Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

[BhelliomRahl]

Good day.

 

This is an old scenario my friends have run several times. They have used Rolemaster and later HARP. Its coming round to my turn to run it and was planning to go the Hero 6E way.

 

The general concept is that they are low level demons, weakling imps not even on the ladder and through cunning, deception and killing we grow in power and strength.

 

The main way for a demon to increase its power is to consume the essence of a weakened/defeated demon. Doing this it gains the powers of the demon to a limited effect.

I was planning to use the Chao Blade power Blade Theft form HS-Fantasy p.298.

This seems to contain most of what I need. I will remove the bit about losing the power. Also need to increase the time the power is retained for, its meant to be permanent.

However what I need to represent is the ammount of points received is dependant on the power of demon. Theres little point in a strong demon killing a much weaker one due to the fact that he will gain virtually no power. To gain strength the demon must target those of similair power to him or stronger.

I'm thinking of a conditional limitation. That if the energy is drawn from a lesser demon half the result and if its much weaker quarter.

 

Example of Demon Consumption:

Aid 5d6, Variable Effect (Any Characteristic or Power that the consumed Demon possesed; +1/2), Delayed Return Rate (Permanent; +4) (165 Active Points);

Extra Time (1 Minute; -1.1/2), Only Aid Self (-1), Only Work when the targets essence is consumed (-2), Limited Effect (Power operates at Half effect if target weaker that self; -1)

Total Real Cost: 25 points

 

What are people thought?

[Christopher]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Aid only works if you already hae a power. It can never give you a power.

 

If you want them to copy abilities (for a short time) you can use a mimic VPP, with somewhat stronger change Limitation (maybe extra time, concentration and "Meal" required to change).

 

When the copy should be permanent, use a VPP with a Custom "only powers you consumed from other demons" Limitation.

 

If you don't want a VPP, about the only way is to give them the abilities for "free", somewhat like Equipment works in heroic games. But that can become inbalacing really quickly. Effectively hey get a ton of XP for free everytime they consume a demon - enough to buy thier foes ability.

[Ockham's Spoon]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Depending on how the demon powers are built/absorbed, either a VPP or a Multipower would be the easiest way to do it. The problem really is matching earned XP with the new powers, especially if they are getting stronger and tougher instead of developing new low-level abilities that fit easily in the VPP or Multipower. From a storyline perspective, a demon might get very powerful very quickly, but XP aren't doled out like that. So for a PC you might want to either have a reserve pool of unspent character points to draw from or have the GM hold back some XP during the course of gaming so the demon can receive a large chunk when he absorbs another.

[Christopher]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Depending on how the demon powers are built/absorbed' date=' either a VPP or a Multipower would be the easiest way to do it. The problem really is matching earned XP with the new powers, especially if they are getting stronger and tougher instead of developing new low-level abilities that fit easily in the VPP or Multipower. From a storyline perspective, a demon might get very powerful very quickly, but XP aren't doled out like that. So for a PC you might want to either have a reserve pool of unspent character points to draw from or have the GM hold back some XP during the course of gaming so the demon can receive a large chunk when he absorbs another.[/quote']

That.

Unless the GM is planning to have a fast progressing game, where the characters start as around normal (50-100) and aquire power really, really quickly (400+ after a few successfull kills).

 

It is hard to make a "fast growing" PC as is seen in Anime, Movies and Books in any role playing game. Even "Supermodes" are difficulty, or at least not that "special": The character isn't getting more powerfull - he always was that powerfull and just wasn't working on full power.

[Lucius]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Is this the only, or at least expected and normal, way for the characters to grow more powerful?

 

Ignore the usual XP rules. Award XP for defeating and consuming rivals, and ONLY for that, and award XP in proportion to the power of the consumed foe.

 

You have no reason to muck around with complicated AID builds, etc. Just change the basic XP awards to reflect campaign assumptions.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary says you are what you eat, and if you're a cannibal, you eat what you are.

[Manic Typist]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Word, Lucius. This can easily be represented by XP and prebuilt expenditures of XP.

[Christopher]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Is this the only, or at least expected and normal, way for the characters to grow more powerful?

 

Ignore the usual XP rules. Award XP for defeating and consuming rivals, and ONLY for that, and award XP in proportion to the power of the consumed foe.

If you go this route, it get's similar to some origin Campaigns in Superheroics:

Basically it's a 300 point game, where you play the aquisition of superpowers out. Everyone starts around "normal" (100 points), but has a clear idea what powers he is going to aquire already (maybe even has his "full powered" sheet written up).

 

So all you have to do is figure out your longtime stable Value (the point level you actually want to play at), what starting point you have (this is where the adventure starts) and how fast you want to get there (session) and in what steps.

[BhelliomRahl]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

This will be the main source of there experience. But they are not going to defeat demons by the score. Starting as Demonic Imps they will be virtually powerless. They will be stepped on, beaten down, used by the greater demons in their machinations. Only through cunning and paitence will they stand a chance. A major worry is that if they gain power too quickly the stronger demons may take notice of them personally, then things become interesting.

 

But most importantly they will be suspicious of each other. Knowing my players they will scheme against each other making plans for defense and attack. They very well may kill each other.

 

The plan was to start them on 125pts with 25pts matching complications. Greater Demon builds start about 500pts and Demon Lords can go up to 1000pts. I reckon each player may gain about 5 points per 6 hour session. Will be many years before they are powerful enough to challenge the greater demons. They will gain a small amount of experience points outside of this but this is limited to skills and perk development (this in conjuction with Roleplaying). Will have to modify the 'Demonic Consumption' Power, also each Demon will have a Limited Essence pool to draw from (Probably 5% of the Demons Build Points). The players will have to decide how much each gets (I will try to make it so the essence total does not split equally amoung them).

As a house rule I will allow them to gain powers with Demonic Consumption that they did not have as long as the demon the essence is taken from possessed it.

[Diamond Spear]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Since this power seems to be more of a plot device than something that will be frequently used you could always just write up what the power does, without bothering with the exact “HERO terminology” and without working out the points. You exist in the campaign; you gain power in this way. Everyone clear?

 

I went through a similar process when trying to duplicate the “Time Stop” power of Piper from Charmed. After a very long conversation with a friend (Thia Halmades from these very boards) what I ended up doing was realizing that since everyone that was going to be playing in the game and myself were already aware of how the power worked all that was needed was for me and the player to write up a detailed description of the power, what it could do, what it’s limitations were and then assign it a point value based on its usefulness. In this case with the Charmed Ones written up as 200 point characters we decided on 100 points.

 

You seem to be facing the same problem I was; you know what you want the power to do but it doesn’t fit easily within the HERO framework. There are bits of it that insist on sticking out no matter how you try to design it. So don’t kill yourself trying. Just figure out what it does and how much you think it should cost and move on. I think that we HERO players sometimes fall into the trap of thinking that just because the system will LET you build almost anything with the toolkit everything HAS to be built with it.

 

Does that make sense?

[Christopher]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

I went through a similar process when trying to duplicate the “Time Stop” power of Piper from Charmed. After a very long conversation with a friend (Thia Halmades from these very boards) what I ended up doing was realizing that since everyone that was going to be playing in the game and myself were already aware of how the power worked all that was needed was for me and the player to write up a detailed description of the power' date=' what it could do, what it’s limitations were and then assign it a point value based on its usefulness. In this case with the Charmed Ones written up as 200 point characters we decided on 100 points.[/quote']

Since APG II we now have a Time Stop Power. It costs 200 Base Points (so around 20 END/Phase)..

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Since APG II we now have a Time Stop Power. It costs 200 Base Points (so around 20 END/Phase)..

 

Which is great, but has virtually nothing to do with the point of Diamond's post...

[Guest Celt]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

A possible alternative, all demons have high # of power points already, just most have not had them used yet. Thus all demons are potential energy. As they consume other demons they unlock access to use of those power points. Perhaps higher level demons must consume other demons to maintain their power access. Thinking meta, perhaps demonologists can exploit the potential energies of demons for their own uses.

[dmjalund]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

either that is that all demons are duplicates of the same entity and one consuming another is just partial recombination

[Christopher]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

either that is that all demons are duplicates of the same entity and one consuming another is just partial recombination

That entity must really be "beside himself".

[bigbywolfe]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

That entity must really be "beside himself".

I can't spread rep from my phone, but thanks for making me lol.

[Diamond Spear]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

I can't spread rep from my phone' date=' but thanks for making me lol.[/quote']

 

Got him for you.

[Diamond Spear]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Since APG II we now have a Time Stop Power. It costs 200 Base Points (so around 20 END/Phase)..

 

But does it function exactly like Piper's from Charmed does?

[Christopher]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

But does it function exactly like Piper's from Charmed does?

When you limit it accordingly to the specific powerlevel she had at that time:

Very likely.

 

Exlucde one or two special uses with "she made a power roll and the GM deemed it not unbalancing".

[BhelliomRahl]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Technically Piper's power is not manipulation of time but the manipulation of atomic motion. Freezing is slowing down the motion of atoms to essentially stop the world around her and later the explosive power is the excitation of atoms.

 

But Time Stop is probably the best representation of this power in Hero

[Christopher]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Technically Piper's power is not manipulation of time but the manipulation of atomic motion. Freezing is slowing down the motion of atoms to essentially stop the world around her and later the explosive power is the excitation of atoms.

 

But Time Stop is probably the best representation of this power in Hero

Acording to wikipedia it works on magic energy and normal energy, so it is mostly a Special Effect for a Time Stop power.

[Martin2]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

This will be the main source of there experience. But they are not going to defeat demons by the score. Starting as Demonic Imps they will be virtually powerless. They will be stepped on, beaten down, used by the greater demons in their machinations. Only through cunning and paitence will they stand a chance. A major worry is that if they gain power too quickly the stronger demons may take notice of them personally, then things become interesting.

 

But most importantly they will be suspicious of each other. Knowing my players they will scheme against each other making plans for defense and attack. They very well may kill each other.

 

The plan was to start them on 125pts with 25pts matching complications. Greater Demon builds start about 500pts and Demon Lords can go up to 1000pts. I reckon each player may gain about 5 points per 6 hour session. Will be many years before they are powerful enough to challenge the greater demons. They will gain a small amount of experience points outside of this but this is limited to skills and perk development (this in conjuction with Roleplaying). Will have to modify the 'Demonic Consumption' Power, also each Demon will have a Limited Essence pool to draw from (Probably 5% of the Demons Build Points). The players will have to decide how much each gets (I will try to make it so the essence total does not split equally amoung them).

As a house rule I will allow them to gain powers with Demonic Consumption that they did not have as long as the demon the essence is taken from possessed it.

 

Demons live for thousands of years (the ones that either keep a low profile and keep to a certain level and don't get in the way of the other long lived demons that just kill and plot their way to the top). And I have always imagined that the progression from an "imp" to a greater demon would take hundreds of years with some demons getting killed of and then returning as less then imps and then starting off all over again.

 

So for a roleplaying game its not a very good source for realism and time play. It would take years of game time to progress from imp to the next level of demon. Possibly the same time as a normal Champions game would take at 1 exp per session.

 

But you have set your mind on this sort of game play with a fast track demon progression I would go with as suggested by other people. Each demon they kill they gain EXP. They have to kill similar level demon to get a set amount. If they kill a higher one they get more. If they kill lower demons they don't get any.

 

If you say your players will kill each other what happens when they kill each other? I would suggest no exp for killing players.

 

Also the dead players do they return at the same level or the begining level again?

[Martin2]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

I have played in a very short "evil" campaign (paladium I think) where everyone played an "evil" race. We had mostly orcs and one ogre and I played a magic using goblin but none of the players knew he could use magic. If they did find out they all hated magic so I would have been killed straight away.

 

Everyone knew it was going to be a short and evil campaign so they played their races and picked on the weakest ones (mostly me). They tended not to help each other out and in a combat they sort of picked on the easy target and did not take on the most threat and did not work together and one player was sacrificed.

 

One of the players said that he would kill my character when the campaign ended and he did. So it was not a game for keep a character that you liked!

 

So playing a group of demons sounds a good thing to do but will depend on your players. If the players can work together it will work well. If your players want to play free willed demons who don't care who they kill to get to the top it may be a lot of bringing in new player characters who are brought in to replace the ones that were killed by other players or sacrificed so that a player gets more powerfull.

 

So your game needs something strong to keep the players from killing each other (in an evil game some players like to do this if the game is not going to be going on for too long ).

 

I would recommend the players being henchmen of a very powerful demon (one that they all can not gang up on and kill in the first session) and make them work for the powerful demon and they get more powerful as their master gets more powerful. This gives them a clear mission and not one that they have to decide what they do next and they decide just to be evil and just start picking fights with the next demon .

 

So lots of chances to be evil. But someone around to stop them just killing the party off.

[Manic Typist]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Well, regarding time... you can always play around with it. "Alright, you guys set the next phase of your plot into motion.... 30 years pass, and you manage to eliminate two bands of heroes and a rival imp. Here's 30 XP. Now, about that child you planted in the mortal world...."

[Martin2]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Well' date=' regarding time... you can always play around with it. "Alright, you guys set the next phase of your plot into motion.... 30 years pass, and you manage to eliminate two bands of heroes and a rival imp. Here's 30 XP. Now, about that child you planted in the mortal world...."[/quote']

 

Yes something along those lines.

 

So mortal enemies will only appear for a short time and then will not be around.

 

Also time lines on Earth (if they interact with Earth) will change dramatically over time.

 

I see this sort of game more of a political game and would be quite complicated to keep track for the players.

 

So not the kill a demon consume his power and gain 10 character points to spend and move on to the next demon and in a few sessions you are a greater demon and a few days have passed in real time.

[Orion]

Re: Consuming a defeated Foe to gain his Power; It's the Demon Way.

 

Have scenarios as normal - fight other imps, set things in motion, try not to get noticed by the Big Guys. All XP gained here can only be used to increase skills, knowledge, and contacts. XP from draining other demons can only be used to buy powers. Make it is simple campaign rule/agreement, and you are set to go.