Totentanz kills Marvel Earth

[MJ12 Commando]

Due to act of Divis Mal, the potentially most dangerous (but not most powerful) Nova in Aberrant is dropped onto Marvel Earth with one goal. To cut short the lives of all the heroes and villains on Earth. In this case these are defined by guys who have their own comics or are featured repeatedly in other people's comics.

As far as tactical information goes, Totentanz has a copy of all the Civil War comics to use, and knowledge that they are essentially accurate. For purposes of the debate, Quantum Leech WILL work on metahumans no matter their stated origins, draining them of the juice they use to power their death-rays and other powers and whatnot (although superhuman physical/mental abilities and the like will not be affected).

Normally I wouldn't state that but it's a significant portion of his dangerousness, so we'll keep it.

The debate takes place during Marvel Civil War. Totentanz is dropped onto Marvel Earth at the start of the series and has whatever equipment he can requsition from DeVries he thinks he might need and can carry.

Is this quantum powered grim reaper enough to kill the Marvel gallery, or will their disparate powers defeat him?

[Havok]

What the fuck is a Totentanz?

[MJ12 Commando]

What the fuck is a Totentanz?

He's a sig character from the WW RPG Aberrant.

Think Batman and the Punisher's illegitmate love-child, with none of the morally redeeming qualities of either, no compunctions against causing mass damage, and being pretty much superhuman in every respect.

He's a pretty nasty combatant, capable of catching bullets without much difficulty, generating a force field providing a fair amount of protection (well, fair in comic book terms), the ability to drain your power-juice, invisibility (against anything sensing in the EM spectrum), anti-psychic defenses, superstrength (10 ton lifts and whatnot), and is a tactical genius to boot. He also has the ability to heavily disorient people fighting him, endure incredible amounts of pain, can run without making a sound on a bed of leaves (a la a ninja), and can analyze a combat situation and react to it consciously far before a normal human can.

And to top that off, like I implied by saying Batman + Punisher, he's a crack shot *without* his powers, is an incredible martial artist, computer hacker, athlete, and is pretty much peak human, not factoring in the benefits of his nova capabilities. (listed above)

So basically, an incredibly skilled human who has, on top of that, superspeed, some superstrength and a good amount of super-durability, the ability to turn invisible, stun/disorient people, suck away what powers their abilities, and has no compunctions against using the right tool for the right job.

[alexholker]

How long can he remain invisible? How close does he have to be before he can start draining "power-juice"? Does he have any flight capability?

[Stark]

So we've got an OP with zero information and another post with nothing quantifiable ('without much', 'fair amount', and other nonsense stuff). Great thread guys.

Let's just spam pet wank characters!

[alexholker]

Let's just spam pet wank characters!

Sounds good to me.

Worst case scenario: Totentanz dies of old age, Mr. Immortal respawns.

[MJ12 Commando]

So we've got an OP with zero information and another post with nothing quantifiable ('without much', 'fair amount', and other nonsense stuff). Great thread guys.

Let's just spam pet wank characters!

Because, you know, I'm supposed to know exactly what information you want on demand. The OP mentioned the system he came from and he's reasonably well-known in that system. Assuming as a thought experiment that say, Star Wars was fairly obscure, I'd still think that I wouldn't have to cite exactly who Darth Vader was if I mentioned him and "Star Wars" in the same sentence. :p

But if you want an infodump have an infodump.

His full character block is on Aberrant: Elites, page 28, with these notable abilities (save for his mundane ones). These are his powers in the RPG, so bear with me for a fraction of a moment before I get to explaining them. And no, do NOT mention Aberrant d20 at all. Please.:

Mega-Attributes (superhuman physical/mental capabilities):
Mega-Strength 2 (Quantum Leap)
Mega-Dexterity 5 (Accuracy, Rapid Strike, Catfooted)
Mega-Stamina 2 (Adaptability, Durability)

Mega-Perception 2 (Blindfighting, Bloodhound)
Mega-Intelligence 2 (Analyze Weakness, Tactical Prodigy)
Mega-Wits 2 (Quickness X 3, Enhanced Initiative)

Quantum Powers (actual powers):
Disorient 2
Force Field 5
Healing 3
Invisibility 2
Psychic Shield 5
Quantum Leech 4 (Energy Siphon)
Quantum Regeneration 2

So let's start with explaining mega-attributes first. They're grossly superhuman abilities caused by the quantum power channeling node in a nova's brain (get used to me saying quantum a lot. If you are allergic to 20th century buzzwords this may be problematic.) transforming their body into something that can be many things, but human isn't one of them.

Mega-Strength 2 (Aberrant Core P 156): "When your moving truck breaks down, you just pick it up and carry it to your new home." Totentanz can deadlift 10 tons, in addition to his basic human strength. He can wield a GAU-8A and fire it without ripping his arms out of his sockets with recoil.

Quantum Leap allows him to jump absolutely ludicrous distances using his quantum go-juice. His vertical jump using it is, on average, six kilometers up and twenty-four horizontally. Without using it his vertical jump is a much, much more reasonable 20m, but that's without aids and whatnot and still enough for a lot of tactical flexibility.

(as a note mega-attributes at least somewhat break the laws of physics for comic book effect and novas can never hurt themselves with their own powers or the side effects of such. Hence someone can make a leap with multi-kilometer and still get injured by being hit in the face by a tank shell, or run at Mach 3 and still worry about bullets hitting them. This will come up a lot.)

Mega-Dexterity 5 (Core P 158): "You can perform acts of manual dexterity so precise not even machines can match them." The level before that allows someone possessing it to pluck bullets out of the air with about as much difficulty as a normal person has blocking a punch or other melee attack. He can control a 30mm gatling gun firing 150 rounds per second of DU ammunition well enough to use it against people.

Accuracy is just what it does. Incredibly precise attacks. Unfortunately it doesn't come with fluff on exactly how much more precise you get, so all you get to go on is the dice bonus, which is somewhere between "as accurate with a gun using iron sights as someone else without this enhancement (but everything else being equal) with a scope, and "about as good as having a computerized smart-aiming sight" (the ECS from Trinity).

Cat-footed allows extremely quiet movement. The flavor text is "A nova with this enhancement is the stealthiest of the stealthy, able to walk on dead leaves without making a sound or run through sand without leaving footprints."

Rapid strike is the Agent blurry punch, basically. "A nova with this enhancement can deliver a blur of rapid-fire punches or kicks to a single target. While the individual blows are not any more powerful than an ordinary strike, they strike so fast and so furious (sic) that the cumulative effect is much more powerful."

Mega-Stamina 2 (Core P 160): Mega-Stamina is superhuman resistance to injury, fatigue, and the like. Totentanz here has 2 levels of it, with the fluff description being "torturers despair of breaking you", which isn't as descriptive or impressive sounding as the one above it (Mega-Stamina 1), which is "you can go for weeks without sleep." Someone with Mega-Stamina is capable of functioning unimpaired even after taking grievous injury. They're also much more resistant to being injured in the first place, and take a bit more damage to put down.

Adaptability means that there isn't much in the natural world that can hurt Totentanz. He can survive in outer space without a spacesuit near indefinitely, never needs to eat, sleep, or breathe, can swim in the Marianas Trench, stand inside a firestorm, and come out completely unharmed. Strangely enough, this doesn't protect at all from actual directed injury. Flamethrowers hurt just as much as before, but a hostile environment is his best friend.

Durability allows Totentanz to channel energy from attacks away from him, turning lethal attacks into attacks that only do minor, fast-fading damage. Or, like the fluff text says, "reducing an instant-kill attack to a 'gee, that stung' level of injury."

Mega-Perception 2 (Core P 162): Mega-Perception is superhuman sensory acuity. They see better, hear better, smell more accurately, taste more precisely, and the like. Mega-Perception 2 turns "the tiniest details" into "information beacons". Mega-Perception 1 means that the nova's peripheral vision and the details he isn't paying much attention to are still as easily remembered and easily percieved, for lack of a better term, as something a normal person is paying attention to ("You remember the license plate numbers of all the cars you just walked past in the parking lot.")

Blindfighting: He can fight while blind just as well as he can with his eyes open. Obviously he can't see the enemy, but by some combination of smell, touch, hearing, and taste, he can sense them well enough to punch them in the face.

Bloodhound: Totentanz can track people by their smell about as well as the dog of the same name can.

Mega-Intelligence 2 (Core P 164): Totentanz not only thinks faster, he has more sudden insights than a normal person. He outstrips supergeniuses by an impressive amount, and can do advanced calculus without much if any effort without any tools (and given the basic calculus problems I've seen in physics and engineering, we're talking mathematical savant levels of ability... except applied to every mental field), and generally applies this to breaking things and people.

Analyze Weakness: Totentanz can perceive the weak points of whatever he's looking at. Sometimes it might be a physical weak point, where hitting it hard enough might be more likely to cause a crack, other times it's a weakness in a less tangible form. But he not only can do this, he can do this quickly enough that it's usable in breaking people's faces in better.

Tactical Prodigy: He can analyze the battlefield and forces arrayed, and use whatever assets he has most effectively to give him the desired result. He's basically a one man command staff, including all the analysts needed to pore over the battlefield and find minor bits of information that might be important.

Mega-Wits 2 (Core P 168): Totentanz can stay calm and collected while in the worst of firefights. Mega-Wits also represents superhuman speed of thought (rather than the superhuman reflexes someone with Mega-Dexterity has).

Enhanced Initiative: A nova with this ability is capable of analyzing a combat situation faster than any human (or even another Mega-Witty nova without this ability)

Quickness: Max Payne 1 style bullet-time is probably the best analogy I've got for this. It doesn't speed your body up any, but it means you have more time to think and plan your blows, allowing that barrage of snap shots that you put out seemingly by reflex to be much better aimed and accurately placed. What fluff text there is for this is useless.

So now, powers. The main powers Totentanz has that aren't self explanatory are Disorient, Quantum Leech, and Quantum Regeneration. The rest of it I'll try to get the fluff and whatever might be relevant transcribed.

Force Field: Force Field is basically what you think it does. Creates a force field around Totentanz, adds some extra protection, makes it harder to smear him across pavement, etc. On average Totentanz can produce a force field that has a bit less protection than the average main battle tank.

Psychic Shield: Forget about reading the mind of someone who has this up. He's specifically resistant to being brain-fried, telepathically found or communicated with (of course this feature can be turned off), having illusions inserted into his mind, or mind control. Generally powers that directly mess around with the mind aren't going to help you. It specifically does not protect against stuff like manipulating emotions, pheromones, or similar methods of indirect mental influence.

Healing: Nearly instantly heal damage to yourself or others. It can even be used to cause (nearly?) instant regeneration of limbs. All of this tissue regeneration takes place on a timescale useful enough that you can use it to prolong your lifespan while being hit in the face.

Disorient: Gives people nauseas or debilitating hallucinations of fear or something. In any case it's intended, no matter how the end result is reached, to make someone incapable of practical defensive action. It doesn't last long (given Totentanz's stat block it's not likely to last for more than a few seconds) but being heavily disoriented isn't going to help you fight, and a few seconds can be critical.

Invisibility: The nova becomes invisible in the entire EM spectrum (going all the way up to gamma rays and all the way down to radar). It doesn't help against someone using sonar, listening, trying to smell the nova, or the like, but eyes, optical sensors, and a lot of modern detection gear aren't going to be useful.

Quantum Leech: Suck juice away from the other guy and use it for yourself. Really it's not terribly easy to quantify past that, but if anyone has questions I'll try.

Quantum Regeneration: Not terribly relevant in most cases, it just means he can get the juice needed to fuel his powers and abilities back much faster if he can get a little while to relax or sleep or recover similarly.

I am hoping (possibly futilely) that this will help now. I'm now going to pore through the Core and its stories to find other information which might be useful.

[Stravo]

I find it mildly amusing that someone name drops a character from a game system that maybe half a dozen people on this board have played and then get pissy when people essentially go "Huh?" then Proceed to even attempt to compare Star Wars to an RPG that few people have heard of or played. Star Wars is a cultural phenemenon. Darth Vader is one of the most recognizable villains in history. Its a cultural touchstone that generations know or at least recognize and on top of that this is a board dedicated to Star Wars. Aberrent is an RPG played by a small segment of the gaming community and a far far smaller segment of this board judging by the torrent of responses so far. You think maybe you could have chosen a better comparison for your thought experiment?

It has long been a rule here that if you're going to drop some obscure character into a vs. thread you assume we know nothing about him and provide as much information as possible for people to make a judgment call. Personally, I always think that if a character is that obscure why even bother making a vs thread for them since most people here probably won't respond in any meaningful way since we don't know them but that's just me.

But sure, somehow, this is Stark's fault for asking for more information on an obscure character from an obscure RPG.

[MJ12 Commando]

Some other stuff from the Core comics and whatnot that might be relevant:

All novas have almost zero body fat, are pretty much immune to normal disease and toxins, and whatnot. The news show that they used as a comic said that a Nova would have to be chugging pure ethanol to try and get a buzz, let alone get drunk. Nova medicines have to be custom tailored because so few drugs work against them, and the like.

Raoul Orzaiz (who is not a combatant and doesn't have the same combatant power spread) is capable of eating small arms fire without a scratch according to the core. Totentanz has only marginally less durability naked and wears a eufiber (notspandex) bodysuit that when fully charged provides equivalent protection to small arms fire as the stuff SWAT guys wear, but full-body. It stiffens to protect against impact or redirects energy attacks away from the user, allowing this level of protection over the entire body without any loss of actual mobility.

If anyone else familiar with the Aberrant system and setting knows any more feats I'd be happy to look them up and transcribe them.

[MJ12 Commando]

I find it mildly amusing that someone name drops a character from a game system that maybe half a dozen people on this board have played and then get pissy when people essentially go "Huh?" then Proceed to even attempt to compare Star Wars to an RPG that few people have heard of or played.

Again, as I said, the thought experiment would be reducing the people who watched SW by a few orders of magnitude and then namedropping both the character and the system. The very purpose of using SW is specifically because it's a cultural icon. It's an analogy. A character fairly well known by people familiar to the setting is a character fairly well known. The point wasn't ever me being pissy, the point was that although not well known in absolute terms, he would be well known by the people familiar with Aberrant (and I know there's at least a handful on these boards).

I will concede that it needed a lot better wording but I'm typing this at 6 AM here without sleep. :p

I posted a mention of the character who is well-known enough for people who are familiar with Aberrant that they would be able to recognize him without much difficulty. It's a very poorly worded thought experiment but this is a forum, not an essay that's aiming to win some sort of prize for convincing people.

But sure, somehow, this is Stark's fault for asking for more information on an obscure character from an obscure RPG.

I tried to provide information, it wasn't specific enough, but then that's all that needs to be said. "Not specific enough on this or that point. Tell me more." He made a vaguely insulting response, I gave a vaguely insulting retort and what he wanted to the best of my current ability.

I never intended to blame him or do anything more than vent a little bit of my (relatively minor) annoyance at being insulted. This is the internet after all, we swap insults like fricking trading cards, and then we let go of it unless they're unforgivable. Same principle. He snaps at me a bit, I snap at him a bit, in the end we aren't actually very angry at each other.

And an obscure RPG I'll grant you, but Totentanz isn't an obscure character in terms of people familiar with the RPG.

[Ghost Rider]

So wait, you name drop a character from a semi obscure RPG and expect people to fucking just know? And fuck if you gave anything except some wanking mixed with "He can do this and this".

Locking if really you cannot get how bad I despise when one person decides to go "I wonder..."