Creating Unique Characters

Players are a clever breed. Even the most seasoned of Game Masters are, at times, stumped by the creativity of players. Any GM worth his mettle would say that no one could predict every action a player will try. In my time, I’ve seen players I once assumed to me borderline munchkin display an amazing amount of restraint with extremely powerful characters. I’ve seen true role players fall into the power-corrupting trap. The fact is you can never know what a player will do no matter how long or how well you’ve know the player. But, this isn’t to focus on how to deal with the cleverness of players during games. Each GM should just stick to his or her vision of the game world and adapt and overcome. The intent of this article is to aid the GM with helping players realize their own visions of the one part of the world that they have some control over: their characters.

Part I: Realizing the Vision: Character Customization

No player I’ve ever met has wanted to play the template character. I’ve never had a player come to me say, “Hey, can I play the guy with the big ‘S’ on his chest? I’ll call him Stupendous-man and he’ll be so totally cliché.” That’s never happened to me. Most players want flare and originality. They want their characters to be unique and special. I’ve had players so focused on a unique trait, no matter how minor, that I’ve had to pull them aside and say, “Everyone knows your character has a ½ diameter birthmark just below his left earlobe and no it doesn’t grant you any special ‘distraction’ bonuses.”

The rulebooks, though, provide only so many options. If you stick to rules specifically then the originality disappears after a time. How many energy bolt throwing flying heroes do you have in your game? If you have more than two or even two that are basically the same, then you really need to squeeze some creativity out of your players and yourself for your NPCs. And it’s actually quite simple to create some extraordinarily unique characters that fall pretty much within the rules. Yes, some bending of the rules will be required, but I can guarantee that if done properly game balance will be maintained and the players will all be satisfied with their personalized characters.

I believe it’s better to show than tell. So, following that philosophy, I’m going to show you how to build the following three characters within the rules that most GM’s would probably allow in their games. I’ve tried to go with one simple concept, one a little more difficult and one that seems very difficult and wouldn’t exist within the current rules. And I want to show how this can be done without inventing new super abilities.

The first is a character called Nimbus. The player’s vision of Nimbus is of a powerful being that rides on a cloud and carries a staff that shoots lightning bolts at his opponents. Additionally, Nimbus is a master of storms. This is one is rather easy to make and I think most people are already compiling a list of powers to create this character. Nimbus can be made with just five minors, maybe less.

The second is Shadowlord. The player wants his character to manipulate and control shadows, including shaping shadows. This one isn’t too difficult and with a minor bend of the rules shouldn’t be too hard to construct.

The third is a character we’ll call Knightshade. This character is a unique vision indeed. The player’s idea is that the character is able to manifest a suit of armor and transfer his mind into it. If the suit of armor is defeated then his mind returns to his body and he must wait to reform his alter ego, as it were. Besides the armor, the player also wants the character to have the customary knight weapons of a sword and shield.

These characters, by the books, cannot be made specific to the vision. There isn’t a power to ride on clouds, though there’s a couple that allow for the creation of fog, which is basically clouds, and the ability to walk on clouds. But, it doesn’t match the player’s vision. Also, there’s no power for throwing lightning bolts from a staff. Energy expulsion: electricity is close, but it comes from the eyes or hands, not a staff.

In Powers Unlimited 1, we can find a few good shadow-based powers, including the ability to shape shadows. But, checking with the player we find that he wants to be the true master of shadows and the minor Shadow Shape isn’t exactly what he wanted. Already many probably have an idea of what to do here. A simple cosmetic change and this player’s vision will be met, but we’ll still have to bend some rules to complete the vision.

And Knightshade: what a combination this guy is! Besides possession, there aren’t any powers that let a character transfer his intelligence into a suit of armor. Magically this could be done and left as that, but if the player wanted his power to be from an experiment or the result of an accident and he uses his powers to compensate for the loss of the ability to walk. I can think of a couple ways to build this guy, but I’m just going to detail one and make a mention of some other options throughout.


Nimbus

Nimbus’ description says he is the master of storms. Wind and lightning all bow to the will of Nimbus as he flies through the skies on a storm cloud. His staff can send powerful bolts of lightning to strike his enemies.

From just that description the GM may just tell the player to choose Alter Physical Structure: Electricity and Control Elemental Force: Air. Well, that’s an old, out of date template that just doesn’t fit my vision of Nimbus. I want the cloud and the staff as they are unique and make him stand out. So, how do we do this?

First, let’s totally disregard the major powers all together. We don’t want nor need them to build this “Master of the Storms”. Let’s take each part of the player’s vision one at a time and create the separate pieces.

Let's look at the cloud, which is this character’s namesake. What power exists that would provide us with something similar? How about Flying Force Disk? But that’s not a cloud, you say, it’s a disk of force energy. Yes, but for this guy, it’s now a storm cloud. Simple enough. But, what about the throwing disk part of Flying Force Disk? It now does electrical damage, as the character is able to send a small electrified storm cloud at his opponents. Obviously, opponents immune or resistant to electrical attacks won’t be affected by this attack, but it still fits the vision and all it took was a simple cosmetic change.

What about the power to throw lightning bolts from a staff? There’s no power for that, right? Actually, by altering the energy used in Power Weapon to electricity we have the ability. Is it perfect? Probably not, but the player can always opt to take Energy Expulsion: Electricity and say he must have a staff to cast lightning bolts. Personally, I would make him use the Power Weapon to avoid any potential conflict later on as the power already has the requirement for a weapon. But, that is truly left to the player and GM. That’s just two options.

To round out this master of storms, we could give him Super Wind Blast. This pretty much completes the vision the player had and we still have some room to add either a major or one or two minors. Perhaps he could take energy shield and make it into a “storm shield” to complete the motif or go with something more traditional, such as Control Elemental Force: Air.

Whichever route the player chooses is up to him or her, but we’ve created a character within the books limits with nothing but some cosmetic changes to existing powers. The player is happy since he can play that unique character concept and the GM is happy because the character is within the rules and he didn’t have to deal with the potential of a new power and trying to make it fit his world and maintaining game balance.

Nimbus was a simple creation. No rules broken or bent. Everything was pretty straightforward. The worst change was going from energy or force damage to electrical damage. Not bad, really. But, what about something a little more outside the norm and in contradiction to some of the rules? Can it still be done and maintain game balance?

Shadowlord

Let’s look at the character Shadowlord. The player wishes this character to be able to manipulate shadows. Not just manipulate, he wants to animate and shape them as well! Really, there’s a couple ways to accomplish this as well. Each depends on the player’s vision and the GM’s perception of game balance. How much is the GM willing to give? For this, it really isn’t that much.

To accomplish this we’ll need to break with the norm. We’ll say this character is an experiment and give him three majors. The first is simple and obvious: Alter Physical Structure: Shadow. Already he has a stable of shadow related abilities. He can become a shadow and merge with shadows, even fire a bolt of shadows.

The second power is probably obvious as well: Create Energy Constructs. A simple cosmetic change again and now the character can create solid manifestations of shadows. Remember, this is shadows and not darkness; therefore they are translucent and won’t blind people. Darkness control is something completely different, though this could work the same for manipulating pure darkness as well. Regardless of whether dark or shadow is being manipulated, both are still susceptible to light attacks. This little flaw would actually come into play when dealing with the shadow constructs and it’s a weakness an opponent could exploit. Game balance is still maintained and the player, so far, has everything he’s asked for, except the ability to shadow step or teleport in shadows.

Shadow stepping is a minor and allows the character to step into one shadow and step out of another. So, if the player takes that, he may either feel he got short changed missing out on a major or someone else might feel he was given an extra power since he has two majors and one minor. The simple explanation is that an experiment is able to have up to three majors, per the book, so having two majors and one minor is nothing really.

I’ve heard that its common practice to allow a player to swap one major for two minors and vise versa. It may even be in writing, though I’ve never seen it. Each GM can judge game balance for his own game world and if that fits, than go for it. I would allow it in some cases as taking two minors could actually be more powerful than one major super ability.

Now for one that requires more manipulation to become playable: Knightshade.

Knightshade

For Knightshade to become a reality it's necessary to come to an agreement between the player and the GM. First, the player wishes to make a character that can effectively die and come back with no real side effects. That’s a large order to fill. Limitations will have to be set up front. What those are should be left to the GM and I will only make some suggestions as we build Knightshade.

As we did before, let’s tackle each part one at a time. First, what powers can we use to construct the armor? We could use Bio-Armor or Energy Doppleganger, but we’ll use the former, as the player wants a medieval knight-type. So, the character can create a suit of bio-armor that isn’t on his body. A stretch, but so far it’s not too drastic.

The sword and shield is the next hurdle. The shield is easy: the minor Energy Shield. So far, so good. Unfortunately, there really isn’t a minor Energy Sword power. There are a couple options here. One is to take the Psi-sword super psionic power and require the player to spend ISP. But, considering what we’re doing and that we’re only halfway there, it’s not a valid option if we want to remain somewhat book legal.

We have some other options, though. First, see if the player wishes to use Energy Whip instead of a sword. You can even let him change the weapon to a flail or similar knightly weapon. If he’s dead-set on a sword, then change the energy whip to an energy sword, increase the damage slightly and drop the additional creations and entangling ability. The sword problem is really minor when we start looking at the last issue: how does this character transfer his mind into this construct?

The simple answer would be Possession. The character has to possess the armor to use the power. Or even simpler, it’s like a transformation. Transform, or transfer, into the armor. Again we start edging towards being cliché again. Maybe the character just doesn’t want that or maybe he refuses to take possession because he wastes a major and needs that slot for the bio-armor. Honestly there are many other ways, not better just other, to create this effect. I’m using this example to illustrate different ways to make characters unique.

This is not the only way to do this and there are some GM’s out there that wouldn’t allow this to work, but I would use Sensory Orb as the catalyst for the taking control of the armor. The character has already transferred his senses and mind into the orb, so why couldn’t he just place it in the helmet of the armor and go from there? It’s a stretch, but it’s unique and that’s what it’s all about. The character could hide in a closet, release the orb, have it travel through the ventilation ducts and drop out of the ceiling creating the armor, shield and sword as he does giving the impression of coming out of nowhere! A dramatic entrance for a unique character and when you truly analyze his power level, he’s not really that powerful. Some clever uses of his abilities can create some borderline situations of unbalance, but so can any power.

So, before scrapping an idea for that truly unique character, try looking at what’s out there already and making some minor alterations. Work together to create that unique character before just going with the template. With the powers already written and published, everything you need is right there. It just takes a slight tweak to make it fit your vision.