Now THESE sound tough to stat out!

[Yamo]

Found this character descriptions on another message board and I just couldn't resist pondering how to convert them to HERO System terms. These ones seem really tricky, though! Any ideas?

 

1. Chaos Nation could absorb living people, using them to amplify his own powers; with enough "citizens" he could fly, was superhumanly strong, and could fire some kind of energy bolts. When injured, he could assign that damage to one of the citizens of his "nation" -- he's blasted by FireGuy, so he assigns the damage to to a guy that he abosorbed earlier, and John Smith re-materializes and collapses to the ground, burned to death.

 

2. Doro, from Octavia Butler's "Pattern" books. He's a mutant, and he has the ability to "jump" his consciousness into whatever body is closest to him.

 

When he does this, his old body dies, instantly. And he can use his power quickly enough to take out a group of people in a matter of seconds, leaping from mind to mind and letting the corpses fall behind him.

[Blue]

Re: Now THESE sound tough to stat out!

 

Don't have my books with me so crunching numbers isn't possible.

 

#1 sounds nearly impossible to simulate on any cost effective scale. If you had infinite points to spend, I suppose you could do an END transfer on the subjects to fill an END battery. Then you build your powers received and give each a limitation that they can only be used when you have so much END in the battery. As fro getting rid of the folks, you could use a transorm that doesn't activate until after you've drained all their END from them. The change-back trigger would be expending their END from your battery.

 

 

#2 is one of those oft discussed issues of possession. Hate to use Transformation as the catchall for everything, but it's just about the only way to simulate major changes to opponents. As for taking over their consciousness, there is no good mechanism in the game for this. But I'm sure this crafty bunch will have some kind of suggestion.

[DrFurious]

1. Chaos Nation could absorb living people, using them to amplify his own powers; with enough "citizens" he could fly, was superhumanly strong, and could fire some kind of energy bolts. When injured, he could assign that damage to one of the citizens of his "nation" -- he's blasted by FireGuy, so he assigns the damage to to a guy that he abosorbed earlier, and John Smith re-materializes and collapses to the ground, burned to death.

I'd do this as an X-Dim movement into Chaos Nation's "body". The powers could either be Aid's to existing powers or partially limited powers that depend on how many "citizens" he's absorbed.

 

The assigning of damage to a citizen is a bit tricky tho - I'd probably do it with a missle re-direction, transdimensional (into the body dimension) with ungodly bonuses to the roll. You can make it constantly active (?) with the potential for Chaos Nation to absorb it himself (i.e. he doesn't reflect). The poor citizen could be released from the "body dimensions" as a special effect or as a limitation on the power. Season to taste

 

!DrFURIOUS!

[Chris Goodwin]

Re: Now THESE sound tough to stat out!

 

Originally posted by Yamo

1. Chaos Nation could absorb living people, using them to amplify his own powers; with enough "citizens" he could fly, was superhumanly strong, and could fire some kind of energy bolts. When injured, he could assign that damage to one of the citizens of his "nation" -- he's blasted by FireGuy, so he assigns the damage to to a guy that he abosorbed earlier, and John Smith re-materializes and collapses to the ground, burned to death.

 

XDM, UAA, to the "absorbed" dimension. Aid to his own Powers based on the number of people absorbed, or perhaps just +X points to his Powers based on the number of people. Missile Deflection, Linked to XDM on one of the absorbed people back to this dimension. SFX is that poor bastard takes the damage.

 

2. Doro, from Octavia Butler's "Pattern" books. He's a mutant, and he has the ability to "jump" his consciousness into whatever body is closest to him.

 

When he does this, his old body dies, instantly. And he can use his power quickly enough to take out a group of people in a matter of seconds, leaping from mind to mind and letting the corpses fall behind him.

 

A very large Transform, Target's Mind (perhaps Mind+Soul) to Doro's Mind (etc.), Side Effects: Current Body Dies.

[Acroyear]

I did a Chaos Nation thread ages ago. He's from the Pantheon miniseries by Bill Willingham.

 

The way I wanted to work it was he gained knowledge the originator had... so he got more skills, too. He did display a complete working knowledge of the absorbed people's lives... total. He could list off their hometowns, who was in their family, etc.

 

I ended up doing it like this:

 

Killing Attack.

 

Yes, when he absorbed someone, he essentially killed them, anyway... as there was no other way to make him release their bodies. So he just kills them (distintigration) with the SFX "absorbed." Mark one tally on the sheet for the limitations of the power ups.

 

The special effect of his "protection" was simply that all damage was applied as if he were a normal... and divided it up amongst his citizens. So the SFX is corpses are falling out of him. The more damage, the more bodies (and the running tab is kept for his other limitations). More SFX would just be he knows who they were and can name them as they drop. It doesn't really provide any mechanical advantage and I don't feel requires points. Essentially he has lots of armor with the lim "loses one citizen for every X body hit with" (not taken, hit with...) The armor also has the lim "must have citizens to assign damage to or is uneffective" which is, eventually, how they defeated him...

 

Then just limit the other powers based on "must have X people for this level and Y people for that level."

 

Using adjustment almost powers seems to fit, but they also fade over time. Chaos Nation maintained the power once he got it.... I suppose you could buy up the time chart... effective permanance... but you'd have to by the top end of the adjustment power pretty high - just buying the powers and limiting them is probably more cost effective.

 

He also claimed that he usually was very selective with his absorbtion... which is what lead me to believe he gained there skills and probably more power from more "potent" citizens... but the variances of normal human to normal human are probably too slight to try to reflect in game mechanics.

 

EDIT: Aieee... I must have been more Dr Funk than I thought... look at all those terrible spelling errors....

[Killer Shrike]

But why would you want to?

 

Chaos Nation: Does he actually get bigger/denser when he absorbs people, or does he absorb them in the comic book no effect -> mass sense?

 

When he absorbs them, are they themselves helpless?

 

Can the target resist getting absorbed?

 

Once absorbed, can a target bust loose of thier own accord?

 

Can Chaos Nation release people still living, or is he like a roach motel, only spitting them out when they are dead? In other words, would it be most appropriate to just KILL the target outright when he 'absorbs' them rather than fuss with them?

 

Could Chaos Nation treat his damage delegation ability as an ablative Armor instead, or as an appropriate Limitation applied to a large Damage Reduction ?

 

Will post more after above has been answered......

[altamaros]

Originally posted by Yamo

2. Doro, from Octavia Butler's "Pattern" books. He's a mutant, and he has the ability to "jump" his consciousness into whatever body is closest to him.

 

When he does this, his old body dies, instantly. And he can use his power quickly enough to take out a group of people in a matter of seconds, leaping from mind to mind and letting the corpses fall behind him.

 

does Doro gain some abilities from his host ?

 

IMHO, you should use the "Shift spirit" power from hte old Horror Hero; very expensive (the power !) but useful.

 

otherwise : maybe you can build Doro as a computer/spirit and the host as its small size vehicle (after all, the host is separately targeted by attackers, which fits the TUV rules ).

Doro has its own abilities

- (skills, INT, EGO)

- mind link to the vehicle

 

so has the host :

- a VPP for skills/characteristics/Perks, only change according to host, must take all host non-psychologial disadvantages.

- an inherent shapeshift for the external look.

- the transfer itself can be a IPE teleport

- to remove the next host from existence: ? a RKA, A EDM UAA ?

 

With the vehicle rules i think you could do that for a correct amount of points ?

[Acroyear]

Re: But why would you want to?

 

Originally posted by Killer Shrike

Chaos Nation: Does he actually get bigger/denser when he absorbs people, or does he absorb them in the comic book no effect -> mass sense?

 

No mass, size, physical appearance change, at all. (we only saw his "final battle" with some references to earlier battles in text).

 

When he absorbs them, are they themselves helpless?

 

He selects his prey, grabs them... they glow for a moment... and then are gone.

 

Can the target resist getting absorbed?

 

It doesn't look like it. He never tried to absorb another superhuman, though, so he might not be able to.

 

Once absorbed, can a target bust loose of thier own accord?

 

Can Chaos Nation release people still living, or is he like a roach motel, only spitting them out when they are dead? In other words, would it be most appropriate to just KILL the target outright when he 'absorbs' them rather than fuss with them?

 

Doesn't appear so. In fact, they only ever leave his body when he releases them... and he only does that if they are dead. He refuses to surrender his "population." Even the extra-goody guys just womp on him with lethal attacks to burn up his population, knowing full well that they are killing innocent people, because there is no other way to stop the guy.

 

Which is why I designed it as just killing them with the absorb SFX.

 

Could Chaos Nation treat his damage delegation ability as an ablative Armor instead, or as an appropriate Limitation applied to a large Damage Reduction ?

 

You could treat it as ablative armor... but then you'd need, like, 10 Armor per person in the population. Absorb 100 people and you need 1000 Armor... I felt a nice size of armor (like 50) was plenty with the lims that he loses 1 population per 10 Body he was hit with and then a lim on the armor that he needs population to use it.

 

I'm using a version of him in the campaign I've been working on. I'm currently calling him The Conglomerate Man.

[Uncle Shecky]

I have a character who is a little similar to Doro (though much weaker). Domino is able to make her consciousness leap from person to person, knocking out the host when she leaves it. I built this as a a powerful Mind Control with UBO, so the person she is mind controlling can use her mind control power to enter someone else. Domino's body is inactive while using this power.

 

I had to cheat a little to build the "knockout": I made it a Side Effect of the Mind Control: Drain vs. STUN. It's munchkiny, because she's able to damage people with a limitation on her own power. She takes the STUN drain herself the first time she uses the Mind Control, but she has enough STUN that it won't knock her out.

 

You could build Doro in a similar way, with a BODY Drain or HKA side effect, but it would be extremely expensive (and munchkiny). But this won't work if Doro is just a free consciousness, who kills even his own original body. In that case, I like altamaros's idea of making him an AI, since he doesn't really have a physical form. He wouldn't need to buy a body as a vehicle, IMHO. He could just Mind Control different characters.

[DarkGreen]

Re: Now THESE sound tough to stat out!

 

Originally posted by Yamo

2. Doro, from Octavia Butler's "Pattern" books. He's a mutant, and he has the ability to "jump" his consciousness into whatever body is closest to him.

 

When he does this, his old body dies, instantly. And he can use his power quickly enough to take out a group of people in a matter of seconds, leaping from mind to mind and letting the corpses fall behind him.

 

I built a jumper power like this once. I haven't read your source material but there was a very similar setup in the "Wildcards" books except that it didn't kill the victim, just swapped minds with them (and left them in your previous body). Since I didn't recall anyone using a bodies old superpowers (which I thought was explained as most all powers actually working physically as some form of psychokinesis - which explained some of the weird limitations on people as psychosomatic...)

 

I don't remember the numbers but it was something like this:

 

* Xd6 cosmetic transform, requires eye contact, short range (4"), invisible - Changes target into cosmetic duplicate of attacker; Side effect that always occurs: Xd6 cosmetic transform self into target

 

- plus-

 

* 4" teleport, Usable as an attack, linked to cosmetic transform, set effect: swaps target and attacker positions, fully invisible, ranged/short range, requires eye contact, only if cosmetic transform successfully transforms target

 

The first power makes him look like me and vice versa, while the second swaps our positions. This turns out to be WAY cheaper and easier then some form of massive will domination and appearance change. It's also far more elegant.

 

If you want to leave dead bodies behind just put a killing attack in there too.

 

If you want to be able to use a targets abilities.... well as a GM I would simply never allow that.

 

-DG

[Captain Super]

Acroyer - dead on for chaos nation's powers. Once again creative use of SFX trumps fancy power construction.

 

As for the jumper, there was a villian just like this named Janus in one of the champions adventure books by Gold "something" Games (was that gold rush games?). With my limited time I'll try to pull it out and post how they did it. I believe they did it with the Spirit Form Powers from Champions Almanac #1.

[KawangaKid]

Originally posted by Acroyear

I did a Chaos Nation thread ages ago. He's from the Pantheon miniseries by Bill Willingham.

 

The way I wanted to work it was he gained knowledge the originator had... so he got more skills, too. He did display a complete working knowledge of the absorbed people's lives... total. He could list off their hometowns, who was in their family, etc.

 

I ended up doing it like this:

 

Killing Attack.

 

*CHUCKLE* That was my solution for Doro (BODY & STUN Drain, Killing Attack, whatever). Just kill the suckers he absorbs, link it to a shapeshift and a bunch of conditional skills and overall levels for the kinesthetic skills. If you want him to know everything the victim knows, link a Telepathy to it or something.

[Zaratustra]

Killing Attack is the wimpy solution out of the problem. What if one of the brave heroes finds a way to extract the poor souls from the villain?

 

Personally, I'd buy the XDM UAA to absorb people, then Missile Deflection with Transdimensional with the limitation, only works if there are people in the pocket dimension. Alternately, Transfer BODY and STUN, Transdimensional, triggered by attacks.

[Acroyear]

Originally posted by Zaratustra

Killing Attack is the wimpy solution out of the problem. What if one of the brave heroes finds a way to extract the poor souls from the villain?

 

That's like saying using a killing attack to simulate disintigrating someone is a wimpy solution because someone might find a way to re-intigrate them. You should transport them to "disintigrated stuff universe" instead.

 

You don't build powers based on what someone probably won't discover as a way to reverse it, this is doubly true when there's actually no way to reverse it.

 

 

Here's more info on the character...

 

The Chaos Nation character was considered one of the four most powerful villains in that universe, counted among that number was Loki (the god), an unnamed cthonic "old god," and the evil version of Dr. Strange (or for us Elementals fans... Saker dressed like the Phantom Stranger). As such, I have no problem with his absorbtion being irreversible.

 

If the combined heroes of the universe, as presented, with decades of experience have determined that there's simply no way to save these people (including the Superman based one) once they've been absorbed... I'm going to assume that it's a fair bet that there's no way to save them.

 

Personally, I'd buy the XDM UAA to absorb people, then Missile Deflection with Transdimensional with the limitation, only works if there are people in the pocket dimension. Alternately, Transfer BODY and STUN, Transdimensional, triggered by attacks.

 

Just because you can make something complicated doesn't mean you should, imo. There's no functional advantage to this method. In fact, it doesn't work properly as a triggered adjustment power will still only work once a phase. Which means that autofires, teamwork tactics, etc will wipe the villain out easily. And in my case, at least, I don't want to deal with dozens of adjustment powers running at once.

[BlackCobra]

For Chaos Nation's power, I'd suggest buying all his defenses and other abilities on charges -- very difficult to recover charges, that basically require him to use his people-absorbing power to get the charges back.

 

And count me in with the folks using an RKA to absorb the people -- no way back is no way back. If you want the possibility to get them back in your version, either say it's a side-effect of the RKA that they can come back at some point (unless "used") or use a Major Transform.

 

Wacky power.