| From: | Jeremy DeVore jmortir@*****.net |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Early Brainstorming: The Advantages to Being a Magic User |
| Date: | Tue, 23 Feb 1999 10:20:42 -0600 |
This time I think I am going to concentrate on the Magic Users. There is
quite a lot of stuff I have to cover for them.
Now we are going to discuss the benefits of being a Magic User.
First we have to address the Infection itself and how it takes hold in
living beings. To keep things simple I am going to use a system similar to
Background Count (which in a way it would be Background Count since it would
be Infected Astral). The Infected Background Count would be determined my
the GM on the fly. Different things will raise this Background Count (the
default Background Count will differ according to how far up the timeline
the characters are. At the beginning the Infected Background Count would be
0, three to six months later would be about 2, and it would peak at a level
of 3 about a year after that.) being close to a very infected piece of
material (remember mass determines how infected something is), or being
surrounded Zombies for long periods of time, or other things that would be
deemed important. When ever a person is injured there is a chance of
infection. The GM would use the Background Count in an Opposed Test with the
injured character. The GM's difficulty would equal the character's Essence
and get to roll a number of dice equal to the Background Count. The
character's difficulty would be the Background Count of the area, and gets
to roll a number of dice equal to his/her Essence. If the character scores
the same number or more successes than the GM nothing more happens. Now if
the GM scores more successes than the character kiss the character goodbye.
S/he has been Infected and it is just a matter of time before s/he comes
back as the living dead.
I know that may seem a bit complicated, but it only seems that way because
of the way I described it. If you were to sit down and actually use the
system you'd realize how easy it is.
The Magic User has a high Essence to begin with, but after dealing with the
Infected Astral daily with their magic they begin to build up a tolerance to
it. Because of this they always ignore the default portion of the Infected
Background Count (you know that little part where depending on how far you
are in the timeline...). They only have to deal with the additional
modifiers. Which combined with their High Essence rating makes them a little
safer than say a Street SAM.
Whenever a person becomes Infected it takes a little time for them to die
and eventually rise again. I have a system for that too. That one is quite
simple. Roll a number of dice equal to the Essence of the character, and
that is the number of hours it takes to die (rising takes a few minutes
after that). Thus you have a window of 6-36 hours before the character goes
bye bye. As the Aura of the character alters and twists physical changes
occur. To put it bluntly they are dying a horribly painful death compounded
by the fact that they know they'll come back as one of the Living Dead. I
have rules for this too. The character permanently scratches off a box on
the Physical side of his/her Condition Monitor for every 10% of his/her time
used up. (Again I suffer from lack of sleep so some simple damned concepts I
cannot get out correctly. For example, say a person has 30 hours before they
become a Zombie, every 3 hours of their Infection they lose a box from their
Physical Condition Monitor permanently!) Once all of the boxes are gone so
is the character.
A Magic User is the only type of character that hope of fighting off an
Infection. The Magic User can use their ability to filter Astral to cleanse
themselves of the Infection by concentrating all their focus into purging
their Aura. This is similar to meditating and will totally incapacitate the
Magic User. At no time during this purge can the Magic User move, act, or do
anything. If they are disturbed while they are doing this all they have
accomplished is null and void. Which will result in the death of the
character because they have but one chance at purging their Aura. The
character gets to roll their Magic Attribute (plus Initiate Level) in dice
versus a difficulty equal to 12 minus the character's remaining Condition
Boxes (Permanent Boxes). The character has to get a number of Successes
equal to 9 minus the Essence of the character in order to shrug off the
Infection. The lost Condition Boxes are gone forever there is no way of
getting them back, that is the damage the Infected Astral did to the Magic
User's Aura (and the corresponding physical self). This process takes a
number of hours equal to the number of Condition Boxes lost thus far.
One concept that I have been laboring under that I may not have let on about
happens to be how the characters know how much longer they have, how much
taint is in their system, etc. The character or person would feel their Aura
change, this is a BIG change in their system and while the Infection is
quick to nail someone (between 6-36 hours, if you have an Essence of 0 you
are screwed, with less than an hour before you are turned) it does so in a
gradual way. It's akin to a terminally ill person feeling their body shut
down as they die.
That I do believe will do for this installment. I am working on the next
installment at the same time as I was finishing this one so expect that post
very shortly.
Later
J
http://www.prysm.net/~jmortir/AWINS
ICQ# 27381095
"Tis a nobler thing I... Aw screw it! Bye..."
