Loophole (St. John "Loophole" Latham)

Story: St. John Latham is a lawyer in the high-powered firm of Latham, Strauss. The running joke about him is that nobody's really sure whether the wild card virus has destroyed all his emotions, or he's just a really good lawyer. He has ties to organized crime, but he's never been under suspicion from the authorities.

When Croyd "The Sleeper" Crenson came up with a contagious form of the wild card virus, St. John picked it up. It gave him the ability to turn people into jumpers by having sex with them. Jumpers have the ability to switch bodies with anyone they can see. This power is somewhat unhinging Latham. He has created a whole gang of jumpers who know him as "Prime". Many of them are attractive blond teenage boys, which seem to be his type, but there are also female jumpers. Also, since a jumper can switch bodies with anyone, they can look like anyone.

Powers: Latham's Transform is basically a plot device. The Personal Immunity is to model the fact that he can't be jumped himself, which might be a slightly "unofficial" use of it. The jumpers themselves are really hideous in terms of power, too. Basically, if they can see you (in person, not over TV etc.), they can jump you, then run around in your body while you sit there in theirs going "Huh?". Some people have a variety of defenses against being jumped. These are very specific, and seem to work on a case-to-case basis. For example, when the shapeshifting Jerry Strauss was jumped, the jumper couldn't control his shapeshifting powers and returned to her own body because of the disorientation. I've defined the jumper power as follows:

     8d6 Major Transform (mind transfer), Based on ECV (+1),
     Works vs. EGO, not BODY (+0), Jumpers Body is at -10 STUN but
     under victim's "control" (-1/4), NND (defense is varied) (+2)

All together, it's a 480 pt power. I know that the Mind Transference thing (taken from Ultimate Mentalist for those who don't recognize it) is decidedly optional, and a lot of GMs would probably frown on it. I kind of felt the same way; I don't mind a Transform that changes the target, but this one changes the attacker, too! Still, I can't think of a better way to do it, and it's not like any players are going to be taking it at these point levels. The STUN thing is because people who are in jumpers' bodies usually don't react for the first little while that they're in the new, unfamiliar body. Exceptionally strong-willed people might be able to, though. Maybe some kind of EGO roll, at -5, then +1 for every level on the time chart, would make sense. Except that it should never take more than ten minutes for someone to recover, if they're left in the new body that long.

Oh yeah, and in the books both the Transforms would be permanent, which is a no-no in Hero. I guess the second one (the jumping) could have the reversal condition of being jumped back into your body, but that's kind of cheesy...

Write-up copyright © 1995 by Chuk Goodin (Chuk_Goodin@mindlink.bc.ca); comments about the page layout should be addressed to Jack Wilson (deejay@cu-online.com). Permission granted to duplicate and transmit, as long as this note is not removed.

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