Reinspired by a thread on RPG.net made by some mad genius named Moochava.

Attributes: The Mad Scientist goes headlong where angels fear to tread, blithely steals fire from the gods, and is absolutely, positively sure that he’s right. From his intellectual heights, he can see the many possible directions humanity and science can go, and makes grand claims justified by his lofty genius. And all too often, he reaches too far, flies too close to the sun, and plummets to his doom.

But if he survives, he’ll just climb back up again. The vision of a Mad Scientist is too great, to beautiful to abandon. The loss of a few bones, limbs, or the lives of millions is a small price to pay to acheive that dream, whatever it may be.

The dark side of the Mad Scientist is fairly obvious to anyone in Western Society; recklessness, arrogance, and a lack of compassion or value for human life. The more positive side comes from the diligent researchers determined to make the world better somehow, who have discarded conventional theory and technique. These mad scientists may not be any more sociable or sane than the negative ones, but at least they’re working for a world with unlimited electrical power and dirt cheap cancer eradicating pills, instead of a world plunged into darkness by an army of carniverous pigeon-men.

Taboo: What defines a Mad Scientist from a conventional scientist is his madness. He sees the world differently, either slightly off-kilter or completely off his rocker, or anywhere in between. Whatever he thinks, it’s certainly not objective in the normal scientific sense. That said, what with avatar powers being what they are, a Mad Scientist does not have to actually be Mad; they can get away with having no failed notches on any of their madness meters.

The problem with this is that they must still act mad, or at least eccentric. Even among the most open minded company, this is probably going to result in a few stares, some nervous avoidance, or suggestions of therapy. Most people and groups will not be so tactful about it. In short, if the character does not already have some failed notches, they probably soon will, on the Helplessness, Isolation, or Self gauges. If they are strong-willed enough to avoid those failed notches, they run the risk of accumulating enough hardened notches to make them sociopathic — and making their Avatar: Mad Scientist skill completely useless. (Taking the extreme opposite approach, keeping up that kind of slightly crazy act for long enough could cause confusion as to whether it really is just an act, or an actual mental deviance at some point. Realizing that is certainly worth a Self check or two.)

In short, insanity isn’t an occupational requirement, but it can be a hazard. The Mad Scientist must appear to the uninformed observer to march to the beat of a different drummer.

The Mad Scientist also strives forward constantly, building better mousetraps and even better mice. This doesn’t mean they eschew tried and true methods or the common place, only that they constantly seek improvement. If you don’t take a little time in each game session to go off on some research binge, or experimental all-nighter, the GM can dock your Avatar skill.

Symbols: The lab coat, safety goggles, and complicated chemistry apparatus are extremely powerful symbols of the Mad Scientist; nothing says “Look at me! I’m playing God!” like a goggled man in a white lab coat holding a laboratory flask of bubbling and/or glowing liquid. Other symbols include poor personal hygeine (every day is a bad hair day!) and physical disfigurement. A good maniacal laugh every now and then is good, even if you’re just celebrating victory in a computer game, or managed to find a bargain on turkey gizzards at the supermarket.

Suspected Avatars: Nikola Tesla, proponent of the alternating current power grid in use today, is widely considered to be the Ascended Mad Scientist. (Who he ended up replacing is not so widely agreed on.) Thomas Edison was likely an avatar as well, and their mutual enmity could have stemmed from a lost or continuing contest over who would be the Godwalker. Albert Einstein may have channeled the Mad Scientist in a positive light when developing his Relativity theories. Dr. Joseph Mengele’s experiments in Auschwitz certainly could have been an extremely negative manifestation of the Mad Scientist’s pursuit of knowledge heedless of the human cost.

Masks: Victor Frankenstein, Rotwang, Dr. Strangelove, Emmett “Doc” Brown

Channels:

1-50%: Specialization is for INSECTS! While a Mad Scientist may have a degree in one specific field, if they have a field at all, they have picked up enough knowledge through brainstorming and curiousity to let them get by in any field they didn’t explicitly study for. And some of those tangents have had interesting ramifications for their chosen field. That is, a Mad Scientist can flip-flop any roll using a scientific or technical skill to make it better, as long as the result would be under the Avatar: Mad Scientist skill.

51-70%: No Funding, No Problem Mad Scientists do not often get research grants; if their theories aren’t too strange to discount out of hand, usually the lack of social skills, or just the eccentric behavior, will ruin any chance of weaseling money out of established academic and business interests. So Mad Scientists have learned to make do with what they can find around the house, becoming as skilled in the practical applications of science as the theoretical. A Mad Scientist could make a Mass Spectrometer out of a microwave and her car’s spark plug, or do DNA testing with two cotton swabs, a coffee mug, and an ultraviolet light. What this means is that with a successful Avatar: Mad Scientist roll, the character can do with improvised tools and primitive conditions what normal scientists can only do with very expensive doohickeys. Any negative shift that might be applied to their skills due to not having the right facilities or gear is not applied.

71-90%: Behold My Magnificent Creation! At this level, the very theatrical elements of movie and comic book science become available to the avatar. Taking any scientific skill she possesses, the Mad Scientist can strip off the chrome, pump it full of steroids, and then give it rocket engines, metaphorically or literally. Successfully creating a Project using this channel requires two successful rolls, one against the scientific skill in question, and the other against the Avatar: Mad Scientist skill.

If both rolls succeed, the device/creature/drug works as planned.

If the science roll fails but the avatar skill succeeds, the Project goes very wrong — a robot tries to destroy its creator, a freeze ray won’t stop shooting icy death, a weather control device starts up a hurricane and won’t turn off… but not right away. These Haywire Projects can be used as a normal Project, but there’s a bit too much madness in proportion to the science, and they are not reliable. If the skill rolled to use them should ever hit a match, success or failure, then the Project will go Haywire, and must be destroyed completely to get it to stop doing whatever it is that it’s doing.

If the science roll succeeds but the avatar roll does not, then the project fails. All time spent working on it is wasted, but some of the raw materials might be salvagable at the discretion of the GM.

If both rolls fail, then all that time was a waste, everything used in the project is ruined, and there might even by an explosion.

This channel is pretty wide open and can be used for pretty much anything, so long as the appropriate scientific skill is used to make it. For example, Physics and Electricity would be useful for things like robots or rayguns, while Psychology or Chemistry would be useful for Mind Control. (Remember, though, Free Will can’t be overriden. At best you could put people in a parahypnotic trance and convince them to do something they’d want to do anyway, or come up with a super pheromone spray to trigger a basic animalistic response, but they can resist and there’s no getting around that.)

When creating anything, whether it’s a one-shot AIDS cure, a death ray, or a flying saucer, a modified form of the mechanics for building Mechanomantic clockworks is used:

Minor Projects: These Projects can do things that modern technology does already, but it can do such tasks faster, more efficiently, safer (maybe) and with more style. Jet packs, ultrafast cars, rayguns and artificial intelligence/life are all possible at this level.

Significant Projects: These can do things that human science either can’t do yet, or can do only at great risk and expense. Weather control, space travel, and curing incurable diseases fit here.

A Minor Project takes a number of days to make equal to the value of the ones die in the Avatar: Mad Science Roll that was used to make it. At this point the Project has 60 points to divide among various stats and a single skill. Every further day spent working on it adds another 10 points to it, up to a limit of ten days. You can only refine something so much before you reach the limits of your tools and materials.

A Significant Project takes a number of days to make equal to the sum of the dice in the Avatar: Mad Science Roll that was used to make it. At this point, the Project has 120 points to divide among various stats and skills. Every further week spent refining the project adds 20 points to it, also up to a limit of ten, for similar reasons.

In addition to whatever the Project’s normal purpose is, the Mad Scientist can add in other features or attributes to make them easier to use. These modifications take the normal amount of time for refining a Project of that particular type; a day for Minor Projects and a week for Significant Projects.

1. User Friendly. Normally, only a Mad Scientist knows how to use and maintain what she makes. Anyone without an Avatar: Mad Scientist skill will just fumble around and maybe break something. (The lone exception is weapons. The principle of the blunt club, sharp knife, and a firearm’s point-and-shoot interface are fairly universal, so a layman would only be at a 10-20% negative shift when using Mad Science Weapons, depending on how complex it is.) By taking the time to make his gear User Friendly, either by labeling all the controls, using an easily navigated operating system or something else, the Mad Scientist’s allies can now use her gear and keep it running. So can her enemies, if they get their hands on it.

When a non Mad Scientist tries to use a Mad Science Project, they use whatever skill is closest to the Project’s actual purpose. Weapons use combat skills, vehicles use Drive or Pilot, advanced medical gear would use First Aid or Medicine, and so on.

On that note, a Mad Scientist can use whatever scientific skill the project is based on to govern the use of the Project, but more commonly they’ll have their own unique skill dedicated to operating it, like Freeze Ray 35% or Weather Control GUI 50%. Just building the device isn’t enough to get them the skill, they have to work with it and test its limits and parameters — learning, in a word. The skill itself is acquired as normal; spend the needed number of XPs and she’s yours, and if you buy now we’ll throw in a monogrammed keychain.

2. User Unfriendly. By adding a set of security lockouts or safety mechanisms, only the creator can use their Project. Anyone else either wastes time by messing with it, or triggers a defensive response (gas, electric shock, etc.) for playing with the Mad Scientist’s toys without her permission.

3. Remote Control. The Mad Scientist can use one of her Projects even at a distance. This is very useful for stuff that might be immobile and hard to bring around (supercomputer), reasonably useful for anything that must be left alone for extended periods of time (vehicles) and almost pointless in anything that is kept in somebody’s personal possession… or body, for that matter (Medicines, tools, clothing).

4. Batteries Included. Actually, this isn’t so much a built in power source as it is a compatibility with common power sources. A raygun with Batteries Included could run off of a 9-volt battery, while otherwise it might need some sort of uncommon chemical reactant, a radioactive element, or have to be plugged into a wall socket for twelve hours after every eight shots.

5. Now In Fun Size! The Project is much smaller, lighter, and more compact than it might otherwise be. In the case of a jet pack, this could make it into something more akin to a pair of rocket boots or a belt of some kind. Some sort of medical project could get more effectiveneness out of a smaller dosage; complete cancer remission with 40 mg of Serum Z43 instead of 300 mg, thus making any given supply of the stuff stretch further.

91-98%: Of Course I’m Playing God! Somebody Has To! At this level of scientific genius and madness, the Mad Scientist has reached an apex of confidence. Secure in his own superiority and the superiority of his work, he no longer has to make stress checks against Self, Isolation, or the Unnatural. He does not have to roll and gets no hardened or failed notches. On the other hand what mental deviations he already has are still there, and the Mad Scientist will still have to make checks against Helplessness, when something goes wrong, or Violence, when the villagers storm the castle (or his creation goes haywire and tries to rip off his arms).

Lastly, as if there was any doubt: Sufficiently Advanced Technology is indistinguishable from magick. And has the same effect on the Tiger. If you absolutely must get your revenge against the physics department at university for mocking you, and you absolutely must do it publicly, you might as well plan ahead and let your friends know who gets your stuff.