Forums of the Megaverse®

Tyciol wrote:This is an interesting book but I got wondering when I read it about some stuff.

1. When it says 'roll on table or select' I don't think people should be able to select the 'roll again twice' option. That should be something you should only get to do with GM supervision by rolling. Otherwise people could select that repetetively to get EVERY power. 'Roll again' implies that you rolled, so people should not be able to select it when designing a character themselves.

"Select" generally means you can select one non-roll again option.

Tyciol wrote:2. 56-57 'Low Body Mass' and 91-93 'Increased Mass and Natural Body Armour'. On one hand these seem contradictory, can you have low mass and have it increased? LBM is partially due to 'light muscle tissue' whereas IMNBA is partly due to 'dense muscles'. However there are aspects of both powers which don't interfere with each other, like hollow bones, protective fat, rubbery skin. Would it be possible to select both and overlap the penalties/bonuses to speed, sdc and weight?

LBM would likely be more due to "lighter" construction of the body...lighter musculature, less durable/dense bones, smaller organs, etc.

IMNA would likely be a combination of denser skin and connective tissues, tighter muscle bundles, and/or protective blubber, up to skin plates/bone spurs/modified body hair (ala the Rhino's horn), etc.

Admittedly, they do seem mutually exclusive, but they can be combined...although if I were your GM I'd want some REAL fast talking to let you do it.

Tyciol wrote:3. LBM in particular, is a tad confusing. It says basic mass is 1/2, but normal weight is 85%. I guess that means bones/muscles are half the weight but the rest of the weight isn't, like fat/organs/circulatory system/connective tissue? I wonder how often that comes into play... honestly the only time I could see it being relevant is if you're incinerated and someone's carrying your bones around. I guess it's to point out that if you donate your kidney to someone, it's going to weigh as much as a normal kidney, and not 15% less because that's only part of you that's lighter.

Especially at 1G accelleration, when mass and weight are technically identical.

Tyciol wrote:4. 30-31 extra pair of hands and arms. It's possible to get the same amount of fingers as a normal humans hand. Is it still only a partial hand in that case? Since it says 'partial' and not 'full' I think even with the full amount of fingers, it should still be deformed with skill/bonus penalties to operate things.

Sure...consider the "extra" hands to be like monkey hands...good graspers, but not great manipulators. Alan Dean Foster's Commonwealth novels had a race like this called the Thranx. They were octopodal insectoids, with four legs, an intermediate set of limbs called "Foot/Hands" and true manipulator hands on the upper most limbs. The foot-hands were a good deal stronger, but much less dextrous and had less fine motor control than the "true hands" on their upper limbs.

Tyciol wrote:5. For people who roll psionic powers on this table, do you guys think they're operated with ISP or are they supposed to be like the mutant psionics which don't cost any?

Going back to the original publication of these sort of things, I believe you have enough ISP to activate it once and maintain it for "x" activation periods (or if it does not have a duration, you had enough ISP to activate it X times at first level, with an extra D6 ISP per level or some such. It's been a while so I could be mixing games and genres.

Tyciol wrote:6. If someone gets both 17-18 Adhesion and 83-84 Sucker Feet, would they be able to combine them to support 100lbs in addition to their weight?

Personally, I would rule that the sucker feet were part and parcel...I *might* be convinced to allow an extra 50lbs or so. But, if I recall correctly, with adhesion you can carry yourself and up to half of your lifting capacity.

Tyciol wrote:7. The length of the tail you get on 74-76 isn't listed. Is it fair to automatically give the unusual characteristic of 81-85 tail to anyone who rolls/selects this power? It has a lengt stated so it'd help clarify that. Although, someone who rolls that characteristic won't automatically get the prehensile tail power.

I would consider it to be about the porportional size of a rabbit's cotton tail to a small dog's tail, and the first listing would be 100% non-prehensile.

Tyciol wrote:8. On the unusual characteristics table if you roll '51-55 two fingered hand' is that just for one hand or for both hands? It's not plural... I think it'd be interesting to have it for just one hand unless you rolled it a second time.

That would be for *each* hand.

Tyciol wrote:9. On same table, 61-65, if you roll 6 fingers... what would happen if you also rolled 'two fingered hand'? Would you have a thumb, 2 thick fingers and 1 tiny finger? Could you choose where the tiny finger would go (like between thumb and thicks, between the 2 thicks optionally) or would it have to be where the pinky finger is like extra fingers IRL always are?

Actually, I've seen partially developed thumbs under the thumb and on the opposite side of the hand (although all in pictures, non in person). As for the additional finger combined with two fingered hand, I'd make each of the two fingers slightly smaller, and add the mass to the "sixth" finger, or simply make the finger further from the thumb larger. If I was particularily disposed to be extra nice, I'd allow the person to have a second thumb on the "off" side of the hand.

Tyciol wrote:10. A lot of unusual characteristics make parts of the body HUGE. 01-05 for eyes, 36-40 for ears, 46-50 for arms, 97-00 for feet. It's sort of boring because there aren't any statistical representations for this. There's a minor power in PU1 'Enlarge Body Parts' (pg 25) that has options for Feet, Arms, Ears, Eyes that gives bonuses to certain stats along with penalties to PB/MA for looking cross. The difference here is that you would only have that one power, and it would be permanently on, and you wouldn't have to spend an attack to concentrate on maintaining it since it's part of you. If someone rolled more than one they could cumulatively reduce the PB/MA.

Actually, since this is simply a "characteristic" and not a power, the larger body part would not give any powers, although to be generous, for eyes, give the "owner" some wider peripheral vision (+1 Perception to see somthing on either flank), a better lay-up or point guard skill for arms, and maybe +1 SPD when swimming (lost if wearing flippers). etc...

Tyciol wrote:The only thing I'm not sure about is whether or not these unusual characteristics make the parts BIG enough. The Enlarge Body Parts power doesn't specify how much larger the parts get, so they may actually become much larger than these characteristics. Also, the bonuses may not wholly be due to the size but part of a 'comical' aspect of the power that gives it things it normally wouldn't have. The only thing that does mention size is the neck... which becomes 10ft long...which is 2/3 as much as what you can do with the major Stretching power. I'm not sure how long a neck usually is... but based on Stretching if everything increases proportionally it is 10% if your body length. Body meaning torso... but to be honest, just looking at my own neck it seems to be a bit longer than 10% of my torso, so maybe Stretching doesn't increase it proportionately.

??? No opinion.

Tyciol wrote:It's possible it amplifies natural stretchiness and some parts are more prone to stretching than others. There 7 cervical vertebrae and 17 other spinal (thoracic/lumbar) vertebrae, so maybe Stretching increases the lengthening of the lower spinal ligaments more. We do tend to be able to apply more traction to these vertebrae anyway, whereas getting our heads pulled on is pretty rare (just roughly 10lbs worth of force when you hang upside down from its own weight.)

This is one of those powers that defies any form of logical explanation, sorry.

Tyciol wrote:11. Pg 31's little green mutants says they can be time travelers via transdimensional TMNT. They use the same picture as the mutant humans from that book too. Is it possible that these guys might just be human mutants who got chased off human stations, but didn't look animal enough to be accepted on the Outcast station? While you can get humans from 'modern' TMNT (they aren't included on the expanded chart but they do have their own chart included) modern really isn't applicable since MiO is a futuristic setting. So the only thing you could roll would be 'future' (as in, a further future than MiO) or transdimensional.

They could also be from beyond the "wall" mentioned in TTMNT.

Tyciol wrote:12. If time-travel technology or magic sends MiO/AtB/Rifts characters back in time to the HU/TMNT/BtS -type universes would all temporal BIO-E mutation/degredation happen? Which station in MiO would be the closest the achieving/capturing time travel or interdimensional technologies? It's interesting because in Lone Star, a Doc Feral-type character Desmond Bradford is creating a technological dimensional device, so if he can do it I don't see why people in Orbit couldn't be close to getting that too.

I believe that in order for temporal degridation to occur, you have to travel back more than one "twist." Without walking three metres to my shelf and grabbing a book I haven't read in several years... If I recall correctly, you can go back several hundred years and stay for almost literally forever without mutating.

As for the MiO station...I'd say that the Lunar base would be closest, with the "EU" station and "US" stations following somewhere behind.