Aberrant RPG - Your Nova PCs vs Totentanz

[metaphysician]

( I vaguely remember this having been done, but couldn't find it, so. . . )

For whatever reason is appropriate, your nova PC and his team mates find themselves on the bad end of somebody, resulting in Totentanz having been hired to kill you all.

What do you do? Can you beat him in battle? If so, how? If not, how do you survive? Do you survive?

[SkyLion]

It's a tough proposition.

I am currently writing a story where T is going to own one of my characters outright so this is a topic that has been on my mind quite a bit. As such I will deliver my findings.

Here are T's tactics based on my understanding of his build.

He lurks invisibly, analyzing your weaknesses and possibly even draining you of quantum before you even see him. Then he uses enhanced initiative and tactical prodigy to gain a huge leg up on prempting any of your actions and uses the stolen quantum to fuel 4 attacks. In a blinding burst of speed, he attacks invisbly with specially designed spears that let him use his mega strength as well as rapid strike.

His initiative is going to be (on average with a grandfather tactics skill of 5) 33+1d10. Barring charachters built for similar situations such as with Intutition (Which in order to work mechanically should give a bonus of +1 to initiative per success rolled. Something that I have had a couple of STs house rule for me), or enhanced initiative, Totentanz *will* be going first.

Of course this is once he is attacking. If he lies in wait he can steal your quantum with an average q-leech roll of 5 or 6 successes resisted by your willpower. If he beats you even by 1 he takes 9 quantum from your pool and nothing stops him from trying this over and over, unless he realizes that the persons willpower is too high. i think being a tactical genius he would have a dossier of your character and their abilities, and would wait until the maintenance time ran out for any force fields and the like. You know someone has drained you, is stalking you and he will take his time.

When he finally does atack he is going to make 5 Mega Dexterity super-spear attacks. (1 normal, + 3 from quickness, + 1 from abush which he will almost certainly win at with Dex 5, M Dex 5, Stealth 5, Cattfooted, Wits 5 Mega Wits 2, Quantum 5 and Invisibility 2...unless you have a godly M Perception and awareness pool and plenty of sensory blindfighting type enhancments. His first free ambush atack is going to get an *additional* to hit bonus of the differnece on the ambush roll, as if he needed a further gaurantee of +5 attack success damage bonus).

Luckily his Disorient is VERY weak netting him on average only 2 successes so if you have decent willpower you should be good.

Now for the attacks:

lets assume for the moment that he *doesn't* go for a called shot, which would require either more successes or cancel his mdex dice for removing them...either of which is a good tactic. He could also go multiple actions by splitting his dice pool but he doesnt need to with 5 attacks. in fact lets say his last action is going to be to hyper leap or run away so the next round will be from ambush as well...

That's four attacks doing [10] + 9 (spears = Str+4) + 5 (rapid strike) + 5(attack success bonus) for a total of 29 lethal damage per strike, and with his initiative, he is likely to get them all off before you can even counter attack. So you would need a lethal soak at least that high and even then he can ping you unless you have a lethal soak of 58 or higher... BUT WAIT! He gets on average 4 successes on his find weakness roll, not counting that an ST might let him apply his tactical prodigy to that task, so your soak is down that much meaning you would need a lethal soak of 33 to only take ping damage.

He can continue like this for a long time, retreating when necessary and using his incredible abliltiy to regenerate quantum to keep at you faster than you can recover (I'd grandfather him in with the meditation skill as well, given his propensity for mantras...)

But your question was, how to deal with all of that right?

First I reccommend having that creepy feeling to know he is spying on you ahead of time as well as blindfighting, Q Attune and sonar to take away his invisibility advantage. Disrupt would be a good idea to deal with his q leech, and or force field. If he cant leech your quantum he is going to have to be more conservative in his approach and use of quickness. Id reccomend having your own force field (preferably with impervious to cancel the analyze weakness) and high mega stamina with durability and regen to deal with ping damage. Now you can see him coming and have a solid defense. Again dealing with the high end q leech is a must either through disrupt or invulnerabilty to such things.

if you want to actually be able to fight him, you will have to keep up, which means you need hypermovement or q leap or both. he is smart enough to run away if he is losing...

To actually damage him, forget psychic assault as he has Willpower 10 and psychic shield 5. You need a pretty burly attack as well, since his *average* soak is going to be 25, potentially much higher with force field. I reccommend using an agg attack, as he doesnt have hardbody, an AP attack or a mind blast with Agg a la Anna DeVries. Those things could soundly defeat him quickly. There are other tactics that can be used if he is going solo against your whole team...IE let the party brick soak his attcks while the blasters blast him, use area effect attacks, etc.

All in all he's one of the most lethal builds you could come up with, and he paid through the nose in NP or xp to get there...

"Ich bin der Hammer, der Dolch, die Sichel die alles niedermaht" ::ohmy

[SkyLion]

Yo Alex Green! Have anything to add to my analysis?

[Alex Green]

IMHO you can't Q-Leech and then Ambush, i.e. the Leech itself would be an attack.

So what he does for most novas is lurk around invisibily, think about it for a while, then ambush them while they're alone and their forcefield is down. The attack itself is absurdly nasty, Find Weakness, +5 succ for acc, a called shot for +4 damage, and probably +6 damage from a smackdown, +5 Rapid Strike.

Blindfighting is the ultimate trump against this, but it only works if it's on so you need Intuition to tell you to turn it on. Note that it's pretty much the *only* trump against this because all the other sensory enhancements will pit your Aware against his Stealth and mechanically he's going to win.

Note also that post-ambush he's not going to be all that stealthy so assuming you have an extra sense to get around Invis you'll be able to engage him normally.

Creepy Feeling might or might not work. It's an enhancement which post dates T and if he's purchased that extra for Invis then it'd cover it. If it works it'd work really well... maybe. In theory he could just stop watching you.

If you have Intuition and/or Blindfighting, then it gets interesting because he'll go with the Leech first.

lets assume for the moment that he *doesn't* go for a called shot, which would require either more successes or cancel his mdex dice for removing them...

He'll go for it. In an ambush he gets to use his Stealth succ as extra dice for his attack.

in fact lets say his last action is going to be to hyper leap or run away so the next round will be from ambush as well...

He probably will move away with his last action, but you can't ambush someone who knows they're in combat. His next combat round will be next scene.

Disrupt would be a good idea to deal with his q leech, and or force field.

Disrupt is almost useless against either of those. He resists with 7 dice, so you'll probably get an extra succ or two on him. Problem is Disrupt only subtracts dots of power, and he has 4 or 5. So to shut down his FF you'd need an average of 7.4 succ.

If he cant leech your quantum he is going to have to be more conservative in his approach and use of quickness.

If he can't ambush you at all, and he can't Q-leech you at all, I have to wonder if he'll bother to engage.

force field (preferably with impervious to cancel the analyze weakness)

Imperv doesn't counter FW.

If we assume that we're going to be using a lot of points here, then don't bother with FF, just get INV:Physical and be done with it. Use juice on your offenses.

I reccommend using an agg attack, as he doesnt have hardbody, an AP attack or a mind blast with Agg a la Anna DeVries.

Disin is probably best. AP is iffy since his soak is so high. Mind Blast won't work because his M-Shield is so high. His soak wouldn't work but his auto-willpower succ would.

...let the party brick soak his attcks while the blasters blast him, use area effect attacks, etc.

This would, or at least should, be harder in practice than in theory. With a team you're going to have people who aren't immune to some of his tactics, and he'll try to deal with you one at a time.

[metaphysician]

I'd tend to figure AP is useless on Totentanz, as he's just too dodgy.

( now, by comparison, if Totentanz taught himself some Claws [ Kinetic Discharge, Armor Piercing ]. . . )

[SkyLion]

IMHO you can't Q-Leech and then Ambush, i.e. the Leech itself would be an attack.

There is nothing to say he can't leech you dry and then go for the kill a half hour later before you have regenerated.

So what he does for most novas is lurk around invisibily, think about it for a while, then ambush them while they're alone and their forcefield is down. The attack itself is absurdly nasty, Find Weakness, +5 succ for acc, a called shot for +4 damage, and probably +6 damage from a smackdown, +5 Rapid Strike.

Don't forget the spear damage (+4)

Blindfighting is the ultimate trump against this, but it only works if it's on so you need Intuition to tell you to turn it on. Note that it's pretty much the *only* trump against this because all the other sensory enhancements will pit your Aware against his Stealth and mechanically he's going to win.

Note also that post-ambush he's not going to be all that stealthy so assuming you have an extra sense to get around Invis you'll be able to engage him normally.

Sonar would work as well, unless he bought an extra (and for purposes of this discussion I am keeping strictly within canon so no he didn't. ::tongue ). Sonar specifically states it removes penalties over and above the awareness boost of Enhanced Hearing. It's also handily "ultraperipheral." Also Quantum Attunement would sniff him right out.

As for post ambush, his inititive means he is most likely to get off most if not all of actions before you even get to your first.

Creepy Feeling might or might not work. It's an enhancement which post dates T and if he's purchased that extra for Invis then it'd cover it. If it works it'd work really well... maybe. In theory he could just stop watching you.

Good point on the stopping of watching. With Blindfighting he could do this, and it would be an ST call on whether or not it counted as "Watching."

If you have Intuition and/or Blindfighting, then it gets interesting because he'll go with the Leech first.

Again, see above. I don't think he above "harrying" his quarry with Q-leech before a final ambush.

He'll go for it. In an ambush he gets to use his Stealth succ as extra dice for his attack.

Okay, good point and with MDex 5 he lowers the difficulty. Debateable whether its better to roll the Mega Dice or cancel difficulties in terms of overall successes achieved (4 at standard difficulty with M Dex 1 or 9 if he rolls all 5 Megas IIRC).

He probably will move away with his last action, but you can't ambush someone who knows they're in combat. His next combat round will be next scene.

Yes that it what I meant. That could be fairly soon after though...

Disrupt is almost useless against either of those. He resists with 7 dice, so you'll probably get an extra succ or two on him. Problem is Disrupt only subtracts dots of power, and he has 4 or 5. So to shut down his FF you'd need an average of 7.4 succ.

Depends on how good the disrupter is. On the other hand he probably has such tactical information on his targets and will assign his "order of perations" accordingly. Pretty much point agreed.

If he can't ambush you at all, and he can't Q-leech you at all, I have to wonder if he'll bother to engage.

I don't see him as cowardly to turn down a contract just because his invisibility isn't a trump. He'll just use different tactics...

Imperv doesn't counter FW.

I would argue to any ST that it would. While the rules for Impervious don't say anything about Analyze Weakness, in the spirit of the rules I would have int grandfathered. After all, in AW's description it mentions the possiblity that a structure is "without weakness" and furthermore there is no other defense against AW. I would propose that if it is "Impervious" that AW would find and declare it to be so.

If we assume that we're going to be using a lot of points here, then don't bother with FF, just get INV:Physical and be done with it. Use juice on your offenses.

INV doesn't say anything about AW either though I would also probably support its effective countering of AW.

Disin is probably best. AP is iffy since his soak is so high. Mind Blast won't work because his M-Shield is so high. His soak wouldn't work but his auto-willpower succ would.

I would also argue that an AGG mindblast wouldn't be effected by Psi-Shield period, ans would also propose a Mega Intelligence enhancment that is the psychic equivalent of Hardbody (supported in Canon by the sidebar "Mega What? on page 101 of the APG). Of course it is then up to the ST whether T would have such an enhancment to his Psi Shield. I mostly agree with Disintegrate being the best option, although in defense of my psi shield argument I always figured her Agg mental Blast was what kept Anna DeVries safe from even psi-hardened Elites like Totentanz.

Of course a reminder to Metaphysician about how to deal with Players, assume if one of them has an agg attack or Disintegrate, that T will know about it beforehand and have prepared his tactics and approach to deal with them.

This would, or at least should, be harder in practice than in theory. With a team you're going to have people who aren't immune to some of his tactics, and he'll try to deal with you one at a time.

Wholeheartedly agree. Like the Predator, pick 'em off one by one... ::devil

PS...Are we limited now in post quotes? Everytime I tried to go past 10 Quotes, ALL of the quotes on the page reveted back to simple code in my post so everything looked like [*quote][/quote*].

[metaphysician]

*cough* I am intimately familiar with the ultimate trump card tactic: "I go first and kill your ass."

Seeing as Hermes tried to exploit such, and Mereneptah needs to keep an eye out for such whenever he's on a battlefield in the future ( high end Matter Creation is a very potent battlefield weapon ).

Which reminds me, another potential anti-Totentanz tactic: *if* he goes for the blitz, and you survive through the attack ( or if you spot him coming via Intuition, and he's still invisible ), use Matter Creation to drop an excessively large quantity ( in the hundreds or thousands of tons range ) of hot, sticky tar all around you. He's not fast enough to avoid it, so as long as he's not literally hugging you, he should be buried. Hard to get out of, hard to damage, and even if you do get out, your not invisible anymore.

[Alex Green]

Don't forget the spear damage (+4)

I'm not sure you can combine spear with everything else. But that's really a side note, he's going to be throwing a lot.

Sonar would work as well, unless he bought an extra (and for purposes of this discussion I am keeping strictly within canon so no he didn't. ::tongue ). Sonar specifically states it removes penalties over and above the awareness boost of Enhanced Hearing. It's also handily "ultraperipheral." Also Quantum Attunement would sniff him right out.

Sonar and QA negate Invisibility. They don't negate Stealth, especially when Catfooted is in play. They're also expensive to keep up. So after you know he's there (which likely is when he ambushes you), you can keep him in combat. But they don't stop him from sneaking up on you.

I don't see him as cowardly to turn down a contract just because his invisibility isn't a trump. He'll just use different tactics...

If we're building the "anti-Tot", then we're basically removing all those other tactics. He could just not take any contract that involves him directly killing you.

Imperv doesn't counter FW.

I would argue to any ST that it would. While the rules for Impervious don't say anything about Analyze Weakness, in the spirit of the rules I would have int grandfathered.

You can't "grandfather" it. Imperv and AW came out in the same book.

Personally I'd prefer that there just be a Mega-Stamina enhancement "Lack of Weakness"... but it's not broken for there to be nothing.

INV doesn't say anything about AW either though I would also probably support its effective countering of AW.

I've tried this and mechanically it's disappointing. INV:FW means you get +6 soak useable to oppose FW. That's expensive when you could just buy INV:Physical.

I would also argue that an AGG mindblast wouldn't be effected by Psi-Shield period...

AGG negates *soak*, not *defenses*. Defense in this case is a willpower roll.

, ans would also propose a Mega Intelligence enhancment that is the psychic equivalent of Hardbody (supported in Canon by the sidebar "Mega What? on page 101 of the APG).

We don't need to re-invent the wheel here. Hardbody itself works perfectly well, and is *much* better than inventing a non-standard defense that no one has. That side bar is just a reason why someone could in theory use Mega-Int to buy Hardbody.

Further this is already an extremely strong attack. It's piling [Q] succ on an attack that normally doesn't have auto-succ, and Hardbody by itself doesn't give any soak. It's seriously abusive to make the defense something that no one outside of Divis Mal has.

I always figured her Agg mental Blast was what kept Anna DeVries safe from even psi-hardened Elites like Totentanz.

Even if Tot didn't have a Mind Shield he'd still kill Anna in *any* type of combat. He goes first, she dies. He sneaks up on her, she dies. He turns invisible, she dies.

What keeps her safe against Tot is he *wants* to do what he does, and she's a big part of that. What keeps her safe against others is the same thing, or a pay check, or the threat of Tot or some other elites killing them if they get too far out of line.

[metaphysician]

*cough* So if Totentanz bought Claws 5 ( Kinetic Discharge, AP ), who *couldn't* he kill?

[Alex Green]

Divis. Maybe Pax. I think he can already get Ironskin.

[SkyLion]

Based on my previous damage figures, the claws AP kinetic added to his spears would be a total of 38 damage. Going for a called shot would be an extra +2 damage on average for a total of 40 damage. Given that the extra ambush attack dice are going to get eaten by the called shot difficulty we can still assume 9 successes which cut the target down 18 soak. So you would need a lethal soak of 58 or higher to only take ping.

[metaphysician]

*checks* Yep, Andy Vance doesn't have quite enough soak, even with the Invuln vs Cutting protecting him from the spears.

As for Pax. . . huh, he'd not stand a chance normally ( kinetic invuln protects versus most all of Tot's attacks, and there's no realistic way to shut down the force field ), but if he were spotted some kind of energy based melee weapon, he theoretically could do something. In practice, long before Pax ran out of even quantum, let alone health, he'd have unleashed some horrible area attack that would totally hose Totentanz.

[knave]

As for Pax. . . huh, he'd not stand a chance normally ( kinetic invuln protects versus most all of Tot's attacks, and there's no realistic way to shut down the force field ), but if he were spotted some kind of energy based melee weapon, he theoretically could do something. In practice, long before Pax ran out of even quantum, let alone health, he'd have unleashed some horrible area attack that would totally hose Totentanz.

I think the point of Elites is that they're hardened killers. T would find a way. Stick him when he's sleeping. Gas him. Poison his food. Whatever.

[BertJammin]

Stick him when he's sleeping. Gas him. Poison his food. Whatever.

Nuke 'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

[knave]

Nuke 'em from orbit, it's the only way to be sure.

lol - well, yeah - if you want to be state of the badass art about it ::tongue

[metaphysician]

I think the point of Elites is that they're hardened killers. T would find a way. Stick him when he's sleeping. Gas him. Poison his food. Whatever.

Against lots of targets, that would work fine, but against Pax, not so much. Even in his sleep, the guy can ping nuclear levels of kinetic force, and poisons and gasses are less than massively effective against somebody with sizable mega stamina and adaptability.

[Sprocket]

Considering the sheer lethality of the target (Totentanz), dumping him somewhere in deep space via a permutation of the Warp power would seem to be the best solution. Cygnus X-1 would likely be the best spot for him to end up, but the surface of a planet that's about to be destroyed by a star going nova or supernova (puns not intended) could work as a definite "dump him & relax" location too.

[SkyLion]

Combat Warps can't open that far. how are you going to spend a round engulfing him when he can dodge with all of mega Dex 5???

[metaphysician]

Zatz him with a high dot Immobilize first? Temporal Manipulation ( Time Stop )? Maxed out Stun Attack?

There are some options. They just require a certain minimum level of power, first. And you have to find him.

[Alex Green]

You pay him 50 million dollars in advance to go to an alien planet and kill "the nova exploring it" then you leave him there.

[metaphysician]

Or send him on a mission to a parallel dimension. You tell him there's someone on the other side of the portal that needs to be killed.

You don't tell him the local conditions are unbelievably hostile to novas ( 1 qp spent = 1 temp taint ).

You hope and pray he self-destructs or never finds a way back.

[knave]

Actually, if I was a mega intelligent Nova killer I get Pax by framing him for Slider's death.

[Alex Green]

Or send him on a mission to a parallel dimension. You tell him there's someone on the other side of the portal that needs to be killed.

You don't tell him the local conditions are unbelievably hostile to novas ( 1 qp spent = 1 temp taint ).

You hope and pray he self-destructs or never finds a way back.

Wait, you only tell him you have a mechanical warp and not a Cross Time machine.

Same thing works pretty well for Pax actually.

[Sprocket]

Re: Using Warp tactically-

I was thinking that using Warp with the Trigger Extra (AB:Teragen, p. 131) might do the trick. It would work even better if the trigger item was an object that Totentanz had been hired to retrieve, say from a baseline thief.

[Alex Green]

Get Geshia to talk him into it.

[Sprocket]

Get Geshia to talk him into it.

The heck with Geisha. If the guy's willing to kill anyone his client wants in return for a seven-figure payment, retrieval of stolen property from a dangerous and/or elusive thief would seem like light duty in comparison. Having Geisha sell him on it would only make him (& Anna DeVries) suspicious, resulting in the set-up deal falling through before it even began. ::laugh