Recently, I have purchased all the available Mission and Quest packs from Avalon’s latest dollar sale. It’s how I was able to obtain the Avalon Quests game and how I was able to do the Avalon Quests sessions. Though funny story, I didn’t realize they had an annual dollar sale a year ago.
As I said before, the game is perfect for Pathfinder fans, as it’s a good way to play the game solo. I’m actually gonna confess, Pathfinder is my favorite version of 3.5, if only because of its vast customization, its open sources, and the fact that it’s getting more and more updates to keep the game fresh, rather than torching the system and jumping ship to a new version.
However, Pathfinder, as well as most D20 games, are a bit of a thorn in my side for being… complex. If you have read my past experience with Avalon, you’d know that I wound up forgetting quite a bit of common Pathfinder rules. Of course, this falls under the logic of “fun over rules”, so it’s not that bad…
And so, I get to the point of this post: I’m tackling Avalon again. Though not for a while, as per my preparations for other stuff, like the Solo Gaming Month or the Fan-Voted Quarter Quell. However, we have a twist. See, sometime ago, Avalon made a rules variant of Pathfinder. The variant? Superhero-themed D20. Ladies and Gentlemen, Heroes Wear Masks.
Our first step is to talk with our GM about our concept…
Hey, me, is it okay if I play a character that I’ll generate right now in this post?
Sure! Go ahead!
Thanks, me!
No problem!
Alright, got the approval from myself. Now to generate scores. I’m gonna use the heroic method for this, but rerolling ones on top of it.
[Rolling]
Alright, so now we have: 18, 14, 12, 14, 14, and 16. Pretty decent scores. Next we determine origin. I already know what I’m going for with my character, so I’ll work on the sheet right now.
So we have a choice of four origins: Human, Altered Human, Mutant, and Alien. Well, to be fair, the last one is called Strange Visitor and can be applied to more than just aliens. I’m picking Altered Human. Next, we pick a class. Six classes for this: Acrobat, Brick, Combat Expert, Detective, Energy Manipulator, and Super Human. I’ll pick Super Human so I can say I’m an Altered Super Human.
Next, I’m gonna pick out the guy’s powers. These powers can be purchased with Power Points, and my character gains two upon starting up. One of these powers is buffing one of your attributes by 3. Level these babies up, and you could have a max of thirty additional points in your Attribute score. So of course, I’m picking that, adding it to my Dex.
Next, I’m picking Super Speed. Pretty obvious what it can do (makes me super fast), but it also enables me to get a +1 on both my attack and AC, as well as give me a bonus attack. That’s… basically it. My build is simply The Flash.
Skills are nothing worth writing home about, except for the one time where I put a skill rank into a non-class skill and I was confused as to whether it’d just count as half. My choices for feats (I get an extra one for my Altered Human) is the Super Vehicle and Vehicle Operation. Next up, we get to pick up any Flavors and Flaws. Flavors are essentially benefits for a character while Flaws are… well, just that. We can pick up Flaws for more Flavors, but we can get one Flavor for free. I’m picking Sponsored.
The final step is to get a Resource. Resource Points are actually a pretty remarkable feature in Heroes Wear Masks that stands out from Pathfinder. You basically use these to purchase items instead of the usual Gold or Silver pieces. My feat of Super Vehicle had it so that I have two points worth of Resources to spend on my Jet (which I’m able to use via Vehicle Operation), and so I’ll spend it on Super Speed and Stealth. It’ll be a glorified Stealth Bomber.
I have two resource points left, one I’ll spend on getting myself a Laser Pistol that can shoot ice. Yeah, you can also use Resource Points to upgrade your weapons to do super powers too. And with that, we’re done making the first of two characters for this RPG. Our next one will be a character inspired by this book.
In the Strange Visitor origin, they listed a couple of example adventures, including: The hero Gilgamesh, brought back to life by Anu to right the injustices of the world. And so, I’ve decided the next character to make will be Gilgamesh. I’ve decided, since he’s Gilgamesh, that I’ll add exploding dice to his generation.
[Rolling]
So we have 16, 10, 14, 13, 19 and 19. Attributing to his stats to make him really strong, but as fast as our speedster, Atikli Slim. The Strange Visitor starts off with three power points right off the bat, so we can probably give him some different powers right off the bat. I’m also making him a Combat Expert, since I assume Gil is a pretty competent warlord. He also gets another power point from this.
The pragmatic me would just give him a level four Super Attribute, which means he gets twelve bonus points to his strength, and I think that’ll fit him just fine. However, I’m gonna put one Power Point into Regeneration, reflecting the story of his quest for immortality. Regeneration simply allows you to recover a hit point per round.
For feats, he’s gonna take the Large feat and then the Power Attack combat feat. For Flavors and Flaws, I’ll take the Alien flaw, a fish out of temporal water sort of storytelling device. I’ll also make him primitive, because, again, temporal water. This gives me three Flavors to use. First two are obviously going to be Fabulously Wealthy and National Leader, as per his roots. I’ll lastly give him Reputation, which adds a +2 to his Charisma checks.
With his resources, I’ll give him the three-point Arsenal of Weapons which… Well, they don’t explain, but I just think it means he has tons of weapons. And because he is from ancient times, I’ll go ahead and say these weapons are Pathfinder weapons, which with his large size, will make things… easy.
Alright, now we come up with the backstory. Obviously we know what Gil’s deal is, but what of Slim’s? I’ll go with the suggested idea that he was a super soldier enhanced for a war before the project was shut down for breaching the Geneva Convention. Out of work, Slim is determined to show the world his powers are the best thing to combat threats to his nation, and he does this by teaming with Gilgamesh.
But what binds the two together? How did these two come together? Well, that’s gonna be the focus of our future adventure: Brown Out. There’s an adventure packaged into this, and that’ll be the adventure I will be playing. Bon voyage, gamers. See you in both the anniversary and in the Solo Appreciation Month.
Solo RPG Voyages 