Nightblade - Gun Bunny - Seize the GM

I described this group of characters and this goal for the Card Catalog to look at 1990s inspired comic book characters built with the FASERIP system – to that end I give you Gun Bunny! The 1990s were full of EXTREME characters who were grittier and used blades and guns frequently. Sometimes, they didn’t have significant other powers and their names could be a bit “EXTREME” as well and so I give you Gun Bunny. GB is an alien and because the idea of balanced heroes was sometimes lacking in the 1990s, I pulled the Ultimate Powers book out where there are far more powers available and a potentially larger number to start. The Advanced Player’s Guide we were using provides for modest characters and to close out Nightblade, I thought we’d get a little crazy. The character also developed a tragic backstory from a winning side of a war that degenerated into tyranny she had supported. A great reason to be surly and short tempered!

Design Notes

Origin: Alien. Aliens have a lot of potential in the Advanced Player’s Guide. The column they roll their statistics on is the most generous so they are most likely to have the higher stats, and like Robots can even roll into a Monstrous statistic to start. On the downside, they have one less power than rolled though using the Ultimate Powers Guide charts mitigates that somewhat, have Poor starting resources, and only starts with one Contact.

Primary Statistics: As a reminder, this is the FASERIP of the FASERIP System – Fighting; Agility; Strength; Endurance; Reason; Intuition; and Psyche. The following shows the rolls, the Rank, and the Rank Number for Gun Bunny:

F – 63 – Remarkable (26)
A – 61 – Remarkable (26)
S – 68 – Remarkable (26)
E – 49 – Excellent (16)
R – 72 – Incredible (36)
I – 93 – Amazing (46)
P – 76 – Incredible (36)

Definitely an above average and better than humans character with enhanced physical attributes and mental attributes that far surpass what most humans would display. Perhaps some of it is attributable to her training or is not a normal member of her Alien Race.

Secondary Statistics: These include Health and Karma that are generated by adding FASE and RIP respectively, Popularity that is built from a standard base with some optional changes from the character’s history, and Resources which starts at Typical and is modified by a random roll.

Health – 94
Karma – 118
Resources – Aliens start at Poor and with a middling roll of 57 it increases to Typical
Popularity – Popularity starts at 0. Secret ID, hangs out with a couple of weird mutants, and has a penchant for guns.

Special Abilities are rolled to create a range of powers, talents, and contacts. There is a minimum number available, but a character may sacrifice Resource ranks for additional powers, talents, or contacts up to the maximum shown. The Ultimate Powers Book more than doubles the number of powers available and increased possible results for all of these significantly so you could start with a truly awe inspiring character as a Deity character could manage to start with 200 powers in the right circumstances.

Powers – A roll of 60 means a result of “5/7”. As an Alien, I subtract one power and then roll on the expanded charts and get:

Physical Enhancement – Regeneration* Incredible (36)
Fighting Powers – Martial Arts Supremacy Incredible (36)
Defense – Resistance to Mental Attacks Remarkable (26)

Well the roll for regeneration certainly fits the feel for Gun Bunny, but the * means it counts as two powers which is why you only see three rolled. Martial Arts Supremacy works in conjunction with one of the 5 Martial Arts styles available as Talents increasing that Martial Arts Rank and also doing Rank damage to non-living Matter. It’ll be Martial Arts D which I will explain below. With Resistance to Mental Attacks, it has a minimum requirement of Psyche +1CS (Column Shift), so it gets adjusted:

Defense – Resistance to Mental Attacks ~~Remarkable (26)~~ Amazing (46)

While I was sort of hoping for Hyper Leaping the Resistance to Mental Attacks and Martial Arts Supremacy will let me play into the 90s martial artist tropes as well with Gun Bunny.

Talents – a Roll of 95 means a result of “4/4” so 4 Talents, which are trained abilities. Since we have already gotten the Martial Arts Supremacy Power, one of those Talents will be Martial Arts D and I think Marksman makes a great deal of sense as well since it provides a +1CS to all ranged attacks using weapons which Gun Bunny will pick up throughout the game. That costs two talent slots, though leaving one more to roll.

Fighting Skills – Martial Arts D (Remarkable Fighting[36] + Remarkable Martial Supremacy[36] = Amazing [62])
Weapon Skills – Marksman*
Professional Skills – Pilot

While I wouldn’t have been sad to get another Fighting or Weapon Skill to really double down in the 90s era, Piloting makes sense and between her origins as an alien and her Reason, it certainly includes spaceships as well. Martial Arts D allows Gun Bunny to bypass armor for the purpose of stunning or slamming a foe after observing them for two rounds. Since she likes to start at range shooting at her opponents, this shouldn’t be too bad and plays into her as a trained martial artist in a style humans do not understand quite yet.

Contacts – Aliens have one contact. It can be generally the originating race they come from, or if anything else they are an Outcast that is likely being hunted by their own people. As a bargain for some equipment so Gun Bunny can shoot things, they get both. Gun Bunny’s alien originating home is in the midst of a losing insurrection and so while she has contacts with her own people as a resistance fighter and leader, those can turn her in to the people hunting her as well the sympathizers in her own people.

Weakness – Every good hero needs a weakness. With a power like Regeneration, it is a classic trope to have one type of attack or damage not be healed by the power. In FASERIP terms this is an Energy Allergy that causes Power Negation. I am going to go with Hard Radiation which, while rare in our real world life, comes up more often than you might think in super heroics especially in the 90s with cosmic radiation, X-Rays, Gamma Rays and more. This means the villain BANG that is constantly emitting low levels of radiation would be quite a problem for Gun Bunny.

Equipment – We have not touched much on the normal equipment possibilities as heroes tend to have special equipment better described as powers. The FASERIP system does have rules for inventing super-science gadgets and making them part of the work. The Classic FASERIP Podcast did a good description here. Gun Bunny is going to be using some normal guns and weapons including the pictured shotgun as well as a machine pistol to start and will be trying to get more as she goes along. Increasing her resources will certainly help but for now she makes do by just being better than the rest of this crew. One of her first Karma expenditures may well be an Energy Projection power that is repairing some of her old weapons for use.

Character Notes

L’prd’onia has seen things go from hopeful to dark in her short two hundred years of life. For the most part, her race had been embroiled, and beset even, in a war with the Lolt for decades and that is where she was trained. As a special operator sent to undertake risky and deadly missions against the Lolt, she was given extensive training that supplemented her already Remarkable abilities. She rose in the ranks as one of the greatest fighters and shots that the R’Cadams had in the war.

Then they won. They won at a cost. While the Lolt were defeated, it was more that they had a different and more pressing war to fight. One with this planet it would seem if the histories are correct. That was 50 years ago when the pyrrhic victory left L’prd’onia’s home in ruins. It was 50 years ago when the military junta started. At first it seemed to make sense as the fractured civilian structures were having difficulty adapting to having won the war while losing ⅓ of the R’Cadams. At least the military’s sense of structure and order would provide the base on which to rebuild society. The base wasn’t transferred, though, it is was all she could do to drop into the shadows and fight against her own people when Supreme General W’rt ordered the permanent control and purging of the planet in his name.

At least, that is what she told Barracuda and Section Gamma. When Section Gamma found her, the ship had crashed and she was still wounded heavily from the crash here on Earth. She claimed to have left to look for a way to undermine W’rt’s control of the planet. Section Gamma hasn’t said whether they have contacted other extraterrestrial sources to confirm or deny this, but L’prd’onia hopes they haven’t.

Like all of her kind, L’prd’onia was resilient and able to bounce back from most injuries quickly. In fact, the R’Cadams never knew it was unusual that they all healed as quickly as they did. Section Gamma definitely seemed intrigued by this when they learned the entire race regenerated like that. She was brought around to train and work with Barracuda and Brique. These disparate individuals formed a sort of ad hoc team, though there was often some frictionhttp://seizethegm.com/2019/04/23/nightblade-chimera/. Gun Bunny, as she was being called, had a very direct and militaristic attitude befitting her background as a soldier and then freedom fighter, but Barracuda was nominally in charge. He would slow her down, and make her ask questions. More than once, Brique quietly absorbed a blow or two Gun Bunny intended for Barracuda … to “test his little suit”. Chimera’s appearance galvanized them more than she will ever know as that gave them a direct enemy.

Gun Bunny took a liking to Chimera, as she reminds her of her old days and old friends. More than that, the New Millenium Patriot’s Blanks reminded her of something from the war. Something that shouldn’t be on this planet at all and her new friend Chimera could be in the middle of that mystery.

Nightblade and FASERIP overview here

Gun Bunny Character Sheet here.

Character Designs done on Hero Machine 3.