RISE FROM YOUR GRAVE!
Particularly appropriate invocation* of thread necromancy, since the new post is a hero who’s literally a living lightning bolt.
Behold, Levin-Brand! And some commentary on sub-par character build options.
*Because it’s an Altered Beast reference, which opens with Zeus chucking lightning bolts at a tombstone to revive some heroes to go do his bidding. And Levin-Brand is a similar divine lightning bolt, albeit a badly-aimed one. Get it? 
Not bad. I’d be tempted to give him Intuition instead of one of his other powers, so that he can make better use of his various knowledge qualities, but as far as pulling those sets together he’s certainly useable.
I suppose he could swap that dinky d6 Teleport for it easily enough, but at the end of the day any fiddling just results in going from a default d4 to a d6, which nets a meager +1. Not meaningless, but I’m kind of hoping not to get stuck being an Overcome monkey anyway. Really nothing I can do about that godawful 6/8/8 status die spread unless I retcon the Red, and I’d rather take my chances on twisting to dump a minion swarm early in Yellow than try to compensate for a weak Overcome game.
Couldn’t quite reach Nanomax levels of minimal d8s on his character sheet, but he’s kind of close.
First game with him starts in about an hour, we’ll see how it goes.
Neat. Yeah, I’m definitely getting Thunderbolt Genie vibes from him. And the backstory of being something akin to Billy Batson’s lightning bolt before getting blown off course is certainly interesting.
Regarding his dependency on Electricity, yeah, losing it or having it degraded would definitely impair most of his tricks. He’s still got a few tricks in his bag he can use with Absorption, but none of them are win-con progressing.
I wonder: if a twist or something degrades or eliminates a hero’s power or quality, would you allow the hero to Overcome to restore it?
Bit less pink, though.
The Shazam bolts have been deflected and misdirected a number of times in canon, but it always just results in a dud or the wrong person getting the powers for a while (including at least one of the Sivanas, IIRC) rather than a free-willed being. When I first read Johhny Thunder as a kid I remember wondering if the genie was actually a rogue Shazam bolt or otherwise related to the Marvel Family mythos, but no, turned out he’s “just” another variation on the many extradimensional imps DC is plagued with.
Personally, it would depend on the situation and how well they can justify it. I really dislike just saying “no way” to clever Overcomes, but I wouldn’t make it easy. Levin-Brand couldn’t restore his Lightning die size just by sticking his fingers in a wall socket or even nomming on regular high tension wire, but if he had access to a power substation and was willing to damage the electrical grid that would be enough for me. Probably better if he can use villain resources instead. Giant robots and doomsday devices usually come with some pretty powerful generators, but they’re also usually well-protected against interference so maybe multiple Overcomes would be needed.
And really, the only way you lose P/Q dice completely is on Major Twists (which are supposed to be truly awful and last till end of issue) and a couple of villain upgrades (which are also supposed to be awful - they “cost” a whole scene element- but don’t last as a long). Minor Twists just downgrade die sizes, which is painful but you can cope with it for the duration of a scene if it doesn’t happen too often.
FWIW, L-B played fine in last night’s session (and we have another later this weekend), even with him down to a d8 Electricity for most of one scene after he twisted a couple of times to flood the zone with minions by using Spark Motes early. When you start with a d12 losing a step or even two isn’t totally crippling.
The big villain in that scene lacked sweep attacks and I wanted to see what it was like being on the other side of a minion swarm for a change. We had a hefty team Boost both times I did it so I was getting ~9 d6 sparks each time, which made it worth the cost even against a -2 damage reduction on the big guy.
Other than that Levin-Brand did as expected. Good damage output in fights, solid Overcome game for things involving electrical stuff, bounced in and out of Red Health five times in the course of two action scenes. It was a little embarrassing being outraced by a guy on a what amounted to powered roller skates. High point of the evening for me was a whimsical second turn Overcome on a teleport gate the environment had opened up where a lucky-ish 3d6 Teleport + Science + Status roll let me redirect it so everyone coming through got dumped in a nearby vat of “prototype containment gel” for a big fat penalty. Totally worth the minor twist on that one.
Notable quotes, all relating to my lackluster mobility powers:
“Slowest Lightning Bolt In the World!”
“Look, it’s not the length of your high-voltage arc, it’s how you use it.”
“I was thinking of Zeno’s paradox and it slowed me down, okay?”
Or just doing a lotta damage to whatever poor sap gets caught in the way (as happens with Superman in Kingdom Come).
True. Speaking of which, what would even happen to Levin-Brand if he completely lost his Electricity die? I mean, he’s entirely made up of lightning, yeah? So, what would his form even be like without it?
I’ll see if I can roll badly enough over the next few weeks to find out for you.
The story’s only going to run four-five sessions and poor Levin-Brand will probably get retired when it’s done, so a tragic ending where he just dissipates while saving the day with a key Major Twist isn’t off the table by any means. Don’t mind playing the guy, but I’m not real invested in his long term prospects.
you just know that if there was a cartoon based on your characters that L-B’s player would always take disabling a power or ability as a major twist and would always choose a major twist.
“O/o/p/s I s/h/o/r/t/e/d o/u/t a/g/a/i/n”
That, or winding up stuck in a battery and used to power some villainous gadget until he can get loose.
It’s kind of like the Human Torch. When you’re all about one thing and that one thing has a bunch of counters and exploits to use against it, you can expect to see them turn up with minor variations over and over again throughout your whole career.
In the plus side, some things that seem like they should work don’t. In our second session some jackass thought he’d disable L-B by summoning a rainstorm to short him out. Had a fun time explaining that lightning bolts and rain mix just fine while I was mildly electrocuting him. It’s like he’d never see a thunderstorm.
Which also led to an running argument about how it should be “lightning storm” and thunder deserves second billing because it always misses the cue and comes in a little late, which in turn led to us establishing that thun…er, lightning storms are actually the elements having a metaphysical jam session and meteorology is a crock.
I’m way behind on the January Character Creation Challenge, but I might as well use it as an excuse to finish a few writeups I’ve had sitting around as drafts. Today we’ve got a somewhat specialized super-thug for hire who’s a particularly tough customer one-on-one.
If you want to make him even more of a pain to deal with, drop his reaction for Ludicrously Durable (I) Reduce all damage dealt to you by (another) 2.
Bully + Indomitable is one the few combos that let you double up on that trick, and while Titans can still sport even higher damage reduction “just” 4 points is usually plenty to frustrate team interventions.
Gruji entering cosplay contests is a fun personality/hint to origin bit
I can also just imagine a group of game designers getting dragged along behind Gruji and B.G. Gruff on a bar crawl after Gen Con. I could also see a hero sending money to some game industry celebrity so they can keep the booze flowing until the heroes can arrange a sting to arrest them.
An orc’s got to do something with their time off, right? Can’t stand around in a 10’x10’ room guarding a treasure chest all the time.
Another hero today, checking of the last of the archetypes I haven’t done for the blog yet. Also cleared Unremarkable and Apathetic off my list, so that much closer to hero bingo.
Modular is by far my least favorite archetype, in part because the mechanical complexity doesn’t feel at all worth it, in part because the balance feels dubious at best (just look at those mode abilities), and in part because explaining why a hero is modular in the first place is a stretch. Just look at the time-travelling-alien-gestalt hoops I had to jump through here. Yeesh.
It’s enough to make me dislike Bunker in the card game just through association - which is ironic, because if you used Method 1 Bunker would be impossible to roll into. There’s only two power sources that can get a 20 for an archetype, and either one has a 1% chance of doing so. Certainly achieves the goal of keeping the compex character build away from newbies, I’ll say that for it.
The one Modular I threw together was not to play but to get a clear picture of an NPC ally hero and what he might be able to do if he was in the spotlight instead of a supporting character.
Character is a kung fu master that “realigns his chi” and “assumes a dedicated stance”
also, he is part of a group of reincarnate cycle kung fu immortals, so he has teammates to support the flaws in his fighting style.
He looks like a screaming Al Leong his partners are a cartoon-ish Gerald Okamura and a young Keye Luke (copy paste of an actual self-portrait)
Yeah, Modular isn’t weak the way that Divided is, but it’s just way more work than you really should need for the concept. Especially when Form-Changer exists and does the concept much more fluidly.
It’s really the most obvious case where an archetype was designed because they wanted to mimic a character’s card deck rather than their nature. Bunker would work fine as a Powered Suit / Form-Changer if you were allowed to use Technological powers as its form-changing (and you should be allowed to, it’s a silly restriction.)
edit And, like, easily. Powered Suit gives him physical damage reduction, a persistent boost (Lidar Intel) and a multi-target attack (Grenade Launcher).
Then he gets two Green Forms: Upgrade Mode (Clever Form) and Turret Mode (Strong Form). His Yellow Form is Recharge Mode (Regenerating Form), and in Red he activates his RIOT Cannon (as per his existing build.)
Absolutely. And while Bunker doesn’t generally seem to use Form-Changer’s power die reallocation trick, if you wanted that would also allow you to model custom specialist suits like the stealth model. Modular’s not weak (and might actually be too strong) and works better mechanically than some other archetypes, but it just feels so pointlessly complex and unneeded.