High Speed Running, Extreme Acceleration Limitations

[MechaniCat]

I got a real weird one now.

 

So I'm building a race concept for a cyberpunk setting. The concept is a Genetically modified race designed to be able to thrive in a cyberpunk setting without as much need for technology in that setting. A Megacorp creating a "Green" worker you might say. That means they have things like biological "datajacks" and other goofy abilities, but the one I'm having trouble with is the race's supposed ability to not need a car. Which is to say that the race should be able to run at vehicle speeds (doing messenger work by foot at the same speed as a car would, but without the gasoline or vehicle costs) and be road legal.

 

However, this isn't meant to be useful in normal combat for a starting character. So how to do I reconcile that with the ability?

My idea is to make the highway speed take too long to reach to be combat useful (and because of what it is it would have the same sort of restriction that vehicles might have such as turn mode).

We're not done with this yet though.

 

If it was that simple I might buy it as a teleport or just let the GM hand wave it, but there is some other needs that the write-up must satisfy:

1) The race can take part in car chases and shoot outs once at full speed. This is part of the "doesn't need a car" bit, where the race should be able to do anything it would be able to do if it had a vehicle (within reason I suppose)

2) That the race can eventually pay more points into the ability to reduce the slow acceleration which means it might become useful in non-car chase combat.

 

I realize this is something that most systems wouldn't be designed to do. (But then working outside established norms is what I'm all about)

 

What I'm thinking currently is perhaps buy the full speed of running and then give it a limitation "cannot accelerate beyond 12m in a turn" or something of that sort. Perhaps even building a table with increasing levels of limitation based on how much smaller the max acceleration rate is compared to the maximum velocity. But I think no matter what I do it's gonna be a bit hinky.

[Doc Democracy]

OK, I think he majority of your query is handled by non-combat multiples.  If you have 12m running with SPD 3 you can run 36m every 12s if you want to retain full combat ability.  You can double that, 72m every 12s, by sprinting which means you lose combat abilities.

 

you can purchase doublers to that sprinting which does not affect your normal movement in combat, so you can effectively run at 100 miles an hour but only move 12m in an action where you retain your combat values.

 

I would be inclined to keep this and hand wave the ability to do car-chases once at top speed.  I would not allow them to strafe non-moving targets unless that causes them to drastically slow down and use 0 OCV to do so.

 

experience could be used to slowly switch between NCM and better running speeds.

 

Doc

[Grailknight]

I'd do as Doc suggests with some additions.

 

Buying Multipliers will cover the added velocity just fine, To handle combat and chases you'd need to use the velocity based DCV rules and buy levels in NCM combat. The first is an optional part of the rules set and the second would be a house rule or something from Ultimate Vehicle(not sure there, barely touched the book). As I faintly remember the vehicle combat rules would work just fine for characters.

[Duke Bushido]

8 hours ago, MechaniCat said:

the one I'm having trouble with is the race's supposed ability to not need a car. Which is to say that the race should be able to run at vehicle speeds (doing messenger work by foot at the same speed as a car would, but without the gasoline or vehicle costs) and be road legal.

 

However, this isn't meant to be useful in normal combat for a starting character. So how to do I reconcile that with the ability?

 

 

Use Doc's idea of NCM, and take on a "requires a bicycle" focus.

[archer]

13 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

OK, I think he majority of your query is handled by non-combat multiples.  If you have 12m running with SPD 3 you can run 36m every 12s if you want to retain full combat ability.  You can double that, 72m every 12s, by sprinting which means you lose combat abilities.

 

you can purchase doublers to that sprinting which does not affect your normal movement in combat, so you can effectively run at 100 miles an hour but only move 12m in an action where you retain your combat values.

 

Doc

 

That was my first reaction to the concept as well.

 

Since the "race" isn't designed for combat, I could even see some of the normal base movement sold back for points if the entire racial concept is that they function as biological vehicles: they thrice when functioning as vehicles and are more limited than normal when acting as a person.

[MechaniCat]

For clarity, I'm going to refer to the Race as "the character" for simplicity's sake.

Also to clarify, When I say car chase I generally mean vehicle combat as well. For example I would expect the character to be able to run parallel to a car in motion, draw a gun, and attempt to shoot the driver of the car they sidled up to. In a drive-by hit for example. Which might lead to the driver attempting to shoot back and both parties beginning evasive action. The character should be able to shoot the driver as easily as the driver could shoot him, but he's at a disadvantage in other ways. If the Character had to slow down too much then they likely wouldn't be able to catch back up. Also, the character is much more unprotected in this situation so one wrong move and the character is hamburger.

 

Using NCM is a decent starting place, but has some issues to iron out.

The first is how to handle/cost having a reasonable OCV still available for use during that NCM to make the shots he might try to make in the above situation, and the second is that it leads to nested NCMs. The character is only able to match the vehicle's combat speed by using NCM, but the vehicle can move even faster than that with it's own NCM. That would suggest that to make this work the character must have an NCM to reach combat highway speed, and another multiplier for NCM to reach non-combat highway speed.

 

I don't really know what kind of advantage/limitation to give an NCM that gets it's normal OCV even in limited circumstances. It's a pretty extreme violation of the RAW in the sense that there's no costs applied to the idea, so I don't have a rubric for how big a deal the change would be other than "pretty big" since the RAW saw fit to give it no write up at all.

 

22 hours ago, Doc Democracy said:

I would be inclined to keep this and hand wave the ability to do car-chases once at top speed.  I would not allow them to strafe non-moving targets unless that causes them to drastically slow down and use 0 OCV to do so.

 

I tend to agree that the strafe thing would apply. The concept works best if they only get their normal OCV/DCV against something moving as fast as they are. But it leads to the question of where the cut-off point is? When do the rules change to "car chase mode"?

[Grailknight]

The rules for this are in The Ultimate Vehicle.

[MechaniCat]

On 4/20/2019 at 6:59 AM, Grailknight said:

To handle combat and chases you'd need to use the velocity based DCV rules and buy levels in NCM combat.

When you say buy levels do you mean CSLs? or PSLs?

 

On 4/21/2019 at 4:40 AM, Grailknight said:

The rules for this are in The Ultimate Vehicle.

I don't have a copy of that. Could you summarize? 

[Grailknight]

I meant CSLs. I no longer have my copy of Ultimate Combat(lost in the move and not replaced as I rarely used it). The PDF should be in the Hero Store.