Saturday, March 3, 2012

The Merc With A Mouth

 A friend of mine is dieing to play Deadpool in the new Marvel Heroic RPG just released by Margaret Weiss Productions but unfortunately Deadpool is not one of the heroes released in the initial book. I'm in the middle of fighting a vicious flu bug and the medicine I took induced some vicious insomnia so I spent most of a bizarre night (which may be appropriate for the subject matter) tossing and turning and designing Deadpool in my head. So without further ado, here he is with comments at the bottom to explain my reasoning.

DEADPOOL
Affiliations:
Solo D10      Buddy D8        Team D6

Distinctions:
     Merc With A Mouth
     Voices In My Head
     Misunderstood Hero


Power Sets:
ASSASSIN'S TOOLKIT
Big Frickin Gun D8              Katanas D8

sfx: burst. Step up or double a BIG FRICKIN GUN die against a single target. Remove the highest rolling die and add 3 dice for your total.
sfx: Focus. If a pool includes an ASSASIN'S TOOLKIT power, you may replace two dice of equal size with one die +1 step larger.
sfx: teleport. When deadpool suffers any stressed out result he may spend 1 PP to immediately teleport to his safehouse.
sfx: Holo-Projector. Spend 1 PP to use Holo-Projector and add a d8 to the dice pool for your next roll.
Limit: Gear. Shutdown ASSASSIN'S TOOLKIT and gain 1 PP. Take an action vs. doom pool to recover.

Weapon X Program
Superhuman Reflexes D10      Enhanced Strength D8      Godlike Stamina D12

sfx: Second Wind. Before you make an action including a Weapon X Program power, you may move your Physical Stress die to the doom pool and step up the Weapon X Program power by +1 for this action.
limit: Conscious Activation: If stressed out, asleep, or unconscious, shutdown Weapon X Program . Recover Weapon X Program when stress is recovered or you awake. If mental trauma is taken, shutdown Weapon X Program until trauma is recovered.
limit: Exhausted. Shutdown any Weapon X Program power to gain 1 PP. Recover power by activating an opportunity or during a Transition Scene.

Specialties:
     Combat Master D10
     Crime Expert D8
     Covert Master D10
     Menace Master D10
     Acrobatic Expert D8


Milestones:

Twisted Path
1 XP: When you first fight alongside other heroes against villains or accept a bribe to sit out of a combat.
3 XP: When you fight a former employer or become romantically involved with another hero.
10 XP: When you sacrifice yourself to save a team member.

Wisecracking Basket-case
1 XP: When you first make any hero laugh whether on your team or not.
3 XP: When you make the final take-down attack on a villain and deliver a one-liner.
10 XP: When your team hears you arguing with the voices in your head.



So let's start with affiliations. This was pretty easy, Deadpool usually performs best when he is alone and outnumbered. He's been on a buddy team with Cable as well as others in the past and has been on several teams. Not much to consider here, I toyed with swapping the buddy and team dice but I couldn't find a strong argument for either case so I left this as I initially laid it out.

Distinctions were pretty straight forward too. Merc With A Mouth is appropriate, Deadpool may be second only to Spider-Man when it comes to wisecracking. Voices In My Head would make a great negative distinction to take frequently as Deadpool pauses to argue with himself. Misunderstood Hero represents Deadpool's attempts to sometimes do what is right even though the outcomes don't always match his intent.

The powersets were a little more tricky but I think I found the right balance. The first powerset is the Assassin's Toolkit. Of course he has to have his iconic weapons: guns and katanas. I used a couple standard SFXs (burst and focus) but created two unique ones just for him to represent the teleporter and holo-projector in his belt. I think these both work very nicely, the holo-projector adds an asset reflected in the dice he gains. This would represent Deadpool changing his appearance to confuse the enemy. The teleporter is his lifeline and is true to the way he always seems to live to fight another day no matter how badly he appears to be wounded.
The Weapon X Program borrows a lot from Wolverine's datafile mainly because Deadpool derived his powers by being infused with some of Wolverine's. He has an insane healing factor like Wolverine but his is more concentration based than natural, which made me choose Conscious Activation as a limit .

Not much to say regarding specialties, they are all pretty self explanatory.

Milestones was tricky. I thought long and hard about this one and hope they capture the essence of Deadpool. From his wisecracking to his failed romances and heroic attempts to sacrifice himself. Twisted Path represents his unpredictability and Wisecracking Basket-case is the Deadpool we all know and love.

Well that's it for now. Hope you like it, I welcome your feedback (positive as well as nicely worded criticisms!)

-Myrkwell

2 comments:

  1. Very nice. I threw together a build for Ghost Rider that I'm pretty happy with. Maybe I'll put it on my blog.

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  2. Yeah I'd like to see that! I like how this system lets you model the heroes fairly easily without worrying about balancing them.

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