Guardian



Idintity: James MacDonald Hudson
Side: Good
Affiliation: Alpha Flight            
Sex: Male
Age: ?                           
Level: 12
Training: Accuracy

Powers:
1. Armor B: Battle-Suit: ADR=90
a) Plasma Blast (Power Blast): 1d20 damage, R=30", PR=1 per charge shot.
b) Invulnerability: Protective Field: 18 points. Guardian's battlesuit is capable of creating a protective force field that dampens inertia and absorbs energy. 
c) Flight:
d) Teleportation: Essentially, he cancels out the effects of the Earth's rotation upon himself. This allowed him to apparently "vanish", while actually being whisked westward at the speed of the planet's rotation.
2. Heightened Intelligence (A): +6.
3. Training: +4 to hit w/Power Blast.
4. Training: -2 to be hit.

S: 13
E: 14
A: 14
I: 19
C: 17

Note: This is the original Guardian before he became a cyborg.

Origin/Background:

Puck



Identity: Eugene Judd
Side: Good
Affiliation: Alpha Flight            
Sex: Male
Age: ?                           
Level: 9
Training: Endurance

Powers:
1. Heightened Agility A: +10.
2. Heightened Endurance A: +10.
3. Heightened Defense: -4 to be hit while conscious and mobile.
4. Acrobatics: Acts as Evasion but costs only movement per turn, and be started and stopped whenever desired.
5. Natural Weaponry: Unarmed Combat Training: +3 to hit, +6 damage.
6. Speed Bonus: +30" ground speed.
7. Willpower A: PR=1 per turn when used as a defense.
8. Dwarfism:

S: 16
E: 18
A: 23
I: 11
C: 16

Note: This is the original version of Puck, before he got retconned with all the demon silliness.

Origin/Background:

Great job.  I love both Guardian and  Puck.  When they retconed Puck it my me 

I few questions.  Did you consider giving Puck a speed bonus to represent is cart wheel maneuver?

I also think Puck would be good candidate for the Q.'s acrobats - Evasion costing movement only is the one I had in mind.

Aurora



Identity: Jeanne-Marie Beaubier
Side: Good
Affiliation: Alpha Flight            
Sex: Female
Age: ?                           
Level: 5
Training: Agility

Powers:
1. Heightened Speed: +500", +17 initiative bonus.
2. Flight:
3. Body Power: Blinding Flash: Attacks as Light Control. Must be in physical contact with her brother to activate power. PR=1.
4. Phobia/Psychosis: Multiple Personality Disorder: Aurora has two distinct personalities. 

Origin and Background:

Personality/Character Traits:

Note: Aurora and Northstar are bother and sister.

Before I post I want to make one caveat (which is below).  These were put together by a friend of mine (my best friend in HS; the guy I started playing V&V with).  So they don't necessarily represent my opinions on everything (though I may have pitched in; I don't honestly remember).  What I did do - with these guys in particular - is calculate what Level they should be at (this was around a dozen or so issues into the Alpha Flight series, perhaps even 15-20 issues in).  So I do believe their levels and experience were fairly accurate (though of course it's still somewhat subjective).

The caveat is this: our campaign at the time was *off-the chart* high as regards to Agility.  We were young, and my character set the bar extremely high with a 45 Agility (though he had no defenses and really wasn't that powerful except for this phenomenal ability).  This high Agility soon led to some power creep, and soon Sabre (my buddy's character, whom many of you have seen over in the character design thread - the one with art by both Bill Willingham and Mike Grell), who was tough enough to go toe-to-toe with (and even defeated!) the Incredible Hulk, had an Agility of something like 28.

So our A scores were stupendously silly and overpowered.  And as a result we tended to skew many of the comics characters we encountered (mostly Marvel, but occasional DC as well) rather high.  I'd take 5-7 points off most of the characters you see, sometimes maybe even 10.

The other Basic Characteristics should be pretty accurate.  We spent a long time crunching numbers and using the facts we had at the time, such as the Official Handbook of the Marvel Universe.

Here's Guardian.

I've gone back and rescanned those that were difficult to read, in addition to resizing the images.

Next up is Snowbird, who has all sorts of cool animal forms:

The amazing Puck; I like how Greg made his cartwheel attack, though how close the targets need to be should probably be spelled out as well:

And lastly (for our group, anyway - no Marina or any others), Northstar.

Nice character write-ups.

Which method do you use to resize your images in Photoshop? Do you use free transform or the standard 'image size' option?

Cheers,
Tim

It's too bad Alpha Flight was only cool during a couple of guest spots in the X-Men and for a year or two of their own series.

I've never seen a series fall from being "so cool" (issues 1-4) to so "so-so", to "so awful" so quickly.

Yeah, they were especially awesome in those early guest appearances with the X-Men.

Some cool Alpha Flight artwork

And one last pic before I head to bed.

John wrote on Feb 18^th, 2011 at 12:26am:


I liked puck, when he was just a well trained acrobat. When they started throwing in all of the demonic possession BS, they completely lost me. Overall, I liked all of the original AF crew (with the exception of Marina, who just never clicked with me), as well several characters from the Fabian Nicieza run on the book.

IndieComicsFan wrote on Feb 20^th, 2011 at 10:30am:


MAdison Jeffries was the sh*t! I he was one of my favorite characters coming, a close second to Gaurdian.

I always liked Hudson. He always seemed to be what Pym should have been. A reluctant "hero" who would have rather been in the laboratory, but circumstances and honor demanded otherwise. He and Puck were a great combination in my book

Byrne + Alpha = Good

I couldn't stomach much after John moved on. Fact is though there were alot about/of comics back then that started to turn sour. Either the stories or artworked suxd because publishers weren't willing to pay to keep good talent. I also was really turned off by "creative talents" constantly messing with universe continuity

Hawk wrote on Feb 23^rd, 2011 at 10:48pm:


Yeah, I thought it was pretty cool myself., As far as his powers go, they really didn't really change. But instead of his suit providing the powers, they were now integrated into his body.

Majestic wrote on Apr 4^th, 2010 at 8:33pm:


Believe it or not, if this is meant to be from his first few appearances, his STR and Carrying Capacity are actually somewhat low, even though they match what OHOTMU said. After all, that plane he easily throws 1000 feet against its engines in his very first appearance? Over 200 tons without cargo.

When it comes to strength, the Marvel Handbook stats often felt "prescribed" rather than describing the character's abilities within the comics. The early editions said Sasquatch could lift/press about 70 tons (IIRC) and that Thing could lift/press about 85 tons. But when Thing first battled Sasquatch, Thing made a point of noting that Sasquatch was stronger than him (after getting hit a few times).

http://www.comicvine.com/marvel-two-in-one-where-stalks-the-sasquatch/37-21864/

It's always hard to put this stuff in perspective -
Writer's take license of characters all the time. OHOTMU, OTOH, hasn't always been consistent and in updates and revision has to follow those whimsical writers....

We used to have three categories for big strength in our game that dealt with Marvel/DC
1) the lower category filled with characters that were able to approach the big lift at up to 90 tons, that the games was/are able to well-define...
2) the 'usual' category filled with the known heavy hitters like Thing, WonderMan,Thor, Colossus, Sasquatch, etc...
3) the rare exception that included Superman and Hulk all the time, Sasquatch in a rage and cosmic guys like Champion and such... to get here is rare and there no reason category 2 guys couldn't get here if the conditions were right, but as a rule, no matter the game system, this area was forbidden to character generation...
It's hard because our comics reading experience marvels at the impossible and revels in the suspension of disbelief; when we game and try to put marks on the gauge, our writers have usually muddied up the estimation pretty bad, especially when they seemed to have to one up each other all those years ago...

Scott H wrote on Apr 7^th, 2011 at 12:18am:


You're probably right.  In addition to what AK said, I'll point out that over time, different writers (who don't necessarily even pay attention to the guidelines in things like TOHOTMU) give wildly varying abilities to characters.  They would all agree that Sasquatch has Heightened Strength, but each might choose to implement that in different ways.  Sometimes Superman can only lift a plane or a building, other times he can push planets.

Since we had relative benchmarks for at least one single stat (Strength), we took advantage of that and used the numbers they gave, even when it might have been contradicted in the comics themselves.

good call. also, Majestic: HFS! 3d20 for guardian's powerblast?!? Lawdy!

right on. incidentally, I was trying to calculate spider man's approx S and E to lift 10 tons. figuring 200lbs (which he isnt, even) and a 32 Endurance, he would need a Strength around 60.

Majestic wrote on May 10^th, 2012 at 3:33pm:


I have to disagree with how to write Spider-Man, he doesn't have to have gamebreaking stats. I think John has the right approach and even without a homebrew power, he could be simulated with proportional spider-strength and game longevity...
And I definitely don't characterize him with a glass jaw, even if to compensate for a grossly exaggerated write up.
But alas, only my opinion...

(Mutant Power: 'Spider' Strength: Spider-Man's Carry Capacity ( and Base HTH damage) is modified by (x2? x4? x7? etc...) to reflect the proportional strength of a spider. No extra PR cost required.)

?

Note that even Tim's write-up, which has that Body Power doubling his CC, his stats are way up there (ending up with 242 Hit Points).  It's just one of those things that happens with characters that have great stats in all of the Basic Characteristics that go towards HPs (Beast is the same way).

I suppose he wouldn't necessarily have to have a glass jaw.  There just seem to be times when he goes down fairly easily (writer's feat, I suppose).

As long as he doesn't have any protection powers (Invulnerability, Armor, etc.), he could go down with any blow, if the roll is low enough.

Great points, pb.  I'd never thought about how often sleep-deprived Spider-Man (and now probably Wolverine) is/would be.  Wolverine can regenerate, but Spider-Man would hardly ever have time to catch up on even Power, yet alone Hit Points!