Avengers Level Ideas needed...

[Guest cubist]

Trying to work out a possible game world in case I ever find some players I can play with. One thing I wanted was a fully fleshed out team of powerful heroes, but I'm drawing a blank here. Have an archer so far, a very high point level guy with many trick arrows, many levels with bows, Kyujutsu and Karate training and some zen type mystic skills, oh he's also a reformed supervillain who is a professional adventurer both to make amends for his past and to support his seven year old daughter. Anyone with any ideas on the type of heroes I should add? I want a fairly large roster, since not all would be active all the time, sort of like the Avengers or T2M in Aberrant.

[Supreme Serpent]

Any hero types would work. My main advice would be to try to avoid characters that are too close to what the PC's want to do. Accordingly, until you HAVE players and characters, I wouldn't get into too much detail. If one of your players wants to play "Blue Arrow", you may not want a famous NPC archer hero out there (although if the player goes along, could be used for fun - friendly rivalry, they keep getting mistaken for each other, even attacked by each other's enemies, etc.).

 

If the PC's aren't going to interact with them, no need to worry about stats/writeups. Just give them names, basic costumes, basic personalities and basic powers (ie - "ice powers"). If you need them in an adventure, write them up at that time.

 

If you want some for the PC's to interact with, there are writeups for a team named, appropriately enough, "The Champions". If you need more, find villain writeups, change the names and disads, and voila! Instant heroes!

 

There are several areas online you can find writeups, some for 5th ed (also commonly called FRED) and earlier 4th ed. (you'd hardly notice the difference most of the time). The Great Book of Net Heroes is still floating around somewhere, and there is a "Hero of the Day" thread on this very forum with tons of writeups.

 

Oh, and welcome back to Champions/HERO by the way!

[Guest cubist]

Uh, I actually know of most of or all of those resources but I want to create my own team memebers so that they will have a distinctive feel that I can deal with and get into. As for getting back into Champs, I never left...

[Lord Liaden]

Well, if you're looking for ideas, you could do worse than follow the comic archetypes listed in the Champions genre book: Weaponmaster, Brick, Martial Artist, Energy Projector, Speedster, Mentalist, Metamorph, Gadgeteer, Mystic, and two that can combine with others, Patriot and Powered Armor.

 

It sounds like you have the Weaponmaster archetype covered with your archer character, and possibly the Martial Artist as well. If you can gain access to Champions you could always use the archetype illos for inspiration; the Weaponmaster example there is an archer too.

[Kzinbane]

Universe creation

 

My take on creating a universe for gaming is to start locally then move outward. What supers are they likely to encounter often? If the group is going to be like the JLA and heads anywhere on the planet (and beyond) then obviously more work needs to be done. If they are instead city based, then figure out who the supers are in the home town first, and flesh them out pretty well at least as far as an idea on what powers they have, maybe what motivations, and relationship with authorities.

In "my" town (Porltand) for example I have a Vampire hero (don't ask), and a very mysterious mage lady. Portland's not too big, didn't figure there would be too many residant heroes. I have one more that gets around the west coast - he's either a powerful nut case who thinks he's an angel, or he really is one. No one knows for sure.

Outside of Portland I have hero/villains conceptionally built - meaning I know who/what they are but have not "built" them as such (payed for powers, disads, etc). The further you go from Portland the less I have down. For example if my team gets a wild hair up their behinds and wants to fly to Moscow I'd have to come up with something from scratch. If instead though they want to go somewhere far more likely - Seattle or Vancouver BC - I "know" who is there and what they can do. I'd have to take a while to put them on paper in Herodesigner (get it if you don't have it) but that's all.

[Supreme Serpent]

Originally posted by cubist

Uh, I actually know of most of or all of those resources but I want to create my own team memebers so that they will have a distinctive feel that I can deal with and get into. As for getting back into Champs, I never left...

 

Ah. Then I would suggest being creative.

 

As for welcoming you back, this

 

Originally posted by cubist

...in case I ever find some players I can play with.

 

was the source of my confusion. Thought that you haven't been playing in a while.

[Doug McCrae]

How about ripping off comic books, cubist? That's what the rest of us do.

[JmOz]

OKay, I have a soft spot for the Monstrous Genius. Usualy a Brick, who looks more like a neanderthal than anything else, but in truth is a rocket scientist

[Kzinbane]

Hank McCoy.

 

It's very hard to NOT copy a super hero or villain. Other than by coming up with something really out there, almost any super you make will be similar if not a copy of some comic type.

Some fun things to do though is to make visual changes - much like the very intelligent brick. Make a skinny 5 foot tall girl a 100 ton hefting brick. Make the big muscle man an energy blaster. The werewolf could be a pacifist.

One other thing I have done, is to use local legends - in my case from the native American tribes in the area. Their legends talk of mountain spirits, water spirits, thunderbirds and other things that "could" turn out to be supers of one type or another.

[Ghost who Walks]

When doing powerful hereoes, especially NPC ones, the key is to making them something the players can relate to.

 

Theis means they need to have some grounding in a normal life, even if they don't have a secret ID. Superman has a job, Spidey has his army of DNPCs, and even Batman has to eat, drink coffee, and buy batarangs. (Anyone know where he gets those, anyway?)

 

I said the above for a reason. Ripping off comics is fine...the point is to do it so know on knows you did it!

 

Take Superman for example. Alien who looks human, very moral, can fly, superstong, secret identity, and shoot lasers from his eyes. Other powers dependent upon interpretation. Those are his "character elements", that which defines him.

 

Take him apart piece by piece.

Alien who looks human: What race of humanity does he look like? For fun, lets make him Mediterranean, and give him a voice similar to Sylvester Stallone.

 

Very Moral: Supes has a midwestern morality. But what if we have him raised by say...Mormons? Suddenly he gets a different outlook on life.

 

Can Fly: Yes he needs to do this. but there are different ways to do it. The technological angle is open (Wonderman, at one point, wore a jetpack), and we can always say that he is a traffic reporter for a major metropolitan radio station, flying in his own helicoptor.

 

Superstrong: We'll keep this, we don't want to make him too wierd. However, instead of making his strength dependent upon a yellow sun, we'll say its because Earth's gravity is 1/4 of his home planets.

 

Secret Identity: As noted above, he is now a traffic reporter for a major metropolitan radio station, flying in his own helicoptor. Lets give him a wife (married right after high school, before he became fully aware of his powers), and a couple of kids. He also has parents, who are doing occasionally dangerous missionary work in other countries. no longer an only child, he has a brother and sister, who help him in his battles against evil.

 

Shoot Lasers from eyes: Always fun. The telescopic and x-ray vision are part of this. A difficult power to change, we are still goin g to do so. He know has a pair of bracelets he wears, that can project energy and have motion detectors in them (sonar). They were found in his spacecraft, and represent a link to his world. Unknown to him, they also are constantly sending out a distress signal (his spacecraft was an escape capsule from a ship). Various aliens show up and try and capture him...he has no idea how they keep finding him. They want to use him as a hostage against his birth parents, who are somewhat important. They are also usable by others, so he can loan them to his DNPC's.

 

We now have a character who is technically a Superman clone. You know he is, but do your players?

[Doug McCrae]

That's pretty good. I think the strongest idea is giving him another outlook on life such as Mormon. Alan Davis did an excellent Elseworlds where Superman was raised by Amish so he was an extreme pacifist, only getting involved in the action right at the end.

 

Other possibilities might be to make him a Chinese communist or devout Muslim (but a nice one, none of your Al-Qaeda). Make him a Parsee if you wanna get really weird.

 

You probably don't need to modify Superman quite as much as you have to make him distinctively different. One or two major elements will do.

[Metaphysician]

IMHO, the Superman-archetype requires that the character be somehow "from elsewhere." Most important element.

 

Using the Champions book archetypes isn't a bad idea, especially if you give each character at least one "special" bit, not normal for the archetype. However, it wouldn't be a bad idea to come up with at least one character that can't really be archetyped.

[Doug McCrae]

Re: Avengers Level Ideas needed...

 

Originally posted by cubist

Trying to work out a possible game world in case I ever find some players I can play with. One thing I wanted was a fully fleshed out team of powerful heroes, but I'm drawing a blank here... Anyone with any ideas on the type of heroes I should add? I want a fairly large roster, since not all would be active all the time, sort of like the Avengers or T2M in Aberrant.

I think you should do modified versions of your source material, which is the Avengers. Maybe chuck in stuff from other powerful groups like the JLA, Fantastic Four, LSH, the Authority, maybe some of the more powerful X-Men. Not so familiar with T2M but the leader is a Superman type isn't he?

 

The Classic Avengers IMO would include Captain America, Thor, Iron Man, Hank Pym, Wasp, maybe Vision, Scarlet Witch and Wonderman, too.

 

Vision always seemed to me to have rather weird powers for a robot so if you have weird technology, howabout giving that to the power armour guy? He has the usual strength and armour but his archetype is mainly mentalist - mind control, telepathy, possibly telekinesis. I picture him having a big helmet. Doesn't have to be evil - as some on the boards have argued - no power is inherently evil, it depends how you use it.

 

For the Thor variant, let's just make it a different god like Danu, the Celtic earth mother. I picture her being similar to Big Barda. In my own comic-based universe my version of Thor is Loki, god of fire. I've played down the deception and played up the fire aspect. He's got a personality similar to the Sub-Mariner, but with the Human Torch's power.

 

I've always hated robots that want to have emotions and find out what it is to be human. Like Data from Star Trek or, indeed, the Vision. How about a robot that has plenty of emotions, cause they've been programmed in? Who has no desire to be human, cause being a robot is patently better? This character has a fiery temperament, like the modern Green Arrow, and is strongly pro-robot, his attitudes resembling those of some militant mutants in the Marvel universe. His powers can be anodyne, the persona is the main thing.

 

People seem to dig the Scarlet Witch/Solitaire innocent type. Can't see the attraction myself, mind. This version is a scientific genius - a teenage prodigy specialising in maths and computers. She's shy, feminine, smart as a whip and cute as a button. Powerswise I'm not sure. She could have developed a weather control system through her brilliant additions to Chaos theory and predictive software. Perhaps this makes her too similar to Storm?

 

And the couple? Danu and Loki. This could just be a fling rather than marriage. But who knows how long a fling between immortals lasts? I hadn't planned to use both gods until now. Though two on the same team could be one too many.

 

The Captain America/Superman-type is The Soldier, a gruff military veteran who fought in Vietnam. He has the powers of Golden Age Superman - strength, speed, leaping - thanks to early genetic engineering. He wears a very heavily armoured suit (not power armour though) which he can only manage thanks to his strength.

[Kristopher]

The avengers had Thor and Hercules, so there's two gods from two different cultures. They're just not sleeping together.

[Doug McCrae]

Originally posted by Kristopher

The avengers had Thor and Hercules, so there's two gods from two different cultures. They're just not sleeping together.

In the Authority-verse they would be.

[Benzini]

Ratman and Mouse

 

For the dysfuntional couple/superhero married, may I suggest: Someone with control over urban swarms, (rats/cockroaches/pidgeons)...and his wife (whom he either experimented on, or is a secret mutant that he created his powers using...) with the ability to shrink and gain some redentia-like powers/ and or super abilities (super stealth, tunneling, smell...)

[Metaphysician]

An idea I had to help build Avengers-level characters: Take the random hero tables, roll for two different character types ( say, one at high powered and one at midpowered ), and add them together.

 

Lets say you roll for a weaponmaster and an elementalist. You could combine these, and make a character with a staff that grants, say, wind control abilities, who also is quite adept at using it in combat.

[Guest cubist]

OKay, I have actually written up the second member of the team now- a variation on the classic brick. She's a beautiful woman with almost a body builder-like physique but otherwise doesn't look that tough. She is, however, able to shrug off darn near any physical attack and adds the damage from said attacks to her strength and Con. Think female Sebastian Shaw. Hates abusive husbands and misogynists after having seen her mother nearly beaten to death by her abusive father. It was witnessing this attack that first started to work out so that she would be strong enough so that no man wuld ever do that to her, she also studied various wrestling styles for the same reason. This subconcious desire to be powerful in a physical sense determined the nature of her then latent mutant powers, which did not surface until her sixteenth birthday when her father, just out of jail, returned to finish what he had started. Instead, when he was stopped by his daughter, he attacked her instead, causing her powers to manifest and she just started absorbing the force of his blows until she lashed out at him and shattered both his arms and legs. She was exonerated, as it was ruled self defense but he still hunts her to this day and will hook up with any group that he can get to attack her.