[OOC] H.E.A.R.T. [Recruitment re-opened]

[EPIC]

Looks better Hound. I can definitatly see some contract between Sandra and Jessica now, and the Phobia is good, and a little ironic, since her powers can easily start fires.

[Prof Weird]

My unfortunate instinct to attempt to help games in need compels me to offer this character :

Name : Jiaying "June" Zhang
Occupation : Student
Legal Status: US citizen with no criminal record
Family : parents, younger sister and brother, grandparents back in Shanghai
Age: 18
Height : 5' 6"
Weight : 120
Eyes: darkest brown, nearly black.
Hair: black
Powers: Chi
Skills and Abilities : Martial artist, pure and simple
Role: Lancer
Power Level : 10 (150pp)
Abilities : STR 3 STA 3 AGL 5 DEX 5 FGT 12 INT 1 AWE 6 PRE 0

Powers : Chi Mastery Array
Black Touch (Will save, Cumulative Affliction 6; Fatigued/Exhausted/Incapacitated); Insidious [15 pp]
AP : Deflect 12 (Reflect +1; Limit : not vs Energy -1 ); Diminished Range 3, Quirk (Req's chain)
[short/medium/long ranges are 24'/60'/120']
AP : Disrupt the Flow : STR-based Damage 5; Alt Save : Fort 8; Inaccurate; 1 rank Secondary Effect

Chi Abilities : Immunity 4 (Starvation and Thirst, Sleep, Heat, Cold; Half Effect -1), Senses (Chi Awareness), Movement (Safe Fall; Limit : Only near surfaces), Leaping 1, Speed 1

Advantages : Assessment, Agile Feint, Chokehold, Close Attack 2, Defensive Atk, Defensive Roll 4, Equipment 2, Evasion, Fast Grab, Grabbing Finesse, Improved Disarm, Improved Grab, Improved Hold, Improved Initiative, Language 1 (Chinese; English native), Power Atk, Prone Fighting, Quick Draw (tamagusari), Trance, Uncanny Dodge, Weapon Bind

Equipment : Tamagusari (Lian Bian) [7 ep], 3 free at need.
Tamagusari : Damage 3, Improved Trip, Reach 3

Skills : Acrobatics 4(+9), Athletics 4(+7), Expertise (Philosophy) 4 (+5), Insight 5 (+11), Perception 5 (+11), Treatment 4 (+5), Persuasion 4 (+4)

Offense : Unarmed and Melee weapons +14, (+3 unarmed damage, and +6 damage from chain), Ranged +5
Black Touch +14, +6 Affliction; Disrupt the Flow +12, +8 Fort-resisted damage

Initiative : +9

Defense : Dodge +11, Parry +13, Fort +9, Toughness +3*/+7, Will +11
(* without Defensive Roll)

Abilities 70 + Powers 21 + Advantages 26 + Skills 15 + Defenses 18 = 150 points

Character Background : born in the US to Chinese immigrants. Always around the martial arts in one form or another - her earliest memories were of her mom and dad both doing Tai Chi every morning, and she always joined in. Still makes her feel calm and serene today fifteen years later. Started basic karate at nine, and discovered she was good at it.

Too good, in fact. She was progressing faster than all the other students, and had nearly equalled her instructors inside two years.

Her family returned to China to visit the grandparents over the summer. While there, her grandfather introduced her to the original martial arts - kung fu. She witnessed several different styles at a tournament, but the flowing grace and flexibility of one style in particular just seemed perfect to her - She Quan.

Otherwise known as 'Snake Fist kung fu'. One of the first styles codified at the Shaolin temple a millenia and a half ago.

It took some serious persuading, but her parents relented and let her stay with her grandparents for a year to train.

Once focused on a style that truly fit her, she advanced quickly, eventually unlocking techniques that most acolytes take decades to discover - if at all.

Deducing that his granddaughter was a bit special, her grandfather got her enrolled in a school he'd heard about. One that could provide her with challenges and opportunities she may not have otherwise.

Personality : If martial artists in general are contemplative, Snake stylists are even more so. These stylists favor the tried and true over 'flash in the pan' innovations. Will not only go by the book, they will study, memorize and analyze every update and addendum ever written for it !

And Jiaying is the quintessential Shaolin Snake stylist. Usually unperturbable, with a quiet grace few her age possess. She doesn't like fighting, but an amusing paradox of life is that the only way to know if her skills are any good is to actually use them. So she will not turn down an honorable challenge.

However, there is a constant burr in her serenity's side - for some strange reason, most people seem to think that snake stylists are inherently evil and untrustworthy. She's tried explaining that it is an ancient style, and few consider Shaolin to be evil, yet it never seems to make any difference in the end.

Complications :
Motivation : Be the best martial artist she can be, furthering the Greater Good.
Complications : Honor
Bad Reputation (practices an 'evil' style)

How to deal with her in a fight : ranged energy attacks. Robots and other non-living foes (no Will or Fort to disrupt). Chaotic, spur of the moment attacks (Snake stylists do NOT improvise !)

Tweaked build a bit - Close Combat skills replaced with Close Atk 2. Cleaner build.

Deflect tweaked to have more rational ranges - a quarter mile was a BIT excessive .... !

A generic chain grants Damage 2, Reach 2, and the Advantages 'Improved Trip' and 'Improved Grab'- even to those that already have them. Since a tamagusari is a specialized weapon, dropping the Improved Grab for more damage seemed reasonable.

Lowered PRE to bump Parry and gain Enhanced Advantage : Precise Atk (Close, Concealment) power.

Edit 3/11/12 - removed Precise Attack to gain 'Insidious' for Black Touch. This gives all APs an extra pp.
Thus Disrupt the Flow gained 1 rank of Secondary Effect - 1st attack is a Damage (DC 23 vs Fort); a turn later, target gets hit with a Damage (DC 16 vs Fort) effect.

It is things like this that people think her style is evil - for the Black Touch, person hit doesn't know they're ready to fall over until they do. For the Disrupt the Flow attack, person struck may be KOd without her touching him again !

[EPIC]

Mmm... June's order to Sandra's chaos. Good contrast there.

On the build side of things... you do realize that despite your chain being only 15ft long(give or take), your deflect allows you to deflect any attack within the range (as though Deflect were a ranged damage attack, so 325/650/1300ft? (with the normal penalties for medium and long range)

That sir.... is a VERY long chain.

Also, you are also undercapped on defense and offense.

Toughness 7, Parry 12 (19, .5 under cap)

Your three attacks:
Chain attack: 4 damage, +14 to hit (18, 1 under cap)
Black Touch: effect 6, +12 to hit (18, 1 under cap)
Fort damage 8, +10 to hit (18, 1 under cap)

It is clear you seem to have gotten confused somewhere and thought you were PL9 while building your attacks. Well...at least you didn't give yourself insane numbers of improved crit like most martial artists.

Backstory and personality looks good, The build just needs a little TLC to bring it to caps.

[Prof Weird]

Mmm... June's order to Sandra's chaos. Good contrast there.

On the build side of things... you do realize that despite your chain being only 15ft long(give or take), your deflect allows you to deflect any attack within the range (as though Deflect were a ranged damage attack, so 325/650/1300ft? (with the normal penalties for medium and long range)

That sir.... is a VERY long chain.

Or spinning the chain sets off a wind slash that diverts material projectiles off their intended course.

But you are right - that still seems like monstrous range. Far, FAR greater than anyone could use (could anyone even SEE a projectile a quarter mile away ?!)

How about : Deflect 12 (Close Range -1, not vs Energy Attacks -1, Reflect +1, Redirect +1); Quirk : requires chain ?

Since this is now a close range effect, she can only deflect attacks within 15' or so of her; not sure what the range modifiers would be in this case (or even if they'd apply. -2 for 10', -5 for up to 15' ?) Maneuver nastier now, since not only can she send the attack back from whence it came (Reflect), she can send it anywhere she wants it to go (via Redirect) ! Too bad she has a rather low Ranged Atk of only +5 ...

Also, you are also undercapped on defense and offense.

Toughness 7, Parry 12 (19, .5 under cap)

Your three attacks:
Chain attack: 4 damage, +14 to hit (18, 1 under cap)
Black Touch: effect 6, +12 to hit (18, 1 under cap)
Fort damage 8, +10 to hit (18, 1 under cap)

The chain attack is Damage +5, +14 to hit; I have some equipment points left, so I could just boost the chain's base damage up to +3, granting +6 damage, +14 to hit with it to reach caps.

I assumed the Black Touch and Fort damage, being unarmed attacks, would use Unarmed rating of +14 (which would mean that both attacks actually DO hit caps).

It is clear you seem to have gotten confused somewhere and thought you were PL9 while building your attacks. Well...at least you didn't give yourself insane numbers of improved crit like most martial artists.

I assumed the skill Close Combat : Unarmed applied to open hand attacks since she's not holding a weapon(meaning that both the Black Touch and Fort damage strike) actually might hits caps. As she is still a student (albeit a highly gifted one), there may not be much trouble being undercapped - I wasn't trying to build a min-maxed combat monster.

Could change skill to Close Combat : Chi attack array, bringing both of those attacks up to cap.
Boosting damage on the chain enables it to hit caps as well. Hand to hand then +3 damage, +12 to hit.

I thought about Improved Criticals, but they didn't feel right - they're more appropriate to people that have either lived in a temple for decades, or been out fighting for decades (ie, people that have done nothing BUT fight the whole time), NOT an eighteen year old student !

Backstory and personality looks good, The build just needs a little TLC to bring it to caps.

I'll see what I can do when I get home later.

[EPIC]

I somehow completly missed the unarmed skill. In that case you are correct.

Your defensively still under a bit by 1 in either your toughness or defense.

As for the new deflect, that would make more sense, limiting it to your chain length, though your whiplash explanation is very cool and chi-like. Alternatly to what you did there, you could use reduced range 2 to lower the range drastically (5/10/25 per rank iirc) though it only returns 2pp total, so you wouldn't get redirect.

[Aerlwyn]

Got room for one more?

[McGuffin]

There's the one spot open for Lancer, details on the first page.

I'll leave commenting on the crunchy stuff to other people, but June and Jessica are looking pretty good to me. Right now June is maybe edging ahead in my personal opinion since she feels to me like she brings more variance to the team.

[Aerlwyn]

Ah ok well good luck.

[flynnarrel]

Question on June. She has Improved Grab as a feat, and again as part of the chain. Is there a good reason I'm not seeing? They don't stack do they?

And Black Touch and the other would use melee to attack wouldn't they? Unarmed is a different thing, isn't it?

Edit: The easy fix would be take the 4 skill points from Close Combat - unarmed and chain and make them two points of feat: Close Combat. Would make her a better grappler as well.

[Hound]

There's the one spot open for Lancer, details on the first page.

I'll leave commenting on the crunchy stuff to other people, but June and Jessica are looking pretty good to me. Right now June is maybe edging ahead in my personal opinion since she feels to me like she brings more variance to the team.

Ya I realized my powers and Rainbow girls powers were kind of on the same wave length, but at the same time Hardwire and Brawl were also very similar in that they both get in your face and melee it up. So I just went with it cause its what I wanted it, can't let everyone else decide what I should apply with.

[Coyotzin]

Actually, flynn, Sprocket's sensory usefulness is not lost; since the sensory alternate is not dynamic, Sandra will not be using it in combat as it prevents her from using her combat-heavy dynamic effects

[EPIC]

There's the one spot open for Lancer, details on the first page.

I'll leave commenting on the crunchy stuff to other people, but June and Jessica are looking pretty good to me. Right now June is maybe edging ahead in my personal opinion since she feels to me like she brings more variance to the team.

Ya I realized my powers and Rainbow girls powers were kind of on the same wave length, but at the same time Hardwire and Brawl were also very similar in that they both get in your face and melee it up. So I just went with it cause its what I wanted it, can't let everyone else decide what I should apply with.

They are both energy controllers (yes, Lumi is based on an energy controller build), but really, i see nothing of overlap. Lumi is too support oriented. That's why i didn't mention anything. They are about as different as energy controllers can get.

In my own opinion of the two, i like them both for different reasons. Jess may be another energy controller, but June is a scrapper in a group that already had two scrappers.

But conceptually, we don't have a martial artist, so June kind of carves a new niche for herself rather than sharing one (not that i mind sharing, again, Jess ad Alicia are completly different in approching the energy controller archetype)

Personality wise, they both contrast Sandra, but in differeent ways, which is facinating.

[McGuffin]

Ah ok well good luck.

Sorry if I confused you, there's the one spot open but the GM is looking at a lot of applicants for it. So if a Lancer type of character that plays off of Coyotzin's Heroine (Hardwired) is something you have an idea for then by all means put up an entry.

I'll leave commenting on the crunchy stuff to other people, but June and Jessica are looking pretty good to me. Right now June is maybe edging ahead in my personal opinion since she feels to me like she brings more variance to the team.

Ya I realized my powers and Rainbow girls powers were kind of on the same wave length, but at the same time Hardwire and Brawl were also very similar in that they both get in your face and melee it up. So I just went with it cause its what I wanted it, can't let everyone else decide what I should apply with.

Sorry, I wasn't referring to the powers, I was referring to the personality. The powers/crunch look good to me (at a glance), but like I said earlier, I leave commenting on the crunchy stuff to others.

On the personality side of things, there were some stuff that brushed up on other characters but Jessica's definitely different enough to be her own person.

Man, maybe I should just shut up about the new characters, I feel like I'm constantly confusing people and making things harder, not easier.

[Aerlwyn]

Sorry i dont have a character even close to that, was going to post up my Myst character but shes way over pointed for this setting. She was my first stab at a weather witch style on my own.

Will post a cut back version of the character and see if it works. Should have a back story tomorrow.


Myst - PL 10

Strength 0, Stamina 2, Agility 2, Dexterity 0, Fighting 0, Intellect 0, Awareness 0, Presence 0

Advantages
Attractive, Defensive Roll 3, Equipment 2, Favored Environment: Air

Skills
Athletics 4 (+4), Close Combat: Grab 2 (+2), Close Combat: Unarmed 2 (+2), Expertise: Floraculture 9 (+9), Perception 2 (+2), Persuasion 1 (+1), Ranged Combat: Throw 2 (+2), Vehicles 2 (+2)

Powers
Costume: Protection 5 (+5 Toughness; Impervious)

Minor Weather Effects 1pp
Feature • she can create tiny “micro-storms” focused enough
to water potted plants or to shower beneath.

Nature Mastery
--- Weather Control: Environment 5 (Cold (Extreme), Heat (Extreme), Impede Movement (2 ranks), Visibility (-5), Radius: 500 feet; Selective)
AE Acid Cloud: Cylinder Area Damage 5 (DC 20; Cylinder Area 6: 900 feet cylinder, Indirect 4: any point, any direction, Secondary Effect, Sustained)
AE Acid Rain: Cylinder Area Damage 5 (DC 20; Cylinder Area 6: 900 feet cylinder, Indirect 3: any point in fixed direction or fixed point in any direction, Secondary Effect, Sustained)
AE Air Control: Element Control 10 (Element: Air, 25 tons)
AE Call Lightning: Damage 10 (DC 25; Increased Range 2: perception, Indirect 3: any point in fixed direction or fixed point in any direction)
AE Calm Weather: Burst Area Nullify 10 (Counters: Weather Effects, DC 20; Burst Area: 30 feet radius sphere, Effortless, Increased Range: perception, Simultaneous)
AE Control Currents: Element Control 6 (Element: Water, 3200 lbs.; Limited: Ocean )
AE Electrolytic Field: Transform 1 (Affects: 1 Thing > 1 Thing - Water to Hydrogen & Oxygen, Transforms: 1.5 lbs., DC 11)
AE Generate Fields: Burst Area Nullify 6 (Counters: Electomagnetic Energy Effects, DC 16; Burst Area: 30 feet radius sphere, Broad, Effortless, Increased Range: perception, Simultaneous)
AE Heavy Fog: Cloud Area Concealment 4 (All Visual Senses; Cloud Area 8: 1800 feet radius sphere, Selective)
AE Lightning Bolts: Cone Area Damage 10 (DC 25; Cone Area 3: 250 feet cone, Selective)
AE Perceive Fields: Senses 7 (Accurate: Detect, Acute: Detect, Detect: Electromagnetic Energy 1, Extended: Detect 1: x10, Ranged: Detect, Rapid: Detect 1)
AE Weather Prediction
---Enhanced Trait: Enhanced Trait 3 (Linked; Traits: Perception +6 (+8))
---Senses: Senses 4 (Linked; Precognition; Limited: Predicting weather)
AE Wind Control: Deflect 9 (Limited: Projectiles)

Resistance to Weather: Immunity 10 (Common Descriptor: Weather Effects)

Weatherproof: Movement 1 (Environmental Adaptation: Weather)

Wind Riding: Flight 5 (Speed: 60 miles/hour, 900 feet/round)
AE Flight: Burst Area Flight 3 (Alternate; Speed: 16 miles/hour, 250 feet/round; Affects Others, Burst Area: 30 feet radius sphere; Distracting)

Equipment
Costume [Costume: Protection 5, +5 Toughness; Impervious]

Offense
Initiative +2
Acid Cloud: Cylinder Area Damage 5 (DC 20)
Acid Rain: Cylinder Area Damage 5 (DC 20)
Call Lightning: Damage 10 (DC 25)
Calm Weather: Burst Area Nullify 10 (DC Will 20)
Electrolytic Field: Transform 1, +0 (DC Dog 11)
Generate Fields: Burst Area Nullify 6 (DC Will 16)
Grab, +2 (DC Spec 10)
Lightning Bolts: Cone Area Damage 10 (DC 25)
Throw, +4 (DC 15)
Unarmed, +2 (DC 15)

Complications
Identity Secret
Prejudice Mutant
Power loss In enclosed spaces (rooms with no doors or windows) "Atmospherically sealed"

Languages
English

Defense
Dodge 10, Parry 10, Fortitude 10, Toughness 10/2, Will 10

Power Points
Abilities 8 + Powers 87 + Advantages 7 + Skills 12 (24 ranks) + Defenses 36 = 150



Backstory
Magaly Guerrero is a few weeks away from her 17th birthday, and was born in New York. When her powers first began to show themselves when she was a child, she had no control over them, and sometimes she would accidentally make it rain if she was sad, or cause a thunder storm if she was angry. Realizing she was the cause of these things, her family - and all those who she had considered friends - called her a "freak" and treated her like an outcast. Her parents tried locking her up and keeping her as down trodden as possible, hoping that doing so would stop her from being able to use her powers, but all it did was to make her miserable, and make her hate them. When she was about 14 she managed to escape the cellar she had been kept locked up in, and ran away from home. She started calling herself Myst, and cast off her old identity, wanting nothing to do with the life she had left behind, or the person she had once been. She began roaming the streets, stealing food and sleeping wherever she could.



A few weeks after she'd escaped from her cellar prison, she was caught in the act of stealing something from a street vendor, who called the police. In an attempt to evade capture, she tried to use her powers, though she still had very little control over them. She managed to do enough to get away, though it was more pure luck than skill. One of the staff who worked at the school witnessed it, and - realizing what she was - managed to catch her and bring her to the school. Finally finding herself in a place where she was accepted for who she was, Myst decided to stay, and - having nowhere else to go - once she had mastered some control of her powers, decided to make the school her permanent home, and to take it upon herself to act as the school's groundsperson.

[McGuffin]

I was thinking of using the 2 pp we were given to get Extraordinary Effort and Ultimate Effort (Toughness checks) for Bobbie. The fight with Meltdown really drove her to push herself further and harder.