Aberrant: Elites

MJ12's potential Aberrant Game.

Background

The year is 2020. N-Day happened a little more than ten years ago. Now with demigods taking roles in all walks of life, what is your calling? What are you willing to do to achieve your goals? And how far are you willing to fall in the hopes of power?

Time: ~10 AM - 2 PM Pacific on Saturdays

Room: irc.sorcery.net, #aberrant

Characters

Michael Boddy - Norseman
Jeremy Roddick - Singh
Carter Luso - Nacht
Rose Sharon - QuicksilverFox85
Zach McAllister - OmegaPaladin
Melissa Flint - Screwball
Esker Eaves - Ralson
Iskandar al-Rashid ibn Abdul Rahman - Dacis2
Caran Steele - Andronicus

Defeated Major Foes

It isn't an Elites game without a body count.

The Revolutionary - Terat Primacy member. Heat visioned through a wall and then executed by Moroccans.

Sloppy Joe - Terat Primacy member. Was garroted to death by Iskandar despite being 100% force fields and acid.

The Amazing Brain-Plant - Terat Primacy member. Mind controlled entire village. Was stabbed by Fire Shadow and then heat visioned to death by Caran.

Geryon - Teragen Nova Vigilance member, with about 34 NP invested in "NOT DYING" and a whole bunch more in "hurting people". Nevertheless, defeated in combat because he refused to puss out and retreat. Had a satchel charge thrown into an open wound, was then reduced to chunks of superhuman flesh smeared all over New York City.

Notes and Miscellaneous Errata

These are from the Player's Guide or other stuff that's hard to find or can be useful.

General Combat

Unarmed damage is Strength + 2 for punches, Strength + 4 (with +1 difficulty to-hit) for kicks. Sweeps are Strength + 1 damage (+1 difficulty) and knock down targets who fail a Difficulty 4 Athletics roll.

Attacks from the side are +1 accuracy, while attacks from the rear are +2 accuracy. In close combat, if outnumbered by foes, attack and defense rolls gain +1 difficulty for each opponent after the first (maximum +4 difficulty).

Called shots are +2 difficulty for +2 damage, or +3 difficulty for +4 damage. +1 difficulty allows called shots to limbs, etc. Called shots may allow one to bypass armor.

Area attacks (i.e. grenades, powers with the Explosion extra, artillery shells) gain +2 accuracy, cannot be parried and can only be dodged if the character can get out of the blast effect.

Throwing: the range for throwing an object is (Strength + Might) x 5 meters for objects massing 1 kg or less. Each additional kg of mass reduces the throw distance by 5 meters. Characters with Mega-Strength may throw objects up to their base lifting ability (Strength + Might) x 5 meters. If the object masses less than half of the Nova's lifting ability, though, the Nova can multiply the range by his or her automatic mega-strength successes (x5 per dot of Mega-Strength).

Hyperspeed strikes: A melee attack made at hyperspeed adds +2 damage for Enhanced Movement and +1 damage per dot of Hypermovement, and is made at +1 difficulty.

Aerial strikes: A melee attack made from flight adds +1 damage per dot of Flight and is made at +1 difficulty.

Firearms

Bursts add +2 accuracy while automatic fire adds +10 accuracy, increases the difficulty of dodges by 1, and adds +2 difficulty to the shot. Bursts require 3 rounds, autofire expends the magazine.

Firearms cannot be dodged without either cover within movement distance, going prone, or Mega-Dexterity 1. Firearms can only be parried with Mega-Dexterity 4.

Cover fire is Dexterity + Firearms versus the opponent's Willpower, failure to make the roll forces the opponent to automatically dive for cover. Botching the willpower roll causes the opponent to take the attack's base damage.

Aiming: Each turn spent aiming adds +1 to accuracy, up to (Perception + Mega-Perception).

Status Effects

Dazing/Unconsciousness: Attacks that deal more damage levels than a character's Stamina stun the victim, who loses his or her next action. If an attack deals more damage than a character's Stamina + 2, the character is knocked out for a time between five rounds and a scene. Each Mega-Stamina dot counts as 2 Stamina dots for the purpose of resisting being dazed or knocked unconscious.

Knocked down: A character knocked down must make a Dexterity + Athletics roll. A successful roll reduces the character's initative by 2 on the next turn, while a failed roll means the character spends his or her next turn climbing to a standing position. A botch deals bashing damage equal to the number of 1s rolled.

Blinding: Blinded characters have +2 difficulty to all actions. Furthermore attacks made against blind characters gain +2 accuracy.

Errata

p.62 of the Aberrant Player's Guide (since it doesn't have a nice organized index)

XP Costs

TRAIT INCREASE

• Name Cost (current rating)
• Attribute x4
• Ability x2
• Background x2
• M-Attribute x5
• Q-Power (L1) x2
• Q-Power (L2) x5
• Q-Power (L3) x7
• Willpower x1
• Quantum x8
• Q. Pool 3 XP
• Initiative 1 XP

NEW TRAIT

• Ability 3
• Specialty* 1
• Background 2
• Enhancement 5
• M-Attribute 6
• Q-Power (L1) 3
• Q-Power (L2) 6
• Q-Power (L3) 9

• 3 Specialties max. per ability

Houserules

Chargen

Taint at chargen gives 2 Nova Points per point of Taint.

Aberrations can be taken as flaws, with minor aberrations being 1 point, medium aberrations 2, and major ones 4.

Backing is disallowed-everyone's going to be part of an up-and-coming new Elite agency.

Items that require Backing to purchase MAY be purchasable with ST permission.

General

All Mega-Attributes add one flat success to any roll. Mega-Attributes are not affected by Qualities-however mundane dice are. These extra successes are only added if the character makes at least 1 success on the actual roll-i.e. they do not protect from botching.

All rolled effect powers (Forcefield, etc.) use the fixed effect rules in the Player's Guide.

Qualities makes 10s count double on rolls where they would be valid instead of allowing 10s to be rerolled.

Use the Player's Guide rules to maxing out powers (2 successes on a max roll allows one to add any Extra, 1 success adds 1 level of damage, 1 dot of soak, or 1 success to the power activation roll). A successful power max roll grants 1 XP specifically for improving that power. (maximum of 1 XP earned this way per power per session.). Tentatively characters are allowed to power max Mega-Attributes, where 2 successes adds 1 level, while 1 success adds an Enhancement.

Equipment and Backgrounds from other WW sources may be purchasable with ST permission. Possibilities include Devices, Enhancement, Sanctum, and certain other backgrounds which might fit.

Powers

Clone only provides up to (Clone) clones, instead of up to (Quantum + Clone) clones. It costs 3 Quantum per clone.

Vehicles

All vehicles gain an additional amount of -0 Damage Levels equal to their Armor Adds. Furthermore Armor Adds soak levels of damage after damage is rolled, instead of reducing damage dice.

Equipment

The Flechette Rifle has doubled range and is naturally armor piercing.

Combat

A Nova may move up to half their run distance without taking penalties to actions during combat. Running up to maximum run distance subtracts 1 from all pools. Sprinting while acting requires the person in question to take a multiple action.

Using the Accuracy Enhancement stacks with aim actions-the Nova gains the +3 dice from the Enhancement in addition to the bonus from aiming.

Burst-fire no longer adds 1 to difficulty.

Extreme Range: Shots from twice to up to five times the range of a weapon or Quantum Power are extreme range shots, at +4 difficulty. A power with the Extended Range Extra has long range: Line of Sight and thus will never make an Extreme Range shot at all. Homing powers suffer no difficulty penalty from extreme range.

Custom Powers and Enhancements

These are for player-designed powers and Enhancements created to fill niches that you really want filled but can't find something that does so.

NPCs

Put the NPCs up on the wiki and link them here to claim your XP. They should have full stat blocks and at least a token background. Nova NPCs should be built on 10-40 Nova Points.

Baseline NPCs can be built on just about any amount of XP but most shouldn't have any attribute or ability over 4 (unless they're Olympic-quality). As a rough guideline most workers in a field should have a 5-6 dice pool in relevant skills, with experienced personnel having a 7-9 pool in relevant skills.

NPC Creation Guidelines

Teragen NPCs: Teragen will generally be high-Taint and wallow in their Taintedness with extensive and inhuman Aberrations and obvious powers. There are a few belonging to the Casanova faction which will have lower Taint scores (sometimes even Taint 0) and generally more subtle effects.

Directive NPCs: Directive Novas will all have Taint 0 and Dormancy of at least 2 dots, often higher. They will not have extremely obvious, blatant powers. Directive Baselines work for an intelligence agency with a significant paramilitary arm. They should reflect that.

Project Utopia: The Nova in question must be able to interact with baselines and not freak them out. Otherwise regulations are fairly loose. Utopian baseline personnel are often either researchers, managers, or paramilitary.

Elites: They need to be able to viably work for pay. Note that not all Elites are combat oriented-there are Nova celebrities who will generally have powers fitting their occupation (a Nova lawyer will have Mega-Charisma and Mega-Manipulation, some Mega-Intelligence and Mega-Wits, while a Nova movie starlet will likely have Mega-Appearance, Mega-Charisma, and if she does her own stunts, some Mega-Physicals).

Government-Employed: Government employed Novas will always have powers befitting their role and need to be able to listen to baseline commanders or superiors and not freak out their coworkers.