Revamping the Horsemen

[Powerhouse]

The original Seven Horsemen was a pretty cool and scary group and I'm sure terrorized many supers. That said, they pretty much paled aganst those who inspired them.

 

Did anyone ever try to use the Horsemen as the Biblical ones? Just curious. I'm thinking of revising them as just the Four Horsemen: War, Pestilence, Famine, and Death as beings so powerful and alien that you gotta wonder... ARE they the real Horsemen? Is the world ending?

 

Depending on the power levels of the game, they could easily be 1000-1500 pointers and pull crap (with mega scale) like tearing the Middle East apart as War exerts his influence to bring it all boiling over. Famine could devestate the American Heartland or Pestilence make vast swaths of Africa graveyards. As for Death, his mere presence can kill "immortals" at will and he silently absorbs killing blows... what can kill Death?

 

Epic Adventure anyone? Along with some personal reflection for those who realize that maybe Revelations has started.

[J.J.]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

If I saw your Horsemen, I would say they were fakes.

 

Technically, only Death was named. The others only alluded to. There is some debate as to if the first rider was Christ or the Anti-Christ, but considering they were called curses, most people go with the latter. However, some others believe that it is "conquest from foreigners" as the description matches the typical Parthian soldier (white horseback & archer) and no Anti-Christ is necessary.

 

White Rider, Red Rider, Black Rider, Pale Rider (in truth, "pale" was originally named "green" but that didn't have the same connotations in english so the word was changed in translation - greenish tinge of the sickly & recently dead).

 

In truth, they are Conquest (Anti-Christ/False Faith), War/Destruction, Famine & Death/Pestilence. There is no Pestilence as a separate Horseman.

 

The White Rider uses a bow and carries a crown, the Red Rider a sword, the Black Rider scales, and the Pale/Green Rider... well, he kills via war & famine (infection/disease/etc) so he just kinda rides the coattails of the 2 just before him.

 

All them may have power over beasts : "And power was given unto them over the fourth part of the earth, to kill with sword, and with hunger, and with death, and with the beasts of the earth. "

 

How one "kills with death" is a bit of a mystery to me, but it may be that the Pale/Green Rider has been split into Pestilence & Death in the popular Horsemen and the White Rider has been lost.

 

And, of course, Hell follows them.

[MCMaenza]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

I think the Horsemen, no matter the level built, need to cause a lot of death and destruction whenever they are used. They would be epic regardless.

 

I did a revamp of them for my gameworld back in the 90's (still can't wait until we move completely so I can get back to all my character sheets). I believe I tied War to Ares, the god of war. Plague was connected to a nuclear accident.

[Dominique]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

The Horsemen kicked much @$$ back in the day, and I would love to see an updated version of them (hint, hint).

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

Tom McCarthy offered some good suggestions as to how to bring the Horsemen up to 5E standards:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?p=35911

 

I used them quite a bit myself in past campaigns. They're a powerful, diverse, very striking group with strongly-defined motivations, who can be used singly or in any combination; and you never need to provide reasons for them to cause trouble. I did modify their character sheets to try to make each character's power set conform to my notion of their "aspects," i.e. fear powers, famine powers etc. I also increased the power level of the individual Horsemen, which IMO isn't as insane as it sounds. They're very single-minded and tend to work poorly as a team.

 

I'm not going to post any writeups, though, because IIRC Hero Games still has the rights to all the characters from Wrath of the Seven Horsemen, and I think Steve Long mentioned that he'd prefer we not put them up here.

 

As to the topic of this thread: frankly, beyond the PCs' ability to cope with whatever power level you give your Four Horsemen, I don't think it would matter a great deal whether you call them the actual Biblical figures or just villains styled after them. Superheroes in comics frequently interact with pagan gods, demons and conceptual entities, as both enemies and allies. And there have been many "end of the world" scenarios run in comics. If the threat is clearly out of their league the heroes may be frightened, but if there's a chance that they can stand up to it you can expect your players to roll up their sleeves and plunge in, whatever you choose to call the opposition. That's what superheroes do.

[Mutant for Hire]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

I once decided to thematically rebuild the Horsemen for the modern age. What would the classic four of Death, Pestilence, Famine and War translate to? Or rather if I was going to create four supervillains to recreate the Horsemen how would I go about it and make them relevent in modern times, if not more dangerous?

 

War:

Relatively unchanged. War incidentally is the most subtle of the Horsemen weirdly enough. War's power in HERO terms is Mind Control over a massive scale, or perhaps a Mental Transform, culminative that turns everyone into a fighting maniac, this side of a beserker (or perhaps the far side of one). War doesn't do damage directly, he just makes everyone else go to war. I stole the effect from Good Omens, I admit.

 

Pestilence:

Again, borrowing a leaf from Good Omens, I expanded Pestilence into corruption of all sorts. Chemical pollution, radioactive contamination, biological nastiness of all sorts. Pestilence also handles various nasties and stuff that corrupt even non-living material. Wood rots and chemicals leech away at the strength of concrete and steel. Think of New Orleans damaged by the flooding, and dangerous to inhabit because of the pollution.

 

Famine:

Famine consumes the things that we need to stay alive. Famine also causes drought. As we have shifted from animal/people power to other sorts of power, there are other sorts of power that Famine consumes. Famine also drains away at our energy supplies. A famine of energy sources like fuel can be just as devistating as anything else.

 

Death:

Death might as well be renamed Entropy. Death causes the breakdown of all complex systems, living and non-living. Machines and electronics break down as well as people.

[Kirby]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

I never treated them as the Biblical aspects, but have thought about doing so (it just never reached fruitation). I personally try to introduce them one at a time into the campaign (generally starting with War, but that's me; if you wanted to go in the order according to Revelations, that could add more dramatic effect) and then introduce the scenario.

 

I much prefer them over the less enthusastic, less interesting Crowns of Krim, who apparently are taking the niche of the Seven Horseman ([scarcasm]and we can't have two types in that niche, oh no![/sarcasm]).

 

I'm running a game on Hero Central in the CU, so I'll probably use The Wrath module but substitute the Crowns, though in my face to face campaign (which uses the San Angelo setting) I'll be using the Seven Horseman.

[freakboy6117]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

i rather liked the way they where handeld in good omens by terry pratchet and neil gaiman

 

war was a red headed women named Scarlett after all men where always fighting over her good with machinery nowadays and transitioning from her

 

career as an arms dealer to one as a war correspondent.

 

famine aka Dr raven sable a noted and successful diet guru and fast food restaurant chain owner (fast food with no nutritional value what so ever)

 

Mr white /chalky his name begins with p and ends in something that could be estilence or ollution had a lot of small unobtrusive jobs at places like chernobyl 3 mile island and aboard the Exxon valdez

and finally death well he's just busy.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

I'm running a game on Hero Central in the CU' date=' so I'll probably use [b']The Wrath[/b] module but substitute the Crowns, though in my face to face campaign (which uses the San Angelo setting) I'll be using the Seven Horseman.

 

That's actually a pretty cool idea! If you change the source of the Crowns to the Kings of Edom or whatever Lovecraftian Elder Gods and/or their servants you want to use, that would make for a natural connection. Dark Seraph can then be searching for the rest of the Crowns just as Fear of the Horsemen searched for other Old Ones artifacts. Heck, the original adventure even features a Stone Crown.

 

If you have access to Galactic Champions, you might consider something that I've been toying with for running this adventure: substituting Slug 3000 for the Prime. The Elder Worms were originally servants of the Kings of Edom, and this could be a good way to introduce them. If I needed more power I could add other lesser Elder Worms based on the CKC version of Slug. I might also substitute Maraud from GC for the Black Death, since in my campaign the Xenovores were created by the Elder Worms.

[Dr. Anomaly]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

I once decided to thematically rebuild the Horsemen for the modern age. What would the classic four of Death' date=' Pestilence, Famine and War translate to? Or rather if I was going to create four supervillains to recreate the Horsemen how would I go about it and make them relevent in modern times, if not more dangerous?[/quote']

That's a very interesting take on them, MfH, especially with things like Famine vs. energy reserves and so on.

 

I also agree...I've never exactly thought of War as being the subtle one, before now.

[Trained Chicken]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

Unless you're going to include Lex Luger, Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, and Nature Boy Ric Flair, you can't really call them the Horsemen.

[Southern Cross]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

How would you rebuild Destruction's aura of destruction in 5th Edition terms? I'd add the Penetrating advantage,as a 1d6RKA isn't very dangerous,even if it's bought AP.It also seems to be a Persistent Power,as it's active for as long as Destruction is in her Aspect form.

[Kirby]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

How would you rebuild Destruction's aura of destruction in 5th Edition terms? I'd add the Penetrating advantage' date='as a 1d6RKA isn't very dangerous,even if it's bought AP.It also seems to be a Persistent Power,as it's active for as long as Destruction is in her Aspect form.[/quote']

Penetrating sounds good, though if you wanted to keep the AP aspect, then I'd raise the Damage Shield to 2d6. Just make sure to remember the Area of Effect advantage.

[CrosshairCollie]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

I probably wouldn't change any of their schticks (though I'd be tempted ... my wife just finished reading Good Omens and told me all about it), though I'd clean them up to 5th Edition and maybe give them a few more appropriate powers, since they seem kind of one-dimensional in terms of powers.

[Christougher]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

I wouldn't call my take on them a revamp, but I'm working on a supervillain team planning to call themselves the Four Horsemen. Took most of the module's horsemen and turned the ideas on their ears.

 

War: Ex Special Forces soldier experienced in all forms of combat - HtH and Ranged Martial Arts. Defeated early by the PCs as "Commando" (just another thug), conceives of the Four Horsemen idea and proceeds to recruit other villains to form his team.

 

Pestilence: Caught in a nuclear reactor and absorbed ultralethal levels of radiation, this stone cold killer called himself Fallout until he joined War.

 

Famine: Filling the brick slot, heavy damage reduction plus absorption. Darkness and vacuum powers, formerly called Wraith.

 

Death: Planned to be what may be a running gag, as War never seems to be able to find the right Death to go with the group. Success finally comes with speedster called Breakneck, stolen right here from the Hero boards.

[GothKidSamurai]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

Unless you're going to include Ole Anderson' date=' Arn Anderson, Tully Blanchard, and Nature Boy Ric Flair, you can't really call them the Horsemen.[/quote']

 

 

Fixed it for ya.

[Mathew]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

Is there a reason Destruction has a Climbing skill of 29- or is that some sorta typo?

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

Is there a reason Destruction has a Climbing skill of 29- or is that some sorta typo?

 

Actually, pre-4E the roll for Climbing in Champions was based on STR, not DEX, which is why Climbing Bricks seemed a little ridiculously effective at it. OTOH the old "gouge handholds out of solid stone" motif might apply.

 

Ironically enough, I was just considering assembling a new 6E incarnation of the Four Horsemen for the Champions Universe, drawn from villains appearing in Champions Villains Vol. III: Solo Villains. That book already has a murderous disease-causing mutant villain called Plague, whose unstable mind sometimes considers himself a manifestation of said Horseman. One of the new villains in the collection, the Reaper, already proclaims himself an incarnation of Death, and has the look, style, and lethality to back it up. It struck me that if the two of them met they might very well consider themselves fated to work together to bring suffering and terror to mankind.

 

As War I'd cast the demon Bloodrage, whose mental power to compel people to anger and violence suits him well for the role. I'm sure he'd see the potential for greater conflict and rage to feed upon in working with these other vicious villains. Bloodrage could probably also provide Demon Steeds (see the Bestiary for these equine devils) from the Netherworld for the villains to ride, better fitting the Horsemen image and increasing the group's overall mobility and combat capability.

 

I couldn't find a perfect match for Famine among the 6E villains (or 5E, for that matter); but I believe the ruthless vampire Stalker would fit well enough. From his physical description he looks pretty much like you'd expect Famine to, and his thirst for the blood of the living, and capacity to spread that thirst by turning humans into more vampires, seem like a reasonable analogue to the effects of Famine. Stalker has generally avoided tangling with true superhumans, but might be intrigued at the thought of hunting more powerful "prey" with the other Horsemen backing him up.

 

Although this version of the Four Horsemen can be pretty dangerous in a stand-up fight, I think they'd be used more effectively as a primarily out-of-combat menace. They would have an extraordinary capacity, and the malicious desire, to spread suffering and terror among normal humans, often without any indication of who's responsible. PC heroes might encounter each villain separately, or at most in twos, not realizing at first that four of them have teamed up. These villains are also extraordinarily stealthy, well able to keep tabs on the heroes undetected. If the PCs track one of them down, they may walk into a deadly ambush from all four Horsemen.

[Greywind]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

Might be a problem since Methos is the only surviving Horseman.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

Might be a problem since Methos is the only surviving Horseman.

 

Just for that, I hope teh bunneh takes your head and Quickening.

[death tribble]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

There was a DC adventure where the person behind the horsemen was Darkseid. Ran an adaption and it did not go down too well.

[Dr. MID-Nite]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

Actually, pre-4E the roll for Climbing in Champions was based on STR, not DEX, which is why Climbing Bricks seemed a little ridiculously effective at it. OTOH the old "gouge handholds out of solid stone" motif might apply.

 

Ironically enough, I was just considering assembling a new 6E incarnation of the Four Horsemen for the Champions Universe, drawn from villains appearing in Champions Villains Vol. III: Solo Villains. That book already has a murderous disease-causing mutant villain called Plague, whose unstable mind sometimes considers himself a manifestation of said Horseman. One of the new villains in the collection, the Reaper, already proclaims himself an incarnation of Death, and has the look, style, and lethality to back it up. It struck me that if the two of them met they might very well consider themselves fated to work together to bring suffering and terror to mankind.

 

As War I'd cast the demon Bloodrage, whose mental power to compel people to anger and violence suits him well for the role. I'm sure he'd see the potential for greater conflict and rage to feed upon in working with these other vicious villains. Bloodrage could probably also provide Demon Steeds (see the Bestiary for these equine devils) from the Netherworld for the villains to ride, better fitting the Horsemen image and increasing the group's overall mobility and combat capability.

 

I couldn't find a perfect match for Famine among the 6E villains (or 5E, for that matter); but I believe the ruthless vampire Stalker would fit well enough. From his physical description he looks pretty much like you'd expect Famine to, and his thirst for the blood of the living, and capacity to spread that thirst by turning humans into more vampires, seem like a reasonable analogue to the effects of Famine. Stalker has generally avoided tangling with true superhumans, but might be intrigued at the thought of hunting more powerful "prey" with the other Horsemen backing him up.

 

Although this version of the Four Horsemen can be pretty dangerous in a stand-up fight, I think they'd be used more effectively as a primarily out-of-combat menace. They would have an extraordinary capacity, and the malicious desire, to spread suffering and terror among normal humans, often without any indication of who's responsible. PC heroes might encounter each villain separately, or at most in twos, not realizing at first that four of them have teamed up. These villains are also extraordinarily stealthy, well able to keep tabs on the heroes undetected. If the PCs track one of them down, they may walk into a deadly ambush from all four Horsemen.

 

Carrier from VOICE of Doom can also fill the Pestilence role(though I like Plague more as a character). Famine has no direct HERO analogue...probably cause the effects of Famine are redundant to some extent. Starvation in the end simply means death..which is already covered. For that matter...how would one build a starvation ability? Myself...I'd give a Famine character the ability to destroy any organic matter...that'd be a reasonable approximation to the "symbolism" of Famine.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: Revamping the Horsemen

 

Well, some type of Drain might be appropriate for Famine, although in the Horsemen examples I used Plague is built with several of those. Transfer would also be appropriate, representing Famine "feeding" on his victim. You might also consider Desolidification, as Famine becomes so thin and wasted as to be virtually insubstantial.

 

Other Champions villains could be spun to represent Famine. For instance, the master villain Necrull must absorb the flesh from recently-killed beings to sustain his unnatural life. The solo villain Eclipse -- not the Crown of Krim, but the CU's Rogue analogue -- absorbs the powers, and even the skills and memories, from other people, transfering them to herself while leaving her victims powerless and amnesiac.

 

The previous season of the television series Supernatural involved encounters with the Four Horsemen, and I thought their take on Famine was quite intriguing. Famine inspired overwhelming hunger among all the people in his presence, but not just "hunger" for food, but for whatever a given person wanted the most on an instinctive level: love, sex, violence, material possessions, whatever. The people affected would become totally, uncontrollably possessed by their hunger, taking it to lethal extremes. In the Famine episode, one character, a recovered alcoholic, literally drank himself to death. Another died plunging his face into a deep fryer full of boiling oil. A young couple in love so wanted to be "together" that they literally ate each other, until they killed themselves.