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Page 19 of the After the Bomb line supplement 'Mutants Down Under' includes some interesting statistics for weapon skills.

For the most part (and as far as I can tell in TMNT) experience tables only list up to level 15. The rare exceptions I've seen to this in Palladium Books' publications include experience guidelines for levels past 15 for Dragons (Atlantis and Dragons & Gods published this) and I think also for Deevils (I think the Dyval sourcebook published this). I am not sure if there are any others with post-level-15 level listings, if anyone happens to know, that would be cool to keep track of.

WP Axe lists a +1 to strike at level 16. For some, that might seem problematic, but it actually isn't. In spite of tables only going up to level 15, every player knows how much experience it takes to get to level 16. That's because the upper limit of level 15 is given, so 1 more experience point than that would bring you to level 16. If it weren't possible to get to level 16, there would be no point at all in defining the upper limit for level 15, so it must be possible.

What players don't know, however, is how much experience it takes to get to level 17, since we don't know when level 16 ends. This presents a potential problem, because WP Boomerang gives the +1 at 17th level this thread is titled after.

I kept thinking "why is this here? How could it apply to anyone?" but then it hit me: Team Characters.

These were defined on page 11 of TMNT Adventures, and both the Turtles (4 siblings) and Sparrow Eagles (3 siblings) were examples of this.

I don't know if After the Bomb 2nd ended up including options for this or not. But it is essentially the only explanation I can think of here.

What the Team option allowed, if you designed your siblings identically in terms of bio-e, species, powers (base attribute rolls and skill could be different) was that they all got to share the highest bonus roll for a given attribute, and notably for this thread, all their skills went up a level for each sibling they had. So you'd add 1 level of experience if you had 1 other siblings (a 2 sibling team) and in the case of the sparrows you added 2 (3 siblings, each one had two) and in the turtles' case you added 3 (4 siblings, each had 3).

This, for example, made the Sparrows level 3 at Ninjutsu and their WP skills at first level, and of the Turtles, Leo/Raph's skills are at 9th level (in spite of being only lvl 6) while Don/Mike are all at 8th level (in spite of being only level 5).

This wouldn't apply to groups like the Terror Bears, however, since in spite of all being bears, they have slight variations in their psychic abilities. It would only work if they all had identical psychic abilities.

This 'team' system is an explanation for how you could get the 17th level bonus. A pair of "boomerang twins" at level 16, for example, would have the WP at level 17, and "boomerang triplets" would have the WP at level 17 at merely level 15.

I always found in reading the 'team' system that it was rather "broken" in design, however. The reason being that it was made clear there was never any numerical limit on how many members could be in the team.

I initially thought there might be some kind of 'sibling limit' (although if you believe "The Next Mutation" TV series, the turtles and Venus are not biological siblings) but even that won't necessarily put much of a cap on. The average litter size for mice is 10-12, for example.

If you rolled up a litter of 10 mutated mice as a team, that would mean that they would all start out 10th level in all their skills... which is somewhat frightening. Other animals like frogs lay thousands of eggs in frogspawn...

I guess the worst you're looking at here is people initially with maxed out combat, 98% in everything, but it gets a bit more frightening with the wording of SOME weapon skills.

A lot of weapon skills will only state certain bonuses at certain levels, like WP Blunt. This is often because they don't increase at regular intervals, or if they do, cease to at some point. Some though, such as WP Bow, do not. Instead it uses phrases such as "for each additional TWO levels of experience". That means that there's an effectively unlimited amount of bonuses a WP skill might provide.

To put this into perspective: if you made a player group of 99 characters who all chose frog siblings with archery, each of them would have WP Bow at level 100 and be able to shoot at +50 to strike with 50 shots per melee round. Of course that would probably cause some fast ammunition problems, but it puts the problem into perspective...

Using the TMNT as an example (unless anyone knows any larger sibling team-groups out there) I think the max bonus to skill rolls should probably be 4. That doesn't mean people can't make groups of 5+, just that even if you have more than 4 siblings, you don't get more than 3 bonus levels to your skills. This makes it comparable to some N&SS martial arts that let you start off at a higher level with a WP skill (I believe Zanji does this if you select only Katana, being 4th level at lvl 1, like the Turtles were in EVERYTHING)

I agree that putting a limit on this would be a good idea. Personally, I'd use the reasoning that not all siblings are alike. They may share common features passed down from their parents, but not all siblings have the same skills or physical abilities. So from that perspective, I'd put a limit on this to avoid any unnecessary unbalancing.

Id allow the 99 frog brothers and sisters if and only if the pc manage to wrangle 50 people willing to play a role playing game on the same night of the week......this is as far as i know a theoretical impossibility hahahaha i can bearly scrounge up 5 for a weekly game, so no worries about lv 100 bow skill.

auyl wrote:I agree that putting a limit on this would be a good idea. Personally, I'd use the reasoning that not all siblings are alike. They may share common features passed down from their parents, but not all siblings have the same skills or physical abilities. So from that perspective, I'd put a limit on this to avoid any unnecessary unbalancing.

Auyl, you're thinking along the right lines. If you read the dialog concerning the creation of the Sparrow-Eagles, you'll see that the GM has some things to say concerning this issue.

1. The team bonus only applies to skills that match. You only get a team bonus when another member takes the same skill. If all 3 sparrow's have WP Sword. then each get's it at level 3. If only 2 of them took WP chain, then only those 2 get it at 2nd level. If only Chirp Yenko has the Sewing skill, then he only has it at 1st level.

2. The GM in the dialog tells the players "Don't everyone pick the same skills. The group needs diversity." If everyone picked the exact same skill, they would essentially be clones of each other.

3. As far as physical abilities go, the only requirements are they must all be the same type of animal and have the exact same mutations, The PC's each chose to role their own attributes and pick their own skills.

So there really isn't a need to impose a limit. It's already built in. The skill % or level bonus is limited by A. the # of people on the team AND B. the # of times the SAME skill is selected.

In the case of the 50 Frog Archers..yeah that's a bit much. IF all 50 frogs took archery or wp bow as they're pretty much the same skill. Then they'd all be at 50th level. If frogs 1-48 and 50 took HTH Martial Arts and Froggy 49 took HTH Basic, well I feel sorry for froggy 49. His brothers and sisters are going to be 49th level death dealing maniacs, while in his chosen combat form he's starts at Level 1

Actually Nate, it doesn't work that way, because it's not all skills in common, it's apparently ALL skills, in spite of the flavour text. They use the example of Computer Programming getting the level bonus, but only one of the three Sparrow-Eagles has computer programming. They mention nothing about him getting the bonus to ComPro due to practicing it with his bros, and he indeed can't.

sea titans level up to 25 i believe.

Tor. Anyone who has ever analyzed a Palladium NPC will quickly tell you that the standard chargen rules don't apply. It would seem that as an author you have carte blance in creating characters however you please.

As for team characters. I see what you're doing there. The page 11 text says that you get a bonus for each additional member of the team. The text on page 76 goes on to say that it's only on skills that match/are taken as a team. To me this isn't contradictory, but a clarification. You are free to play or generate characters either way.

Personally I'd go with only giving the bonus to skills that match as this makes the most sense.

The Oh So Amazing Nate wrote:The page 11 text says that you get a bonus for each additional member of the team. The text on page 76 goes on to say that it's only on skills that match/are taken as a team. To me this isn't contradictory, but a clarification.

You're correct about the restriction in the 'character rollup' part of the game master section, regarding hand to hand ninjutsu. But going to page 11...

Gorba Chirp has Computer Programming. It states that he would normally be 45, but that he gets a team bonus, so it's at 55 instead. This 55 can be seen on page 108 under Gorba's scholastic skills. But while his brother Brown Wing also has Computer Programming (also at 55), their brother Chirp Yenko is not listed as having this skill.

Pg 20's stats for Computer Programming (40/5) make it clear they (since they don't have exceptional IQs or a Scholastic Bonus) must have Computer Programming at level 3, in spite of only 2 out of 3 of the siblings learning it.

I can think of one compromise: perhaps you only get the bonus levels if at least one other sibling (or alternatively, the majority of siblings) have the skill, but it's not an absolute requirement that each and every sibling know the skill, to get the bonus?

Even then, I can't see how the other sibling who didn't know the skill would benefit the other two that did. I think the two of them probably should have only had CP at level 2, rather than 3. They should get a bonus, but only based on how many siblings share the skill, not the total number of siblings.

This section isn't perfect. It for example says the Sparrow Eagles are all level 3 in hand to hand: martial arts, but their stats at the back of the book are in Ninjutsu, like the Turtles.

I'm taking a close look at the Sparrows now (they're easier to deal with since they're all level 1, the turtles having different experience levels makes them bothersome) to find other skills we could analyze to figure this out. Looking for unique skills only possessed by 1/3 Sparrow siblings.

Chirp Yenko speaks French at 70, Pilot Automobile at 98, Pick Locks at 26. None of these are listed under Brown and Gorba.
Brown Wing has Electrical Engineering at 60, Cryptography at 35. Yenko and Gorba don't have these.
Gorba Chirp has Spanish at 57, Navigation at 50, Investigative at 40. Yenko and Brown don't have these.

Since none of the Sparrow Eagles have exceptional IQs, all are level 1, none list Scholastic Bonuses, we can determine the levels of these skills based on their base percentages and how many 'per levels' each got. I'm a bit unclear on their backgrounds. It says no occupation and 'lifelong ninja training'. The closest I can figure on pg 9 under 'wild animal education' is the 41-90 option for 'adopted by mentor'. Characters made that way get a bonus to their secondary skills (quite odd) though and the Sparrows list none so I'm not really sure... it may be that the Sparrow Eagles have an education option that actually isn't listed in the RPG?

With Languages being 55/5 I am not really sure how 70 French and 57 Spanish came about. I mean... well, that's level 3 French for Chirp, so it follows the (all skills get the bonus even if other characters don't have them) trend but I have no idea where 57 came from.

A third level Pilot Automobile would be 88 so I figure the 98 must've been a typo. Or else the base for automobile is supposed to be 86... either way, the '8' in the ones column could only happen by being third level.

Chirp somehow has a Pick Locks skill 9% lower than the base percentage of the Picking Locks skill. I can't explain that.

Electrical Engineering is also clearly at third level for BW, even though he's the only one who knows it. Cryptography on the other hand... is at level 1. So yeah. Consistency, yay.

(Land) Navigation would be 48% at level 2, 52% at level 3 so I can't explain how Gorba got a 50 in it. I'm also unclear on what Investigative refers to.

The Oh So Amazing Nate wrote:You are free to play or generate characters either way. Personally I'd go with only giving the bonus to skills that match as this makes the most sense.

I agree, just pointing out that the examples don't actually do it this way outside your example.

I would argue that the GM section Char Rollup is overridden, because it is only described as a "relatively accurate" example of how the Sparrow Eagles were rolled up, right after an emphasis that the GM can alter rules. So the requirement that skills be selected by all members may have been a modified rule. We can also see that it wasn't even applied to the Sparrow Eagles according to pg 11.

Another alternative, the Sparrow eagles are carry overs from TMNT&OS (the original, non revised edition). I don't have a copy of that to comment on different skill percentages. Can anyone weigh in on this?

We all know that Palladium is notorious for literally cutting and pasting info from one source into another without editing it any for accuracy. So that's one theory.

Another more probable one is the old NPC standard of "Authors get to bypass rules as they see fit." I've yet to see an NPC that is RAW Book Legal. But then again, I've never really looked for one either.

It is a mystery.

Good point, possibly they updated the skill percentages but not the NPCs themselves...

Heck 'Turtles Guide to the Universe' references Lee Kwan Choo being found in the main rule book, but it isn't there. I don't suppose anyone with an ancient first edition of TMNT might weigh in on if Lee Kwan Choo is present (pg 33 of Universe says its on page 97 of main book) and if the original skill percentages actually worked out correctly for the Spagles.