Character Creation Rules

Here is where we will do Step-by-Step Character Creation. I am not requiring you to have connected histories, but it might make it interesting if did work out some details to connect you to another PC.

So I am going to take a page from the Wearing the Cape book and rearrange the Aspects a smidgen. Instead of High Concept, Trouble and three Background Aspects, we will use a Power Aspect, a Hero Aspect, Trouble and two Background Aspects

Step One: Power Aspect - This aspect describes your origin and powers in a nutshell. As an example, Superman might have the Power Aspect: Kryptonian Power House Ubermensch. Spider-Man might be Radioactive Spider-powered Teen. This aspect should almost always be useful when throwing down against other Supers or saving civilians during missions, so a lot of the action scenes.

Step Two: Hero Aspect - This Aspect is meant to reflect your outlook on Hero Work, your public persona. Often in comic books, one might look to a character's epithet for this Aspect. Spider-Man is sometimes called Your Friendly Neighborhood Wed-slinger. Or Batman is famously called The Dark Knight Detective. This aspect should come into play most often in social situations, calming civilians, Provoking your enemies, negotiating new sponsorship contracts, that sort of thing.

Step Three: Trouble Aspect - This aspect is the same as your normal the Fate Core. This is the biggest issue your character faces in life. It needs to be a real issue for them, and not something that can be easily fixed. You might have a family to take care of, or a day job/profession you'd rather be doing but can't for some reason. For an example from comics, Batman might be said to have the Trouble "The death of my parents still haunts me." or Captain America might have "The battle may end, but not the war." This aspect should be compelled almost once a chapter (my term for a short segment of story...like a 3-6 issue arc in an ongoing comic. In the Golden Age it would come up once an issue, but trend change) to cause issues for your Hero. I might threaten a loved one or cause your PC to choose between the two lives they are trying to live, that sort of thing.

Step Four: 2 Background Aspect - These aspects are basically freebies. You can do almost anything with these aspects to fill out your character. This is a great place to put secret identity details you might want to be able to call upon. Spider-Man might put something like the famous "With great power comes great responsibility" quote from Uncle Ben. Batman and Iron-Man might have "Billionaire Playboy Philanthropist by day" for another example. These aspects will be most useful if you keep the "double-edged sword" concept in mind when creating them. Sometimes you want to be able to call on them for a bonus, sometimes you want the GM to compel them to earn a Fate Point.

Step Five: Skills - We are using the standard list of skills you can find here on the Fate SRD. However, there are three changes to what they represent. At the end of a chapter (again, I will let you know when this is) I will award the "points" your hero has earned for their most recent missions. At that time you will make a test using the skills Contacts, Rapport, and Resources. Your results will determine how many of the points you potentially earned you will get. Like any other skill test, you will be allowed to invoke Aspects, or employ stunts that might be applicable assuming you have the appropriate resources.

Contacts during this phase will represent how well the city or other government officials view your Hero. If you created a lot of collateral damage to city infrastructure, or just even just a big mess that slows down city business, the challenge will be higher than it might otherwise be.

Rapport during this phase will represent how the public views your Hero. If you saved a lot of people or put yourself in harms way to protect non-heroes, stay after to sign autographs, show up at community events, or if you just ham it up for the cameras, the people will love you. If you show anti-social tendencies or are perceived to be responsible for civilians being injured, they will throw you under the bus. There is a weekly show where fans can call or go online to up-vote their favorite heroes. Just a warning though...the people can be fickle.

Resources during this phase represent your relationship with your Sponsors and how well you are paid. This test has a similar metric to the Rapport. If your sponsoring corporation has a favorable view of your hero you can expect to be treated well. Or you might catch the eye of a more lucrative contract. Fail this test to often and the sponsor may decide to drop you or they might impose more restrictions on your conduct.

So now that you know how the skills differ from typical uses in Fate, you can distribute your points. Basically, you give one skill +5, two skills +4, three skills +3, four skills +2, and five skills +1. All other skills default to +0. This is a bit more than usual, but I want to reflect that these characters are super-human. To put all this in context, a skill at +4 is considered peak human perfection. Olympic athletes have an Athletics skill of +4 in their chosen sport. Your character can, if you choose and the dice are on your side, outshine every normal human and take home gold in any event you choose. (this doesn't even factor in your powers yet.)

Step Six: Stunts/Powers - As mentioned in the other thread, we will have Stunts become Super Powers. In a normal game of Fate, you have 3 free Stunts and 3 Refresh that can be exchanged for Stunts at a one-for-one ratio. In this game, you will have 10 free stunts to build your powers and/or reflect other tricks you may have picked up in life, as well as 3 Refresh that you can trade for more powers or stunts.

The vast majority of characters have only one power, but learn cool tricks to do with that one power so that it looks like they have many powers. For example, if I made Superman for this game, I would name the power Kryptonian DNA (aka...Super Toughness). This would cost me 1 Stunt out of the 10 freebies. From there I would buy all the other powers he has, further Enhancements like Master Super Toughness, Implacable, and/or Juggernaught, then the other powers like Flight, Super Strength, Energy Blast(Heat Vision), etc, until i felt I had replicated the comic book Superman as best I could without going over my limit of 12 points, I say 12 because you can spend Refresh on Stunts as well, but you have to have a Refresh of 1 at the end, those are the rules.

If I were trying to make a Batman style character, I probably wouldn't buy as many powers. Technically he has none of course but for the purposes of the game, he would at least have Super Intelligence and one or two Enhancements after that. The rest I would spend on individual Stunts separate from the Powers. I would probably look at stunts from the individual skills on the SRD. The Stealth skill entry for example has Ninja Vanish. That is very Batman appropriate in my opinion. The SRD is a great resource for designing stunts, but I am happy to help if you need it.

Step Seven: Stress and Consequences - This step is pretty easy and we are just using the rules from the Core rules. Characters typically have two Stress tracks. Physical and Mental. You can think of these like Hit Points. If you run out of Stress boxes and take a hit...you are out of the scene. What "out of the scene" means varies a lot depending on the situation. It does not mean your character is dead...unless you want it to. We will enter a negotiation phase outside of the action. The GM has ultimate authority, but my mandate is to make the game interesting. If capturing your hero is best we will do that, but in this game making them lose standing in the ranks is probably my go-to result. Of course this is a comic book based story so death is rarely final. it could be fun to have your character die and bring them back. The possibilities are practically endless.

The one thing about Stress that I often forget is that skills Physique and Will can increase the number of Stress boxes you have. Physique gives you extra Physical Stress boxes and Will gives you Mental Stress Boxes. Check those skills on the SRD for more details, but I will double check your sheet for the proper number of boxes.

Consequences are a secondary kind of damage. You use Consequences to mitigate how much Stress you take when hit with an Attack. All PCs have three Consequence boxes, a Mild, Moderate and Severe. Each of these boxes can absorb Stress, but give you temporary Aspects that make life harder. Perhaps you are hit by a villain with Super Strength and take 3 Stress. You can choose to take a Mild Consequence, negating 2 of that stress, and write Cracked Rib in the slot for your Mild Consequence, then fill in one box of Physical Stress. Physique and Will at a high enough level can grant extra Consequences. I will check for that as well.

And you're done! - So that is character creation in a brief, or as brief as I can make it. Feel free to ask questions and start working on ideas here in this thread. If you need help I feel I am really good at making characters. Just do your best to explain what it is you want, and I will try to translate it to the rules so you understand what I did.

Okay. So I've put my character together, but here is my idea just to see if I'm thinking about this the right way.

My hero, Vertigo (name pending), is a kinetic conduit. Her powers rely on energy that she absorbs from her surroundings, either from moving around (Super agility) or from taking hits (I've given her energy absorption with Capacitance). She then uses this energy to both heal herself (regeneration) and to deal damage (natural weapon). She passively absorbs energy around her, allowing her to use most of her powers at any time. This also fuels her regeneration, so I gave her immortal, because even if she goes down, she will eventually absorb enough energy to heal from it. I decided to give her Human Pincushion as well, partly because I think it will lead to some hilarious scenes, but also because she just can't be bothered sometimes (she can fix it later).

I'm toying around with making a vitromancer - a telekinetic limited to glass. Think magneto but windows instead of metal. The main power is telekinesis, and then picking up a few incidental powers like flight (He wears suit interwoven with fiberglass threads) and super senses (can hear people from far away if they're speaking close to windows, can detect motion by feeling the movement of sand in the air). I'm also considering giving him some measure of super intelligence to justify being able to handle lots of different pieces of glass at once.

That's really cool. Do you have any ideas for a name?

i like this concept for a power set. Also would love to hear more about her personality when you get around to it. Is her absorption only related to energy (solar, electric radiation, etc.) or do physical attacks also work? If physical kinetic energy can be absorbed, I would suggest at least one instance of Super Toughness. If I'm counting right, you've listed 7 things to spend your points on, meaning you have some more in your budget.

But this is a conversation not an ultimatum. If you see things differently let me know.

No, not really. I find names really hard so that's usually the last thing I think of. Personality wise, I think the guy is a bit of a showboat. I kind of picture his costume being kind of like a flashy, cirque du soleil acrobat thing. White, and bird themed I think. Lots of glass elements incorporated, partly for looks and partly for utility. The suit shouldn't need to encumber him since he can just lift the glass with telekinesis

This is a very interesting power. Is he moving moving the "glass" (i.e. the sand that has been heat treated and now functions like glass) or is he moving the individual "grains of sand" that still technically make up the glass? Like, if he went to the beach would he have an unlimited arsenal to play with? Can he reshape the glass at will? Like making ornate glass daggers instead of hundreds of random jagged edges? Or can he replace a window that got smashed during a fight by reshaping all the shards? if yes to this, I think at least Master Telekinesis would be required

For the suit (which is a good idea and a great way to give him flight by the way) I recommend having a stunt dedicated to it. Give the suit a name, like an Iron-Man armor, or keep it simple like "Fiberglass Supersuit" and the stunt will give you 2 Armor against physical attacks because of the carbon fibers the fiberglass is combined with. Perhaps it was provided by your sponsor(s).

Again, just some ideas

My full breakdown of points is:
1 point for Basic Super Agility
1 point for the Uncanny Dodge Enhancement
1 point for Basic Energy Absorption
1 point for the Capacitance Enhancement
1 point for Basic Natural Weapon
1 point for Master Natural Weapon
1 point for Basic Regeneration
1 point for the Human Pincushion Enhancement
1 point for the Immortal Enhancement
And I spent 1 point for the Heavy Hitter Stunt under the Fight Skill.
Total of 10, though I am very much okay with spending one of my refresh points on Basic Super Toughness. I think it fits well.
I didn't mention some of these, but I thought they made sense for her.
She was an adrenaline junky even before she was a hero, so she knows how to take a hit and dish them back out. Personality wise, she is a bit of a loose canon. She enjoys helping people and saving the world, but what she really enjoys is fighting people who can make her feel something. So she's a bit of a loud mouth. She likes to provoke her enemies to hit her harder and then she hits them right back with the same force she just absorbed.

I was thinking it would have to do with clarity/purity. He'd have trouble with raw sand (still able to do some things but maybe with less force), and with glass that's been "adulterated" too much with other materials.

I did picture him having a lot of control over the glass, able to make it flow like a liquid and reshape, or break very precisely. So far I am planning to take master telekinesis at least twice.

For the suit I was thinking to just take flight. I didn't expect that it would provide him any particular kind of armor, but I'll consider it

I'm still working through some character concepts, but wanted to let everyone know what I was thinking at least. In this world of sensationalism and corporate sponsorship it might be interesting to run a character whose powers are all based around maintaining a good public image, but is actually kind of a shit hero. His skills could be focused in resources, rapport and contacts, basically all the things needed to get other people to do things for him rather than doing them himself. With a resources skill of 5, could he for instance be the CEO of the corporation that provides his own corporate sponsorship? His actual super powers could focus on creating illusions, special effects and such to just really make himself look good. Stunts like, Dramatic Entrance! where he bursts into a room, theme music starts playing, his social media and camera crews are already set up to capture the moment, his cape billowing dramatically even though the wind isn't blowing. He's always ready with punchy one liners and a winning smile, but is absolutely useless in an actual fight. With the power of clever editing though he can always make himself look like the hero. A bit like an HGTV show where they have a single shot of the handsome host in a spotless button up shirt hammering one nail in, but leave out the twenty people behind him doing all of the actual work. All the other super heroes hate his guts not only because he's a complete fraud, but he's infuriatingly popular on social media and makes more money doing what he does than any actual competent hero.

Sounds like a fun idea to me, but not sure how much fun that would be long term. He sounds like he'd be a pain in the ass for the GM and other players too. Hmm, he might actually make a better NPC or rival than a player character now that I think about it...

Thoughts?

I think it is an entertaining idea, but I agree that he would make a better NPC. I could see him being fun to play for a short while, but the novelty would probably wear thin. In my opinion, at least.

I think it could work if he's good enough to also talk the badguys into defeating themselves. Otherwise the "He doesn't actually do anything" would probably get annoying for everyone.

Like you could make a character whose actual power is just a boat load of persuasion. Then he becomes like Zero from Code:Geass, which is powerful enough to contribute while being able to make the leaderboard without appearing to do anything fancy. He shows up and all but the toughest badguys stand down or start shooting each other.

Heh, just my natural inclination to lean into crippling flaws. Actually the more I think about it, the more I like the idea. Well, parts of the idea at least. I'll focus on him being a social media star whose primary goals are to be entertaining and popular, and make deceive his apex skill, followed by contacts and rapport. He'd still be annoying as hell to work with because he's always trying to steal the spotlight, and his goals aren't necessarily to get the job done, but to be seen doing the job.

Not being good in a fight isn't the same as not doing anything. If I focus on the deception/trickery aspects of his illusion powers that could be pretty powerful. He'd be like a bull fighter. In a combat situation his goal wouldn't necessarily be to take down his opponent, but to faint and parry everything thrown at him. For him, it's more important to be entertaining and to make his opponent look like a fool. So, less Gilderoy Lockhart and more Antonio Banderas as a Bullfighting Lucha Libre.

And I will name myself, El Toro Caliente! (sponsored by Red Bull)

I love the idea of a CEO making himself a superhero. We probably should inact some issue about having to answer to a board of directors. Could be his Trouble?

You might look at the power Influence on the SRD. If you scroll down and expand the Venture City section it gives all the details. Makes for a "lover not a fighter" powerset.

I haven't gotten a chance to go through character creation yet, but here's my idea: A guy with a few robotic limbs who can also turn into an electric elemental form. Like, when he's powered up he's fast and hard hitting, but vulnerable to things like water or touching the ground, and when he's not he would be stronger and able to absorb electricity to keep himself powered.

This concept has some good potential. I'd point to the Power Themes...Super-Transformation makes sense, and you might want a second with Electricity Projection. The first one is free, the second costs a point. Super-Transformation means you spend an action to get transformed but if you aren't powered up, you don't register as having powers. But if you want cybernetic limbs in normal form that have some power, that can happen.

Would this be the appropriate thread to ask about potential sponsors, or will that be covered later?

Yes....lets do that. I'll keep the Nova Gail Coty thread clean of chat and post official data only there.

So, i am offering two options. You can make up all the details you want or give me an idea of what you want and I will fill in the specifics.

Things to keep in mind...
Nova Gail is a HUGE mega city. Like NYC or Chicago on steroids. To make a comic reference, it looks like a futuristic Metropolis. There is a public transit rail lime that runs above and below ground. Millions of people live here.

I'm also going to have floating billboard zeplins. About the size of a mid-size sedan. They display ads and keep the public updates on Hero and Villian activity so they can adjust their routes around fights and what not. The public can also text info to the blimps and they will alert authorities as needed.

You guys are second tier heroes right now. Think Lightning McQueen in the first Cars movie. He had a small sponsor and was looking to go big time. National brands are fine. Or you might be the second hero a major corp is sponsoring...living in someone's shadow.

I was going to mention this later but now it seems relevant, but I was going to ask for input on the Top 10 heroes you are working under/against. If you want to invent someone to try to overcome professionally, an "better" pro hero...go ahead. You don't have to create a full character, just a name and power set and a little about how they act is fine.

Sponsorship wise: I see Vertigo as being sponsored by some sort of Athletic company, like Underarmor or Gatorade or whatever this universe's versions of those are, or I could see her being sponsored by, like, an event brand. I almost imagine that people might view heroes like pro-athletes, and if that is a case, maybe there is an arena-style sport where heroes face off against each other (just for sport and training purposes) on national television. I could see her being the poster-child for that organization.