my super heroes can be up your super heroes: crafty style

[Shadow]

lo all,
   was fiddling around with the idea earlier this evening of how to build the core justice league members using existing spycraft rules (i use a thing or two from sfa, and a sorta teaser from wof, but most of it is core). here's what i came up with (note that i'm assuming they're all 20th level, for my personal ease/sanity):

superman: ah, the man of steel. cornfed test subject advocate 15/avatar 5. having gained hulking from both cornfed and test subject, i'm now huge. throw in the (you become large) ability from avatar, and i'm now gargantuan, or colossal when it comes to bull rushes and grapples. assuming a base 23 strength, supes stacks out with the ability to press 111.836 tons, or round up to 112, if you will. assuming you are using his body as a housing, he houses 3 gadgets via miniaturized gear gadgets: a suit of pimped out riot gear (for DR), a high-speed recon plane (for flight), and a heat attack gadget (for heat vision).

batman: while you could go with many different types of builds for ole bats, i chose martial artist 1/intruder 9/schemer 10. using the cca from schemer, i can pick up PHD in investigation. with my ghost and ambush supremacy feats, i can vanish, and with my 22 intelligence, i have plenty of skills, but only a few maxed out (investigation, falsify, and sneak, by my count). add in my personal lt, who's a straight level martial artist, and you have a fairly awesome fighting combo.

wonder woman: unlike supes, miss thang here is a soldier 10/avatar 10. high strength, decent DR, and the ability to thrash joo if she wants.

aquaman: unfortunately, the fine folks at crafty haven't created the loser class yet, so arthur goes unstated.

green arrow: martial artist 10/inventor 10. he needs the gadget picks to get plenty of attack arrows (in all the damage types of the rainbow, including stress!)

flash: not sure, but probably straight wheelman. a friend reccomended having flash's body house a miniaturized vehicle of some sort, but it seems that to be the lesser elegant solution.

martian manhunter: not sure at all what to do about him, either.

so, thoughts? questions? comments? concerns?

[Mister Andersen]

I'd say you're wrong with Supes - the sizes really don't stack like that. But beyond that, Superman is essentially a God and as such really better handled as a special NPC build.

Batman has a bazillion different builds.

Diana isn't a soldier, she's a warrior. As such, she's better modelled as a Martial Artist 10/Avatar 10, with all manner of Wuxia.

Arthur is a Scout, with some levels in Advocate for his kingly duties.

Oliver is an Advocate/Sniper.

Wally is a Scientist/Hyper

J'onn is a Pointman/Sleuth

[Shadow]

mister anderson wrote:
I'd say you're wrong with Supes - the sizes really don't stack like that. But beyond that, Superman is essentially a God and as such really better handled as a special NPC build.

Batman has a bazillion different builds.

Diana isn't a soldier, she's a warrior. As such, she's better modelled as a Martial Artist 10/Avatar 10, with all manner of Wuxia.

Arthur is a Scout, with some levels in Advocate for his kingly duties.

Oliver is an Advocate/Sniper.

Wally is a Scientist/Hyper

J'onn is a Pointman/Sleuth

while i'm not sure about the avatar size increase, the other two would indeed stack, as per the hulking npc quality.

for batman, schemer does a remarkable number of things right: they can get cross class abilities like the pointman, replace int for other traits on skills, all skills are class skills for them, once a mission they can gain a number of 1d4 AD equal to their int mod, and the ability to take 10 with all skill checks without penalty. add in masters art (int) and mental leap, and he can do a surprising ammount of damage. at his core, batman is a excellent unarmed fighter, smart planner, detective, and master of disguise. anything else that is added to batman is writer specific and needs careful scrutiny, imho.

as for aquaman, he'll never be as cool as namor, and he knows it 

you're right that i forgot about oliver having levels of sniper. that's a definate must.

i haven't seen the hyper, so i can't comment on it.

[Mister Andersen]

The hyper is the super speedster psion expert class from the SFA splat books

[Mister Andersen]

Someone might care to bump this over to the LTI board. Anyhow, Wonder Woman has two signature items that stand out when you think of her...

...that would be her bracelets and her lasso.    These items, like many such comics items, are really artifact-level in their power and thus wildly outside the scope of the standard gear rules.  But we can at least attempt to replicate some of their effects.

The bracelets/bracers/gauntlets (depending on the particular artist) are made from the remnants of the shield Aegis; the upshot of this is that they are individually proof against a whole bunch of attacks and when used together are capable of an area-of-effect shield. We can try to kludge the latter using psionics, but let's just say the effects of this gadget apply to the square controlled by the user, which means they can effectively protect one or maybe two others if they get real close.

We kinda need to indulge in a sleight of hand exercise here. Our housings for this are going to be a pair of tonfas (2x cal I) as their stackable GAR quality more or less mechanically mimics the whole point of bracers/guantlets in the first place in providing forearm protection against close range attacks, so I feel no guilt about giving them each a custom grip upgrade (1x cal I) and simply handwaving their shape.

As Tiny objects, they can each have 2 mechanisms, for a total of 4 (remember, these puppies do work together). For our 1st we'll stick in a Class II duty vest with trauma plates upgrade (1x cal II) to which we'll add the hobbyist shield, weight reduction and personal tailoring upgrades (1x cal I). Let's get a little creative and throw in damage resistance 4 vs magic and laser (2x cal I), and another DR 2 (1x cal II).

For 6x cal I and 2x cal II picks (effectively Possessions 5), that's a total of DR 9/11 (13/15 vs magic or 4/4 vs laser), +4 DP, -1 ACP, 11 lb. The ACP is a little sucky (but suitable to some renderings of the gadget in question), but it's an acceptable trade off for the extra point of DR.


Moving on to the lasso, woven from the girdle of a goddess and filled with the Fire of Hesta that compels those caught within its coils to tell the truth. The closest mechanical equivalent for the housing is the bullwhip (1x Cal II). As an allegedly Diminutive weapon it can fit 2 mechanisms, but given that it has a reach of 10 ft (compared to the small weighted chain's 5ft reach) I call shennigans on that and class it as Small, granting a necessary extra mechanism slot. We fill these with Durable gadget (preferably as high as you can get it), improved truth serum (cal IV) and and Intimidation/Coercion skill check gadget (again, as high as you can get it).

For the Lasso to come out even close to its intended effect, you will undoubtedly want to have the Big Budget campaign option in effect

[Desertpuma]

as for aquaman, he'll never be as cool as namor, and he knows it 

Actually in every DC vs Marvel crossover where the two faced that I can remember namor gets his brain handed to him because Aquaman can activate the Basal Mongilius in all fish and amphibians make them collapse unconscious or go to sleep.

[ThunderMonkey]

I would even think that Batman would be better served as an NPC to account for all of his abilities.

There is a way to handle supers. I think I'm on the edge of it figuring it out, but with so much other stuff going on it has taken a back seat.

DC heroes, especially the classic ones, are rather difficult to duplicate in a balanced setting. However, therein lies the cusp of the whole thing...

Superman rarely goes all out with his abilities (freeze breath... heat vision... flight... invulnerability... punching... etc.) Likewise with Batman, one moment he's the world's greatest detective, the next he's a general badass bringing down the house). With that in mind, a crafty (pun intended) super system (again, pun intended) would to account for all their abilities, but limit what they can do in a single scene or session. (The same could be said for such uber-heroes in the Marvel Universe... Dr. Strange and Iron Man comes to mind).