“Just because you hear voices, don’t make you crazy. That’s what my old ma said to me. ‘Course, back then I knew all the voices I heard. I could hear Old Spikey down the road chastizin’ his mule, clear as if he was in the room right next to me. I knew when my sis was coming home from school, even afore the dogs started barkin’. Some days, I could hear the voices clear across the valley to the next settlement and even then I knew most of them, or got to know ’em.
Anyhows. Now I’m in the city and I hear so many voices all the time, and I hardly know any of ’em at all. But the bad ones – the real bad ones – well, I make a point of getting to know them very well. If you catch my drift.
No. Hearing voices don’t make you crazy.
It’s what they say what does that.”
Jonah was born with a gift – or perhaps a curse. He can hear the surface thoughts of everyone over a wide (and steadily growing – currently about 2.5 mile) range, all at the same time. He can focus on a single mind to delve deeper, and at a closer range (1 mile) can even see through a person’s eyes. While he cannot communicate telepathically (it’s one-way only) he has mastered sending a concentrated burst of all those thoughts at a single mind, overloading their brain. It’s a crude yet effective attack at best, but is a sign that he may well develop full telepathy as his abilities improve.
At 6’5″, Jonah is a lanky welt of bone and sinew, possessing a catlike agility that’s heightened by his precognitive talents – he knows where you’re going to be before you even know yourself. Against a living, thinking foe he is almost untouchable, able to move and pre-empt every attack before it even begins. Against robots, the undead or any other non-living thing though, he’s at a disadvantage.
Jonah’s sense of right and wrong comes from his life on the settlement where his Preacher father instilled in him a sense that the Law of Man and the Good Book were inviolate things, and it’s the duty of all godfearin’ men to see that sinners find just punishment. A natural drifter, Jonah has found his way to the city, drawn like a moth to a flame by the sound of all those voices.
They will be his undoing, one day.
Notes: Psionic Cowboy! Mind-reading son of a preacher man! Daredevil meets Jonah Hex! Greyseer is a prime PC for a gritty PL10 street-level game where the stakes are high and the risks are hidden in the shadows of the night.
Dirty little secret: Where do Jonah’s powers come from? Well, you better ask his pa that question. Too bad he died many years ago – though Jonah still hears his thoughts on the wind. And those thoughts, they ain’t good.
Jonah Greyseer, PL 10 150pp
Str 18, Dex 24, Con 18, Int 16, Wis 18, Cha 16
Tough +4, Fort +9, Ref +8/+14, Will +10, Init +7
Attack (Ranged) +4/+10, (Melee) +8/+14, Defense +4/+14Enhanced Trait 43 (Defense +10, Reflex +6, Attack +6, Attack Focus (Melee) 4; Limited: only vs. living)
Super-Senses 2 (Mental Awareness, Danger Sense:Mental)
Super-Strength 2
ESP 4 (Visual Senses, Range 1 mile, Medium:other people’s eyes)
Mind Reading 6 (DC Will 16, Ranged, Area:Burst, Extra:Area 8 (about 2.5 miles))
– AP: Stun 10 (DC Fort 20, 100′, Limited:only vs. living)Acrobatics +15, Climb +8, Computers +5, Concentration +12, Gather Information +7, Investigate +7, Medicine +6, Notice +8, Search +7, Sense Motive +8, Stealth +15
Acrobatic Bluff, Master Plan, Redirect, Teamwork 2Flash Goggles, Motorcycle
Love the concept. He’s a straight up kind fisticuffs hero in a very old school sort of way plus some power. The M&M min-maxer in me however is twitching at the fact that he’s only PL 9 when fighting Man to Man but if he’s primarily a Psychic then that makes sense and is a cool concept thing.
The only real thing I see is that I don’t think you built Mind Reading correctly. I’m calculating it at Mind Reading 1/Rank +1PP/Rank for Area and -1PP/Rank Perception to Ranged. At rank 6 plus the 8 for Progression that’s only 14PP, well below the 20PP that the Stun AP is costing.
.-= DarkTouch´s last blog ..Introduction to the Craft Meme =-.
@DarkTouch Glad you like him :D
I had originally given him a set of Brass Knuckles just so he could fight closer to PL10, but in the end ditched them – I quite like the idea of him punching below his weight and it leaves room for the character to grow at the campaign develops.
The Mind Reading works out like this:
Mind Reading 6
– Flaw:Range 1 (Ranged) -1/rank
– Feat:Progression, Increased Range 8 (x500)
Mind Reading is normally 1/PP but the Flaw knocks it down to 0.5/PP to that’s (3+8) 11PP in total.
Add an Alternate Power for one more point:
Stun 10
– Limited: only vs. living
(That’s only 10PP worth of powers – there’s wiggle room to add in a Power feat for free should we choose!)
Total cost: 12PP
Hope that helps – please excuse my shorthand in the character statblock :D
You have two extras in there that you aren’t accounting for. You have an area:burst extra mentioned on the mind reading and stun is a default touch range so you have the ranged extra to get those 100′ of range in there.
Good catch – that’s what I get for re-writing it from memory in a hurry. Here’s the full (corrected) version:
Mind Reading 6
– Flaw:Range 1 (Ranged)
– Extra:Area, Burst
– Feat:Progression, Increase Area 8
AP: Stun 10
– Extra:Range 1 (100′)
– Limited: only vs. living
Total cost: 21 PP
The reason why I originally noticed it to begin with was that I was thinking about the massive area and the range. Basically you have a 60′ range of where you can place the center of a multiple mile wide sphere. Take the range down another level to ‘touch’ so that it is always centered on the cowbow.