Character Creation: Necessary Evil

Today's offering on the altar of creation (which really doesn't make sense, but sounds good) is Necessary Evil.

The Game: Necessary Evil
The publisher: Pinnacle Entertainment Group
Degree of familiarity: None, yet, though I'm running a one-shot in a couple of weeks.
Books required: The Savage Worlds book and the Necessary Evil book.

I'd heard of this game a while back. The basic idea is, aliens land and blew Earth all to Hell, took it over, and in the process wiped out all the superheroes. Now, it falls to supervillians to rise up and fight for Earth's freedom. The game gets into the moral and psychological themes this would create a little, but honestly, it's not like this is meant to be Aberrant in its social commentary. I can totally see 80s-Marvel doing this story. The good guys are dead, so the bad guys have to step up, because if there's no world left then there's no world to rule.

But really, I'm more interested in villains who don't so much want to rule the world as get rich and live comfortably. I'd like to play someone in the vein of Blacklash or the Beetle; a fairly absurd villain, at the guts of it, who just wants cash. But now cash, fame and notoriety are meaningless.

I don't think I actually want to go technological, but I'll hold off on deciding that for sure until later.

Step One: Concept. This proceeds in three very simple questions.

1) How did your character get his powers? Hmm. Villains are generally either disfigured by their powers or they did it themselves in a fit of pique. I don't want to be disfigured...or do I? I think perhaps I do. OK. My character was collateral damage during a fight between some superhero and some supervillain. The hero, I don't know, but the villain was Dr. Devolution (who's dead as of Necessary Evil, but his lab figures into one of the story seeds). My character was an innocent bystander, a normal guy doing a normal office job at the lab where the hero (a mild mannered scientist, but secretly the tech-hero Binary!) worked. Dr. Devolution sent his monstrosities in to grab the latest experiment, a new form of solar energy, and Binary fought them. Normal day in Star City.

Except my character, an entry-level tech named Burt Bannister (superheroes have alliterative names, dammit) was trapped in his cubicle when the fighting started. He finally made a break for it, but one of the monsters bit him, poisoning him. Binary, not a healer but not willing to let the guy die, used his powers to break down Burt's physical body into data, store it, and then reconstitute it later when he could get medical help. Trouble was, he'd never done it with a living person before, only machines, and Burt's body didn't take it well. It adapted the poison and rebuilt its physical form to accommodate it, and when he reformed, he was hideous.

2) What sort of powers does your villain have? I think Burt needs some kind of poison touch or bite, and should also have a modicum of super-strength and invulnerability. I think that physically, his face has become purple and monstrous, and his flesh feels tough, leathery, but smooth. He's more or less a brick, but with the venom added to give him some spice.

3) Why did your character become a villain? Well, the usual "disfigured and thinks the world owes him" thing, of course. Burt's transformation took some time, and by the time he'd gone fully purple and poisonous, Star City's media had moved on to other battles. Binary died in battle with another villain a month later, and Burt had no one to blame. He decided that he would use his powers to get rich and life high on the hog for the rest of his days, since this venom is, sooner or later, going to kill him (that's the prognosis he was given). As a villain, he called himself Toxicity.

But when the aliens invaded, he actually was one of the first villains to fight them. Not, you know, a lot, and he did some looting where he could, too. He just didn't want to knuckle under to the ugly bastards. And the one day, he was taking advantage of some alien-caused carnage to swipe some gear, and none other than Champion showed up and kicked his ass. He not only beat him up, he shamed him. Burt did his best emo-villain and said that this, a poison, was all he was. Champion, who despite being a little like Superman in function is not a dick, quoted Paracelsus: "Everything is poison, there is poison in everything. Only the dose makes a thing not a poison." Burt fled, mortified, but when the real shit hit the fan and Champion died, he came out of hiding with a new name and costume. Now he's Dosage, and he's here to show the aliens what it means to mess with Earth.

Step Two: Race. Human. That's easy.

Step Three: Traits. I start with a d4 in my attributes, and I get 5 points to raise 'em. Same as usual. I'll boost Agility to d6, Strength to d8 and Vigor to d6, for now.

15 points for Skills. I'll buy a d6 in Climbing and Fighting, and a d4 in Intimidation, Knowledge (Computers, from his old life), Notice, Streetwise and Shooting. And then I'll bump Intimidation up to d6 and Fighting to d10, and then take Streetwise to d6. Good, good. For now.

I can take two minor Hindrances and one Major, so I shall. Definitely Ugly. I take Terminally Ill. The poison is still killing Dosage, and he knows that. When the symptoms act up, he's in horrible pain and his flesh burns and goes ugly red, rather than the purple it usually is. And, because it's easy, I'll take Distinctive Appearance. It's easy to recognize Dosage as Dosage, rather than just some ugly dude. He's freaking purple.

Ooh, and since I can take an extra Major Hindrance to gain 5 extra Power Points, I will. I'll take Bloodthirsty. This is partially him projecting his own issues onto the aliens, and partially the venom affecting his brain over time.

Now, I get 4 points to mess with. I take the Berserk Edge; just seems to fit. I'll use the other two points to bump Spirit up to a d6, which gives me an extra skill point, which I put into Shooting.

Now, powers! I get 15 points. I want Armor, first. I'll dump 4 points into it. I want his bite to be poisonous, so I'll take two powers to represent. Paralysis (2) means he can nip you and knock you out, but Infection (4) kills in 1d6 hours. I'll take Leaping at 1, but I'll add Bounce to it so I can do that cool back-and-forth thing and scale tall structures. That leaves 3 points. I'll put them into Super Attribute (Strength), making me able to lift about 1000 pounds.

Finally, derived traits (I get $1000 to spend on gear, but eh). My Charisma is -2, or -6 to people that know I can kill with a bite. My Parry is 7, my Toughness is 5, and my Pace is 6''.

And that's it. Dosage is ready to go bite some aliens!