Another supervillain for the SCRPG today, this one a literal one-man gang using a combination of the Overpowered approach and Legion archetype to flood the scene with minions while delivering serious melee hits and supporting his allies.
Shatterfist
Tommy Marcone died in a gangland shooting three years ago, riddled with bullets in an ambush while performing a courier job for the Rossi crime family. He was delivering a chunk of crystal taken in a research lab theft to be assessed by a crooked scientist, the fragment neatly tucked in his jacket pocket. Whatever the thing was it reacted his death by copying his mind into itself, transforming into a rough duplicate of his former self made of transparent crystal. As the "new" Tommy stood there looking down at his own bloody corpse his killers poured another volley of bullets into him...and met their bloody end at the new super criminal who'd go on to call himself Shatterfist.
Shatterfist's crystalline makeup gives him a number of superhuman abilities, including great strength and immunity to pain, and he no longer eats, sleeps, or breathes. Any strong impact causes his body to splinter and cast off shards. This causes him no real harm and new crystal replaces the lost mass almost instantaneously, while the shards grow into semi-autonomous creatures that adopt a vaguely human shape - four articulated limbs attached to a central mass, with a rounded featureless "head" at the end of a shorter stalk. Each of these shards is connected to Tommy's consciousness, and are effectively separated parts of a whole. There seems to be no limit to how many of these can be active at once but coordinating them all becomes more confusing for Shatterfist as the number increases. Shards last only a brief time (till the end of a scene) and need to remain fairly near (within the same general environment) their creator or they evaporate into nothingness.
The underground scientists who examined Tommy's powers seemed very excited about "impossible physics" and "generation and sublimation of mass via quantum particle transfer" and the like, but he doesn't care much. His powers have made him much more useful to the Rossi organization, and he's moving up in the ranks fast. Which should make him happy, his life has always been all about the Family - but it doesn't. He's not happy about anything any more. Or angry, or sad, and he's forgetting what any of those felt like as time goes by. He can't sleep, and his inhuman physique cuts him off from most human pleasures. Tommy soldiers on as mob enforcer because its all he knows for now, but he's quietly going quite, quite mad.
Description: Short, bull-necked, wide-shouldered figure like a slightly abstract transparent crystal sculpture of a man, the surface webbed with an ever-changing pattern of cracks. Unless he expects a fight he generally wears custom tailored suits made out of extra-durable super-fabrics, although even they rarely last long due to the sharp edges of his joints. He's given up on shoes altogether after shredding several thousand dollars worth of them in a single day. When on a job where violence is likely (which is most of his jobs these days) he wears a pair of sturdy black shorts, mostly for modesty's sake. He may not be using any of that gear any more, but his momma didn't raise him to go out without pants.
Gender: Male Age: 28 Height: 5'10" Eyes: Colorless
Hair: None Skin: Transparent Build: Sturdy
Approach: Overpowered Archetype: Legion
Health: 30 + (5 x H)
Powers: Part Detachment d12, Strength d10, Vitality d10
Qualities: Close Combat d8, Rossi Family Enforcer d8, Alertness d6
Status: (# of Legion Minions) 0 - d12 / 1-2 - d10 / 3-4 - d8 / 5-8 - d6 / 9+ - d4
Abilities:
All Broken Up (R) When you would take physical damage, prevent that damage and create a minion with a die size equal to your status die (after creating that minion). You may use this reaction more than once per round, but each use after the first deals 1 irreducible damage to you.
Fragments of the Whole (I) Whenever a Legion minion with a die size greater than d4 rolls a save against physical damage, instead of the normal effects if it succeeds it splits into two minions, each of one smaller die size, and you take 1 irreducible damage. If it fails its save, it is only reduced one die size rather than being destroyed.
Putting All the Pieces Together (A) Boost using Part Detachment. Recover Health equal to your Max die. Each of your nearby allies Recovers Health equal to your Min die. Each of your nearby minions and lieutenants whose die sizes have been degraded are increased one die size.
Shattering Punch (A) Attack using Strength. Use your Max + Mid + Min dice. Hinder yourself using your Max die. Take physical damage equal to your Mid + Min dice.
Too Many Crooks Spoil the Stew (I) Whenever multiple legion minions all take the same action against the same target, you must roll all their dice at once and use the lowest rolling die amongst them for each minion's result on that action.
Upgrades & Masteries (optional):
Group Fighter (I) +20 Health. When you take an action that lets you make an Attack, also make an Attack using your Mid die.
Power Boost (I) +20 Health. Increase all Power dice sizes by one (max d12). Add the following ability: Splitting Headache (A) Add two minions with a die size one lower than your current status die, to a minimum of d4.
Villainous Vehicle (I) +15 Health. Add a Crystal Shuttle d10 Lieutenant with the following abilities to the scene: Distance Attack (I) To Attack this vehicle, a Hero must first make an Overcome action to reach it. Escape Plan (R) When Shatterfist/Breakdown is Attacked, roll this vehicle's die. If it rolls higher than the villain's current Health, both the villain and this vehicle escape the scene. Minion Deployment (A) Add minions to an existing group equal to half the vehicle's current die size. These minions are of a size equal to the highest die size already in the group. If the vehicle has a bonus or penalty adjust the number of minions by that amount and then remove that mod.
Master Mercenary (I) If you have a contract for a specific task, automatically succeed at an Overcome where your payment is at stake.
Tactics
Shatterfist prefers brawling face to face in melee, where he can rely on Shattering Punch to deal damage and generate minions using his All Broken Up reaction. His minions aren't very good at coordinated actions due to Too Many Crooks Spoil the Stew but are hard to put down thanks to Fragments of the Whole. When he has a lot of damaged minions in play or is low on health himself he'll use Putting All the Pieces Together for mass repairs, which will even help nearby non-shard allies (mostly as a motivational effect).
The stats above assume no upgrades or masteries are in use, which is fine for "early days" Shatterfist. After Tommy's gotten some experience with his powers I'd add Group Fighter and Master Mercenary and count him as a difficult scene element.
Once he finally snaps and decides (probably correctly) that he's no longer human, he embraces his powers more fully and adds Power Boost on top of that, at which point he's "worth" about two difficult scene elements and a real threat to any single hero. In my campaign this is the point where he goes rogue after murdering most of the Rossi crime family, changes his supranym to "Breakdown" and goes full on maniacal supervillain, teaming up with other powered baddies and leaving his past behind.
If you wanted to make Breakdown a solo villain capable of taking on a whole team by himself (well, along with his endlessly spawning minions) you could add a third Villainous Vehicle upgrade as a flying platform to help compensate for his personal lack of mobility. If it gets beat up Breakdown could restore a die step with his healing ability, although the range limitation means he'd either have to leave the ground battle or it would have to drop down near him (losing Distance Attack in doing so).
Trivia: Shatterfist is not only descriptive of what Shattering Punch looks like, it sounds a lot like Shadowfist, the best multiplayer CCG ever made. Totally a nod to that fine game.
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