: "are you my rightful owner? Yes." The character works as a mystical bounty hunter, hunting down magical sentai teams for their stuff. He's also got a menagerie of magical animal companions, each of which is convinced that he's the "sole true heir to <whatever>" or "the last reincarnated princ(ess) of <something>".

2. A grizzeled, John McLain-type character who has the power of cutsie 80's cartoons (Care Bears, Smurfs, Snorks, etc.). Other than that, he's a standard shotgun-toting, trenchoat-wearing, Dark Champions character.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Well, actually, the weirdest concept in Legacies is Lady Polarity, who has the power of Weak Force Control. That's right, she controls submolecular cohesion.

It sounds stupid, but sadly, she's phenomenally powerful for her point total.

Now THAT'S a character sheet I want to see.

One old character for another system that I'll have to do for Champions sometime is Centerfold. Centerfold has the power to animate photographed objects, and switch both them and herself between being two-dimensional and three-dimensional. If she can find a picture of something, she can make it real.

What's odd is that Centerfold herself is exactly such an image, a compromising photograph of a celebutante brought to life by the Magister, a nasty mage in the campaign, to be used as a toy. But he did the job too well, giving her free will (and more brains than the original). Of course, people are constantly mistaking her for her "original" and vice versa. To avoid even more confusion she tends to dress modestly "off the job" and prefers to associate with fellow "misfit" heroes like her teammates Bottom (a brick with a donkey-like head -- yes, he was born with it) and Tech-Man (an otherwise ordinary guy who has an alien supercomputer implanted in his brain).

[Drhoz]

I played a Thermal Detonator Sales-gibbon once.

[Drhoz]

I guess this isn't all that strange, but for a while, I've wanted to play a character who got eaten by a shoggoth . . . but somehow in the process, his consciousness over-wrote the shoggoth's. This would create a human in a shoggoth's amorphous shape-shifting body, but with a shoggoth sub-conscious.

I thought it might have interesting roleplaying opportunities.


altho one hopes he never visits the penguin enclosure at his local zoo.

[input.jack]

I played a Thermal Detonator Sales-gibbon once.

I fear you.

[Susano]

I was able to play Algernon Patrick Emerson (A.P.E.) as a PC for a few sessions: http://surbrook.devermore.net/original/champions/ape.html

[Susano]

Well, actually, the weirdest concept in Legacies is Lady Polarity, who has the power of Weak Force Control. That's right, she controls submolecular cohesion.

It sounds stupid, but sadly, she's phenomenally powerful for her point total.

And what does that mean? Exactly?

[Hermit]

A Ninja with Duplication, and aids with triggers that boost him up when his numbers are reduced, to show that many Ninja are a cakewalk, one Ninja becomes unstoppable!

;)

[death tribble]

Weird heroes ? Well there was the British Bulldog who was an ordinary man changed into a walking, talking Bulldog. He had a wife and child before the change. Couldn't see colour and had to pant to keep cool.

Last was United States Marine Corpse. The Marine who proves 'Semper Fi'. Once a marine always a marine ! Even unto the next life.....

With villains it is easier. No-one seems to question a Giant Snail with an artillery piece on its metal shell which is also festooned with guns and radar who talks with a cut-glass British accent.
Or a Mafia boss who is a dinosaur bird a Pterradon or Pterra Don.

[WarriorKnight]

Years ago several friends wrote up Transformers,& I was in a very silly mood & wrote up Erogenous Prime!!!The description line for him was"He's a big D**K."Don't think I ever ran him,but I've still got the write up some where.

[transmetahuman]

1. An anime-themed character I'd like to play (in a villian game) is as someone who has a polymorphic aura - it always returns positive when queried by a magic spell, regardless of the question. The practical effect is that he can use any piece of mystical gear, as most magic only queries for the positive: "are you my rightful owner? Yes." The character works as a mystical bounty hunter, hunting down magical sentai teams for their stuff. He's also got a menagerie of magical animal companions, each of which is convinced that he's the "sole true heir to <whatever>" or "the last reincarnated princ(ess) of <something>".
I don't watch much anime, but I think that one's really cool (and funny). Wouldn't work in any of the games I've played in; he'd be more likely to just keep detecting as evil, undead and lying - but in the right kind of world, awesome!

[Hainted]

Biscuit Pete-Hit by a mystic beam of energy he can produce hot flaky buttery biscuits at will.

Martina-Pete's girlfriend who was hit by the same beam and can now urinate any alcoholic beverage she has ever tasted.Works as a bartender.

Embiggens-Able to double his height with a proportional increase in strength,and endurance.Unfortunately he's 3 feet tall.

[Kevin Schultz]

I don't watch much anime, but I think that one's really cool (and funny). Wouldn't work in any of the games I've played in; he'd be more likely to just keep detecting as evil, undead and lying - but in the right kind of world, awesome!


heh. Yeah - the negative consequences of such an ability are what lead him to a life of crime; after the fifth devil hunter beat down his door to slay the evil villain within, he kinda gave up and just went with the flow.

[Michael Hopcroft]

And what does that mean? Exactly?

It means she can fundamentally alter the structure of matter. All matter. it's one of those meta-powers that, in the hands of a creative player (and this sounds like a very creative playr) can wreak untold havoc on a campaign.

[Michael Hopcroft]

Martina-Pete's girlfriend who was hit by the same beam and can now urinate any alcoholic beverage she has ever tasted.Works as a bartender.


If the Health Department has any say in the matter, no she doesn't. :ugly:

[CandidGamera]

Do almost-rans count?

I was in a great Legion of Superheroes game - it was set millenia after the usual era, and was a new group of Legionnaires. I played a pregen (all the initial batch of characters were pregen) called Chlorophyll Kid II.

However, I was keeping a few backup concepts in my pocket in case something should happen to him.

We'd had some amusing references crop up to previous eras, including the 20th century DCU, so in keeping with that an our lack of a magic-user, my first-choice backup guy would have been a descendant of John Constantine, a modern day magic-user. Except, instead of John's clever, rude, and brash nature, this one would be polite, calm, and rational.

That's right, he was -

Neville Constantine, Heckblazer!

[BoloOfEarth]

JD: A formerly normal-human bounty hunter, his body was destroyed but his brain saved and put into a jar, mounted atop a robot body. He could detach from this body, which could fight independent of him.

Metar: Alien nano-swarm.

Subliminal: Team mentalist and the sixth member of S-Squad. Actually, Subliminal doesn't exist. He's a figment of the PC heroes' imagination, invented to make foes *worry* about a never-seen mentalist. They drop his name every now and then, in battles or during interviews, just to keep everybody guessing. If one of the heroes is asked directly about Subliminal, that hero gazes at nothing with a blank expression and say in a dull, hypnotized-type voice, "Subliminal? I have no idea who you're talking about."

[Mister E]

Back in the 90's, I was brain-storming for a "What If?" marvel campaign; and thought of a new version of Spider-Man that was actually Bruce Banner having been bitten by a gamma-radiated spider.

The costume was a purple and green version of Spider-Man's classic red and blue costume.

His powers were based on his spider-sense. The more danger he detected, the faster the character's reflexes became... in the same way that the Hulk gets stronger the more rage he has... to the point that this character should be able to survive on the cosmic-level of superheroing.

I never figured out a way to build this power, unfortunately. Probably would be best to use Desolid... but... oh well.

[Weldun]

Swarmling A city spirit that inhabited the bodies of 250 rats, all at once, and could get them to cling to each other in a vaguely humanoid shape.

Legend A metamorph who transforms into the physical embodiment of the Legends of Folk Heroes. See my folk heroes thread (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=58415) for more details.

Bill A magical sword. A really magical sword.

Bombardier A superhero who was cursed with theme music. Any time somebody referred to him in his presence, an otherworldly marching band would play military fanfare. ("You know, that guy" *cue music*).

Whisper A soul eating shadow daemon working for the prince of evil himself. One problem, he's been bound to a paragon of innocence, and must fight for truth :angst:, justice :sick: and brotherly love! :help:

Loon Back in 4th ed, Loon was the unfortunate result of Merry Andrews attempt at making a team mascot. Thus Loon, the living cartoon was born. He once intentionally got "tagged" just so he could spraypaint (i.e. tag) the letters "I" and "T" on TeeHee.:sneaky:

[CrosshairCollie]

One character type I've never really done is the Mr.Fantastic/Plastic Man style stretcher. I've done a couple of robot characters with telescopic limbs, but it's not the same, but to avoid obvious comparisons I was trying to avoid the mutant or altered human origins.

Which led to me to 'artificial' (another of my favorite character schticks, robots and constructs) ... essentially, the character would be a rubber golem.

Then I started trying to figure out why in the hell anybody would make such a thing, and let the idea go when I realized I couldn't think of any reasons that didn't go into some really weird territory.

[Comic]

This isn't so much a strange concept character of mine, as the strange thing that happened to him when he ran into a strange concept character of the GM's.

The GM wanted an 'evolution-based' Superman-like character for himself. He started out with "just the things a person would 'naturally' evolve by growing up." Superstrength, high DEF, flight, life support, x-ray vision. I'm not entirely sure how those are natural things to evolve growing up, but it's his character, I'm not raining on his parade.

My hero character, however, couldn't resist the urge to force the evolution-guy into developing strange powers by exposing him to unusual evolutionary pressures. Extra limbs, by handing him too many things to hold at once over and over until he had to sprout the spare arm. Fins and gills. Mammaries..

[Brandi]

Though my characters have been relatively mainstream, I've GMed some silly (and great) characters:

Mr. Squeak: Originally "named" subject J-296, Mr. Squeak was just a hooded lab rat used as a test animal for the World War 2 (WW2) super solider program. One of the few test animals to survive the process, he mutated into an intelligent telepathic rat. After "talking" with the scientists he was assigned to fight the Nazis and saw some limited direct combat action though his forte was intelligence gathering and subterfuge.
Current day Mr. Squeak secretly roams the walls of the Viore Mansion keeping careful watch over Epic City's new brand of hero.


I had a hand in creating Mr. Squeak as well, although my version, for a proto-Teen Champions game (a teenage setting, but before the official book came out) was more an attempt to see what the other players would do when faced with a character who was intelligent as they were, but tended to have an animal's moral sense (frex, the concept of property rights didn't really click with him on a deep level-- if someone wasn't using something, why couldn't he?). It never quite worked in the game (I think as much as the concept being a bit odd, my own emotional f**kups at the time were not making me a good gamer), and then Barton asked if he could use the idea but revamped him into a more fun Golden Age hero.

Here's (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5108) the thread in which I first brainstormed Mr. Squeak. Glad you guys have had fun with it!

[Mojo_Bones]

The Heckler- while not a very odd concept (just a silly kind of Batman type really) had a very fun (for me) disadvantage, hero worship. He picked one of the other PCs at the beginning of the campaign and decided he was the best superhero ever! He would go around telling hero and villain alike how the hero could defeat them any time he liked. He was very well off and even took out newspaper ads talking about how great the hero was. I think the worshiped hero really should have gotten a rep out of all of the publicity.

[CrosshairCollie]

The Heckler- while not a very odd concept (just a silly kind of Batman type really) had a very fun (for me) disadvantage, hero worship. He picked one of the other PCs at the beginning of the campaign and decided he was the best superhero ever! He would go around telling hero and villain alike how the hero could defeat them any time he liked. He was very well off and even took out newspaper ads talking about how great the hero was. I think the worshiped hero really should have gotten a rep out of all of the publicity.

Heh. A new power!

Greatest PR Firm EVER: +2d6/+2 Reputation, Useable Against Others.

[GoldenAge]

I had a hand in creating Mr. Squeak as well, although my version, for a proto-Teen Champions game (a teenage setting, but before the official book came out) was more an attempt to see what the other players would do when faced with a character who was intelligent as they were, but tended to have an animal's moral sense (frex, the concept of property rights didn't really click with him on a deep level-- if someone wasn't using something, why couldn't he?). It never quite worked in the game (I think as much as the concept being a bit odd, my own emotional f**kups at the time were not making me a good gamer), and then Barton asked if he could use the idea but revamped him into a more fun Golden Age hero.

Here's (http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?t=5108) the thread in which I first brainstormed Mr. Squeak. Glad you guys have had fun with it!

We did have fun... And you can rest assured that your creation will haunt the walls of the Viore Mansion for as long as it stands! :thumbup:

(Of course, it being a hero HQ and all... There's no guarantee that it'll stand for ever - :eg:)

[Weldun]

(Of course, it being a hero HQ and all... There's no guarantee that it'll stand for ever - :eg:)Now there's a reason to hold on to the 30 xp for a radiation accident. "I died? Okay, I come back and haunt you all! Mwahahahah!":D

[Dawn Darke]

Oh wow! A smorgesboard of cool ideas to ste---urr, be inspired by.

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thumbup::thum bup:

[GoldenAge]

Now there's a reason to hold on to the 30 xp for a radiation accident. "I died? Okay, I come back and haunt you all! Mwahahahah!":D
Are you suggesting that one day I incorporate the ghost of a highly intelligent, hooded black and white lab rat imbued with mental powers by a WWII super-soldier formula testing into the reconstructed walls of the Viore Mansion II???

SWEET!
Now that's a strange character concept....


GHOOOOOOOOOST RAAAAAAAAATTT!!!

[Weldun]

Are you suggesting that one day I incorporate the ghost of a highly intelligent, hooded black and white lab rat imbued with mental powers by a WWII super-soldier formula testing into the reconstructed walls of the Viore Mansion II???Yes. That is exactly what I am suggesting. If I were to list every weird character that I remember playing, I would probably end up making my largest post ever.
SWEET!
Now that's a strange character concept....


GHOOOOOOOOOST RAAAAAAAAATTT!!!

If you do a write up, I want a copy.:thumbup:

[Dawn Darke]

Yes. That is exactly what I am suggesting. If I were to list every weird character that I remember playing, I would probably end up making my largest post ever.

If you do a write up, I want a copy.:thumbup:

Heck, please post it for everyone's fun. :D

[Weldun]

Actually, with one of my players looking over my shoulder as I type, I am reminded of the fact that I invented Killer Furbies. My PCs nicknamed them "Furbinators" after they discovered that they were actually 8" tall robots that resembled T-800s. These robots would rip the guts out of Furbies and climb inside them, animating when their purchasers least expected it and then murdering them.

[ParagonAlpha]

I had a character that only was played once but he resulted in alot of mocking, me getting upset and everyone else loving the character.

His name was Street Elemental.

In his hero form he appeared as a 7' tall walking, humanoid pile of the inner city; concrete, bricks, chain link fence and graffiti. Imagine if a whole section of "the hood" got up and walked away. Street Elemental had a very distinctive voice, an almost unintelligible "ghetto" speech, think Leon Phelps, the Ladies Man (http://imdb.com/title/tt0213790/) from SNL.

In his non-heor form he was a small, mousy lawyer from the suburbs, along the lines of Wallace Shawn (http://imdb.com/name/nm0001728/)


It was about as wierd as I got. Unless you want to count the first character I ever made for Champions way back in 1984. You know back in the "Holocaust beating a guy on the cover, look there are staple in my book, Mark William is a god!" days.

I made a character named Nightdevil. He was a martial artist (1.5x STR Punch, 2x STR Kick) who was blind but could teleport because he had radar vision. (My apologies to Nightcrawler and Daredevil).

He now that I think about it that was well before Amalgam every came out, I should sue.

[Phantom Jack]

A sadly abortive campaign I played in followed the team OUTCAST (I had a cheesy acronym, something like "Opposing Unusual Terrorist, Criminal, And Subversive something"), a team organized in the '70s out of the superhumans too weird to fit in elsewhere. The present day lineup was:
The Clockwork Cowboy, a 19th Century robot gunslinger, constantly belching smoke and with gears for eyes, etc.
Grix, Alien Arcane was an alien gardener in touch with the mystical natural forces of the universe, exiled for not watering the rhododendrons. His species was reviled for being pompous, stuck up jerks. He was a small, blue, hairless humanoid permanently inside a floating, crystal sphere. That could shrink to marble size on command.
Dr. Cameron St. James, the Science Skeleton was a glowing green radioactive skeleton due to a dreadful accident in a radiology lab that transformed him into a living X-ray. He's still one of the greatest surgeons around, but many patients fear either his cold, bony talons or constant, low-level radiation signature.

[DocSamson]

I'll break the mold a bit as this was run as a villain, but he certainly could be played as a hero. He was alot of fun to run as his powers were greatly underestimated by the team until the combat started.

Jack Gusher (name legally changed, real name unknown) is an Oil Tycoon and CEO of Gusher Enterprises. He is a brilliant inventor in the fields of mechanics, electronics, and chemistry and made a fortune from his design for a high-efficiency oil rig. Bored with his wealth, he designed a high-tech suit of (diesel) Powered Armor and became the super powered thrillseeker known as Pumpjack. His powers are based on (you probably guessed it) oil!

His more frustrating powers included:
"Frictionless Oil Coating" Desolidification (not vs. fire), cannot pass through solid objects
"Frictionless Oil Spill" Change Environment, -DEX, dex roll or fall down
"Viscous Oil Spray" Sight Group Flash with Area Effect Cone
"High-Pressure Oil Blast" Energy Blast, double knockback with penetrating knockback
"Ignite Flammable Oil" Energy Blast, 0 end continuous uncontrolled (stopped by anything that puts out fire), only vs. targets that have been hit with one of the other oil attacks
"Ignite Oil Slick" as above but Area Effect Radius

[Blue Jogger]

Vindicator - Werewolf disguised as a guy wearing a wolf-themed armor. (Helmet would clamp shut to prevent him from bitting people, but he would break if he tried hard enough.) He would playback recorded phrases as he was often too entralled with bloodlust to speak normally. He had a bionic ear and eye which wasn't much better than his supernatural senses, but had HRRH so that he could transmit what was going on.

"Hello. I'm Vindicator, I'm hear to help." (Snarl, Grrr...)

[jkwleisemann]

Along the lines of Vindicator, I'm reminded of one of my bro's first characters - Cyberwolf, a cybernetic werewolf trapped in her hybrid form by the mechanical bits.

[Enforcer84]

Inspired by Marvel Superheroes' Avengers Book, an adventure called Avengers Experimental Franchise, where the PC's got to play Avengers in their home towns. Complete with Tryouts.

So for the tryouts I decided to go with people who had "legitimate" superpowers but some were impractical at best.

Brentman: A child with the ability to assume the form of an adult version of himself. That's it.

Angora: Cat Girl. High on Flirtation. Low on actual combat ability

The Champ: A disgraced former Pro-Wrestling champion (Steroid user made example of because he was asking for too much money) did the talk show circuit and talked about his 'fall from grace' and his desire to start over. Athletic but not a great fighter, his career had been mostly show before, and while he didn't actually expect supervillains to bump for him, it was tougher than he thought it would be. SPent alot of time arguing and fighting with Scorpio-7

Crimson Magus & Libram: Apprentice mage with an intelligent magic book (Libram). The book was a better spell-caster but could lend it's power to him. He wore it like a backpack.

Godiva: Scantily clad martial artist with "Bullet Proof nudity" and a "Flash" based power.

Scorpio - 7, basically what if Batman had been from a pro wrestling family.

Skyhigh - 14 year old girl who could grow to be 18 feet tall.

Commando - a former green beret

Scout - his 13 year old daughter/sidekick

Beaverman - Slightly crazy "embodiment of the State of Oregon"

Captain Cardinal - Self styled religious leader/survivalist

Vault Man - Heroic version of Marvel's Batroc the Leaper.

[psychonaut_raz]

I had a cult-type group in a Marvel game I was running called the Children of the Beyonder, and while there were some that had more traditional comic book powers of strength/speed/etc, there were a few I threw in just for the weirdness aspect...some of them from memory:

Bleach, whose only power was to remove the color from anything

Dandelion, whose power was to become a cloud of dandelion spores...originally his was just a silly throwaway power with little applications outside of getting into air vents etc etc, but as the game went on he started using his spore form for choking and blinding attacks and changed his name to Spore.

And my favourite, Forget-Me-Not...a mutant with one uncontrollable power that was always on. Once he was out of someone's field of perception, that person would completely forget about his existence. He had to make sure he always had at least two of his own teammates around him at all times just so that he would have a couple of people to vouch for him that they actually knew him as one of their own...

Oh, and there was an NPC hero I made up as well for a team of characters with time-based powers: Fast-Forward. His power was to be able to transport himself forward in time (and only forward), but he didn't ever develop any kind of precognition to go along with it, so it had extremely limited combat applications because he was never really sure what he'd be getting himself into on the other side of the trip...

[sinanju]

The Murderous Man-Bear, a villain who gained his powers when he was bitten on the leg by a radioactive Kodiak Bear while hunting in Canada. In addition to being huge and hairy, very strong and equipped with lots nasty, sharp pointy teeth and claws, he had a high-tech peg leg--it was Kodiak Bear, not a spider--which included a jump-jet for superleaps, a flame thrower, and a swivel base for spinning kicks with his clawed feet.

Speed Freak - A kid whose mutant metabolism reacted to speed (meth) by giving him superhuman speed and dexterity. It also left him completely wired and jittery, and he alternated between speed and downers that would allow him to sleep.

Power Man - Millionaire industrialist Derek Wright by day, costumed superhuman brick by night. Only "Derek Wright" was also a secret identity--a human-appearing exoskeletal suit of armor worn by LEAH Wright, who created Derek as a front man for her own works of genius because she was convinced that the world would never recognize her true worth because she was a woman.

[BNakagawa]

Angora: Cat Girl. High on Flirtation. Low on actual combat ability


I've been playing this character since 1st ed. Except that she's a gunbunny.

[CandidGamera]

And my favourite, Forget-Me-Not...a mutant with one uncontrollable power that was always on. Once he was out of someone's field of perception, that person would completely forget about his existence. He had to make sure he always had at least two of his own teammates around him at all times just so that he would have a couple of people to vouch for him that they actually knew him as one of their own...

I had an NPC in my Noir Supers game something like that - his codename was Damper and he was, in essence, an emotional vampire. He had an always-on aura that passively fed on the emotions of those around him - it manifested primarily in two effects:

1.) An area of effect always-on bonus to Mental Defense vs. emotion-based attacks.

2.) A bright-fringe invisibility power - essentially, people could see he was there, but his aura caused them not to care about his presence unless they were specifically looking for him. The players joked he was the perfect NPC. "Hey, where's Damper?" "I've been here with you for five hours." "Oh, there he is!"

He also could focus his emotion-drain powers into an "apathy attack" - which, if I recall correctly, as an Ego Drain.

[BoneDaddy]

The Chinatown Defenders consisted of:

Plato, a two foot tall rat mentalist with an area effect mental illusions attack.
Ho-Tai, a very large animated bronze statue of Ho-Tai who thought he WAS Ho-Tai, trying to bring paradise to his people.
Maestro, a wizards pet kitten, armed with a magic-based super suit and a wand.
Master Pai, a wizened blind martial arts expert, slow but deadly with a staff.

The campaign world was nifty, somewhere between Jademan comics and Big Trouble in Little China. I might revive it someday.

[DocSamson]

I don't think this one is strange but my group seems completely freaked out by it.

Prime-8
A genius-level intellect mutant research gorilla (experimental subject no. 8 of the ApeX Project). His powers are loosely based on bad silver age gorilla stoylines (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gorillas_in_comics). He has augmented his gorilla physique to near gorilla perfection (super simian serum), he can grow to giant proportions (inventor of the Kong Particle), and he can transfer his mind into a human body (Animal Magnetism (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal_magnetism)).

[Lord Mhoram]

Here is one of the strangest concepts.

A shapeshifting mini-brick (50 STR*, 10 D, 75% reduction). He can shapeshift into any form, and is a stretchy guy. Add in a chunk of amnesia, and he's an alien, who is unfamiliar with earth culture. And talks by vibrating the air with his skin.

Oh, and he is green, and looks like a man sized amoeba. :)

Yes I actually play that one. That would be Meeb. :)

Couldn't let a "strange concepts" thread go by without a mention of good ol' Meeb. :)

* When the STR cap is 80, that is mini.

[Enforcer84]

I read somewhere about a guy who had a character who's schtick was "Ancient Martial Artist" not blindingly fast, but powerful punches, seemingly perfect defense, always seemed to block or dodge the blows.

Turns out it was all SFX...

He had 60 STR 18 DEX 30PD/ED and a 4 SPD the whole martial arts aspect was merely colorful combat description.

[Psylint]

My favorite was...

Revanche: an otherwise normal, if totally put upon, ill used, misunderstood young woman from Paris, who suddenly manifests the ability to "Get Even." Essentially Revanche had a bundle of skills, a Mimic Power Pool, and a multipower filled with high level Transfers additionally limited to "the equalization point" i.e. when the total amount of points Revanche had in the transferred power equaled that remaining on the target.

Neat concept, I thought, but mechanically still haven't figured out how to swing it.

Peace

[Enforcer84]

12 SPD, with the limitation can only be used on phases 1-7 (-1/2)

[palaskar]

A couple that I wanted to make for the Gestalt setting:

Superpope: On the eve of his death, Pope John Paul II watched the moon ecplise (sp?) the sun. He was then transformed into SuperPope, fighter of all things evil and ungodly. Has the Popemobile and the "red phone" -- a telephone line to God. (I haven't statted out the points for that Contact...:D )

Hmm...comes out at +2 for a basic 11-, +7 to 18-, +3 for very useful skills, +1 for access to major instituions (sp), +1 for significant Contacts of His own, +1 for good relationship...15 points. That doesn't sound right.

Elvis: It's Elvis. An immortal Elvis. Who is spectacularally popular, holds an 8th black belt in Ed Parker's American Kenpo MA style, and can summon legions of Elvis impersonators at will. He can also change between agile, handsome "thin Elivis" and rubbery, fat "fat Elvis" at will.

[Cancer]

Background: My current Champions character ("Mr. Terrific") is a non-combat scientist type with a Multiform power with charges. He takes one of four types of Power Pill (of his own making), and goes into the alternate form matching that pill. Each form is limited to a maximum of 2 minutes duration, and he can take each pill no more than once in 24 hours. He can "abort" out of one form into another by taking another pill (assuming he has one that he hasn't already taken in the last 24 hours), but otherwise he has to wait for the 2 minutes to expire to get back to base form. Finally, he's incapacitated by the change back from any super form to base form ... I don't recall the details, but it's a full turn long.

So, this guy is super for no more than eight minutes a day, and is super in a particular fashion for no more than two minutes at a stretch.

(The forms are nothing creative ... there's a mentalist form, an electricity-based energy blaster, a speedster, and an "invulnerable form" with buttloads of defenses and damage reduction.)

Anyway, over lunch, one of the other guys asked what it'd take to get him super for a longer time ... and, of course, it's +5 AP to double the number of forms in a Multiform. So to get 24 hours of super-powers, you need 720 different pills. 512 forms (getting you to 17 hours a day, probably all you need) is 9 doublings, of which Mr. Terrific has already got two.

Of course, now you have to specify 512 different alternate super-forms, which limits this nonsense from the player side. Then there's the mechanical question of how you pick exactly which of those 512 you get at any particular form-shift ... a bottle that holds 500 pills is nothing too onerous, but finding the green pill with silver spots among all of them in the bottle is a bit of trick....

But the discussion wandered off toward how you'd try to get that many forms in a "quick and dirty" way, and I recalled the mechanic I used for a random shapechange trap back in an old D&D game: Roll 3d10, take the result as the digits of a page number, open an unabridged dictionary to that page, go down the page until you hit an appropriate noun, that's what you get. I suppose you could double up on this idea, do it again for an adjective. Somehow, make up a suite of powers that match the adjective-noun concept you just generated.

Now ... rapidly getting silly here, as we spouted out things like "Firey Slug! Sloth-Man!" and so on ... assuming you can somehow make up a power suite on the fly, take that concept and make the entire Multiform Uncontrolled, so that the power suite you get is random each time you pop a pill.

If I could concoct a fast quasi-random character generator, it'd be a hoot to try this idea out. But it'd have to be more versatile than just a different Energy Blaster with a different sfx set....

[Psylint]

One I've always wanted to do, but never had the GM hand wave the AP cap violation

Archetype: x4 Duplication, +1 totally altered. Essentially the character (Jungian Psychiatrist by day) summons from within himself psychic projections of the collective unconscious archetypes: Warrior, Martyr, Wanderer and Shadow. So instead I got stuck with a Multiform, personality loss, reversion etc. Still workable, but kinda miss the schtick of the original idea.

Peace

[BNakagawa]

Elvis: It's Elvis. An immortal Elvis. Who is spectacularally popular, holds an 8th black belt in Ed Parker's American Kenpo MA style, and can summon legions of Elvis impersonators at will. He can also change between agile, handsome "thin Elivis" and rubbery, fat "fat Elvis" at will.

Please, it's "The King".

thankyewverymuch

[wcw43921]

Please, it's "The King".


Hey--he said Elvis, not Jack Kirby. :D

Hail To The King. :king:

:hail::hail::hail::hail: