Wednesday, January 4, 2023

FTL, Violently Impatient Speedster

A villain who wants to pull everyone up to his level so he has someone to interact with again, regardless of the side effects.

FTL

William Connacht gained his powers in a research accident that left him partially disconnected from the normal flow of time.  He saw them as a blessing for the first few years of his subjective timeframe, but eventually became frustrated by the intolerable sluggishness of the world around him.  Increasingly embittered, he grew tired of forcing himself to slow down enough to interact with others and resolved to end his growing isolation by accelerating time in his vicinity, pulling the sluggish masses up to his speed.  From an outside observer's point of view, all of this happened in the three days following his accident.  

The resulting temporal anomaly nearly tore the spacetime continuum to pieces, cost the lives of several heroes to repair, and firmly established William as a mad scientist supervillain, a role he's embraced in his descent into hyperspeed-induced insanity.  Now operating as the science-speedster FTL he continues to scheme to find a way to drag the fools who oppose him into his own, vastly superior timeframe, circumstances be damned.  He's Faster Than Law, Faster Than Life, and when he pushes it Faster Than Light.

FTL has a hard time working with other villains, most of whom are so slow it drives him to distraction.  His grandest schemes can attract unwanted attention from entities like Johnny Crisis or the Reckoner though.  He's not much better with flunkies and henchmen, who tend to become victims of his experiments the moment he gets bored..  Once in a while he'll actually manage to empower one of them with some of his own speed, but the results (much like FTL himself) are unstable at best.  Unlike FTL, their inherited speed doesn't make them immune to the passage of their own subjective time and they tend to age into dust without warning.  

Description: Usually a white-and-red blur of motion, nothing but a speed lines.  When he holds still long enough to see clearly, a lightly-built man in a sleek white full-coverage bodysuit that leaves only his eyes, mouth and jaw exposed.  The integral gloves, boot, and cowl are deep red, and there's a large red infinity symbol in the center of the chest.  

Gender: Male          Age: 31          Height: 5'8"          Eyes: Green

Hair: Red                              Skin: Pale                   Build: Narrow-Shouldered

Approach:  Mastermind                  Archetype:  Loner

Health:  30 + (5 x H)

Powers: Agility d12, Speed d10, Precognition d8

Qualities: Close Combat d10, Acrobatics d8, Alertness d8, Faster Than Life d8, Finesse d8, Science d8

Status: (# of Other Allied Villains) 0 - d10 / 1-2 - d8 / 3+ - d6

Abilities:

Accelerated Strikes (A) Attack using Agility.  Use your Max die.  Recover Health equal to your Mid + Min dice.

Doppler Shift Trickery (A) Hinder all opponents that can see or hear you using Faster Than Life.  Boost yourself using your Max die.

Too Slow To Finish The Job (R) When you would be Hindered or when an Attack would reduce you to zero Health, reduce the penalty to -1 or reduce the damage to 1.

Your Best Isn't Good Enough (R) When Attacked, Boost yourself using the Attacker's Max die.

Upgrades & Masteries (optional):

Power Boost (I) +20 Health.  Increase all Power dice sizes by one (max d12).  Gain Supersonic Blitz (A) Attack Multiple targets using Speed.  Hinder each target using your Max die.

Master of Mad Science (A) As long as you have access to materials, automatically succeed at an Overcome by using scientific principles and inventions.

Tactics:

FTL prefers to alternate between using Doppler Shift Trickery to make fools of multiple heroes and using the bonus it grants him with Accelerated Strikes to increase the damage or healing it produces.  He concentrates on dropping whichever hero seems to be the easiest to KO.  When Attacked he'll react with Your Best Isn't Good Enough unless he'd be defeated by the damage.  In that case he uses Too Slow To Finish The Job instead, which he also employs if facing a big or persistent Hinder.  Either reaction will be followed with Accelerated Strikes to heal up as much as he can.

With his upgrade he'll add Supersonic Blitz to his offensive ability rotation, using Doppler Shift Trickery less often.  His upgrade requires access to suitable equipment, which he can dream up using Science but usually needs assistance to build or he can resort to stealing gadgetry from other people - either of which offer good story hooks to get the heroes involved.

__________________________________________________________________

These lieutenants represent the most successful of FTL's experiments in sharing his speed with normal humans.  They're usually loyal to him and most have dreams of becoming career super-criminals on their own someday, but few if any will last that long.

Hyper-Speed Henchman d10 lieutenant

Description: Nothing but a blur of black and red when in motion, which is their normal state.  If making an effort to hold still, they look like normal men and women dressed in a variation of FTL's costume that substitutes black for his white, and replaces the infinity symbol with a zero.

Blur of Motion: Once during your turn you may move elsewhere in the scene without using an action.  

Unstable Acceleration: Whenever you roll your die, you may opt to roll twice and take the higher result.  If you roll doubles, reduce your die size by one.  If this reduces your die below a d4, you are defeated.


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