Doctor Dread 7 (21)

Early Access

Doctor Dread is larger than life thanks to her brilliant mind, her media savvy, and the robotic armor she uses to enhance her otherwise normal abilities. Indeed, Doctor Dread has become the most feared terrorist on the planet. She uses her abilities to extort money, influence, and technology from the rich and powerful, whether her victims are individuals, governments, corporations, or superheroes.

Alicia Coleridge is Doctor Dread’s secret identity. Born into relative obscurity, she received a full scholarship to the Russell Institute of Technology, where she studied the effects of radioactive substances on living tissue. In a freak lab accident, her fiancé was slain, and Alicia went insane with grief, leading her to build the Doctor Dread armor. She plows the vast wealth she accumulates through terrorism into research into the rejuvenation of dead flesh. She hopes to one day bring back her dead love, whose body she keeps in suspended animation.

Assume that Doctor Dread has three power shifts in intelligence and two in resilience. These shifts are already figured into her modifications and other stats.

Doctor Dread is usually accompanied by a handful of robot minions.

Dread’s robot minion: level 3; Armor 1; long-range laser attack inflicts a moderate wound

Against mid-rank superheroes, increase her health to 60 and her Armor to 6; increase her robots’ levels to 4. Against high-rank superheroes, increase her health to 80, increase her Armor to 8, and ease her attacks and defenses; increase her robots’ levels to 5 and their Armor to 3.

Motive: Wealth, reanimate dead fiancé

Environment: Wherever money can be extorted

Health: 40

Damage Inflicted: Major wound

Armor: 4

Movement: Short; long when flying

Modifications: Intellect defense and deception as level 8; understand, repair, and craft advanced technology as level 10

Combat: Doctor Dread’s armor allows her to exist without outside air (or air pressure), food, or water for up to ten days at a time. As an action, she can activate one of the following armor abilities:

• Barricade: Establish an immobile, two-dimensional field of transparent force 10 feet by 10 feet (3.5 m by 3.5 m) for ten minutes.
• Energy Cloak: Create an energy field that gives her +5 Armor against one kind of attack (heat, cold, or magnetism) for ten minutes.
• Fade: Become invisible for one minute, or until she makes an attack.
• Plasma Blast: Long-range blast of heat and electricity that inflicts a major wound.

Interaction: Doctor Dread is slightly mad, but that’s normally disguised by her amazing brilliance. She is an egomaniac but will negotiate in return for a promise of wealth or biomedical lore she doesn’t already know.

Use: The PCs are called to handle a hostage situation at a party where Doctor Dread is holding many of the city’s wealthy elite captive; she promises to let them go for a large payment into her offshore accounts.

Loot: Most of Doctor Dread’s considerable wealth is tied up in online accounts, two or three secret fortresses, and cutting-edge biological research equipment.

GM Intrusion: Doctor Dread uses a function built into her robotic armor that is the perfect solution for her current predicament: healing herself, teleporting away, disintegrating a barrier, or whatever is needed.