Characters
Hero Character Considerations
Heroes Are People First
Of course, if you're reading this then you're probably excited to jump in to the super powers and explore building out a super-powered character. By all means, jump ahead to Abilities and Skills and check them out. But then come back here and read the rest of this page.
We all have our favorite comic book superheroes. Whether they're from one of the big publishers or something more indie, the idea of a character with larger-than-life abilities is always going to have an allure. But if we think of our favorites, it's likely that the characters we think of aren't simply super-powerhouses. They're complex, nuanced, and even maybe flawed. Those little details are what make these characters compelling. When considering a Hero character, it's important to think of them first as a person. Just because someone has superpowers, doesn't mean they have to be nothing but a bag of super abilities. Make your character a person first, and that will lead you towards a well-rounded and interesting character to play.
Origin Story
Who was your character before their powers manifested? Did they have a job? Do they still? Do they have family, friends, colleagues? Are they from far away or down the street?
How did they go from unassuming regular person to hero? Were they the unfortunate victim of circumstance? A subject of secret government experimentation? Was it Science?
A good origin story explains not just how the character gained their powers, but can also explain any limitations or vulnerabilities, and provides a background framework for understanding their skills and social connections. Work with your GM when fleshing out an origin story to make sure it makes sense in the adventures the GM has planned.
A Hero's Relationship with Heroism
There are a variety of ways in which a Hero may draw boundaries between their mundane and heroic lives. The following options are neither exhaustive nor necessarily exclusive, but are intended to give a sense of flavor for creating a heroic character.
The Alter Ego
Maintaining a healthy boundary between your heroic and mundane lives may—from the outside—look like you're two different people. It can even feel that way to you. Whichever it is, it can be a useful way of keeping your worlds from crashing together in violence.
The Brand
It takes audacity to put on a mask and fight crime. It takes even more to take that mask and make it—and yourself—into a brand, a symbol, a legend.
The Moniker
When a Hero who's trying to keep a low-profile starts getting noticed, others (the media, the police, the populace) might hang their own moniker on them. Whether or not the name fits, sometimes it sticks. The Hero may not have much of a choice but to operate under the name that's been chosen for them.
The Whisper
Your very existence is a guarded secret, whispered among criminals and those you've saved. You try your hardest to keep a low profile and avoid standing out. You not only avoid attention, you keep your heroics secret and don't even take credit for your saves.
A Hero's Relationship with Society
Living Large
Sometimes, the thing to do is just to own up to your actions. And for some Heroes, that means living their best, most powerful self 24/7. You don't bother with secret identities or alter egos.
Low-Profile
Keeping a low-profile can be tricky for a Hero, but it can make a lot of other things much easier. If no one knows who you are, no one can target your loved-ones, your lair, or your plans. This works especially well for the "ground-level" heroes who keep to the shadows.
Character Creation
Species
This expansion limits its focus to the human species as described in the ’Verses Core rules. This should not be taken by GMs as a limitation—the world of comic book heroes is rife with aliens, gods, monsters, and extreme mutations, and these are omitted here merely for simplicity and clarity in describing these rules.
Archetypes
The comic book world is full of such a wide variety of powered heroes and villains that it is nearly impossible to provide a finite set of categories. Indeed, one of the challenges of constructing a parameterized rules set for supers is that even a catalog of flexible archetypes would be woefully incomplete. Because duality and variation play such a prominant role in so many powered hero stories, this expansion separates the core ’Verses concept of the Archetype into four components, each representing a distinct aspect of the character.
This "Aspects Wheel" illustrates how the aspects work together to describe a whole. By combining Origin Stories, Personas, Power Profiles, and Limitations, a vast array of potential archetypes can be assembled with a smaller set of components.
Each component provides suggestions for the components adjacent to it on the wheel. You can start with any of the four components, and move around the wheel to build the rest of the character from these suggestions.
As with the standard archetypes, these are suggestions only, and players are free to create their character with any combination of the four aspects or indeed, entirely from scratch.
Origin Story
A character's Origin Story not only explains why they became a hero and how they developed their powers, but can also have ramifications on other aspects of the character's life.
The Origin Story informs the character's Persona and Limitations.
Personas
The Persona component represents who the character is as a person. This component of the archetype provides the mundane attributes, abilities, skills, and a framework for what their every day life looks like. Choose one persona or work with your GM to construct a custom persona that best fits your vision of your character.
The Persona informs the character's Power Profile and Origin Story.
Power Profiles
Starting with an existing comic book or film character or a general power profile in mind as a template when creating your character can be a good way to keep your character design focused. The Power Profile component represents a category of the character's super abilities, and many of the power profiles listed in these rules are based on well-known super-powered heroes.
The Power Profile informs the character's Persona and Limitations.
Limitations
Almost as important to a good super's story as their powers, a hero should have limitations. A hero that can simply and utterly defeat any oponent with no challenge and without facing any dire stakes will be no fun to play in the long run. Whether it's a meteorite that saps the character's powers, a mundane identity that they must keep secret to prevent harm to their family, or a code of honor that prevents them from using the weapon of the enemy, all good heroes have narrative limits.
These limits are expressed in terms of Limitations. Limitations provide a framework for the constraints that a hero must operate under while boosting their pool of Refinement Dice to allow for their increased abilities. But a character's limitations will also shape their super-heroic life as much as their power profile, and should make narrative sense in combination with their powers, the people that they are, and their origin story.
The Limitations inform the character's Origin Story and Power Profile.
Random Creation
In most cases, players will want to choose at least one of the aspects of their character's archetype. However, there are times that randomly determining these aspects can be useful. The following table can be used to determine an initial starting point, and following recommendations to connect to other aspects, or to determine all four aspects by rolling dice for each column.
Random Hero Character Creation
Persona
Origin
Limitation
Power Profile