Is it possible to build an essentially realistic character for a 500 poinsupers game?

[Michael Thayne]

The "Highest real world point total?" thread got me thinking... in a 500 point supers game, could you build an essentially realistic character?

Some initial thoughts:

1) Of all the templates in 4e books, I think the highest point-total realistic template is the Navy SEAL template from SEALs in Vietnam, at 240 points. Recommended point totals for a SEALs in Vietnam game are 275 points. Deleting the Duty for an ex-SEAL raises that to 295.

2) A lot of the characters in the Who's Who books who have high point totals are politicians, with a big fat pile of Rank (with a little Wealth and Status to go with it). At first glance, Rank doesn't fit well with super-adventuring, but President Action is a thing, so you might try for a realistic version of that. Or, arguably in a super-universe, any president is going to need to be badass with high IQ and Charisma to to manage the super-crises. Though getting that to work with the other PCs might be tough.

3) The other easy way to jack up the point total of a realistic character is Wealth, though for a lone super-adventurer, it's hard to see more than $1 million/month getting spent on adventuring gear. That corresponds to Multimillionaire 1 + Independent Income 5. The MM1, incidentally, will grant Status 2, enough to be occasionally useful but not trigger the higher risk of having a Secret Indentity discovered.

I'm not sure what to do with (2), but if someone wants to run with it, I'd be curious to see the results. What I'm really interested is combining (1) and (3), to get (depending on your point of view) Batman with Guns or The Punisher with Money. Either way you look at it, that's 375 points for ex-SEAL + MM1 + II5.

What else? Probably you want a smattering of adventure-useful skills not found on the SEAL template, plausibly the result of self-training after getting out of the military. And he needs to be able to do all his vigilantism without getting caught, which I'm not quite sure how to do.

One attractive path, though, is to invest fairly heavily in Allies, as a way to increase effective flexibility without making his own capabilities too over-the-top. It's also a very point-effective method, given that in a 500 point game, 4 points gives you an ever-present 125 point ally. Won't give you a combat monster able to easily face down supervillains, but will give you someone who would qualify as world-class in their specialty in a more realisitc game.

If we're sticking to realism, that in turn raises the question of what kind of realistic 125 point character would be a useful assistant to a vigilante. An ace amateur detective to act as Mission Control? An former criminal with high Streetwise to act as a Jason Todd-esque "Robin"? What else? How to do those character types realistically?

[Flyndaran]

For the most part, isn't that Batman?
I think they're called super normals in some groups.

[Michael Thayne]

Two follow-up thoughts:

• Bat-Punisher should have Charisma 5, to get people in on his crazy schemes.
• President Action could be built as a cross between Theodore Roosevelt and Jesse Ventura.

[Goober4473]

How realistic do you want this to be? Purely realistic, or cinematic with no super powers?

I'm sure you could make a Batman style character on that budget, but he has cinematically high attributes and skills. No one really has time to learn all of the skills he has, and he certainly has cinematic ninja skills and gadgets. But technically, a human can have 20 in all attributes for 600 points without breaking reality. It's just generally unreasonable and pretty clearly cinematic.

[Flyndaran]

Every now and then there are freaks incredibly intelligent and physically adept. As a short sleeper or user of one of those drugs that remove the need for sleep entirely with no know side effects, and up to age 50 before aging kicks in according to Gurps...

[ErhnamDJ]

I think it's probably possible, depending on what you consider to be human maximums.

I would start by making this person as expensive as possible physically. Highest realistic ST, HT, and Appearance, plus whatever other physical traits you can justify.

Then what you need to do to increase their point total is to give them a low or average IQ and DX with lots of training in IQ, Per, Will, and DX based skills. You can pour a ton of points into skills that way. Probably a few hundred points easily.

If they have IQ 9 and have even five Musical Instrument skills at 12, then that right there is sixty character points. Maybe give him skill 16 or 18 instead. I think there are some real-world musicians who might have character sheets that look like that. And then you could give them all sorts of other IQ-based skills.

You can easily justify someone speaking four or five languages on top of that.

And that's before social traits.

So, yeah, it's definitely possible, if only because of the way skill levels are priced. If you ignore the package deals in the attributes and Talents (that real people don't necessarily have), then you can easily make someone that costs hundreds and hundreds of character points.

Someone who is the human physical peak who went to university for twenty years and spent a decade in the military could definitely do what you're looking for.

[Kromm]

Consider a former SEAL or other special operator who left the service, exploited his training and service record to start up a PMC (however governments feel about that, real-life people do it . . . look up Erik Dean Prince or Al Clark), and made it big thanks to bodyguard contracts in wealthy places like Saudi Arabia. Now he's a rich man with serious military training and a career arc that means he may well have kept up his skills or even added to them – many PMCs take on civilian security contracts and de facto criminal investigations, both of which require tactics and technologies not generally used by special operators. If the GM is serious about making this work, ask about adding Legal Immunity [5, 10, or 15] to all this to represent having all the licenses to maintain training facilities and an armory, and the connections to obtain EUCs for military weapons. This won't grant true immunity, but can represent a tangle of red tape so dense that nobody can easily cut through it to get him in trouble; the GM is within his rights to charge as much as he thinks that's worth, anywhere from 5 to 15 points.

After that, how you spend the last 110 to 120 points depends a bit on your definition of "realistic." Gunslinger [25] isn't a super-power, and with the extended treatment in Gun Fu it's a great investment for a hero like this. With all those points, you could also afford Trained by a Master [30]. Something that lets you hang with bulletproof men who shoot nukes from their hands would be nice, too . . . guns are great for offense, and you'll have those, but for defense I'd look at Unusual Background (Invention) on p. B477 and spend 5-50 points for next-gen body armor. Even less unrealistic is Luck [15, 30, or 60]; this is clearly someone who has had lucky breaks to get where he is, and Luck could simultaneously justify and be justified by that stuff. Actually, you could afford most or all of the above.

Then build a motivation. It's easy to use "patriotism" or "avenging my men" for an ex-soldier, or "charity" or "giving back" for a rich guy, but there are more interesting options. Perhaps this PMC owner got rich off blood diamonds and developed regrets, and is a tortured soul trying to make amends for selling out. Or maybe sinister truths were revealed to him while he held a security clearance, now he sees things happening in the world that tell him his country is doing evil without letting Joe Taxpayer know, and he vows to stop it. A character like this can have a lot of interesting disadvantages!

[Fwibos]

Realistically? No
Cinematically realistic? Sure

Now, Why not just give him Cosmic Modular Abilities with some disads on how they can be altered. Suddenly you have a person who can be anything for around 500 points.

Cosmic Modular Abilities 80 (Takes extra time 2 -20%, Super -10%, Limited Use 3/day -20% cost 2 FP per use (RPK) -20%) [160]

Cosmic Modular Abilities 80 (Mental Only +0, Takes extra time 2 -20%, Limited Use 3/day -20%, Super -10%, COst 2 FP per use (RPK) -20%) [160]


ST 13, DX 13, IQ 13, and HT 13 (180)

Ta-da!*

*Does this work? IDHMBWM

Though it's probably cheaper to just take the stats you want.

And as others have said: Wealth is a super power. I could easily spend more than 1 million a month on super gear, especially if my gunships were being blown up.

Erp: Ninja'd by Kromm!

[Kalzazz]

All SEALs are Awesome, but not all SEALs are equally awesome

Consider every NBA player is an awesome basketball player, or they wouldnt be NBA players

Among NBA players are Stars and not so stars

Then there is Michael Jordan, who can make Stars look like not so stars

You could easily expect that while the stock SEAL has 12,13,13,12 as stats, a SEAL among SEALs could have 14,15,15,14 without straining realism, thats another 120 pts

And he could be big and strong (realistic people can be big and strong), so we can easily knock ST up to 17 or so without straining realism (we could take it even higher if we wanted . . . with this high ST and DX we have Shaq the SEAL!)

That is 150pts on top of the 240 SEAL template, were up to 390

We can take some useful talents (he should be good at something), a bit of wealth (with his awesomeness he should have made some money), Luck (of course hes lucky with those stats, he won the genetic lottery) and some more skills and things

500!

[aesir23]

Speaking of NBA players, a professional athlete is one route to a plausible 500 point realistic player.

Take Kareem Abdul Jabar, for example, he was an athletically gifted giant, a millionaire, and was personally trained to fight by Bruce Lee (which qualifies him for Trained by a Master in my book.)

A professional MMA fighter (with high physical stats and combat skills in the 16-18 range) can easily come to 300 points. If you make one who is a rich ex-soldier, you can hit 500 easy.

Or the golden age hero Wildcat, whose super-power was that he was a heavy weight boxer. With world class stats, high wealth, and very high combat skills, 500 points is easily in reach.

Obviously this sort of character is less combat effective than one who focuses on guns, but they are also more capable of engaging in Non-Lethal combat, which is commonly a genre requirement for supers.