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Tsotha-lanti
2008-11-11, 03:20 PM
AKA Fallout Must Be Eaten. (Disclaimer: don't actually eat radioactive fallout. Or, you know, CDs or DVDs containing a Fallout game. Or even floppies with Wasteland on them. Tasty Wasteland.)

I'm homebrewing me some Fallout with Unisystem, and I figured I'd solicit advice and comments here.

I'm starting with chargen and "races" first.


Super Mutant
6-point Racial Quality
Super mutants are massive humanoids, usually eight to ten feet tall and weighing nearly a thousand pounds. They are grotesquely disfigured, and typically have greenish-grey skin. Super mutants are sterile, and can only "reproduce" by introducing FEV into human victims. They are also immortal, living until killed by unnatural causes.

Super mutants can raise Strength and Constitution to ten and gain +2 to Strength and Constitution, five levels of Hard to Kill (may have up to ten maximum), Nerves of Steel, three levels of Resistance (Pain). They have two levels of the Dermal Armor mutation and the Regeneration (hourly) mutation. They suffer -1 to final Dexterity and Intelligence, a six-point Attractiveness Drawback, a one-point Cruel Drawback, and a three-point Minority Drawback. Super mutants gain no points for these drawbacks.

That's 16 -10 points (since raised maximums don't seem to have a cost, looking at Dungeons and Zombies).

I'm not positive about the necessity of Regeneration, but since super mutants' cells apparently do regenerate (which explains their immortality - aging cells are "fixed" - and their sterility - gametes are supposedly mistaken for "broken" cells and also get "fixed"), I chucked it in. I want a high cost on the package anyway.

I'm a bit stuck on trying to figure out how to model radiation immunity. It's got to be a Quality, and Resistance (Radiation) won't cut it for ghouls and super mutants (it'll work nicely for humans, giving them a bonus to the test to mitigate the effects of radiation by one level). I just need a point value, really - I'm thinking either 2 or 3 points. So that'd be...


Radiation Immunity
2 (3?)-point Mutation
The mutant is immune to radiation, and suffers no ill effects from any exposure to it.

Simple enough.

I'm replacing Metaphysics with Mutations - using powers and the cyber/bio/nanoware in All Tomorrow's Zombies (like Dermal Armor and Regeneration for the super mutants) as the starting point. Only ghouls and super mutants will start out with Mutation Points - I'm thinking humans will be able to buy them with Qualities, paying a small "entry fee" first, then trading points 1:1. Characters will also be able to purchase mutations with experience points in play. Mutations can cover actual Metaphysics, too - namely weird psychic abilities.

Pure Humans - Enclave and inhabitants of certain long-sealed Vaults - won't be able to get mutations at all. I figure regular, everyday exposure to radiation and FEV wouldn't cause mutations in a creature, only in its offspring. Intentional FEV-saturation, or thousands of rems of radiation, are a different matter, resulting in transformation into a ghoul or a super mutant.

Despite my love for Fallout Tactics, I absolutely will not make Deathclaws playable. Ugggh. No dog PCs, either. Robots... maybe.

Satyr
2008-11-11, 05:26 PM
I think the attractiveness drawback is out of place. A Supermutant do not have to be attractive to a human, he has to be attractive to other Supermtants, like a cat does not have to look pretty for dogs and vice versa. I wouldn't include attractivity in a species' write up, because there is no such thing as a universial attractivity scale. What is considered pretty is always dependent from the society you live in, and I think a Super-Mutant who finds humans more attractive than his own kind rather ridiculous.

And even if you treat them all as one large culture with a unified cultural image of personal beauty, a -6 penalty is widely exagerated. -2 or so might be in order (and -a bit worse for the Ghouls than), but -6? Hardly justifiable.

I liked the idea of a Unisystem-based Fallout game, and strted to scribble on my this morning. I came up with this for the Supermutant:


Supermutant - 10 Point Racial Quality
Super Mutants are very strong and much bigger then ordinary humans, they were breeded to become the ultimate soldiers: Big, green, and prone to shooting people at point-blank range with miniguns, nobody who wants to live messes with a Super Mutant.
Super Mutants were originally created by dipping humans into vats of the Forced Evolutionary Virus, or F.E.V. The process grants superior physical strength and resilience and a tough and leathery skin. Both the FEV and the survival in the Wastelands have geatly improved their tolernce to radiation and poisons.
There aren't so many superhumans around, and most people are easily afraid of anyone who is big and strong enough to kill them with their bare hands, so Supermutants are treated as a feared and often hated minority. While they may be distrusted, their sheer muscle power is sometimes very helpful which makes the Supermutants more tolerable as heavy workers.

Attributes: Strength +3, Constitution +2, -1 to either Intelligence, Perception or Will.
Qualities: Natural Toughness, Resistance (Poison) 2, Resistance (Radiation) 3, hard to kill 3 (Supermutants can buy up to 8 levels in hard to kill).
Drawbacks: Too large for this world -1, minority -3

too large for this world - 1 point physical drawback
The character literally does not fit in as world built for much smaller individuals. He constantly has to duck to pass doors, furniture breaks down when he sits on it and clothes and other equipment must be specially designed or dified for their size. This drawbackj is most of time only inconvenient, but the too large character gains a -1 penalty to all rolls when large size is a hindrance.

Tsotha-lanti
2008-11-12, 08:34 PM
I agree that the Attractiveness point value, at least, seems a little disproportionate, but I think I followed the core book's Attractiveness entry precisely. At -5, "people will be taken aback", and both super mutants and ghouls are ugly enough to outright cause revulsion and fear. "Beings with inhuman features can have levels as low as -10." -6 seemed appropriate - both ghouls and super mutants are always more hideously ugly than any human (human-looking human, anyway).

I'm pretty sure that Attractiveness is intended to be either objective or measured against humans, and it definitely makes sense to me that super mutants and ghouls would get penalties to interacting with humans.

There are two problems that come up:
1. Ghouls get an intimidation bonus? On first blush, this seems inappropriate - but I'd say that's just because we rarely if ever see or hear ghouls trying to be intimidating. So it's just that they never try to intimidate, rather than that they are incapable of it. And the feral ghouls in FO3 are definitely scary and terrifying (even to me as a player!), if not quite Fear Test material (unless they jump you or you've never seen one before).
2. Do ghouls and super mutants have penalties and bonuses to interacting with each other, based on Attractiveness? This one's easily resolved: no. They ignore Attractiveness among themselves (or altogether, maybe; why would a super mutant care if that human is pretty?). This seems like a good general rule: Quasimodo (Attractiveness -5) won't care about Caliban's deformities (Attractiveness -4), because Caliban is comparatively more handsome.

I think I will definitely use the drawback you came up with. I might make it a 2-point one with a -2 penalty, because I think I'd like to make it significant. Super mutants should have a hard time using the tools and small arms of humans.

Where's Natural Toughness from?

Satyr
2008-11-13, 01:46 PM
I agree that the Attractiveness point value, at least, seems a little disproportionate, but I think I followed the core book's Attractiveness entry precisely. At -5, "people will be taken aback", and both super mutants and ghouls are ugly enough to outright cause revulsion and fear. "Beings with inhuman features can have levels as low as -10." -6 seemed appropriate - both ghouls and super mutants are always more hideously ugly than any human (human-looking human, anyway).

I had the impression that the revulsion of humans in confrontation with the supermutants is more like a trained reaction - and the quite normal fear when you meet a 2.2 m brute who can rip of your head without many problems.
Ghouls look dead though, and that is normally a good reason for disgust. I also think that Ghouls are uglier than Muties.


I'm pretty sure that Attractiveness is intended to be either objective or measured against humans, and it definitely makes sense to me that super mutants and ghouls would get penalties to interacting with humans.

Isn't that already covered through the minority drawback?

I mean that according to Dungeons and Zombies, Orcs gain a 2 point attractiveness drawback - six points would be three times as ugly ass Orcs. (On the other hand, minotaurs have no penalty at all. It seems that green skin is uglier than looking like an angry cow.)


I think I will definitely use the drawback you came up with. I might make it a 2-point one with a -2 penalty, because I think I'd like to make it significant. Super mutants should have a hard time using the tools and small arms of humans.

The inconvenience and part time role as a comic relief character (and again the supermutant walked against the door frame alone is worth one point of a drawback in a game where inappropriate jokes are worth one as well.


Where's Natural Toughness from?


I thought it is in every Unisystem Core book, but it seem to have mysteriously disappeared from AFMBE. Natural toughness is a 2 point physical quality that gives the character 4 points of armor against blunt weapons like fists or clubs. A more focused form of damage resistance.