Born to Mexican immigrants, Cris (as he is known to his friends) grew up in the life a seasonal immigrant farm hand, moving from place to place as his parents followed the harvest of different crops and speaking Spanish as his first language. As a result, his early education was spotty at best and he graduated high school with a barely passing average despite being a rather intelligent child. A first generation US citizen (what would be considered an anchor-baby by some, since his parents were both illegal immigrants) he felt the need to prove his loyalty to the country and enlisted in the Army out of high school. Originally tasked as a Health Care Specialist, Cris demonstrated an aptitude for medicine that lead to him being enrolled in the Green to Gold program, pre-medical undergraduate work, and eventually medical school for full training as a doctor. As a medical student (and later as a doctor), Cris specialized in pharmacology and toxicology. His unique, but at the time unknown, immune system, however, lead to sloppy laboratory practices (as he himself was always able to avoid the effects of the chemicals he worked with) which hindered his advancement within the military and his eventual discharge (though still an honorable one) having only attained the rank of Major (just one step up of the captaincy that his medical degree entitled him to). Said discharge did not come, however, before he had been stationed in Afghanistan for one tour (October 2001 to June 2002) and Iraq for two tours (once from January 2003 to January 2004 during both the run-up to war and it’s early stages so technically he was in Saudi Arabia or Kuwait at the outset, and again from November 2004 to February 2006).
Since his discharge, Cris has lived in Idaho, working primarily as a family physician in Aberdeen and the surrounding area, but also consulting on the side within his specialty (mostly via the internet). A commensurate tinkerer (a trait first practiced on farm equipment as a child) Cris has taken to rebuilding and reworking some of the more common lab equipment for his specialty in his spare time and is thinking about going back to school to study Medical Engineering. His lab technique still tends to be sloppy (which is why he doesn’t work for any major pharmaceutical company) but his use of his own blood and cells as test samples for his experimental equipment has lead him to discover and understand his unique immune system, a fact which he has been quietly using to treat his patients (who are phenomenally free of disease as a result).
Oh, and Merc I’ll expect some help on the military end of things. To that end, it may make more sense to make the character former Navy doctor attached to the Marines (as I imagine you’d know more about that than the army) but I wasn’t sure if Navy doctors were/are deployed to field hospitals in Iraq or Afghanistan.
[ Edited: 18 October 2007 02:00 PM by Black Plauge]
He would not have earned retirement, which is a special kind of separation. Like me (6 years) he would only get an honorable discharge. The correct term would be “Since separating from the Army” or “Since his discharge,” although the former sounds nicer than the latter. Maybe he could be a reservist? His title would read - Cristobal AGUILERA, M.D., MAJ USAR
Oh, and Merc I’ll expect some help on the military end of things. To that end, it may make more sense to make the character former Navy doctor attached to the Marines (as I imagine you’d know more about that than the army) but I wasn’t sure if Navy doctors were/are deployed to field hospitals in Iraq or Afghanistan.
Army works fine. There are Navy doctors in both places, but the Army docs far outnumber the Navy ones. I think the write-up is fine as is.
EDIT - Also, I realized I won’t have enough character points to do exactly what I want with FLEA, but I’ll be doing what I can to have him able to shrink as much as possible. He truly won’t be terribly effective at PL 1, but I’ll be doing what I can to max out Charisma.
He would not have earned retirement, which is a special kind of separation. Like me (6 years) he would only get an honorable discharge. The correct term would be “Since separating from the Army” or “Since his discharge,” although the former sounds nicer than the latter. Maybe he could be a reservist? His title would read - Cristobal AGUILERA, M.D., MAJ USAR
If he was a reservist, though, there would still exist the possiblity of the Army calling him back up. Now while I don’t have a problem with that from the character’s point of view, I’m trying to think about how the Army would handle having a reservist who they don’t really want to call up unless they have to (because while his record is clean, his former superiors didn’t exactly give him glowing recomendations). Does the reservist system allow for that kind of thing or would the Army simply not let the guy into the reserves?
How would his title read if he didn’t go reserves and was just out (I assume that the “R” in “USAR” stands for reserves because the google search I did earlier only showed USA for army people)?
EDIT - Also, I realized I won’t have enough character points to do exactly what I want with FLEA, but I’ll be doing what I can to have him able to shrink as much as possible. He truly won’t be terribly effective at PL 1, but I’ll be doing what I can to max out Charisma.
Yeah, I came to a similar realization as I was working on Cris. I was originally going to have him have a Ph.D. in medical engineering, but with only 15 cp to work with I figured I’d downgrade that part of his back ground to just tinkering at the moment with the possibility of him persuing the degree later. Likewise, you could make it so that the ability to shrink is something that develops over time. Plus, while it develops, you have an excuse to post the FLEA to stateside posts as his “bosses” don’t want to post an “undertrained” asset overseas.
I’m interested to see how the characters turn out. I’ve played very low-PL M&M games in the past and met with serious difficulties, since the numbers really only support PL 1-2 characters being non-combat bystanders. I don’t know if it will be more successful in d20A, but I can hope.
Primarily there were two reasons why I am started it at first, one is that I too am looking forward to see how it works at low levels to begin with and then gradually raising up. Second is that I always love the underdogs.
I was thinking that maybe the FLEA might have gotten a reduced dosage (maybe lab mix up?) and that made it so that he only starts out as semi-small but gradually gets smaller (lol almost said bigger).
Lune need any help with the concept at all?
zachol donde esta tu?!
I think I’m really going to like DMing for you guys.
EDIT: Hey has anyone gotten the Dundjinni Modern Streets (I think its called) Map Pack? Is it any good? I was thinking of getting it for this campaign.
Okay, I haven’t been ignoring this...just waiting to see others concepts before committing to one of my own. It looks like so far the characters concepts are:
zachol: ?
Black Plague: Great Immune System and minor Tinkering skills
Lune: possibly Razor Charlie
MerCameron: FLEA size shrinking powers while retaining normal strength.
Does a Super Hero game suffer from the need for something similar to D&D’s “core classes?” (Healer, Frontliner, Support/Tactical Character, AoE/Bag of Tricks Character).
If so we currently seem to be lacking our “mage” and our “fighter.” I will work on finalizing my character concept(s) shortly.
The super game does need a certain group dynamic to it like D&D but it isn’t as set in stone. Since D20A allows for such flexibility coupled with the way I’m doing progression it will be quite easy to compensate if you guys feel you need something else (ie. you keep getting hit by traps and want that to stop, so after the next encounter you spend your hero points on skills).
I don’t think it’ll be much of a problem if you decide to go into a far-off concept Talae, just have fun with it.
After some thought, here are some concepts I am leaning towards:
My Seattle Man concept I have had since high school. If this is the one I will flesh out many ideas that I haven’t contemplated about this character. It would be a fun exercise.
My next concept would be for a character with the ability to find weak spots in things, particularly structures. For instance, he would be able to know the exact location to hit something to make it crumble with ease. This character would have a mercenary sniper persona and possibly gain the ability to slow time down for others so that he could focus on the situation. I am also contemplating having this character focus more on melee combat through the use of martial arts. I like the idea of him being an anti-hero and maybe even using a telescoping staff (similar to a Gambit persona). This character concept would most likely have extreme agility and stealth skills.
I have a few other concepts going as well but those two are the main two.
Concepts I am considering:
Razor Charlie (mostly to see how the system works for supporting a character like him and cause I love the character concept)
A transforming scrapper type character
A female advanced human that uses her brain differently than the average person. She would be somewhat like Batgirl (Cassy) but her mental powers would border on true telepathy and empathy while they would remain completely natural, not meta powered. She would also be a fragile tactical fighter...kinda ninja like. But I haven’t priced it out to see if I can make the concept work.
Well seeing how much trouble everyone is going through with the concepts vs power level ratio I’m going to increase the game level to begin at Power Level 4 with 60 character points.
(Plus, my villains weren’t very villainous at PL 1 anyway so this helps me have a bit more fun too ^^)
Yeah, I think it would be more fun with even a single level up but this will do nicely. ...will likely also take me longer to come up with some good stuff.
Anyone want me to play one of those concepts specifically or think one of them would fill a niche we need filling?
I’ve started to stat out my character sheet in the Character thread. It’s no where near done, but I find it easier to think about things if I’ve started putting them down some where.
Oh, and if anybody else would like the character sheet template with all of JK’s formating, let me know by posting in the character thread with a request. I have moderator powers and can edit posts, allowing me to both copy JK’s original post with the formating tags, and paste it into one of yours.
