This is an attempt at a low-powered "street vigilante" style hero, as well as a chance to mark the godawful lousy Struggling background off my bingo card. He suffers from some truly dire die pools that really hold back otherwise decent abilities. If a teammate hands him a decent persistent bonus early on on it would make a big difference in his performance, but he can't do it himself.
Crosstown Hammer
Lou Crupp was an unassuming taxi driver until the night he was robbed and beaten senseless for the seventh time. While he was unconscious a Presence came to him and declared that he would be granted the power to fight back against the city's criminals and bring justice to the streets. Being unconscious and badly concussed, he only dimly recalled the incident when he woke up in the local ER, and he kept his mouth shut to the authorities about what was probably a hallucination anyway.
It wasn't. The night after he got out of the hospital he was awakened by horrible visions of a brutal crime, and the certain knowledge that he could stop that crime from happening if he acted now. Slipping out of his basement apartment into the night he found himself stopping an assault with unexpected ease, casually bludgeoning a half-dozen drunken thugs with his bare hands and walking away with nothing but a few bruises. Even got a sincere thank you from the young couple he'd saved from God knows what - and with the voice whispering in his head, maybe there was a god involved.
So now Lou is a superpowered taxi driver that takes some nights off to fight crime as the mysterious vigilante Crosstown Hammer. He didn't ask for this, but it's a lot better than getting robbed for an eighth time.
Description: Short, thick-set man of Southern European ancestry with oddly forgettable features, usually dressed in cheap civilian clothing and a local team's baseball cap. When engaging in vigilante heroics he dons a domino mask that he bought from a theatrical supply store, which inexplicably makes him nigh-unrecognizable even to close associates. He doesn't really have friends any more. Speaks with a gruff voice in whatever accent is native to [campaign city].
Gender: Male Age: 37 Height: 5'7" Eyes: Brown
Hair: Brown, Thinning Skin: Swarthy Caucasian Build: Burly
Background: Struggling Power Source: Higher Power Archetype: Shadow
Personality: Fast Talker Health (G/Y/R): 30/22/11
Powers: Agility d8, Invisibility d8, Precognition d8, Vitality d6
Qualities: Stealth d10, Criminal Underworld Info d8, Finesse d8, Haunted Vigilante d8, Banter d6, Fitness d6
Status: Green (30-23) - d6 / Yellow (22-13) - d8 / Red (11-1) - d10
Abilities
Green
Ambush (A) Attack using Stealth. Remove one physical mod, Hinder a target using your Min die, or maneuver to a new location in your environment.
Blur of Motion (A) Attack using Agility. Use your Min die to Defend yourself against all Attacks until the start of your next turn.
Driven (I) At the start of your turn, remove any -1 penalties on you.
Principle of the Everyman (A) Overcome when using a bonus from another hero. Use your Max die. You and your allies each gain a Hero Point. Minor twist: Which hero did you just make look good at the expense of yourself? Major twist: How are you utterly, totally out of your league? RP: When needed you can make yourself just another face in the crowd.
Principle of Stealth (A) Overcome to infiltrate somewhere or avoid detection. Use your Max die. You and your allies each gain a Hero Point. Minor twist: What evidence of your presence did you leave behind? Major twist: What just happened to identify you as an obvious threat? RP: You always know the most efficient method to enter or leave a location.
Yellow
Elusive (R) When you would take damage, Defend against it by rolling your single Stealth die.
Foresight (A) Attack using Precognition. Boost all nearby heroes taking Attack or Overcome actions using your Min die until the start of your next turn.
Go All Out (A) Attack multiple targets using Agility. Hinder each target damaged by this Attack using your Min die. Hinder yourself using your Max die.
Red
Can't Stop Now (A) Hinder yourself using Vitality. Use your Min die. Recover Health equal to your Max + Mid dice.
Just Making Me Angry (I) At the start of your turn, change any penalty into a bonus.
Remember Our Arrangement (A) Select a minion. That minion is now entirely under your control and acts at the start of your turn. You may release control at any time, and also lose control if you are defeated. At the end of the scene, that minion is defeated.
Out
Superstitious Nonsense (A) Hinder a minion or lieutenant by rolling your single Stealth die and increase the value of the resulting penalty by -1.
Tactics
In Green, Crosstown Hammer usually relies on Blur of Motion for a little bit of damage reduction it will produce (usually only 1-2 points per instance, but it adds up). Ambush has some very useful riders options though, and if an ally has a big physical penalty or he needs mobility it may be the better choice. Going to stand somewhere you can't be Attacked at all is the best defense. If he needs bigger damage to crack a lieutenant save he may have to resort to a risky basic Attack for Max damage to start the death spiral. Despite some solid principles his lousy die pools make Overcomes difficult, although Driven may help if he winds up being Hindered by twists from them - or from risky actions.
Once he reaches Yellow he gets a solid defensive reaction from Elusive and his dreadful status die improves, making Overcomes slightly more feasible. Foresight offers mediocre damage output coupled with a team-wide Boost, but it's almost always going to be a meager +1 bonus so not outstanding except for helping fuel someone else's Charged-Up Blast or Principle of the Everyman or similar ability. Go All Out is Crosstown Hammer's best ability by far, dealing good damage for a multi-target attack and following it up with small penalties on the survivors - at the cost of a bigger penalty on him. His bad dice pools actually help a bit here, since he'll rarely exceed a -2 self-penalty and he might well wind up in Red the next turn, letting him turn it into a bonus.
His Red zone abilities are designed to invert troublesome penalties (like from Go All Out) with Just Making Me Angry and some comeback ability in the form of Can't Stop Now, which you can probably pool your Stealth with as you slip away to lick your wounds, and your penalty may very well just fall off thanks to Driven. It honestly may not be worth healing up right away if your enemies aren't focusing on you, since Go All Out is a lot better in Red than Yellow and your reaction might be enough to keep you on your feet. You could also use the time to grab minions to serve you with Remember Our Arrangement, but odds are you'll pull that one forward with a twist to use it in Yellow on a nice, fresh blackmail victim. If your GM is feeling generous (and they ought to, with this wretched build) the twists you generate might even create more minions to use the ability on.
Your Out ability is weird and very narrow, but it may be the nastiest thing you ever manage to do to a powerful lieutenant.
No matter you do, this hero is always going to be feeling their bad die spread. Be wary of playing him without a taste for being the underdog.
A lot of people have experimented with fixes for Struggling (which is generally seen as very sub-par as Backgrounds go). The most interesting one I've seen in action is to add text to the background so that when you later choose your Personality, your Yellow zone status die gets bumped up by one die step, eg from d8 to d10 or d6 to d8. A d10 in Yellow would be unique and go a long way toward balancing out the lack of d10 powers and qualities from Struggling, but I haven't seen it at the table enough to be sure it doesn't go too far, or that it might have some broken combo (maybe with the Impulsive Personality?), but it might be worth trying out at your table if you have a Struggling character who's underperforming too badly.
Design Notes
Conceptually, Lou's powers are all subtle to the point where it's hard to be sure they even exist. There are times when he's not sure if he's just getting really lucky and the voices and visions are actually the result of serious head trauma. His Agility feels like time is out of joint somehow, the Invisibility is tied to the way people just seem to get distracted and fail to notice him sometimes, his Precognition always shows him awful things that haven't happened yet instead of anything nice like tomorrow's lottery numbers, and his Vitality might just be cumulative nerve damage from previous beatings coupled with how accustomed he is to long nights behind a wheel.
That said, there's definitely something driving him and rewarding him with power. No matter how inattentive a crook might be, it doesn't explain how Lou doesn't ever leave fingerprints or other evidence behind, or how that stupid domino mask perfectly conceals his civilian identity. He just can't bring himself to really believe it.
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