Aberrant RPG - Psions Vs. Aberrants

[Guest]

Aberrants are too weak in Trinity, is this because aberrant rules came afterwards? or they just wanna make Aberrants look crappy or give Psions a chance?

[Stheno]

I believe it's because Trinity came first, and Trinity has a rather peculiar definition of "powerful".

It's also because Psions in Trinity should be able to confront minor Aberrants and win - at least with the advantage of numbers.

Bring Nova-level characters into Trinity, and things get very hairy for the Psions...

[Jager]

...if very hairy means that they die screaming, your correct. Starting novas can give psions a rough time of it. Some taint riddles monstrousities would rip right through a decent sized group of them. Different power levels.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jager:
...if very hairy means that they die screaming, your correct. Starting novas can give psions a rough time of it. Some taint riddles monstrousities would rip right through a decent sized group of them.

That is the problem abbies face right there. I can build a 30 point PC who will kill any 1 psion. Maybe even any 8. Then the army shows up and I have to deal with hundreds (of normals if not psions). At some point I run out of quantum. Generally speaking, the fight goes on until the abby loses.

[SpartanClear]

you got to think that the lemming aproach to abberants is really bad news to a group of PCs. which is what it's all about when you think about it.

[Jager]

Please define Lemming Approach. That's a new one to me.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

He means this...

,,

Quote:

Originally posted by David Smith:

I can build a 30 point PC who will kill any 1 psion. Maybe even any 8. Then the army shows up and I have to deal with hundreds (of normals if not psions). ...the fight goes on until the abby loses.

If your PC is a Trinity Psion who has to deal with such an abby, knowing that "this" is the way to deal with it would be a little depressing.

[SpartanClear]

see that's the tough thing about trinity, i haven't started my game yet, we're still trying to figure out who lives and dies in the aberrant war in my game (i'm running about three concurrent games in the same setting with two more planned to fill in the holes)

short of a fleet of biovargs, interstellar cruisers, and tacnukes, there just isn't much a group of pcs can do, but should you really have aberrants in trinity?

one way i'm thinking of treating it is having the whole group of high level psions (which they would be by then) embody the sacrifice angle of trinity and go on a suicide run to shunt off the invasion.

and then there's my time traveling crew of aberrants....

[Walker]

I always feel free to include whatever I want into my campaigns. Full scale abberants would be best used sparingly for dramatic purposes I feel.

EG. Finding the corpse littered battlesite of an invasion The Colony/Divis Mal/Whoever singlehandedly made of an extrasolar colony.

Or maybe...After trashing a group of trinity level abbies on the moon in, an abberant they had not previously noticed becomes visible, trashes their vehicle and warps out leaving them for dead. The players are then left in a hostile environment to survive as best they can and limp back to civilisation wondering at the super powerful thing that trashed their invulnerable space tank.

[SpartanClear]

i supppose, the way i'm going to doing it, as in themewise, is that the world didn't end and now armaggedon is coming. the stats for the abbies they give in trinity are the ones i was going to use for some wycoff dead zone newly erupted drifter. an uber mad max or something equally terrible.

it's almost religous, with people using the word nova as a cussword and pulling one of those kids playing jump rope singing end of the world songs. divis becoming the new boogeyman. or even better some nursery legend about turning off the lights and saying his name three times summons him.

and in a really evil moment- it works. just an idea i keep giggling about, earth finally gets destroyed because of a brave five year old.

on that whole eventually you run out of quantum argument- no. as long as you got your mega atts you got your health. in a game i played, a character named seraphim (an ex team tomorrow member) agrees to a basically a test to destruction, for two hours he would fight all novas in a xwf arena (for charity purposes and to make a nova assassin show himself) and he lasts over an hour and a half. no joke. seraphim only has two things that cost quantum, flight and regeneration. and in this game flight doesn't cost. when the fight really went down between the assassin and him it went on and on and on. and in the end the assassin kept some in reserve to be able to warp his way to escape.

seraphim could only do bashing damage, jericho had aggravated claws, and he still lost. mega atts is where it's at.

any not too far gone in mental taint will leave an exit strategy for himself. suicide missions are for mortals.

you start getting really hit you teleport to some rock in the asteroid belt and wait a day, if you have quantum regeneration it takes even less time. meanwhile people are desperately trying to find you. which is the problem really.

unless your tainted to hell mentally (helllooo chrysalis) you will not be very stupid about things and chances are you will let a mega int nova plan your campaign of destruction.

i could go on and on, but you get the idea.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by SpartanClear:
on that whole eventually you run out of quantum argument- no. as long as you got your mega atts you got your health.

The problem with is that after you run out of q your force field goes down (OK, yes, it will take another FF+Q rounds) and you stop regenerating. Then you have Mega-Stam + Armor... vs an unlimited number of lethal attacks with high numbers in brakets.

Even if you can soak that (unlikely) you still have that one last die being rolled, it will kill you eventually. And yes, it might take a long time (if you maxed both M-Stam & Armor). But it take about 30 points to do that...

[SpartanClear]

who said anything about a forcefield?

combat teleport with a high dex is all you need.

giant fleet? well now all you dumbasses are in one place and i'll teleport over to australia and burn sydney to the ground, while you travel there, i teleport to the moon.

rinse, repeat.

it really depends on the nova.

high levels of dex, and per

combat teleport

ap qbolt with spray technique.

quantum reg for fun.

you're done. and so are they.

my point is that novas are way too freakin powerful and they are just toying with earth.

and there is nothing psions can do about it.

it gets even worse if the abberants team up which it is implied they did, launching attacks from somewhere in the asteroid belt.

more later

[Guest]

Even a single nova can destroy a city in Aberrant, in Trinity they are suposed to be older and even more powerful, and if they regenerate health levels per turn like it says in Trinity rule book not even an army of thousands can destroy an aberrant.

[Kirby1024]

Well... That's not entirely true. You have to understand that thay can only regenerate once per round, and an army can fire off thousands of heavy artillery rounds in a single turn. With some coordination and help, an Army can whittle down any Aberrant short of Pax or Mal. Given time and cannon fodder, of course

At any rate, the whole Destroying cities thing tends to be a one in a thousand kind of thing with Aberrants. Most Aberrants aren't that powerful. Most of them have other, non-combat edges, like, say, being able to teleport, read/control minds, convert non-psions, etc. Sheer firepower is not the domain of Every Aberrant...

[Jordan]

One small little detail everyone is forgetting. Psi interferes with Quantum. That is why Psions can take out Aberrants with such ease. Get enough Psions in the area and poor mister Abbie finds his abilities go *POOF* instead of *Kablam!*

[Ashnod]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jordan Rossi:
One small little detail everyone is forgetting. Psi interferes with Quantum. That is why Psions can take out Aberrants with such ease. Get enough Psions in the area and poor mister Abbie finds his abilities go *POOF* instead of *Kablam!*

Jordan, I think I must have overlooked something big here. Can you point me to where in TRINITY or ABERRANT that this is written, cause I can't find it.

[Jordan]

I can't say about Trinity as I haven't gone back and read it in a while, but it is discussed in the APG. I actually got a one fact wrong. Psi and Quantum can cancel each other out. I think that is why Psions do so well. More Psions means their "signal" will be able to overpower the "signal" of any Aberrant that attacks the earth.

The reference is on page 58 of the APG under Noetic Energy: A Primer. Particularly the last couple of paragraphs. Also, on the next page, it says that Psiads can have the disrupt power and use it to shut down Quantum generated powers.

[Babylon]

So basically psions/psiads have the disrupt power and the psi form of synergy usable only with other psi users and only for the purpose of disrupt?

Sounds workable. Maybe a little hard to explain but workable.

[Jager]

...and lets not forget the clairs out there. You teleport to the city and they should have something waiting for you. After all, destroying a city would be a really big event. Not likely the clairs couldn't pinpoint it with some advance warning.

Let's not forget that while you teleport, they teleport starships.

[ 06-25-2002: Message edited by: Jager ]

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by Babylon:
So basically psions/psiads have the disrupt power and the psi form of synergy usable only with other psi users and only for the purpose of disrupt?

Well, probably not.

The exact quote is (page 58, APG) "Not only do psi and quantum interact with the physical universe differently, they don't get along particularly well with one another. To continue the communications analogy, it's not unlike getting overlapping transmissions. The energy of one disrupts the other, garbling both. While this doesn't result in an explosion as when matter and anti-matter collide, it's often enough to disrupt the intended effect".

It is a big leap to go from the above paragraph to "all psions have disrupt". You might as well say "all psions have problems using their powers on abbys". (There is actually more and stronger evidence for that. Page 232 of the Trinity core book talks about how psions have problems using their powers where abbies have, in the past, used theirs.) Also, remember that a 30 point Nova is a really strong abby.

In general;

Psiads can buy Disrupt. Which is different from just being given it.

Unlike the psiads, the Psion Orders have (delibrately) limited powers. Teleports don't read minds, ect. The order which was most likely to have some form of disrupt was the Quantakenetics.

[Kane Knight]

I use the Abbies in the back of the Trinity as cannon fodder. These are the low level baddies that the PCs and their support can rip through. For those special occasions, I toss in a lower level Aberrant.

Maybe it's too many power Ranger-esque shows, but it's what came to mind when I saw the discrepancies between the flavor text and the numbers. The little baddies the hero goes and kicks around before the big boss/Epsiode's bad guy, etc.

Can a combat Nova take out a large number of Psions/Baselines? Yes. I give both sides of the coin some protection from each other's powers, which gives a Psion team a bit of an edge against a lone and dangerous Aberrant. If they work together, and utilize what power they can muster, they can kick some serious tentacle.

Remember to apply such interferences both ways, though. It's a touch unfair if it only hurts Aberrants.

[SpartanClear]

abberrants=gods

to say that not all aberrants are powerful is a joke, it's been a hundred years, plenty of time for everyone to enter chrysalis at least once.

and worse yet, what about the kids of novas?

anyone ever read "bright light makes baby cry" in the utopia book? i had to bring it to the attention of my group in the middle of the child debates. and there are what they say in the teragen book....

,,

Quote:

Originally posted by Jager:

[QB]...and lets not forget the clairs out there. You teleport to the city and they should have something waiting for you. After all, destroying a city would be a really big event. Not likely the clairs couldn't pinpoint it with some advance warning.

Let's not forget that while you teleport, they teleport starships.

number one: ask france how well the clears figure things out.

number two: the starships are still experimental, it took an alien race's aid and the use of high level clears and high level devices. a nova just thinks about it.

worry more about warp masteries then teleporters anyways.

although nova detection is getting better, like most telecom sats are really decoys that explode when they sense reality dislocations or something like that (basically high levels of taint).

here's a fun thought:

play trinity like the fall of rome, barbarian tribe upon barbarian tribe invade seeking refuge from other invaders chasing them.

the chromatics might be fleeing the novas and some other races like the coalition are fleeing.

so what are the aberrants running from...

perhaps the children who are born without the limitation of human perceptions?

[Kane Knight]

Quote:

Originally posted by SpartanClear:
abberrants=gods

If you redfine the word God to include very powerful people, yes.

Quote:

to say that not all aberrants are powerful is a joke, it's been a hundred years, plenty of time for everyone to enter chrysalis at least once.

To assume that all Novas would/could go through chrysalis is foolish. I'll add that not all Novas are created equal, much less Abarrants, which applies much looser in Trinity terms. I seem to recal you only have a couple of Trinity books, by your own confession in another thread, so absolute generalisations are perhaps a little unecessary.

To think that all of these taint mad, insane Aberrants (Not Novas) would function as a cohesive unit is a strange assumption. To think that the Gods wouldn't clash, that they wouldn't do themselves in, that the numbers of these refugees of the Nova age wouldn't cull their own ranks is also a little presumptuous.

Quote:

and worse yet, what about the kids of novas?
anyone ever read "bright light makes baby cry" in the utopia book? i had to bring it to the attention of my group in the middle of the child debates. and there are what they say in the teragen book....

Too much light makes the baby go blind? You are referring to Adam? I thought they made it clear that he wasn't a typical second gen Nova...

There's what they say in the Teragen book, yes. Being born without the limits of human preconceptions, etc, etc.

Quote:

number one: ask france how well the clears figure things out.

A decent point. They were also distracted elsewhere. Ask yourself why you don't see more of these attacks, if they're so easy.

Quote:

number two: the starships are still experimental, it took an alien race's aid and the use of high level clears and high level devices. a nova just thinks about it.

Just because it takes less work doesn't mean that Aberrants win out. The fact that the ships are experimental doesn't mean they don't work.

Quote:

here's a fun thought:
play trinity like the fall of rome, barbarian tribe upon barbarian tribe invade seeking refuge from other invaders chasing them.
the chromatics might be fleeing the novas and some other races like the coalition are fleeing.
so what are the aberrants running from...

perhaps the children who are born without the limitation of human perceptions?

Go for it. Feel free. It's your game. How you will perceive what something beyond human perception is like is beyond me tho. For all the hype, Novas are limited to systems in a game made by humans. They can hype it all they want, but in the end, all the products have to fit iwthin human reasoning.

Note also that the Qin are capable of handling Aberrants. Despite their hype in Trinity, they are still manageable by a small number of Psions.

I mean, you're still free to make out Aberrants as unstoppable Gods, and humans to have no shot whatsoever. Psions are clearly inferior, Novas are Gods, no contest. If you want it, it's yours.