Aberrant RPG - How Much Damage?

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Does anyone have any views on how much damage these 'Hell' grenades are supposed to do? In game terms I mean.

[Jager]

Ask Fortune. He introduced them into our little world. I hypothesize that skin contact is a big issue as well as blast radius.

For someone like Dr. Smith (the Green Dr. Smith, that is) it would be no more uncomfortable than having the air sucked out of your lungs and your nose hairs singed. Uncomfortable, but not really incapacitating.

For the less armored of us, its either get out or get hospitalized, if not dead.

The theory is that most novas, while tough, aren't tanks.

[Sakurako Hino]

Let's put it another way. There'd be nothing left of Endeavor for ANY type of burial if she was near one of these things when it went off.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Does 20[20] sound about right? Too much?

[Jager]

OWWWWW!!!!

Man, that is kind of tough. An average of 28 levels of lethal damage!

Hummm...A bit too tough, I think. I guess it depends on what kind of campaign your in/run.

How about 10[10] with a one dice degradation every three meters? That averages to 14 damage which still kill any human it comes in contact with. Even at 15 meters, that's 5[5], so its still killing people on an average roll. If the damage gets through, make it like a base 10 dice poison attack doing lethal damage and make it continuous with a two dice degradation. Only soakable with Stamina/Mega-Stamina if you have Adaptability. So, at 30 meters, even though its only doing 1[1], your baseline is still going to get screwed up, if not die.

Besides, Vile Bill throw four of them at once and odds are, BigGun shot them as they came in, setting them off.

Just some thoughts.

[Sakurako Hino]

Sounds like these puppies you shouldn't let players known to powergame have very easily. It's practically a nuke in your pocket!

[Jordan]

Heh, I remember in the Gurps Tech book they had a "Hell" grenade. It became available at tech level 14 (I think) and was a satchel sized bomb. At tech level 15 or 16 it moved down to the size of grenade. The scary thing about them was they were anti-matter bombs, so I don't think extreme levels of damage are unwarrented if that is what these hell grenades are emulating.

Of course, you could always lower the damage even further that Jager's suggestion and make them aggrivated. All in all, I'd rather not have one thrown in my direction!

[Asche]

I have those levels of weaponry in my settings. As an ex-AVID runner of GURPS and SpaceMaster, most of my gadgetry and weaponry is directly converted from those sources.

In Ultra tech I believe the notorius Hell Grenades (aka Implosion grenades, Black Hole Bombs, etc..) were listed as having a damage of 50d6 with an initial radius of 50 meters(quartering every 5 yards I believe) at tech level 14. Thats averaging 150-200 hits.

In GURPS, it only took 30 Hits to kill a normy outright; I converted the damage in Aberrant to 25[15} but no armor would protect you as you were being collapsed in upon yourself into the size of a pinhead. with the anti-matter reaction. I did allow Force fields to act as half as strong as they are actually listed. (This last idea came form my days of running SpaceMaster. They had a similar weapon and it reacted similarily with force fields.)

When you think about all matter within 50 meters being condensed into smaller than a pinhead, its easy to allow the damage levels. But then again, according to the rulkes of GURPS and SpaceMaster, these levels of weaponry came from civilizations that almost had total control of the base elements around them. How many civilizations in Aberrant can boast that?

[Preston]

Definitely time for a closed casket funeral. Make the casket a shoe box, for that matter.

[Jager]

Me, I liked using GURPS Swashbuckler. Gotta love those black powder weapons!

50 d6 in a hand grenade, huh? Time to hide the entire star system, buddy.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Power gamer? I resemble that remark.

More seriously, I think people are being misled by the word "grenade". For the effects described, 20[20] works pretty well. Fortune used one to knock down a building and launch an industrial freezer a quarter mile. Bill's lethal soak is 25. He would take roughly 6 lethal levels from that (assuming that the distance is balanced by the "satchel full of them" part). I would think that this is a bomb designed to kill novas, not baselines, and made by DeVries' Mega-Int 5 tech lady.

On a sidenote, from the WW forum, an aberrant nuke is supposedly about 100 dice, this is only 40.

[ 08-21-2002: Message edited by: Dr. David Smith ]

[Jager]

Bill through four of them and it probably took the ole node sparking off (for a little extra emergancy soak) just to keep him alive.

Also, Fortune implied that the device was not only a DeVries toy, but manufactured elsewhere (either Japan or Nigeria). That means, you could eventually have baselines using them, and they don't need to be using them on eachother which leaves ...

Also, Fortune was kind enough to start a gas main leak.

I just keep thinking of the mass obliteration these things cause. Not exactly eco-friendly.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Maybe we are looking at this from the wrong angle. What/how much does a good sized truck bomb do?

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

OK. Looking at the damage types for other heavyish weapons, probably 20[10]+explosion (rather than 15[15]) is appropriate. You all were right, 20[20] is just too much.

This isn't really the type of weapon that a baseline could or should use, especially inside city limits. Basically, this is a hand-held truck bomb. Call it the size of half a loaf of bread and resource cost, 2 or 3 dots?

[Sakurako Hino]

O_o; 3 dots? Try 4. The black market is probably the only place you'd find 'em, and the fu**ers would probably be as illegal as all get-go and marked up price wise through the roof. If you were military, probably 2 or 3 dots. 2 for a "baby" version, 3 for the big poppa.

Looks like I gotta start saving up my allowance...

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by Endeavor:
Looks like I gotta start saving up my allowance...

Me too. Although this still has potential as a replacement for "Thunderclap". Just whip one out and set it off.

Another question; "Has anyone figured out how long a combat round/turn is?" AD&D had it at one minute, which is way to long for Abby.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dr. David Smith:
Another question; "Has anyone figured out how long a combat round/turn is?" AD&D had it at one minute, which is way to long for Abby.

Anyone?

[Twist]

Quote:

Originally posted by Dr. David Smith:

Originally posted by Dr. David Smith:
[qb]Another question; "Has anyone figured out how long a combat round/turn is?" AD&D had it at one minute, which is way to long for Abby.

[qb]Anyone?

Storyteller standard has always been 3 seconds hasn't it?

[ 08-28-2002: Message edited by: Twist ]

[ 08-28-2002: Message edited by: Twist ]

[Kirby1024]

It's a nebulous thing. A turn in Storyteller is "Usually around 3 seconds, but it can be as much as is needed to get the job done". I tend to stick to around 5 seconds myself, just for general purposes, less if everyone's a speed freak, but it usually how long you need it to me (gotta love cinematic play...)

[Jager]

In third edition D&D, a round is six seconds, now. So, a turn equals one minute.

I think three seconds is accurate for Aberrant, though it is meant to be more free-form.

As for the grenades, Nigeria is just pumping them out. All you novas, sleep well.

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by Jager:
As for the grenades, Nigeria is just pumping them out.

Good!!

And about 3 seconds. Thanks all, I don't think I'd heard that before.

[Sakurako Hino]

O_o; Grenades?!?! *gulp*

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

OK, different question. What is the low end of the elite scale? I.e. Totentaz is #1, the top 100 get action figures, so how far down does the list go? (Or as a new elite, where do I start?)

[NeoVid]

Well, from what I remember, you're pretty well established as an Elite by the time you get up to #150 or so. So as a guess, I'd say that Dr Troll would start out at, say, #275. Though I partly say that because I don't know how many Elites there are. I don't think there could be that large a number...

[Jager]

Ahh, merchandising. Now, that is were the money is.

[Liam VanGilder]

Given the pay possibilities of the Elite lifestyle there are probably a fair few of them. Lethal danger doesn't reccomend the job but I would have thought there would be a fair few Elites who only sign up for relatively low risk jobs as part of their contract.

Something I thought about a while back, given that there are 6000+ novas in the Aberrant world as of 2008, how many would be independant and roughly how many would be in each of the factions?

Any thoughts?

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

I'd say that many of the Teragen aren't included in that figure (specifically the Harvesters).

#275? Just from the number of nova kills, I was thinking twice that. Anyone else?

[Hugin]

Quote:

Originally posted by David 'Dr. Troll' Smith:
I'd say that many of the Teragen aren't included in that figure (specifically the Harvesters).

#275? Just from the number of nova kills, I was thinking twice that. Anyone else?

First, 6000 is an accurate *approximation* of 2008 Nova population. The number starts to increase fairly quickly after that. I've seen mention somewhere of about 12,000 by the period of approx. 2012-2015. Terats, including the Harvesters, only actually number between 50 to at most 100 in the 2008-2010 period. They are a small group.

You've hit on the very reason there are probably only 275 *active* Elites. Death. Also the horrors of war causing some to quit. There is also the fact that most of those 275 aren't going to be full time Elites. Quite a few are going to be guys who just occasionally take on an Elite style mission while the rest of the time play bodyguard or Corporate Security Nova.

[Jager]

Both as an ST and player, I have discovered that most games have a larger nova count than the official record. It gets worse as time goes by; 1) there are more experienced novas out there to train new novas, bypassing the need to go to Rashoud Facilities; 2) Nova drugs become more common on the black markets; 3) as Utopia's reputation starts to diminish, fewer new novas who don't have violent eruptions want to go.

Also, at least two games I have been in had novas of differing power levels with the 10~15 point novas being a strong, but nearly invisible, minority. They were either taint ridden or had smaller eruptions that went unnoticed.

Another corrilary that myself and another ST came up with was that the initial erupters were more powerful (45~75 points with little taint), but rapidly become less common. Then the 30 pointers became the norm and remain that way for about twenty years. By that time, the 15 pointers become the majority, but they are also more succeptable to taint.

Though the highly powerful novas remain the biggest threat, the public becomes inundated with smaller, more corrupt (and vulnerable) novas.

The 30 pointers are the real players on the world stage, with the 45 point behomoths being like lonely titans that the 30's can bring down if the group together (as they usually do) and think it out. But, the 30 pointers are aware of the weaker mass boiling up beneath them in the form of the 15 pointers who are more tainted and less versitle and have a much harder time rising up and making a name for themselves.

By the way, shouldn't we move this to another thread?

[David 'Dr. Troll' Smith]

Quote:

Originally posted by James 'Prodigy' Meehan:
You've hit on the very reason there are probably only 275 *active* Elites. Death. Also the horrors of war causing some to quit. There is also the fact that most of those 275 aren't going to be full time Elites. Quite a few are going to be guys who just occasionally take on an Elite style mission while the rest of the time play bodyguard or Corporate Security Nova.

Agreed, but right now I'm not an active elite. It should be pretty easy to get to the top 300 (just be an active elite), but right now I'd be below even the part & some timers.

Put another way, how many people have ever done the elite stuff, and what to you have to do to be taken off the list?

[Sandy Davis]

Well, the story teller I played with worked it out that by 2012 there were roughtly 8,000 known nova to aeon about 9,000 in all, there were also so as many as 30 psaids.. In term of Elites..I think the ranks had around 500.And just starting off did not mean you started at 500.

As I understood being a Elites was some ike being a football players, some of the rookies have high standings before they even hit the feild.And not all Elites are even 30 point novas.

So let's just say there are 500.. ball boy may be an elites wih only around 15 nova points of power..so when a starting nova with 30 poitns of power comes along it will more likely be at least at 499.

But that is just me and I could be wrong.