Forums of the Megaverse®

Shadow wrote:Where should you look for good stats for dinosaurs using this power? I have looked in transdimentional TMNT for a few of them, but I don't know how acurate they are. After all they were made years back before they separated the strength classes of normal, extraordinary,superhuman, and of course supernatural. And for that matter what about regular animals? I have used the monsters and animals book but it lacks attributes.

There are several dinosaurs mentioned in Rifts: New West... Plus I'd frequent the "walking with dinosaurs" type websites to determine real-life attributes of dinosaurs and work from there.

Well most animals in Palladium systme does nto have attributes..For eventual attribute bonus try to look at After the bomb game
the mutant animal bonus seem quite right
plus it is modified to fit the palladium division of strenght

A little House rule I use in my games. You also get all the relevant abilities of the animals, including Body Armor and SDC. Just look in the Mutant Animal Section in HU (or After the Bomb) under the Animal Descriptions; "Natural Weapons" and "Powers". Say you transform into an Alligator, you would get the "Teeth and Powerful Jaws", "Heavy Natural Body Armor" (giving you a natural AR and extra SDC), "Hold Breath", etc.

I'm curious, what animals WOULD you let a character turn into? The term Animal is a bit vague and with Teen Titans on it seems a lot of people want dinosaurs. What about if the character goes to a new planet, can he learn to do animals on that planet?



Daniel Stoker

Daniel Stoker wrote:I'm curious, what animals WOULD you let a character turn into? The term Animal is a bit vague and with Teen Titans on it seems a lot of people want dinosaurs. What about if the character goes to a new planet, can he learn to do animals on that planet?

Now THAT's a good question. By definition, insects, arachnids, sea cucumbers, jellyfish, and sponges are animals -- yet I'm willing to bet nobody in the history of Heroes Unlimited has ever needed to morph into a sea cucumber in order to save the day.

My biggest house rule is that a character with this power cannot morph into insects/arachnids, but that's about as far as it goes.

As for going to alien planets... well, I would say that the character would be limited to just the animals from his/her home world until he/she has spent a sufficient amount of time researching the native fauna (going to have to spend a lot of time in zoos/museums). How long that would be of course is up to the individual GMs.

kathyacker wrote:of course if the dinoswamp book comes out on schedule you wont have to wait long for stats on the thunder lizards...

Of course if the dinoswamp book comes out as per the perceived normal Palladium schedule you WILL have to wait long for stats on the thunder lizards...

I asked this question of what type of animals one could turn into and Shawn Merrows responded with all back bone type animals (mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians) and various large inverterbrates (sharks, crabs, lobsters). However insects and simple animals (jelly fish, sea urchins, etc) were a no. I think its because such creature have simple brains and the idea of the complexity of human/alien thought wouldn't work in such simple organic creature. Now of course magic is a different subject matter. He also said that the natural abilities of the animal are granted. So if you turn into a cobra, yes you have the poison bite of the cobra, samething if you turned into a shunk, porcupine, electric eel, etc. These are the natural abilities of that animal type.

Reagren Wright wrote:I asked this question of what type of animals one could turn into and Shawn Merrows responded with all back bone type animals (mammals, birds, reptiles, fish, amphibians) and various large inverterbrates (sharks, crabs, lobsters). However insects and simple animals (jelly fish, sea urchins, etc) were a no. I think its because such creature have simple brains and the idea of the complexity of human/alien thought wouldn't work in such simple organic creature. Now of course magic is a different subject matter. He also said that the natural abilities of the animal are granted. So if you turn into a cobra, yes you have the poison bite of the cobra, samething if you turned into a shunk, porcupine, electric eel, etc. These are the natural abilities of that animal type.

Actually, a shark is a vertebrate as it includes a vertebral column in its skeleton. The main difference between it and bony fishes is that the skeleton is primarily cartilage; a shark has fewer moving parts than a bony fish (which would limit maneuverability), but cartilage is more flexible than bone so it evens out.

But I pretty much agree with you and Shawn on the rest.

you should not be able to turn into a dinasaur. it makes a character way to powerful. it should not make normal superhumans into mega-hero's.

scenario:

the supervillian loses track of the hero as he rounds the corner. the hero meanwhile has turned into a mouse, the villian does not look down as the mouse scurries past him. the mouse gets clear and turns into a tranysaurus behind the villain then picks up the bad guy in its powerful jaws with a critical hit. doing massive amount of damage.

i would keep it to current animals that roam the earth.

I think that animal metamorphosis : dinosaur and animal metamorphosis insect and archnids should be considered, if allowed, two major powers apart.