Today's NPC: Magda Berlioz, CPA

Magda Berlioz, CPA

SYSTEM: Any

Magda first comes to the attention of the PCs because she's a tax accountant, working for a firm hired either by one of the PCs (in secret or hero identity) or for the team, if there is a team. Magda is young, unmarried (to the displeasure of her father), and has a bright future ahead of her. She's built rather like an Olympic shot-putter, but she has a cheerful disposition, and she's pretty sure her boyfriend will propose very soon.

And she's just been handed the job of handling the taxes of the PC|team, now that old Mr. Courtemanche is retiring.Things are looking good for Magda.

The PCs soon get to know the way that Magda is frustrated by their inability to keep proper receipts, and their tendency to claim things like "extradimensional mileage--work expenses" (if she's the accountant for a hero identity or identities). Magda is very happy when her boyfriend proposes (he's an insurance underwriter). They might even get to know that her mom was a serious granola-crunching hippy who raised Magda on a commune after she split with Magda's father, and cast "good luck" spells on her every full moon. But they certainly know that she's a good accountant who finds every allowable deduction for them.

That's when Magda gets possessed.

It probably happens on a trip to the hero HQ to discuss some deductions, triggered by accidentally brushing against some mystic object, but it might happen when she shakes hands with a magical hero or, frankly, the stars might just be right.

She becomes temporary housing to a powerful extraplanar deity, maybe one that calls itself a god, maybe an Elder Thing, but one with a mission of conquest.

I'm sure that the heroes can defeat the entity and send it back to its home dimension; that's what heroes do.

Except that Magda isn't really the same after that. Not that her personality has changed, but her fiance breaks it off for fear that some night he'll be sharing the bed with Czernobog, and she's put on notice by her company. Yes, possession is one of the risks of associating with superheroes, but it never happened to Mr. Courtemanche.

Magda can probably rebuild...except that first possession has wrought one more change: it's given her the Quality "transient housing for the incorporeal". If there's an entity in search of a body, it will probably get Magda, which means that the PCs will see her outside of tax season.

Magda tries to make this work...she puts the heroes on speed dial, except of course that once she's possessed she doesn't want to dial. Proactive heroes probably have her on a list. "Weird clouds over city? Check Magda and other usual suspects." She gets fired, tries to open her own business. She probably has the heroes as clients, maybe other exceptional individuals. ("Well, I think that as a werewolf, you can reasonably deduct the cage and manacles. Can we get some kind of affadavit from a recognized sorcerer?")

The Quality cuts both ways. If someone else is possessed, the players can try to encourage a helpful spirit into Magda. However, they might get something inimical. Also, if she's possessed by something relatively weak, like a revenant with unfinished business, it might get ousted halfway through by Zargox, Eater of Souls, which would mean that the current fight against Earl of Evil over there just got to be a fight on two fronts.

It's possible that one use of the Quality is that she retains bits and pieces of the god like abilities of the possessors. That will be handy when Paul is trying to kill her.

Paul, you see, is one of the previous hosts and possessors of the Quality. But he's old now (it would awful but telling if his last name were Courtemanche), and powerful extraplanar entities no longer try to possess him. (He's the shabby and dilapidated motel when compared to the bright new building that is Magda.) Paul's thing is that after he gets possessed, he feels better. A little of that life force gets left behind, and sure, he might die sooner, but he feels better. His joints don't ache, he can sleep better, and he can work small bits of magic.

The PCs can get involved with Magda through their taxes, the incidents created by one of Magda's "tenants", through the police catching Magda as she's possessed and creating an incident, or through the death attempts that Paul makes. She's a gateway to get them involved in the unfinished business of a revenant, and possibly a romantic interest for a character.

Here's how she might be written up in ICONS as the PCs first meet her:

Magda Berlioz

Prowess	2	Coordination	3	Strength	4
Intellect	4	Awareness	3	Willpower	3
Determination		–	Stamina		7
Specialties	Business Expert
Powers	None (yet)
Qualities	Darn good tax accountant and CPA Dad's traditional, mom's a granola flake, I don't want to be like either of them Transient housing for the incorporeal

Random Encounters in Superhero RPGs

I don't know which of Arneson or Gygax was responsible for the random encounter, but to me it's both narrative and non-narrative. Narrative in the sense that it provides material that the players can select among in creating their own narrative (kind of Darwinian story-telling) and non-narrative in the sense that these encounters have nothing to do with the story/adventure. If the adventure or arc of the campaign is about looting, er, cleansing the tomb of the lich-king, the  meeting with the kobolds in the frontier town on the way there has nothing to do with the story. It provides color, yes; it probably provides the PCs with enough XP to be able to tackle the first challenge in the tomb of the lich-king. In the hands of the right DM/GM it might reinforce themes in the adventure or campaign, and from a story point of view, it says you're telling a longer story, because you have time to spend on these interludes. (Of course, there can beno story, just an evening of random combat encounters. But we're going to ignore that for the moment.)

Most of which doesn't apply to superhero games in general and ICONS in particular. Color is good, sure, but combat provides experience in only the loosest sense, and there aren't levels to be concerned about. You probably don't want the random encounter to be too hard, because you don't want it to steal focus from whatever you have planned for the evening.

The rolls for Champions disadvantages were a kind of random encounter that were personalized for the campaign: DNPCs, Hunteds, and Rivals were rare (8-), moderate (11-) or common (14-). If a particular disadvantage got rolled, it was probably going to show up somehow.

Bearing in mind these purposes (buffet assortment to see what the players want to follow up on; color; soap opera), here are some ideas for random encounters in a superhero game. I have included two combat situations, but only against minion-quality foes, so the PCs should make short work of them.

Even moreso than in other games, if a random encounter doesn't make sense in context of the game, don't use it.

2d6 Roll	Random Encounter
2	Unusual type of minions (such as zombies shuffling out of graveyard for normal heroes)
3	Informed that enemy has escaped custody/been freed
4	Loved one tries to get closer to hero
5	Fan tells hero of approval
6	Uncomplimentary article or comment from member of public
7	Loved one explains new interest that could be a source of trouble later
8	Date with romantic interest
9	Hero has chance to do good deed
10	Persistent NPC fakes being victim of crime to get interview
11	Enemy publicly claims to have reformed
12	Loved one wants to break it off

Obviously, there could be many more, but this is a random (ahem) sampling. You could subdivide it like this:

1d6	1d6	Random Encounter
1-2	1	Trouble at work
1-2	2	Good news at work
1-2	3	Extra obligations at work
1-2	4	One of the neighbours needs help
1-2	5	There's a superhero request and the person with PC is oblivious to hints about ending this conversation
1-2	6	A relative/old friend visits
3-4	1	Fan tells hero of approval
3-4	2	Someone fakes being victim of crime to get interview
3-4	3	Hero has chance to do good deed
3-4	4	Loved one has interest/new problem that could be a source of trouble later
3-4	5	Loved one arranges a date/party, possibly at a bad time
3-4	6	Loved one wants to break it off
5-6	1	Store robbery
5-6	2	Mugging
5-6	3	Informed that enemy has escaped custody/been freed
5-6	4	Enemy publicly claims to have reformed
5-6	5	Uncomplimentary article or comment from member of public
5-6	6	Unusual minion spotted in crime (e.g., zombies in a street-level crimefighter campaign; plant monsters; etc)

Converting Mutants and Masterminds into ICONS

Someone else (not me!) wrote a guide to converting M&M characters into ICONS. They wrote this about second edition M&M, and first edition ICONS.

Now, the best way to handle this is to conceptualize the character and write it fresh in ICONS. But the conversion guide was written for second edition M&M, and third is now out, and, well, I have a nit-picky view of the world. So, in a fine example of the tech writing art, I decided to update it, without bothering to check whether it gave good results originally.

I reproduce it here, but with a bunch of caveats:

• First, a numerical conversion like this isn't a good idea.
• Second, I didn't write this originally: I only updated some sections to reflect third edition M&M, and I didn't even check those (beyond running a couple of numbers).
• Third, apparently the characters generated by this are wayyyy out of scale.

Still, with apologies for not giving credit to the original author, I put it here to make it easier to find. The original post was at http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?757183-ICONS-Assembled-Some-Questions&p=19041807#post19041807

The conversion is for 2nd edition M&M. I've taken a stab at a third edition-ICONS Assembled version because someone will want it...but a better choice is knowing both systems and converting by "feel" rather than by numbers. A much better choice.

My opinion only: in general, I feel like in ICONS a level of 8 in something is best in the world. When you get to level 9 and 10, you're talking best in the universe/century/millennia kind of territory. Nobody should ever be saying, "Oh, my character has only level 8 in this." A character with level 8 in a power can take on and succeed against a character with level 10. (Of course, the opposite is also true: it depends on the powers involved, and the lower-power-level characters might need to team up.) The Troll, for example, is an epic villain. With a Damage Resistance of 9, he is tough to beat: players have to team up or use his qualities...and if they have a character with Mental Blast, he falls apart.

Please remember that I didn't write the original, of which vast swathes remain. I only updated it.

The following will look ugly; I don't know if you can even do tables here.

General conversions: powers and abilities

First number is M&M 3rd edition, the second is ICONS Assembled. Convert against this chart and you'll still have only a rough guideline that needs to be adjusted.

M&M	ICONS
<-1	1*
-1	2
0	3
1-2	4
3-5	5
6-7	6
8-9	7
10-14	8
15-18	9
>18	10*
* Maybe a candidate for a Quality as well.

So, those abilities...

Prowess

This is the M&M Fighting ability. If you really care about the powered/non-powered thing, consider using Martial Arts to achieve Prowess levels higher than 6 with non-powered humans. Remember also to add in advantages and skills that enhance melee attack bonus. What you're looking at is how good the character is at his/her best. You might want to do this last, after looking at skills

Coordination

Use the average of the agility and dexterity plus any ranged attack bonus and defense bonus feats rolls to determine the number used for conversion. You can improve ranged attacks with the Power or Weapons specialties. Again remember that non-powered humans can be boosted with the Power or Weapons specialties.

Strength

This is converted from the M&M Strength ability. Consider superstrength and your heavy load lifting ability when determining Strength; ICONS doesn't distinguish between lifting and fighting.

Intellect

Convert the Intelligence ability.

Awareness

Use the average of the Perception and Insight skill totals. Yeah, technically Insight should be Will based, and you can do it if you want, but I've seen better effects averaging them. Except when I don't.

Willpower

Use the average of your Will Save and Presence and compare it to the Stats and Powers Chart.

Skills to Specialties

When determining Specialties, determine what your character is really good at: those are the things that might be specialties. In ICONS there are no requirements to have a specialty in order to do something: any shmoe can try Medicine (as first aid). Yeah, skill monkeys are still difficult, but since you can say "Science" and mean all of them, it's not quite as painful.

In both systems, the skill/specialty rank adds to the character's ability, so consider comparing the sum in both cases to see if you need a specialty at all. If your doctor in M&M has INT 10 and Medicine 5 just so he can be a doctor, consider putting the doctor bit in a Quality and leaving it out of the Specialties entirely. Your character will probably need fewer specialties because the ICONS specialties are looser. (TheICONS version will get fewer specialties, as well.)

Remember that most of the fighting skills are absorbed into Prowess and Coordination, above. You can still add them as Martial Arts, Wrestling, or Power specialties, but consider whether you need to.

But, assuming the skill ranks are seriously different from the ability...

If the skill is less than 6 in M&M, don't even consider buying a specialty unless the character is meant to be an idiot savant

Skill, M&M	Specialty in ICONS
6-10	Specialist
11-20	Expert
>20	Master

Yes, I think the rules allow you to have an ICONS character with rank 10 in something and a Master specialty, but why? Remember scale. If that level of expertise is important, maybe you need to re-scale your game.

Advantages

ICONS doesn't even have advantages. Most of them are going to be roleplaying handwavy things. If you want the GM to use them as plot hooks and make a big deal of them, maybe they could be a Quality. Something like Fearless, consider if you want to be fearless. If you really, really want it—if it's at the core of your character concept—then consider something like Resistance: Fear effects. But really, that's probably better done as a stunt if you have a Quality that somehow alludes to it. There's a different feel between a character with the Quality "Man without fear" and someone with Resistance 5: Fear effects.

Powers

Pick what ever powers fit your character and use the chart for the ranks. You should pick the powers that best representation of your hero and leave the rarely used or less used powers for using power stunts.
In doing conversions from other systems, I've noticed that there's a difference in feel between a power or ability that's mimicking something a normal person could do, and something that's just plain super. When you convert damage or strength, you have guns to compare against. Mind Control, not so much. Because of this, super super powers might be converted as if they were a lower rank but I have no idea how much.
If a power can have a specific limitation, consider a Limit for it. If the limitation affects multiple powers or the whole character, maybe it's a Quality.

In M&M a character can have a lot of powers in an array for relatively little cost; there's no equivalent to arrays (or Multipowers, for the Hero Games players). In that case, consider Magic or Gadgets or Cosmic Power. All three allow you to pluck powers from out of a hat or utility belt for the cost of a test. Or have a Quality that generates many determination points that you can use for stunts.

Qualities

Here you can tie up a few of the loose ends like complications and advantages that might not fit intoICONS. There are only three of them now, so look for things that can be advantages and limitations.

Determination

In my experience, Determination points are more powerful than Hero points, though that will depend on the GM. It also applies only to player characters.

Benchmark it!

Consider the scale you're working at. It doesn't matter if the conversions aren't appropriate for the original game, what's important is that they work relative to the current game. Batman has different abilities depending on whether he's in Detective comics or Justice League.

This goes along with scale. Look at the benchmarks for both games. If your M&M character could not lift a building but your ICONS ability says you can, drop the ICONS strength level down.

Now take it out for a test drive. Tweak it.

But really, I think you'd be better off starting with the idea and working from the ground up.

The Immortality Show

How many methods for immortality can you think of? I can think of these right now.

Obviously, living a long time is the first that comes to mind. That doesn't really give you the game mechanics of coming back after you "die" but it works. In ICONS and Mutants and Masterminds, buying Life Support (aging) does this just as well as Immortality. If you want a cheap way to live forever and still have the risk of dying, Life Support is the way to go.

Some kind of treatment, whether it's the Lazarus Pit or implanting monkey glands or full-blood transplants of the blood of superheroes is the next. It might or might not provide some kind of regeneration.

Next is serial possession. The spirit is immortal and leaps from body to body. There might be limitations--maybe the victim has to be a blood relative, or a particular kind of mutant, or a baby, or a clone. Planting your mind in a clone (a la John Varley) counts. (I can imagine a very creepy family where everyone knows that they might be taken over by great-great-grandfather for his next body. Some of them might be deliberately slothful, trying to make sure that their body isn't the next one that gggf will want; some of them actually want to die, so they're playing the "fitness=death" lottery; and one of them is hunting great-great-grandfather to kill him and claim to be the current host.)

Maybe the host comes to look like the original. In some ways, they will: the immortal spirit probably has habits that affect the body. ("So, Lucy, when did you take up smoking cigarettes?")

Imagine duplication where the duplicates are the age when the power first manifested. The original eventually dies of old age, but a duplicate (if one is split off at the time of death) "becomes" the original. And so on, and so on.

Can you think of others?

Show some initiative (M&M Style)

SYSTEM: MUTANTS & MASTERMINDS 3E 

And here is a PDF form I put together that is useful for combat.

The big thing it has that I haven't before is that the button at the bottom will sort by initiative (that's bonus+1d20). If you don't put anything in the d20 box, it generates a number between 1 and 20 and adds it automatically.

It was very useful for teaching myself certain parts of JavaScript. :)

https://drive.google.com/file/d/0B0KkM_vAe2HXa3RUdDNoWG9NVHc/view?usp=sharing

What Street Level means to me

SYSTEM: ANY

Someone was asking for a street-level system over on G+ the other day, and I had answered before I really examined my assumptions. So here we'll take a quick look at street-level supers.

If I say I want a street-level hero, then I probably mean Black Lightning. Or Arsenal. Or Batman...wait. Do I mean Batman? Or Spider-Man? I mean, the Bat goes up against Darkseid on a regular basis, as part of the Justice League. And while Spider-Man whups a certain amount of hoodlum butt, I never think of someone like the Green Goblin or Doc Ock as street-level, so why should their arch-foes be street level?

But on the other hand, if we measure a hero by his or her occasional opponents, then anyone who has ever been in the Avengers or the Justice League is not street level. (And over the years, they've had pretty much everybody.) Even though the Justice League has a number of decidedly cosmic foes, it has also had members like Vibe, who it's pretty safe to say is street level. And Black Lightning.

And, frankly, it can't be power level, because I don't think that we can count Adam Strange as street level, even though he's just a dude with a raygun and a rocket pack.

Where does Squirrel Girl fit? I mean, her whole raison d'etre seems to be to take down cosmic villains with a plucky attitude and a set of frankly silly (uh, sillier than usual) powers.

So it can't be occasional opponents and it can't be power level. What about regular opponents? Well, for the early part of his existence, Jim Corrigan as the Spectre confined himself to thugs and hoodlums. In those days, he was the spirit of vengeance. Star Lord has, well, the kind of powers that would do him okay in Hell's Kitchen, but he is a regular in cosmic stories.

There is no hard-and-fast rule, especially as characters wander between titles and teams. So the term "street level" has got to be a guideline, a kind of wish list, rather than an absolute.

With that out of the way, when you say a character is street level, here's what it means to me. Your definition might vary.

• The character isn't that powerful, or that really intense power is limited in some way. Perhaps OmniNom can turn anyone into a piece of bedroom furniture given their true name, but most people don't even know their true names. OmiNom has to be like any regular trained person...until finding out the person's true name...and then exacts retribution. Or Hulkette can bench press a tank, but has normal tensile strength problems when trying to lift or move heavy objects.
• Some guys with guns are an actual threat. Kitty Pryde and Colossus probably aren't street level by that metric. Batman might be; every once in a while, they get a lucky shot (when guided by the plot).
• The usual stomping grounds is a neighbourhood or city, and it's a noteworthy event when the character goes elsewhere.
• The usual foe hasn't got ambitions beyond the city. There are no plans to take over the world, but rather plans to knock over the 7-11. Or bank. Or maybe get that valuable item out of the vault. Or revenge. If he or she gets hold of an unstoppable robot killing machine, the most likely use is to rob jewelry stores.[1] Again, it's a noteworthy event going up against a foe with bigger plans.

These aren't absolute; characters can be really powerful and be limited mentally or morally, or have sworn an oath to defend this patch of land. But really I need three out of four of these for a character to sometimes be street level.

It feels more like scope, though that's not all of it. Spider-Man is street level mostly because he chooses not to deal with world or nation threatening problems. Cosmic characters talk about worlds and universes where street level characters talk about buildings and streets. They save the world or the universe on a regular basis. (Must be tough to get insurance on Rann.)

In an RPG, lowering the available points/dice is an easy adjustment, but if everyone's on the same page, you might not need even that.

1. And then drive the Unstoppable Killing Machine out of town to unload it, but the cops are still following it, so you have to kill or disable the cops, and then the spy satellites have it, and it's just sitting there...with a load of bullion...waiting. Killing anyone who comes near. Man, that sounds like a setup for a story.

X-Men...really?

I was listening to the Play On Target podcast, where Lowell Francis interviewed Eloy Lasanta, and Lasanta mentioned his love of the X-Men. I've heard of this love from others and I realized that the superhero RPGs I love (Supers! and ICONS) do a more four-colour setting by default.

I was never a big reader of the X-Men...the proliferation of X-titles in the 1990s was of the reasons I fled to DC (truthfully, I had been a DC child anyway) and then away from comics. But I recognize the basic characters and I see that the powers approach of my favourite games doesn't really reflect the X-Men as I understand them.

Caveats that I might be totally wrong in my understanding so that True Fans(TM) might object. However, this approach might be fruitful in figuring out how you do things to more accurately reflect the comics. It's mostly inspired by Marvel Heroic Roleplaying (it's not influenced by AMP except for what was in the podcast; I don't own AMP and haven't read it).

When I look at them, the characters in the core X-Men and the New Mutants (again, circa the late 1980s and the early 1990s, when I was occasionally looking at the books) are mostly human but with one or two powers that make them different. As humans, they're usually pretty good...Scott Summers is well-trained, Warren Worthington seems to be buff, Kitty Pryde manages well, and so on. (In story, the justification is the danger room and the training.) It's not until later (such as in Excalibur) that you see any disabled heroes. Anyway, the powers are applied differently: a character might freeze a lock or throw iceballs or make an ice wall, but it's one power. We'll call it a theme. This is like the power sets in Marvel Heroic Roleplaying.  (I don't have a list of themes handy, but I might edit one in later.)

Both Supers! and ICONS have mechanisms to handle this stunting: Competency dice and determination points.

First, we roll to see how many themes you have. We're going to use 2d6 because we want the bell curve.

Roll	Number of themes
2-6	One power theme (Colossus has the Strength theme; Angel can fly; Cyclops blasts things with his eyebeams)
7-10	Two power themes (Kitty phases and is smart; Wolverine has the healing factor and an animal theme)
11-12	Three power themes (I can't think of examples at this second, but I'm sure they exist. Maybe Cable, who has cybernetics, and the telekinesis, and being from the future and having that kind of knowledge might qualify as a third--I don't know enough about the character to be sure.)

Then we're going to figure out the width of your biggest theme. This is the number of standard expressions of your power. Iceman lucks out because he has three main expressions: ice armor, movement, and the ability to create things out of ice. Colossus has two expressions: strength and durability. (You might be able to call that one in ICONS with Alternate Form.) Cyclops and Angel have a single expression: optic blasts and flight, respectively. (Actually, you could make an argument that Angel's second theme iswealth but I'm not sure I want to go there. Worth considering that wealth might be a power, like anyICONS ability over 6.)

Again, we roll 2d6 for the bell curve:

Roll	Width of theme
2-6	One main expression
7-10	Two main expressions
11-12	Three main expressions

If you have multiple themes, the additional ones only get one main expression. (That's okay: you can stunt on any of these themes.) You get to pick which one might have multiple expressions, if any. You can run all of those main expressions at once. So Iceman, who has three main expressions, can have the armour, the movement, and the attack.

You pick (or roll, on the nonexistent table) your themes. Once you have themes, you can pick or roll main expressions. Those are the powers you normally use, but you can stunt others.

"Great," you say. "But what is the point?"

The point is that it's free to swap expressions or powers within your main theme. (In systems with a finer grain, such as Mutants & Masterminds, you might say that swapping within your theme takes a bit of time, maybe your movement action, but doesn't cost hero points.) To keep extra expressions up simultaneously costs a competency die or a determination point. To stunt in some other theme costs a competency die or a determination point. It costs two dice or points to bring a power into your theme, and you have to have a justification.

By defining the themes, we get to ones where it's difficult to use a power (it's from a different theme according to the homebrew rules we've just put down).  In fact, you can have character generation being constructing your theme, or players can add to the theme with experience. (That's certainly the only way to add powers or expressions to a secondary theme.)

Themes would include a particular animal or being animalistic; darkness; force; light; air; earth; water; fire; plants; movement; telekinesis; mental; decay or corruption; magic; strength; time; body alteration; and so on. A theme has one or more obvious main powers and the set of things that often go with it. A theme has, oh, five to ten powers in it--we're looking for comic book cliches here. Some of them will be contradictory...just don't take them both.

For instance:

Theme	Expressions (powers)
Air	Flight or Gliding, control winds, shielding winds, alternate form (air), gentle fall, shielding
Animal theme	Depends on the animal...Power mimicry specific to animals, Flight, Swimming, Burrowing, Leaping, Claws/fangs, Strength/toughness, Growth/Shrinking, Super-senses (smell, taste, hearing, eagle eyesight, 360 degree vision, sonar, infrared vision, electroception)
Body alteration	Growing, Shrinking, Phasing or Intangibility, Air walking, Density Increase, Duplication, Regeneration, Enhanced Senses, Stretching or Malleability
Mental	Mind reading, Mental link, Mind control, Mental blast, Mind find, Possession, Telekinesis, Precognition
Phasing	Intangibility, Air walking, Enhanced senses, attack by phasing through things, disable electronics
Strength	Strength, Invulnerability, Leaping, Flight, Superbreath, Alternate form that gives strength, Density Increase, Immobility

A given power can show up in more than one theme. There are multiple ways of doing an energy blast: that was the whole point of going to effect-based powers. Here I'm trying to graft a cause back on to those.

Themes might possibly be the character types in the Mutants & Masterminds random character creation system. In Champions terms, everyone gets an elemental control and the ability to stunt within it for free.

This is totally untested, but I think it might work.