Elric's 2e Builds

[Elric]

Iron Man

Power Level 12 (180 pp)

Abilities: STR: 38 [12] (+14), DEX: 12 (+1), CON: 14 (+2), INT: 22 (+6), WIS: 14 (+2), CHA: 16 (+3)

Skills: Bluff 8 (+11/+15), Computers 6 (+12), Craft [Electronics] 16 (+22), Craft [Mechanical] 16 (+22), Diplomacy 8 (+11/+15), Disable Device 6 (+12), Gather Information 8 (+11), Knowledge [Business] 10 (+16), Knowledge [Technology] 16 (+22), Notice 6 (+8), Sense Motive 8 (+10)

Feats: Attractive, Benefit (Wealthy), Connected, Dodge Focus 3, Inventor, Jack of All Trades, Speed of Thought, Teamwork, Enhanced Feats: Accurate Attack, Improved Aim, Power Attack, Precise Shot

Powers: Device 19 [Iron Man Battle Suit, Hard to Lose, PF: Restricted 2] (78 pp)
Iron Man Battle Suit:
Enhanced Feats 4 (see above), Protection 12 (Extra: Impervious), Immunity 9 (Life Support)

Flight 5 (250 mph) (Dynamic Alternate Power: Super Strength 5 (Heavy Load: 77 tons)) (13 pp total)

Blast Array: 35 pp (31 pp base + 4 Alternate Powers)
Enhanced Strength 26 & Enhanced Feat 5: Attack Focus 4 (Melee) & Attack Specialization (Unarmed) (31 pp)
AP: Blast 14 (Power Feats: Accurate x3) (31 pp) [Force]
AP: Stun 14 (Extra: Ranged, Flaw: Full-Round Action, Power Feats: Accurate x3) (31 pp) [Sonic]
AP: Blast 14 (Extra: Targeted Area- Line, Flaw: Range: Touch, Power Feats: Accurate x3) (31 pp) [Uni-beam]
AP: Blast 10 (Extra: Area- Burst) (30 pp)

Super Senses 4 (Direction Sense, Distance Sense, Extended Sight, Infravision)
Super-Senses 5 (Radar [Acute, Extended]), AP: Communication 5 (Radio: 5 miles)

Combat: Attack +4 (+10 Unarmed/Blasters) [Unarmed 14 damage, Blast 14 dmg, Stun Fort DC 24], Defense 20 (14 flat-footed), Initiative +6, Grapple +22 (+5 w/out Enhanced Strength AP, doesn't include DAP Super-Strength), Knockback -13

Saves: Toughness +14 (12 Impervious), Fortitude +7, Reflex +7, Will +8

Drawbacks: Normal Identity [Tony Stark; Full-Round Action, -4 pp]

Abilities 30 + Skills 27 + Feats 10 + Powers 78 + Combat 22 + Saves 17 - Drawbacks 4= 180

Notes: Here’s Iron Man as a PC at PL 12, 180 pp. Tony is really, really good. Social skills, technical skills, bulletproof and unaffected by the environment, flight, super-strength, super-senses, a versatile set of blast powers, and he’s one of the the best businessmen in the world—Donald Trump, eat your heart out!

Like the battlesuit archetype, Tony’s greatest weakness is low exotic (Fort/Reflex/Will) saves. His inventions will be quite useful, given his high Craft and Knowledge skills. This isn’t a version of Iron Man with his armor built into his blood—figure that he carries the battlesuit around folded up in a briefcase when he isn’t using it.

Speed of Thought is from the Mastermind's Manual and lets you add your Int bonus to your initiative instead of your Dex bonus. I haven’t decided what descriptor his Area- Burst blast is. It could be a Missile Launcher, an exploding ball of force, or whatever else seems appropriate (a missile would usually be Area: Explosion but I prefer Area- Burst because from the GM’s side it’s much easier to deal with in play and from the player’s side it’s easier to avoid collateral damage),

Note that Radar in Ultimate Power has been errata'd to only cost 3 pp (Radar is an Accurate, Ranged, Radius Radio Sense). One potential problem with Radar: for a battlesuit character, the battlesuit isn’t adding Radar as an innate super-sense—it’s probably just taking Radar data and using it to display an accurate picture image of everything around you (which, due to the magic of superheroes, can be interpreted alongside regular visual data at no loss in precision for either). So this means that if Iron Man fails his save against a Dazzle: Visual effect, he should lose the ability to benefit from his Radar power as well. When this comes up, call it a Complication.

[JackGiantkiller]

Very nice Iron Man. A touch low on the lifting, but one has to give *something* up for a PC level build.

[luketheduke86]

Very nice Iron Man. A touch low on the lifting, but one has to give *something* up for a PC level build.

plus at anytime he could hero point/extra effort his enhanced strength into super strength

extremely well done Iron-man Elric! the thing i always liked about battle-suit types is you can power stunt just about anything off the armor as long as it has the super-science descriptor. gives alot of potential versatility

[Zephraim]

I agree, great Iron Man build. The Deathstroke and Batman (pl10) builds was great as well.

[Elric]

Very nice Iron Man. A touch low on the lifting, but one has to give *something* up for a PC level build.

plus at anytime he could hero point/extra effort his enhanced strength into super strength

Luke has it right- I forgot to mention that trick (Enhanced Str power stunted into Super-Strength to increase lifting capacity) in the build. In fact, the problem for Iron Man is that his lifting capacity can get far too high for his concept if he does that, since the Enhanced Strength power is built on so many pp to start with. Since the original power costs 31 pp, he could Power Stunt Super-Strength 15 and be able to lift an empty cargo freighter. A more reasonable power stunt to give him enhanced lifting capacity is to stunt up to Super-Strength 4 off of his Flight, which will decrease how fast he can move to give a Superman-like "Dynamic Array" effect.

I try to avoid building into a PC character the ability to lift the largest amount you'll ever see them lift, because I think it should be a big deal when a character does lift some incredible (for them) amount and because if they already had that high of a lifting capacity tricks like Power Stunting would make the character's lifting ability feel wildly disproportionate. I could build these Enhanced Str into Super-Str power stunts in as APs to get the appropriate lifting capacity, but I think this would go against the feel I'm looking for.

For example, my PC Spider-Man build has normal Strength for Lifting 31 and can Power Stunt Super-Strength 8 off of Enhanced Strength and lift about 25 tons, which seems appropriate as his "pushing himself really, really hard" carrying capacity, but wouldn't be appropriate in general- and his "pushing himself really hard" capacity would be too high if his base lifting capacity was 41 because I had taken 2 extra ranks of Super-Strength.

My She-Hulk PC can lift 77 tons but Power Stunting Super-Strength 13 off of Enhanced Strength 26 brings her Strength for lifting up to 102, enough to lift a Cruiser (seems fine, you can't complain about lifting capacity being too high for a character with Hulk in their name).

[Elric]

Thanks for the praise, everyone.

I got a question by PM about whether Iron Man’s Dodge Focus feat means that he breaks his caps because it means that his defense should be 21, while I have him listed at Defense 20. I don’t list ranks in base defense explicitly in the builds, so it isn’t necessarily clear, but Iron Man only has 9 ranks of base defense, plus the rank of Dodge Focus.

Dodge Focus basically serves to lower Tony’s cost by 1 pp, because your dodge bonus from X ranks of base defense is X/2, rounded down (see pg 32). So 9 ranks of Base Defense gives you 15 Defense when flat-footed as only 4 points of this is a Dodge bonus and this means that you get the same benefit from buying the 10th rank of base defense as you do from buying a rank in Dodge Focus, since your flat-footed Defense is 15 in either case.

The fact that Iron Man has Dodge Focus, 20 Defense, and 15 flat-footed Defense tells you that I’ve given him 9 ranks of base defense.

To see that the points add up: When I list a character's attacks, I'll list their base attack first- in Tony's case, Attack +4. That's how many ranks of base attack I've bought. Then you can look at the Combat cost of the character, 26 in Tony's case, and you know I've spent 8 pp on base attack.

So that means I've spent 18 on base defense, which corresponds to 9 ranks of Base Defense, and that plus Dodge Focus gives 20 Defense. If those numbers didn’t add up, you'd know I've made a mistake. I use this trick (giving a character an odd number of ranks in base defense rather than an even number) fairly often in my PC builds.

[Elric]

Captain America

Power Level 12 (180 pp)

Abilities: STR 24 (+7), DEX 24 (+7), CON 24 (+7), INT 12 (+1), WIS 18 (+4), CHA 20 (+5)

Skills: Acrobatics 9 (+16), Climb 3 (+10), Diplomacy 9 (+14), Intimidate 5 (+10), Knowledge [Tactics] 14 (+15), Medicine 2 (+6), Notice 8 (+12), Pilot 3 (+10), Sense Motive 11 (+15), Stealth 4 (+11), Survival 3 (+7), Languages 1 (German; base English)

Feats: Acrobatic Bluff, Assessment, Attack Focus 8 (Melee), Benefit (Status: Renown), Defensive Attack, Diehard, Equipment, Evasion 2, Fearless, Improved Disarm, Improved Initiative, Inspire 5, Interpose, Leadership, Luck 2, Master Plan, Power Attack, Takedown Attack 2, Teamwork 2, Ultimate Effort (Ultimate Toughness Save), Uncanny Dodge (Hearing)

Powers: Device 6 (Star Spangled Shield, Easy to lose, Power Feats: Restricted [functions as large shield for anyone else], Indestructible) (20 pp)
Leaping 1, Speed 1 (10 mph)

Star Spangled Shield:
Enhanced Dodge Focus 5, Feature—Reduces Knockback by 2

Blast 4 (Power Feats: Accurate x4, Improved Critical x2, Improved Range, Improved Ranged Disarm, Mighty x3, Precise Shot 2, Ricochet) (100-foot range increment) (22 pp)
AP: Blast 4 (Extras: Targeted Area- Burst (20 foot radius), Selective Area; Power Feats: Accurate x4) (20 pp)
AP: Strike 3 (Extra: Penetrating, Power Feats: Improved Block 2, Improved Critical 2, Improved Defense 2, Improved Overrun, Mighty, Weapon Bind) (15 pp)

Equipment: Chain Mail (Protection 3), Commlink, Binoculars

Combat: Attack +6 (+14 melee/shield throw) [Unarmed 7 dmg; Shield Throw 7 dmg, 18-20 Crit; Shield Bash 10 dmg, 18-20 Crit)], Defense 24 (15 flat footed), Initiative +11, Grapple +21, Knockback -7

Saves: Toughness +10, Fortitude +10, Reflex +10, Will +10

Abilities 62 + Skills 18 + Feats 36 + Powers 22 + Combat 30 + Saves 12= 180

Captain America has been updated a bit. These PL 12, 180 pp characters just rock. One note I wasn't aware of when I did the build the first time: You add extra distance from Acrobatics before multiplying by 2 for Captain America's Leaping power (see Steve’s answer here). That means that Captain America's Leaping distance is a little high at the moment (taking 10 on Acrobatics gives him a 56-foot long jump), but being a legendary human has its advantages.

Also, if your GM doesn't use the Masterful Tactics option from the Mastermind's Manual (which lets you roll Master Plan checks with your Knowledge: Tactics skill), see if you can talk your GM into letting you take a Benefit feat to get this effect. Essentially, you'd take Benefit: use Knowledge: Tactics to roll Master Plan checks (Hat tip to Taliesin's Mat Cauthon build for this idea). What to drop in this case? Maybe Diehard (Captain America did just die, after all).

[JoshuaDunlow]

Iron man still has to be one of my favorite characters from marvel, good work Elric. Keep it up. An awesome build.

[Libra]

Keep up the good work Elric.

[luketheduke86]

your comment on dodge bonus is a good power point saving technique..wil have to remember that next time i do up a character in my game..

[Elric]

Superman

Power Level 15 (225 pp)

Abilities: STR: 46 [13] (+18), DEX: 12 (+1), CON: 46 [16] (+18), INT: 14 (+2), WIS: 18 (+4), CHA: 18 (+4)

Skills: Bluff 4 (+8), Concentration 6 (+10), Diplomacy 8 (+12), Gather Information 4 (+8), Handle Animal 1 (+5), Knowledge [Current Events] 4 (+6), Notice 8 (+12), Profession [Farmer] 1 (+5), Profession [Reporter] 4 (+8), Sense Motive 8 (+12)

Feats: All-Out Attack, Attack Focus 4 (Melee), Benefit 2 (Status: It’s Superman!, Knowledge: Kryptonian Technology), Dodge Focus 5, Fearless, Interpose, Leadership, Luck, Power Attack, Ultimate Effort 3 (Ultimate Strength check, Ultimate Toughness Save, Ultimate Will Save)

Powers:
Enhanced Strength 33, AP: Blast 14 (PF: Accurate x4, Precise)

Enhanced Constitution 30, Impervious Toughness 12 (Drawback: Power Loss vs. Magic, -1 pp), Immunity 9 (Life Support)

Super-Strength 14 (PF: Super-Breath, Countering Punch), Dynamic AP: Flight 15 (500,000 mph), Dynamic AP: Super-Speed 6 (base power: Rapid Attack)) (35 pp total)

Super Senses 12 (Extended Vision 3, X-Ray Vision (Drawback: Action- Move Action), Microscopic Vision 1, Ultra-Hearing, Extended Hearing 3) (11 pp)

Combat: Attack +8 (+12 Melee, +16 Heat Vision) [Unarmed +18 dmg, Heat Vision +14 dmg], Defense 22 (14 flat-footed), Initiative +1 (up to +25), Grapple +30 (not counting DAP Super-Strength), Knockback -15

Saves: Toughness +18 (12 Impervious), Fortitude +18, Reflex +6, Will +10

Drawbacks: Normal Identity [When Exposed to Kryptonite; Uncommon Occurrence; Major Intensity; 4pp], Weakness [Kryptonite; Uncommon Occurrence; -1 Constitution Per Minute; 5pp]

Abilities 31 + Skills 12 + Feats 20 + Powers 130 + Combat 30 + Saves 11- Drawbacks 9 = 225

Notes: Here’s a build of Superman as a PC. If you happen to be playing in a PL 15, 225 pp campaign, that is!

I haven't given him the Fortress of Solitude as equipment because if you're using him as a PC, he'll probably be on a team, which means the team probably has a base besides the Fortress of Solitude- and headquarters are more of a team resource than individual ability anyways.

Clark’s Rapid Attack ability on Super-Speed is very powerful since it lets him hit many enemies at once. He can almost be assured of going first in combat by shifting most of his DAP points to super-speed while outside of combat. The official rules answer (see here) is that nothing happens if you suffer an initiative loss later in the combat. The problem is that this ruling makes having an Alternate Power of Super-Speed (or worse, Enhanced Feat: Improved Initiative) pretty abusive.

So if I had a player using this build, I’d prefer that the player (agree in advance to) rarely use Super-Speed for the pre-combat init boost. Otherwise, I might rule that initiative loss modifies your position in the round when it occurs.

Countering Punch is in Ultimate Power and lets you use a Strength check to counter appropriate ranged attacks (but it still takes a readied action or a hero point for Instant Counter). Clark's Heavy Load with all of his DAP points in Super-Strength is about 120,000 tons (example: Aircraft Carrier). The Power Stunting Super-Strength off of his Enhanced Strength trick can get him to almost 150 Strength for lifting while going at Flight 1- so he can lift a "small asteroid". Might come in handy :)

For his Normal Identity drawback when exposed to Kryptonite, I’d say he should lose all of his powers, his ranks in Attack Focus and Dodge Focus, and his Ultimate Effort feats besides Ultimate Will Save. Note that he doesn't have a drawback to represent "Loses his powers when not under a yellow sun"- that's definitely a Complication.

[drfeck]

Batman

Power Level 10 (150 pp)

This build is great. Everytime some body says-"you can't make any of todays comic book heros on 150!", I will show them this.

By the way, why can't Batman use his gadget pool to get a Batmoblie/plane/boat? I always see him pulling a remote control out of his belt and "summoning" them.

[Libra]

Use of Hero Point, perhaps?

May one please ask where you found that Superman picture, Elric and who painted it?

[Elric]

Batman
Power Level 10 (150 pp)

This build is great. Every time some body says-"you can't make any of today's comic book heroes on 150!", I will show them this. By the way, why can't Batman use his gadget pool to get a Batmobile/plane/boat? I always see him pulling a remote control out of his belt and "summoning" them.

Thanks. You're totally right that in principle Batman could use his gadget pool to get a Batmobile/plane/boat. However, in practice I don't think this would be balanced, as it makes a Gadgets power bought as equipment too versatile and makes buying Vehicles on their own seem pointless. I don't create PC builds using equipment (or other rules- particularly drawback) dodges that I wouldn't allow myself as a GM (it's not really a PC build if a GM wouldn't approve of it as a PC). But you (and Libra) have given me an idea.

Use of Hero Point, perhaps?

This is how I'd handle it- Batman can spend a hero point to alternate power a Batmobile/plane/boat off of his Gadgets base power (which costs 32 ep, so he has more than enough points to get any of his vehicles). This keeps it reserved for more special occasions (and it should still be plausible that Batman has the plane/mobile/boat somewhere near- e.g., no doing this in adventures in another dimension!). I'll update the Batman builds to reflect this when I get the chance.

May one please ask where you found that Superman picture, Elric and who painted it?

The artist is Greg Horn and the picture is Superman "Power Beyond Compare". It's up on Comicvine, but I first found it through a Google image search.

[Libra]

Thank you kindly.