Stat suggestions for a spy-mouse?

[DataPacRat]

My latest HERO creation has a couple of living "peripherals" which she can send ahead to use as, expectedly, spies. Described as a 'furry snake' and a 'fuzzy mouse', they need 61 points to match the hero's own nanites (Life Support and Regeneration, mainly).

 

I currently have them built via Duplication, 65 character points (13) (base: 13), Altered Duplicate (+1) (active: 26), x2 Duplicates (5) plus Mind Link, Specific Mind (5), x2 minds (5) (total cost: 41). [sidenote: I think I might have made a mistake here, but the points have already been spent and the game started...]

 

And, so far, the critters' stats are simply (61) Nanites: As Main Character plus (4) Double-Jointed. Might some kind-heared HERO player be able to offer any suggestions on what selection of Characteristics (and possibly Powers) would better reflect a mouse-like or snake-like creature for those 4 points currently taken up by Double-Jointed?

[Zed-F]

Re: Stat suggestions for a spy-mouse?

 

Why buy them as duplication? That does not seem to be a good fit. If one gets destroyed, it's gone permanently unless you spend still more points on duplication, and they aren't really duplicates of your character in any meaningful sense.

 

Why not buy them as followers? That would be much less expensive as you don't have to take altered duplicate and so forth, and you can describe their abilities much more precisely. Or if you can create more of them at will (and if you have regeneration, why not?), then summon slavishly loyal critters might be better suited to what you want. And you can still describe their abilities precisely.

 

Another possibility would be to just handwave a bit and use clairsentience to represent nanoperipherals blanketing an area, observing, and reporting.

 

EDIT: As far as stats suggestions go, you could use a size template to give them appropriate stats for being small, and go from there.

[DataPacRat]

Re: Stat suggestions for a spy-mouse?

 

Why buy them as duplication? That does not seem to be a good fit. If one gets destroyed, it's gone permanently unless you spend still more points on duplication, and they aren't really duplicates of your character in any meaningful sense.

 

Why not buy them as followers? That would be much less expensive as you don't have to take altered duplicate and so forth, and you can describe their abilities much more precisely. Or if you can create more of them at will (and if you have regeneration, why not?), then summon slavishly loyal critters might be better suited to what you want. And you can still describe their abilities precisely.

 

The main reason I bought them as Duplication was that this is a generally biology-oriented character, and the snake/mouse live inside the hero's body when she's not using them. Followers tend not to share the main character's meals so directly; and Summon needs the Specific Being (+1) enhancement to summon a specific being, which puts its cost on the same order as Duplication.

 

 

Another possibility would be to just handwave a bit and use clairsentience to represent nanoperipherals blanketing an area, observing, and reporting.

 

Hm... that approach might have a possibility or two.

 

 

EDIT: As far as stats suggestions go, you could use a size template to give them appropriate stats for being small, and go from there.

 

Where might I find this 'size template' of which you speak? I'm not entirely sure /how/ to stat out -6 to PER rolls (Stealth bonus?) against or +9" Knockback. (The +6 DCV, I can manage.)

[Pogo]

Re: Stat suggestions for a spy-mouse?

 

And' date=' so far, the critters' stats are simply (61) Nanites: As Main Character plus (4) Double-Jointed. Might some kind-heared HERO player be able to offer any suggestions on what selection of Characteristics (and possibly Powers) would better reflect a mouse-like or snake-like creature for those 4 points currently taken up by Double-Jointed?[/quote']

 

For the snake, enhanced smell or IR vision if it's a pit viper. Enhanced hearing would also work. Change the mouse to a rat and you could add some sort of vibration sensitivity, including hearing -- see near the end of http://www.physics.brocku.ca/etc/cargo_cult_science.html. You may need to slap on limitations to drop these to four points, but that's where I'd look.

[John Desmarais]

Re: Stat suggestions for a spy-mouse?

 

Another possibility would be to just handwave a bit and use clairsentience to represent nanoperipherals blanketing an area' date=' observing, and reporting.[/quote']

 

This would be my suggestion as well. The "fuzzy critter' would just be the visible special effect for the Clairsentience.

[Profit]

Re: Stat suggestions for a spy-mouse?

 

Lets see, a spy mouse, well, the mouse needs to wear a eye patch and a white turtleneck. (BTW Dangermouse comes out on DVD soon, rush to amazon now) Seriously though, I like the clairsentience bit better than the duplication bit. Just need appropriate disadv to simulate the critters abilities.

[DataPacRat]

Re: Stat suggestions for a spy-mouse?

 

This would be my suggestion as well. The "fuzzy critter' would just be the visible special effect for the Clairsentience.

 

Hrm, let's see; Clairsentience, Sight+Hearing+Taste/smell groups + Touch sense is 45 points... possibly extra Range (5 per doubling), maybe 0 END (+1/2)... 'Only through senses of others' isn't right, since the heroine isn't using passers-by's eyes. to bring the cost back down, probably Concentration, Extra Time (to let the spy-mice or whatever get into place), maybe even an IIF.

 

Does that sum up the most likely modifiers?

[freakboy6117]

Re: Stat suggestions for a spy-mouse?

 

does the summon really need the specific being adder?

 

I can't see any difference between creating a new nano mouse every time and having one stored in your body beyond the special effect unless the mouse retains its previous memories in some significant way.

[DataPacRat]

Re: Stat suggestions for a spy-mouse?

 

Does the summon really need the specific being adder?

 

Apparantly not; the GM and I have decided to replace Duplication (1 pt per 5) with Altered Duplicates (+1) with Summon (1 pt per 5) with Amicable: Slavishly Devoted (+1). The overall points stay the same, which is easy to work with; plus, if somebody steps on a nano-mouse, she doesn't lose the character points.

 

Which, of course, brings us back to my original post. The nano-mouse or nano-snake has 13x5=65 base points to spend, presumably plus disadvantages (to the maximum of the main character's total, which is 250); 61 of those are taken up with a set of nanite abilities (regeneration, life support, and chameleon invisibility); and I'm still not quite sure how to build a Shrinking template.

[Zed-F]

Re: Stat suggestions for a spy-mouse?

 

There are some such templates in the back of 5ER to my understanding, though I only own FREd. I believe you wind up selling off base characteristics and buying DCV levels and a high Concealment Skill with the proceeds, plus taking a size Disadvantage, e.g. small and light, +X" KB. Of course, the amount of CP you spend on DCV levels and Concealment does not necessarily have to equal the amount of CP you gain from selling off base characteristics. In general for non-combat constructs of this type I tend to skimp on the DCV levels; since its job is to avoid engaging in combat in the first place, it doesn't necessarily have to be super-evasive. It could easily have slower movement speed and/or reactions than a human, which would partially negate the DCV bonus it gets from simply being small. After all, just because a mosquito is very small, doesn't mean it's impossible to swat one, whereas a human the size of a mosquito that nevertheless retains human-equivalent intelligence and mobility would be very difficult to hit indeed.

 

I guess I would also wonder whether your nano-mouse/snake really has to have the same selection of regeneration, life support, and invisibility. You might want it to, of course, but you could conceivably create it as a considerably less complex, special-purpose nano-organism. As such, you might only need to give it a subset of those abilities.

 

I should also point out however that when using Summon, you must buy the ability based on the total number of CP your summonable has, not based on the base number of CP your summonable has. Your summonable starts with the same number of base+disad points as you do, but that doesn't really come into play here as your summonable isn't even going to use up its base point allocation before it runs out of total points (based on the amount of points you took in the Summon power.)

 

As far as abilities needed to reflect their shape -- since they are summons, their shape is now just their shape. You don't need double jointed or anything like that for them; the snake looks and moves like a snake, and the mouse looks and moves like a mouse. If you want them to be able to change shape, you could of course buy shapeshift.

[Zed-F]

Re: Stat suggestions for a spy-mouse?

 

This would be my suggestion as well. The "fuzzy critter' would just be the visible special effect for the Clairsentience.

Of course, normally a clairsentience perception point is completely invisible, so if the 'fuzzy critter' concept was retained, then this probably warrants a -1/4 limitation such as 'Physical Manifestation.'

 

When I made the suggestion, I was thinking of just expelling a swarm of nano-scale sensory roboticules to blanket the target area. This gets around needing to have a physical manifestation, and it more closely matches the way the clairsentience power works since you could describe the roboticules as having a one-shot travel ability to get to the target area very quickly. Of course that would be a different SFX from what DataPacRat has so far described, but it fits the Clairsentience power rather more cleanly.

 

On the other hand, as independent entities, summonables would have the ability to perform some limited manipulation of their environment in addition to merely spying.