ok i updated my roster so it makes more sense and gives me a bio(i based my stats from apocalypse so wouldn't help here).
name:Alexzander "bloodsheder" Piontek (real name)
equipment: Laser Rifle, Heavy laser
stats: high accuracy, med bravery, med reaction, low strength
bio: snip Polish descent, Alex has been wandering over the world as a self employed mercenary. his last contract he was guarding a Canadian Government official in Montreal when a harvester landed. Armed only with projectile weaponry he was no match compared to the advance alien technology. As he was moving the official, a reaper ran into the car. he was launched out of the car and watched the reaper devour the gov. noticing the reaper wielded flesh wounds from lasers, he quickly aims for the car's gas tank and blows up the reaper. turning around he finds it's handler a floater, the floater took 2 shots: 1 miss and 1 hit his arm glazing. fighting the pain, alex aimed for the head and fired his rifle mutilating its body. before x-com agents were able to evacuate him to safety he reported feeling a weird presence in his head suggesting there was a sectoid close, he was able to resist the mind control giving the agents enough time to find the source. he is currently being treated for plasma wounds but faces a dilemma of secrecy. seeing he has no job, he has requested for employment. his skills comes from fighting with the IRA, SAS, and against drug Mafias. as a gun for hire, he prefers working alone but will take in a protege. he has been train in long range combat and automatic weaponry or distances. his nickname comes from bleeding out his opponents.
Now see, this i can work with. I don't care how mary sue it is, it just needs background. as other have stated, you can make your character sound as awesome (or crazy) as you want, they all can die in a single turn rendering their status moot. bloodshedder's bio likely comes from before anya snow stepped into office (since I haven't fought a harvester ship in this LP).
The sentence where bloodshedder notices the reaper taking wounds from laser fire; was x-com already on scene? but if so, they wouldn't of had lasers since such weapons were developed under anya snow's watch. What would make more sense (both mechanically and logically) was that he noticed the reaper was weak to fire; giving a reason as to why bloodshedder shot the car's gas tank (which would cause a fire/explosion).
Now the sectoid part does not make sense, aliens never mix species (might be wrong about this when it comes to cydonia). Why? maybe the aliens don't even know they are working in concert? Maybe there is a strategy that involves making earth thing several alien worlds are attacking at once? Maybe the programmers couldn't/didn't allow that to happen in x-com. As for bloodshedder, it's possible that he is sensitive to psionics and unwittingly noticed some powerful psionic force assisting the floaters from beyond the battlescape.
X-Com was not supposed to be very successful before anya snow arrived on scene so it is safe to say that while bloodshedder managed to get some kills and have his ass dragged to safety, the missions still failed and no alien loots were recovered.
Floaters are paper thin, they fall like leaves in the wind to x-com's advanced projectile weapons so it is not a leap of faith that standard (or even high quality, he was a mercenary after all) could cause them harm if one gets a lucky shot. Taking the game's RNG into account, bloodshedder could have pulled off just about anything if he was lucky enough (invincible chrysilid anyone? can you imagine if he had a gun? oh god lobster men
)
Finally to address where bloodshedder has been all this time. Even grazing wounds take days to heal, plasma fire is nasty stuff and spreads if not neutralized. It has been designed to destroy living tissue faster than anything we can develop. Early on no one had the kind of knowledge required to properly treat these wounds. With Dr. Ross's work being so effective, bloodshedder was transferred to the x-com facility in north america for treatment...
So as you can see, I can take a crazy backstory and actually make something out of it. I really cant work with "he is awesome" or a short list of attributes. Those characters end up being whatever I make them (which might not be what you wanted).
and to answer CJ's unanswered question: Yes cloning is ok, anyone can request to clone their character but they will have to deal with the rank reset, stat changes and possible complications.
I'm going to write up a little random generator list that i can roll on that will list cloning effects. the full list will only be available once the LP is over.