Continuing with one hero a day, here is #4…
Step 1: Background
Three down, seventeen to go! For Hero #4, our Background roll gives us an 8 and a 2. That gives us access to Blank Slate, Tragic, and Military.
Let’s build a Blank Slate. Our mystery woman doesn’t have a name yet. She awoke without one, based on whatever her Power Source is. So for the moment, let’s start her off with Alertness d8 and Stealth d10.
Blank Slate gives an Identity Principle, and the Principle of Amnesia seems entirely on-point, so Imma take that.
Step 2: Power Source
Blank Slate gives us a d10 and two d8s. Rolling them, I get 5, 3, and 7. This gives us access to Genetic, Mystical, Relic (nope!), Powered Suit (nope!!), Tech Upgrades, and Artificial Being.
As obvious as Artificial Being would be, I’m taking Tech Upgrades. Blank woke up in an aftercare room in a mysterious facility, with implanted technology in her and a lot of red alarms going off. She fled rather than wait to see, and the whole facility burned down mysteriously. She doesn’t know if she was a willing patient or a captive.
Blank is now a Lightning Calculator (d10), but has also gotten some substantial physical upgrades with superhuman Agility (d8). She’s also got a Nuclear (d8) power source inside her, which is properly shielded except when she doesn’t want it to be. This could be the root of what went wrong…
For Abilities, Blank takes an Energy Burst, letting her use her Nuclear power against a bunch of people, and Recharges herself with Lightning Calculator. For her Green, she grabs Indiscriminate Fabrication; when she starts calculating, she doesn’t always know who she’s helping.
Step 3: Archetype
Another d10, d8, d8 for Archetype. 3, 3, 4 doesn’t give us many choices. Physical Powerhouse, Marksman (nope!), Close Quarters Combatant (nuh-uh!) and Armored. So my choices are Strong, or Tough. That doesn’t line up with her earlier choices at all, but we can make a Powerhouse work, I think.
Strength (d10) is a given, and Close Combat (d8) covers the previous lack of physical Qualities. The last choice goes to Density Control (d8), for interesting shifts in mass created by her nuclear core.
For Abilities, Blank picks up the very strong Damage Resistant. She also takes Frontline Fighting with her Strength, to force enemies into close combat with her. At Yellow, she takes the Reaction that when she defeats an enemy with Strength, she can Recover. She is going to be a hard nut to crack.
Finally, Blank takes an Expertise Principle. Stealth would be interesting, but I think Blank is not fully used to her weird, indiscriminate strength, so I’m taking that.
Step 4: Personality
Blank’s personality roll gives us a 10 and an 8, which gives me access to Fast-Talking, Alluring, and Apathetic. I think she’s leaning Apathetic right now. For reasons that she’s not clear on, but suspects has to do with her implants not being tuned correctly, Blank feels everything in a muted way.
Her roleplaying quality is Mysterious Programming. Sometimes, she just gets prompts to do things, and if she goes along with those prompts she gets some results. This isn’t consistent, and it can’t be directed, and it kind of worries her, but here we are.
Step 5: Red Abilities
We don’t have anything tied to Blank’s Stealth, so let’s have her fade when things go bad. Book It lets her Hinder any number of enemies, using her Max die, and then end up somewhere else in the scene. And her overclocked systems can unleash an Unerring Strike to hit an enemy very precisely and very hard.
Step 6: Retcon
I’d like Blank to have a little bit of social skills, so she isn’t entirely falling back on running away whenever things get awkward (as funny as that is.) So for her Retcon, I’m going to give her Persuasion d6. This is definitely not as strong as boosting something Red, but it’s a nice layer of versatility.
Step 7: Health
We’re getting a lot of beefy friends. Blank’s Health is (8 + Strength 10 + Red 10 + 4) for a total of 32 Health, the third of our four to reach that high.
Step 8: Alias
So I guess Blank needs a name, in addition to a hero name. I’m going to go with Patience Smith, mainly because it is a pun on Patient. For her superhero name, she’s a beefy fighter with nuclear power, so let’s call her Atomizer!
Character Sheet
Atomizer
Alias: Patience Smith
Background: Blank Slate, Power Source: Tech Upgrades, Archetype: Physical Powerhouse, Personality: Apathetic
Principles: Amnesia (Identity), Strength (Expertise)
- Minor Twists: You have a flash of your former life that distracts you. What was it? What just broke?
- Major Twists: A shocking detail of your past changes the current situation – how does it affect the scene? Who just broke?
Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d10
Health: 32 (Green 32-25, Yellow 24-12, Red 11-1)
Qualities:
- Stealth (Physical) d10
- Close Combat (Physical) d10
- Alertness (Mental) d8
- Mysterious Programming d8
- Persuasion (Social) d6
Powers:
- Lightning Calculator (Intellectual) d10
- Strength (Athletic) d10
- Agility (Athletic) d8
- Nuclear (Energy) d8
- Density Control (Self-Control) d8
Green Abilities:
- Principle of Amnesia (A): Overcome a situation where a completely fresh perspective is useful and use your Max die. You and your allies gain a Hero Point.
- Principle of Strength (A): Overcome using brute force and use your Max die. You and each of your allies gain a hero point.
- Indiscriminate Fabrication (A): Boost using Lightning Calculator. Use your Max, Mid, and Min dice to create three bonuses. One must go to an enemy.
- Stuck In (A): Attack with Strength. The target of the attack must use their next action to Attack you, if possible.
- Damage Resistant (I): Reduce all physical and energy damage by 1 in the Green Zone, 2 in Yellow, and 3 in Red.
Yellow Abilities:
- Nuclear Blast (A): Attack multiple enemies with Nuclear. Use your Min die.
- Reorient (A): Boost yourself using Lightning Calculator. Then either remove a penalty on yourself or Recover using your Min die.
- Surge of Strength ®: When you defeat an enemy with Strength, Recover using your Min die.
Red Abilities:
- Book It (A): Hinder multiple enemies with Stealth. Use your Max die. Then end your action anywhere in the scene.
- Fracture Point (A): Attack an enemy with Lightning Calculator. Use your Max + Min die. Ignore all penalties to the attack, ignore any Defend actions, and it can’t be affected by Reactions.
Out Ability: Remove a bonus or penalty of your choice.
Aftermath
Even more choices blocked off, but I think we got something interesting. I like how I was opening with “upgrades to make Patience faster, stealthy, and quick-thinking” and then ran face-first into “but actually she is a brick.” It totally shifting the tone of the character, in a way that I think worked out. If I were Guiding her in a vacuum, I would probably have gone with Marksman as her Archetype to line up with the stealth, but this works!
Patience is a character who probably needs to be drawn into a story; I would integrate her with a team by asking another PC to have found her early on, and she’s living with them while she tries to figure out what the heck’s going on and doing superhero work more out of a desire to fit in than a drive right now. There’s a lot of story potential in her head being full of not-fully-functional technology from a mysterious and unknown source – was she meant to be a hero, and villains destroyed her lab before she was done? Was she an innocent test subject of a malevolent agency? Was she just a slightly amoral person whose experiments went terribly wrong? Or worst of all, was she a supervillain herself? There are a lot of ways her story could go.