Super Soldiers PEACH

[Rater202]

https://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/b/b1/Captain_America_Vol_6_2_Textless.jpg/revision/latest?cb=20110719042719
Doesn't matter what the press says. Doesn't matter what the politicians or the mobs say. Doesn't matter if the whole country decides that something wrong is something right. This nation was founded on one principle above all else: the requirement that we stand up for what we believe, no matter the odds or the consequences. When the mob and the press and the whole world tell you to move, your job is to plant yourself like a tree beside the river of truth, and tell the whole world -- "No, you move."

A sad fact of life is that War... Is inevitable. Sometimes for conquest, sometimes for politics, or maybe becuase your leaders just don't like the other peoples' leader's face.

And for as long as there has been war, there have been peoples trying to one-up each other, to maintain dominance. Better weapons, better armor, better training, better tactics, better strategy, better magic.

And some, sometimes, think "why not have a better soldier?" Why be satisfied with what the Gods have deemed to give them.

Created with arcane secrets, surgical alterations, alchemical concoctions, controlled modifications of infectious diseases and curses, or stranger things still, Super Soldiers are created to be at the peak of what one of their kind is capable of and to be able to be trained far more thoroughly in less time.

The process of creating Super Soldiers is difficult, both because the reagents used are rare and difficult to prepare and becuase those who know how to do it tend to keep it secret. No one, not even a malicious mad man, wants this kind of power to fall into the hands of a dangerous lunatic. People who are administered these processes are rigorously tested for mental stability, moral backbone, loyalty to the people imbuing them with the power, or some combination of the three.

If successful, these procedures create physically perfect paragons of everything that is good about their people. If unsuccessful... Well, the best case scenario is that the subject dies horribly. We'll get to the worst-case scenario later.

"Super Soldier" is an acquired template that can be applied to any Giant, Humanoid, or Monsterous Humanoid, or at the GM's discretion any creature that is sufficiently similar to those types, such as a human with the Half-Dragon template. The Creature's type remains unchanged.

HD: A Super soldier always has maximum hit points per hit die.

Speed: A super-soldier increases all of their movement speeds by half again. If they have a natural fly speed from wings or other means of physical flight, they increase their maneuverability by one step.

AC: A super-soldier gains a +4 insight bonus to armor class and a +1 natural armor bonus to armor class. If the base creature already has natural armor, increase that bonus by +1 instead.

Attacks: A super-soldier gains a +1 untyped bonus on all attack rolls. This bonus stacks with all other bonuses to attack rolls.

Damage: A super-soldier gains a +1 untyped bonus to all damage rolls. Furthermore, a super-soldier who does not have natural weapons can, if they choose, inflict lethal damage with their unarmed strikes and is treated as though they have four levels of Monk for the purposes of unarmed strike damage. This stacks with monk levels or with any class that further's monk unarmed damage progression, but not with the bonus from a Monk's Belt or similar magic items.

Special Qualties

Clinical Immortality.: A super-soldier does not Age and does not have a maximum life span. They still accumulate bonuses from progressing through age categories but do not suffer penalties, and any penalties acquired before the template is applied are reversed. Furthermore, a Super Soldier cannot be permanently diminished. They cannot be permanently maimed by anything short of amputation, and any ability drain they take is converted to ability damage, which heals at the normal rate. They cannot be inflicted with permanent ability damage. Any permanent level loss is treated as a temporary negative level and they recover at the normal rate.

Evasion: A Super Soldier's reflexes are honed to the height of what is possible. A super-soldier has the evasion ability. If they already have the evasion ability, be it from racial traits or class levels possessed prior to the application of this template, they instead gain improved evasion. A super-soldier who takes class levels that would grant evasion after acquiring this template does not gain improved evasion automatically but must acquire from further class levels or some other source.

Mettle: A Super Soldier's mind and body are imbued with a preternatural fortitude. A super-soldier has the mettle ability. If they already have the mettle ability, be it from racial traits or class levels possessed prior to the application of this template, they instead gain improved mettle. A super-soldier who takes class levels that grant mettle after acquiring this template does not gain improved mettle automatically but must acquire it from further class levels or some other source.

Saves: A Super Soldier calculates their saving throws as though they were a monk whose level equaled their total hit dice, overwriting any progression based on Hit Dice or Class levels. A super-soldier with 1 hit die with thus have fortitude, reflex, and wisdom saving throws of +2 each, while one with 20 hit dice will have bonuses of +12 each.

Abilities: A super soldier's strength, dexterity, constitution, and intelligence scores are always at least 18, before applying modifiers from race or templates. A super-soldier does not apply negative ability modifiers from race or templates to these scores unless the race or template applies some obvious deficiency such as a zombie made from a super soldier losing it's intelligence score or a creature that has no legs taking a penalty to dexterity.

Skills: A Super Soldier is imbued with great intelligence and ability to learn. Knowledge skills are always considered Class Skills for a Super Solider, and they gain 2 additional skill points per level.

Feats: A Super Soldier gains one bonus feat for every four hit dice it acquires after this template is applied. Feats that modify skill roles, grant new options in combat, and proficiencies in exotic weapons are common, but any feat can be taken as long as the Super Soldier meets all of the prerequisites.

Climate/Terrain
Any land and underground.

Organization
Same as the base creature, though they tend to be the leaders of groups of combatants.

Treasure
It's not uncommon for Super Soldiers to be equipped with weapons, possibly exotic weapons, and armor made of materials or with enhancements that are too expensive or difficult to work with to be mass-produced.

Alignment
Often as the base creature, though the selection process for who can become one tends to skew them towards the alignment of the people who made them(possibly even moreso than the people who made them.) A Cult of Lollth who makes a Drow Super Soldier will make the most treacherous and ambitious of all Drow, while an order of Paladins with produce the most noble of heroes.

Advancement
Same as the base creature, or by class level.So I suck at CR and LA so id anyone with a keen eye of balance(as in, better at it than Wizards) wants to pitch suggestions, that would be apreciated

So this was inspired by a poster in the 3.5 thread asking what bonuses Captain America's Super Soldier Serum would give him. I answered there, but it got me thinking and this is basically a tweek from the answer I gave in that thread.

I've also got ideas for templates reflecting the products of Project Sulfer(Man-Thing,) Project Home Grown(Nuke,) Project Venom(The Sym-Soldier program,) and maybe some of the experiments done by Project Power(They made Luke Cage and, later improved the procedure to include a healing factor comperable to Wolverine) but for now I'm content with Captain America.

Obviously, this is based on the main comics timeline, not the MCU.

[Rater202]

The Home Grownhttps://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/6/63/Captain_America_Vol_7_12_Textless.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20130913084215
You think you're a patriot?! You think you can wrap yourself in the flag -- and justify your madness?! You're everything that's wrong! You're the American nightmare!

Under ordinary circumstances, the birth of a Super Soldier is a glorious thing... However... Sometimes, sometimes the people creating a super soldier aren't careful when screening their subjects, or they overcompensate when trying to condition someone into a perfect candidate, or they just cheap out on the procedures to create the Super Soldier, and one of the Home Grown is born instead.

Some think that the Home Grown are, in a way, superior to Super Soldiers in at least some capacities, though others point to their frothing insanity as canceling all potential benfiet. None the less,some people do make them on purpose.

A Home Grown is mentally ill at best. They can follow orders but will do so aggressively and destructively. In the absence of orders or a commander, a Home Grown will pursue the most twisted and destructive interpretation of the values of the people who created them, again in the most destructive way possible. Toxic Jingoism is common among Home Grown.

Home Grown is an acquired template that can be applied to any creature who could potentially acquire the Super Soldier Template. Its type remains unchanged.

HD: A Home Grown gains 2d12 Racial Hit Dice and an additional +5 hit points per hit dice. A Home Grown always has maximum hit points per hit die.

Speed: As Base Creature.

AC: A Home Grown gains +5 natural armor but a -2 to penalty to overall armor class.

Attacks: A Home Grown who doe not have natural weapons gains two Slam Attacks as primary natural weapons that they are proficient in, representing the crushing might of their enhanced body. These attacks deal damage as a standard slam attack of a creature one size category larger than the Home grown.

Special Qualities:

Fast Healing: A Home Grown has Fast Healing 5. If the base creature already has Fast Healing, increase that value by 5.

Damage Reduction: A Home Grown has DR 5/-. If the base creature already has Dr/-, use whichever value is higher. If the BAse creature has some other type of Damage reduction, use whichever is better in the moment: A Human Home Grown Natural Werewolf would normally use it's DR 10/Silver, but against a Silver weapon would use it's Dr 5/- instead.

Powerful Build: A Home Grown counts as one size larger than their actual size category for the purposes of grappling, bull rush attempts, and carrying capacity. This does not stack with similar abilities.

Rage: A Home Grown is in a permanent state of Rage. Treat the Homegrown as if it had all of the downsides, but not the benefits, of a Barbarian in Rage. The Armor Class penalty is already included in the adjustments. This is temporarily overwritten by the Rage class feature or similar abilities.

Madness (EX): If the Home Grown wasn't insane to begin with, they are now. Anyone who targets a Home Grown with a thought detection or telepathic effect, or any mind affecting ability of psionic origin, takes 1d4 wisdom damage from contact with such a diseased mind.

Abilities: Str+4, Con+4, Dex+2, Int-2, Wis-6 Cha-2. The processes that create a Home Grown strengthen their body but destroy their sanity and in general are not conductive to healthy mental development.

Skills and Feats: A Home Grown cannot benifet from or use any feats or skills that are denied to a Barbarian in Rage.

Climate/Terrain: Any land and underground.

Organization: Solo, with a handler, or with a handler and 2-6 supporting combatants.

Treasure: Home grown are usually equipped with quality weapons, otherwise as Base Creature.

Alighnment: Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Evil. The violent, destructive insanity inflicted on those who become Home Grown prevents them from adopting any other alignments.

Advancement: A Home Grown advances as the base creature. In terms of class levels, Fighter and Barbarian are most common while Spellcasting Classes are almost unheard of, due to the Home Grown's constant state of Rage preventing the use of spells.

LA: N/A, Home Grown are not suitable for PCs.Okay, here's another one.

This one is mostly based on Frank "Nuke" Simpson, but there are a lot of Failed Super Soldiers who boil down to "stronger and tougher than Cap but violently and incurably insane" that this also works for.

Up Next will be a template based on Man-Thing, the aforementioned "Worst Case" scenario for Failed Super Soldiers, and after that...

Well, as I think about it, the Sym-Soldiers, and Symbiote hosts in general would probably be better as a class.

[noob]

The Home Grownhttps://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/6/63/Captain_America_Vol_7_12_Textless.jpeg/revision/latest?cb=20130913084215
You think you're a patriot?! You think you can wrap yourself in the flag -- and justify your madness?! You're everything that's wrong! You're the American nightmare!

Under ordinary circumstances, the birth of a Super Soldier is a glorious thing... However... Sometimes, sometimes the people creating a super soldier aren't careful when screening their subjects, or they overcompensate when trying to condition someone into a perfect candidate, or they just cheap out on the procedures to create the Super Soldier, and one of the Home Grown is born instead.

Some think that the Home Grown are, in a way, superior to Super Soldiers in at least some capacities, though others point to their frothing insanity as canceling all potential benfiet. None the less,some people do make them on purpose.

A Home Grown is mentally ill at best. They can follow orders but will do so aggressively and destructively. In the absence of orders or a commander, a Home Grown will pursue the most twisted and destructive interpretation of the values of the people who created them, again in the most destructive way possible. Toxic Jingoism is common among Home Grown.

Home Grown is an acquired template that can be applied to any creature who could potentially acquire the Super Soldier Template. Its type remains unchanged.

HD: A Home Grown gains 2d12 Racial Hit Dice and an additional +5 hit points per hit dice. A Home Grown always has maximum hit points per hit die.

Speed: As Base Creature.

AC: A Home Grown gains +5 natural armor but a -2 to penalty to overall armor class.

Attacks: A Home Grown who doe not have natural weapons gains two Slam Attacks as primary natural weapons that they are proficient in, representing the crushing might of their enhanced body. These attacks deal damage as a standard slam attack of a creature one size category larger than the Home grown.

Special Qualities:

Fast Healing: A Home Grown has Fast Healing 5. If the base creature already has Fast Healing, increase that value by 5.

Damage Reduction: A Home Grown has DR 5/-. If the base creature already has Dr/-, use whichever value is higher. If the BAse creature has some other type of Damage reduction, use whichever is better in the moment: A Human Home Grown Natural Werewolf would normally use it's DR 10/Silver, but against a Silver weapon would use it's Dr 5/- instead.

Powerful Build: A Home Grown counts as one size larger than their actual size category for the purposes of grappling, bull rush attempts, and carrying capacity. This does not stack with similar abilities.

Rage: A Home Grown is in a permanent state of Rage. Treat the Homegrown as if it had all of the downsides, but not the benefits, of a Barbarian in Rage. The Armor Class penalty is already included in the adjustments. This is temporarily overwritten by the Rage class feature or similar abilities.

Madness (EX): If the Home Grown wasn't insane to begin with, they are now. Anyone who targets a Home Grown with a thought detection or telepathic effect, or any mind affecting ability of psionic origin, takes 1d4 wisdom damage from contact with such a diseased mind.

Abilities: Str+4, Con+4, Dex+2, Int-2, Wis-6 Cha-2. The processes that create a Home Grown strengthen their body but destroy their sanity and in general are not conductive to healthy mental development.

Skills and Feats: A Home Grown cannot benifet from or use any feats or skills that are denied to a Barbarian in Rage.

Climate/Terrain: Any land and underground.

Organization: Solo, with a handler, or with a handler and 2-6 supporting combatants.

Treasure: Home grown are usually equipped with quality weapons, otherwise as Base Creature.

Alighnment: Chaotic Neutral or Chaotic Evil. The violent, destructive insanity inflicted on those who become Home Grown prevents them from adopting any other alignments.

Advancement: A Home Grown advances as the base creature. In terms of class levels, Fighter and Barbarian are most common while Spellcasting Classes are almost unheard of, due to the Home Grown's constant state of Rage preventing the use of spells.

LA: N/A, Home Grown are not suitable for PCs.Okay, here's another one.

This one is mostly based on Frank "Nuke" Simpson, but there are a lot of Failed Super Soldiers who boil down to "stronger and tougher than Cap but violently and incurably insane" that this also works for.

Up Next will be a template based on Man-Thing, the aforementioned "Worst Case" scenario for Failed Super Soldiers, and after that...

Well, as I think about it, the Sym-Soldiers, and Symbiote hosts in general would probably be better as a class.

So you describe a player character then write "is not suitable for player characters"

[Vrock Bait]

So you describe a player character then write "is not suitable for player characters"

NPC templates exist. Nuke is a direct antagonist to Daredevil and Captain America. And there's a lot of Super Soldier processes that are awful for PCs. The Burstein or Cortez Processes are just overpowered for less than Epic level, and the Bradley or "Adam" formulas drive people insane.

@Rater202, great work! I'd love to see a Butler's Faux-Men template.

[noob]

NPC templates exist. Nuke is a direct antagonist to Daredevil and Captain America. And there's a lot of Super Soldier processes that are awful for PCs. The Burstein or Cortez Processes are just overpowered for less than Epic level, and the Bradley or "Adam" formulas drive people insane.

@Rater202, great work! I'd love to see a Butler's Faux-Men template.

But being completely crazy and killing people by misinterpreting the ideology you are supposed to follow is the kind of defining behaviour for most pcs.
If you wanted a npc template it would be like "now feels forced to behave like captain America"

[Rater202]

Man-Thinghttps://vignette.wikia.nocookie.net/marveldatabase/images/3/3d/Man-Thing_Vol_5_2_Deodato_Variant_Textless.jpg/revision/latest/scale-to-width-down/324?cb=20161220180737
Whatever knows fear burns at the touch of... the Man-Thing!

The Worst-Case Scenario for what happens if a Super Soldier Goes wrong. Chemical substances and powerful magic react... Poorly, destroying the sentience of the subject and transforming them into a mass of plant, fungus, and eldritch energies drawn from all planes of existence.

A Man-Thing is the most common name for these monsters, though in truth it is only what human and half-human subjects are called. Elves, Gnomes, and other such beings tend to be called Swamp-Fae. Dwarves and Halflings and other non-fae small folk become Little Monsters. For some reason, Giants and their kin become Giant-Sized Man-Things, a title that invites much juvenile laughter... That stops as soon as they see the creatures in action.

Man-Thing is an acquired template that can be applied to any creature that can receive the Super-Soldier Template. The Base Creature's Type changes to plant. It does not gain the augmented subtype and loses all non-alignment based subtypes. As a special exception, a Man-Thing never has the Extraplanar Subtype and gains the Native Subtype in any situation where it would gain the Extraplanar subtype.

As a plant, a Man-Thing has all of the following traits:8-sided Hit Dice.
Base attack bonus equal to 3/4 total Hit Dice (as cleric).
Good Fortitude saves.
Low-light vision.
Immunity to all mind-affecting effects (charms, compulsions, phantasms, patterns, and morale effects).
Immunity to poison, sleep effects, paralysis, polymorph, and stunning.
Not subject to critical hits.
Proficient with its natural weapons only.
Proficient with no armor.
Plants breathe and eat, but do not sleep.

As well as the following modifications

HD: A Man-Thing's racial Hit Die, if any, become D8 unless they are already higher. The Man-Thing loses any and all hit dice from class levels and instead gains an equal number of Plant Racial Hit Dice in their place, recalculating saves and base attack bonus as needed. Like all attempted Super Soldiers, a Man-Thing has maximum hit points per hit die.

Speed: A Man-Thing gains a swim speed equal to its base land speed and a supernatural flight speed equal to twice its land speed with good maneuverability, which overwrites and flight speed it already possesses. A Man-Thing can breathe underwater.

AC: A Man-Thing loses any pre-existing natural armor but instead gains a +8 natural armor bonus and a special +5 dodge bonus that applies even when flatfooted and stacks with other Dodge bonuses, representing how many forms of attack pass harmlessly through the creature's plant and fungal body.

Attacks: A Man-Thing gains the ability to alter its mass into natural weapons including slams, vine-like tentacles, and blades of wood or bark that can inflict slashing or piercing damage. At any time a Man-Thing can produce as many natural weapons as it could make iterative attacks with a manufactured weapon: Thus, a Man-Thing with 1 Plant Racial Hit Die could make a single natural weapon, while one with 20 plants racial hit dice could make up to three. Slams and tentacles deal damage as though the appropriate natural weapon of a creature one size larger than the Man-Thing, while a blade deals damage as either of shortsword or a spear sized for a creature one size larger than the Man-Thing, depending on if it is set for slashing or piercing. This is only for the sake of damage, for all other purposes it is a natural weapon. Any or all of these can function as a primary natural weapon and are in addition to any natural weapons possessed by the base creature.

Special attacks:
At will, a Man-Thing can use Detect Plants, Entangle, Diminish Plants, Plant Growth, Command Plants, or Transport Via Plants as spell-like abilities. Three times per day they can cast Animate Plants, Giant-Size, Teleport, and Control plants as spell-like abilities. Once per day they can plane Plane Shift to any plane of existence, as a spell-like ability.

Stretching: a Man-Thing can stretch its limbs, giving all of its natural weapons an extra ten feet of reach.

Acid: Any being that is experiencing the Shaken or Frightened condition or is otherwise experiencing tangible fear is sensed by the Man-Thing, causing it to secrete a potent supernatural acid as the sensation of another's fear causes pain in the Man-Thing. While in the presence of a fearful being, the Man-Thing inflicts an additional 1d6 acid damage to any creature it subjects to one of its natural weapons, that attacks it with a non-reach melee weapon, a natural weapon, or that is involved in a grapple with it. If the other creature is experiencing a fear effect, the Acid Damage is Maximized and bypasses immunity and resistance to acid: Even creatures that are healed or sustained by acid are harmed, becuase all who know fear burn at the touch of Man-Thing.

Special Qualities:

Immunity: In addition to a plant's immunity to poison, Man-Things are immune to all diseases and to any source of acid damage.

Detect Fear: A Man-Thing is automatically aware of any creature suffering the shaken or frightened condition or otherwise experiencing any fear effect within one mile of itself. The sensation of fear in others causes pain to a Man-THing, leading the Man-Thing to seek out and destroy either the fearful individual or whatever it is that is causing them to fear, depending on the Man-Thing in question.

Powerful Build: A man thing counts as one size larger than normal for all situations where this would be to its benefit.

Regeneration 10: Any damage from non-energy sources is converted to non-lethal damage and recovered at heals at a rate of ten non-lethal damage per round. A severed body member will regenerate in 1d4 minutes, or instantly if it, or an equivalent amount of plant or fungal matter, is joined to the stump. Even if "killed," a Man-Thing will reanimate at zero hitpoints after 1d4 days, regenerate all limbs at this rate, and recover hit points as natural until it has fully recovered, unless its entire body is completely destroyed. It is not unheard off for additional Man-Things to spawn from cast-off chunks of the original. Man-Things do not die of old age or natural causes.

Speach: Most Man-Things can't talk, but when one can they do so as if under the effect of a Tongues spell.

Abilities: STR+10, Con+10, Int, CHA, and Wis reduced to 3 each.

Skills and Feats: As a plant.

Climate/Terrain: Swamps or naturally occurring portals to other planes. Usually both.

Organization: Alone, or with 1-4 offshoots.

Treasure: None.

Alignment: Always True Neutral

Advancement: Racial Hit-Dice

LA: None. A PC that becomes a Man-Thing becomes an NPC.The hardest part about making this template: I kept accidentally typing "Swamp Thing" instead of "Man-Thing."

Which is a bit odd, since Man-Thing came first. (though, honestly, Man-Thing and Swamp Thing are both copying The HEap so no one has room to talk here.)

So next... Honestly, the only thing left that translates well as a template would be Weapon V and Project Rebirth 2.0, and symbiotes are better as a class than as a template. That's gonna require some thought.

[noob]

Symbiotes can also be under creature form. (there is a bunch of rules for symbiotic creatures)
There is also a template where a creature uses another creature as a host (I believe the creature in question had to be a plant but since you are making new templates)

[Lord Raziere]

But being completely crazy and killing people by misinterpreting the ideology you are supposed to follow is the kind of defining behaviour for most pcs.
If you wanted a npc template it would be like "now feels forced to behave like captain America"

"all adventurers are crazy murderhobos" is nothing but a stupid meme that needs to die, please stop taking up the thread with this tangent.

As for the actual thread topic: well I don't know much about 3.5, but according to experienced 3.5 players I've discussed things with in the past they don't like balance anyways, so all that leaves is whether or not these things are accurate to the abilities of the super-soldiers.

given how well I know Rater, he wouldn't be able to deviate from their actual abilities unless he came up with a long essay on why they do to justify the discrepancy. I can only assume he did his very best to emulate them within the system no matter how hard it was.

and matching the abilities to the fluff being presented? They work, I can see using these templates for these characters.

[Rater202]

"all adventurers are crazy murderhobos" is nothing but a stupid meme that needs to die, please stop taking up the thread with this tangent.

As for the actual thread topic: well I don't know much about 3.5, but according to experienced 3.5 players I've discussed things with in the past they don't like balance anyways, so all that leaves is whether or not these things are accurate to the abilities of the super-soldiers.

given how well I know Rater, he wouldn't be able to deviate from their actual abilities unless he came up with a long essay on why they do to justify the discrepancy. I can only assume he did his very best to emulate them within the system no matter how hard it was.

And matching the abilities to the fluff being presented? They work, I can see using these templates for these characters.

Eh, Kinda.

There's some things you've kinda gotta fudge.

Take Man-Thing? Man-Thing is consistently a Hulk level physical threat. Boy-Thing, a miniature clone of the Man-Thing, is able to tangle with Cosmic Ghost Rider(The Punisher, as Ghost Rider, who is also a Herald of Galactus who's had millions of years to get good at having that kind of power.)

Roxxon created their own Man-Thing using a cutting from "the original" and a piece of Groot. They expected that it would defeat Clayton Cortez, who at his weakest depiction has the combined powers of The Hulk and Wolverine, years of military experiance and martial arts training, and no rage issues that make him fight inefficiently. (At his strongest, he also has domino's Luvck powers but those haven't be referenced since his first appearance.)

I can't represent that kind of power, so...

[Vrock Bait]

Eh, Kinda.

There's some things you've kinda gotta fudge.

Take Man-Thing? Man-Thing is consistently a Hulk level physical threat. Boy-Thing, a miniature clone of the Man-Thing, is able to tangle with Cosmic Ghost Rider(The Punisher, as Ghost Rider, who is also a Herald of Galactus who's had millions of years to get good at having that kind of power.)

Roxxon created their own Man-Thing using a cutting from "the original" and a piece of Groot. They expected that it would defeat Clayton Cortez, who at his weakest depiction has the combined powers of The Hulk and Wolverine, years of military experiance and martial arts training, and no rage issues that make him fight inefficiently. (At his strongest, he also has domino's Luvck powers but those haven't be referenced since his first appearance.)

I can't represent that kind of power, so...

My personal thoughts on Man Thing is maybe something derived from Shambling Mound with at-will Burning Hands.

@Rater, are you planning on doing Luke Cage or “Adam” for Project Power?

[Rater202]

I'm considering it, but it honestly seems pretty simple: DR Adamantine, powerful build, and either slam attacks or effective monk levels to represent his super strength with some bonuses to strength and con. The hard part is assigning numbers.

Adam, honestly he''s covered by the Home Grown: He's a captain America knick off that's super strong and heals fast but he's bat**** insane. I based the template off of Nuke but it works for Adam, Anti-Cap, and Commie Smasher too.

[Vrock Bait]

I'm considering it, but it honestly seems pretty simple: DR Adamantine, powerful build, and either slam attacks or effective monk levels to represent his super strength with some bonuses to strength and con. The hard part is assigning numbers.

Adam, honestly he''s covered by the Home Grown: He's a captain America knick off that's super strong and heals fast but he's bat**** insane. I based the template off of Nuke but it works for Adam, Anti-Cap, and Commie Smasher too.

True. I'd also add in a ritual with a high chance of failure.

But I've always been of the opinion that Adam's healing factor was a separate from his insanity. If you look at how healing factors are given to test subjects in Weapon H or Butler's FauX-Men, insanity isn't a completely necessary prereq for an incredible healing factor if you can get samples from an existing healer. The militant personalities of Nuke or Adam seems to come from Psiborg's memory implants a la X-23 or Wolverine.

Edit: Butler is a Deadpool villain who spliced Wade's healing factor onto North Korean political prisoners in order to graft on mutant DNA. This was even less stable than the U-Men procedure, so Butler only seemed to be able to graft on one mutant power at a time, and the subjects all later suffered from heavy cellular degradation. Psiborg is an incredibly obscure supervillain from Wolverine's early Weapon X stories. He's the one credited with creating the brainwashing that the Weapon programs used.

[Morphic tide]

In my own opinion, I think the Super Soldier going too far "out of its lane", so to speak. The underlying concept of Captain America is "Peak Humanity in a bottle", so giving explicit bonuses that strictly surpass the ordinary potential seems very decidedly off, especially given the spectacle of higher-level mundanes that know what they're doing in D&D. Steve can just as well be a mild LA +1 template on a Warblade 7 as he could some mind-numbingly insane LA +3 thing on a Fighter 3, the most ridiculous showings can be hinged to being a higher-level character regardless of the template. If you're starting with flat 18s, that's going to be +1-+3 to everything you care about, depending on degree of focus, and no less than +5 for things determined by truly dumped stats. Even without touching on chassis perfecting, this is still going to translate to many characters being able to get 40% survivability increases against typical encounters, and outright doubling survivability with the max HP effect isn't off the table in the slightest.

Also, the one-way effects, with bonus feats only for later HD and stacking Mettle/Evasion only if they're present previously, are spectacularly bad design for PCs, because it extremely intensively forces one to desperately grasp for it as early as possible or else you're missing out on large value propositions, and you can't actually pin down a given LA because it depends heavily on when you get the template. Evasion and Mettle are somewhat pushing it, but there's plenty of ways to get them with decent things to leverage in 2-4 levels.

My own suggestion is mainly to have the Super Soldier template have utterly minimal complexity, relying on the character's class levels to define how, precisely, they're ridiculous from the options given to leverage that chassis. The Clinical Immortality is fine as it's a "frill" for per-fight effects, giving them set-to maximized d12 hit die and 8 skills per level is excusable, but the core of the concept is that they're the peak of the mundanely preset ability rather than a thing that's genuinely beyond normal limits, as proven by the existence of someone with equal capabilities to Captain America off a diet and exercise plan. So giving an extra +1 untyped bonus to attack, damage, and AC is a bit of a no-go. Again, they already get that from very few characters getting anything above a 16.

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As for the "Home Grown", the mainline continuity actually seems to have Frank Simpson be more cybernetically augmented alongside a suite of temporary drugs, with particular mention of the White and Blue pills that are there specifically so he isn't permanently enraged. He's quite reliably controllable in terms of designating targets, the issue is that he has decades of piled-up trauma and triggers that make keeping him from collateral damage a complete non-starter. And later on, pretty much all his enhancement is cybernetics rather than anything to do with being a living creature.

So for Frank Simpson in particular, he'd actually be well modeled as a combination of feats (eg. Spelltouched feat to "bake in" consumable effects), PRC abilities (because he's actually canonically as technical a fighter as Captain America, they have the same Fighting Skill rating by the broad-strokes databooks), and equipment (massive pile of grafts), rather than a single template, because he's a combination of a quite significant variety of things that can function perfectly well as parts of a character pieced out and he is listed as a primarily technical fighter, sharing Steve's high rating in Fighting Skill.

The more relevant comparisons are Clinton McIntyre, a prototype for Project Rebirth, and Isaiah Bradley's "batch" of attempted recreations, who actually are recipients of a decided sidegrade to Steven Rodgers' enhancement, in that they're much less skilled, don't have any apparent inclusion of the mental benefits, and have obvious psychological instabilities (the usual jack-off behaviors from Clinton, Isaiah in particular undergoing massive mental degeneration, and Maurice Canfield, another of Isaiah's "batch", had deformities in his thyroid that caused enormously escalated aggression), but have better regenerative capacity and higher strength.

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Speaking of which, Man-Thing isn't wholly no longer the same person, even if he isn't in a state to realize such. In general, declaring that such and such fundamentally cannot be a PC, especially when it's representing things that have been protagonists previously. Giving -6-10 Intelligence and -4-8 Charisma does about as good a job representing the mind-breaking nature of it, especially given that Man-Thing is capable of speech without some grand structural change. Even if it takes a supernatural language that sounds like the most familiar manner of speech to observers.

Really, given what happened, Man-Thing is actually probably represented better as a creature statblock of its own rather than a template that gets applied to other creatures, in the same fashion as Illithids. They're not wholly apart from the previous creature, but in both cases virtually totally lose what defined the previous creature. Illithids carry over decontextualized knowledge, Man-Thing carries over vestiges of emotional attachments, neither actually has anything meaningful left of the anatomy of the previous creature, so they aren't really template territory.

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For the Symbiotes, the "modern" Klyntar themselves would most likely be a good fit for a heavy-duty "Racial Paragon" class or other method of option list for their bothersome variability, or having them be a faux-gestalting tool that readily loots properties of hosts to carry to new ones, as that's baked into the Symbiote who can just up and run off to give the exact same abilities to somebody else, and probably having a bundle of Enchantment-based effects for how their ability to force hosts to do things is psychological manipulation, rather than being a true domination.

The Sym-Soldiers of Weapon V are from sort-of from-scratch Symbiotes using what was apparently the original "model" of Klyntar, which were dragon-like world-wrecking abominations. I imagine one would model the Klyntar "Dragons" first, describe the regular Symbiotes under Spawn text of some variety, and include a method to force the Symbiotes to form in a controllable state. Special mention of the "Tyrannosaurus" Symbiote, who's one of the Sym-Soldier Symbiotes that developed a fully independent personality and convincingly faked being its original host for decades before telling its "parent" to **** off.

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For the other Weapon Plus projects, Weapons III and IX were specifically upgrading Mutants, so they're more a "force-feed levels into weird-as-balls classes" situation where you more pin down an appropriate PRC. Weapon III's one known result would probably be a best fit as a CoDzilla emulating Psychometabolism specialist who happens to have Synesthete, while Weapon IX's "Typhoid Mary" would be some Schism PRC. Weapon II was an animal testing phase frankly best handled as just allowing Animals to take this stuff, we know basically nothing about Weapon VIII, and Weapon VI is my biggest reason for being pissy about "Home Grown" being forbidden to PCs since the capabilities of Luke Cage are basically exactly what the current "Home Grown" template is doing, just not insane and to a technically greater degree, rather than actually being much of a different thing.

Then there's Michael van Patrick, the aforementioned diet and exercise Super Soldier. Probably best done via Legacy Champion-like class, with the same number of levels "lost" as the Super Soldier template has Level Adjustment. Possibly open to 1st-level qualification with text to specifically allow it.

[Rater202]

Captain America is peak human, but Peak human means more in MArvel than it does in real life.

For example, Steve explicitly has peak human intelligence(and, in MArvel, Peak human intelligence is stuff like being able to do quantum equations in your head or making a hand held device that can turn off electromagnetic fields,) Peak Human learning capacity, and perfect memory: He never forgets and learns really, really fast. But only going foreward.

Cap was able to learn and master dozens of differant martial arts in only a few months. In comparison, giving these super soldiers effective monk levels for purposes of damage representing them picking up some good hand to hand combat skills during whatever training they've got and access to bonus feats going forward seems pretty light. It's the most balanced way to represent that kind of learning capacity.

Since Peak human physical and peak human intellect, I figured "abilities at the highest you can start with before modifiers" made sense, and as the Serum explicitly removes any and all genetic flaws and harmful mutations that would prevent you from achieving peak potential, I figured that removing negative ability modifiers also made sense.

I'm trying to most accurately represent what the Serum actually does... Though I've fluffed it to be modified soldiers in general rather than strictly requiring the Super Soldier Serum.

As for the Home Grown... Do note tha the fluff for the Original Super Soldier template is a bit more loose than the canon SSS so... Yeah. Nuke's Fluff still aplies: It's based mostly on him, but as I've said, it also works for Adam, Anti-Cap, and Commie-Smasher.

Man-Thing's been a protagonist, yes, but he's very much an "other people point him at something" or a "just wandrs around unthinking" thing. It is explicitly stated that Man-Thing, under normal circumstances, does not have much in the way of higher intelligence.

The Man-Thing of the Savage Lands, for example, explicitly has no mind.

[Morphic tide]

Captain America is peak human, but Peak human means more in MArvel than it does in real life.

For example, Steve explicitly has peak human intelligence(and, in MArvel, Peak human intelligence is stuff like being able to do quantum equations in your head or making a hand held device that can turn off electromagnetic fields,) Peak Human learning capacity, and perfect memory: He never forgets and learns really, really fast. But only going foreward.

Cap was able to learn and master dozens of differant martial arts in only a few months. In comparison, giving these super soldiers effective monk levels for purposes of damage representing them picking up some good hand to hand combat skills during whatever training they've got and access to bonus feats going forward seems pretty light. It's the most balanced way to represent that kind of learning capacity.

Since Peak human physical and peak human intellect, I figured "abilities at the highest you can start with before modifiers" made sense, and as the Serum explicitly removes any and all genetic flaws and harmful mutations that would prevent you from achieving peak potential, I figured that removing negative ability modifiers also made sense.

The thing is that most of the spectacular capabilities is just "you are a high level character" in D&D. You don't need to give a suite of specific advantages over a normal member of the race, because those advantages bleed in just for being a PC for long enough. Cap's ridiculous pace of advancement happens in D&D campaigns all the time because campaigns don't take place over the course of years. In-universe, most 1-20 modules are taking you from a barely worth mentioning decent soldier or slightly above average apprentice to a setting-shaking mythical figure in six months or less.

Even in the TSR days, you can still have player characters easily advancing to setting-warping levels in a blink of the eye by actual human learning rates. The issues that arise with reaching the super high levels are the high probability of dying at low levels and the difficulties of figuring out where the hell you're finding the place to dump your loot for XP.


As for the Home Grown... Do note tha the fluff for the Original Super Soldier template is a bit more loose than the canon SSS so... Yeah. Nuke's Fluff still aplies: It's based mostly on him, but as I've said, it also works for Adam, Anti-Cap, and Commie-Smasher.

The point I'm making is that Frank is not like the other three. He is not the result of a permanent enhancement serum of any kind. His enhancements are temporary drug effects and cybernetic upgrades, and his craziness is from the mundane psychological damage side of Weapon VII, not side-effects of the treatment. He wouldn't be a Home Grown, he'd be a Barbarian/Fighter or Warblade with a large array of lone muderhobo optimization.

He, as Weapon VII, is not the kind of thing that receives templates, because it is not a permanent change, and he is not uncontrollable. The character you present as the example for the "mild failure" is literally the single most distant from what you mention out of all of Weapon Plus. There's a much more solid argument for Logan being a Home Grown than Frank, because he's done the "kill everyone in his way at the base and screw off to violently resist all attempts at demands" thing multiple times, while Frank's story is an extremely long series of successful indoctrinations, command triggers, and brainwashings.

Frank is a character concept that's very much playable in any Evil Campaign. Got a hook for turning away from the murder sprees, horrifying backstory that explains the continual murder sprees, unsavory method of keeping up with the Good Guys, gets put back together in a nastier state each time he's beaten down but still about the same kind of crazy each time... Only thing he actually has that would be a big issue to PCs is hallucinating that he's still fighting in Vietnam, except that isn't actually a "your character can no longer function under a player", it's a Weird Character Flaw that doesn't stand out much compared to the sorts usually fielded in Evil Campaigns.


Man-Thing's been a protagonist, yes, but he's very much an "other people point him at something" or a "just wandrs around unthinking" thing. It is explicitly stated that Man-Thing, under normal circumstances, does not have much in the way of higher intelligence.

The Man-Thing of the Savage Lands, for example, explicitly has no mind.
Except that in the "current" canon, he's explicitly capable of speech. He explicitly still has emotional attachments from his prior human self, to the point of contributing to holding an echo of reality together. And his capabilities are explicitly completely divorced from his original self, which is the mark of something that's a separate creature statblock. We do have precedent on that last one in 3.5, in both Illithids as mentioned, as well as the statblock-replacing Skeleton and Zombie templates.

Either Man-Things are unplayable for Intelligence below 3, which you did not give, or they're playable as the beatstick dumber than their Magical Beast mount, and in either case the process doesn't leave things in place that make sense for a conventional statblock-changing template, even to the limited degree you went with. If there really is nothing noteworthy left of the original creature, then keeping even what little you have doesn't make sense. Think more Animated Object than anything else.

[Rater202]

Actually, Simpson is permenantly modified.

For one, his skin was removed and replaced with some kind of ultra-durable plastic.

For two: They eventually started replacing his adrenaline pills with placebos, yet he's still fully functional.

For three, Andrenaline pills don't account for his healing factor.

On Cap: Cap learns faster than an average PC. It can take months or years of in-game time to get from one to twenty. I could bundle twenty levels of a fighter into the template to account for extra feats and skill points or I can give them bonus feats determined by HD and some extra skill points.

Or I could just scrap the template and say that Super Solider Treatments give you the PAragon Template, since, in D&D terms, Paragon is the "peak" for every race and species.

[GrayDeath]

While I understand arguing for "But in D&D maximum potential is high levels", I disagree.
Noone says that a Supersoldier cant ALSO be igh level, and then the Discrepancy should be at LEAST as big as when they get the Template.


I think your Super Soldier Template doesnt go far enough.

Since you didnt mention any LA, I am assuming somewhting around +2?

I would add something along the lines of (since it maximizes potential but we dont want it to be TOO frontloaded because DnD): Gains +1 physical Ability point every Level they take of any Class.
Make them Immune to natural Fear and give them +5 vs Fear Effects.

From level 8 onwards add a floating Feat Chain of Weapon Focus/Speciality/GWFocus/GWSpec they can reassign every day.

From Level 10 onwards, Supersoldiers are immune to Fear and Fear Effects, as well as nonmagical Diseases and Poisons, and receive a +5 to Saves vs. magical Diseases and poisons.


From level 15 onwards, they are immune to nonepic Ability Damage and Drain.

At reaching Level 20, they gain the modifed Paragon Template (all bonuses to Stats/Armor/Movement halved, no flat extra Bonuses to Rolls).

How does that sound?

If you want to make it extra easy and simple, you could also just use my Level 20 Capstone as Supersoldier Template though. ^^

[Rater202]

The truth is, I really, really suck at game balance and kind of just hate the concept of level adjustment in general and think that if your racial traits are too good to have without penalty then you should just have built-in hit-dice and you have to take all the levels of "race" before taking PC levels.

Like, I really like Drow and picked up Drow of the Underdark before I got my own monster manual. I look at the Drow Racial traits and I'm like "this is so cool but who the hell is gonna play a race with LA+2, especially with light blindness."

Beyond that, I'm mostly aiming for comics accuracy. This is about...

Well, I left out how the serum is constantly propagating itself in the super soldier's blood, for example. Transfuse Captain America's blood into someone and they get his powers. But otherwise, mostly the same.

Which is why I'm probably not gonna do Luke Cage or other project power subjects. Luke's powers are constantly getting stronger and the rule of thumb seems to be "indestructible blades can pierce his skin if there's enough force behind them and he's almost as strong as the Thing," who is likewise also constantly getting stronger.

I don't think I can accurately reflect that level of strength, now that I think about it. "Third place below The Hulk and the Thing" is still "can one punch most things in this game."