I Have Powers - [t&j] Dr. Zachary Zevon

December 2009

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Following up on

brianrogers' Supers Thought Experiment - Does System Matter? post, I offer a quick T&J write-up of his sample character.

Check out the whole series; it's pretty cool.

Dr. Zachary Zevon, the Indestructible Man

Background: Zachary is known as the smartest man on Mars. He's knowledgeable in most fields of science, and an expert in the high energy physics connected with the Philadelphia Experiment and Project Rainbow.

Motivation: Discover, analyze, create -- for and with SCIENCE!

Qualities: Expert [+4] Analysis, Expert [+4] Wealth, Good [+2] Armor: Energy Fabric Uniform, Good [+2] Charisma, Good [+2] Reputation: Smartest Man on Mars, and Poor [-2] In Love with teammate Deirdre.

Origin: Irradiated by IF energies when an attempt to replicate the teleportational effects of the Philadelphia Experiment, Dr. Zevon, the smartest man on mars, gained his power of indestructible force fields.

Powers: Good [+2] Force Fields, Good [+2] Super-Intelligence, Average [0] Super-Gadgeteering. (One Average [0] Power converted into 4 Quality points.)

Stunts: "Super-Strength" (Average [0] Force Field Signature, lifting heavy things, 1 HP) and "Super-Punch" (Good [+2] Force Field Signature, for blasting with invisible force, 2 HP). For Zevon's Gadgets see Miscellany below.

Hero Point Pool/Max: 5/10

Uniform: Red slacks & shirt, silver gloves, boots & belt, League emblem (silver liberty bell with red dot in its center and two silver "moons" in "orbit" outside of the bell) on breast; made out of Energy Fabric.

Miscellany: Zevon's Analysis Quality shows his expertise at analyzing scientific theories, technologies, super-powers, and even opponents he has a chance to observe; this allows him to determine their strengths and weaknesses. His Armor: Energy Fabric Uniform is detailed below. His Power of Force Fields is effectively another type of Invulnerability (see T&J, p. 43). Super-Intelligence means he's knowledgeable in most fields of science, an expert in the high energy physics connected with the Philadelphia Experiment and Project Rainbow; systemically, grants him 2 Upshifts per Scene for mental tasks or conflicts, and 2 "contingency plans" per session. While he can design super-technologies with his Super-Intelligence, it's his Super-Gadgeteering that allows him to actually construct them; furthermore, he gets four Gadgets at character generation.

Zevon's Gadgets include:
* Energy Fabric: A material with an indeterminate IF charge, making it highly resistant to damage, able to adapt to the IF powers of its wearer, and a effective form of insulation. Zevon's uniform is made out of it.

* Nanite Reconstruction Surgical Equipment (NuRSE): When a character is placed inside a NuRSE chamber, he gets +2 to all subsequent healing rolls as per Continuing Danger (see T&J, p. 62).

* League Communicators: Using cutting edge IF technology, League Communicators send messages through parallel dimensions to other communicators. They are not normally affected by distance or obstacles and can’t be traced or intercepted, but they do still suffer from lightspeed limits.

* Personal Environment Generators: A limited gravitic field is used to hold in atmosphere (and the warmth of that atmosphere), providing an unprotected body about 5 minutes life support in hard vacuum. (No combat effects.)

(Gadgets not used from the original V&V write-up: the Artificial Intelligence Emulator design, StrattonTech Scanner, pocket toolkit, and Roberto. The first one I consider as a user of Super-Intelligence to explain Zevon's Expert [+4] Wealth; this is aided by the fact that it seems to have no mechanical effect. The other three are essentially "off the shelf" purchases, which easily fall under Wealth. Roberto could be statted up as a Sidekick, if desired.)

(Since the the Liberty Lair is his team's base, it would be handled under the Headquarters rules on T&J, p. 69).

Permission is given to

brianrogers to copy and publish this in furtherance of his own discussion.

Brian, I'm especially interested in seeing what you think of this write-up -- how close it matches your initial concept, and any variations from the original V&V write-up (as well as the others).

Tags: asmp, game design, gaming, mad rpg theory, pdq, truth-and-justice

	From: chadu	Date: February 16th, 2008 07:04 pm (UTC)		(Link)
	On a couple minutes' reflection...

...I'd probably make one change for optimization purposes: move Super-Intelligence from Good [+2] to Average [0], and boost Force Fields to Expert [+4].

This would change Zevon's Signature Stunts to "Super-Strength" (Good [+2] Force Field Signature, lifting heavy things, 1 HP) and "Super-Punch" (Good [+2] Force Field Signature, for blasting with invisible force, 1 HP). However, this way Zevon could do super-strength lifting and force blasts for no HP cost at Average [0] Rank as Spin-Off Stunts.

The cost of this would be to reduce Zevon's "Reed Richards Technobabble" aspect of the character vis-a-vis Super-Intelligence to 1 Upshift per Scene for mental tasks or conflicts, and 1 "contingency plan" per session.

CU

Edited at 2008-02-16 07:07 pm (UTC)

	From: whswhs	Date: February 16th, 2008 08:01 pm (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: On a couple minutes' reflection...

So far as I understand your system, I think that's a sound change. When I looked at the initial design, the one point where I stopped for a second was at Force Fields being merely Good. My feeling is that an "Indestructible Man" ought to have defenses way better than that. The lower technical competence is an unfortunate side effect of this, though.

	From: chadu	Date: February 16th, 2008 08:49 pm (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: On a couple minutes' reflection...

When I looked at the initial design, the one point where I stopped for a second was at Force Fields being merely Good. My feeling is that an "Indestructible Man" ought to have defenses way better than that.

Probably true, though "Invulnerability" in T&J grants utter invulnerability to most normal-scale attacks. Z would only be suffering from MASSIVE normal-scale attacks (like, meteor strike) or super-scale attacks.

I do think upgrading to Expert helps.

The lower technical competence is an unfortunate side effect of this, though.

Arguable: Super-Intelligence, like Invulnerability, is a scale-shift sort of Power. While there's no bonus on the roll, the character can STILL grasp concepts beyond mortal man.

Also, I think the Upshifts per Scene and contingency plans work better in the lower form, from a gameplay perspective.

(As an aside: you have no idea how depressing it is for me that you don't grok PDQ. I hope that the revised version, PDQ#, that will run S7S might be more palatable.)

CU

	From: brianrogers	Date: February 19th, 2008 12:18 am (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: On a couple minutes' reflection...

OK, I'm confused. According to the rulebook Zach can have either
2 Good rank and 2 Average rank powers
OR
1 Expert rank and 2 Average rank powers.

If I make his Force Field and Excellent I would have to lower his Super-Intelligence to Average and drop either his Gadgeteering or the 4 extra qualitry ranks, right?

	From: chadu	Date: February 19th, 2008 12:50 am (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: On a couple minutes' reflection...

By the book, you're right.

What I did was select 2 G+2s and 2 Av0s, then drop one of the G+2s to Av0 and place that freed-up rank on the remaining G+2 to make it E+4.

It's not ENTIRELY kosher, by the book.

An option would be to go for Gadgeteering (Quality) rather than Super-Gadgeteersing (Power), if you wanna go by the book for chargen. (But that means you havta tweak the Qualities again; however, Gadgeteering could replace Armor: Energy Fabric very easily.)

CU

CU

	From: brianrogers	Date: February 19th, 2008 01:51 am (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: On a couple minutes' reflection...

Ok, I've taken that into consideration and posted my tweaked copy of the character, with notes, as part VII. Thanks for your help!

	From: billwerk	Date: February 17th, 2008 01:42 am (UTC)		(Link)

My thought (other than raising the level of Force Fields, which you've commented on) was to have FF be a Meta-Power, with stunts for the various effects: defense, telekinesis, bolts of force, super-strength, etc.

	From: brianrogers	Date: February 17th, 2008 02:45 pm (UTC)		(Link)
	Groovy!

To keep my sanity I'm limiting my LJ to one entry per day, so I'll comment on this officually tomorrow. I do want to say both "Thanks" and that I think you're overstressing the Energy Fabric uniform. It's not so important that I'd want to see it as a quality - it's about the same usefulness as Unstable Molecules in Marvel - it explains why their costumes don't tear or burn up, and as a GM excuse for them roaming aroudn the unterraformed Martian surface. but it's not really the same thing as full fledged armor.

If I had my druthers I'd lose that and shift those 2 quality points back to his Gadgetry.

	From: chadu	Date: February 17th, 2008 03:51 pm (UTC)		(Link)
	Re: Groovy!

If I had my druthers I'd lose that and shift those 2 quality points back to his Gadgetry.

Systemically, I don't think that can be done directly: the Average [0] power used as Intense Training gives up 4 Quality Points -- to get them back from the Quality level to Power level, you'd need to drop ANOTHER Quality a Rank. (I'd probably drop Analysis to Good, or maybe completely drop Charisma, to get that.)

Then you could bump either Super-Gagdeteering back to Good [+2] (or Super-Intelligence back to Good [+2] for the "optimized" version in my comment).

CU

	From: dungeon_grrrl	Date: February 18th, 2008 12:32 am (UTC)		(Link)

This is neat. Thanks for linking back to the original post, which has some cool thoughts.

	From: brianrogers	Date: February 19th, 2008 12:01 am (UTC)		(Link)

I'm about to put up Part VII if you want to check out the whole LJ.

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