I'm terribly uncertain about the Innovation channel, is it magick or isn't it and damn it seems to be pretty powerful for that level too.

Also perhaps the 71-90 channel could be fleshed out a bit more. Maybe the Avatar survives but suffers reductions in his stats or loses a number of points off his skill from surviving or something because the combination of the last two channels seem like Mad Scientist are nearly impossible to kill, more so than Masterless Men or Dark Stalkers or some of the more combat capable avatars.

Maybe instead they could expand on the whole able to create weird machines. Perhaps at first they can glimpse underlying structure of the universe better alowing for improvements to efficiency or something to there devices, maybe they can subsitute elaborate seeming building materials into their devices to achive amazing results letting them cobble things together quickly, and combine wildly divergent technologies then a further channel would let them bend laws of physics (make computers that process at much speeds or something) or maybe with a matched or critical success actually break the laws of physics.

I really like your idea about combining divergent technology, and yeah, the avatar does seem too resilient. I was operating on the steretypes of movies and media more than the actual science and madness.

I'll see if I can cobble together a revised version after final exams are done.

How about this for the 2nd Channel (it comes from a mad-inventor type Avatar from a game I'm running):

Once per day, you may make an Avatar roll to create an object or objects equivalent to the Mechanomancer Adept ability. You produce a number of Minor charges equal to the sum of the die roll; a matched success or Critical provides the equivalent of one Significant charge. This requires tools, time, and raw materials; unlike Mechanomancy, there is no limitation on the technology level that may be incorporated into the device.
If you are already a Mechanomancer, you may use this channel to provide charges for a device you are already working on (though, in this case, there is still the technology limit).

Oh man, I've been waiting for The Mad Scientist for so long!

I agree with Unfinishedbusinessman that it would be nice if it could combine technology, or at least be more inventive.

I don't think mixing them with Mechanomancers are a good idea, as a mad scientist's motive is very unlike clockworkers. I imagine them as being rivals - the modern (destructive) concept of The Mad Scientist against the age-old (constructive-well, sort of)
Mechanomancer both seeking to be "the king of technology".

This is a movie Avatar, and not a real one. If you are playing a Hollywood-type UA campaign, ok, sure, but... Oh, what is so annoying is that only a non-scienteist would actually sit down and write something like this. It's similar to "the Superhero" that surfaced a while ago, which was also bad because like Mad Scientists they don't actually, you know, exist...

Now, if you would call it "the Excentric Scientist" or something like that (because, believe me, there are plenty of exccentric people sitting in insitutions for theoretical physics around the world), scale the unnaturallness WAY down, remove every reference to Frankenstein.

Oh, and scientists rarely actually build anything, engineers do that.

One of the ways you can spot an archetype that doesn't work is when you can't think of a single person who might actually channel it at a high level, and behold, there are no examples of "suspected avatars in history" in this writeup.

No, don't like it.

I was distracted when I wrote this up, so the suspected avatars ended up under Masks instead. Specifically, they're Keely, Tesla, and Mengele. Tesla is the best known.

Whether the avatar is more real than others is a debate for people with degrees in existentialist philosophy.

I will concede that normal scientists rarely build anything... most of their time is spent jockeying for grants and tenure and suchlike. If you can't get people to back your work, you have to build your own hardware yourself. Speaking from personal experience here now.

If anyone has ascended as the Mad Scientist, or Eccentric Scientist, it's got to be Tesla. Tesla was a Scientist first and foremost though, all the really crazy UFO stuff that people usually connect with Tesla had nothing to do with him.

In defense of both the Superhero and the Mad Scientist, Mattias, NOTHING in UA really exists.

I wrote the Superhero archetype after a rather enjoyable UA game in which the PCs actually started to take on super-heroic personas based on their in-game abilities. I figured later that if a group like this, or perhaps even Team Salvation, managed to do something spectacular, like save the world on TV or something, then a Superhero Archetype might arrise. There were obviously no REAL suspected avatars in history since the archetype's envisioning, refinement, and final embodiment all occured between Action Comics #1 and in-game history that I made up. In this world, no, there aren't any superheroes and I don't think there will ever be. In UA, though, super powers ARE possible, and thus so are superheroes, and thus so is a Superhero Archetype.

The same principle applies to the Mad Scientist. Since we have a make-belive world, why not put something in the Rumors section on this very site saying that Dr. Frankenstein existed, and that Mary Shelley's work was embellished history rather than a work of complete fiction? After all, we already have Lancelot running around as a demon obsessed with finding the grail and a man who can use his children as proxies because their names are anagrams of his. Who's to say that, in the UA universe, there weren't eccentric noblemen delving too deeply into the strange world of science?

(to be continued ...)

(... right here.)

It's make-believe to begin with. Anything goes. With things as outlandish as Carnals, Tenembrae, and the Ritual of the Prowess of Bruce lee, should the line really be drawn at superheroes and mad scientists? You're right- superheroes don't exist in the real world, and neither do mad scientists. But we're not playing in the real world. We're not even playing in a realistic world. We're playing in one where certain people ARE more powerful than locomotives, and clockworks make sandwiches for today's over-worked mechanomancers; in other words, a world in which superheroes and mad scientists are well withing the realm of possibility. In fact, given what I've read and played through, I would say that these two would be among the more believable additions to an Unknown Armies game.

When powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men are possible, who's to say that there were never those who put on masks and capes and captured the public eye with their daring do? Who's to say that others, inspired by works like Shelley's, captivated by the invention of electricity, and driven by the evidence of the Occult Underground, did not seek the unknown to the point of insanity?

Apparently, you would, Mattias. I would remind you we're playing in a big game of "let's pretend," and I say that, in a world like the one we're dealing with, both would be very possible.

--The Detective--

Aw, Crap.

*Bruce Lee.

Sorry Bruce.

--The Detective--

I have no problem with powered masked avengers (spandex optional) and Tesla-based magic. None! I'm personally not much for superheroes (I'd like to try playing a supers game someday to see what the fuss is about, so that particular opinion might change any time), but glowing tubes and sparking machinery will find it's way into MUAC really soon now.

What I DO have problems with is trying to shoehorn them into avatars. They are so obviously adepts! Just the fact that every superhero has a DIFFERENT set of powers settles that for me. If they were avatars they would be much more alike...

Most of my complaints on this site are about avatars that should be adepts and adepts that should be avatars, I've written a long, not very well thought-through ramble about it somwhere in the dustier corners of the site.

Ah, therein lies the problem. Find a superhero game and read the flavor-text, and you'll find there's more linking superheroes than costumes- common themes of heroism and sacrifice you'll find with any masked crimefighter. Or don't find a super-game; if superheroes aren't your cup of tea then whatever. But take it from an expert who DOES like them; they are alike enough to be lumped together as superheroes, and they're alike enough to be recognized as such by the IC.

After all, Warriors come in all shapes and sizes, with different means and methods, some of them not even violent. It's the same story with MVPs; some of them (such as the suggested Lancelot) don't even play sports. But they use their talents in similar fashions. They get their figurehead, don't they? In the same way, the fact that superheroes have different powers and/or skills means nothing, really, since they all use those powers and skills in the same way: fighting for justice from behind a mask.

As for having different powers, the third channel of the Superhero was very open-ended just for that purpose: you basically get a GM approved superpower. I left some examples like superstrength and invisibility for scaling purposes. The other channels are not superpowers. They're subtle but helpfull abilities based on the themes of determined, dramatic heroism that link all superheroes.

As for the Mad Scientist, I didn't write it so I'm not sure how to defend it further.

--The Detective--

Which is where I come in.

I'll admit that the first version was too movie-like. Using ideas from the others who have commented thus far, I'm working on Avatar: Mad Scientist version 2.0 right now. However, it's been slow going. First there was final exam time, then Christmas-related chaos, and now the new year. But it is getting done, fragment by fragment.

I spent part of the season reading Paranoia. They have taken the UA approach of street-global-universal a step... not exactly further, but sideways, perhaps? They have made three different flavours, three different ways the world works. In Paranoina it's Zap (stoopid lethal), Classic (fun and deadly) and Straight (dark satire). In UA that would translate to: what?

I suggest:

Realistic (skilled cops that give a damn force the occult underground underground)

Cranked (lot's of wierd things happening, some of the stuff we see in weekly world news today actually makes headlines in "real" magazines)

HHH (Whole-Hog-Hollywood)

Thoughts?