Emoticon (MHRP)

[bryant]

As one does, I wrote up my old superhero PC Emoticon in the hot new superhero RPG. This time, it’s Marvel Heroic Roleplaying. MHRP character writeups are tied to specific versions of the characters, both in powers and in XP Milestones, so I decided to do this writeup as the youthful, optimistic Emoticon. In actual play he went all the way through the Weight of Responsibility Milestone, but I don’t think he ever finished up the True Teen Love Milestone.

I’m not sure how I’d add the martial arts he picked up later — actually, he had a bit of it early on, too. But that’d be a third Power Set, which is a bit more spread out than typical MHRP characters. You could drop it into the Projective Empathy Power Set, but the Limit doesn’t make sense.

There are a couple of small tricks in the original Champions UN PEACE gear package that I skipped. Flash Defense never came up, so you could represent it with a stunt, and the radio headsets are most easily handwaved.

Oh, and I added a Social Specialty, because it’s missing and there clearly ought to be one. Cite: Johnny Storm, socialite extraordinaire, with no particular business acumen at all. Emma Frost might also fit in that category.

Affiliations

Solo: d6
Buddy: d8
Team: d10

Distinctions

Patriotic Frenchman
Devout Catholic
Teenage Enthusiasm

Power Sets

Projective Empathy
Emotion Control: d8
Psychic Resistance: d6

SFX: Area Attack. Target multiple opponents. For every additional target, add d6 and keep +1 effect die.
SFX: Unoffensive. Spend a PP to add the Emotion Control die to your pool when making a reaction roll.

Limit: Don’t Look Now. Shutdown all Projective Empathy powers for a single target. Recover powers by activating an opportunity or at the end of the Action Scene.

UN PEACE Gear
Jet Pack: d6
Padded Armor: d6

Limit: Gear. Shutdown UN PEACE Gear and gain 1 PP. Take an action vs. Doom Pool to recover.

Specialties

Menace Expert (d8)
Psych Expert (d8)
Social Master (d10)

Milestones

True Teen Love
1 XP: Profess your love for another superhero or supervillain
3 XP: Reject the superhero or embrace the supervillain, either way for a noble reason
10 XP: Tell the world about your broken heart

Weight of Responsibility
1 XP: Learn someone else’s secret
3 XP: Keep a secret only because it would damage the world to reveal it
10 XP: Take immoral actions in order to protect a secret

Mirrored from Population: One.

Comments

[artbroken.livejournal.com]

Two ways I can see to add Martial Arts:

- The Combat Speciality, which covers all forms of fightin' and shootin'

- Rework UN PEACE Gear into UN Peace Agent (or similar) that covers both gear and training, add appropriate SFX and modify the Limit so that it only shuts down the items.

Although it's hard to say one way or the other, I think you're supposed to assume d8 as a baseline for traits (d6 is for mooks and minor characters) and you probably need more SFX.

But hey, good write up! I should try the same with my old character, although to be honest he's just Iron Man with less money and hair.

[bryant]

Hm. I think 10 XP milestones are supposed to be choices. Does that match your understanding?

[artbroken.livejournal.com]

Yes, definitely - which I think is a really nice piece of design, as it pushes players towards character-defining acts.

A lot of the characters being posted on RPGnet right now seem to forget or ignore that, which I think is a shame.

[bryant]

I somehow missed the Combat Specialty, but that's exactly how to do it. This works particularly well since Emoticon's just a normal human who uses his own emotion control powers to brainwash himself into exercising to peak physical ability.

I went for d6s because there are a couple of datafiles with d6 in 'em, and the UN PEACE characters all started at very low point values. We wanted to do a quasi-realistic game where hitting people with human fists was a big deal. Possibly it'd be a bad fit for MHRP as a result.

[artbroken.livejournal.com]

...a normal human who uses his own emotion control powers to brainwash himself into exercising to peak physical ability.

Oh man, that's awesome.

And I don't know that it's so much a bad fit for MHR's rules as for its setting, since most Marvel heroes are a cut above that. Well, certainly the ones who show up in the modern events. You'd mostly just need to design the NPCs along similar lines, so that d6 heroes aren't fighting d12 villains.

Hmm. Actually, thinking about it a little more, there's a strong incentive in the rules for d6-heroes to find better dice, rather than just more dice, through stunts and opportunities. Which leads to a style of play where PCs need to use their environment, set up combos and work together rather than just rely on their powers. So in some ways it's a self-correcting problem, because that style of play fits the change to the genre.

[bryant]

Hm, that'd work really well for the way UN PEACE actually ran. And it was a heavily roleplay-oriented game anyhow; as is perhaps not surprising when someone verbal is playing an empath, we liked talky solutions. Of the other two main PCs, one was a spy and the third was an ice projector, so on the whole we tended towards non-violent solutions.

[artbroken.livejournal.com]

Well, talky solutions are action scenes too, so yeah, your powers being weighted in that direction makes that a much more effective idea - and one that should still be interesting to play out with actions and dice rolls.