I may be playing Psylocke in an upcoming game. What are some good comics to research her personality and powers? Thank you in advance.
Psylocke is originally Betsy Braddock, sister to Captain Britain, raised in a rich family. Her violet hair and eyes are natural. She has psionic powers, including telepathy primarily, and is able to control people too. She became an X man after the mutant massacre where Kitty, Kurt and Peter were wounded. Her personality was kind, gentle and a bit uncertain, though brave when she needed to be, even to the point of focusing Sabretooth's attention on her and away from the wounded. During the Oz episodes, she got body armour to compensate for her lack of combat training. She was made invisible to cameras with the other X men who fought the Adversary. She had a vision about her own death at the hands of the Reavers, and entered the Siege Perilous. After that, she was replaced by an asian woman trained by the Hand ninjas, who had a very different style and personality, but held the name Psylocke for a time. She was likely the original Soulknife, focusing her psychic powers into a mind blade extending from her hand like Wolvie's claws. She was aggressive, lethal and sexual. Betsy Braddock fell in love with the much younger Cypher, while asian Psylocke (Kwannon?) had an on/off relationship with Archangel. I believe Betsy has returned, but I stopped reading the comics before that happened.
|
Do you plan to usr a soulknife class or are you playing a system designed for super hero powers?
Soulknife has been published 4 ways to my knowledge. 1st as a prestige class in the 3.o Psionics handbook. Then as a 20 level base class all itself in the 3.5 Expanded sionics handbook. Then reprinted in a Dreamscared Press book Psionics Unleaded, and reprinted again in tbeir"Ultimate Psionics compilation book. Be warned "Ultimate Psionics" is not actually a Paizo published book. Many 3rd party companys use the title Ultimate to make.it should like it is a Paizo book. I love it myself but I don't like the practice if they to make it sound like an official Paizo book itself.
The 3rd edition stuff is legallf free online as it was part if the open game license.
Do not be put off by it being psionic with the bad reputation psioncs has. For one, it does not even use the PowerPoint system that most ill informed(people who never read the Psionics rules themselves and fail to recognize people "abusing" Psionics were actually cheating instead) complainers have issues with, for another, it was considered one of the weaker classes in thr tier system, so little chNce someone would complain it as too good.
Ultimate Psionics is allowed and it is gestalt.
|
|
Psylocke is originally Betsy Braddock, sister to Captain Britain, raised in a rich family. Her violet hair and eyes are natural.
She's been shown pre-dye job as a blonde, like her brother (back when she was just a spy / supermodel. Ah, the life of a comic book superhero!). She's also only part human, being, along with her brother, from another dimensional line of fae-types.
She used to describe her powers as being a 'psycho-blaster,' a primarily offensive telepath that shorted out people's brains with mental blasts. After losing her eyes, she got better at non-combat uses of telepathy, to tap into others minds to see from their eyes, allowing her to function as if not blind, as long as sufficient people were around to give her a view of her surroundings.
By the time she started hanging with the X-Men, she developed the raft of additional powers that X-telepaths have, like mind control, eidetic memory, absorbing skills and teaching other people new skills and alien languages etc. in seconds, astral projection, etc.
She also had precognition, to an extent, but it's been mostly forgotten over the years.
She's currently still in Kwannon's Asian body, Kwannon having returned in her original British (half fae) body and then died of the Legacy Virus. She also had bionic eyes for a time, but those eyes were in the British body, and aren't relevant to her current Asian body.
Over the last decade she's flip-flopped from a telepath using a telepathic blade to a telekinetic using a telekinetic katana, and back again. I honestly have no idea which she has currently, but telepathy, IMO, is more 'iconic' for her. When she manifested telepathy originally, a purple butterfly 'power signature' would appear framing her face and the face of whoever's mind she was reading, but it's not clear if that was ever visible to other people, like the Phoenix's fiery eagle power signature, or just artistic license like the 'pink fluff' that appears around anything that a telekinetic is lifting.
Briefly she also had some tattoos and shadow-teleportation powers from exposure to a mystical energy source named the Crimson Dawn, but those seem to have gone away. (Probably best to emulate those with levels of ShadowDancer, if one cared to do so.)
With Gestalt, some sort of Ninja/Psion (telepath) might be suitable, although Soulknife could probably do a lot of it justice without being gestalt at all.
It's probably not pertinent, but her cybernetic eyes were also 24/7 recording and transmitting devices used by an extradimensional media mogul (MOJO!) to boost his network's ratings and provide his subjects with on-demand entertainment. He still (very infrequently) tries to get her back "on the job" for him (note, she never agreed to this "job" in the first place) - often with perilous and deadly results.
So, you know, your character could end up with an entity from some forsaken hell-dimension chasing after her, eventually.
There is the mind blade magus archetype as well