As requested Mr Zert (shatterstar)

[The Dude]

ShatterStar 5-7-3-2 Inherant: Draw 1 card after taking a hit (excluding KO). Discard duplicates.

Bred For Combat - Acts as a level 8 Fighting attack. Shatterstar may make an additional attack against each of target's frontline teammates. (OPD)

Enhanced Regeneration - Remove 1 Hit from Shatterstar's hits from Permanent Record or Current Battle.

Expert Swordsman - Avoid 1 attack with a Fighting icon. Opponent must discard 1 card from hand. Opponent's choice.

Extradimensional Time Traveler - Shatterstar is not effected by Event cards for remainder of game.

Extreme Tactics - For remainder of game, attacks made by Shatterstar with Universe cards are not affected by Special cards already in play. (OPD)

Pit Fighter - Only Shatterstar and target hero may attack, be attacked or defend this battle. (OPD)

Vibratory Shockwave - Acts as a level 7 Strength or Energy attack. If not successful, Shatterstar is -2 to attack for remainder of battle.

X-Force - Shatterstar may make 1 follow up attack after he plays a Teamwork or Ally card for remainder of the game.

I also have a homemade X-Force team card (based exclusively on Liefeld's original team) that I just made last week and haven't even playtested yet.

[Karmanal of Zert]

I was a bit surprised you didn't give him an 8 Fighting on his Power Grid, but the Inherent Ability you gave him wayyy more than makes up for that in my opinion. That's one of the best IA's I've ever seen! I really like most of the Specials you gave him, especially the Extradimensional Time Traveler card. The Expert Swordsman card makes perfect sense although it probably wouldn't see much use in my decks. I also don't think I'd be likely to use the Extreme Tactics OPD. But no official OP character got all usable Specials, so your methods are a little truer to the game than mine where I make all the Specials usable. I'm really interested to see how your X-Force team turns out, when you feel like you've finalized what they're going to get please let us know!

[The Dude]

Shatterstar is one of those borderline heroes. I can see why people would give him an 8F--namely he was raised in a warrior culture and grew up fighting in arena to survive and has little experience with anything but combat. But I had two reasons for deciding he was a 7. 1 - In Shatterstar's first appearance Cable, unarmed, dropped him in two panels (and no one is arguing Cable should be an 8.) and 2 - If I compare Shatterstar to the other 8Fs like Cap or Wolverine (or even Bullseye) I don't seem him lasting five minutes.

Still whenever someone is borderline (I had the same issue with Boba Fett on whether he was 7 or 8 F) I try to make up for giving them a 7 with their inherant and specials--in this case the inherant shows Shatterstar lives for combat so if you wound him he gets more into the fight and he has a opd with an 8F that allows for follow-ups, which I think works as a opd since if he pushes himself he can provide an 8F skill level, but it shows he's not like Wolvie or Cap who can fight at that level naturally all day long. Thus I tried to take the arguments of why Shatterstar might be an 8F and incorporate them into the character while still giving him a 7 which is where I think he more readily fits.

And yea when it comes to designing specials I go for source material realism first rather than just making all my favorites super-characters. So while I have designed a few insane powerhouses (Thanos, General Zod) its only for heroes who are pretty scary powerful in the source material; cause on the flip-side I will make someone like D-man and yea he's max 6 and none of his specials are turning the world on fire but he's still fun cause he's true to the source material and thus his specials are a mix of pro wrestling moves to go with being homeless and hanging out with Cap.

[BigBadHarve]

And yea when it comes to designing specials I go for source material realism first rather than just making all my favorites super-characters. So while I have designed a few insane powerhouses (Thanos, General Zod) its only for heroes who are pretty scary powerful in the source material; cause on the flip-side I will make someone like D-man and yea he's max 6 and none of his specials are turning the world on fire but he's still fun cause he's true to the source material and thus his specials are a mix of pro wrestling moves to go with being homeless and hanging out with Cap.

That's a good way of looking at it - too bad the makers didn't think of that when creating some of the flagship characters. The other thing to look at is deckbuilding balance. Thor, for example, should have sick mo-fo cards for the reasons you outlined - source material realism - as well as his cost to add to a team. 23 points, with no 8 should mean brutal specials. Conversely, a character like Rhino I think is good as is. He's cheap (16 points), a 6 and a 7 on his grid and has some okay cards (albeit not many).

Even Scarlet Spider would be a great character if the idiots governing the rules didn't make up more rules to contradict other rules. His Arachnid Gizmos card could make the difference for that character if playable as written (choose any card from draw pile and play immediately) as opposed to their errata (must be a card usable by Scarlet Spider.)

In designing missing aspects, I tried to gauge the difficulty of assembling a cohesive team based on the 6 characters against the cost of said team and the virtue/penalty on the homebase inherent. For example, The Gamma Base team can be built any way you like without the Homebase card, which offers a penalty. So why would you use it? The Aspects have to be so good that you'd be willing to take the penalty. Whereas something like FF Plaza, which already has the best inherent of all Homebases, would get something simple and usable, but not powerful.

I agree that Shatterstar wouldn't have an 8. Deadpool kicked the tar out of him with no effort. He's born and bred for combat, but lacks imagination which is why other, more worldly characters can get the better of him. Interesting inherent, have you put it into practice to try it out?

-BBH

[Karmanal of Zert]

It's great to hear that you're working on Boba Fett cards, too, TheDude! My buddy Steve who I recently got into OP and I are working on a complete Jedi VS Sith starter OverPower expansion. Have you worked on any other Star Wars characters?

The amount of unusable Special cards in official OP is insane in my opinion, so when I make my home-mades I try to make all of a character's Specials usable, taking into account who actually got those Specials in official OP so that it makes sense given that character's abilities. Since I try to give everyone a full 8 - 9 cards right off the bat and make all of them usable, on its face it looks like all of my guys would pretty much pummel most official OP characters. It's just a matter of using them fairly - only using a few of the Specials when playing against all official cards and rules, being more liberal when playing with alternate rules that buff up the unusables. Mojo has two 6's, is really cheap tournament-limit-wise, and has a lot of great Special cards; I think trying to make most characters more or less comparable to him (depending on how powerful the character is) is a pretty good place to start when making new characters or altering cards for crappy characters to make them more competitive.

[The Dude]

To Harve:

Yes Shatterstar is indeed printed, laminated and has been played two or three times. The inherant is powerful I won't deny that. On its own I don't think its that bad, I mean how many hits do you take before KO? two or three most games and they are usually spread out over a couple battles and its just 1 card that has to be discarded if duplicate. (and he does not draw for the hit that KOs him). The bigger problem comes in with him having a healing card that affects current battle, because he can let a card hit, draw and then heal it the next turn. (I'll add I did not design that card, in fact I did not know Shatterstar had a healing factor from the comics I have read him in--I did design the inherant however as the other Shatterstar was an 8F which I felt was inaccurate).

Anyway the first time I played him I paired him with Maruaders and Shang Chi and was vertigoiing cards to either Shang Chi's Marvels card or Shatter Star's swordsman and avoiding and causing discards at the same time which was fairly viscous (plus Flash was in reserve causing more discards)--this combined synergy was much more dangerous than his inherant; although that came into play too since if I had to take hit I was sending most of them to Shatterstar because he could draw and heal. I'll add we were using our only 1 hero needs to be listed house rule so I had Mojo World as homebase and could let specials through and heal them the next battle (It was this game that made us seriously reconsider letting mojoworld use any team you could form with any one hero on it; although a subsequent Beyonder, Mojo, Reyes, Shadowking deck was equally frightening from that homebase but I digress)


Anyway I was concerned about Shatterstar after the deck won prettily handidly the first time out but my opponent was able to beat me using it (still with mojo world) in a rematch with a strength deck of Hulk (using his Marvels card to prevent the vertigo and the avoids) Strong Guy, Juggernaut and Thing and Any Heroes so DOW (which she got in the second battlee) could shut down homebase negates thus making Hulk's savage unstoppable by the heroes on my Shatterstar team.

So he's not unbeatable even with what I would consider optimal teammates
While without mojo world he's still a low-level tournament level hero but he does not seem overly powerful considering he is a single skill max 7 and does not have any shared defense of his own which is what most tournament teams are built around.
Post Merge: July 10, 2011, 10:04:42 PM
To Zert:

Actually Boba Fett is finished and done I played with him for the first time yesterday. He's the only Star Wars hero I've made (although he has a Jabba the Hutt special). I have every intention of making Yoda one day (an easy 8I and definately a "Do or Do Not, There Is No Try" Special), but other than maybe Vader in the distant future I do not see me making many more Star Wars people. I'm actually making a movie set (only two heroes in so far with The Dude from Big Lebowski being the other) and I have to admit Predator (whose new movie rules it 7 ways from Sunday) Capt. Jack Sparrow and Harry Potter are probably higher on my to do list than Yoda, while I can think of at least a dozen characters I would do before Vader (from Indiana Jones to King Kong and Godzilla).

[breadmaster]

LOVE the idea of non combat, non-comic characters getting overpower cards

howbout spinal tap

e: 6
f: 2
s: 3
i: 2

inherant: opponent -2 to venture total per battle

specials
infinite drummers (OPD): spinal tap can only be ko'd by 30 points AND a 4 power spectrum KO
but these goes to 11... (OPD): acts as a level 11 energy attack...spinal tap may not attack for remainder of battle
wall of sound (OPD): acts as a level 7 fighting or strength attack
nigel tufnel-a fine line between brilliance and stupidity: acts as a level 6 intellect attack.  if successful, tap is +4 to venture
david st hubbins-full time dreamer: acts as a level 4 multipower attack. spinal tap may make 1 additional attack
derek smalls-out of commission: acts as a level 2 fighting attack.  if successful, acts as a level 10 anypower card (picture w/herpes mouth sores)
ian faith-problem solver: remove 1 hit from hits from current battle or permanent record
impervious to attacks: negate the effects of a special card (picture of shark sandwich with 'shit sandwich' stamped on it)
cover band: spinal tap may place and play any 'folksmen' special cards for remainde of game

[Karmanal of Zert]

Hahahaha! I died laughing on "but these go to 11..."! Nice.

That is an interesting topic unto itself. My friend came across this site and told me about it:

http://underworld.fortunecity.com/lylat/765/overpower/opc.htm

They have regular comic home-mades as well as some Star Wars ones, but I had never thought of making Godzilla or King Kong before visiting there. Check them out in the "Giants" section. Unfortunately there are only Hero cards, but still pretty cool!