The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

[Thia Halmades]

Okay guys. I've been mulling over this on the Star Hero board, and I have to bring it here. I have one request: please bear in mind, this is NOT a simple case of "transform" by the book - and if I do it by the book, I finally found something I don't know how to model. You do NOT need to have played the game to help - I've provided a full explanation. If you're familiar with the film ALIENS, that WILL help.

 

Premise: In the game "HALO," there's an alien race known as the Flood, who operate not unlike our friends, "Aliens," except instead of Chest Bursters they have a swarming infection form. The infection form (if Manic Typist is correct) sinks its tentacles into your spinal column and converts your tissue from human to flood.

 

Nothing is left of you when this transformation is done - your Body is now Flood, your mind is absorbed & linked to the local Gravemind, and your soul is... well, probably obliterated, seeing as how you're very likely dead. Just as we see in Aliens, once the Chest Burster comes out, the host dies and the Alien begins to mature. Rapidly.

 

They use the hosts memories to learn how to operate machinery, firearms, and so on. Lastly, once the Combat Form (the mutated stage 2 after infection) is destroyed, it can be reanimated by another Flood Infection form.

 

Problem: How on Earth do I model this? The Infection form itself has the SFX of knocking the target out (Suppress STUN by accessing the Central Nervous System) and then converting the Body into Flood - which, as noted, kills the target. This takes time, though, so I was thinking of linking the HKA to the Transform. But it can't be healed back.

 

Option two. It kills the host and then 'summons' a Flood Form into the Body...? That seems kludgey and unHEROic to me.

 

So I'm stumped. I can't finish the project because I can't figure out how to model this. And I can't model it because I seem to breaking every rule about Transforms that we have. Since the target is dead, if you Transform it it's still dead. That follows the canon though.

 

Option 3. You're dead! But your 'body' is now a fucos that can be used by the an Infection form, like a vehicle.

 

I'm open to any and all thoughts on this.

[Derek Hiemforth]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

Whether it seems kludgey or not, the Summon sounds like the best option to me. The infection first knocks out, then kills, the host; then the "Summon" brings a Flood. The build would probably involve a Killing Attack with Gradual Effect, and a Triggered Summon, where the Summoned being is Loyal and the Trigger condition is "when the host dies".

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

Whether it seems kludgey or not' date=' the Summon sounds like the best option to me. The infection first knocks out, then kills, the host; then the "Summon" brings a Flood. The build would probably involve a Killing Attack with Gradual Effect, and a Triggered Summon, where the Summoned being is Loyal and the Trigger condition is "when the host dies".[/quote']

 

Another option would be to model the toxin as a continuous Body Transfer to Summon, and trigger the summon when the Body Transfer has obliterated the Hosts body. That way larger hosts will produce larger amounts of offspring.

 

Otherwise, yep, this uis ow I've done it.

 

This is similar to how I've model Broo style breeding abilities as well.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

Okay, so that's two votes (three, counting my own, kludgey or not) for:

 

Flood Infection: HKA 1d6, Gradual (+1), Continous (+1), NND (+1, Appropriate Immunity), Does BODY (+1); Side Effect, Flood Infection Form is consumed in the process, bound to the body it infects (Always occurs, -1). plus Summon Flood Type* (X), Trigger (When host is dead).

 

Approximately.

 

Thoughts?

[Lord Liaden]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

Okay, Thia, a few opinions here. If one of them isn't helpful, perhaps one of the others will be.

 

First opinion: this is obviously not an ability for PCs, so I would say that we're firmly in the territory of GM permission as to what effects are or are not allowable. If a Transform is the cleanest way to model this effect, and in the process it kills the victim, and this will never be something that a PC has access to, I say go for it. After all, Steve Long himself routinely bends or breaks his own default rules in a number of published books when that would best do what he wants.

 

OTOH consider that in game terms you're not actually killing the target; you're changing it into something else, but it remains an active, functioning character. "Death" is just the Special Effect of the process. If it were up to me I would define the "reversal condition" as "enough damage to kill the target" and leave it at that.

 

However, I fully recognize that that may not satisfy you, so let's try a different tack. You say that the Flood Infection takes time to change the host body. Is there any method within the game to prevent or reverse that process? If there is, it grants you a little wiggle room: you can make the Transform more gradual through Gradual Effect or Extra Time, and define the reversal condition as "application of method X before infection is complete." Perhaps not to the letter of the Transform rules, but well within their spirit IMHO.

 

There's an example of this from Will Mistretta's excellent Twilight of the Dead website. If you look in the "Rules" section for his zombie writeup, you'll see that he sets the reversal condition for the zombie contagion as "heals back through amputation of bitten extremity within 5 minutes."

 

If all of these are too much rules-bending for you to stomach (which I respect), then I agree with my colleagues as to the use of Summon. In that case you'll probably want to include at least a +1/4 Expanded Class Advantage, to cover the variation in Skills and background knowledge from each unique victim of the Flood Infection that the new Flood retains.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

I hadn't thought of the 1/4 advantage thing. This is one of the few times where d20 does something more efficiently than HERO - because in d20, it's a handwave. You design the template, overlay the template on the character (or declare it a new type) and you're done. In HERO I have to explain how to get there from here, and it's driving me a bit batshit.

 

I'll put together a model of the 'Combat Form,' but it'll come out to a giant variable effect. I think it may be EASIER, and more reasonable, to build it as a Transform and apply the "template" of Combat Form/Infection Form to it and call it good. In addition to being 'rules exact' I also need it to be elegant.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

Hey, who said you can't handwave HERO? As many folks here have repeatedly remarked, just because you can build anything in the system, doesn't mean you have to. And just because another system handwaves something doesn't make it more efficient - it just means that handwaving is the only way it can handle that.

[Lord Liaden]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

I'll put together a model of the 'Combat Form' date='' but it'll come out to a giant variable effect. I think it may be EASIER, and more reasonable, to build it as a Transform and apply the "template" of Combat Form/Infection Form to it and call it good. In addition to being 'rules exact' I also need it to be elegant.[/quote']

 

FWIW that's how I would handle it. Really, the only reason to use the Transform at all instead of just making it GM fiat, is to have a mechanism for determining how long the process takes against a given individual, how to defend against it, and how to stop or reverse it. If none of those are a consideration in this case, i.e. it always happens the same way regardless of what anyone does, then building it may be more trouble than it's worth.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

Sorry if I missed this above, but simply because I like to do two things when I suggest for something odd: 1) keep it simple when I can; 2) go way out, in the hopes of finding something in between the wild and the currently under consideration, I'd like to offer this:

 

Multiform: useable as attack

 

 

Just offering.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

MF UAA? Okay, well, I would have never thought of it. But, IIUC, in the event there are two ways to do something, you must always take the more expensive. Second, you can't UAA Multiform - it automatically becomes a Transform, by rule. Interesting concept though.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

 

Oh, if only there were a grin big enough.........

 

 

While I've no wish to drag this away from your build question, I'd like to point out that the often-discussed "most expensive mandate" means that _all_ powers are either T-form or EDM.

 

With that in mind, my group tossed that rule out way back when. Forgive me; I tend to forget that it is actually a rule.

 

 

But thanks for the appreciation of the concept!

[Lord Liaden]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

As a followup to Duke Bushido's comment, let me quote from "Meta-Rules Of The HERO System," 5E p. 348/ 5ER p. 559: "If two Powers (or other game elements) are equally valid ways to create a particular ability, you must use the more expensive of the two." (Emphasis mine.) I would say that a GM has the right, if not the obligation, to decide if some ways are more valid than others.

 

(That probably doesn't help much in this particular case, does it. Sorry.)

[Markdoc]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

The other option is to build this as a creature with multiform with three (or more) forms Swarm/possessed/combat/?.

 

It starts out with "swarm form" powers. By the sound of it, invisibility, inherent desolid (with a vulnerability to area effect attacks?), etc, plus a slow (probably NND does body) HKA.

 

It then converts into the "possessed host" form with a physical body and a big cuddly mimic pool (all limited with "requires a host body") and a limited set of powers (what the host knows/can do). So it can't use this form without a body. You can safely handwave the body of the person killed - at that point, it's a special effect anyway.

 

If at some point it mutates further, then it has further forms (Combat form, disco-dancing form, whatever). You might put a limit on this part of the multiform such that it can only switch when possessing a body.

 

With this construct, if a combat form (or disco-dancing form) is killed, a new swarm can come along and use that as the body for possession - nothing says the body has to be human, right? In this case it simply possesses and goes straight to the combat form.

 

cheers, Mark

[Doc Democracy]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

An interesting problem. I'm not familiar with HALO but I think that the answer to this problem can be solved with Duplication (though it requires you to handwave the restriction on duplicates on using duplication).

 

I see the swarm form having duplication - one duplicate being the swarm form and the other being the larval form.

 

The larval form should have almost nothing in the way of characteristics or thinking abilities but have shrinking, killing attack and duplication (the duplication will not function unless the host has been killed). Once the host dies the larval form duplicates and you have a swarm form holding another larva - ready for insertion into another host.

 

The swarm form from the original duplication can only duplicate once either its duplicate or the host dies to provide a swarm form and another larva.

 

I'm not sure where the combat form comes in - but the swarm form could have a multiform that can be activated by contact in some way.

 

Duplication seems the way to go IMO.

 

 

Doc

[Duke Bushido]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

I think Markdoc is onto something, myself.

Let me play with this a bit at work tomorrow....

[Thia Halmades]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

Mark: I think you might have the answer, but like Duke it'll take me a while to work out.

 

Multiform, Only while possessing Host Body. Okay. Then the Mimic Pool (for skills, though, how do you steal a skill in HERO?) to allow them to use Firearms and vehicles proficiently. holy crap, I think that might just do it.

[Manic Typist]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

Victory!

[Thia Halmades]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

Almost victory. I can model the ability "multiform" easily enough - now its the skill mimic ability that I need. One of the posters put up "mind control" but that doesn't matter if the host is dead and his neck is broken. Yeargh.

[SirViss]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

You could use a VPP Skill Mimic Pool (Only to imitate appropriate skills from Flood Victim; -1). Don't know how large the pool should be, but that would be the easiest way.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: The Flood: Not a Simple Transform

 

Ah, check out section II - how to Steal Skills from your Host. Oddhat said the exact same thing - a massive VPP Multiform (which makes my head hurt thinking about it) in which each form is pre-built and then applied as necessary. So they could take you over and turn you into any of the forms available as a 'template,' then steal any skills you have on top of that, and still have points left over (which is totally fine, the trick is making sure they don't go OVER, we don't care if they're under).

 

But I think that's how I'll have to do it. I just have to sit down and work out the numbers, which I haven't quite felt like doing (too many other projects on my plate, but I'll do it this week, guaranteed).