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Aberrant RPG - Changes Novas Bring to Society


Heru

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And he can claim Mercer's not supposed to be a Daredevil all he wants; doesn't change the fact that the abilities Mercer demonstrates *are* those of a Daredevil.

The only alternative is that Mercer is a nova.

Its like when the Trinity developers complain about Aberrant being overpowered. If they didn't want novas that powerful, they shouldn't have written novas doing Q7+ feats into the backstory of Trinity.

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I recently discovered a question I had as I went through the enhancements chapter.

If I have Mental Prodigy: Engineering do I roll Intelligence + Mega-Intelligence in dice or just Intelligence to see how many extra dice I will have when I actually make the Engineering roll.

I would answer that it is Intelligence + Mega-Intelligence because whenever you roll an Attribute your Mega-Attribute dice come into play. I wondered if anybody had an official (or close to it, :)) ruling on this.

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We have quotes regarding Max in the abby core book.

What are you getting at? Just because Aberrant mentions Max, that somehow means Bates didn't create him? He's mentioned in Trinity too.

Point being, Bates created the character when the line began, and fleshed him out for Adventure. I'll trust his version, since he's the one that actually made the background for the character. He concieved the character, and he also created the character's background and abilities.

And he can claim Mercer's not supposed to be a Daredevil all he wants; doesn't change the fact that the abilities Mercer demonstrates *are* those of a Daredevil.

I can kick a football, but that doesn't make me a professional football player, even though professional football players do exactly the same. Max can still have daredevil-like abilities and not be a daredevil. He's unique, the Hammersmith blast may have heightened his physial and mental abilities, we might never know, but he's unique. He has a nova-like ability, Chronal Manipulation, remember...but that doesn't make him a nova. Max is not a daredevil, mesmerist, or stalwart. Telluric energies made him into something different than all the others.

Point out to me examples of things he does that are only capable by daredevils. You say he does daredevil-like feats...go ahead and list them.

Also remember that since he can travel through time and perform all manner of time-alterations, it's very possible that he's as talented as he is because he has all the time in the universe to develop those talents. If Max wants to read a book, he need only stop time and read until he's finished. No time will pass to the normal world, but Max will have read the entire thing in an instant.

And also remember that when Adventure was written, daredevils weren't "powered beings" of any kind. This only changed when Baugh took over after Bates, and decided to retcon daredevils into powered beings. This throws a wrench into things (or everything, I should say, for Trinity).

Its like when the Trinity developers complain about Aberrant being overpowered. If they didn't want novas that powerful, they shouldn't have written novas doing Q7+ feats into the backstory of Trinity.

*sigh* How many times does this have to be brought up? The Trinity team was complaining that a starting character was too overpowered; novas around by the time of the Aberrant War are another matter entirely. Novas start appearring in 1998. The Aberrant War happens half a century later. That's a lot of time to get powerful. A lot. That's a lot of time to get XP and raise Quantum and gain more powers.

Yes, a nova could still flood Florida. If you read America Offline, you'll know that Felice Taylor (the nova in question) was not a normal nova. She was classified as a Prime Threat...the same classification given to Divis Mal. Prime Threats are novas/Aberrants that are several magnitudes more powerful than other novas. Meaning that she was definetly an exception to the norm, like Antaeus or Caestus Pax. If every nova had the power of Felice Taylor, Earth would have been a cinder by 2120. Like I said, she is clearly an exception.

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Has anyone been reading Awaiting Inspiration for Jackson Creed's take on post-Venezuelan Phenomenon Inspired? Hammersmith 2.0 looks a bit different in a world that was drenched in Quantum for decades. How does the new breed of Inspired fit into a world of psions and (hated) novas? ::confused

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And also remember that when Adventure was written, daredevils weren't "powered beings" of any kind.
Every time I hear this claim it makes me shake my head. If it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, etc… then what we have is a duck. DD knacks are the equal of the others, the others are inspired, i.e. powered beings. The tenth or hundredth time the same guy dodges automatic weapons without cover simply by being lucky, one has to suspect that what we have is an ill understood powered being of some sort.
...Felice Taylor (the nova in question) was not a normal nova. She was classified as a Prime Threat...Like I said, she is clearly an exception.
Granted, but the problem just the existence of someone like that presents is...

A) That the PCs might/will want that level of power.

B) Originally Divis and the Prime Threat Novas were supposed to be as powerful as the top of the line Psions, i.e. the Proxies. Which is fine until you toss out lines about a single prime threat nova destroying a state or desecrating a North America.

The Trinity team was complaining that a starting character was too overpowered; novas around by the time of the Aberrant War are another matter entirely. Novas start appearring in 1998.
To be blunt, they're wrong or they simply didn't see the implications of the setting that they'd built.

The abby setting, as described in Trinity, is built for the power levels seen. A fresh out of the box nova is supposed to be (at least sometimes) the sort of thing that you need to call in the army to deal with. A dozen police with hand guns simply shouldn't be up to it. Abberants are supposed to be things to truly be afraid of.

Having made those statements, they are stuck with their creation. This is why D20 Aberrant fails, the power level of the characters doesn't match the setting. Alexandra was supposed to be FAR better than any human can be, right out of the box (ditto far to many examples to bother with). But that doesn't really happen until about 10th level, so are all nova artists/elites/scientists/etc 10th level right out of the box? Changing the default abby level from 3rd to 10th goes a long way to deal with that but of course raises other problems.

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