Aematlon - WIP (5th Ed.): Advice welcome

[Comic]

Aematlon - Jim Adams

 

Value Char Cost Base Price Roll Notes [END]

 60 . STR . 50 . 10 .  1  . 21- 12d6, 100 Tons [6]

 23 . DEX . 39 . 10 .  3  . 14- 8 OCV/DCV

 33 . CON . 46 . 10 .  2  . 16-

 21 . BODY. 22 . 10 .  2  . 13-

 23 . INT . 13 . 10 .  1  . 14- PER 14-

 20 . EGO . 20 . 10 .  2  . 13- 7 ECV

 20 . PRE . 10 . 10 .  1  . 13- 4d6 PRE Attack

 16 . COM .  3 . 10 . 1/2 . 12-

 24 .  PD . 12 . 12 .  1  .     30(12r) PD(rPD)

 19 .  ED . 12 .  7 .  1  .     25(12r) ED(rED)

  5 . SPD . 17 .  3.3 10  .     Phases: 12, 3, 5, 8, 10

 19 . REC .  0 . 19 .  2

 66 . END .  0 . 66 . 1/2

 68 . STUN.  0 . 68 .  1

244 Total Characteristics

 

Skills

  - Acting Everyman 8-

  3 Analyze Story 14-

  - AK: Campaign City Everyman 8-

  - Conversation Everyman 8-

  - Climbing Everyman 8-

  - Concealment Everyman 8-

  3 Deduction 14-

  3 Electronics 14-

  1 KS: Aquatic Sports 8-

  2 KS: Law 11-

  - LS: English Everyman 4pts w/Literacy

  3 Oratory 13-

  - Paramedic Everyman 8-

  - Persuasion Everyman 8-

  - PS: Author Everyman 11-

  - Shadowing Everyman 8-

  - Stealth Everyman 8-

  - TF: Small Motorized Ground Vehicles Everyman

 15 Total Noncombat Skills

 

 Aquathlon Martial Art

  4 Chug +2 OCV/DCV Block, Abort

  4 Crash +15 STR Escape

  3 Grab -1 OCV/DCV Grab 2 Limbs; +10 STR to hold on

  3 Wheel +2/+1 O/DCV Strike, Both Fall

  3 Breakfall 14-

  6 Combat Skill Level, +2 All Aquathlon Maneuvers

  6 Combat Skill Level, +3 OCV to Grab

 29 Total Combat Skills

 

Perks

  3 UN Authorized Super Agent

  1 Wealth - Well Off

  4 Total Perks

 

Talents

  5 Eidetic Memory

  3 Lightning Calculator

  4 Speed Reading 10x

 12 Total Talents

 

Powers

  6 Damage Resistance 6 rPD/rED [-]

 10 N-Ray Vision (10 AP) "Insight" stopped by heavy metals (lead, gold, etc.) [-]

  3 Telescopic Vision +6 PER vs Range w/Insight (3 AP) "Farsight" [-]

  3 Swim +3" [1]

  6 EC 18 pt Reserve Phosphoric Generation Increased END x5 (-2)

  6 ec Flight 10" x8 Ncbt (150 mph) "Red Wave" Costs END Only To Start (+1/4) [15]

  6 ec Force Field 6 rPD/rED/rFlash/rMental/rPower "Blue Shimmer" Costs END Only To Start (+1/4) [15]

  6 ec Healing 1d6 Can Heal Limbs (5) "White Glow" Decrease Re-use Duration 1/Turn (+1.5) [15]

 46 Total Powers

 

106 Total Skills, Perks, Talents & Powers

 

350 Total Cost

 

200 Bonus

  5 Distinctive Feature: Phosphogenically Modified Body (Easily Concealed, Noticed & Recognized)

 10 Hunted: UN (As Powerful, NCI, PC Easy to Find, Watching Only, Infrequently)

 20 Mystery A

 20 Mystery B

 10 Physical Limitation: Medically Impervious Skin (Infrequently, Fully)

 20 Psychological Limitation: Protective of Innocents

 10 Psychological Limitation: Curious to Know the Whole Story

 20 Psychological Limitation: Code vs. Killing (Common, Strong)

 15 Secret Identity: James Adams, Popular Author

 10 Social: Subject to Book Signings, Deadlines, Interviews as Author

 10 Social: Subject to Orders, UN

350 Total Bonus + Disadvantages

 

Background

 

Jimmy Adams at 13 years old was the youngest college water polo player in the USA, and an avid aquathloner (underwater wrestler). His endurance, speed and moves were beyond prodigy. Out of the pool, Adams scored top grades in his Liberal Arts and Sciences pre-Law/pre-Med program at his top Ivy League School. He just got better and better in every way, day by day, not knowing how or why.

 

Though big for his age, compared to other college players Jimmy was small, and affectionately nicknamed 'Plug', short for drain plug. 'Plug' was the title of the first best seller James C. Adams saw published after winning his final college championship game. The book launched Adams' meteoric blog, book, sports anchor, and journalism work. And he's been accepted in an Ivy League Law program, too. These are some of the products of his superpower.

 

Adams' inhuman power to generate phosphoric energy had made him grow beyond ordinary physical and mental abilities. It was subtle at first, and took a long time to dawn on him, but eventually Jim understood he was no longer merely human.

 

When he realized he was in essence using an unfair advantage, Jim decided he needed to leave the game he loved. His chance for a normal life would end and his friends and family be in danger if his 'mutation' were known. So he hides his identity, taking the name 'Aematlon' for 'Blood Wrestler', because he struggled so to understand his blood-toned powers and their story.

 

Aematlon found a new league to join, one where his powers would be exactly the right advantage. He's signed up to be a UN-authorized super agent, to protect the world from threats beyond the ordinary. Aematlon's new team is a group of superheroes.

 

Powers and Tactics

 

All life depends on the reversible binding and unbinding of a phosphate radical from Adenosine Diphosphate (ADP) to its Triphosphate (ATP) and back. This reaction is the intense high-energy that drives every cell, powers every living process. And Jim's DNA is fine tuned to emit and control power in the exact bandwidth of this reaction, making Jim like a booster for all things living. That's just what his power is, not how Jim experienced it.

 

From the age of eleven, this power unconsciously built up Jim, gradually and exponentially modifying his body to be faster, stronger, more durable.. and more able to store, generate and control the phosporic wavelengths. By eighteen when he could lift 100 tons, Jim could create a self-sustaining bubble of 'life energy' and hold it in a wave or shimmer, using it to move or protect himself.

 

What he couldn't do was explain it. When he expressed his phosphor bubble one way, it was a flowing crimson cloud that might suddenly shoot ghostly arterial scarlet jets he could ride high into the air. When he wrapped the bubble closer, it turned cyan and took on a liquid shimmer, rippling with the beats of his heart, like a pool of blue ichor shaped into human form. It was careful analysis of the healing light that eventually led to Jim's partial understanding of his power.

 

Adams is extremely strong, quick and tough due to his phosphorized cell density. When he has armored himself in a blue shimmer Jim is more durable than steel. Able to fly 150 mph swimming on a crimson wave, and see phosphoric wavelengths through walls, Jim uses his aquathlon moves modified for combat to avoid injuring opponents rather than using his deadly strength to brutalize. He protects innocents first, and will not take a life. In fact, with an effort of will he can heal even severe injuries by emitting phosphoric energy near the injury site.

 

Working with his team to distract enemies and take full advantage of his up-close aquathlon moves hand-to-hand, Aematlon takes the fight to the foe while they play long and go wide.

 

Appearance

 

The superhero Aematlon is a man enveloped in a liquid bluish shimmer like a human shaped pool of sky rippling with concentric waves at each heartbeat. With gold-ichor-white glowing hands, swimming half in a cloud of crimson jets roiling with living power, he is frequently a blur of lurid color too fast to follow with the eye.

 

Jim Adams is a blazer-and-turtleneck-wearing author who is known as a young sportscaster and former college athlete. He's taller than people expect, more redheaded, more blue eyed, handsomer, and with the form and build of a swimmer in his athletic prime. 

 

Catchphrase

 

"So what's the story?"

[Comic]

The particular concerns I have about Aematlon:

 

1. Skill, "Analyze Story" is inspired by the character Castle from the show of that name. A hero who can see a narrative and spot flaws in it, to understand where the narrative is false or incomplete. This helps with deduction and interrogation, replacing conversation, and of course helps him edit and improve his own storytelling as a professional author. As a referee, would this fly with you?

 

2. Skill, "Science, General" is meant to reflect a background as a high performing speed reading prodigy in a typical athletic scholarship at a good school (along with "KS:  Law"). As such, the skill could be used to check science facts, claims and broad questions, as opposed to the type of specialization someone might use as an Inventor to advance discoveries at the leading edge of a subfield of science. Where science is involved, it would be a complement to Deduction, for instance; or if giving a speech on science as a complement to Oratory to come off sounding knowledgeable; It would also include advanced mathematics, working with Lightning Calculator. As a GM, would you allow this sort of use?

 

(EDIT: Thanks to GrandmasterGM for the advice; have updated 'SS: General Science' to 'Electronics', and will commit XP to development of the science knowledge as appropriate.)

 

3. Skill, "Deduction", not gained from detective work but being a logical, 'deductive' thinker. While he's read a great many detective novels, and more case history in his liberal arts pre-law studies, is that enough to justify the skill?

 

4. Lack of Noncombat multiple for swimming, with a background as an aquatic athlete. Aematlon has Normal Maximum (5") swimming speed, but his sports were sprint types that needed full CV at all times, not distance types. Does this work?

 

5. Background; too inspired by a villain NPC no one seems to like: Powerhouse? I'd even begun with football as Aematlon's background sport. But I just couldn't get the Powerhouse imagery out of my head, and that wasn't what this character is meant to be like. Does this character differ enough?

 

6. Dorky name?

 

7. ATP - too technical? Should I have just said, "Life Force Powers" and be done with it?

[Comic]

Aematlon flew into the Power Childe district (renamed after the Power Childe tragedy decades before Jimmy Adams was born) under cover of darkness, changed to civvies, and walked to a low-rent avoiding street cams and keeping his face down from the Triphammer Hovercams. At the desk, he paid cash and took a room under the name Adam James.

 

He slept until afternoon. When he woke, he applied face makeup. In a city where public displays of superpowers was a misdemeanor, and would lead to asking for a Powers Registration Card, dressing up in tribute to a Powered was not only still allowed, but the fashion. Everyone loves an outlaw, so long as they obey the law. The difference was, this face makeup had an expensive facial recognition impairment under layer.

 

Many Powereds avoided this and other Registration jurisdictions, but this city was where the story was. The anniversary of the Anniversary, where twenty years after Hunger's slaughter at the Power Childe Club, on the same day he broke out of containment and repeated a new mass murder, in public, of almost six hundred people - normal and powered alike - before Hunger's recapture by his own former pupils and followers. Now, it was twenty years later, to the day.

 

After applying the makeup, Jim spent some time jotting down his thoughts, editing them, rewriting, before he headed down to Power Childe Plaza. The Plaza was were Power Children -- the dismissive name for younger people with superpowers trying to fit into a world with no place for them -- congregated, mixing with wannabe's and fans, and other disaffected youth.

 

There was a story here. It was the story of his generation. James Adams, watched by a hundred Triphammer Hovercams, mixed among his kind, in plain sight, unseen. Aematlon was way out of the league of this crowd; if he flashed his blue and red there'd have been a dozen heavily armed response units on the scene in five minutes.. not enough to capture an unregistered Aematlon-level Powered just for being seen in public, unless there were some Pact Powereds feeling particularly masochistic that day in attendance, but enough to make the scene unpleasant.

 

How did the country come to this? Had it always been this way, even before Powers?

 

It wasn't how it saw itself, in its storied past.

 

There was a story here. Aematlon was going to tell it.

[Comic]

Blood in the Water

 

Childe Plaza swam with people coming and going. Waves of Powereds and Wonnabees, Powseurs and F'anNoys mixed and melded, pooled and niched and cliqued among passersby and tourists.

 

Jim thought back to his own origin. The moment he knew.

 

He was swimming literally, in a literal pool of literal water beneath literal waves lapping the pool deck and the bouys. Viktor was his sparring partner.

 

They were doing double drills: thirty seconds submerged wrestling for banners, break fifteen seconds for breath, thirty seconds submerged wrestling again, five minute 'breather' doing sprints in flippers.

 

The pair had been drilling for over an hour this way. Neither tired. Neither giving in. Viktor was way behind on banners, Plug's growth spurt and sudden performance surge of the last few weeks combining with his years of training, being coached, striving finally showing up in results.

 

And they were submerged again, grappling for all they were worth, when frustrated Viktor purposely drove his knee into Jim's throat -- a foul that could kill underwater. It almost killed Viktor, when Jim's phosphegenic reflex smashed Viktor's femur -- the toughest bone in the human body -- under Jim's elbow, snapping the star athlete's legbone like a dried twig.

 

Blood bloomed in the water, obscuring the pair. The broken bone had severed Viktor's femoral artery and pierced the skin of his thigh. In five seconds, he would bleed out entirely, so rapidly was his heart pumping from the exertion. He'd already blacked out from the pain and shock.

 

Without thinking, Jim's hands found the wound and applied pressure. He prayed in silent submerged scream, tasting bitter blood in his nose and mouth and eyes. His eyes suddenly awash in phosphorescence saw like a perfect three-dimensional X-ray, the bone, the artery, the wound.

 

And then the flash only Jim saw, in the blood cloud, consuming the blood and sealing the wound, healing the break cleanly, healing the artery, that first uncontrolled dumping of pent-up life energy stored in Jim so long, pouring out of his hands.

 

It was just that quick.

 

Jim swam up to the surface with Viktor, beginning CPR, clearing the water from his lungs and.. and that was enough. The Bulgarian aquathloner's fantastic level of fitness took over in coughing and vomiting on the pool deck.

 

People had rushed over, others who were training, the coaches and trainers and life guard on duty. The flash of gore from the wound was gone, the wound was gone. There was a bruise at Jim's throat, and a bruise on Viktor's leg, but nothing that gave away Jim's secret.

 

Except to Jim.

 

And he was back at Childe Plaza, just another Power Childe no one knew, in anonymous face paint, getting checked out by the hangers out of the place. The ones who cared about pecking order and rank. The ones with stories to tell.

[Comic]

"Here I am, in the wheel well of a transcontinental jet. Even with all my power, it's uncomfortable. I don't think it could kill me outright, but it's a long, nasty fall if I nod off from the thin air and chill."

 

Mentally, Aematlon edited his thought bubble. He'd want that for later, to compose properly into some novelization. He couldn't very well write as fact that he was stowing away on flights much faster than his own top speed, with much better navigators guiding them. It wouldn't look heroic. It wouldn't inspire confidence. And it would get him standing in front of a judge trying to explain why he shouldn't go to jail, if he was lucky.

 

Twenty six days to the Anniversary. The start of the chain of events that led to Powers being hunted, hounded, and sometimes the lucky and smart few became iconic brands worth hundreds of millions of dollars -- sometimes all three -- was only two decades ago. Before he was born, but his reading showed what a huge change the world had been through in so little time.

 

Triphammer Technology was everywhere now. The cyborg CEO claimed to have no Powers, but he traded blows with the greatest of the Powereds for all of that twenty years, first in jet armor, then bit-by-bit replacing bone with titanium, and humanity with machine. It took a great deal of resourcefulness to remain undetected by Triphammer in America, between satellites and microdrones and plain old fashioned snitches.

 

People were living longer, thanks to Triphammer's cybernetic advances. Ordinary crime wasn't down.. it had been heading steadily down before the new security grid over America, and now all that was heading down was rate of Americans without criminal convictions.

 

How had that happened?

 

It would make a great story, if it could be traced to its roots at Power Childe.

 

The birth of Powers, and of tyranny by the Powerless, in an America where one could not hold office if one were Powered.

 

Aematlon was heading into a Registration city, if he was heading to the Power Childe Club.

 

In his mind's eye, Jim Adams fingered the contract offer from the UN. They were forming a league of World Class Powereds to deal with situations the Powerless -- even the Triphammer-armed militaries -- could not. Aematlon's ability level was head and shoulders above the usual, and he exhibited competencies the bureaucrats were desperate for.. even while holding back, and keeping his own secrets.

 

They had a standard mind reading Triphammer scanner on him the whole time, but all it got was the Boy Scout manual and the national anthem, even as he passed the interview and physical test with flying colors. They were particularly accurate at plotting maximum flight speed, and Aematlon's respectable 150 mph top rate was well-documented. Which was all to the good. It gave Aematlon more latitude in his plans. 

 

It's odd, he thought. A villain is just someone who won't divert from his own plan to help someone else achieve theirs. How would Jim know, given Aematlon's ultimate secret goals, if he had fallen into supervillainy?

 

The acceptance letter from Stanford Law, and the carefully negotiated terms of the internship at the Lamark Hammer Memorial Hospital's legal aid clinic as a substitute for one unit popped up on his imaginary storyboard. Positioning. Preparation. Timing.

 

The UN knew Aematlon as a Boston-based Powered. Boston, with its liberal views of Powers, a safe haven far from the madness of the West Coast and its Powered Camps and Registration Enforcement Drones. Stanford and the Lamark knew him as James Adams, an Ivy League former sport scholarship prodigy freshman law school student and legal aid support volunteer with an interest in medicine. They gave him access to statewide medical records and all areas of the hospital, all under the nose of Triphammer Security. Adam James was the public name of the author of Plug, and its red-hot blog.

 

So the UN wouldn't know its new hero with outstanding scientific understanding of biology from Boston.. alibied by having just an hour ago left the UN compound in Piscataway.. was the same mystery figure who..

 

Aematlon launched himself from the plane's underbelly, undetected, and let the turbulence kick him around a bit before righting himself and dropping full speed toward the city below, aiming for a large luminous "H" he could see below.

 

He slowed, still a blur, passing the never-locked emergency doors to the helicopter landing pad of Power Childe Memorial. It took him moments to find the closet and dress in scrubs, the low light of the just started midnight shift assisting his stealth.

 

Room by room the silent figure flitted, his ability to see through walls helping him avoid unwanted discovery. Each patient he came upon, he healed with Aematlon's penetrating power: diseased and lost limbs and organs were regrown, weakness dispelled, diseases either eliminated or abated to the point nature and ordinary medicine might finally defeat them. Three or four patients a minute, it was better than an hour before the miraculous recoveries were discovered, and a hubbub ensued.

 

This diverted attention to the upper floors, and freed up the normally more intensely populated middle and lower floors, as staff rushed to examine a hundred or more patients who were suddenly whole and well.

 

By sunrise, Aematlon had healed everyone in the hospital, to the limits of his power. And James Adams was due in class in a couple of hours, so he would need to be seen in the student cafeteria for breakfast in minutes, alibi establishingly.

 

What would the world do, when suddenly seven hundred and thirty nine people -- the same number of lives as Hunger took ten and twenty years ago altogether -- in such dire condition they resorted to PowCh Mem for care.. were made whole?

 

Adams didn't understand Aematlon's powers; he didn't have the resources to study them himself, and he certainly wasn't going to trust them to the UN -- or any other institution -- without understanding them better. Now, he was in position to gain access to every aspect of every investigation into them for hundreds of cases, both as a legal aid intern and as one of the UN's Powered Investigators. And he could do it in a Registration City without needing to register, due UN diplomatic immunity for its agents.

 

And James would have a story, ready to blog on Anniversary Day.

[grandmastergm]

The particular concerns I have about Aematlon:

 

1. Skill, "Analyze Story" is inspired by the character Castle from the show of that name. A hero who can see a narrative and spot flaws in it, to understand where the narrative is false or incomplete. This helps with deduction and interrogation, replacing conversation, and of course helps him edit and improve his own storytelling as a professional author. As a referee, would this fly with you?

 

2. Skill, "Science, General" is meant to reflect a background as a high performing speed reading prodigy in a typical athletic scholarship at a good school (along with "KS:  Law"). As such, the skill could be used to check science facts, claims and broad questions, as opposed to the type of specialization someone might use as an Inventor to advance discoveries at the leading edge of a subfield of science. Where science is involved, it would be a complement to Deduction, for instance; or if giving a speech on science as a complement to Oratory to come off sounding knowledgeable; It would also include advanced mathematics, working with Lightning Calculator. As a GM, would you allow this sort of use?

 

3. Skill, "Deduction", not gained from detective work but being a logical, 'deductive' thinker. While he's read a great many detective novels, and more case history in his liberal arts pre-law studies, is that enough to justify the skill?

 

4. Lack of Noncombat multiple for swimming, with a background as an aquatic athlete. Aematlon has Normal Maximum (5") swimming speed, but his sports were sprint types that needed full CV at all times, not distance types. Does this work?

 

5. Background; too inspired by a villain NPC no one seems to like: Powerhouse? I'd even begun with football as Aematlon's background sport. But I just couldn't get the Powerhouse imagery out of my head, and that wasn't what this character is meant to be like. Does this character differ enough?

 

6. Dorky name?

 

7. ATP - too technical? Should I have just said, "Life Force Powers" and be done with it?

 

1.  That works.

 

2. That seems a little too broad for a skill, and it would be unfair to the other players with just a single focus on science.  I would give him the broad fields: Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics- plus any others you want him to be familiar with.  KS: Law is fine.

 

3.  That's fine.

 

4. Also fine- not too many GMs run aqua-focused campaigns, so I wouldn't worry about it.  Let the GM know if you want maybe a single combat to feature water so you can use the swimming power.

 

5.  I think you added enough originality to the character to make him different from Powerhouse.  In one game I ran, one of the players ran essentially a carbon-copy of Blade except Blade was a female- I teased her about constantly, despite her protestations- and your character is far better designed than hers as far as originality and distancing itself from copying the original.

 

6.  If the other players have trouble pronouncing it, then you should come up with a nickname.  Other than that, I don't have a problem with it.

 

7. Nah, I'm impressed that you attempted to include actual science in a genre that often relies on questionable (and outright made-up) science at best.  You can translate the powers from the ATP base to "Life Force Powers" if the other players don't understand it.

 

Anyways, those are my thoughts.  Nice job!

[Comic]

2. That seems a little too broad for a skill, and it would be unfair to the other players with just a single focus on science.  I would give him the broad fields: Biology, Chemistry, Physics and Mathematics- plus any others you want him to be familiar with.  

 

While I _like_ 'General Science' (at a -5 roll for specific sciences), I'm forced to agree that it's not capturing exactly what I want for the character, other than emulating the effects of an Arts & Science degree program.

 

If the Arts side of that can equate to KS: Law, then certainly the Science Skill can correspond to a specific single discipline, too.

 

I'm going to start with Electronics, I think, as the core of Aematlon's scientific side; he's mostly on the lookout for concealed electronics using his x-ray vision, and figuring out what they do and how to counteract them. He's an action-oriented beginner, right now, not an inventor. There's plenty of justification for him spending XP on other science knowledge, later.