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Dr.Orpheus
2014-11-11, 01:46 PM
I have a friend running a game with a homebrew rule system it is quite simple. You basicaly make up a class ability each level and the GM looks it over, but no ability scales with your level so you need to spend later levels to upgrade earlier levels. As the title suggests I am making a god of mad science and they are focused on ignoring the prerequisites for a capstone ability (the best thing to compare it to is the spell creation system in the ELH). At his level he can do a lot of stuff, but still has plenty of more powerful adversaries to kill. I require help in thinking of unique abilities and items that would normaly break a game because not only are my opponets stronger my allies are also stronger. I am underleveled because of the fact I can powergame well in 3.5, but I just don't have enough creative juces to do the same in this new system. My GM said " I may not know what crazy **** you'll make, but if you conqure the void and the beyond or become the new flawless one I still have harder dudes."

braveheart
2014-11-11, 02:01 PM
The idea of a ray of random ailments comes to mind, you shoot a beam at an enemy and roll on a table to see what happens to them, it could be anything from a sneezing fit to death to being bound to your will for the remainder of eternity, make yourself a fun and interesting table that hits an enemy for random bad (for him not you)

Kid Jake
2014-11-11, 02:27 PM
You obviously need some sort of blinding aura.

GorinichSerpant
2014-11-11, 08:21 PM
What kind of scientist are you going for?
A mad biologist can make Frankenstein monsters, engineer poisons and deceases, graft limbs to your allys and so forth.
A mad physicist can make anti-gravity fields, contort space to basically allow teleportation, time travel, weaponize relativity,exploit quantum properties to be in multiple places at the same time, you name it!
A mad chemist can not only create acid and wondrous explosives, but also make food from rocks, and potentially anything from anything else!
A mad mechanic (not technically a scientist, but it still fits the theme of mad scientist) can construct robots and horrid war machines and machine guns that shot nano-robots that burrow into people and exlpode!
MWAHAHAHA!!!*cough*
Sorry there, I got carried away. You can also combine several of these together into the same character, heck you can pick and use all of these and it'll make sense unless everyone is playing a mad scientist.

Demidos
2014-11-11, 08:27 PM
+1 to the previous post.

Also, look at the names of the schools of magic, and find inspiration there.
Alternately, use http://powerlisting.wikia.com/wiki/Special:Random to generate random abilities, and then let him discover how to use them through his discipline (for example, doubt manipulation (random example) can be via psychologist, via altering chemical pathways for chemistry, via altering their biostructure by injecting them with drugs or via a hormone aura for biologists, etc.)

In summary, come up with the path first, then find random abilities and figure out how someone from that path of science could gain those powers. Should make it more interesting than bog standard abilities.

Edit: Just realized, you're a GOD of mad science? You should be able to GRANT mad science abilities to others. Start gathering those worshippers and give them access to d% random effects table! All the insanity, 1d100 times the fun!

BeerMug Paladin
2014-11-11, 11:18 PM
Once per day, you can take 20 on a single skill check by screaming, "SCIENCE!" at the top of your lungs. Obviously it doesn't work for some things like moving silently.

Geostationary
2014-11-12, 01:09 AM
Once per day, you can take 20 on a single skill check by screaming, "SCIENCE!" at the top of your lungs. Obviously it doesn't work for some things like moving silently.

For those lesser scientists it may not, but for one such as I, inventor of such wonders as the Ciliated Pet Groomer, the Blasphemous Bread-Toasting Ray, and the Articulated Hair-Care Spiders With Styling Venom, such a feat is a mere triviality! Lesser scientists shall weep at my stealthiness as I cry SCIENCE! and let loose the tools of stealth (now with GROTESQUERY DISPLACEMENT FIELDS and DIABOLISM DEFLECTORS)!

GorinichSerpant
2014-11-12, 01:13 PM
For those lesser scientists it may not, but for one such as I, inventor of such wonders as the Ciliated Pet Groomer, the Blasphemous Bread-Toasting Ray, and the Articulated Hair-Care Spiders With Styling Venom, such a feat is a mere triviality! Lesser scientists shall weep at my stealthiness as I cry SCIENCE! and let loose the tools of stealth (now with GROTESQUERY DISPLACEMENT FIELDS and DIABOLISM DEFLECTORS)!

Well obviously to sneak by yelling SCIENCE! you project your voice somewhere else and sneak by while your opponent looks in the other direction.

You can also look at Full Metal Alchemist for inspiration for knowledge based application of science.

Strigon
2014-11-12, 01:28 PM
Once per day, you can take 20 on a single skill check by screaming, "SCIENCE!" at the top of your lungs. Obviously it doesn't work for some things like moving silently.

If you choose to go with this idea (which I strongly encourage, by the way), this list (http://www.scp-wiki.net/the-things-dr-bright-is-not-allowed-to-do-at-the-foundation) should be useful for inspiration, as should SCP-705. (http://www.scp-wiki.net/scp-705)

Dr.Orpheus
2014-11-12, 02:25 PM
I doing the "science!" thing for sure, but I compiled all the ideas so far and expect I can get most approved. Any other ideas would be great and I should add that early levels I spent include lots of followers and instant crafting.

GorinichSerpant
2014-11-12, 04:03 PM
Are all the PCs in this campaign playing as gods of some sort? It may make sense to come up with ability that synchronize with the other PCs.

If your all playing gods then that would effect what makes sense for you to have.

Dr.Orpheus
2014-11-12, 04:26 PM
I have two god allies one that sacrifices himself in alternate timelines to gain a dying wish that overcharges spells and onet that stacks buff spells of every alignment. What little I know of the main villin is that his spells cannot be countered which I have not found a way around and he has a plane that traps you inside which I alone have successfuly escaped.

Radar
2014-11-13, 01:50 AM
Hmm... so you and other people in this game have some really awesome powers. How do you feel about extracting the raw awesomness permeating the whole universe and using it to power your mad inventions to increase their effectiveness beyond any limits? To make things clear: unleash spiral power (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VeFwdL4AF9M) onto your game. :smallbiggrin:

As for countering uncounterable spells: you can always make them ineffective instead. For example: he paralises you, but it's no problem, since you have precise telekinesis thanks to some technomagical gizmo of yours, so you can still operate all your equipment.

Dr.Orpheus
2014-11-13, 12:22 PM
Spiral is already in the world and I use it for speeding up research time so I can get new inventions, but I like the idea of powering inventions with the same energy instead of magic crystal generators. Mechanicaly I think the generators are more effective, but fuel can only be created so fast.

Radar
2014-11-14, 06:02 AM
Another idea that came to my mind is investing in yourself. Invent things that boost your mental capabilities, which in turn will allow you to improve your imporvements. In essence, see if it is possible to reach a technological singularity.

Dr.Orpheus
2014-11-14, 02:34 PM
Sounds good and if it is not approved I may be able to start a lesser singularity on my mortal plane. I just finished making it and it is basicaly a infinitely large factory where warforged make a bunch of magic crystals, plastic, rubber, and metal.

daremetoidareyo
2014-11-15, 06:19 PM
First off, If I'm just a scientist in a D&D type world, I create a flawless surgery robot. Then I create shrink ray. Shrink rays are awesome.

Then I hunt and kill a bunch of psychic stuff, remove their brains, create a frankenbrain by minmaxxing all of the relevant parts and sewing them together. Then I shrink it and have my surgery robot implant it into my brain. Boom, Now I'm frankenpsychic. The mind flayers have nothing on me now.


Now that I'm powered by a partially psychic chimeric brain: It's time to build my battle suit. For this, I'm going to need to invent an unshrink ray. (it unshrinks things that you have shrunk, but doesn't enlarge other things) Then I want hovercraft battle-legs, six pack abs (thats like at least a +8 to seduction/intimidate rolls, amiright?!), gunsword arms, bazooka shoulders and samurai face, and screw it, rocket angel wings. Each of these parts is haptically created and strapped onto my personal body dimensions.

Hovercraft battle legs: hover 12" over all things all day. Powered by your part psychic brain. Of course, they wouldn't be battle legs without retractible knee spikes and boot knives (heel and toe)
Sixpack abs: removed from a body builder and grafted to your own torso. Are bigger abs or more abs better? You are conducting an experiment to see which offers the best. Currently you are using half-orc sixpack abs and they are working quite nicely.
gunsword arms: are attachable full arm prosthetics that have guns where hands should be, and should ranged battle not be an real option, large sized bayonets with blades that terminate at the elbow for personal combat slicing opportunities.
Bazooka shoulders: Big heat seaking missile silos are on your shoulders that are engaged by your psychic powers.
Samurai face: Every battlemech needs one. No-one is going to mock you for not respecting tradition!
Rocket angel wings: A series of summon wands conjures the powers of the heavens and traps them in a small box with the command to: use all magic. The celestials then spend all of their inherent strength attempting to free themselves, the energy of which is collected and used to power these awesome rocket wings.


You may be wondering about this battle mech suit, it would be such a hassle to use while you still have to go to the bathroom. No worries, you have developed world class transportation and pressurization technologies that make you more BATTLE READY. Have to go #1? Just implant this tiny portable gate in your urethra. What was once nitrate filled bio-waste, is now whisked away to the dimension of hyperbaric super pressure, creating an unstable crystalline structure that is as hard as adamantium. Although under normal pressures this breaks down in 20-30 seconds, that isn't a problem, as the urine happens to gate into a bullet moulding device that you transported to the plane first, complete with a harness detecting triggered mini gate at the bottom. If you gotta go, just shoot your armor piercing urine pellet within 10 seconds of relieving yourself.
But perhaps #2 is your issue, using state of the art remolecularization fabrics, you can simply allow the bowels to move whenever you want, the fabric will collect it. You can then wash the fabrics or replace them. Be careful not to dispose of them too close to where you eat. After this filter is removed, biologically engineered nitrate fixing maggots can be applied to the area to make you clean and serene: they pupate and hatch into protein filled flies in just 4 or 5 hours!

Each part of the battle mech suit can be shrink rayed and placed into a custom holder, to be un shrink rayed when it is time for use and implementation. With a mad science check of moderate difficulty, this suit can be modified to work for someone else as well.

Sith_Happens
2014-11-15, 07:16 PM
Are all the PCs in this campaign playing as gods of some sort? It may make sense to come up with ability that synchronize with the other PCs.

Read: combine into Voltron.:smallcool:

Also, if you don't already have a "build exactly the gadget I need right now out of random stuff laying around" power then you need one.

TeChameleon
2014-11-15, 07:35 PM
Read: combine into Voltron.:smallcool:

Also, if you don't already have a "build exactly the gadget I need right now out of random stuff laying around" power then you need one.
So, MacGuyver Voltron? >.>

Also, you really, really need an 'empathic scenery' trait- dark clouds roll in, lightning flashes and thunder roars when you start laughing maniacally or scream 'SCIENCE!!!!!', it gets dark out, a full moon rises and a wolf bounds out to howl mournfully on a crag when you say 'Yonder lies the castle of my father' (even if, or possibly especially if the castle is in the middle of a thousand miles of perfectly flat plains and the nearest wolf is on another continent), the entire world freeze-frames while you turn to stare in incredulous shock at someone who's just said something impossibly stupid, maybe even a bit of Wile E. Coyote (SUPER genius) physics where you don't fall until you look down, that kind of thing.

Oh, and if you give any sort of 'smite'-type abilities to your followers, they really need to be triggered by opponents saying 'at least things can't get any worse', 'I AM INVINCIBLE!', 'what else can go wrong?', and stuff like that (aka 'Taunting Murphy').

Dr.Orpheus
2014-11-16, 05:19 PM
I am getting closer to character completion by the day now with all your helpful inspiration, my caracter has several abilities that you folks mentioned and others are just blueprints. I spent lots of levels on better potential in the long run so my only starting items are ones to make research and crafting better. Only having bluprints and not actual inventions means they can be higher level and I can build them very quickly sense my mortal plane produces more then 3 times the GDP of earth.

Sith_Happens
2014-11-16, 06:41 PM
So, MacGuyver Voltron? >.>

Yes.

...Oh, and don't forget the counterpart to MacGuyvering, "It's a good thing I built [gizmo] just for this occasion! [*pull the thing in question out of your pocket*]"

Dr.Orpheus
2014-11-18, 02:00 PM
I have a plane in my pocket for holding all such items as well as storing mana. My character is now officialy complete, but if anyone has new ideas feel free to post them and I should still be able to make them happen.

GorinichSerpant
2014-11-18, 09:16 PM
I'm kind of curious to see what your character statistically looks like.

Another ability that a mad scientist could have is the ability to "disbelieve" some magical effects. Like scientifically proving that something is an illusion, or doing the math to figure out something shouldn't work and use that to stop it.

Sith_Happens
2014-11-18, 09:47 PM
Another ability that a mad scientist could have is the ability to "disbelieve" some magical effects. Like scientifically proving that something is an illusion, or doing the math to figure out something shouldn't work and use that to stop it.

I like this. Instead of using technobabble to justify something working, you're using it to make something stop working.

Or it could be in the form of a "physics enforcement ray" that temporarily strengthens the fabric of reality in a localized area so as to render all supernatural effects nonfunctional.

...Of course either way the power in question presupposes that the OP's character acknowledges the existence of supernatural events rather than believing them to be scientific phenomena for which he simply hasn't discovered the mechanism yet.

Dr.Orpheus
2014-11-19, 01:52 AM
I'm kind of curious to see what your character statistically looks like.

I'll do my best at describing things more specific to the game he's in, but you should all get to see it sense you all helped in making it.

Keep in mind that 1 my character is also a god so many abilities he just gets for free, and 2 before my first meet using this character the world was not syfi in the least and now that I exist technology has advanced from midevil to industrial in the local multiverse and will continue to advance, but in the meantime my inventions are magitech instead of tech, but do the same things.

76 points of int (this would be like 760 in D&D)

(All the numbers listed before an ability are what levels I put into them. Lots of levels means the ability is generally more versitile and powerful, but even the lowest level abilities can be boosted with spiral magic or a science devise I make on the spot)
700-551 Old magic alchemy kit: This god piece lets me research and if I research after leveling up I may use more different magic types when making new blueprints with those new levels. I may roll for my ability to use the god piece and the result is how good the blueprint can be if low it will be something lower powered, but cheaper to make and if I intentionally worsen it a lot more it can be used by mortals as a household appliance of a high TL. If the roll is high it will be blueprints for a good artifact for an ultimacy and I could make more than one, but they would be expensive and if I intentionally worsen it a lot it can be used as a rare expensive appliance for mortals that they would probably only have one of per major city at high TL if they put forth the time and money to build them.
550-401 General artifice: Unlike a normal magic type artifice uses the properties of other magics working together with a bit of hardware Magic type all about making magic items fairly good for my level instantly or fairly quickly. It can be used to upgrade existing items or for improving the roll on how well I make an item I spend a long time on.
400-321 Old magic bomb blueprints: The atomic bomb of the TG omniverse. It involves taking a small amount of old magic and tons of iz, spiral, and vulgar and merges them igniting and inferno of powered up vulgar old magic that will destroy a large area if used inside a plane or if shot from outside the veil it will blow a big hole in the veil of the plane.
330-286 Double veil tear: Can make a rift into and out of more secure places which can be used for travel or to send away people and attacks.
285-246 Planar rocket blueprints: Can be attached to the outside of a plane and move the plane while building up vulger.
245-241 The warp: Can draw not only stored mana which is networked through the psionic sub-plane, but instantly summon items left in divine realm.
240-221 Mana generator: Generates mana to power people and things and the upgrade just speeds it up sense it is already automatic.
220-202 Upgrade blueprints: Can spend more resources on a non-combat device and have it require more mana to run so that it works on its own or gets better at working on its own. This can be increased with more resources and mana, but the exchange rate sucks after a certain point unless more levels are taken.
201 Assorted lesser military blueprints: Many wand guns that shoot spells and magic armor with a small range of utility add-ons it is a bit better then what the mortals can create on their own, and boosted versions can be made that are worthy of ultimacys.
200-101 Utopia factory: Refines resources really efficiently to allow a city to make enough food and goods with less time and effort.
100-41 Battle suit blueprints: Can summon a robot body to inhabit that has armor, str, and mostly dex bonuses. It uses charges instead of mana and to get another charge I need resources to build a new body. If I use more or better materials I can increase armor and str more and if I tap things out I can craft other attachments on to it.
40-1 Transformation: Can change from size tiny to huge or become incorporeal or swarm
0 higher then normal reputation they an ultimacy of my level

Old magic is the first magic to exist in the omniverse and all other magic in the world is made up of small parts of it, so it is basically the quantum physics of the setting.
A god piece is an item that anyone of god level can use at a higher level then it normally would be.
TL means tech level like in Gurps.
Ultimacy is a step above greater diety.
Magic types are more then just schools of magic they are broader categories like arcane, divine, and psionic.
Iz is a magic type about copying the effects of another magic type, but with a randomness factor.
Spiral is the boost magic that makes you better at what you do.
Vulgar is not a magic type, but instead a side effect that comes with using more magic then you can handle and it adds more destructiveness and makes it so you cannot single out only enemies as targets.
The veil is the border between a plane and the aether which separates the planes.
The double veil tear sends stuff to the beyond which is the space between all the omniverses of cannon campaigns my DM has run in the past using different rule systems.
Taping things out means to erase them from existence things that are willing or things that would not get a will save in D&D can be taped out and doing so overcharges an ability, and on a similar note taping in which I did not mention lets you gain the effects of taping out something fairly good if you use all of your mana on one ability.

Edit: A few things I made in game include a telescope for planer study and stuff for surgical/genetic alterations and constructs with modern weapons.