Team Mutants

[DevastationBob]

Anybody use this feature in the old TMNT&OS? I wrote up a quartet of mutant armodillos (9 banded always have identical quadruplets, fun science fact!) named Alamo, Austin, Apache, and Bubba. Instead of a ninja mentor they had a gun-nut survivalist mentor. What about you?

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Anybody use this feature in the old TMNT&OS? I wrote up a quartet of mutant armodillos (9 banded always have identical quadruplets, fun science fact!) named Alamo, Austin, Apache, and Bubba. Instead of a ninja mentor they had a gun-nut survivalist mentor. What about you?

Woooo! Texas, yeee f'ing haw.

When I was a kid and first playing, my uncle (GM), my little brother, and I split a team of 6 mutant meerkats. The name of our group was H.a. M. M. IC. which stood for Heavy Metal Meerkats Incorporated (this was forever ago. i can't recall really how it was spelled. just the phonetics of it and what it meant) We were a touring Heavy Metal rock group (duh) that drove around in the biggest baddest tricked out Semi truck - Trailer/RV combo you ever dreamed of. The last campaign I remember involved vampires. I'm pretty sure we all died.

After that came a team of 3 escaped Russian Circus bears. Nikolai the juggling bear, Vladimyr the trapeze bear, and Gossamer..the clown bear (I guess he was a clown. we dressed him in a pink ballerina's tutu with shimmery wings and gave him a morning star that looked like a fairy godmothers wand (stick with a star on top) and rode him around on a tricycle). I don't remember what happened to that group. All I can remember is how Furious my little brother was at being called Gossamer Bear.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Bob it is FREAKY that you posted this. Before I went to bed I searched through ATB2 and noticed a distinct lack of team creation rules. Do you or anyone else have an adapted ruleset for the new setting?

[DevastationBob]

Nah, i'd just use the one in Other Strangeness and hit it with a hammer til it fits.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Anybody use this feature in the old TMNT&OS? I wrote up a quartet of mutant armodillos (9 banded always have identical quadruplets, fun science fact!) named Alamo, Austin, Apache, and Bubba. Instead of a ninja mentor they had a gun-nut survivalist mentor. What about you?

Care to share the write up with us? I'd like to see how you adjusted things for the chosen concept.

[DevastationBob]

Geez, I'm not sure I even still have the sheets. I'll have to check. In the days before the com-pu-tor I had the worst luck saving character sheets.

[DevastationBob]

I had an adventure idea for a trio of mutant possum brothers that were ambushing motorists on country roads and eating them. Yeah, a little darker.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

I had an adventure idea for a trio of mutant possum brothers that were ambushing motorists on country roads and eating them. Yeah, a little darker.

I like it! Even if it never gets played, you need to write that out and post it to the boards as game inspired fanfic. I'd read the hell out if it.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Geez, I'm not sure I even still have the sheets. I'll have to check. In the days before the com-pu-tor I had the worst luck saving character sheets.

My gratitude would be untold if you found and posted them.

[Tor]

The best modification to the rules would be I think to ignore the 'everyone gets the bonus die' policy, and only give a bonus level to skills everyone shares, and have diminishing returns for it.

For example: if you have 1 sibling, you get 1 bonus level to skills you share. But to get additional bonus levels, the amount of extra siblings you need should double. So to get +2 levels to a shared skill, you should need 2 more siblings (3 total bros, 4 siblings total), and to get +3 levels you should need 4 more siblings (7 total bros, 8 siblings total), etc. Or basically, the amount of bonus levels you get is the exponent 2 is to the power of.

This somewhat prevents the "99 frog bros with +50 to strike, 50 rate of fire" bow problem I brought up in another thread. There's no cap, but with diminishing returns like that, you won't get huge bonuses unless you have thousands of siblings.

[Nightmask]

The best modification to the rules would be I think to ignore the 'everyone gets the bonus die' policy, and only give a bonus level to skills everyone shares, and have diminishing returns for it.

For example: if you have 1 sibling, you get 1 bonus level to skills you share. But to get additional bonus levels, the amount of extra siblings you need should double. So to get +2 levels to a shared skill, you should need 2 more siblings (3 total bros, 4 siblings total), and to get +3 levels you should need 4 more siblings (7 total bros, 8 siblings total), etc. Or basically, the amount of bonus levels you get is the exponent 2 is to the power of.

This somewhat prevents the "99 frog bros with +50 to strike, 50 rate of fire" bow problem I brought up in another thread. There's no cap, but with diminishing returns like that, you won't get huge bonuses unless you have thousands of siblings.

There really isn't much reason for that, it's extremely unlikely you'd have such a huge team where the bonuses get so outrageous. Sure if you had 10 people trying to play a giant team like that some adjustments would be made but not much need to with a small team.

[DevastationBob]

And mutant animals are behind the curve a little anyway.

[Nightmask]

And mutant animals are behind the curve a little anyway.

Pretty much, even if they go to college their education and skill access is lower than the average human even for the genius IQ mutant animal. Mutant animals really don't have all that where somehow you're being 'fair' to humans limiting them so much.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

Jog your memory Bob, tell me about the armadillers

[Tor]

isn't much reason for that, unlikely you'd have such a huge team

Likelihood aside it's a problem that would need to be addressed. A pair of mutant siblings would not be reduced at all this way. But a trio would only be equal to a pair, and you'd need a quartet to equal the abilities of a trio by the old rules.

Beyond requiring double the siblings for each level increase I'm not sure what else to do...

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

isn't much reason for that, unlikely you'd have such a huge team

Likelihood aside it's a problem that would need to be addressed. A pair of mutant siblings would not be reduced at all this way. But a trio would only be equal to a pair, and you'd need a quartet to equal the abilities of a trio by the old rules.

Beyond requiring double the siblings for each level increase I'm not sure what else to do...

Use the rules as they are, but impose a limit on team size to no more than 2x the number of players. That should keep team bonuses from getting out of hand.
Any larger than that, in my experience, things start to get hairy. Once played as part of a team of 6. 3 players each with 2 characters. It was kind of wonky keeping track of things, who was where doing what. Combat TOOK FOREVER.

[The Oh So Amazing Nate]

While we're talking about teams and skill advancement consider the following and let me know what you think.

3 mutant team all with HTH Ninjitsu

team starts out Level 1 (like everyone) with HtH Ninja at Level 3 (hooray bonus)
what happens when a member of the team reaches level 2? Does the HTH then become Level 4 for that particular character?

[Nightmask]

While we're talking about teams and skill advancement consider the following and let me know what you think.

3 mutant team all with HTH Ninjitsu

team starts out Level 1 (like everyone) with HtH Ninja at Level 3 (hooray bonus)
what happens when a member of the team reaches level 2? Does the HTH then become Level 4 for that particular character?

Yes, it starts at level 3 and increases each time the character levels up, as do any other skills the character has.