Paralytic Poison Delivered by Bite.

[Kintara]

I'm new to the HERO system, and haven't used it yet. But I've read through the book, and I know the system passably. But I still need some practice, apparently.

My friend wants to learn it too, so I'm helping him learn it by doing an example for a game he wants to do.

So here it is. This transhuman race has a bite that excretes a paralytic poison. The race generally uses it to hunt prey of many sizes. The race is vampiric; it eats blood. The poison in the bite can be extracted and used in other ways, poured in a drink, on an arrow, whatever (so Trigger, I guess). The poison must be able to get past the skin, but otherwise it can be used in many ways. The race can paralyze a normal grown human in one dose. Preferably, at lower levels it reduces coordination. The race has quite precise control over both how much damage the bite can do (they can do as much as a knife, and don't forget the blood loss), and how much poison is released (Standard Effect?). The poison should be able to paralyze large sea creatures enough for them to feed easily. We are thinking the poison is limited in Charges, perhaps 12. The poison should incapacitate for a good span of time, enough to feed at leisure.

How should I go about this? Is Drain STUN the way to go? Drain Dex? STUN Only HA with NND? I'd like the power to not be too far off a decent AP limit (like 60), but it doesn't have to be. How should the poison, the bite, and the blood loss (which isn't sucked out, only taken as it is bled, but the idea is that the race can feed with out causing too much trauma to the victim) be modeled as a whole?

[Lord Liaden]

Because you want the effect to be gradable, i.e. range from loss of coordination up to full immobility, I would suggest a DEX Drain with the return rate bought down to the speed that you want the effect to last. You could give it the Physical Defense Applies Limitation for Drains (-1) to reflect the necessity for it to get past the skin in order to affect its target. Alternatively, you could give your vampire a small Killing Attack representing the bite linked to the Drain, and Limit the Drain as "Only if KA does Body" (-1/2 Lim in most writeups of this effect).

Since the vampire can vary the amount of poison at will, I'd avoid using Charges for the limited amount; I'd suggest an Endurance Reserve instead, with a Recovery at the rate you'd like the vampire to renew his venom supply. For having the poison take a longer time to affect the target, Gradual Effect is good if you have a relatively large maximum Drain in the bite, but you can get a similar result by making a smaller Drain Continuous and Uncontrolled, and then just measuring the END from the Reserve that you pump into the attack. Both methods have pros and cons which you should compare to the effect you want

The venom would likely be less potent if mixed with drink or on an arrowhead, but that would be a matter of GM's discretion. Trigger would make sense for a poisoned drink, but arrows might use Trigger or take the "Must do Body" Lim above.

Feeding on blood can be simulated using the optional Bleeding rules, if you give the vampire a Killing Attack; the victim continues to lose Body from blood loss until the wound is tended to, which the vampire can do after it's lapped up its fill.

Hope that helps.

[Kintara]

Ok, thanks for the advice. The only problem I see is that I worry about the ability to Drain Dex. It is the most pricey primary characteristic. Even a normal Joe Shmoe has a Dex of 8, and that's 24 points right there, to get them to 0. To get them to -30 is long indeed. How about Drain Speed, less limiting for the victim, but it seems to be a little cheaper (less granular though)?

[Lord Liaden]

A Speed Drain would have been my first suggestion for this, since you "only" have to get to SPD 0 to stop all movement rather than go to negative numbers. A "lack of coordination" as you requested would normally relate to losing DEX, but you could certainly call slowing down the special effect of losing coordination.

[Insaniac99]

well if you mean a pure paralysis then this would do fine:


Yd6 Y Def Entangle, Vs Con, Takes no damage from attacks (+1/2), Cannot be escaped with teleportation (+1/4); cannot form barriers (-1/4), Susceptible to antitoxins (-1/4), no range (-1/2)


that is a gues for some of the disadvantages and advantages, and i forget the cost for the against con advantage but this would simulate that they can't move at all and that they have to touch them to do it, other ways you could to it is link this to a small HA attack and then link the entangle to it, or maybe even have the advantage of must have exposed skin or do body damage. but the above example is just the simplest to use...

[Kintara]

Hmm, another issue with both DEX and SPD Drain is that size doesn't factor in prominantly. In fact, many big creatures are slower. Presumably, larger creatures would have more PD (if I were to model it that way), but it should take more poison to drop a larger foe. Maybe a limitation, Reduced Proportionally to Size (-1/2, or more?), or maybe Increased END Cost as Size Increases (who knows? But I like this modelling, in theory).

Also, I'm not sure I understand how your Entangle would work. Vs. Con, how? How does breaking free of the Entangle work with recovering from a paralyzing poison?

[Insaniac99]

Originally posted by Kintara
Also, I'm not sure I understand how your Entangle would work. Vs. Con, how? How does breaking free of the Entangle work with recovering from a paralyzing poison?

Well in a super setting (and even some in a non super setting) there are probably gonna be people who can shake off the poison even though it may take awhile, and it would have little to do with how much damage they can do so Con (or Constitution) symbolizes the target metabolism, they would roll damage with their Con instead (so a 20 CON would try to break free of the entangle with 4 dice) so someoen who ca break free, had their antibodies nuetralize the poison in the system or shake it off or something. then you keep attacking them with the entangle to add more body to it, which would hold the bigger creatures longer.

[Kintara]

Hmm, so I would use the STR table for normal damage, in reference to CON instead. But can't characters use other sources of damage to bust out of a normal Entangle? Also, where is Vs. Con listed?

[Dust Raven]

Originally posted by Insaniac99
well if you mean a pure paralysis then this would do fine:


Yd6 Y Def Entangle, Vs Con, Takes no damage from attacks (+1/2), Cannot be escaped with teleportation (+1/4); cannot form barriers (-1/4), Susceptible to antitoxins (-1/4), no range (-1/2)

I've always been against the use of Entangle to simulate paralysis. This is for one simple reason: Entangles can be excaped through outside, even unwanted, help. Paralysis just isn't so. Even if you buy the Entangle "vs CON" or "vs EGO", that just means that if your buddy wants to help, he gets to use his own CON or EGO to try to break it. That's not paralysis. That's hokey (no offense Insaniac, I realise Entangle's use for paralysis is approved and encouraged by Steve Long, I just disagree).

One things I've done is use Telekinesis to hold a target still. You can apply those same Advantages ("vs CON" and "vs EGO") with similar effects. The only difference is that you must either maintain LOS and spend END every Phase, or buy the TK Uncontrolled and Persistant.

Another idea I've had is to use Suppress instead of Drain. You can make it Uncontrolled as well (It's already Constant, so there's a bonus), and the Charges or ammount of END you use will determine the durration in addition to how much is eventually Suppressed. Suppress is also cheeper than Drain so you can get more dice for the effect, making it easier to eventually get the target down to -30.

[Kintara]

Hmm, I didn't get the impression that Supress could even do that. I'll look into it.

[Insaniac99]

Originally posted by Dust Raven
I've always been against the use of Entangle to simulate paralysis. This is for one simple reason: Entangles can be excaped through outside, even unwanted, help. Paralysis just isn't so. Even if you buy the Entangle "vs CON" or "vs EGO", that just means that if your buddy wants to help, he gets to use his own CON or EGO to try to break it. That's not paralysis. That's hokey (no offense Insaniac, I realise Entangle's use for paralysis is approved and encouraged by Steve Long, I just disagree).

well here is what you can do, the GM, dciding that as per te SFX, and since the character paid "takes no damage from attacks" can do one of two things:

say the characters just takes all damage and that it might snap him out of it (like slapping somone's face) and all he woud do it follow the takes now damage bit.

or (and this is the one i prefer) he can say that due to the SFX that it won't work and he warns the one attacking the entangle that it won't stop the entangle and that he may want to consider another course of action... then somone with Antitoxins injects them into the character and according to the SFX is stops the entangle and the person is no longer paralized

[TheEmerged]

Personally, "Mental Illusions" is my paralysis mechanic of choice -- get to Ego +30, and they "no longer interact with the real world".

[Kintara]

Right . . . .

Well, let's just get it out of the way and use a major Transform as well.

[Grailknight]

I've done this before in my campaign and it works for me but you'll have to decide for yourself.
1d6 spd drain uncontrolled continuous 0 end penetrating.
5pts/hr return. Stopped by anti toxin or after(House Rule) 1 phase per 5 pts in the power. Multiple bites add +1 per die in base power and 1 phase per 10pts. 45 active pts.
One bite will stop a normal in 12-15 seconds and keep him down for 2-3 hrs. Multiple Bites can even drop supers but they may have time to escape or defeat their opponent.
Hope this helps.

[Kintara]

Here's how we ended up doing it.

HKA 1d6 for the bite.

Drain DEX 6d6, No Normal Defense (LS: Immunity; +1/2), Delayed Return (1 AP/Min; +1/2) (120 Active Points), Limited Effect: Affected Proportionately by Mass (-1/4), HKA Must do BODY (-1/2), Charges (8; -1/2), Linked (-1/4). Real Cost: 48 points.

The Limited Effect is bought to simulate the fact that a poison doesn't work as well against larger targets. It works better on lighter ones, but generally size correlates with power, so we figured it worked out to a minor limitation.

We're thinking we might buy more charges because we're not sure that that's enough effect total. Or perhaps SPD Drain is too much more effective.