Aberrant RPG - Some advice?

[Guest]

Ok, I'm starting an Aberrant game, and there's one problem I've noticed with the rules. Aberrant seems to handle it well, more so than other supers games, but the problem is endemic to the genre and I thought if anyone would have a solution, it's you guys. The problem is that when you get to a certain power level regarding damage vs. soak, the line between doing no damage and instant death gets thinner and thinner. It seems unrealistic (a silly term when dealing with supers, I know) to say that if I do 60 levels of damage, he takes none, but if I do 67, he just dies outright. I know that you can buy extra health levels, but that pretty much means that EVERYONE has to buy them to make the damage system work better. It's a small problem, one that is easily gotten around by creative GMing, but I'd like to have a more concrete solution. Every fix I come up with ends up either not working at all, or needlessly complicating things. Any ideas?

[Guest]

I don't get it. If a person takes 60 hl damage he soaks it all... But if the same person takes 67 he dies? How is that possible? Have you read the rules correctly? The soak rating substracts the damage before any rolls. If there are any dices left after soak they are rolled and less than half of that (statisticly) is iflicted on the victim as damage. So, person A fires a quantum blast at person B for 60 HL. B has soak 60 which substract 60 possible damage levels, wich leaves 7 damage levels. Of these 7 only approximately 3 gets through. How can anybody die from that?

As a side note; my troupe and I use the numbers for dramatic results: even if you don't take any damage from a 60 (!) pointer you still gets kicked around the block. The character flies through a wall, tumbles down the street, whatever and is slightly dazed (no rules, just on the feel for drama).

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Love & Kisses

Reaver

[The Ranger]

Hmmm. I don't really see much of a problem here.

First Situation

If Nova A has a soak of 10 and Nova B had a Quantum Bolt which does 4levels and 6 dice (10 total) then even though it is absorbed by soak you still roll one dice because it is more than half the soak.

Second situation.

Assume Nova A has a soak of 20 and Nova B has a Quantum bolt doing 10 levels and 17 dice damage.(27 total) Nova A sustains seven dice and not seven levels of damage which means he should take about 3-4 levels damage. Not too bad. To be sure of incapasitating Nova A, Nova B need to do about 34 levels which is pretty OK.

Remember that Mega stamina gives free health levels too. Just think of the soak as extra health levels that never get marked off. I can see what you mean though...

[Jager]

Some possibilities:

Add their quantum to their health levels for a beyond incapacitated HLs. It's the "oh, man, you should have died from that" thing.

Encourage your players to buy some extra bruised and maimed health levels. As Ranger showed us, they ain't that expensive.

Extra Mega-Stamina works that way as well.

Lastly, remember that most novas are two-day old Jelly filled doughnuts. Yeah, they are tough on the outside, but once that fails, its all over but licking the fingers. Life is tough that way.

[Guest]

OK, I thik that the example is just that, right? (How can someone get 60 soak?)

However, I've a problem like that in my campaign. One of my PCs has more than 20 soak vs. bashing, mainly by armor, so if I would try to damage him I've got to smack it hard. But into the party there are some PC that have 5-10 points of soak. If they get hit by the villain, they would probably die. So the stay away from the fight. Too bad.

And, we have limited the extra health levels, because none of the NPCs of all the books I own have even one (and it seems silly).

[Winter_Heart]

A _huge_ problem with mega-strenght actually...

I mean, take the guy with soak 20 in the later exemple.

He get punched by Bob who has Mega-Strenght 4 and Strenght 5... so Bob rolls 7 dices, doing roughly 3 health level.

But then, Mega-Bob enters the frey and punch Soak 20 Guy... Mega Bob has Mega-Strenght 5. Doing on average 8 health level and killing soak 20 guy in one punch.

The only power difference here is 1 dot in mega-strenght.

[Wizard]

Quote:

Originally posted by MasMas:
OK, I thik that the example is just that, right? (How can someone get 60 soak?)

Some people play at the AUTHORITY level of power and routinely go up against weapons desinged to take out star ships and planets.

Quote:

And, we have limited the extra health levels, because none of the NPCs of all the books I own have even one (and it seems silly).

The NPC among the books are pretty sparse and (bearing in mind that I've never read the ELITE book) fairly worthless. As in not good examples of what the system is capable of producing.

I tend to think of it using REGEN as an example. Although not an uncommon power among gamer's, it's exceedingly rare in the comics. Most possible examples could readily be explained with stamina effects. Then you run across someone like Wolverine, for whom it is the primary ability.

Extra health levels should be like that, rare but when you see someone with them you get freaked by the high levels and what it allows them to do.

[Guest]

Hey Wizard, Would you mind conversing through e-mail? I'd love to chat with you about you character and the game that you play.

My e-mail address is valentius@home.com

Hope to hear from you.

[Guest]

Yes, the 60 soak was just an exaggerated example. But Winter Heart's example was exactly what I'm talking about: How one dot of Mega-Strength can be the difference between mainly negligible damage and instant death. The problem pointed out regarding varying levels of soak in a party and the villian-creating difficulties it produces are also on my mind. All in all, I love the Aberrant system, but nothing's perfect, i suppose.

[Wizard]

I still think this a matter of roleplay and insight. Would I take a leap at the Hulk alongside Ironman and Thor?

NO!

Not unless that leap were going to save a life I suppose. As someone's pointed out recently; I'm weird that way. Still, in the slugfest world the biggest punch landing first is usually the winner. Even when walking among the gods, a big enough stick is going to hurt. I'm fairly certain that's a touch of realism.

Now on the other hand, my style would be more along the lines of forming a warp gate under the big green menace and letting gravity take over. Or put one behind him (unseen hopefully) and let the two big guns do what they do best. Slug it out and knock him thru it.

For me to take part in a slugfest, especially one of this level is insane. That's not where my strengths lie. If I were crazy enough to do it, one would hope I was doing it for a very good reason. A reason worth my life.

[This message has been edited by Wizard (edited 06-05-2001).]

[The Ranger]

Actually group tactics can really kick ass in Aberrant. The first Phase II adventure has a couple of teams in it who should kick player butt if the right tactics are used...I know they kicked ours.

The groups mentioned above would use general threats to the baseline population surrounding the battle to keep as many group members as possible from engaging them.

[Stheno]

They did though Ranger, didn't they ?

As I recall, they kicked the ass of the Ranger's more...ahem...studly character, to put it delicately.

It was as much due to the fact that the NPC teams fought together and the PCs didn't as anything else.

Seriously people, team tactics in Aberrant really do the business.

If a PC group has characters with differing abilities to soak damage (and I would hope it does), is it not reasonable to expect the tougher characters to look out for the not-quite-so tough ones ? If not, then what on earth are all these characters doing in the same group ?

[Coriolis]

Stheno, they hardly ever fought together as i recall, though there were some truly memorable exceptions to that rule.

[Guest]

What is the problem if your opponent can do 100 levels of damage when you can teleport or if you have mega appareance or something like that?

[Wizard]

Group tactics keep you alive.

On another, but related, subject is the flip side of the situations you're describing. I tell this story as not a "How cool was this" but rather to illustrate a possibility. Imagine Wizard, down to the dregs of quantum faced off against Geryon with no backup in sight. Such a situation is no more (or less) fair than the situation originally decribed concerning the difference one dot of mega-strength can make.

Geryon, hesitating for a moment, knowing that she's no where near his class listens as she makes a plea to dissuade him of his goal. The goal happened to involve the death of a lot of baseline children. She tells him about potential, illustrating her point by picking up a piece of rock the size of your fist and drops it through a tiny warp gate, burning the last of her quantum in the process.

She is eloquent. She is passionate. He doesn't buy it and gives her one last chance to get out of the way before things get ugly. This is it, everything came down to a single roll of the dice and Geryon figures she's come up with snake eyes. The last thing anyone hears before the boom is a high pitched keening noise.

The rock she had warped to vertically 15 miles straight up and horizontally ten feet in front of her position came screaming in after accelerating 32ft/second every second and impacted solidly against Geryons skull.

Sometimes you need to examine all other possibilities before you make a decision. In this example, it was all a very iffy thing but when you come right down to it, who was really outclassed in that moment.

[The Ranger]

In the right situation and with the right powers brains will beat shear power. Some situations you just can't think your way out of...

Just make sure you don't get into those situations. (BTW I am always getting into said situations so I don't practice what I preach )

[Jager]

And Wizard, let's hope you did the math right.

As for the rest, try to fight your battle, not theirs. Also, sometimes getting away is the victory. If you are out-gunned, manuever. If everyone attacks the bad guy, and nothing happens, run away (and give your ST a dirty look). About half the fights I ran as a ST were draws. The rest were pretty much he who shot first, won.

[Guest]

Ehurm...

I'd like to get back to the dying part if it's okay with all?

In our games we has solved the problem with instant kills by letting people survive up to their Sta for a while, but they have to get to the hospital or a healer pretty quickly or they will die. Take a look at Cyberpunk and their system of mortal wounds and you see what I mean. Mega stamina proceeds baseline stamina (mortal 1-3 ca)... Hope I'm making sense.

[The Ranger]

Yeah, I think thats a pretty common house rule. Another one I have heard about is if a player is uninjured and receives a deadly wound then they roll stamina+Mega stamina and if they get a 3-4 successes they are just barely alive.

[Guest]

well in that case if I want to keep the story going, I would just fudge the die rolls. Yeah, some players hate that, but when rolling behind a screen you can have fun, as long as it keeps the story alive, running and not to mention entertaining.