Short Shot

Re: Ultimate Thief/Scout The original inspiration for this guy is a race from some John Ringo books. They are a race of froglike beings, camelion style. They are pacifistic, cowardly and paranoid, but love stories and are willing to risk danger to be there in person to actually GET a story. My character was going to be just incredibly curious and unable to resist a challenge. He likes to go visit museums at night ("Just avoiding the crowds, you see.."), the mansion on the hill to see how the rich live, Area 51 to check out the alien bodies. He never steals, he just likes to get there. He is still fairly unformed besides a concept character. Right the vague thought is that he is going to be sneaking around some magic user's place and get caught, but the magic user actually doesn't mind too much because he's kind of lonely and a nice guy. However, later he will be trying to do that magic user a favor and get caught in a different magic trap and barely get out, with some very strange stuff happening along the way. (Free a demon? play host to a ghost? Become a focus of sometimes helpful, sometimes mischivious elementals?) To pay the bills, he will likely start out a security consultant with a fair bit of computer skills as well. Not much for fighting himself, but if you need to get into a secure area, hack a computer system to get the info and get out again, nobody better.

Re: Speedball? Thanks for the post, although at the moment I can't get KillerShrike.com to open at the moment. I'll mark the post in the mean time.

Anyone have a good write-up for Speedball as he was portrayed in the New Warrior? Thanks.

I had this nice, long presentation written at one point, but I'll save you all the pain of reading it. If you were to build the ultimate thief/scout, what abilities would you consider critical? What would not be critical, but really nice to have? This is the guy you send in to take photos of the secret plans, get the base layout, smuggle weapons to your captive teammates. A secret base on a remote island? Not a problem, just a vacation in the sun to this guy. As an added bonus, it would be nice if he could drop the average villain minion guard or two before they can set off an alarm if he gets them from ambush.

Re: Freaking out the players Not to that extreme, but I had a GM in GURPS who started messing with my character. I admit to having had Weirdness Magnet, though. My character was a merchant son named John Chandler who trained intensely in the sword (sabre) and was later forced to leave town due to being forced into a duel where he had to kill his oponent. Every time this guy walked into a new town there would be a beautiful woman arguing with a jeleous man. Just as John would get close enough for her to see him, she would say loudly "Very well, yes, there is someone else! HIM!" and point to poor old John. John, a young man with no real experience with women, would get the deer in the headlights look and end up being forced into a duel. Invariably, the man was the lord or prince of the area. Needless to say, John was not very popular with the party, and much preferred being on the road and deal with things he understood, like orcs and ogres.

Re: Rapid Fire reality check I'm decent with a pistol, better than most people I see at the range. Slow fire, I can put 10 rounds of .45 in an inch and a half at 20 ft, an inch on a good day. Doing double taps my group opens to about 4 inches. Under combat conditions, group size usually doubles. Now, picture a T shape on someone's face, lines being about 2 inches wide, the top of the T going across the eyes, the vertical part going down the nose, mouth, chin, etc. According to the self defense class I took, to be sure of stopping someone with a pistol bullet to the head, you have to hit them in that T. Below the T area you are in the area of sinus', painful but not necessarily fatal. Above the T there is supposedly a good chance of the bullet being deflected to a large extent and preventing the kill shot. Now try this simple drill. Have a friend stand about 20 feet away and do a bit of head bobbing he is getting into the music. I'm not talking major, maybe a couple inches to either side. Point your finger at him and try to keep it in the T area. You may be suprised at how hard it is to keep on target. Slow fire, my group would be 3 inches, my double taps 8 ". On a target that is moving even a bit, no way am I going to chance a head shot with any expectation of hitting consistently.

Re: Being creepy and Bodyguard skills I didn't want to go with just a presence attack because Presence could be bad OR good. Also, I figured this to be a disadvantage most of the time, and why should I have to give positive points for something that screws up his life? What do you think of a 0 or a negative COM along with a middling high PRE? Maybe combined with a distictive feature ? Mencelus, you have exactly the right idea, except with my character you wouldn't have hired him in the first place. So far, his back ground is as follows: Although his physical appearance is very ordinary, he is extremely strong (on a 250 character, I'm thinking a STR of 30 or so). As a child, he was picked on by many for being creepy. One on one, he didn't have any problems defending himself. However, when he got jumped by a group of 8 or so kids a couple grades higher, he nearly killed a couple of them. Feeling really bad about it, he went to a several martial arts studios in town where most of them refused to teach him. He finally found a fair hearing from one who listened to his plea to teach him to fight with enough control that he woundn't accidentally hurt anyone that bad again. Eventually, his main source of income is writing code on a contract basis, restricting his contact with his employers to e-mails and instant messages. He also develops skills for computer security and hacking, more out of boredom than anything else. Not wanting to be a total recluse, he manages to get a job as a bouncer in a dive strip joint using some contacts he made at his martial arts school. Staying in the background as much as possible to avoid driving customers away, he uses his unusual presense to put a damper on trouble before it can get into high gear. It's at the club that he meets his girlfriend. Girlfriend is actually a federal agent working undercover as a dancer and is an empath/telepath. With her abilities, she is able see beyond his strange aura to appriciate the nice guy that his is. When her cover is blown, she gets wind of it soon enough to enlist him as short term protection. The ensuing fight (not the club owners, btw) gives him a rep in certain circles as a good guy to have on your side when the fectal matter his the rotory impeller. She continues to work undercover on other jobs, and she and her agency occationally employ him as a freelance bodyguard both for their agents and for those people under their protection.

Re: Being creepy and Bodyguard skills I'm specifically wanting it to be going on the average person, weather or not he wants it. If I see a guy who looks like Shaquille O'Neil, I won't want to mess with him. However, if I see him with a little girl on his hip making goofy faces to make the kid laugh, I'm not going to be too concerned about him, and will likely grin with them. With the characteristic I'm thinking of, my character could be dressed in the silliest clown outfit and giving away ice cream at a charity event and what comes to mind is the Stephen King character. If he offers to escort an old lady across the street, she thinks she is going to be mugged, even if he is dressed in a tux. Have you ever met someone who said all the right things, was polite and well mannered, but you didn't want to be around? The guy walks up to a group at a party, and the group mysteriously breaks up? They don't have to be big, intimidating, ugly, etc, but they just set everyone on edge. THAT'S the guy I'm talking about.

Been a while since I read the book and I don't have it handy. Also, "Bodyguard" gets too many hits to really do a search on this so: CREEPY. This is one of those people who, for no particular reason, makes you think "This guy is just creepy/spooky". He is the guy you just don't want to sit next to for no reason you can figure out, you avoid at the water cooler at work, etc. If he says "Can I get you a drink of water?" it comes out as a threat, sarcasm, or an innuendo. I started out with this as a straight disadvantage, thinking he would have a hard time holding down a normal just when he just creeps everyone out, assuming he can get past the interviewer no matter what he says. Is there such a thing as high presence only for negative emotions? How would you work it so he might use it for interrogation? "Would you like a tuna sandwich and a root beer?" from this guy would make a prisoner's mind go into overdrive trying to figure out what fiendish torture can be done with those things. (By the way, his girl friend is an empath who knows what a sweet guy he really is.) BODYGUARD/BOUNCER skills: spotting trouble before it happens. I'm thinking in terms of the bouncer spotting the troublemakers before they actually start anything, or people pretending to be interested in one thing but really watching something else (couple snuggling together off to one side are really high paid assassins packing enough heat to take down a company of Marines). Best I've come up with is "Danger Sense, limited to visible body language". Any thoughts on either of these? Thanks in advance

Re: Caffeine Addiction I've got a friend who needs a tripple shot every morning plus about a pot of coffee throughout the day or he is a walking zombie. Talk about a drop of INT, more like a drop of 6 off of 12. No coffee = moron. Perception drops to just about 0. Attention span 10 seconds at most. And I don't want to know what his headache is like the next day without any caffiene.

Re: Points to pull the trigger Just to say something that adds absolutely nothing to the validity of the rest of what I say, I can put 10 rounds of .45 in an inch and a half at 20' using the grip Zeropoint described. Slowfire, of course, not rapid fire. The time I was thinking of using these techniques would be situations where the PC was not in direct line of fire, likely from concealment. A sentry standing duty with the rifle at port arms, or on someone searching for the character, say, with flash light in one hand and pistol in the other. It seems on either a stationary target or a slow moving one should be as easy to hit as a button for a doorbell or a light switch on a wall, if the PC with TK can take his time to get it right the first time. Also, once you squeezed the trigger, what would be the rules about keeping it held down? On the escape, the final obstacle in our path was a sentry with an M-16 slung from a shoulder. There was no cover tosneak up on him. After a brief, whispered conversation, Longhand reached out with his mind and squeezed the trigger back into the grip and held it back. With the crack of the single shot, Crazyfist and 'Dozer surged out of cover and charged the sentry. With the trigger of his semi-automatic weapon held back the sentry was unable fire a shot while the heavy hitters charged over the open ground to take him down and out of the fight.

Re: Points to pull the trigger Well, I figured hitting the magazine release is only a couple pounds pressure, and pulling even a stiff trigger is less than 10 lbs, normally. Also, once the trigger has been pressed, it takes almost no force to keep it held down to prevent another shot from being fired. I figured it would render the firearm useless with a lot less effort than ripping it out of someone's hand

How do you deal with stuff that makes sense, but would cause problems the rest of the game? The specific case I was thinking of was someone with a pistol vs someone with TK with fine manipulation. I know that if I can prevent the hammer from falling, or the firing pin from moving forward to strike the primer, the pistol is rendered useless. I know that the way most people hold a pistol (one hand wrapped around the other), if I hit the magazine release they go from 7 to 20+ rounds down to 1. On some pistols, with no magazine in the well you can't even pull the trigger. If you can spot them without them having a good shot at you, another techneque might be to push on their trigger finger. If its a full auto weapon with a full magazine the consequences might be... interesting. If you can keep them from lifting their trigger finger, or even just keep the trigger down (2.5 to 7 lbs force, usually), they can't get another shot off on any semi-auto weapon. The technique is reasonable, and well within the abilities of a fairly basic and weak person with low strength in TK. How do you deal with keeping this type of thing from getting unreasonable? Short Shot

Re: Should all skills be everyman to some degree? I'm in the middle on this one. I've done a partial rebuild of a truck engine working from a Chilton manual with no other training in mechanics. I haven't had any wilderness survival training, formally, but I've have a friend who was training to be an Airforce Seach and Evasion Instructor and we've chatted casually about some of his training, and, oh, I've read all the Louis L'Amour books that came out before he died. I've also read Tracker, the biography of Tom Brown, who is considered to be one of the best trackers in the country. I might not be comfortable while lost in the woods, but if the weather was decent I think I could make a good showing of getting out in one peice. On the other hand, I've had to show people how to turn off a computer by holding down the power button for 10 seconds, and these people have been working with computers in a software development company for 10 years. Possibly an influencing question to ask is the skill something that the average person might have been exposed to in their daily lives to some extent, and if an intellegent person extrapolating from some general information would be able to figure at least some of it out. Anyone remember the series "Scarcrow and Mrs. King"? I remember one scene where she did a great job of combat driving, and when asked where she learned it she said something like "Well, when you have a son who needs to be at soccor practice and a daughter who needs to get to a swim meet, and you still have go grociery shopping, you learn some tricks".

Re: Jackie Chan vs Bruce Lee in character creation Beautiful! Just what I was looking for!

Well, "Jackie Chan" and "Bruce Lee" didn't come up with any hits on the search, although I think it should have with all the martial arts discussions that have been going on, so here goes: Bruce Lee's style in the movies seems to me to be very straight forward, using speed, skill and hitting power to overcome multiple opponents, taking on room fulls of opponents with very little real strategy. Jackie Chan, at least in the movies I've seen so far, tends to be more strategic, using the environment to break up multiple opponents into one on one fights, and using makeshift weapons to overcome tougher opponents. How would you build their skill sets? What are the key differences?

Re: Recombining Schizophrenia Thank you all for the input. So far I've liked Ghost-Angel's means of doing it the best. It seems the simplest for the eventual recombine. I'm just not seeing how using Multiform can easily be rewritten to have these two personalities combine into one without a major rewrite of the entire character. Ghost-Angel's approach seems like it will end up combining nicely as I just buy off disadvantages. Does anyone see a problem with using his method?

Re: Recombining Schizophrenia PM works develops the skills. He drills with the sword, punches the bag, shoots the gun, works hard at being able to run away. He does okay when not under stress. Under stress, like a lot of people who can't perform under pressure, his performance drops. Cavalier has the same skill sets but rather than his performance being inhibited by stress, the Cavilier performs better. He responds fluidly to changing situations and his performance inceases just as top athletes improve with competition. Having said that, "Cavalier" is in effect a defensive mental state, preventing fear and panic from harming PM. (I should say here that this is phsyco-bable that I'm making up as I go to feed a character story line and claim absolutely nothing in reality except it sounds good). Ideally, the personalities of PM and Cavalier should merge without without losing the higher skill sets of each character. The end character should be a cool headed fighter, able to make a tactical retreat under reasonable conditions, not be driven to deliberately increase the risks of an undertaking, but have the persistence on a day to day level to buckle down and work steadily to achieve a goal, although not in the obsesive manner that PM does now. I guess what I want is to set it up so that I can gradually let PM heal is mental illness' rather than just slamming the characters together at the end. If you think it can be done with multi form, I'll play around with it some more and see how I might make it work. If anyone can come up with better way, even better.

Okay, after typing this all out, I sort of figured out what might work. Once again I'm putting in a disclaimer here in that I'm a tyro at this system, or any other gaming system for that matter. I've scanned the book and just don't see how to make this come together. To be honest, it is a character that should likely be played by someone with a lot more gaming experience than I have. To start with we have Paranoia Man (not to be his final name, formally Ulcerman, referred to from here on as PM). This guy is afraid of just about everything that might go wrong, and is obsesive about preparing for it. He does martial arts in case he is attacked, learns to shoot combat shooting, first aid, wilderness survival, engine repair, etc. He is afraid all the time he trains and is subject to panic attacks. He persists because his fear of not being prepared is a bigger fear. Cavalier is the antithisis. PM tried the technique of overcoming his fear by imagining he was someone else. Problem is it worked too well, and Cavalier is born. Cavalier is a laughing dare devil. He has access only to the same combat combat manuevers that PM does, but does them better since he isn't held back by fear. No panic shots, no emptying clips in one blaze, no shaking locked doors trying to get out when a Rottweiler with a wagging rear end comes to say hello. Cavalier won't run if he if he thinks he has one chance in three of winning. (I figure I'll just ask the GM for a judgement call on that, and have him roll the dice to see if the Cavalier is allowed to attempt a daring escape). Cavalier, if he thinks he has too much of an advantage, will actually try to even the odds by giving his oponent a weapon or putting his away. This is not over confidence, but a love of pushing his limits. At this point, Cavalier will have a chance of coming out if PM panics. Cavalier would go away when he chooses, but will go away if nothing exciting is going on. He would not be standing watch, or reading through documents (well, except if he did the breaking and entering and was reading them under the bed while the owner slept in it). Now the fun part: in the end, I want to end up with one sane, competent character. At first I tried to figure it out with OIHID, but couldn't see how to do the combine. The only way I can figure how to do this is to give him a number of disadvantages such as negative combat levels unless Cavalier is in charge. Any suggestions? Also, do you he would be an interesting character to have in a campaign? Would his chronic fear in his normal state make him difficult to bring in to a heroic campeign? Comments are appriciated.

Re: Ulcerman, the Cavalier, and the Movie Martial Artist Yes. Part of the reason he hates the guy. It's HIS body that gets damaged in the fight, and its him the girls would look to for smooth remarks and romance after an encounter with the Cavalier. "er.. It wasn't me! I never said we would go have wine on the beach under a full moon in the Caribbean! It was my evil twin, Skippy!" Um... which, come to think of it, would be another reason I would have a hard time role playing him. I can't even fake a good line with the ladies.

Re: Ulcerman, the Cavalier, and the Movie Martial Artist Sounds like a good setup. Now, I'm not sure I'd have the courage to actually *play* him in a campaign, but I'll definitely build him out. I'm thinking his main role would be coordinator the rest of the team would stay in radio contact with. Having someone paranoid watching out for you while your in the field might be appriciated, even if you really have a hard time being in the same room with him otherwise. Everyone is still stumped on a cavalier character set in a contemporary setting, I take it. All the contemporary heroes on screen seem to take the attitude of "Don't give a sucker an even break".

Re: Ulcerman, the Cavalier, and the Movie Martial Artist Well, the movie martial artist is actually a seperate thing, and I really hadn't intended to use that aspect. I and a couple friends were trying to come up with characters that fit the Cavalier attitude, and my brain sort of tagged that for a different question. The Cavalier is more of an alternate personality. Ulcerman stops being able funtion normally because of his fear, and Cavalier takes over. Doesn't matter if the fear is due to guns coming out or talking to a good looking woman. The skill set doesn't change for them, its just that Cavalier is more much more alert because he isn't paralysed by fear and so is a better fighter. The presense is not going to be anything outrageous, just the difference between someone who as always fearful and hunched vs. someone who stands up straight, wears a smile and seems to enjoy life. I should also note that Ulcerman doesn't LIKE when Cavalier takes over. Remember, Ulcerman is a worrier, and cautious. He figures the Cavalier is just going to get him killed in combat or humiliated, or get girls mad at him, etc.

Ulcerman is the geeky guy who is afraid of just about everything, but is even more afraid of being frozen by fear. With that in mind, since he fears getting beaten up he takes self defense classes (hating every minute of it). Since he is afraid of heights, he takes climbing classes. Afraid of not being able to deal with an accident, takes classes to become an EMT and rides does the ride/along in ambulances and police cars until he can deal with it to the point he doesn't puke until AFTER the emergency is over. QUESTION: Part of what I want is tunnel vision under stress. If he is about to get in a fight with 3 bikers, I want him to not hear the cop say "Everyone freeze" but instead go in for the attack when the bikers blink. How would you define that in particular in and Ulcerman's general condition in terms of disadvantage? I'm thinking of having Ulcerman's alter ego as a Cavalier, triggerred by being over stressed. By that I mean Errol Flynn style, the kind of guy who looks at a fight with 6 people with a gleam in his eye, and (important part) will toss his oponent a sword to fight with if he is disarmed. I figure to give him a couple levels of luck, a boosted presence/ego, and an inability to resist an honorable challenge. QUESTION: Can anyone think of a contemporary character from the movies that would be a good role model as a Cavalier? James Bond was mentioned, as was the Saint, but I just can't see either one of them giving an oponent an even break. I really have a hard time envisioning that attitude without swords involved. This leads to the final issue. I'm sure if I go home and read UNTIL I'll find it, but here goes: Van Damme does it, Mel Gibson does it, Bruce Willis does it, and, the best example, the Hulk does it, i.e. takes a beating that should have killed him, and keeps getting up and and ending up even better than before. Now, on any of them, if you manage to drop them in one shot, your good to go, but if all you do is hurt them a lot, you better start running because even if you were initially a better fighter your going to be toast if you stick around for long. So, how do you build it? Strength, healing and combat levels that goes up on how much body you take? I have no idea how to do that with my limited knowledge of the rules.