How To: Doppleganger

[Edsel]

I am working on a write-up of a creature called a Mellor. This insidious creature can assume the shape of any character that it has slain. In order to to this it must either kill the character by way of its BODY Drain power, or it must devour the brain and spinal cord of the victim. The junk science explanation is that the Mellor has a collapsing DNA structure that allows it to reshape itself.

 

The creature is pretty good at assuming the victim's form but not as good at absorbing the victim's skills and knowledge. So the Mellor will have one of three possible results if it tries to assume the form and identity of a victim.

1. Complete success: The Mellor assumes the victim's form complete with his skills, powers and memories. It can even become more Intelligent and drastically alter its size.
   
2. Partial success: The Mellor assumes the outward form with all physical abilities but none of the knowledge or skills. It can still alter it size to mimic its victim in this case.
   
3. Failure: Which usually means a horriffic half formed monster.
   

My brain is fried from thinking about this for too long. How would you do it?

[Comic]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

As a lazy GM, add "the Mellor" after the name on the character sheet, for the first option, do the same for the second option, only crossing out the knowledge and skills.

 

For the third option, I'd look up how my last GM Bizarro-ified our team for our voyage to an alternate universe, and apply that same mechanism.

 

I mean, if the Mellor becomes the person they've consumed, completely and without any difference, why even have it?

[Edsel]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

When / If the Mellor decides to attack they usually revert back to their natural form. The most powerful ones (a Master Mellor) are able to store up to 100 forms in their memory and change to those forms when they wish to do so. These creatures often try to sneak on to a planet, replace powerful world leaders and then instigate global catastrophes (global wars, etc.). Fortunately Master Mellor are very rare.

 

They do not become the person, they become a duplicate of their victim complete with the victim's memory and skills. However they are still an evil and malevolent being who retains his own memory and goals. He is still a Mellor he is just almost perfectly disguised, DNA or a blood test will reveal the true nature, as will killing it.

 

I guess I could simply build the natural form and hand wave the rest but that somehow almost feels like cheating. Of course as the GM I guess that is okay as long as it makes the story and game good.

[Duke Bushido]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

Did something very similar in a sci-fi campaign years ago.

 

I'd have to dig through years of notes, but it involved massive use of Disguise (as an Inherent-type Power), shape-shift, and a small power pool for and characteristics and Body-affecting powers such as DI, Growth, etc (which would also be bought as Inherent-type powers).

 

Worked well enough for our purposes, but there was still a liberal coating of Handwavium Armor about the whole deal....

[casualplayer]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

Separate VPPs, one for duplicating physical form and abilities and one for duplicating Skills and knowledge. Each has a distinct Skill Roll to change the VPP so that the Mellor can 1) make both 2) make only the physical form one or 3) blow physical skill roll and become scary monstrosity (Side Effect) with none of the target's skills. It sounds like the Skill dupe VPP can only take effect if the physical mimicry one is successful, so that would be another limitation on the Control Cost for that one.

[braincraft]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

Separate VPPs' date=' one for duplicating physical form and abilities and one for duplicating Skills and knowledge. Each has a distinct Skill Roll to change the VPP so that the Mellor can 1) make both 2) make only the physical form one or 3) blow physical skill roll and become scary monstrosity (Side Effect) with none of the target's skills. It sounds like the Skill dupe VPP can only take effect if the physical mimicry one is successful, so that would be another limitation on the Control Cost for that one.[/quote']

 

Nice. That really seems like the best option.

[Edsel]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

I agree that does sound good. I had thought about a VPP mimic pool as explained in the Ultimate Metamorph, but for some reason I was having a mental block about just making two of them. I kept trying to figure out how to make two skill rolls apply to a single VPP. Doh! Of course why not just make two. Sometimes I can't see the forest for the trees.

 

Rep to casualplayer.

[Killer Shrike]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

Actually...off hand this sounds like a rare example of a case where TRANSFORM vs Self is most appropriate. Probably two Transforms, one Physical, one Mental, with the Mental partially limited to reflect that it must follow the Physical.

 

The uncertain success can be handled with nothing more than a high Activation Roll and the PARTIAL SUCCESS modifier. If both the Phys and Mental Transforms succeed you have total success, if the Physical succeeds and not the mental you have some level of scenario two -- the number of skills / memories gained being proportional to how close to complete the Mental Transform got before failing; if both fail you have the third scenario again courtesy of Partial Success and application of proportional logic. The constraints on when it can be used (after DRAIN / brain consumption) is just a custom Limitation.

[Sean Waters]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

Be aware that some Mellors occasionally get stuck in the hideous, half formed monster state:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/24/newsid_2529000/2529115.stm

 

Can I just mention that this is not a power that Hero 'does'. Sure you can copy the appearance of your victim: shapeshift, images, multiform VPP, whatever.

 

Sure you can copy the powers of your victim: VPP, multiform VPP.

 

Sure you can even access all the momories: Summon specific being.

 

What you can't do is give yourself all the memories of the victim. That is a pure GM plot device you'd never ever let a player loose on, and quite right too, and there is absolutely no point sweating over a power that you are never going to let the players loose on, except to define the mechanics - points are irrelevant.

 

Killer Shrike has the truth of it - if you want to be able to do this, something like a self transform (which is not Hero legal) would be needed. I suppose you could have a multiform VPP and some sort of enhanced sense that allows you to sense something down to cellular level. it really is the memory thing that is the real sticking point though.

 

Hero deals with obtaining other people's memories, at least as a power, through telepathy, and there is not another legal way of doing it. Even enhanced senses should not be used for obtaining memories.

 

What you'd need to do, I suppose, is some sort of summon to bring up th ememory of the deceased, then some sort of telepathy on that to actually read the memories, or just have the shade tell you, but the memories have not been transferred to you, you just have some limited access to them.

 

I appreciate that all this will be done in practice by handwaving, but I come back to this: if you making it all up anyway, why bother trying to stat out anything but the mechanics?

 

Personally if I was in a handwaving mood, and I wanted to capsize the whole campaign, I'd probably make this a 10 point adder on a mental shapeshift, similar to the 'cellular' adder.

[clsage]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

Be aware that some Mellors occasionally get stuck in the hideous, half formed monster state:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/24/newsid_2529000/2529115.stm

 

You must stop making me want to rep you when I can't.....yet.

 

-Carl-

[Doc Democracy]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

Hmm. In the past I have advocated a special use of duplication and transform for Jericho style powers. In this case I might want to explore transform and multiform.

 

Essentially a Mellor is a creature with the power multiform and no other forms to change into. What the transform would do is transform the victim into an alternate form for the purpose of the multiform power.

 

The Mellor would 'buy' a blank alternate form and use the transform to gain alternate sets of powers. If it absorbed a more powerful creature then it would transform into a weaker version (that could be purchased within the available points).

 

A normal Mellor might have only one form available to it and when it uses the transform on a second victim it loses access to the first. More powerful Mellors would have spent experience points on having more alternate forms available to them.

 

My problem would be the transform - obviously it would be all-or-nothing and there would be an all-or-nothing way to return the victim to itself....possibly some arcane ritual where they would have to find an alternate host that could be transformed into the original host body and the powers ferried back or something.

 

 

Complicated perhaps but possibly another way forward...

 

 

Doc

[Sean Waters]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

Hmm. In the past I have advocated a special use of duplication and transform for Jericho style powers. In this case I might want to explore transform and multiform.

 

Essentially a Mellor is a creature with the power multiform and no other forms to change into. What the transform would do is transform the victim into an alternate form for the purpose of the multiform power.

 

The Mellor would 'buy' a blank alternate form and use the transform to gain alternate sets of powers. If it absorbed a more powerful creature then it would transform into a weaker version (that could be purchased within the available points).

 

A normal Mellor might have only one form available to it and when it uses the transform on a second victim it loses access to the first. More powerful Mellors would have spent experience points on having more alternate forms available to them.

 

My problem would be the transform - obviously it would be all-or-nothing and there would be an all-or-nothing way to return the victim to itself....possibly some arcane ritual where they would have to find an alternate host that could be transformed into the original host body and the powers ferried back or something.

 

 

Complicated perhaps but possibly another way forward...

 

 

Doc

 

I'll have to think about that, but it sounds very cunning indeed!

[Doc Democracy]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

I'll have to think about that' date=' but it sounds very cunning indeed![/quote']

 

Hmm. Last thing anyone wants is Sean thinking about stuff.

[Edsel]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

I have found all of this very enlightening. A lot of new ways of thinking about this problem. I'll have to experiment with a couple of different builds now to see how they turn out. Of course now that I want to work on this my week has become busy.

[Andrew Byers]

Re: How To: Doppleganger

 

Be aware that some Mellors occasionally get stuck in the hideous, half formed monster state:

 

http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/september/24/newsid_2529000/2529115.stm

 

 

Dear God, they're more hideous than I had imagined!