janusmaxwell
2014-06-15, 11:44 PM
I'm a fairly competent DnD player regarding Pathfinder, 3.5 and Dark Heresy. The previous Saturday I was introduced to Mutants and Masterminds, and the first session was basically a giant character creation potluck. Unfortunately I'm so new to the system that while everyone else seemed to get their heroes statted out very quickly, I was still asking questions that felt like I was asking "HaY gUyz How I MINe 4 fIsH!?"
That said, I know what I want, I've got the backstory and a generally good idea of how to get everything statted out...but not enough, which is why I currently throw myself on the Giantitp forums tender mercies.
The setting is Power level 10:
What I'm trying to do is a Conduit from the infamous series with power over electricity and ice/cold, similar to Cole in the Good path of Infamous 2, except while Cole was master electrical with some ice flavored extras, this character has equal power in both. For ability scores I stated the guy out to have 16 in everything (not original I know) and his skills be based around solitary exploration (Backstory flavor, explained below) so not much to do with computers, gadgets, or people skills except Diplomacy, otherwise survival, investigate, Search, Notice, and medicine got some ranks.
2 weaknesses, one to water (Standing water up to knees or higher is painful, but since he has cold powers, it's not hard to quickly make a block/shield so he doesn't end up drowning or something) and one to hot, de-humidified locations, like Frozone in The Incredibles. If he ends up in a desert or that blast furnace room from the first Metal Gear Solid his ice powers disappear.
[EDIT] Forgot to mention, while his ice powers disappear in heat, being in a very cold environment actually makes his ice powers easier/supercharged, like making a giant ice battle suit or a freezing laser beam, a la, the Vermach 88 Ice Titans from Infamous 2.
It's the Powers where I'm having a metric **** load of troubles figuring out how to set this stuff up.
I want the (relatively slow) Regen from the games, where I can take a bullet and be fine in a few minutes, but too many at once and I'm down for the count. I don't know even where to start with this...upgrading Toughness? I did manage to figure out the power for absorbing electrical energy at a distance to heal myself and making myself entirely immune to cold damage and cold environments.
I want to be able to shoot enemies from afar with lighting bolts or freezing sprays/ice shards/hail stone fists. I know/think it's the Blast power with the Alternate feat but I'm at a complete loss to the other fine details, like making my lighting having the "Stunning" option...I managed to mostly figure out how to make Bursts for cold grenades that are "selective"
I thought of having some Iceman/Frozone ice shaping power (More Frozone then Iceman) useful in doing ice wall type shenanigans.
70% Ranged combat, but able to do decent in melee, either by having a punch or metal object charged like a taser, or by quick forming a block of ice to swing into someones head or stomach. (larger fist around my regular fist, grabbing a stick/rod and forming a quick ice sledge hammer for a solid whack)
Currently thinking of flight being more "Glide" like the Infamous games, supplemented by the Ice shapes to get/keep my height and momentum, but if the power level increases or I get more power points, I'll upgrade it to straight flight
If there are points left over and/or the Power Level increases, I'll get the pseudo mind-reading powers Cole Mcgrath had in the first Infamous and the Telekinesis to throw stuff around from the 2nd one.
All that is the stuff that I know what I want, but I don't know how to make it "Gel" into a finished character that will fit into what I'm trying to set up. If anyone knows the rules MUCH better than I do, and figures out how to make all or most of this stuff work (the rest can wait until there's more PP later) please help me. A slight addition is that the remaining members of my group are slightly munchkining (in an amusing way, not evil) and have set up magic/alien time travel stuff which includes all of them having "Immunity 9: Life Support" And I can't figure out how to get that added onto my characters stats at the moment in a way that "Makes sense"
That's all the stuff regarding crunch, if anyone is curious about the fluff for my character, backstory and motivations, read on.
Character concept: Johnathan Ezekiel Mcgrath, Only refers to himself as Zeke and no superhero name. A conduit from the bad ending of Infamous 2. (Not second son) The son of Lucy Kuo and Cole Mcgrath after Cole chose to usher in a new, all-conduit society and cause the extinction of the rest of the non-conduit human race.
Raised knowing the sins his father committed, John Mcgrath set out to explore the world which now had 0.0001% of the Human population living on it, all with some form of super power. It was partially to get a sense of the 'world no longer there' but also to see if any ordinary humans survived in the isolated locations of the world. The discovery of regular human settlements, no matter how small, would give a small beacon of hope ("Dad didn't kill everyone!"), and a chance for redemption, if not for Cole, but for his relatives and descendents.
John succeeded, and actually discovered numerous non-conduit settlements of varying stripes. Elated, he returned home, only to be betrayed by his father. Claiming that being spread out and isolated would only hurt their chances for survival, especially in a world now populated by conduits, Cole left to save the remaining humans.
Saving them...by doing what he had done long before John was ever born, sacrificing the pitifully small human settlements to create what amounted to less than 50 conduits. (Infamous process for making conduits, a BIG F-ING EXPLOSION of "Ray Sphere Energy" or equivalent mcguffin)
John was horrified when he realized what had happened and what he had been unknowing/unwitting party to, but that later changed to rage at his father being every bit the bastard that history would end up painting him as.
As John tells it, he challenged his father to a fight and like most father-son fights, he got is ass beat. Rather than killed, his mother spoke up on his behalf and Cole simply banished his son into an alternate dimension/timeline. (Yes electricity can do that....shut up....)
This is tragically a lie as John did fight his father, but Cole was the one who lost. Enraged beyond reason at the self-serving cruelty, John absorbed Coles "Power" (the evil finishing move you could do to bad guys or civilians in both games to recharge) The result of the absorbtion was being catapulted into the alternate timeline (Possibly granting him the power to dimension hop on his own in the future...) and over charging his powers so that he no longer needs to "recharge" as his father did to keep using them.
That said, I know what I want, I've got the backstory and a generally good idea of how to get everything statted out...but not enough, which is why I currently throw myself on the Giantitp forums tender mercies.
The setting is Power level 10:
What I'm trying to do is a Conduit from the infamous series with power over electricity and ice/cold, similar to Cole in the Good path of Infamous 2, except while Cole was master electrical with some ice flavored extras, this character has equal power in both. For ability scores I stated the guy out to have 16 in everything (not original I know) and his skills be based around solitary exploration (Backstory flavor, explained below) so not much to do with computers, gadgets, or people skills except Diplomacy, otherwise survival, investigate, Search, Notice, and medicine got some ranks.
2 weaknesses, one to water (Standing water up to knees or higher is painful, but since he has cold powers, it's not hard to quickly make a block/shield so he doesn't end up drowning or something) and one to hot, de-humidified locations, like Frozone in The Incredibles. If he ends up in a desert or that blast furnace room from the first Metal Gear Solid his ice powers disappear.
[EDIT] Forgot to mention, while his ice powers disappear in heat, being in a very cold environment actually makes his ice powers easier/supercharged, like making a giant ice battle suit or a freezing laser beam, a la, the Vermach 88 Ice Titans from Infamous 2.
It's the Powers where I'm having a metric **** load of troubles figuring out how to set this stuff up.
I want the (relatively slow) Regen from the games, where I can take a bullet and be fine in a few minutes, but too many at once and I'm down for the count. I don't know even where to start with this...upgrading Toughness? I did manage to figure out the power for absorbing electrical energy at a distance to heal myself and making myself entirely immune to cold damage and cold environments.
I want to be able to shoot enemies from afar with lighting bolts or freezing sprays/ice shards/hail stone fists. I know/think it's the Blast power with the Alternate feat but I'm at a complete loss to the other fine details, like making my lighting having the "Stunning" option...I managed to mostly figure out how to make Bursts for cold grenades that are "selective"
I thought of having some Iceman/Frozone ice shaping power (More Frozone then Iceman) useful in doing ice wall type shenanigans.
70% Ranged combat, but able to do decent in melee, either by having a punch or metal object charged like a taser, or by quick forming a block of ice to swing into someones head or stomach. (larger fist around my regular fist, grabbing a stick/rod and forming a quick ice sledge hammer for a solid whack)
Currently thinking of flight being more "Glide" like the Infamous games, supplemented by the Ice shapes to get/keep my height and momentum, but if the power level increases or I get more power points, I'll upgrade it to straight flight
If there are points left over and/or the Power Level increases, I'll get the pseudo mind-reading powers Cole Mcgrath had in the first Infamous and the Telekinesis to throw stuff around from the 2nd one.
All that is the stuff that I know what I want, but I don't know how to make it "Gel" into a finished character that will fit into what I'm trying to set up. If anyone knows the rules MUCH better than I do, and figures out how to make all or most of this stuff work (the rest can wait until there's more PP later) please help me. A slight addition is that the remaining members of my group are slightly munchkining (in an amusing way, not evil) and have set up magic/alien time travel stuff which includes all of them having "Immunity 9: Life Support" And I can't figure out how to get that added onto my characters stats at the moment in a way that "Makes sense"
That's all the stuff regarding crunch, if anyone is curious about the fluff for my character, backstory and motivations, read on.
Character concept: Johnathan Ezekiel Mcgrath, Only refers to himself as Zeke and no superhero name. A conduit from the bad ending of Infamous 2. (Not second son) The son of Lucy Kuo and Cole Mcgrath after Cole chose to usher in a new, all-conduit society and cause the extinction of the rest of the non-conduit human race.
Raised knowing the sins his father committed, John Mcgrath set out to explore the world which now had 0.0001% of the Human population living on it, all with some form of super power. It was partially to get a sense of the 'world no longer there' but also to see if any ordinary humans survived in the isolated locations of the world. The discovery of regular human settlements, no matter how small, would give a small beacon of hope ("Dad didn't kill everyone!"), and a chance for redemption, if not for Cole, but for his relatives and descendents.
John succeeded, and actually discovered numerous non-conduit settlements of varying stripes. Elated, he returned home, only to be betrayed by his father. Claiming that being spread out and isolated would only hurt their chances for survival, especially in a world now populated by conduits, Cole left to save the remaining humans.
Saving them...by doing what he had done long before John was ever born, sacrificing the pitifully small human settlements to create what amounted to less than 50 conduits. (Infamous process for making conduits, a BIG F-ING EXPLOSION of "Ray Sphere Energy" or equivalent mcguffin)
John was horrified when he realized what had happened and what he had been unknowing/unwitting party to, but that later changed to rage at his father being every bit the bastard that history would end up painting him as.
As John tells it, he challenged his father to a fight and like most father-son fights, he got is ass beat. Rather than killed, his mother spoke up on his behalf and Cole simply banished his son into an alternate dimension/timeline. (Yes electricity can do that....shut up....)
This is tragically a lie as John did fight his father, but Cole was the one who lost. Enraged beyond reason at the self-serving cruelty, John absorbed Coles "Power" (the evil finishing move you could do to bad guys or civilians in both games to recharge) The result of the absorbtion was being catapulted into the alternate timeline (Possibly granting him the power to dimension hop on his own in the future...) and over charging his powers so that he no longer needs to "recharge" as his father did to keep using them.