Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

[Dawn Darke]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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

 

:thumbup::thumbup::thumbup:

[GoldenAge]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

Now there's a reason to hold on to the 30 xp for a radiation accident. "I died? Okay' date=' I come back and haunt you all! Mwahahahah!":D[/quote']

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

Are you suggesting that one day I incorporate the ghost of a highly intelligent' date=' 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???[/quote']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.

[Dawn Darke]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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.

 

Heck, please post it for everyone's fun.

[Weldun]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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 from SNL.

 

In his non-heor form he was a small, mousy lawyer from the suburbs, along the lines of Wallace Shawn

 

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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.

[Doc Samson]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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.

[Doc Samson]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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. 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).

[Lord Mhoram]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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

[palaskar]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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... )

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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]

Re: Strange Hero Concepts: Discuss Your Own!

 

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