Forums of the Megaverse®

With the advent of After the Bomb as a separate RPG and the rules on mutant animals and Transdimensional TMNT and its rules regarding alternate realities I find myself wondering about a few things. Mutant animals are listed as having extra PPE as a perk for being a mutant animal, Transdimensional TMNT has it that a mutant animal from another dimension can come from a world that's basically like the Earth except that one or more mutant animals (and maybe humans as well) are the naturally evolved dominant lifeforms so the mutant animalc character is representative of that world's people.

Given all that it would seem like these worlds would have higher occurrences of spell-casting classes, since the higher base PPE of the population would make it more likely they could discover magic (plus the possibility that they've been targeted by transdimensional beings due to their high PPE levels giving them reason enough to gain mystical knowledge).

Well, if you think about it, the Dog Boys, Battle Cats, & other mutant animals created down in CS Lone Star are pretty much identical to TMTN/AtB style mutant dogs/cats/bears/other animals, with Biped/Hands/Speech set at Full, Human Looks set at None, and Animal Psionics replaced by a selection of psionic powers & innate abilities that correspond to the standard Palladium ISP model.

So...

I would see nothing wrong with mutant animals, being the dominant species in an alternate dimension, developing mystic or other type of spellcasting abilities, or even developing their psychic abilities in a different fashion than the "Animal Psionics" rules. In fact, if the mutant animals (or particularly a set species of mutant animal) are dominant on their planet, I could even see them with the potential for developing bionics & cyberrnetics, or even super-powers.

Given the theme of ATB I could see another dimension having mutants being predominate and maybe even earlier than the ATB setting had them. There could be entire histories of mutant animals that could stretch back hundreds of years. Would make an interesting setting.

If that were the case, I might be inspired to convert HU: Aliens Unlimited options for ATB just to show a different taste of mutant animal than we would be used to. Magic could also be present and you might need to do a bit of tweaking to get it to work in ATB, but again would be interesting to see.

There isn't necessarily a higher correlation between a race having higher-than-human PPE and having more practitioners of magic, though. Sure it seems like that for folk like Elves, but not for other races. The Dabugghs in Rifts England have even more PPE than Elves yet don't learn magic, for example.

Aliens unlimited is MOSTLY just 'Bipeds with animal heads' on them. Which could be argued to be 'Mutant animals with full biped, speech, hands, and looks none" if you wanted to look at it that way. Some have magic. Some don't.

So yeah if your mutant animals are from another place. They could have magic. Remember the rules are there to aid your game. Not restrict it. If you want magical mutants, you can do so. Just watch game balance and realize if you take them to 'Someone elses game' they might not let you play that character.