Avenger Assembled

The gong sound as Mike struck the giant machine was noticeably more quiet and caused less ripples in the air than when Erin had hit the big impervium plate. However, it was still impressively loud and vibrate-y. When the vibrations and sound in the air had faded, restoring both visibility and audibility, Coach Jones slapped Mike on the back, stroking his bearded chin with a look of crafty delight. "That's my boy! Later, I'll tell ya all about my plans for our new all-flying football squad! We'll get jetpacks for the non-fliers, and then, we'll show those so-and-sos how a real team plays!"

Let's call it a DC 15 History or DC 20 Pop Culture check to recognize Doctor Tomorrow.

The screen rippled and changed again, the future coming into view for the two teenagers. They were faced with a handsome, square-jawed blonde man with bright blue eyes, sitting inside a small room that looked like the pilot's cabin of a futuristic spaceship. To their great surprise, he narrowed his eyes and looked right into the lens. "Shouldn't you kids be in school?" he asked with puzzlement. His eyes narrowing, he looked from Erin to Darian, settling on the inventor first. "Oh, it's you. You Claremont kids aren't tampering with the laws of time and space again, are you? Because I told Summers I wasn't coming back there without a really good reason."

OK, well, replace the one at the top with that one and I'll look it over for ya.

Hey MarkK, have you had time to come back and look over this sheet? If not, I'll see if I can get someone else on it to save you the work.

Hey MarkK, Have you had time to come back to this character sheet? If not, I'd be happy to take care of this for yourself and Sandman.

Do you know how long it's been since I've been to a party like this? Jack's thoughts were bleaker than he ever let himself say, much less act out behind the mask of Avenger. One where people are just trying to talk and have a good time? Images of vampire revelries came to his mind unbidden, though he had the self-control to keep the worst memories to himself. Elena saw social functions of predators in Jack's mind, a world of bitter social rivalries and petty eternal grudges that went on over and over again. Jack seemed to have especially strong feelings about vampire social activities. But I can't come as Avenger. Avenger doesn't socialize, because Avenger isn't supposed to have any friends. Because if people did look into where Avenger came from, then this party would be full of people trying to kill me. There was a bleak smile in his mind at that. Funny how things work out like that. "I think you make a good point, Scarab," said Jack a little distractedly, not as experienced in juggling mental conversation with verbal as was the spirit of Heru-Ra. "Maybe there is some merit to working in the shadows.

"Do you really think that's the case?" Jack had taken this opportunity to reappear, his stealth and discretion the equal of the recently-departed Duncan Summers. He'd lost his drink somewhere along the way. "Can't you make the equally strong argument that time in darkness is liable to blind those kinds of heroes to what's really going on?" Even wearing a silly domino mask, it was always hard to tell what Jack was thinking...well, for non-telepaths. "You know what they say about those who fight with monsters."

"...donthurtracheldonthurtracheldonthurtrachel..." It took 'Rave' several seconds to realize that he was out of the confinement of Phantom's cloak. The moment he did he bolted to his feet and looked around wildly, trying to find a way out of his prison even as he extended his hands toward the walls. When he realized that he was by no means as tall as he was supposed to be, the mysterious man who bore the face of Ray Trask behind the mask of the Raven stood there for several long moments, confusion and fear writ large across his face, before he shouted through his fear at Phantom, "You won't get us to talk! No matter what you to do to me, you can't break us!"

I would allow that drawback, but I would probably put it at minor.

OK, Warmonger, I should actually be able to give you some commentary here. Would you mind editing this so that it matches our current template? (i.e., in the same format as other sheets) Also, so what color are his eyes and hair? This also needs edited, now that you're actually built on 150 points and don't have any unspent PP. Good choice! But again, you do want to get rid of the un-necessary stuff that makes the sheet so hard to read; i.e. all the dashes. Hmm, this is considerably more lethal than the UN/Unison generally are in the World of Freedom. OTOH, if Adam is in his mid-30s, he could just have been starting his training during the tail end of the Iron Age, when things were a bit grimmer and grittier. Which would explain how a character who might have been a gritty anti-hero a couple of decades ago is now a bad guy. You might want to emphasis something about how Col. Morrison was a rogue agent from the get-go, either following his own nefarious agenda or the pawn of someone else. Maybe make him an unknowing agent of the Labryinth? (Y'all been DNAscended!) That would explain where they got the tech, and give Ronin a firmer grounding in the setting. It might even give him a good reason to make friends against future attack, if the Labyrinth comes looking to reclaim the guy with so much of their technology wandering around inside of him. Hmm. What's he planning to do for himself in Freedom City; which after all has a heck of a lot of superheroes per square mile? But if he is working to hide out from the Raptors and their Labyrinth masters...well, that might be something to think about. Make sure you get the format of your fort and will saves to match that of your reflex save. Make sure you fix the format of your Defense Bonus, and indicate your various variable Attack bonuses. (If that's something you want to stick with.) Double check the numbers on your skills. LANGUAGES English, Russian, Japanese, Arabic, German, Swahili Alphabetize your feats. What's the descriptor on your Hide in Plain Sight? (i.e.; clouding minds, being a ninja bad-ass, etc.) I would prefer it if you didn't use Accurate for Equipment. That's why we have the Masterwork feature. I like what you've done with your VP configurations; just note that we decided it can't be innate. You've put a lot of work into this, War! But it's looking tremendously better! So you're doing good.

If you don't get any bites at the apple, JD, I've got a few ideas.

If he'd been on his own, Avenger's retaliation against these young men might have been impressive. But as it was he assisted in binding them, casually pulling off the boys' shirts and using them as bindings to go with whatever his companions came up with. They looked younger with more skin exposed, the injuries he and the others had inflicted on them more profound. "One thing first. Likely they know where Fox can be found. Suggest we persuade them to tell us." He bent down and took Vulture by the face. "Look at me."

I would have thought John Varley's Disease would be non-lethal, just inclined to promote some remarkable physical changes that a small percentage of those infected would be very happy about. ;)

The mystical chains wrapped around Dark Star shattered into rapidly sublimating fragments, the sheer power of the space-bound hero's blast having broken apart his magical bindings. At this juncture, Odysseus belatedly discovered that diverting the power reserves that generally powered his flight to the blast earlier had been a serious error in judgement. With a radio-borne shout of "Noooo!" he began falling back to Earth, his suit glowing as it fought to stabilize him in the atmosphere. Dark Star and Doctor Archeville had their escape, but they'd have to make it fast. There were planes beginning to come up from the atmosphere below, black ones with yellow jets of plasma behind them, coming up fast.

Odysseus is...countered!

This time the two teenagers found their perspective taking them far outside Freedom City, somewhere up in the far distant blue skies of the Earth. Suddenly, there was a loud screech of metal just off-camera, and as they watched an airplane came tumbling wildly into view! Smoke poured from two burning engines on the right side and metal fell from that same wing, the damaged craft tumbling wildly through the sky as more explosions ripped through the plane's engines. The craft was doomed and plunging fast, ready to crash into the mountains now visible below. Just as they thought they were about to witness something horrible, something amazing happened! A bolt of blue and gold came plunging down from the sky, throwing itself against the bulk of the plane and bearing it up with a sudden, tremendous force. Their view got closer, and closer, and Quark and Erin both recognized the Centurion! The Man of Adamant, the legendary greatest of all heroes, strained and pushed against the bulk of the massive 747, holding up the collapsing plane through sheer force of will, the effort plain on his perfectly recognizable face as he caught the plunging jet and plucked it safely from the sky. With a final triumphant shout, he began guiding the plane safely back to Earth as distant, tinny cheers were heard from the craft.

As the two young heroes watched, the screen rippled and fuzzed a few times before settling into a clear, solid picture of the distant past of 1992. They were looking at a view of what was clearly the Claremont campus; though back then the school had been St. Thomas Aquinas Academy. Their view was late at night sometime in the summer, the campus itself looking still and quiet. Quark had been at school long enough, and was smart enough, to remember that Aquinas had been a much poorer school than Claremont was today. The grounds they saw were less well-tended, the buildings in more obvious disrepair. They were just about to adjust the view to something more interesting when two people walked into view of the "camera lens." "Mr. Graves!" It was shocking to see Gabriel Marquez up and around and walking. The counselor looked even younger than he must have been seventeen years ago; his face not worn down by cares. He was just catching up with a young man in the Aquinas uniform who had been walking quickly with his head down; a condition quickly explained when Quark and Erin saw the bruises on his face. "Mr. Graves" had a defiant, angry look mixed with hurt on his face; the look of an angry, injured teenager. "Mr. Graves...Michael." Mr. Marquez gave the boy a look of raw sympathy. "Mr. Graves, we can report this to the police. Your assailants-" "They're punks is what they are!" said Graves angrily. "They're just lousy punks! Just because my dad works with his hands, they think it's all right to pick on me!" He spat on the ground. "But it doesn't matter. Another year and I'm out of here, and I never have to look at this place again. I've got my own life ahead of me." Marquez and Graves talked quietly after that, and again Erin and Wander were ready to 'change the channel' when Marquez parted from Graves. "I promise you, Michael, that I will do everything in my power to see that you get some justice from your assailants." As the teacher left his student behind with those words, the teenager looked away, bringing his eyes into view via the camera. "I hope so," the teen muttered. "Or I just might have to get some vengeance..." At his last word, his eyes suddenly washed over with white blue flame that blotted out them out entirely; the glow lasting until he disappeared from view again.

OK, War, I know we've been talking about the edits you're planning for the sheet. Do you want to go ahead with us looking at this one?

All right, well, let's give this sucker a shot. APPROVED

I am disinclined to accept something that the system already provides for adequately. Attractive handles Pompadour's situation well, given the way you've played him in the past and the way you're talking about playing him in the future. Pompadour is a PL 6-7 character; he shouldn't be as good as Bluff/Diplomacy as characters of a higher PL.

OK, Warmonger, here are my comments. (I think I led you astray earlier.) The big issue with the sheet right now is that you've just got too many points in your alternate forms. Putting aside balance issues of making a character this way, you've made the sheet just too hard to follow. I think it would be to your advantage to make a sheet organized very differently. If you are dead-set on the alternate forms, drop them down to 10-15 points each. And as mentioned above, you just...don't need to build a character like this. Consider using Elric's Punisher or Black Widow as a base guideline for how to build your character. Look at Instant Superheroes' "Soldier of Fortune" for another possible variant. Those would be very helpful to you.

You probably want to proofread GG's backstory, JD. It sounds like a good story, but it's pretty hard to read. More generally you probably want to fix up the formatting problems the sheet has.

Hmm. How does GG fix himself when he's broken? (As it is, he can't heal injuries by himself at all.)

Hawke: "You're not the first person to make that mistake!" flexes