Back in the dark, misty days of the mid-late 80's I was running a lot of games, but thankfully one of the other people in my circle, Mike, was also willing to run things. So while I GMs the preponderance of the time Mike had active V&V and Marvel Super Heroes games, along with his homebrew action hero "Soldier of Fortune" system which was all d30.
Mike's V&V game world was, interestingly, set 50 years in the future of _my_ V&V world. Mike extrapolated out politics from a mid 80's baseline so of course the USSR was still there, etc. but the future time solved the problem of us playing ourselves when people already had PCs based on them in my game, so we were able to do the comic book thing where, say, Jesse's PC Banner (as in 'star spangled!') was a tech genius millionaire. My main PC, Legerdemain, was an alien warrior monk who became BannerTech's chief of security as his sinecure while he was primarily a crime fighter.
I can't tell you how much fun I had playing this character. It's likely because of him that "magnetic powers dude" is my fall back PC when I'm about to start a new campaign. He hit all the right notes for both a solo hero and and team player, with the HP needed to solve mysteries by getting he crap kicked out of him Sam Spade style.
Legerdemain (Bak-Maran-Seng)
Side: Good Experience level: 8
Affect/Gimmick: Magnetic powers hero who flies by means of a large metal disk, backed up by superhuman endurance and martial arts skills. A 'noble alien with single power', his origin borrowed a lot of Dr. Tachyon from Wild Cards (exile from world where nobility has powers who tries to protect Earth) with the visual being these guys from issue 29 of Legion of Super Heroes. I just loved the image of these guys, and when I got Magnetic Powers and Vehicle I built the PC around that. Given the source material I must have started playing him in early 1987.
Status: Well established hero, has a 'legal job' at BannerTech which pays him enough to live on while he pursues justice and the defense of his adopted home. He's got OK ties with the government, which are shakier now that he has refused to join the federally sponsored super-term FORCE, run by the head of BannerTech's rival defense organization.
Powers: 5
- Heightened Endurance B: his alien metabolism along with extreme martial/monastic training give him +20 Endurance.
- Natural Weaponry: +3 to hit, +6 on damage in unarmed combat; he seldom uses this, but it's a great surprise backup.
- Magnetic Powers: A gift of his bloodline, he is a Tel-Ren Metal-Mage, able to control both meta and magnetism. Per book, 18" range, 9,000 capacity, PR 5/use, lasts 18 turns.
- Invention: with a use of magnetic powers he can triple the structural rating of any metal.
- Invention: Carries a metal lasso/whip that is 15 lbs, 10' long, +3 to hit, +1d8 damage, SR 11.
- Paralysis Ray: a side effect of his magnetic powers, he can tune his blasts to stun people rather than damage them. 66" range, PR 7/shot
- Vehicle (Item): His magnetic flying disk can reach 67 MPH in a constrained environment, 670 MPH when he has altitude and space to move, or MACH 6.7 in low Earth orbit, has 50/75 HP, and anyone on it has a Magnetic Powers defense. It is SR 14 metal, and can be compressed down to the size of a frisbee for easy carrying. PR 1 per hour of flight.
Background/Origin: He's a lesser nobility warrior-monk from the world of Tel-Ren, where each of the noble bloodlines has a single power, honed through martial training. The nobility of Tel-Ren had been considering Earth as a testing ground for their powers and technology, but Bak-Maran-Seng betrayed his people and raced ahead of them to warn humanity. This has, at least temporarily, forestalled the invasion.
Since arriving on Earth he has fallen in with a larger group of heroes, with whom he regularly works. One of them, Banner, has arranged for his gainful employment. He has routinely clashed with the unstoppable energy monstrosity Power, secret assassin/vigilante turned government task force head FORCE, the League of Nations led by the telepath Mind Lazer, the Fighting Urban Commando Units (FUC-Us), the cryogenically revived Jim Shooter and his Marvel-Comics-Clones, the mercenary Warpath, and the dream-tulpa Oracle.
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