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Shadow Themed Character


Uthanar

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I have a player that is looking to put together a character that interacts with Shadows.  This is not to say that they are interacting with Darkness, as that is the absence of light, but the shadows where Dark and Light meet.  
We were talking about some possible powers that they might have, and one thing that they said is they didn't want the character to be a dark, scary, brooding type and worried that some of the thematic elemental of a lot of Darkness themed stuff does lean that way.  Instead, just like the power set, the character is supposed to be straddling that line between dark and light.  Fighting to bring light into the world and being a good guy.  
We came up with some decent ideas as to what powers they might have that would work with the Shadows, and one of them was that the shadows of living entities are different than those of inanimate objects.  In the shadows of creatures with intention/feelings they can see their primary drive at that time, and possibly see the past/future of the person in the Shadow.  This is an element of Aura Reading/PreCog/RetroCog that the character could have.  I thought that was a really neat thought on the fact that they can see the truth in shadows and such.  
Was coming over here to see what some other power concepts folks might have for such a character.  This is system agnostic as we do use different super hero RPG systems for our games.
Thanks for any thoughts.  

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The classic "can only teleport through shadows" also named shadow walking. A flash attack of course if you look at the public domain of super heroes, there was a unique character that could telekinesis type stuff with his shadow. Can't think of name right now but might be worth the look. The cover picture they have is the Hero rescuing someone one on top of a building by using his giant shadow to reach the victim.

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Something you may well want to check out if you and the player didn't already know about it, is the game Contrast (easily available on Steam, often discounted), where the active character is a kind of shadow creature that can use shadows to get around the puzzle maps (including changing this by turning on lights, moving objects so that their shadows shift etc).

 

You might also tap into the concept of Platonic Ideals. This is often framed as meaning that all real world things are the imperfect shadows of a ideal thing that represents its perfect form. So all chairs are shadows of the Ideal Chair, all trees are shadows of the Ideal Tree etc. Although Plato himself probably didn't mean this literally.

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_Forms

 

Phil Foglio ran with this for comedic effect and made his Ideal Creature a stuffed reptile toy called Winslow (which Phil found one day in a bin).

 

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Winslow

 

Something else that might work is the concept that your shadow has a connection to your soul. Especially if you want to introduce an evil counterpart who can steal shadows (with the player's hero able to rescue and restore them... but potentially able to do the stealing as well).

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I have one shadow and one darkness based hero

 

Tattoo the mysterious mystical of Edinburgh was granted her powers when she became bonded with a sentient magical Grimoire called The Book of Shadows. The spells from the book transfered from the pages to her skin and appear as tattoos on her skin when manifesting their powers the intelligence within the book is slowly teaching her more potent spells and she is learning to combine them to devastating effect.

 

Her current powers are

 

Mantel of night invisibility no Fringe chameleon only in shadow/darkness . Plus +4 stealth only in partial darkness.

 

Fist of shadows stretching 8" does not pass through intervening space indirect can come from any patch of shadows.

 

The Binding dark entangle indirect any patch of shadows

 

Shadow step teleportation must pass from one person sized shadow to another.

 

Eyes in the darkness

 

Eyes of the raven king night vision enhanced senses

 

Strength of shadows drawing in shadows from the surrounding area firming them into armour that enhances strength and toughness.

 

On ebon wings draws in darks to form wings of shadow exposure to bright lights or light based attacks destroys them.

 

Nox

 

Is the son of 60s super heroes Godiva and Tommy Peepers.

 

He can absorb light creating a zone of darkness while enhancing his strength and toughness

 

He acts as a stealth/brawler for his team.

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