Hero Feature: Stella Stretch
Stella Stretch is one of my favorite heroes from our pre-built demo characters. I built out her character after Max had already completed the art. I had to ask myself, “Who exactly is this dorky looking girl that Max created?”
Stella has the ability to stretch across long distances. She’s a goofy dork who is full of corny jokes and puns. She’s also got a bit of an anger problem. She can harness her anger with her superpower, “Big Mad,” dealing massive damage and sending her into a state of rage.
We’ve set all of our demo characters at level three. Level one is front loaded with a lot of choices. This is where you’ll choose your hero’s main abilities as well as build their origin story, which will affect your starting stats and equipment. Then as you level up, more powers and improvements are added.
I’ll walk you through what I chose at each level to round out the hero I envisioned and highlight the synergy between some of her abilities.
Stella Stretch
Level 1
Superpower - Big Mad
Stella’s super power allows her to deal massive damage. She gets to roll with advantage to determine how much damage she does AND she uses a d10 for her superpower die.
The flipside is that her state of rage makes her an easy target for enemies. Any enemy will have advantage for a few turns while attempting to attack her, but the damage is slightly reduced.
When she gets hit, she becomes even more mad and adds extra damage to the next attack she makes.
Innate Ability - My Pain is My Gain
Each superpower archetype comes with innate abilities that players can choose from. You get to add more innate abilities or upgrade your current abilities at future levels. For level one, I chose “My Pain is My Gain.”
This ability is activated when you take a big hit. If you take 12 or more damage from a single attack, you get to make your next attack with advantage. I thought this would be really cool to have in addition to the extra damage from when she gets hit during her rage state.
Talents
As I started building her I was imagining this innocent and goofy looking girl that turns into this berserker when she’s pissed off. To emphasize these two aspects I assigned her talent points so that, on average, she would have the highest scores in physical talents (Muscle, Finesse, Resilience, and Endurance). The next highest group were the charisma talents (Intimidation, Deception, Showmanship, and Persuasion). Her lowest scores, on average, fell into intelligence talents (Analysis, Observation, Science, and Mentality). Maybe she was too busy goofing around in class to really pick up on her science lessons.
I put the most points into finesse, imagining her being able to stretch and wiggle around through the battlefield.
Origin - Born This Way
Stella’s origin story is not an intricate one. She was born with her powers from parents with no special abilities. I thought that if I wanted to come up with a longer backstory, I could use this as a great jumping off point to think about what that relationship looked like and what challenges she might have faced growing up.
A hero’s Origin grants a Boon and a Bane. A Boon is a bonus (+3) to a talent modifier while a Banes is a deficit (-2). Each Origin has a few options to pick from for the Boon and Bane.
For Stella, I chose Finesse as her Boon and Science as her Bane because I thought it stayed on brand with the character I was envisioning.
Hero Trait - Jokester
The Jokester Hero Trait seemed to fit perfectly for what I was imagining in my head - a goofy demeanor that might make it difficult for others to take her seriously sometimes.
Hero Traits determine equipment and talents that you have expertise in. Jokester grants expertise in melee weapons, gadgets, and the deception, finesse, and mentality talents.
Stella got a boost to her starting Public Merit points with the media from being a Jokester.
Starting equipment is also determined by the Hero Trait you chose. Jokester lets you start with one weapon and two gadgets. I spent a long time thinking about what weapon would fit Stella. I couldn’t imagine her wielding a sword or shooting a gun. I eventually landed on weighted gloves, picturing her stretching her arm out and punching someone from 40 feet away.
For gadgets I chose a GPS tracker and a listening device. I could imagine Stella being able to stealthily place these with the stretch ability I planned to give her later on.
Weapons and Gadgets
Mentor - The Betrayer
For her mentor I chose “The Betrayer.” I thought maybe this could help explain her anger issues! Each mentor gives you a Conviction and a Doubt.
Her conviction gives her advantage when attempting to lie to anyone that is currently friendly towards her. Her doubt gives her disadvantage when attempting to determine if someone friendly towards her is lying.
Personal Life and Personal Space
I chose an option from the personal liability table to help build her personal life. I went with “Your parents despise superheroes.” I thought it would tie in nicely to the Mentor option and Origin that I had picked and give us a full picture of how she developed into the person she is today.
These days Stella lives in a city apartment, which grants her +1 General Popularity Public Merit whenever she patrols the streets as a downtime activity.
Level 2
Auxiliary Power - Stretch
At level two you get to choose your first Auxiliary Power. I finally got to give her the stretch ability I was planning on building her around!
The stretch power increases your reach by 2 zones (40 ft.) and scales to reach further and last longer at higher levels.
Level 3
Secondary Power - Damage Absorption
At level three your hero gains a Secondary Power. You only get one of these, so choose carefully. This power levels up over time and can be quite powerful.
I chose “Damage Absorption” for Stella. This power lets her store some of the damage taken to add to future attacks. It doesn’t reduce the damage taken, but I thought it would build on both her superpower and the innate ability I chose earlier, allowing her to deal tons of damage with her weighted gloves. It also seemed like it fit well thematically for roleplaying.
Equipment Improvement
At this level, I had earned enough Public Merit that I was able to upgrade a piece of equipment. I chose to upgrade her weapon, the weighted gloves, by giving them “extended reach.” Not sure how that would work for gloves, but I imagined it as Stella’s own ability rather than the gloves themselves.
With extended reach gloves I could now punch from further away without having to activate my stretch power, or I could use both for even further reach.
At this point I felt like I had really gotten somewhere with this hero. The training wheels were off and she was ready to go beat some baddies!
The We Can Be Heroes crowdfunding campaign will begin February 20th, 2024! Follow the Kickstarter page to support this game and to receive campaign updates.
