Brian Rogers (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
subplotkudzu) wrote2008-04-08 06:38 pm
subplotkudzu) wrote2008-04-08 06:38 pm
Entry tags:
Always wanted to
As I noodle around on my supers setting building construction kit I have a question for my hordes of fans [Listens, daffy duck-like, for crickets]. Is there any super-hero concept that you've always wanted to play but either have had the opportunity or haven't found a system that could handle it?
In my case two spring to mind (there used to be more, but I did get to play my super smart guy and my super-strong cowboy ideas in now defunct PBEMs).
The first is an Adam Strange style SF adventurer: a two fisted science hero with a jet-pack, ray guns and other gadgets who, while a member of the super team on contemporary earth, is actually the defender of a different planet, time or timeline. The system would have to be able to handle someone who was basically a skilled, smart normal person with flight, a good dodge and a modest energy blast - a little tricky in some systems but more a matter of lacking opportunity rather than systemic problems.
The second is someone who has a separate energy body, similar to Negative Man, Raven's Soul Self or, ideally, Antibody from the New Universe book DP7. This is much harder to work mechanically - Cambias once recommended doing it as an Ally, or perhaps it's duplication where one of the duplicates has all the powers, or something of the sort. It's a really neat idea, but finding a system that could handle it is the problem.
This latter is one of the reasons why I'm building the supers setting construction kit: the hope of being able to simply define the characters potency, versatility, and scarcity and have it be in the world as its own distinct power - if the scarcity is high enough (or even if it's not with an oddball power like this one) my PC might be the only person with it, but it would be a quickly defined part of the world.
Finally, as a villain I still love the idea of a mummy whose internal organs were eaten away by vermin that now occupy his body cavities. He would be able to have his eyes turn into snakes, vomit up spiders, breathe out termites and so on for a variety of nasty effects. Icky, yes, but it just sticks with me,
In my case two spring to mind (there used to be more, but I did get to play my super smart guy and my super-strong cowboy ideas in now defunct PBEMs).
The first is an Adam Strange style SF adventurer: a two fisted science hero with a jet-pack, ray guns and other gadgets who, while a member of the super team on contemporary earth, is actually the defender of a different planet, time or timeline. The system would have to be able to handle someone who was basically a skilled, smart normal person with flight, a good dodge and a modest energy blast - a little tricky in some systems but more a matter of lacking opportunity rather than systemic problems.
The second is someone who has a separate energy body, similar to Negative Man, Raven's Soul Self or, ideally, Antibody from the New Universe book DP7. This is much harder to work mechanically - Cambias once recommended doing it as an Ally, or perhaps it's duplication where one of the duplicates has all the powers, or something of the sort. It's a really neat idea, but finding a system that could handle it is the problem.
This latter is one of the reasons why I'm building the supers setting construction kit: the hope of being able to simply define the characters potency, versatility, and scarcity and have it be in the world as its own distinct power - if the scarcity is high enough (or even if it's not with an oddball power like this one) my PC might be the only person with it, but it would be a quickly defined part of the world.
Finally, as a villain I still love the idea of a mummy whose internal organs were eaten away by vermin that now occupy his body cavities. He would be able to have his eyes turn into snakes, vomit up spiders, breathe out termites and so on for a variety of nasty effects. Icky, yes, but it just sticks with me,
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In any event I find the Ally an incredibly clunky solution:
It's still an NPC even with the Minion advantage, which means that I'd send it off to do things and it's under the GMs control, which is not ideal from a player perspective and doesn't capture either the Soul Self or Negative Man concepts.(1). I, as a player, want to be in control of both bodies simoultaniously - even if I as a player have the two bodies argue with one another (as Antibody did in DP7).
If I do make the Ally Summonable it runs from adventure to adventure, and with a 15- chance I have a 5% chance of being hosed in any adventure. If I instead make him Constant then it's always around but perhaps invisible (Invisibility, only works when not taking any action and directly next to PC, -60%), which would be much cheaper and would save the time of concentrating to summon it, as it would already be there. No, it's not ideal, but there it is.
The point cost issues of how Ally scales means that even if I did work all that out it would be realtively easy to have the ally be phenominally powerful. For 500 point hereos I can make my main body a 290 point adventerous human and my Ally (costing in at 210 points [35 point base, +50% minion, x4 for Constant])would have 2000 points - the cost of the Archetype template. Gives being Superman's Pal a whole new meaning.
Of course, I'd need it to have 2000 points because all of the examples can take enourmous damage or even be destroyed and the hero can create new ones - Raven and Negative Man have the shards of the energy forms fly back into them to reform, while Antibody generates a new body (and at times he has swarms of the suckers). Which means kludging around a lot of regeneration and hard to kill to capture the effect.
Easily done? No. Conceievably mechancially possible if you're willing to pull together a large number of rules? Sure. But I could do it much more smoothly in Champions with Duplication, which in 5E has specifically rules for handling just this scenario - I-the-player control both duplicates, the duplicate can be more powerful but won't be multiple times more powerful, and so on. I'm not a big fan of the HERO system, but I have to admit that the designers have gone to great lengths to capture a lot of existing powers.
Still, it's not an easy power to capture in the best of senses - even DC heroes, hope of 2 of the 3 examples - didn't have a good way to do it.
(1) Of course, I could do that if I instead took it as a Puppet, but then I wouldn't be in control of my own body and would have this funky body shifting ability from Possession that I would have to limit so that it was just between me and my puppet, but then my body couldn't be independly active from the puppet. I suppose I'd have to take it as a 0 IQ Ally with a weakness to my Mind Control, which is turn only works on my Ally, but with that I'd have to constantly work out commands to transmit via Telesend....
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I can't say that I've followed Raven's Soul Self to any extent, but of the various takes on Negative Man (including Negative Woman) I don't recall too many occasions when the host body is good for much while the energy form is zooming around, so simultaneous awarness didn't seem a concern. Meanwhile, you put most emphasis on Antibody, who empahtcially was mentally separate from his little pals most of the time; even when he was inside one of them, the others had minds of their own.
Meanwhile, some finer rules points:
A Summonable, Constant Ally doesn't *have* to be there 24/7; it is available to you gamewise, but you can choose to dismiss it, and call it back as needed, just like you can turn your wearable AI on and off as you like, or send it off through the net and call it back.
"kludging around a lot of regeneration and hard to kill to capture the effect" is not necessary in 4/e, you can just buy Unkillable at your desired level.
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And the Rebis form of the Negative spirit - present for Grant Morrison's high water mark on the Doom Patrol book - alsways had the physical body active when the negative spirit was about, just as Raven's soul self and the energy duplicates that Antibody made. Simoultanious awareness is key for the character concept.
In any event this is far afield from the original point of my post.
1) I am building a new system from the ground up
2) I am curious what character concepts people have always wanted to play but haven't yet, to make sure I could cover those.
2a) here are some of my character concepts.
Letting me know that I could build the things in point 2a in a different system is somewhat purpose defeating for point 1.
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* POWERS is the single supplement necessary.
* Projected Form is a -50% Limitation, there is no +100% or x4 multiple involved.
* Duplication, Alternate Form, and Projected Form is two powers and a modifier; how is this more complex than Champs 5/e using one power (Duplication) and two modifiers (make the Duplicate more powerful, and making the Duplicate have a different form)
In any event this is far afield from the original point of my post.
Letting me know that I could build the things in point 2a in a different system is somewhat purpose defeating for point 1.
How far afield is it to show that the stated motivation for the point is partially mistaken? Reading what's already been written in a supplement that directly addresses your subject is much, much easier than hammering in screws.
Unless your new system is going to be narratively based somehow? This is a fairly easy power to infer from what's drawn and written on a page of the comics, but here we are, two veteran super gamers who've been present at the creation of much or all of a current effect-based RPG, and we still have trouble articulating exactly what abilities and disabilities are involved.
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In your original post, you identified "4th ed GURPS CHARACTERS expands Ally to the point where both Antibody and Vermin Hotep are easily done". So I dutifully looked up Ally and discovered that it was nothing of the sort, and the rules in the CHARACTERS book explictly outlawed using it for what I want since it is absolutely an NPC under the GMs control. So I look up Duplication - trying to apply the same logic - and find that it doesn't do anything close to what I want either.
Oh-ho, you say, but by CHARACTERS you really meant POWERS, and by "Constant, Summonable Ally" you really meant "Duplication + Alternate Form + Projected Form". All becomes clear now. If I had but known that you had meant I had to pick up a second (or in this case third, since I already have CAMPAIGNS) book to further explain how your original original statement was entirely wrong and that CHARACTERS, which promises on the cover to have everything I need indeed doesn't, it would obviously be the perfect system for what I want. No reason for me to ever think of using a different system when this one handles things so cleanly that even long time players will give 100% incorrect advice with full conviction.
In short, my view is not partially mistaken - the power is a difficult one to model. The systems that are out there don't do it well, in part because it has so many ways of being handled. The reason why we're having problems is that the effects based RPG we've both worked on it one that has fundamental difficulties in modeling the power. Which is not uncommon.
And - this is important - even if there was a system out there that had a power specifically written to do this, exactly as I liked, it is totally immaterial to my question: WHAT CHARACTER CONCEPTS WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY THAT YOU HAVE NOT HAD A CHANCE TO DO SO? You will note that my Adam Strange-esque character would not be hard to model in almost any system, but that isn't a reason for me to not noodle around on my own game ideas. My original post has one question mark in it. That's where I'm looking for input. I'm not going to drop all work on my enjoyable system noodling because you're convinced that there's a way to build the power in your preferred system.
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(removes tongue from cheek, returns to work)
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I changed my suggested solution because you refined your description of the concept you wanted to play. Antibody, the example you gave with which I am most familiar, does not fully share consciousness and volition with his Antibodies. You, as a player, would like to play out the actions of the Antibodies, of course, rather than sit back and wait while the NPC Antibodies do stuff, and that is understandable. However, that shared identification is not a power that the character has in the context of his fictional world, but rather is a metagame issue, similar to people having multiple PCs.
WHAT CHARACTER CONCEPTS WOULD YOU LIKE TO PLAY THAT YOU HAVE NOT HAD A CHANCE TO DO SO?
You said part of not having a chance was because you couldn't make a build that suited you. Since you displayed some mistaken assumptions about how GURPS currently worked and I've spent spent hundreds of hours researching the subject, I thought you'd have a second chance to make a better build with the correct information.
I wouldn't dream of talking you my neighbor out of building your own custom lawnmower, but if I as a factory-trained mower repair man saw that your old mower wasn't quite as broken as you complained it was, I'd feel obliged to let you know in case you preferred to cut the grass just so sooner rather than later.
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You. Wished for Characters. That's it. Comprende?
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This isn't an unmoderated message board, it's my blog. If I ask you to drop something but don't ask you to leave, it's because I'm interested in your statements on the primary topic but, as host here, I want you to drop something. It's really that simple.