Novate

[Sean Waters]

I want to build a character.  When she dies, she is reborn in another body, with different powers.  The process can take some time and she can be reborn anywhere, but she retains her memories, or at least some of them – she is the same person, just different.

 

So, quick question, should I build that as part of her powers (Resurrection and Teleport, VPP Multiform and so on) or just handwave it as, if a character dies, you are normally allowed to build another one and just keep playing and you (the player) know what the old character knew anyway.

 

I have more questions about the build, but let us start there and gain some insight ?

[Doc Democracy]

I have a question, as the player, how often do you expect your character to die?  This will dictate my response...

[Tech]

Good point, Doc. If the character is kicking the bucket every 3-10 episodes, I would foresee this causing a possible problem with the GM or the players.

[Duke Bushido]

More importantly, is the character suicidal?  Or rather, is the _player_ designing a character he can optimize at will? 

 

So I need to know both the answer to Doc's question, and I need some history on the player. 

 

 

[Doc Democracy]

1 hour ago, Tech said:

Good point, Doc. If the character is kicking the bucket every 3-10 episodes, I would foresee this causing a possible problem with the GM or the players.

 

My group only plays about every two weeks or so.  So your 3-10 episodes probably brackets what I am thinking.  If the character dies about every 3 episodes (with an episode taking one or two sessions each) then I reckon I would be looking for a build that allows switching powers.  If it was every 10 episodes, I would be tempted to handwave it.

[Hugh Neilson]

"Can take some time" and "could be reborn anywhere" places a lot of control with the GM.  That strikes me as not trying for a cheap/free Multiform.  This new character is perfect for the challenge the team is presently facing.  And in three weeks, your perfect character is reborn, and can start looking for travel options from wherever she was born to wherever the group went after resolving the challenge this character would have been perfect for.

 

Assuming that is an accurate assessment of the power, I'd handwave it on the basis that we all get to decide our characters' back stories.

[Doc Democracy]

My problem with "may take some time" is the impact that has on the game. Does it mean that every two or three sessions the player has no character to play? Does it mean they go to a different character? Does that not mean the player is already getting the benefit of switching anyway?

 

There are lots of little details that would swing my judgement. I could be persuaded either way though...

[Sean Waters]

This is a new character so, what you see below is backstory, basically.

 

Novate (pronounced Nova Te, latin for 'a new you') is not suicidal.  When she dies she 'awakens' in a new body, but it is the body of another living person.  She is initially a 'passenger/observer', unable to influence the host at all.  Her personality slowly (or sometimes quickly) takes over.  The host often thinks they are going mad.  The host body develops superpowers, again, over time, sometimes before she takes over, sometimes after, but usually as it is happening.  Sometimes she has limited communication with the host, and usually the host becomes a passenger in their former body before fading away completely.  On one occasion she never took over, and remained a passenger until the host died and she moved on.  It is a horrible experience for both of them so she is not going to kill herself just to change up her powers.  She has no control over the powers she gets (although, obviously, I do, building her).

 

Theoretically she could awaken in a body that already had superpowers, but it has not happened yet.  Theoretically she could awaken in the body of a team mate, or the campaign villain.  Sometimes the awakening is almost instant, sometimes it takes days or weeks before she becomes aware again.  The longest it has ever taken is just under a year.

 

She can awaken anywhere in the world.  She has only limited access to the memories of the host.  Her appearance remains that of the host unless she develops the ability to shapeshift.  Her personality is her own although some hosts seem to come with baggage she is saddled with while she inhabits them.  She feels a responsibility to use her powers for good. She can not usually pick up her old life in a new body because, well, she's in a new body.

 

What normally kills her is a creature called Nocere (latin for 'harm') who always eventually finds her.  Nocere is a More Powerful Hunter.  In the past she has tried to run and hide from Nocere, not drawing any attention to herself, but it finds her anyway, eventually.

 

Novate does not know how her ability works and has not been able to find a way to stop it working.

 

When and whether she dies will very much be in the hands of the GM, as will all the other details (host location, for example, emergence time).  The longest she has lived in a host before being killed was just over eight years.

 

Nocere does not just march up and rip her head off: it stalks her and will often defeat her in combat then leave her several times before delivering the coup de grace.  It likes to taunt and torture her before the kill.  She does not know why.  I've got some ideas, but the character does not.

 

So the next question was going to be whether the possession and transformation of a host should be built as powers or whether they too are really just the SFX of building a new character.  Obviously I'll run all this past the GM but I want to get it straight in my own head, because I too could go either way.

[Christopher]

2 hours ago, Sean Waters said:

It is a horrible experience for both of them so she is not going to kill herself just to change up her powers.  She has no control over the powers she gets (although, obviously, I do, building her). 

As you just noticed, there is a difference between "not under Character Control" and "not under Player control".

Banners transformation into the Hulk was not under Banners (Character) control. But odly they mostly happened when the Hulk was needed. Almost as if they were under player control

Even if the Character is not "suicidal", the player might run her as the "Heroic Sacrifice" type.

 

What you decribe sounds a lot like Posession (APG 1 has two builds for that). But this might just be the SFX of this ability.

 

If it happens rarely, then it is really just "roll up a new Character". There is no power build needed from this.

Maybe include a "Previous Life Knowledge" skill in all the new Characters, to simulate that this character knows the group and vice versa. Asuming the GM and Group insists on that much detail. Not every group does:
https://youtu.be/oSynJyq2RRo?t=1739

 

[Amorkca]

Will the experience points gained transfer with her?  Or are you constantly playing a 400 pt character??

 

Just another factor to take into consideration.

 

I think the concept is neat, Is this an Immortal character but the SFX are body switching?

[Doc Democracy]

To me, this is a complication. Every so often a hunted turns up. At some point the hunter will kill the hero. Probably at the end of an adventure arc, at which point the player gets to build a new character with gained experience (a novel version of the radiation accident).

 

As GM, I would not expect to see any powers on the character sheet for this.

[Beast]

When the character dies I'd just go and use CCCC to generate a new hero
about the only thing I would keep would be 25 to 50 pts of complications to represent her past/original persona
the use the remaining 25-50 complications to represent the current host's situation

I would get together with the GM to approve this kind of character and not sandbag them with this character

Relationships with other characters will be weird for the first few reincarnations

[Sean Waters]

This has all been very helpful and clarified my thinking.  I'm happy that the main power of the character is SFX, that the character should carry over a 'past lives' skill and some personality complications.  I hadn't thought of it as a 'radiation accident': I like that too.

 

Thank you all!

[Christopher]

For further info, try to find any discusion about "Statting out Dr. Who". His "reborn with a new Actor playing the role" is pretty similar to this.

[Beast]

12 hours ago, Christopher said:

For further info, try to find any discusion about "Statting out Dr. Who". His "reborn with a new Actor playing the role" is pretty similar to this.

the story line for Hawkgirl in Legends of tomorrow was that she reincarnated to the same form but her hunted (Vandal Savage)could always sense her once she manifested her powers to hunt her down
The same could be the same for your character Sean in keeping the same hunteds

[dsatow]

Since the expectation is the character will last years, I'd handwave it.

[Asperion]

Another question that I would ask is how long it would take for your character to return from dead.  In the OP, you state that it takes it a while but it that minutes, hours, days, or longer?  In the Marvel FASRIP system, they have an immortality power that works in the manner that you mentioned and require the person with it to wait a certain amount of days equal to the power rank.  The higher the rank the faster one returned from dead.  They never got to a level where they could return faster than one week (unless the char had it at godly level).  Basically it sounds as though this is the power that you are describing.

[Killer Shrike]

Reminds me of Croyd Crenson, the Sleeper from Wild Cards.

 

I also got same vibe as the Hawk Girl / Vandal Savage eternal hunter shtick from LoT vibe that Beast noted (and man, was I glad when they finally got rid of Hawk Girl). 

 

Asperion I think you are referring to M28/Serial Immortality from the Ultimate Powers Book; there's a full page spread on page 75 of the UPB going into deep detail about variants, including "Parasite" and "Obliteration" which would be taking over an existing persons body, and original occupant's identity is destroyed.

 

___

 

So, I really like this concept, and I have some thoughts. 

 

First off, there have been a couple of characters similar to this in my past Hero System campaigns.

 

The more recent is a iconic from here there be monsters, Moralynn, who appears to be unkillable. This ability is modeled as Duplication with a lot of instances, but there is only ever one instance of Moralynn active...when she would be killed or maimed the current duplicate instance is shuffled away and replaced with a fresh one.

 

1) Cannot Be Killed Or Maimed : Duplication (creates 2500 125-point Duplicates), Trigger (Activating the Trigger is an Action that takes no time, Trigger resets automatically, immediately after it activates, Character does not control activation of personal Trigger; Mechanically When Moralynn Would Be Killed Or Permanently Maimed Or Otherwise Messed Up The Current Duplicate Is Replaced With A New One; From A SFX Perspective The Attack That Caused This To Happen Simply Appears To Have Had No Effect; +3/4), Switch Between Duplicates Is Invisible (+3/4) (212 Active Points); No Conscious Control (-2), One Active Character At A Time (-2), Perceivable (Supernatural Awareness; -1/4) 
Notes: Real Cost: 40

 

Something similar might provide a basis for a serial immortality effect.

 

The other character is from back in the 4e days, and I don't have the character sheet available online. It was a PC in a weird anything goes dimension and time hopping adventure. The premise of the character was Doc Brown (of Back to the Future) from another dimension. Instead of inventing a flux capacitor / time travel device, this version of Doc Brown invented a dimensional travel device...but there was a malfunction when his pet cat Schrodinger jumped on the control panel while he was calibrating the device and sent the hapless doctor bouncing around the multiverse, popping in and out of dozens of dimensions until the cat jumped off the buttons and he stabilized elsewhere.

 

In some dimensions, he popped directly in over other people and they got sucked into his event horizon; others were nearby and got forcibly transported with him but weren't absorbed. The people (and things) that got trapped in his event horizon became the forms in a multiform, while the people and things that were nearby and got transported with him were the other PC's.

 

The character's multiform was open ended (more forms were added as the campaign went on, with the rationale that they were absorbed at the same time as the others but had not come out yet), but when the character started play he had enough points for I think 8 forms. Selection of which form was changed into was random; literally a numbered list that was rolled against. Each of the characters in the multiform was diverse, and each had one or more circumstances defined that would force a roll to see which form would pop out next.  It was a great character, played by one of the best roleplayers I've ever gamed with, who was effortlessly able to drop into each role as forms popped out. 

 

The character's multiform had a variation on No Conscious Control that we called "Random". The player had some control over the power, as they knew each character in the multiform's criteria that would force them to change and could thus play the current form in such a way as to make it more likely they would change or avoid things that would make them change depending on if he wanted to keep that form active or not, but could not activate it at will and once it was activated the outcome was a roll of the dice. 

 

Every few sessions, the character would get enough XP to buy another doubling of forms in the multiform if wanted. By the end there were characters that had never popped out yet in actual play due to the randomness.

 

Certain characters in the multiform were more well liked by other players or more fun (one of the forms turned out to be the Hunter of another PC's Hunted By, the rationale being that unbeknownst to the other PC, the Hunter had snuck up on them and was about to capture them right as Doc Brown's campaign starting event occurred and had thus gotten trapped in Doc Brown's effect), but the sheer number of characters and their diverse abilities were a bit much for some of the other players to handle...one player in particular became aggravated by the endless variety and unpredictability and felt that the campaign was overshadowed / dominated by the shtick. 

 

Learning from that, you may want to be mindful to not let Novate's shtick of new bodies / new powers marginalize the other players.

__

 

As far as not charging points and just treating it as a meta concept when the player brings in a new character, on the one hand this makes sense to me and in some other game system I would handle it that way particularly if other characters in the same setting could reasonably expect to be resurrected and thus character death isn't final. For instance, in a D&D style campaign where resurrection is a thing that can undo PC deaths, if a player instead wanted to reincarnate there isn't really an issue.

 

However, in the Hero System or other pay-for-what-you-get game systems, allowing a player to do it as a hand wave without paying for it while the other PC's just die if killed seems like trouble. Unless the other players were cool with it, I wouldn't allow it. Depends on the group and how likely one of them is going to pout that another player is getting special treatment.