Mutant or Super characters

[rulandor]

In the course of my A War in Heaven campaign I plan to make use of an Adventure seed from the Time Traveller's Companion p. 165: "The X Factor".

A Darklady named Hekara Trilav has infiltrated UNIT and works under the guise of Professor Hekate Sanchez, a scientific advisor.

Hekara Trilav is a Biochemical Genius, and her job is to spread a retro virus, creating mutants somewhat in the vein of the X Men. (It's not only about tying up UNIT's resources, it is also a test run for creating super fighters for possible use by the Darklords.)

Now, most mutant characters are straightforward in rules terms. They have the Alien trait and can take any trait adequate for their mutations: Flight, Armour, Natural Weapons, Telepathy, Clairvoyance, whatever.

There are two tricky things, though, as far as the DWAITAS (or DWTRPG in the near future) rules are concerned: Super-Strength and impossible Super-Speed.

It is of course possible to simply give Beast or Colossus or whomever a Strength attribute auf 10 or 15 or something, but that feels forced. How about a Special Major Trait (Super Attribute), costing 3 CP and 3 Story Points, allowing the character to use Story Points for things which are thematically tied to the chosen attribute, but completely impossible for any normal human or Time Lord? What do you think? Thus, the super speed of The Flash could be handled as well: 1 Point for unfairly competing in track races and winning easily; 3 Points for outrunning a car, 5 for outrunning a jet in flight, 6 Points for arriving on the other side of the planet in half an hour, 9 Points for simply being there at a narrratively convenient point in time.

[cigarman]

I would check "Pulp Fantastic" and "Rocket Age" to see if they have rules for such things.

[rulandor]

Well, Rocket Age hasn't.

Since I started this thread, I stumbled across the TV-Show Smallville, watched it completely in the course of three months and became fascinated with the whole world of DC heroes. Currently I am reading .. ah, who am I kidding, DEVOURING DC comics.

Naturally, I consider introducing such themes and motives into my games. I am studying the DC Adventures/Mutants and Masterminds 3e rules, but for a DWRP gamer, the system feels heavy, unwieldy, even clunky.

So, I'm in a bit of a conundrum. I like the Vortex game engine more than any other RPG system on the market, but it has limitations as far as using the DC universe as adventure setting is concerned. Sigh.

Edit:

Just had an inspiration: Establishing a Mutant Special Good Trait for 4 Character Points. This trait works as a combination of the Alien and the Cyborg trait, enabling the Mutant to buy Alien Traits as well as Gadget Traits as inborn capabilities.

For example, let's have a Phaser, a person able to become hard as stone or immaterial at will, able to phase through solid objets. The Mutant needs to buy the following traits:
Mutant (4 CP)
Armour (3 CP for 15 points of Armour and Coordination -2)
Immaterial (has to be bought as a Special Good Trait for 2 CP)

Let's have a Mrs. or Mr. Electro:
Mutant (4 CP)
Ranged Natural Weapon (ball or burst of electricity) (2 times): 4 CP, damage 4/L/L.
Teleport (tansport to another location, only possible by dissolving into an existing eletric current or electromagnetic transmission (Teleport minus Restriction), 1 CP.

Variant:
In order not to devour character points like wildfire, Mutant could be defined as variant of the Experienced trait, enabling to have mutants of variable power level, perhaps needing to be bought two times for a mutant who has access to Alien AND to Gadget Traits.

[bjmorga]

In my new campaign, I have a player who is trying to be a super-soldier ala Captain America. We boosted her character's strength and gave her a couple of extra traits, but stylistically we didn't do anything too crazy or game-breaking.