Forums of the Megaverse®

AT MOST...I'd allow him to take a (small) dagger and his clothes.

The ONLY way I'd let him take a gun along is if the character played-up his abso-freaking-lute obsession with it. (Slept with it, constantly polishing it, naming it, "making love" to it, composing odes to it, etc...) Call it a role-play reward.
Even then, nothing more than 4D6 base damage, and if he's going to insist on exploding gyrojet rounds...scew him/her!

If it doesnt say that the character is invulnerable, then they are not. They can still be shot, etc (remember the shadow movie?). Cracks? Yes. Clothes? No - because there not enough space for his shadow & its abusive. You could probably think of another rule reason or two if you like.

Its great for hiding, travelling (only at your normal rate, but you can go up, down, etc) and entering/exiting places. I think its a good idea to use it with the darkwhip. I can see how stacking nightbringer bothers you, but hes stacked 3 talents - any decent strategy/combination with 3 talents should be effective.

Should you allow stacked talents? Yes, we also allow spells to work together.

How will you deal with this in the future? He changes, people shoot him, he turns into a shadow, people shoot him, he activates nightbringer, people spray the area hes in - hitting him, he activates darkwhip - people attack from a distance, run away, or take the damage & keep attacking. Or he defeats the bad guys & gets diminishing xp - as it obviously wasn't a challenge or he isnt learning anything doing the same thing over and over.
Your main problems stem from the clothes arguement & the immune to physical attacks arguement - which is where you as a GM put your foot down..and explain to the PC why. As for creatures with nightvision - they can still see half as well as normal in the unnatural darkness - thats only a -3, which isnt a whole lot.

Every group tends to need a brick, in this game it is the nightbane - your PC seems to have made a brick...so he will generally be fighting the leaders or more powerful bad guys while the other PCs fight the weaker ones - thats ok.

Frankie wrote:I think is more of a player problem than anything to do with the talent. If anyone's ever played games like Mortal Kombat, you know that one guy who kept using the same move over and over again. It worked, until he went up against someone who knew how to get around it. So get around his tendency to use Shadow Slide every time a problem crops up.

I disagree. In NB you only start off with 1 talent. If a PC has one talent, chances are they will be using it all the time..you are supposed to - its part of the character concept.

Another way of thinking about this is, if a PC has a superpowered character in HU, with a few superpowers (which are a lot like talents), don't they use their powers to solve most situations?

Shadow Slide is by far the most ulitarian talent out there. I had one player that would use it to get out of every dangerous situation. Aka a vampire choking him from behind... falling out of a building... going across the street for some milk...

Shadowslide is not an invulnerability power per se... but it has that side effect. You can't hurt what you can't hit, and you can't hit what isn't there... and since a shadowslider effectively disappears...

The only exception I recognize is if they are caught in an area effect explosion, spell, or the like.

I'm new to the discussion, but from what I've read of the stragedy...

It doesn't sound that bad, really. Shadow Slide is expensive as all get-out, and does appear to include invunerability from the way I read it. I find it perfectly reasonable that while using your "become darkness" power you can also use your "make big patch of darkness" and "make darkness wack my enemies silly" power as well. It makes sense to me.

In some other games, using powers that make you insubstatial inhibit for effecting people who aren't insubstantial in the same way you are. You could impliment this, or make Shadow Slide exclusive in some way where other powers don't work with it, but I don't think this fits the feel of Nightbane(tm). As someone else mentioned, you can have multiple spells up, and nothing says you can't use many talents at once.

What doesn't make sense is going up someone's clothing. Contorting yourself horizontally to fit under door cracks I can accept. Heck, I could accept simply passing through clear glass if you want. (Hey, shadows do it.) But getting under someone's cloths, no. You can't fit into something as narrow as a pant leg, and you can't get under something that's arguably directly agauinst something else. I wouldn't allow such a person to, for example, go through a door that had a seal of some kind under the door either.

Even if you could get in there, I woudln't let someone start shadow whipping or creating big patches of darkness. There isn't room in there for a whip unles sthe clothing is destroyed first, unless, of course, you are nly battling anotehr shadow form in there. The big patch of darkness would be confined to the "room" the character was in, so you'd only succeed in making things under the shirt darker.

The problem you have is this: so, your character is a death machine. How do you deal with it? First, you must ask yourself what the problem is. Is the character overshadowing everyone else? Getting through things "too easily"? Is it that in order to "challenge" your player with combat, you need to have the villians so powerful that they take out the rest of the party, and still the "overpowered one" wins?

One way is to make sure to mix in enough non-combat stuff to keep the game interesting. Combat prowess does not always work when you are trying to talk to someone, or if you are in a situtation where finese is required. Plus, if wolfie takes out the small army and then has to fight later when his PPE is low, he'll have to start thinking again, possibly even looking for a way to avoid a combat.

In several books I have read and games I have been in, the main characters are death machines who easily cut down many foes. This has no detracted from the book or game, though. The reason is that, while the combats are important in various ways, the plots aren't dependant on many of the combats per se. In one, the combat was important because a character picked up a certain weapon taht he found an affinity for and some plot was revealed. In another, the characters won easily, but then discovered something about their foes later that made them question their victory. In several, even though they were tough, some manuvering still had to be done to make sure not to loose anyone.

Remember: the PC's are the main characters of whatever story you are weaving. If they are living in odd ways where others might die, then that might be part of what is making them "special" (ie. live) where others might not. This doesn't always have to be combat prowess, but frequently with PC's in games like this it is.

I'm glad you didn't take as insulting, because I didn't mean it to be so at all.

Along with the glass idea, the character could also potential jump off a tall object, like out of a window, and catch himself as he nears the bottom by turning on his power. Having a more controlled fall and being near the building itself would be critical here, since it's possible the power won't activate or have odd effects if you aren't actually touching anything at the time you activate it. (Can you activate it while, say, falling naked from an airplane? Well, maybe if you get the timing just right, or concentrate really ahrd and spend th e PPE ahead of time...)

The big problem with GM'ing people with fantastic powers is that your players always have more time to think about these things than you do, since they are thinking of their characters and you are thinking of ALL the characters and the NPC's. And then you get players like me who tend to explore the breadth of their powers just for fun. A GM of mine mentioned this in a game recently, that it's madening when I do it, but then I tend to "calm down" after getting a firm grasp on what the power can do, and over all settles into a good thing.

Ben Quash wrote:The talent presented in the book has only one similarity to the temporal spell 2D shift.....it makes the target 2 dimentiononal. The spell usselly is an upright possition and can't move, the Talent he can move and is more like a puddle of shadow on the ground.

He would still take full damage from physical attacks even thou he is 2D. It dose not say anything about not taking damage from attacks. It just makes it hard for their opponents to see and hit the fellow.


As to the using multiple talents at one time question....that is up to the GM if they can or not.

funny last I checked insubstantial ment without substance. If you have no substance solid rounds and weapons shouldn't be able to hurt you. Flame, Electricity, magic and psionics should still cause damage though.

Borast wrote:AT MOST...I'd allow him to take a (small) dagger and his clothes.

The ONLY way I'd let him take a gun along is if the character played-up his abso-freaking-lute obsession with it. (Slept with it, constantly polishing it, naming it, "making love" to it, composing odes to it, etc...) Call it a role-play reward.
Even then, nothing more than 4D6 base damage, and if he's going to insist on exploding gyrojet rounds...scew him/her!

How about part of his morphus?

Quoth silverlb, "why would he take stuff with him?"

Ok, so let's accept that the morphus is at it's most dangerous dripping wet out of the shower. It might still be useful to shadow form your clothing with you, equiptment, etc. Even if not for combat (does he even carry weapons?), it wuold be useful when he gets to wear he is going. The question of "how much stuff can you take with you?" is VERY important. Mind you, the character might not know the exact limits unless it's no to very little mass, but it's still useful for you to know.

Can he bring another with him? What if they are really small (ie. a pet, shrunk, etc.)? What happen to things he drops or throws in shadow form? Do things "work" in that form, like guns, digital watches, or wind up toys? Sombat-wise, even assuming this last question is "no" (it's shadow now, not gun powder or a battery or whatever), the character could still drop, say, a grenade(sp?) or a rather large bomb, switch back to shadow form, and be sliding away while the enemy get blown to bits. he could smuggle around important things, show up at that party IN PANTS, and all sorts of things.

Mind you, combat-wise, it may wind up being moot because the morphus does more damage than the weapnons available, but they are options he'd have.

Zer0 Kay wrote:

Ben Quash wrote:The talent presented in the book has only one similarity to the temporal spell 2D shift.....it makes the target 2 dimentiononal. The spell usselly is an upright possition and can't move, the Talent he can move and is more like a puddle of shadow on the ground.

He would still take full damage from physical attacks even thou he is 2D. It dose not say anything about not taking damage from attacks. It just makes it hard for their opponents to see and hit the fellow.


As to the using multiple talents at one time question....that is up to the GM if they can or not.

funny last I checked insubstantial ment without substance. If you have no substance solid rounds and weapons shouldn't be able to hurt you.

Nope, insubstantial means without substance, it doesn't "ment" anything.

And it's up to the individual GM to interpet what exactly that would mean.

The GM could decide that he takes half/quarter from solid attacks if he wanted to. See APS:Shadow/Light in PU1 to see what I mean.

silverlb wrote: For the number of typing mistakes you make, you sure are a jerk to other people. I see you mis-spell and put wrong words in all over the boards. Don't be dumb.

You mean don't be "stupid", not don't be "dumb"...

...dont' know why but Dumb doesn't feel right....


And I was trying to be funny because I thought he had wrote "mint" for some reason. It was only when you wrote your post that I realised what he had written.Thanks...

silverlb wrote::? I'm having a problem with one of my players useing shadow slide for every problem. the book says he turns insubstancel like a mirrage on the road, so he of course wants to be immune to physical attacks. Then he comes up with all these ideas like slipping into cracks or under someones clothes. Then he turns on night shroud, dark whips, and every other talent and goes to town.
Any thoughts on the limits of the shadow slide? Does anyone have this problem? Currently I am treating it like the 2-D shift spell in Rifts England.

'The book clearly state that you cannot use other tlents while usinga talent that alters your form, unless the talent specifically says otherwise.
Shadow slide doesn't say other wise so he can't use dark whip night shroud or any other talent while using it. Period.

Note: that's on Page 107(under using talents)of the MAIN NightBane book.

The best advice I can give you is keep a sharp eye on the players PPE. His talent is a costly one, and he's probably spending it faster than he realizes. I allow Nighbane in my HU campaign, and I watch the PPE because sometimes it's the only thing keeping balance, unless the other characters are higher than average power. Some nights my group is more heavy weight, sometimes not.