My replacement for Brainiape,
a saurian who can reach into your head and bring out the inner lizard, the so
called 'reptilian hindbrain.'
There weren't any girls in the Ape team. So I made
Hindbrain a girl. Well, a humanoid stegasaurus, but still,
a *female* humanoid stegasaurus with an actual
'hindbrain,' meaning that she has more brains in her @$$ than some people have
in their head...
Hindbrain (Mala Sirrush)
PL 10 (145 pp)
Abilities: Str 16, Dex 12, Con
18, Int 14, Wis 20, Cha 14
[32 pp]
Attack: Melee +4, +8 with tail-lash, Ranged +4 [8 pp]
Defense: +8 (+2 flat-footed) [8 pp]
Initiative +1
Damage: +3 hand-to-hand, +6 (10’ reach) with tail-spikes
Saves: Toughness +10 (2 Imp) / +4 (0 Imp) when
flat-footed), Fort +8, Ref +1, Will +5 [4 pp]
Skills: Bluff 6 (+8), Climb 0 (+3), Concentration 2 (+7),
Craft (artistic) 1 (+3), Diplomacy 8 (+10), Disguise 0 (+2), Drive 1 (+2),
Escape Artist 0 (+1), Gather Information 6 (+8), Handle Animal 2 (+4),
Intimidate 2 (+4), Investigate 2 (+4), Knowledge (behavioral sciences) 6 (+8),
Knowledge (history) 1 (+3), Knowledge (civics) 1 (+3), Knowledge (current
events) 2 (+4), Language (Saurian, native), Medicine 2 (+7), Notice 8 (+13),
Perform (oratory) 2 (+4), Profession (psychologist) 2 (+7), Ride 1 (+2), Search
0 (+2), Sense Motive 4 (+9), Stealth 1 (+2), Survival 0 (+5), Swim 0 (+3) [15
pp, 60 ranks in skills]
Feats: Assessment, Attack Specialization (tail-lash) 2,
Defensive Roll 4, Fascinate (diplomacy), Inspire, Leadership, Luck 4 (Flaw:
Limited (only for Leadership/Inspire)), Trance, Uncanny Dodge (detect
thoughts), Well-Informed
[15 pp]
Powers:
Stegasaurian ‘powers’ Container 2 (+2 Str, Protection 2 (Extra:
Impervious, Flaw: Limited (not when flat-footed*)), Strike 3 (Power
Feats: Extra Reach 1, Mighty), Innate) [10]
Comprehend 2 (everybody understands her mental
communications, regardless of language, even animals, Extra: Linked to
Communication +0, Power Feat:
Alternate Power – Comprehend 2 (can understand any
person or animal whose mind she is reading, Extra: Linked to Mind-Reading +0)),
[5]
Communication 8 (mental, 2000 miles range, Extra:
Linked to Comprehend +0, Partial Extra: Area 4 (1 mile), Power Feats:
Selective, Subtle 2,
Alternate Power – Mind-Reading 8 (Extras: Link (to
Comprehend AP) +0, Sensory Link, Flaw: Limited (surface thoughts only)),
Alternate Power – Mind-Reading 8 (Extra: Link (to
Comprehend AP) +0, Flaws: Distracting, Limited (mental probe only), Range 2
(touch)),
Alternate Power – Confuse 8 (Extra: Area (burst),
Flaw: Range 1 (ranged), Power Feat: Precise**, Selective),
Alternate Power – Emotion Control 8 (Flaw: Range 1
(ranged), Power Feat: Mind Blank),
Alternate Power – Emotion Control 8 (Extra: Area
(burst), Flaw: Range 2 (touch), Power Feats: Mind Blank, Selective),
Alternate Power – Concealment (all senses) 10 (Extra:
Affects Others +1, Flaws: Blending, Passive, Power Feat: Extra Reach 1),
Alternate Power – Drain Wisdom 5 (Extras: Alt Save
(will), Range 1 (ranged), Power Feat: Slow Fade 1 (/5 rounds)),
[18]
Super-Senses 13 (Postcognition,
Awareness (mental), Detect (thinking beings, Accurate, Acute, Ranged, Radius,
Sense, Extended 1 (100’))), [13]
Flight 1, [2]
Shield 4, [4]
Super-Strength 1 (Heavy Load: 460 lbs), [2]
Telekinesis 1,
Strike +0 (instinct-driven retributive tail-lash,
Extra: Aura, Power Feats: Extra Reach 1, Mighty, Selective) [9]
[65 pp]
*Protection (not when flat-footed) represents how the stegasauran presents her heavily armored back towards
combat, snaking her flexible neck around to see her targets, and flailing about
with her dangerous spike-tipped tail. If she is caught flat-footed, the
attacker is able to strike at her soft, unarmored underbelly, and bypass the
thickly armored back-plates.
**With her Precise Confuse power she can’t dictate the
effect, but she can put it ‘on hold’ during any round where she doesn’t like
the potential result, allowing the affected person to act normally that round.
They still get a save to throw off the effect at the normal plus that round,
even if it ‘feels like it went away,’ and if they fail, they could well be
affected again the next round, if Hindbrain feels like it… As long as she has a
Free Action, she can choose to let someone be affected, or ‘skip it’ for a
round, or even hold the effect in abeyance until it is resisted, in the case of
a combat having ended and the effects no longer being convenient.
Abilities 32 + Atk/Def 16 +
Saves 4 + Skills 15 + Feats 15 + Powers 65 = 147 pp
Mala
Sirrush was always an inquisitive child, very much
interested in the *why* of things, and focused primarily in the greatest
mystery of all, ‘why are my parents so freaking WEIRD!’ An enigma wrapped in a
riddle indeed, and one that she picked at and poked at and pried apart until
her stressed out parents ended up getting a divorce and moving to separate ends
of the country, neither entirely able to deal with the various pressures of a
life endlessly aired and postulated upon by their tactless and insatiably nosy
child. (Her mother drew the short straw and got custody, which she shared with
her clutch-sister, who had four of her own, and who seemed psychologically
better-equipped to handle the whole child-rearing thing.)
In her young adult years, Mala’s
‘gift’ began to surface, and she grew strange and distant, contemptuous and
even cruel, at times, to her cousins. Her fledgling mental gifts barraging her
with the petty thoughts of her kin, and inflicting her own petulant spite upon
them, their home was torn apart until a prominent occultist of the day, Doctor
Scale, detected her subconscious powers and took her under his metaphorical
wing to train her to control her talents.
And study she did, turning her insatiable drive to an
obsessive understanding of the saurian psyche, and, through her psychic skills,
learning to manipulate and understand the basest drives that guide even those
who think themselves civilized and sentient and free-willed. She came to
recognize the illusion that some call ‘choice,’ and the power of
rationalization. The fiction of ‘self’ she learned to see as a flimsy construct
fashioned after-the-fact by a race of people who acted seconds before they
actually *chose,* and indeed, whose only true ‘choices’ were the excuses they
would later fashion to justify their behavior as being ‘in-character.’
In her studies, she mastered her own ‘hindbrain,’ the
vestigial secondary brain between her hips that her species had once used to
help control their ponderous (and dangerous) tails, and ‘trained’ it to lash
about with frightening efficiency, so that when she turned her back to danger,
in the fashion of her people (having heavily armored back-plates and a soft
vulnerable underbelly), her tail would lash out to strike any foe who came near
her, seemingly of it’s own volition!
She has most recently learned to master her energies into
truly shocking psychokinetic stunts, levitating slowly along, or lifting
greater weights than her frame should be able to bear.
Mala
enjoys using her powers on others. She has recognized how much the so-called sentient
mind is a slave to primitive drives, and feels that people have grown morally
and ethically lazy, accustomed to rationalizing their own darker impulses, and
their effects on society, rather than acknowledging, accepting and learning to
control them. Without accepting that they are all animals at heart, people can
never truly rise above that state and truly become better than the beasts they
look down upon.