Avenger Assembled Posted November 10, 2013 Share Posted November 10, 2013 (edited) Players Name: AvengerAssembled Characters Name: Fast-Forward Power Level: 12/14 (229/232PP) Trade-Offs: +5 Defense/-5 Toughness and None Attack/Damage as a Speedster, +5 Defense/-5 Toughness and -4 Attack/+4 Damage as Mystic Unspent PP: 3 In Brief: Iron Age villain turned Modern Age hero, speedster punk turned family man and veteran hero Alternate Identities: Tempus Fugitive Identity: Richard Anthony Cline Birthplace: Freedom City, New Jersey, USA Occupation: TV Star Affiliations: Shenanigans Family: Paige Psion-Cline, William Cline, Holly Cline Age: 50 (born 1963) Apparent Age: 30s Gender: Male Ethnicity: White American Height: 6 feet Weight: 160 lbs Eyes: Blue Hair: Black Description: Richard Cline is a tall, slim man with a runner's build. His hair is slicked up in that peculiarly 80s style and he wears leather jackets and jeans when he can, just like his hero Bruce Springsteen. His costume is a black and white bodysuit in traditional style - he doesn't wear a mask, and never has. He does wear a jacket over his spandex bodysuit, particularly when he needs to carry things. These days he carries a small, leather-bound Victorian book in his pocket. Powers and Abilities: Fast-Forward's speed powers are based in temporal manipulation rather than in super-speed as such - he accelerates his local frame of reference and appears to run fast, punch as fast and hard as an assault rifle, and a great many other super-speed tricks. He leaves behind a faint glowing red trail as he runs, a phenomenon caused by hyper-accelerated air molecules crashing back into their neighbors. His powers have begun to fade slightly as he ages, but he remains one of the fastest beings alive. His magical abilities come from carrying around the Tome of Theurgy, a sort of pocket guide to the magic of the stars that lets him call on the magic of the Behenian fixed stars to aid him in battle. Not being a subtle man, he uses his powers for spectacular evocations - hurling glowing fireballs, summoning tremendous storms, and otherwise making sure that he is the life of the party that he has always believed himself to be. Personality and Motivation: Richard's kind of a jerk, something of an occupational hazard for your typical speedster. But he's also a veteran who's been around the block many times, and that's significantly tempered the arrogant jerk who was pretty hard to be around back in the 1980s. He wants to make Freedom City safe for his family, and help make sure the kids tehse days don't make the mistakes he made when he was a kid. He loves his wife and kids more than anything in the world, though he has a considerably more complicated relationship with his still-living parents. He's still inclined to question authority in a Green Arrow sort of way, and doesn't always get along great with cops and other government officials, though he is always perfectly correct when there are cameras around. He's very handsome, though also very married. History: Some legacies in Freedom City aren't forged in the light of day. Richard Cline was born in August of 1964 to Anne Cline, aka Calendar Girl, speedster and smash-and-grab thief and briefly the sidekick of Doc Holiday. Abandoned by her partner when she got pregnant, Anne did the only thing she could, she raised her son at her side as first her ward, then her partner in crime. Richard developed his speed powers early, a legacy of all the times his mother had used her powers while he was in utero, and eagerly trained as his mother's sidekick. His childhood was great in some ways: the Crime League of the 1960s and 1970s were like a weird little family for him. He met gods and monsters, scientists and mystics, and sometimes crashed at their place for a few weeks until his mom could escape. She was Clock Queen, beautiful and glamorous, and he loved her with the devotion of a son for a doting parent. But his childhood was poor in some ways as well; he spent less than a year inside a classroom from age six to age eighteen, and only learned to read and write well from being able to practice at super-speed when he was very bored. Even when he put on a shiny four-colored costume to match his mother's, Richard didn't really know anything about the world except how to rob it. Eventually time ran out for Clock Queen and her sidekick Tempus Fugitive. As the world darkened into the grim days of the 1980s, their brand of crime no longer fit. A few months before his 18th birthday, Richard joined his mother for one last big score in Freedom City, a jewel heist that would give him a nest egg to start on his own career as an independent villain - and maybe work something out with Paige Psion, the daughter of Parker Psion and somebody he was more than sweet on. But it all went wrong: the cops showed up with temporal nullifiers and stopped them both dead in their tracks, dragging mother and son both off to jail. As the police closed in, Anne Cline saw her son's life in peril from a rogue Freedom City cop (there were a lot of those in those days) and shattered the man's legs, escalating this arrest to one that might have seen both mother and son go away for many years. Abandoned by the Crime League (which was already coming to an end itself), the Clines were left without allies. Anne stepped up for perhaps the first time in her life, spinning a grim story to the cops about how she’d abused and brainwashed Richard, that he’d only obeyed her out of fear of her wrath. Richard was sentenced as a juvenile despite the multiple felonies he was charged with and was released on his 21st birthday in 1985; Anne herself got a twenty year sentence. When Richard got out, the Moore era was just beginning, and the young man was disgusted by what he saw. Criminals had turned into psychopaths, cops had become bullies and tyrants, and the heroes had been chased away or turned killer. It was time to turn to _crime_: Fast-Forward, the laughing speedster-rogue, debuted by publicly pantsing the mayor, making sure the police would hunt him for his blood for the rest of the Moore administration. Maybe that life had been forgotten in a Freedom City had turned its back on its superheroes; had turned its back on the joy and laughter of the previous generation. Well, that was all right: he'd bring that world back. He'd _make_ the stupid sheep of Freedom City understand what they'd lost and he'd get damn rich in the process. And he'd do it without bending his head to any of the other supercriminals on the loose in his city in the process. Richard assembled a new costume together out of the raddest fashion gear he could: tight black spandex, aviator glasses, and bought enough mousse to give himself the big hair of the guys he'd seen on TV when he was locked up. Richard had always been a walking temporal anomaly, but in the 1980s he really was a man out of time: a costumed criminal who didn't kill, who avoided violence when he could, who focused on wacky theme crime with matching henchmen, who preferred to thumb his nose at vigilantes and the law rather than punch them in the face. He was equally likely to fight RIOT as FORCE Ops, and indeed he and Archer had something of a grudging understanding given their mutual history and how much the world had changed around both men. When cops opened fire on him, he'd laugh and rip the guns out of their hands or just slap them silly; when RIOT hurled fireballs at him he'd leave them paused and naked on the street. A dozen times, he nearly died, but he was just too fast for the world around him. (It helped that the super-speedsters of the past who'd once bedeviled him had all retired or died at this point, making him basically invulnerable to the local cops and supers alike if he had room to run) And luckily, he wasn't alone. Paige had finally broken out from under her father's tyrannical thumb, and the two of them hooked up again not long after his release. Paige Psion was a good influence on him; she got him to try bigger stuff than just petty, hilarious snatch-and-grabs like robbing an entire CODE fundraiser of their valuables, she also got him off cocaine and the other drugs he'd started taking, making clear that if he did want their relationship to resume, he needed to make her his focus, not his cocaine habit. Taking the name Hologram in honor of her illusion powers, Richard and Paige became a daring criminal duo like people in Freedom City hadn’t seen in years, gleefully bilking the rich and stupid while making sure they spent enough to stay popular in the community. It was a good life, one which Richard, deep down, sometimes still misses. The end of the Moore Act promised good things for the future for the young couple; who knew what fun they could have now that the heroes were back? All that came to an end when the Terminus Invasion happened. Fast-Forward and Hologram stood together against the world-conquering threat of Omega, battling Omegadrones and Annihilists alike, watching as friends and enemies and thousands of others died before Omega was finally defeated. Was it the horrors of T-Day that prompted Fast-Forward’s moral switch? The impact on him of the death of the Centurion? Or was it simply the realization that his old life just wasn’t working anymore in the new Freedom City now that the people had learned to appreciate their heroes again? Either way, he and Hologram decided it was time to get out of town: taking advantage of a Freedom Leage offer that gave a full pardon to all supers who’d helped out in the invasion as long as they stopped committing crimes, Richard and Paige skipped town and headed out of Freedom City. With a full pardon in hand from the US government, they lived in Freedom City and helped out for a few years, finding steady work and (after a few years, and a lot of trying) becoming parents of William Cline. Richard hated it, and almost went back on the coke he'd quit some years earlier, but he was determined to build a steady life for himself and his family. But it's tough to keep a secret from a psychic, especially your wife, and Paige was ready to travel too. When William was eight, they packed up and started moving, traveling in an RV and exploring the country, living the life of hard-traveling adventurers. They did a little of this and a little of that, and worked as part-time heroes, but weren't very happy: they got a big surprise when it turned out that Richard's regenerative and temporal abilities meant that his vasectomy hadn't taken and Paige became pregnant again - Holly Cline was born in Freedom City just in time for his creepy father-in-law to start sniffing around again. Richard despised Parker and frankly wouldn't have minded ratting the old man out, or maybe making sure he stopped being a threat to the family, but thought it was better to get out of Freedom fast. So they went back on the road, this time until they reached the Pacific, where the Psion family had never had much reach. Their window into a renewed celebrity came just a few years ago, when they were called in as consultants for a show the Discovery Channel was airing about the history of super-crime. The pair were funny and charismatic, and had stories to tell most people had never heard, and after several guest appearances they were spun off as the cohosts of Supercrime! Supercrime! (don't forget the !) is a wide-ranging show that takes a broad look at the history of supercrime in the United States, and Richard is very happy there, working alongside his wife and (sometimes) his son! But recently things have been changing, and not necessarily to Richard's advantage. Richard's daughter's psychic powers erupted recently, leaving the eight year old girl with mighty psychic powers and the family with a problem. Moving out to Freedom City (and commuting home with Richard's powers) helped with that, giving her access to the Nicholson School and eventually Claremont. (It also meant getting a heroic education for William, who by now was getting a little old to be taught by his parents) But one problem that couldn't be solved were Richard's powers: the super-speed that had powered him for most of his life had begun to fade by the time he reached his late forties, a slow decline that the super-doctors on the West Coast probably would last for the rest of his life. His speed dropped from close to light speed to hypersonic within the space of a few months, and the thought of being forever stuck in second gear made him feel unhappy. Faced with the choice of letting his powers fade gracefully or trying to infuse himself with more chronitons (a risky, dangerous task), Richard took a third option. He dug an old book out of his collection, one he'd picked up in a moment of panic in 1993 to help save the world, and for the first time opened it up and began to read... History of the Tome: The Tome of Theurgy is a handwritten volume by Violet Pennyworth, Master Mage of Earth before her tragic death in 1893. The book describes Pennyworth's experiments with directly tapping the magical essence of the Behenian stars, using Hermetic ritual and incantation to summon the mystic energies of those fifteen stars to Earth for great power. Pennyworth ultimately abandoned her work, leaving the book itself only halfway finished at her death - though her interest in starry magic did ultimately lead her to her last and fatal confrontation with cultists of the Unspeakable One. The book itself is a small, pocket-sized edition of what was once a diary, bound in pristine black leather. The pages inside are covered in handwritten notes and observations that would take a scholar hours to read and digest. The Tome disappeared from Violet's library not long after her death and has only occasionally been seen since - starry magic is a particularly laborious process given the need to perform all the relevant astronomical calculations moment-to-moment, and the incomplete nature of the book means that secrets may lie inside for the unwary. The Tome was last seen by the general super-public in the late 1970s, when the supervillain Clock Queen and her sidekick Tempus Fugitive robbed the estate sale of the Usher family, appropriating many valuable texts from that twisted criminal line. Mechanically, the tome is difficult to use in combat - its densely packed script is challenging to read, the calculations it requires must be done with incredible precision, and the Earth moves so rapidly that after the initial few castings of the summoning spells contained within, the book must be set aside so the spells inside can be recast over a period of hours. To use the book reliably in combat, a mystic would need both fantastic speed and a mastery over time itself. A silver chain keeps it fastened to Richard's jacket when he takes it out, something he can snap on instantly thanks to his superspeed. Complications: Under Pressure: Richard has a family to protect, for good or ill - including a mother and father who are among the most notorious thieves of the Silver Age, and one of its nuttiest costumed villains, respectively. (Clock Queen and Doc Holiday have not spoken since the breakup of the Silver Age Crime League). Pour Some Sugar On Me: Richard is happily married as only a man with a beautiful wife who just happens to be a psychic can be. However, he’s always had a soft heart for the ladies and may be vulnerable to some persuasion by them in a crisis. The Magic Number: While the Tome of Theurgy carries the gestalt knowledge of centuries of astral magic, Richard does not actually know anything about magic. Back in Black: Like many who lived in Freedom City in the Iron Age, Richard hates ninjas. Stupid Katanarchists. Walk This Way: A celebrity Discovery Channel host, Richard's face is known, and he has to behave himself in public most of the time Karma Chameleon: Richard is a convicted felon. Though his record is putatively clean today (thanks to many of his offenses being committed while he was a juvenile and others wiped away by either the statute of limitations or his pardon after the Terminus Invasion), he’s acutely aware that well-connected enemies could potentially cause a lot of problems for him. White Lines (Don't Do It): Former cokehead Fast-Forward is now a Narcanon member, and may find that responsibility taking him to some very interesting places indeed. Don't You Forget About Me: Freedom City has largely forgotten the 80s and early 90s, with the heroes and villains of those days dismissed as murderers or psychotic killers respectively - this is something Richard is determined to make sure they never forget. Walk Like An Egyptian: Fast-Forward once spent a week in Set’s lair. It was actually fine, Set kept his word to Clock Queen and was a good, if stern, provider: but in the aftermath, Richard has never really liked snakes. He thinks they’re spying on him. And maybe they are. Like a Virgin: Richard can be kind of a jerk sometimes. He’s working on that, though, and is much more pleasant to be around than he was in the 1980s. Take On Me: Though he’s aware he’s slower than most of the younger speedsters out there, Richard isn’t above competition with potential rivals like Downtime, Johnny Rocket, or even PC speedsters. I Can’t Go For That: Like many middle-aged people, Richard is most comfortable in the pop culture of his youth. Though he plays it up for laughs, he honestly doesn’t understand the charm of most modern-day music, style, and entertainment, and sometimes technology from after 1995 or so leaves him baffled. He’s a quick study, but it takes a lot to get him to make that studying in the first place. Hungry Like The Wolf: Fast-Forward has never quite gotten over the Iron Age. Not that he’s eager to go back to the days of lethal heroes and monstrous villains, much less a corrupt system and sheep-like townspeople, but he’s never lost the feeling that there’s another Moore Act out there just waiting to be passed. This has left him with a distrust for authority figures and government types that can occasionally seem a little odd in the modern era. You Shook Me All Night Long: Richard really hates corrupt cops and prison guards, and makes them particular targets of his hero work: nothing is more satisfying than putting away one of the cops (or their spiritual descendants) who used to harass him when he was a kid or in juvie. I Can't Change Time: Given the nature of Richard's powers, GMs should feel free to have interesting things happen when he uses extra effort with his Speedster array - surprise time travel, the arrival of dinosaurs, etc. As it goes! With Or Without You: Fast-Forward is on a first-name basis with many of the old lags from the Silver and Bronze Age Crime Leagues, some of whom helped raise him from birth. While he won’t go easy on them if they’re actually doing something bad, he takes something of a live and let live approach (in the finest tradition of the live-action Batman series) to those old-timers. No Way Out: Between one thing and another, most people don't leave the Crime League. Fast-Forward is one of the few people who has and lived to tell the tale. So far, anyway. Enola Gay: The Tome of Theurgy is a blunt instrument at the best of times, and Fast-Forward's not a terribly subtle guy. Sometimes he has to lay off the magic so he doesn't set the town on fire. Abilities: 2 + 6 + 6 + 0 + 4 + 6 = 24PP STR 12 (+1) DEX 16 (+3) CON 16 (+3) INT 10 (+0 WIS 14 (+2) CHA 16 (+3) Combat: 12 + 12 = 24PP ATK: +6 (+8 Theurgy/+10 Speedster Array) DEF: +17/+15/+11 (+6 Base, +5 Dodge Focus, +4 Enhanced Dodge, +2 Shield; +3 flat-footed) Init: +3/+27 with Speedster Powers Grapple: +7 Knockback: -3/-2/-1 Saves: 5 + 16 + 8 = 29PP TOU +7/+5/+3 (+3 Con, +2 Defensive Roll, +2 Protection) FORT +8 (+3 Con, +5) REF +19 (+3 Dex, +16) WILL +10 (+2 Wis, +8) Skills: 124R = 31PP Acrobatics 9 (+12) Bluff 11 (+14) Skill Mastery Climb 8 (+9) Disable Device 15 (+15) Skill Mastery Escape Artist 9 (+12) Gather Information 8 (+11) Knowledge (History) 15 (+15) Knowledge [Popular Culture] 2 (+2) Languages 1 (Hebrew; English base) Notice 8 (+10) Search 8 (+8) Sense Motive 8 (+10) Skill Mastery Sleight of Hand 10 (+13) Stealth 12 (+15) Skill Mastery Feats: 11PP Challenge (Fast Taunt) Dodge Focus 5 Evasion Move-By Action Skill Mastery (Bluff, Disable Device, Sense Motive, Stealth) Taunt Uncanny Dodge (Auditory) Enhanced Feats Defensive Roll Dodge Focus 4 Evasion [to 2] Fast Overrun Improved Initiative 6 Improved Overrun Instant Up Powers: 32 + 15 + 1 + 7 + 1 + 6 + 1 + 1 + 42 + 3 + 1 = 110PP Device 8 (40PP, Tome of Theurgy, Flaw: Hard to Lose) [32PP] Enhanced Skills 20 (Knowledge [Arcane Lore] 10 (+10), Knowledge [Theology and Philosophy] 10 (+10)) [5DP] Force Field 2 (mystic shields) [2DP] Shield 2 (mystic shields) [2DP] Super-Senses 7 (Detect Magic 3 [mental], Enhancements: Acute, Analytical, Radius, Ranged) [7DP] Theurgy Array 24 (48 PP, PFs: Accurate, Alternate Powers 5, Flaw: Action [Full], Drawback: Action 6 [20 minutes to change allocation]) [24DP] BE: Paralyze 12 (cursed light of Algol; Extras: Alternate Save [Fortitude, +0], Area [General, Cone], Secondary Effect) {48/48} AP: Dazzle 12 (visual) (blinding light of Asteroth; Extras: Area [General, Burst], Secondary Effect) {48/48} AP: Damage 16 (stormy light of Arcturus; Extra: Area [Targeted, Shapeable], PFs: Indirect 2, Stunning Attack, Variable Descriptor 1 [any weather]) {36/48} AP: Blast 16 (burning light of Sirius; Extra: Area [Targeted, Cylinder]) {48/48} AP: Snare 12 (nourishing light of Spica; Extras: Area [General, Burst], Regenerating) {48/48} AP: Teleport 12 (1200 ft/20 million miles) (hasty light of the Pleiades; Extras: Affects Others, Area [burst]) {48/48} Enhanced Feats 15 (Defensive Roll, Dodge Focus 4, Evasion [to 2], Fast Overrun, Improved Initiative 6, Improved Overrun, Instant Up) [15PP] Feature 1 (temporal inertia) [1PP] Healing 1 (temporal acceleration, Extra: Affects Others, PF: Persistent) [7PP] Immunity 1 (aging) [1PP] Immunity 10 (psionic effects; Flaw: Limited [Half-Effect]; PF: Selective) [6PP] Quickness 1 (x2) [1PP] Speed 1 (10 MPH/100 feet per move action) [1PP] Speedster Array 19 (38PP, PFs: Alternate Power 4) [42PP] BE: Enhanced Speed 9 [to Speed 10 (10,000 MPH/100,000 feet per move action)] (Extra: Affects Others 10) + Enhanced Quickness 9 [To Quickness 10 (x5000)] (Extra: Affects Others 10) {19+19=38/38} AP: Damage 10 (goon-sweeper, Extras: Area [Targeted, Shapeable], Penetrating [6], Selective, PFs: Accurate 2) {38/38} AP: Damage 10 (velocity punch, Extras: Autofire, Penetrating [6], Secondary Effect, PFs: Accurate 2) {38/38} AP: Feature 30 (Buys off Action Flaw and Drawback on Magic) + Enhanced Speed 4 (to Speed 5 (250 MPH/2500 feet per move action])+ Enhanced Quickness 4 (to Quickness 5 (x50)] {30+4+4=38} {38/38} AP: Paralyze 10 (time-stop, Extras: Alternate Save [Reflex, +0], Autofire, PFs: Accurate 2, Improved Crit 2) {34/38} Super-Movement 3 (Wall-Crawling 2, Water-Walking, Flaw: Limited [Only While Running]) [3PP] Super-Senses 1 (Communications Link [mental] (Hologram)) [1PP] DC Block: ATTACK RANGE SAVE EFFECT Unarmed Touch DC 16 Tou Damage [Physical] Goonsweeper Area [Shapeable] DC 20 Ref [DC 25/20 Tou] Damage [Physical] Velocity Punch Touch DC 25 Tou Damage [Physical] Time-Stop Touch DC 20 Ref Slowed/Paralyzed Cursed Light Area [Cone] DC 22 Ref [DC 22/16 Fort] Slowed/Paralyzed Blinding Light Ranged [Burst] DC 22 Ref/DC 22 Ref [DC 22 Fort] Blinded Stormy Light Area [Shapeable] DC 31 Tou Damage [Physical/Energy] Burning Light Ranged [Cylinder] DC 31 Tou Damage [Energy] Nourishing Light Ranged [Burst] DC 22 Ref/DC 22 Ref Entangled/Bound Totals: Abilities 24 + Combat 24 + Saves 29 + Skills 31 + Feats 11 + Powers 110 = 229/232PP Edited November 14, 2023 by Gizmo +2PP for October 2023 Link to comment
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