Bill Jackson, on the Girl Genius Mailing List, pondered what I might do with Agatha Heterodyne in the Hero System. It got me to thinking, since my technomage Justina Kendall has a lot in common with Agatha. Agatha turned out to be a simple and quick character to create. For those of you who have no idea what I'm talking about, Agatha Heterodyne is the main character in the Girl Genius comic from Phil and Kaja Foligo (What's New, Buck Godot, and Myth Adventures). It is a world of Romanace, Adventure, and Mad Science: if the imaginings of Mary Shelley, HG Wells, and Jules Verne had combined and come true to life. And it is hysterically funny.
Agatha Heterodyne is a Spark, one of the Gifted few who can make Mad Science real. Unfortunately, she doesn't know who she is at the moment. If you want to know more about Agatha (and if you don't read Girl Genius, you should!) read the comic. Most of these notes are really intended for fans of the comic who may not be Hero Gamers, to explain how the mechanics work, or to explain to fans of both the comic and the game why I made the choices I did.
You can view my version of Agatha here. Her concept is very basic. She only comes to 215 points as a Heroic level character. This reflects her enourmous Spark potential, but lack of experience. The Spark is represented by her Variable Power Pool. For you non-gamers, this is a pool of points in the Hero System 5th Edition that can be used to pay for the use of various Powers, Talents and other ablities "on the fly." In the Champions or Hero System role playing game, a character's abilities are purchased when the character is designed and can't be changed except with experience or GM permission. The Variable Power Pool or VPP is a pool of points that can be changed under certain conditions. In Agatha's case, she can change them in one combat phase (for her, about 3 seconds real time). The Focus Limitation means she has to have materials to work with, in her case usually a clank someone else has already started. She can build from scratch at no penalty if she has raw materials (parts), though the GM may rule that her concept allows this only while she sleeps. She isn't penalized for this point wise--some things are better left as concept and should not be codified in game mechanics. It's up to the player to be true to this concept. Her Gestures and Incantations limitations usually mean she must make dramatic movements with her hands and chant loud magical phrases to get her Power to work. In Agatha's case, this is reflected by ripping apart clanks and re-assembling them in a shower of odds and ends while making loud exclaimations about redundancies or illogical ideas, like she did in Gilgamesh's flyer. Half DCV is a game mechanic which means she concentrates so hard on what she is doing, she doesn't pay attention to combat around her, and is easier to hit. This is offset by another Power she has, 1d6 of Luck, which should be invoked to create "near misses".
She has a number of other useful abilities. Her Speed is average for a Heroic Level character at 3. But when she's working, she's a speed demon and can create or modify equipment at Speed 5. She's Lucky. She has a lot of Skills to reflect the Spark, such as her Gadgeteering Roll. She often knows what she wants to do--it's just that until she lost her locket, which must have had some sort of inhibitor in it, she couldn't make her inventions work. This caused her to have a Bad Reputation as seen in her Disadvantages. Most of the rest of her character sheet should be pretty self explainitory.
A note on her Vital Statistics. I guessed at some of them. It's hard to tell how tall she actually is. She's of good German stock, so she's probably taller than average, but not by much. Her eyes are sometimes colored green, but more often blue.
Be A Hero!
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