Okay, fleshing things out, with second-draft mechanics on my arcane gunslinger idea (will probably need a lot of tweaking)
[sblock=background]Susan Roland was the daughter of a couple of performers in Las Vegas who never let on to anyone save their daughter that the secret to their show's success was subtle application of real magic.
Subtle was important -- if you talked fast, you could convince a skilled stage magician that the trick was actually possible. And Susan was good at it -- she'd been helping her parents set up their acts since she was a child, and was naturally giften in binding spells to objects the way the senior Rolands did. She was also very bright; enough to earn a scholarship to an elite college back east, and even though she wanted nothing more than to follow in her parents' footsteps, they had encouraged her to take it.
But when Susan -- by then a college freshman -- got a call from the police telling her that her parents had been murdered, she flew home right away. The next few weeks made it clear the police were not getting anywhere solving the crime, and she decided to take matters into her own hands. She'd seen the telltales that meant a normal person had not been responsible. Her college was very understanding about granting her a leave of absense while she dealt with her parents' deaths, if less about giving her credit for classes she'd been unable to make the finals for.
It was easy enough to buy a gun in Nevada. The rites to enchant it to be more accurate than it should be came naturally. Without practice, the range instructor said she was good; she got better quickly. A thought to some defense led to enchanting a jacket, and another to carrying her guns and ammo where the government might frown upon the idea led her to build a little bit of an extradimensional space into the pockets. Books on investigation techniques and talking to cops combined with her knowledge of the arcane put her on the trail -- at least better than the police had been.
Perhaps fortunately, she ran into another hero before she found her parents' murderers who'd also been on the trail. [Hero X, a costumed adventurer type; maybe one of the other PCs or the setting's Batman] recognized her talent, and helped her learn to focus less on vengeance and more on justice. Without his help, she would likely never have found thier killer -- and if she had, the sorceress would not have been brought back to justice alive. They'd needed to bring in a third to do that; [Hero X]'s skills weren't up to facing the sorceress' magic directly, and neither were Susan's enchanted items. [Hero Y, a mystic type] had helped them close the circle. Both served as mentors to her in years to come.
In the 'real' world, she'd gone back to school, and finished her degree. She'd spent a semester in Europe, and the summer after it, tracking down arcane lore and talking to any real spellcasters that were willing to talk to her. She'd gone to graduate school in Freedom City, mostly to be closer to [Hero X] and refine her investigative technieques (and to deal with an annoyingly one-sided crush). But nearly a decade after she'd begun down a hero's path, she decided she really did want to get back to the life she'd intended on before her parents died, at least a little. She took an adjuct proffesor's job in Emerald City, far enough from home to avoid bad memories, and started her act there as well. In a sense she was three people - the professor Dr. Susan Roland, PhD (History), the stage magician Susan the Magnificent, and her super hero alter ego of The Spellslinger.
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[sblock=character sheet]
The Spellslinger
PL10
The woman in black fled across the desert, and the Spellslinger followed
Name: The Spellslinger
Player: drothgery
Alternate Identity: Susan Roland
Type of Alternate Identity: Secret
Gender: Female
Age: 31
Height: 5' 7"
Weight: 135 lbs
Eyes: blue
Hair: red
Group Affiliation:
Base of Operations: Emerald City
Abilities
Strength 0, Stamina 2, Agility 5, Dexterity 5, Fighting 2, Intellect 4, Awareness 4, Presence 2
Powers
Arcane sharpshooter [whether it's the enchanted guns or the alchemical bullets she fires, the Spellslinger can find the right attack to take down just about anything]:
Magic bullets: Blast 5 [magic; multiattack; accurate 3, penetrating 5, variable descriptor 2 (any magic), extended range 2, easily removeable -10]
(17 points)
Arcane jacket [a bit of magic armor never hurt anyone, especially with a portable hole for pockets]:
Protective wards: Protection 3 [magic; removeable], Magic pockets: Feature 1 [as per M&M2e dimensional pocket]
(3 points)
Equipment
No adventuring equipment other than the arcane devices that are her powers
Advantages
Power Attack, Defensive Roll 5, Precise Attack 2 [ranged, both], Quick Draw, Uncanny Dodge, Artificer, Languages 3 [Russian, French, German, Latin], Move-by Action
Skills
Acrobatics 5 (+10), Athletics (+0), Deception 6 (+8), Expertise: History 6 (+10), Expertise: Magic 16 (+20), Insight 10 (+14), Intimidation (+2), Investigation 10 (+14), Perception 10 (+14), Persuasion 6 (+8), Ranged Combat: arcane sharpshooter 4 (+9), Sleight of Hand 15 (+20), Stealth 10 (+15)
Offense
Initiative +5
Arcane Sharpshooter +15, Damage 5
Defense
Dodge 10, Parry 6
Toughness 10 (Def Roll 5), Fortitude 6, Will 9
Power Points
Abilities 48 + Powers 20 + Advantages 15 + Skills 49 + Defenses 18 = Total 150
Complications
Sometimes she does not have the right bullets on hand for her opponent, and will need to make more (in game mechanics terms, she can't use the correct descriptor to overcome defenses, or gain penetrating)
Susan Roland has a real life and real job as a stage magician; she has told no one of her super-hero identity
Design notes
Her only attack power is her enchanted guns; she uses the variable descriptor property to attack weaknesses. She's also quite capable of creating one-shot magical devices via the Artificer Advantage and her Expertise: Magic skills, either given time to prepare or by jury-rigging.
Possible scratch-built devices include
- Cloak of Flying (Flight 5) (10 points, so DC 25 to jury-rig)
- Improvised enchanted weapon [baseball bat, kitchen knife, etc] Damage 5 Accurate 5 (10 points, so DC 25 to jury-rig) -> +12 to hit, 5 dmg
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