Fffffffff…
Nope, his health is tiny, I’ll have to fix things. I wrote him as Armored, as mentioned in my background, and then changed him to Marksman because it worked much better, but I left the Health upgrade and commentary about it in.
Hero revisions are the bane of my existence. I really need to just rewrite them from scratch when I do that.
I wouldn’t really call 30 Health “tiny” myself. More like average or a bit on the high side of it. I think I’ve seen more 28s than 32s over time, and 30s are all over the place.
It’s just not 36. 
I refuse to fiddle with things other than Red abilities at all after I reach the archetype stage myself. Like you said, too easy to trip yourself up.
It’s still higher than his original health of 28 even (though to be fair he does lack the damage reduction of his original suit).
Good points all around. I was just woken-up and tired and frustrated at myself for mistakes when I wrote that, and I rather forgot that (a) as part of the Marksman revision, he did get a Mental, and (b) that d12 Red die means that his health is going to be very solid no matter what.
The Randomizers:
Background 1, 1, 4 [Options: Blank Slate, Criminal, Military, Academic, Dynasty]
Power Source 4, 2, 1 [Options: Accident, Training, Genetic, Experimentation, Mystical, Nature]
Archetype 7, 2, 3 [Options: Shadow, Physical Powerhouse, Blaster, Armored, Elemental Manipulator, Robot/Cyborg]
Personality 7, 8, 5 [Options: Sarcastic, Stalwart, Fast Talking, Nurturing, Analytical, Jovial]
Critter
Real Name: Ben Laurent, First Appearance: Vanguard Academy #1, March 2019
Background: Military, Power Source: Nature, Archetype: Armored
Personality: Stalwart, Principles: Hero, Strength
Status Dice: Green d8, Yellow d8, Red d8. Health: 30 [Green 30-23, Yellow 22-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Close Combat d10, Conviction d8, Banter d8, Fitness d8, Superhero Fanboy d8
Powers: Strength d10, Awareness d10, Wall-Crawling d8, Speed d8, Swimming d8
Green Abilities:
Yellow Abilities:
Red Abilities
Out
The first of the two heroes that Captain Bolt took under his wing was Ben Laurent, a young man from the southern U.S. who had grown up with a starry-eyed fascination for superheroes, collecting stories, memorabilia, and trivia about the super-powered people who protected the world.
Ben enlisted in the military, and on an early deployment ended up at at ground zero of a hostile dimensional incursion that imbued him with animal features from several creatures at once; when he focused for a moment, he could become Critter, a chimeric person with incredible strength, speed, and mobility. At the suggestion of his superiors, Critter was one of the first students to sign up for Vanguard Academy. He was over the moon at the chance to meet his heroes and, he hoped, to one day join them.
As a student at Vanguard Academy, Critter’s main flaw was his naivety about the realities of superheroing and his willingness to throw himself face-first into danger instead of waiting for backup or studying the situation. After all, he always said, if the heroes weren’t the first ones through the door, civilians could get hurt! Captain Bolt was drawn to Critter’s excitement and enthusiasm, but worked to remind him of what could happen if that idealism was manipulated by more cynical forces. He paired him off with another hero that he thought would be a good counter-balance to Critter’s strength and eagerness…
Behind the Scenes
Armored is a weird one, because all of its abilities are about Attacking, which is not what you would expect from a defensive archetype. As a result, every non-Principle Ability that Critter has involves an attack of some sort. Normally I would not do that, but there are a lot of different secondary effects, so I think it’s still playable. I pushed a bit and flipped Eagle Eye Shield; I reversed the Attack and Defend on it, and I think it works thematically.
Narratively, Critter works as half of a team; I almost leaned fully into the strength aspect, but I like the idea that he can breathe underwater, climb up walls, move at a good clip and has incredible senses - he’s a brawler, but a well-rounded one as long as he can generally stay in the physical arena. His banter can combine with Awareness to get some good zingers in, and he knows a lot about superheroes, which is useful for both exposition for new readers and for giving him a bit of mental skills.
Interesting character concept - kind of like a mix of Animal Man and Beast Boy (with the latter’s shifting being a steady-state chimera form).
And how have those two never done a team up? Maybe I just missed it.
It’s an oddity in that regard, although it does have both Defend another and self-Recovery rider options so that’s something. With all the Min die stuff it feels like it really wants a “reroll ones” trick for dice fixing but those aren’t all that common, unfortunately. A good mod specialist on the team can help too, even a Minion-Maker who concentrates on Boost minions.
Yeah - Critter has the advantage of a pair of Yellow Abilities that give him Boosts, which he can then drop into his Min die effects to make them more impressive, but it’s notable to me that Armored doesn’t get any Boosts of its own. I sort of understand why it doesn’t have much defense - as I noted elsewhere, none of the Power Sources or Archetypes that give permanent damage reduction also give a reactive defense, and only one (Robot/Cyborg) gives any ability to Defend yourself on top of your damage reduction. You have to pick something like that from your other source of abilities.
But I really would have expected at least one ability to not involve attacking - for one thing, that Recover/Boost ability rather than a Recover/Attack ability would make sense.
It doesn’t help that Armored has one of the worst reactions in the game as an option, of course.
Yeah, it’s bad. I’ve seen two attempts at homebrew repair in play.
The first just turns it into an Inherent ability, and actually seemed too strong unless your game uses a lot of damage sources that bypass the Armored ability. There was a proposed fix for the fix that limited you to dealing damage only to targets in melee with you, which sounded reasonable and characterful. Discouraged brawling with the guy your attacks are bouncing off of, and you couldn’t use Deflection to hurt people at any real distance. Never saw that one in action though, and it adds a little complexity with positioning. That group treated “close” as melee range FWIW, rather than it being the same thing “nearby” is.
The second leaves it as a Reaction that doubles the amount of damage prevented by Armored and then deals the same amount of damage to another nearby target like it does RAW, which actually seemed kind of okay and had some advantages over the usual “roll a single die” defensive reactions with or without a rider effect. I think I like this one better overall, although it’s really silly with Push Your Limits.
I do like that second option. As an inherent, it’s a much too efficient minion-killer, but a powered-up defend/counter would be nice, and thematic.
The Randomizers:
Background 6, 9, 1 [Options: Blank Slate, Upper Class, Law Enforcement, Tragic, Unremarkable, Retired]
Power Source 2, 3, 2 [Options: Training, Genetic, Experimentation, Mystical, Artificial Being]
Archetype 3, 8, 4 [Options: Powerhouse, Marksman, Armored, Flyer, Sorcerer, Psychic]
Personality 10, 10, 8 [Options: Fast Talking, Alluring, Apathetic, Arrogant]
Jackie Frost
Real Name: Jacquelyne Tucker, First Appearance: Vanguard Academy #1, March 2019
Background: Upper Class, Power Source: Experimentation, Archetype: Sorcerer
Personality: Arrogant, Principles: Business, Cold
Status Dice: Green d10, Yellow d8, Red d8. Health: 30 [Green 30-23, Yellow 22-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Investigation d10, Alertness d8, Persuasion d8, Science d8, Cast and Crew d8
Powers: Cold d10, Deduction d8, Presence d8, Momentum d8
Green Abilities:
Yellow Abilities:
Red Abilities
Out
The third and final main character in Venture Academy was Jacquelyne Tucker. Born to a wealthy family on the West Coast, Jacquelyne was afflicted with a congenital illness as a child that grew worse as she got older. By the time she was a teenager, she was spending most of her life in bed, as her parents spent more and more of the family fortune in desperate attempts to keep her alive. Finally, on her seventeenth birthday, a dangerous experimental treatment was attempted - there was a good chance that it would kill her, but the doctors had given her weeks to live, so she went for it.
The treatment was a success, and then some. It introduced an endothermic substance into her blood that not only restored her to perfect health, but allowed her to rapidly absorb heat from her environment, sending out waves of focused cold and skating along the ground at will. Unfortunately, the treatment required ongoing medication to stay stable, and on top of that, Jacquelyne’s family was all but bankrupt. Thinking furiously, the young woman put together a plan to support her parents by becoming both a superhero and a superstar, setting up a MeTube channel that rapidly grew in followers, as her camera crew stayed on the fringes of her exploits and documented them from her rapidly-growing fanbase.
The legality of this was a bit questionable, and Jacquelyne was quick to enroll in Vanguard Academy when it was announced, promising her followers that she intended to be a proper hero. She negotiated the ability to stream some of her classes, as long as the other students didn’t object; the academy’s organizers were delighted at the positive publicity her channel would generate for them. Privately, Jacquelyne was derisive of her new school, considering it to be a price to pay for her success and her family’s safety, nothing more.
Captain Bolt saw potential in Jackie Frost, along with a serious potential for her to become a burned-out government stooge who had sold everything for success. By pairing her off with Critter, he hoped to give her a dose of the idealism that she needed, while also helping her keep her partner out of trouble. Critter and Jackie Frost would soon become Vanguard Academy’s foremost students, facing off against both expected and fearsome threats, and while their relationship was filled with friction, they grew to respect and even like each other as the comic progressed.
Behind the Scenes
This one was ticking along, and then really went sideways on me. I had a whole idea forming at the Power Source of having Jackie be primarily social/mental, and then adding Cold powers - and then I got a slightly weird set of Archetypes. After a bit of consideration, she’s a Sorcerer, but not actually a magical one; rather, she’s using weird cold tricks and capabilities in eerie ways. A lot of the time, she’s relying on her Alertness to just freeze things, but if she has a chance to study the situation, she can combine her Investigation with either Cold (to find weak points) or Presence (ditto, but for information) to get that d10.
Call Out does a thing I don’t usually recommend, which is to have a Red that’s just an upgrade to a Yellow, but ehn.
Thematically, Jackie is really the polar (pun intended) opposite to Ben. He’s eager, she’s cynical. He’s a brawler, she’s a blaster. He’s in this for heroism, she’s in it for her career. There’s going to be a lot of chaos before they rub off on each other.
If it weren’t for the OP synergy with Push Your Limits I’d probably have already started using that form of Deflection, but with it it seemed a bit too good even for a Red-scaling Green combo trick. Maybe if I stole the “can only damage close targets this way” fix of a fix from the other option that would balance out better, though. If I ever get a regular game going again I’ll have to try that. It’s so close - and the RAW Deflection is so bad.
I dig the sculpt there. That ice kilt bit is really snazzy.
Cool (ahem) backstory and explanation for being a hero, although I wonder how Sentinel’s lawyers felt about another cold-using character with a dire medical condition that more or less forced them into hero work to pay for their treatment.
Has “youtube creator” become the modern equivalent to “news reporter/cameraman” for hero jobs, I wonder? I know I’ve used it a couple of times and had at least two players who did as well. It seems like one of those things you could plausibly do around the hero stuff, and you don’t even need to keep a civilian ID safe while doing it so easier than Clark or Billy or Peter have it.
Hey, credit for not doing the usual and running either Charged-Up Blast or the Eruption/Improved Immunity combo like, I don’t know, half the e/e specialists out there? More than half? It’s not like she’s got a Max Attack in Yellow anyway, so that is a pretty meaningful damage bump when the chips are down, and one with no drawbacks or hoops to jump through to use it.
There are only so many stories in the world. 
It helps that by the time she’s introduced, that’s not Absolute Zero’s story any more. So she’s more reflecting an archetype that has become common in the metaverse than directly mimicking an existing character.
The Randomizers:
Background 9, 5, 6 [Options: Academic, Upper Class, Tragic, Dynasty, Interstellar, Retired]
Power Source 8, 1, 3 [Options: Accident, Genetic, Experimentation, Powered Suit, Radiation, Supernatural]
Archetype 3, 1, 5 [Options: Speedster, Powerhouse, Marksman, Blaster, Close Quarters, Flyer]
Personality 3, 3, 4 [Options: Impulsive, Mischievous, Distant, Stalwart, Analytical]
Gale Force
Real Name: Huang Aihan, First Appearance: (as Earthwatch leader) Earthwatch (Vol. 3) #1, March 2019
Background: Dynasty, Power Source: Supernatural, Archetype: Flyer
Personality: Analytical, Principles: Equality, Great Power
Status Dice: Green d10, Yellow d8, Red d8. Health: 26 [Green 26-21, Yellow 20-10, Red 9-1]
Qualities: Leadership d10, Close Combat d10, History d8, Unwavering Idealist d8
Powers: Wind d12, Deduction d10, Flight d10, Agility d6, Intangibility d6, Presence d6
Green Abilities:
Yellow Abilities:
Red Abilities
Out
The third new comic launching in March 2019 was Volume 3 of Earthwatch. With the success of the program over the past fifteen years, Earthwatch had become a standard operation, in which three to four supervillains at a time worked on a parole system, graduating to become superheroes or to retire to civilian life. Previous iterations of the comic had run into the problem that eventually, the question of whether these characters were reformed was resolved, and decided to fix that by developing a rotating cast of characters, with one central leader working with three to four other characters, who would gradually filter out and be replaced one at a time as they either succeeded or failed at their redemptions. With that in mind, the only question was who should be in charge. After extensive discussion, it was decided that Gale Force should return. She had the combat background, the Earthwatch background, and she’d been successfully headlining a solo run for the past three and a half years.
Huang Aihan was now turning 40, an established hero with almost three decades of combat experience under her belt. With age had come a bit more maturity; her tactical skills were still sharp, but she was a bit more patient, and much more willing to offer empathy instead of just demanding that others live up to her expectations. At the start of the comic, she was brand-new to the Earthwatch team; Shockeye was ready to step down and return to wandering the world, and she was placed in charge of the newest batch of recruits.
Gale Force’s story as the leader of Earthwatch was about finding yourself as you move into a new phase of your life. Her 40th birthday was in the first issue of Earthwatch, and she was struggling with what that meant; while she was a famous, distinguished superhero, her personal life had suffered for it. She and Nightguard were no longer together (although they remained friends, and Nightguard appeared in the comic from time to time) and she was trying to decide if she could maintain a relationship while giving her all to her recruits, or if she should focus on the good she could do instead. At the same time, she had to train Earthwatch and stand against supervillainy, and much like Captain Bolt she had to struggle with the potential for government interference and pressure on her parolees to enter military service. The balance made the newest Earthwatch a complicated story, and the four former criminals who joined her weren’t about to make things easier…
Behind the Scenes
I knew that I wanted a new Earthwatch, and I knew that I wanted the head of Earthwatch to be one of its former members, but I hadn’t decided which one. It was down to Ember or Gale Force, and the randomizers lined up a pretty decent team leader version of Gale Force so here she is, back and in charge! HeroForge hair colouring is pretty much single-colour only, but I managed to mess around and get something that looks okay as long as you don’t rotate the model!
Update: I have been pointed to the hair decals in HeroForge. Gale Force is fixed! This may also lead to fancier hair in the future…
This Gale Force doesn’t dissolve nearly so well, because I couldn’t get Intangibility attached to a high die, but she’s a much stronger leader. Supernatural implies that the source of her magic might be magical (originally I’d just given her Nature and never really explained it beyond “inherited from her mother”) and that might wind up being a storyline in the future.
Glad to see her back and in this role.
The Randomizers:
Background 5, 4, 9 [Options: Military, Academic, Tragic, Medical, Interstellar]
Power Source 7, 5, 2 [Options: Training, Mystical, Relic, Radiation, Artificial Being]
Archetype 7, 1, 4 [Options: Speedster, Marksman, Blaster, Armored, Flyer, Sorcerer]
Personality 7, 7, 1 [Options: Lone Wolf, Stalwart, Fast Talking, Decisive, Naive]
The Cloud
Real Name: Clive Stanford, First Appearance: Earthwatch (Vol. 3) #1, March 2019
Background: Academic, Power Source: Radiation, Archetype: Speedster
Personality: Lone Wolf, Principles: Science, Speed
Status Dice: Green d8, Yellow d8, Red d8. Health: 28 [Green 28-22, Yellow 21-11, Red 10-1]
Qualities: Science d12, Close Combat d10, Investigation d8, Refuge in Audacity d8
Powers: Part Detachment d10, Lightning Calculator d8, Speed d6, Vitality d6, Inventions d6
Green Abilities:
Yellow Abilities:
Red Abilities
Out
Nothing ever went smoothly for Clive Stanford, and in his calmer moments he was willing to admit that this was mostly his own fault.
Clive was a genius. Everyone agreed about that. Everyone also agreed that Clive didn’t check his work, didn’t work well with others, and didn’t let things like ‘basic safety protocols’ get in the way of whatever new idea he absolutely needed to develop as quickly as possible. He always meant to! But when he had an idea, he needed to know that he could do it. Even if it cost him friends, or job opportunities. Even if it meant breaking into his university physics lab in the middle of the night to work on a brand-new application for safely digitizing matter and transferring it to a receiver point, using highly experimental and unstable radioactive molecules as a power source.
Even if the resulting explosion both destroyed the lab and wrecked tens of millions of dollars worth of equipment, and incidentally bathed Clive in that radiation, causing him to become a cloud of unstable molecules rapidly reassembling and disassembling. He fled the site of the explosion, dedicating himself to developing a method of controlling his new state, stealing money and equipment rather than asking for help. He became a supervillain known as The Cloud, working any job that would bring him closer to his goal, until he was finally apprehended - at which point Fly Boy and Synthesis were able to work together using his notes to stabilize him. Given the nature of his crimes, and the fact that he had tried to keep the damage he did to a minimum, The Cloud was deemed a potential Earthwatch recruit, joining the team and bringing his immense scientific genius to work saving lives.
As a member of Earthwatch, Clive was a problem child. Not on missions - he was dedicated, he was willing to throw himself into danger to save lives, and he never abandoned the mission. But back at the lab he remained standoffish. He continued to push the limits of what he was allowed, sneaking research materials, and it was clear that he had not learned much from his near-death experience. Gale Force knew that if he could just accept help, he could be a hero for the ages, but it remained to be seen if his future was standing alongside other heroes, or sitting in a jail cell…
Behind the Scenes
Our first repentant supervillain is not… exactly repentant. But he’s sympathetic, kind of! I want to hit four pretty different archetypes for these heroes, and I want each of them to have a potential redemption arc and a potential failure state, so that fans are left guessing who will graduate and who will end up being a supervillain again. Since I’m not planning on going too far into the future, I don’t know if there will ever be an answer to that question.
It amuses me that The Cloud has the exact same principles and nearly the same qualities as Tachyon, while being a totally different character. He’s a Speedster mostly because his part detachment lets him rapidly cloud out and reform in other locations, rather than because he’s literally fast; most of his powers are about dissolving and then forming part of himself wherever he needs that part to be.
Unusual approach to a speedster build, but your Green Discombobulate and Neutron Recalibration aren’t legal by RAW. They have to use P/Q choices from the Speedster list, which is fairly narrow and doesn’t include either Self-Control Powers or Info Qualities. I’m kind of convinced the archetype gets such uncommonly potent Green abilities in part because of the limited list of what you can key them to, so it matters here - although maybe you swapped the key dice on one of them with your homebrew retcon “menu B” choice (up in post 312)? Hard to be sure - “menu A” was obviously a 3rd red ability.
No, I just blanked completely on that restriction. Menu B only allows for swapping the size of two dice, not swapping what Abilities are keyed to. I have a consistent problem remembering that Archetype abilities need to come from the Archetype die list.
I’ll make an adjustment momentarily, using Close Combat for Discombobulate and Lightning Calculator for Neutron Recalibration. It’s slightly more restrictive, but will generally have the same net effect.
The Randomizers:
Background 1, 7, 9 [Options: Blank Slate, Law Enforcement, Struggling, Tragic, Unremarkable, Created]
Power Source 8, 4, 3 [Options: Genetic, Experimentation, Relic, Powered Suit, Supernatural, Artificial Being]
Archetype 6, 10, 5 [Options: Blaster, Close Quarters Combatant, Robot/Cyborg, Sorcerer, Wild Card, Form-Changer]
Personality 3, 7, 6 [Options: Impulsive, Distant, Stalwart, Inquisitive, Alluring, Analytical]
Catharsis
Real Name: Yvette Jaeger, First Appearance: Earthwatch (Vol. 3) #1, March 2019
Background: Struggling, Power Source: Relic, Archetype: Form-Changer
Personality: Impulsive, Principles: Everyman, Inner Demons
Status Dice: Green d6, Yellow d8, Red d8. Health: 32 [Green 32-25, Yellow 24-12, Red 11-1]
Qualities: Conviction d12, Criminal Underworld d8, Fitness d8, Banter d6, Reluctantly Supportive d8
Powers: Intuition d10, Shapeshifting d10, Vitality d10, Size-Changing d6, Transmutation d6
Green Abilities:
Green Form: Anxiety
Powers: Shapeshifting d10, Intuition d10, Speed d10, Leaping d6, Vitality d6
Green Form: Resentment
Powers: Shapeshifting d10, Elasticity d10, Agility d10, Size-Changing d6, Vitality d6
Yellow Abilities:
Yellow Form: Arrogance
Powers: Shapeshifting d10, Intuition d10, Strength d12, Absorption d6, Vitality d8
Red Abilities
Out
Much like her future teammate, life wasn’t easy for Yvette Jaeger. Unlike the Cloud, she recognized this and seethed. She could tell that the world was unfair, that her family didn’t support her, that she wasn’t smart enough or athletic enough to stand out at school. From a young age, she developed a caustic attitude that served as armor, and which turned aside people who might have helped her; instead, she fell in with others who were just as bitter and cynical as her, and who reinforced her disdain by taking advantage of her and pressuring her. She had a shit job, a string of failed relationships, and a burning certainty that life had failed her.
And then she found the Amulet of Dimorges, an ancient relic of Atlantis. The amulet was meant to draw out your inner traits, allowing you to manifest as your idealized self, but it had been cursed when the nation sank. It resonated with Yvette’s hatred and self-loathing, and with its power, she could transform herself into a demonic representation of her greatest failings. As the supervillain Outburst, she channeled her anxiety, resentment, and arrogance to lash out at the world, with no better idea than to use it to try and fill the void inside.
Outburst was eventually arrested, but the amulet had bonded fully with her, and could not be taken away for long. At her trial, she successfully argued that it had affected her mind, and she wasn’t fully responsible for her actions; as such, she was remanded to Earthwatch, to undergo therapy along with her rehabilitation in the hopes of allowing her to use the amulet as it was originally intended. She took on the name Catharsis to reflect her new goals, and tried to commit to a new beginning.
It was not going well. Sometimes, Catharsis was able to manifest the hope and tenacity within her, but most of the time she just fell back on trying to direct her base impulses towards a better end result. Her rage frequently boiled out, manifesting for a few seconds before she could chain it again, and in her worst moments, her self-loathing erupted out, doing untold damage to both her enemies and herself. Gale Force worried that if no one could find a way to get through to her, it was only a matter of time before Catharsis self-destructed for good…
Behind the Scenes
Weirdest Form-Changer yet!
I almost went all-in, attaching Form-Changer to something other than Shapeshifting, but I do like the idea that she physically transforms Ben-10 style into all of her own flaws and worst impulses. There are also some similarities between Catharsis and classic Venture villain the Sca-Venger, as well as the much less self-destructive Dinah-Dozen over at Sentinel Comics, but in both cases I think she’s different enough to stand on her own. She’s also more than a little bit like the villain from Season Two of Dirk Gently, although less awful.
I went back and forth on this one for a while - I liked the core concept of someone who was struggling and suffering and then found a magic relic that made things so much worse, but I couldn’t decide between this or “the relic literally just lets her weaponize her resentment as elemental damage and she’s a blaster.” I think I like this better, especially with the transitory forms that she shifts through but can’t maintain. I think they tell a story. Maybe over time, Hope will become one of her core forms and whatever it replaces will move to Red.
As far as her portrait - most of the time she’s a giant monster, but I really don’t want to design, like, five portraits for her so this is her fancy outfit for when she’s not transformed.
Using the non-Form abilities to represent temporary forms is a neat approach to making a Form-Changer. One note - shouldn’t the Yellow form step up two power dice, or was that something you changed?
Also, neat to see that Gale Force’s color scheme is reflected in the other team members’ costumes so far (good thing Shockeye picked her to be his successor and not Ember, since otherwise they would’ve had to change the team’s red-and-yellow color scheme, huh?).
