Doctor October, Bringing Halloween With Him All Year Round

A seasonally-appropriate character for an upcoming occult/urban horror game in a couple months.  Inspired by watching a few too many noir detective films lately.  

Name: Doctor October

Origin: Hard-nosed private investigator Jackie Riordan keeps a lot of secrets, which is why he's respected and feared on both sides of the law...and on both sides of the Veil between the magical and mundane.  Most of those secrets belong to others, gathered over years of research and investigations.  The one he holds dearest is his own.  Jackie is the face behind the mask of Doctor October, the occult champion of [campaign city] responsible for ensuring the living, the dead, and those who aren't quite either receive the justice they've earned.  Touched by the spirits of Samhain and empowered to enact judgement on those beyond mortal law, Doctor October stalks the night punishing the guilty and protecting the innocent.

Of course, even mystic champions have to earn a living, and Jackie is far more pragmatic than some earlier holders of his arcane title.  He'll take cases from both spirits and mortals, collecting payment in the strange coins of occult wisdom and dire secrets as well as cold hard cash.  Once he's on the trail of a crime nothing can divert him, a fact some of his clients have learned to their regret.   

Description: Thick-set man with weathered features partially concealed by a salt-and-pepper beard and mustache, usually dressed in a dark brown suit and tie.  Clever green eyes glitter beneath a mop of unruly hair and his nose has clearly been broken at some point in the past.  In his heroic identity, his suit magically shifts to deep green, he loses the tie and adopts a snug, eyeless dark orange hood that completely covers his face and head except for a pair of catlike yellow eyes.  He speaks in a clear baritone as a civilian, or with a deep, hollow voice that seems to echo from beyond when in heroic form.

Gender: Male     Age: 32     Height: 5'11"      Eyes: Green / Catlike Yellow

Hair: Salt and Pepper     Skin: Weathered Caucasian     Build: Stocky

Background: Law Enforcement   Power Source: Supernatural   Archetype: Divided (Shadow)

Personality: Civilian - Analytical / Heroic - Stoic

Health (G/Y/R):  Civilian - 28/21/10 / Heroic - 32/24/11 

Powers: Shared - Deduction d10, Transmutation d10

Heroic - Illusions d8, Agility d6, Weather d6

Qualities: Shared - Conviction d10, Stealth d10, Occult Private Detective d8

Heroic - Finesse d10, Insight d8

Status: Civilian - Green (up to 6 damage) - d10 / Yellow (up to 17) - d8 / Red (up to 28) - d6

Heroic - Green (up to 7 damage) - d6 / Yellow (up to 21) - d8 / Red (up to 32) - d10

Abilities:

Green

Cunning Exploit (A) Attack using Stealth.  Remove one physical mod, Hinder a target using your Min die, or maneuver to a new location in your environment.

Face or Mask? (I) Your access to Powers and Qualities is restricted by your current identity, civilian or heroic.  See above for the specifics.  You may not use abilities tied to a Power or Quality you do not currently have access to.  Superhuman Precision is only usable in heroic form.

Principle of the Detective (A) Overcome to learn hidden information.  Use your Max die.  You and your allies each gain a Hero Point.  Minor twist: What important clue did you miss?  Major twist: What major secret was just revealed that you would have liked to stay concealed?  RP:  You can always tell when important information is being overlooked, even though you may not know what it is.

Principle of the Underworld (A) Overcome a problem related to your knowledge of the criminal underworld or using one of your contacts.  Use your Max die.  You and your allies each gain a Hero Point.  Minor twist: What shady detail causes others to distrust you?  Major twist: Are you guilty of what you're being arrested for?  RP: You have a variety of contacts within the criminal underworld and organized crime.

Swallowed By Fog (A) Change from your civilian form to your heroic form, or vice versa.

Swirling Mists (R) When you would be dealt damage, roll a die based on your current GYRO zone.  Use a d4 in Green, a d6 in Yellow, and d8 in Red.  Reduce the damage you take by that roll, then Attack another target using the same roll.

Yellow

Drawn Into the Mist (R) When a nearby ally would be take damage, Defend that ally by rolling  your single status die, then move them elsewhere in the scene.

Empowering Fog (A) Boost yourself using Transmutation.  Use your Max die.  That bonus is persistent and exclusive.

Superhuman Precision (A) Attack or Overcome using Finesse.  Boost yourself using your Min die.

Red

Justice Will Triumph (A) Overcome using Conviction.  Use your Max + Min dice.  Hinder all nearby opponents using your Mid die.

October's Grasp (A) Hinder any number of targets in the scene using Transmutation.  Use your Max + Min dice.  If your roll doubles, also Attack each target using your Mid die.

Vortex of Mist (I) You can use any number of reactions during a round, but still no more than one per turn.  Each time you use a reaction after the first one in each round, take one irreducible damage or take a minor twist.

Out

Shrouding (A) Defend an ally by rolling your single Stealth die.

Tactics

Unlike some characters using the Divided archetype, there's no great pressure to transform to your heroic ID early on.  Only one Yellow ability is locked out in your civilian ID by Face or Mask? and your Green status die is much better as a civilian.  Once you hit Yellow status becomes a wash and your Health and power/quality access is better as a hero, so changing is probably wise when you can find a chance.  Swallowed By Fog wastes a turn doing nothing beyond minor self-improvement so don't bother rushing it unless it's vitally important your civilian form isn't seen on the scene.

On the plus side, your other Green abilities are better than just good.  Both Principles are broadly useful in the supers genre, Cunning Exploit is phenomenally versatile with great rider effects and not very dependent on bonus support to work well.  Swirling Mists is going to save you a lot of damage over the course of a scene while dealing out just as much, and a persistent bonus will make it all the better.

In Yellow Empowering Fog should be a priority for the lasting bonus, but that's a second turn dedicated to self-improvement now.  You also get your second reaction Drawn Into the Mist, which is your major contribution to team support and helps allies.  Deciding whether to reactively help yourself or an ally will be an important choice almost every turn.  In your heroic ID you also gain Superhuman Precision, which isn't a very strong Overcome but using it to accumulate small stackable bonuses while Attacking isn't a bad plan, and you should have a persistent bonus to pump into it each time to maximize what you're getting out of it.

In Red you turn into a Hinder machine with the combination of October's Grasp for massive global penalties and Justice Will Triumph to let you make those vital last-minute Overcomes while also hampering multiple foes.  Your offense is still pretty lackluster and you probably won't last long, but Vortex of Mist multiples the effect of your reactions quite a lot, limited mainly by how much Health you have left and how many twists you're willing to take to pay for it.  Neither reaction provides really impenetrable defenses so don't be surprised if you or an ally goes out despite your best efforts due to massive incoming damage.

Your Out Shrouding provides good last-gasp defense for any ally still standing, adding some extra strength to an overall defensive play style.

Significant weaknesses are a lack of high damage output or multi-target abilities outside of Red, and even there it's all penalties rather than damage.  Your Green combat abilities do help make up for both of those, with a reaction that can degrade or KO a minion turn after turn and an Attack with such good riders that poking a single minion with it still feels like an okay use of your turn.

Design Notes 

This whole build arose from a vision of a hero who made his own Halloween noir environment around him at will.  Transmutation was key, turning the air into swirling mist and drifts of dead leaves for that October feel, even adding skulls and bones and other iconic paraphernalia when going all-out.  Add a dash of Weather for bleak rain and gusts of wind and moderate Illusions for suitable shadows and fleeting glimpses of horrible things and Doctor October is a mood machine worthy of his name.  Mostly just narrative effects, but many of his abilities revolve around the ever-present fog that he conjures up, which can have supernatural soporific or psychedelic effects at times.

Divided Shadow opened up a second Responsibility Principle for the super-thematic combo of Detective and Underworld.  I've also done the common Divided trick of having dual Personalities to get a d10 status die at both ends of the spectrum as long as you're in the right ID and almost minimized the number of locked-out abilities in civilian ID.  Even there I could have keyed Superhuman Precision to Stealth instead and had no lockouts at all, but I didn't like the idea of tying both my Attack powers to one quality.  It's risky to tie too much to any one thing in case you lose it to twists, especially certain upgrade twists.  

Does all that offset how bad Swallowed by Fog really is for your action efficiency?  Probably not, but I'll give it a shot.  Taking two turns every scene doing Empowering Fog and changing forms is a lot on a standard eight-round tracker, and if the environment or villains or challenges accelerate things even a turn or two your odds of timing out skyrocket.  

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