Aberrant RPG - Trolling for House Rules

[Asche]

My players and I were wondering just how differently some ST's interpret various rules and make up their own House Rules for ease of Game flow in their curent games.

This is the time to get all of your great ideas into the open and get some recognition. I want to ask all of you, player or Story Teller, to post here whatever House Rule you have played with or are curently playing with that really works and is enjoyable to all involved.

When I get quite a few various rules, I will compile it all and section it out for easy access fro all to peruse or set it up for a DL somewhere.

I'm getting ready for work right now, but I will post a couple later when I get home.

[Jager]

The big one I am working with right now is "power thematics". In other words, all powers consistant with a theme.

,,

Ex. You want to be a telepath, so Domination, Mega-Man., Perc., Int., and Wits, Psychic Shields, Psychic Immobilize, Stun Attack, Mental Blast, and maybe Emotion Manipultation would be in scope. Mega-Dex, Str., and Sta. would not.

After running several games, I got sick of everyone getting Adaptability, Regeneration, and massive soaks for no better reason than "novas can do anything".

Okay, novas can really do anything, but every nova should not be able to do everything. If you follow that reasoning, then every nova becomes identical.

At the very least, some of the published novas don't seem so ridiculous and weak compared to PCs.

As another house rule, I limit Mega-Int. because I have found that plus inventing stuff to be a real game breaker.

[Fortune's Son]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jager:
As another house rule, I limit Mega-Int. because I have found that inventing stuff to be a real game breaker.

Do all of your Mega-Ints act as super scientists? As opposed to being Sherlock Holmes or the quintessential stock market analyst? I'm not commenting on your troop, just curious. In our group we addressed this situation in multiple ways.

The first was to adapt the A!venture weird science rules to our AB game which provided more interesting flavor, better mechanics and distinguished between merely advanced devices and those that were beyond the pale. I personally like the time factor a little better as well.

The second was anything that was obviously weird science as opposed to advancements of existing technology (creating a woman, Stargates, warp drives, ect) had the Taint rules strictly applied. You could become Iron Man in our campaign if you really wanted to but "Tony Stark" was going to be a raving nutter. Acquired taint and its expression was strictly under the control of the ST and we took it a step further in that he determined whether it was temporary Taint or permanent. Depended on how far you were reaching.

On a side note; we found this approach actually forced the troupe to favor slow development. First you build the clunky armor from the Korean War, test, refine, redesign then do it again with minor improvements. You would eventually get to where you wanted in the design but you wouldn't have constant mental melt-downs and it took game years to get there.

Lastly, you had to have some clue as to what you were doing. For instance "Tony Stark" isn't designing Stargates, Reed Richards isn't building telepathic machines, Professor X isn't modifying a shrinking ray and Henry Pym isn't building flying power armor.

In practice it played as if the characters possessed of quantum powers with serious limitations on how they could use it. Novas but novas without the ability to express most powers without a technological crutch.

We liked this in general since the players that really wanted to be Iron Man or, to a lesser degree, Batman could do it but it didn't bust the game.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jack Chance:
Lastly, you had to have some clue as to what you were doing. For instance "Tony Stark" isn't designing Stargates, Reed Richards isn't building telepathic machines, Professor X isn't modifying a shrinking ray and Henry Pym isn't building flying power armor.

Does this mean no one would object to Dr. Troll building nukes?

[Fortune's Son]

You realize Time-Warner is going to hunt you down and demand recompense for trademark infringement.

[Roslyn 'Pump' Kluesner]

House rule that works well. This is adapted from another game, with some modifications. The lower NP value novas get a lot of use from this.

Multipower

The basics are this. It is several powers that share the same “pool” of dots. You pay 3 Nova Points (or 6 exp) for each power included in the pool. You then pay the price to buy several dots of the most costly power in the pool. That becomes your pool. Each round you get a number of dots to distribute between those powers equal to the pool.

Example:

A multipower with a level 1, 2 and 3 power. You pay 9 NPs to include the 3 powers in the pool. Then you pay the normal cost to buy dots in the level 3 power. Those dots become your pool. Lets say you bought 3. Each round you get to distribute those 3 dots between the powers. That means all 3 powers at 1 dot, one power at one dot and the other at 2 dots or all one power at 3 dots.

[Sakurako Hino]

Roslyn: Sounds like you've messed with either Hero System Champions, or Fuzion System Champions: New Millenium. I guess we superhero gaming fans cover the bases. I like the idea.

[Hugin]

Got a few. Fairly minor ones though.

1. Cypher. The character has to roleplay it to the hilt to keep it. Influence has to be kept low. I read Influence as absolutely personal influenct, anything else is backing in some org. You have too much personal presence then people not knowing anything about you seems silly.

2. Charge 2 NovaPoints as opposed to 3 for Enhancements during character generation. To encourage someone to actually purchase a few at the begining as opposed to simply stacking the dots as high as possible and just dealing with the flat cost of enhancements at later points.

3. Replacing Manipulation for Charisma on the Domination power. Charisma is woefully underpowered due to it's complete lack of powers dependent on it and I think Manipulation has a few too many.

4. Minimal Resources of 4 to have Eufibre. That stuff is expensive.

5. Minimum of 4 dots in a power before you can purchase Mastery 1 or more. Having Mastery in a power you can hardly pull off based on dots in the power alone doesn't fly for me.

6. Pretty common one, no more dots of Quickness or Enhanced Initiative than you have dots in MegaWits.

7. With Jack on this one, Gadgets. Use the Adventure rules with a bit of tweaking.

Just a few off the top of my head.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jack Chance:
You realize Time-Warner is going to hunt you down and demand recompense for trademark infringement.

That is why I can't say the "H" word. And remember that I'm really a nova whose subconscious decided this was a good idea.

[Ashnod]

1) Nixing the Mega Attribute must be less than or equal to Normal Attribute rule. We don't do this but I know of games that have.

2) Alternatively, you cannot purchase Mega Attributes until you possess a stat of 5 in the relevant Normal Attribute. I've never used this one, but I'm tempted to do so the next time I ST. Mega-Intelligence of 1 is supposed to be so far beyond Intelligence 5 that it's uncomprehendable, yet you can have it with Intelligence 2? There's the whole dormancy issue, I know, but it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

[Kirby1024]

One that I use but keep under tight leash is Cross-matching Attributes and Powers/Enhancements. I like to have some sort of underlying sense to the base Attribute of a power.

Also, one that I also like to use is that Tainting powers halves costs, no rounding. It allows for slightly more powerful characters, without overdoing it. It's also slightly more incentive for people to Taint out (I'll admit it - I'm this close to being a Taint Junkie. A choice Aberration can turn an ordinary character into a beautiful character).

Like others here, I like to keep people to Power concepts. I give leeway, certainly, but They keep to the power concept, or I reject the sheet. Oh, on that, Jager, thanks for your suggestion that good year or so ago on how to deal with Munchkin characters ("Yes, this will make a great NPC. Now, can you make a slightly more 3-dimensional character?"). I intend to use it heartily next semester when I run my QPIU game...

[Jordan]

Alternatively, you cannot purchase Mega Attributes until you possess a stat of 5 in the relevant Normal Attribute. I've never used this one, but I'm tempted to do so the next time I ST. Mega-Intelligence of 1 is supposed to be so far beyond Intelligence 5 that it's uncomprehendable, yet you can have it with Intelligence 2? There's the whole dormancy issue, I know, but it still doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Think of it this way. Just because someone can lift a truck doesn't mean they're used to doing it. The way I visualize it, once a character gets a dot in a Mega Att, they use the description of that stat for tell them what they shuold be capable of. The standard attribute tells them how practiced they are at using that new-found Mega-Stat.

Example; My character Jordan had 2 dots in intelligence before his eruption, making him of average intelligence. After the eruption, he gained a dot in Mega-Int, making him smarter than most people will ever hope to be. Of course, according to the rules the maximum number of successes he can get with a straight intelligence roll is 4, which doesn't really simulate the rise in brainpower, does it? Yet in a way it makes sense. I simply take it to mean that Jordan isn't using the full potential of his new intellect. He is not used to having that level of deductive reasoning or memory capacity and it will take time (i.e. increasing the base stat with exp) for him to fully integrate the new abilities at his disposal.

Like others here, I like to keep people to Power concepts. I give leeway, certainly, but They keep to the power concept, or I reject the sheet.

I prefer to make them stick to what makes sense for the character myself. Power concepts are all fine and dandy, but they can lead to arguments between players and their STs and after a while can become horribly stale. Think about what happened to Gorilla Girl who used to post here. Her character's big power was the ability to turn into a gorilla and her ST decided that would be her "theme." She wasn't allowed to take any powers that her ST felt fell outside of that theme. So, even though the character could fly when not in gorilla form, had a dot in psychic shield and armor, she HAD to develop "Gorilla Powers." How, exactly, does this make sense?

I agree that players who design characters that have a random grouping of powers that make no sense to the character or the way in which they erupted should be reigned in, but truly creative character designs shouldn't be penalized just because their powers don't fit to any one "theme" or power concept.

[Kirby1024]

Oh, don't get me wrong, By "Power Concepts", I mean "Framework by which the powers make sense". I even give leeway on that (For example, I consider that Flight is a fairly common power among western novas, due to the whole "I'm a superhero, I can fly!" aspect. I don't mind characters grabbing something like flight even if it doesn't quite match the concept. Same with a lot of other powers).

If I find that a character has an interesting concept (but not power-set), I almost immediately say "cool!" and let it through (unless it's especially twinky. But that's just me).

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by Kirby1024:
A choice Aberration can turn an ordinary character into a beautiful character).

Agreed, but I prefer Quantum Flaws.

They are so much more flexable. You can give a character a single 3rd level aberration without the minor & medium ones. You can also give a character lots of minor aberrations. You can also make a character who has lots of aberrations who isn't one step away from meltdown.

[Asche]

Mega- Stamina.

I make this attribute give the Nova a number of health levels equal to the level in this attribute, in each of the first 3 Wound levels.

I have found this to better represent Mega Stamina as it is sold to us in the book. (Missiles bouncing off your chest at level 5? C'mon...)

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

So Doc Troll's Green form (M-Stam=5 & 1 level of Growth) would have 7x Bruised, 6x The Next Level, & 6x The level after that?

His clones could burn Life Levels to stay green for a long, long time.

[Kirby1024]

Quote:

Originally posted by David 'Dr. Troll' Smith:
Agreed, but I prefer Quantum Flaws.

They are so much more flexable. You can give a character a single 3rd level aberration without the minor & medium ones. You can also give a character lots of minor aberrations. You can also make a character who has lots of aberrations who isn't one step away from meltdown.

Which brings me to another House Rule: You're Taint score denotes the minimum Aberration severity you can choose from. ie, from 4-5, you can pick any Aberration, from 6-7, you can pick from Medium to Severe, and 8-9 Restricts you to just Severe.

Also, when gaining a point of Permanent Taint, You can either gain a new Aberration, or change an existing Aberration into another one of higher severity (but within the same frameset. For example, someone with Glow gains a point of Permanent Taint. She can either choose a new Aberration, or replace Glow with Energy Emission, an Aberration of higher Severity). Severe Aberrations may not be changed in this manner. This one I like because Taint is supposed to up the levels of your Aberrations, but many seperate Aberrations tend to be extensions on ones below. This way you can "step up". However, you can only do it up to Severe, so that you still accumulate other Aberrations.

[Loki]

One of the storytellers i currently game with has a few rules which i like:

In order to have more spectacular feats a player may max his quantum on the same turn he wishes to activate the maxed power, but successes un this 'same-turn' maxing roll can only be use for extra dice

Flight cost no quantum points to use

He also requires players to come up with their power concepts, but these are usually for determining power effects. A player can take any power for his character provided he can explain it in a way that fits his concept.

Another storyteller i game with has started his game very early in the aberrant timeline. Because of this, he has decided to keep taint levels and chrysalis levels unknown to the players. This gets compounded with his random assigning of temporary taint. It's kind of fun when an aberration pops up for the first time and you're not sure why.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Three ideas, and no, I haven't seen them in action.

1) All of the various prodigies do the same thing (a good idea by itself)

2) All of the various prodigies reduce the difficulty of an action by three (including contested rolls). Three autosucc is too much, and rolling dice to roll dice is too little.

3) The rule of three. A character is said to have mastered a power when he has four dots in it. Characters with three or more unmastered powers can't buy new powers with experience.

[SENTRY]

When we started awhile ago, I asked our group to "theme" the charachters. We still have 3 characters with ForceField, Flight, and Quantum Bolt. But one is an astronaut with fiery plasma powers, another is a lightning wielder who is a weather forecaster and a storm-chaser, and the third is a graviton-controlling supermodel. How much more individual can you get?

[SENTRY]

Also, for James 'Prodigy' Meehan, just want to know how you tweak the Adventure gadget rules for Aberrant--I've thought about it but not sure how.

[Hugin]

Sorry buddy, no one in the TT I'm running now decided to run anyone that would use gadget rules so I didn't end up spending anytime on that. I've just been statting every NPC I might ever bother using. Yeesh, it's been taking me quite awhile though. I've done about 30+ canon NPCs.

[Kirby1024]

Quote:

Originally posted by SENTRY:
Also, for James 'Prodigy' Meehan, just want to know how you tweak the Adventure gadget rules for Aberrant--I've thought about it but not sure how.

A few of my thoughts on Tweaking:

• Requires Mega-Intelligence, and at least 4 dots in the related Skill
• Each dot of Mega-Intelligence above 1 Reduces the R&D time by 1/2, so Mega-Intelligence 2 would change R&D from 60 days to 30 days, M-Int 3 to 15 days, etc.
• Level 1 Powers require 30 Days base R&D, L2 60, L3 90. All powers above Level 3 require an extra 30 days, and +2 difficulty on the R&D roll per level.

After that, I haven't really bothered to put more thoughts to paper unfortunately.

[Fortune's Son]

Since we sub-categorized advancements and innovations we did it a little differently. The criteria for advancements was very similar to those Kirby uses but innovations (weird science) required engineering prodigy as opposed to simple mega-intelligence.

[Sakurako Hino]

It's good we're hammering things out here. I as well have been dissapointed with the "gadgeteering" rules in the APG. My head was spinning after the first few paragraphs, and I still didn't know how to build a magneto-plasma hypercompression phase rifle.

Weird science DOES have it's fun moments. Technobabble RULES!

[Sandy Davis]

I am a big of style over efect. Take kicking over striking.I do nto say that either form are better,it should be bassed on how yrou charatcer fights,and not what gives you a bigger bonus.This in away treats your hand to hand liek Q-bolts.A fire Q-bold dosen't kill more than a q-bolt laser. Now you could say then everyoen would be fightign the same way.. but by doing this this you may find that youc players will do things like" I jump at him,spinging kickign him into the side wile contune with a bull rush into him..."That is jsut a taste thing.

[Trueform]

I have found great need of changing the Forcefield power. As it is today it is more powerpul than both armor and invulnerability and it is still at level 2 power. I changed the variable effect from two to one point of protection for each success.

In the process I changed the forcefield to specificly only protect against "objects". Since it do not block light "energy" og photon attacks and air attacks get pass the force field. The ff boble can also be extended to more than one persoion on 5 successes or more.

I have also changed the Telepathy power to be a level 2 power that works like the manipulation powers. With each of the things mentioned in the text as a seperate technique. I also increased the difficulty in changing/deleting peoples memory and made it 1 higher difficulty when using other powers tru the distance extra.

[Jordan]

After pawing through my old WoD books I stumbled across my copy of WoD: Combat. Rereading it I realized that with some modification I could work wonders in simulating the cinimatic combat that is invariably part of any Aberrant game.

Has anyone else here tried to convert it?

[Centipede]

Haven't ST'd Aberrant much (and played nil) but I'm giving serious thought to either giving each power one free extra per level or raising all lvl 2 powers to 'flexible' lvl 3 versions.

I feel characters who want to expand their powers with extras are paying too much.

Also, merits are not converted into extras as per the rules since a dormed down character would then be unable to access them.

I like the idea of characters with a broad selection of powers and find a lack of 'frame' rather exciting, although I guess I too would get pissed with a troupe of identical, maxed out characters.

[Sandy Davis]

Well, Let's see good rules.Charatcer can gain marits/slash flaws in game play, thes would off corse be depdent on play,and for marits the spending of exp, flaws the gaining of exp.THe gaining of such should be up to both the story tellers and players,after it woudl be rather bad if the ST said to the player, sorry your charatcer is not a criple, but you get a few exp, not SMILE!

Let's see, making what you base your power off mater.Say your QB is fire..it wouldn't as powerful underwater, or may not even work,and it would start fires.Wile a water one would be weaker in the middle of a burning building..as it would be dispressed from the heat,and at the same time..Wile a laser would be harder to dodge but lose power in smoke, mist,and may be weaker when hiting shiny things...IE mirrors.

[Loki]

Another Extra:

Lase- For attack powers (predominately Q-Bolt)all targets that are in line of sight from Nova to target are affected equally. The Lased power will leave the nova heading towards the target, if an object is in the way of the attack and soaks all damage then the Lased power stops there, otherwise if object takes damage, then Lased power is able to pass through object and affects others as normal. Penalties for multiple attacks with a lased power are halved rounded down.

[Vixen]

Most of my house rules, I plucked out of Adventure! believe it or not.

Specifically, I like assigning Drive and Pilot to the Wits Attribute instead of Dexterity, since in situations where you have to roll these skills, mental reaction time is MUCH more appropriate than physical reaction time.

[Sandy Davis]

when preferming more than one actoin, the player may only use part of each pool, based on number of tasks.A nova doing 2 actoins only uses hlf dice pool, thre would use a thrid and for would use use a forth, and so on.

Novas can do lesser form of there powers for dramic efect with varrying costs.Simple way would be use a fire based q-bolt to light a fire place,Telakentic powers to get a book,Imolate to to use as a torch over you hand.ANd so on

When not in coombat flight powers are easier to maintain,and novas only have to spend quantum once per ten mintues(or an hour) level of power,and quantum.THis is do the the fact it is easier to fly when not being shot at.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by Vixen:
I like assigning Drive and Pilot to the Wits Attribute instead of Dexterity, since in situations where you have to roll these skills, mental reaction time is MUCH more appropriate than physical reaction time.

I don't know about that. The times I've been in near auto mishaps (2 where I could react), I don't remember doing a lot of thinking but I do remember doing a lot of reacting.

[Vixen]

Quote:

Originally posted by David 'Dr. Troll' Smith:
I don't know about that. The times I've been in near auto mishaps (2 where I could react), I don't remember doing a lot of thinking but I do remember doing a lot of reacting.

Exactly, and mental reaction time is measured by Wits. Or at the very least, in a car it's better measured by Wits - basing these skills on Dex means that an ace pilot needs to be dextrous, but doesn't need a quick mind.

[Asche]

yeah I have never agreed that piloting is a physical skill either. ST system was the first game I ever played that made drive/pilot a dex based skill. I was semi-perplexed.

[Vixen]

Quote:

Originally posted by Asche:
yeah I have never agreed that piloting is a physical skill either. ST system was the first game I ever played that made drive/pilot a dex based skill. I was semi-perplexed.

Does this mean it'll be this way in your game? *bats eyes* Honest, I'm not just saying this so I can have a better default drive, seeing as how Roxanne's never driven in her life...

[Sakurako Hino]

Not to sound like a devil's advocate, but I think that Pilot/Drive are related to Dexterity. Here's my reason why.

Driving and Piloting involve reflexes, dexterity, and reaction time. These things require your Dexterity to function. Wits may fall into this, but not very well. Since where the rubber meets the road is with your body's reflexes.

To me, it makes sense.

[Vixen]

Dexterity and Wits both cover 'reaction time,' so the question becomes which type of reaction time will have the most effect on driving. And I think mental reaction time wins the day, although that depends I suppose on how you relate Wits and Dexterity.

It also depends on what you use the rolls for. If it's to cover every aspect of driving, then yeah, it should be Dexterity. But if your GM only calls for a roll in a crisis situation, then I think the key ability is how fast you can determine the proper course of action - swerve left or right? - and that's the domain of Wits.

My other motivation for this, of course, is that I think there should be more Abilities that depend on Wits.

[Roslyn 'Pump' Kluesner]

Hand/Eye cordination is Dex though (along with reflexs.

Thinking quick doesn't mean anything if you can't enact your decision.