Flunkies - Whether by charisma or fear, you
have the ability to call upon a sizable troupe
of allies. Each of these allies have 10 Health
and Endurance and, when the total of their
Abilities and Weaknesses are combined, cannot have a sum of levels greater than +1.
At the playerís option, flunkies may be
ìcombinedî in order to have more powerful
flunkies. For instance, a character with +2
in Flunkies could instead summon 2
flunkies with 20 base Health and
Endurance, and +2 in Abilities.
As it is, this thing looks cool to maybe build a summoning around, or permanent group of goons following you. This however really seems to break the game, as you can have a 200 hp 200 endurance guy with you all the time, which has a total of +8 in abilities, counting disadvantages and other such things... While the animal companion stays the standard 40/40 and a total of + 1-5. Or the other way around, you can have 20 flunkies that each is godlike in one skill (+5), and have some really obscure weaknesses, making your character practically a god just by maximizing one or two skills.
any ideas how to work this out to be sensible in any case?
on a side questions: are there any penalties for your companion/flunkies to die? can you even die in this game? Does the human arsenal come into play when dealing with death of minions/companions? Is flunkies just there for npc's to use? is it needed for you take transformation multiple times, or can you make one just to have multiple forms in it?
Animal companion vs flunkies, and other questions?
Re: Animal companion vs flunkies, and other questions?
Animal Companion and Servant (Now a single Ability called "Companion"), Flunkies, and even Human Arsenal have seen quite a few revisions since the old version of OVA that help rectify some of your concerns. However, OVA will never be a very munchkin-proof game, and was never intended to be. Even if we made these abilities completely unbreakable, a player could still load up on every combat ability, pick out the most useful perks for their attacks, all the while hand-picking the flaws and weaknesses that would prove the least problematic while netting the most points.
But all those combat abilities won't do a player much good when trying to impress a noble at a ball, or decipher a strange code, or one of many other things. There's much more to an OVA adventure than fighting, and the reward for combat is much less tangible than in Dungeons and Dragons. There's no experience for kills, nor is there a treasure treadmill to run on.
Death is sort of glossed over in OVA. There are no hard and fast rules for when a character dies other than "because everyone thinks it would be cool and dramatic if character X died."
Flunkies, likewise, can be handled as appropriate to the story. If it establishes as a villain as cruel to send his flunkies to their deaths, then why not? Or if those flunkies are robots or evil creatures, there's no real reason they can't be killed as they're vanquished.
Interesting question about Transformation. I see no reason why you can't have multiple Transformations under the same purchase. After all, since each transformation would be mutually exclusive of each other, it only increases your options, not your power so much.
But all those combat abilities won't do a player much good when trying to impress a noble at a ball, or decipher a strange code, or one of many other things. There's much more to an OVA adventure than fighting, and the reward for combat is much less tangible than in Dungeons and Dragons. There's no experience for kills, nor is there a treasure treadmill to run on.
Death is sort of glossed over in OVA. There are no hard and fast rules for when a character dies other than "because everyone thinks it would be cool and dramatic if character X died."
Flunkies, likewise, can be handled as appropriate to the story. If it establishes as a villain as cruel to send his flunkies to their deaths, then why not? Or if those flunkies are robots or evil creatures, there's no real reason they can't be killed as they're vanquished.
Interesting question about Transformation. I see no reason why you can't have multiple Transformations under the same purchase. After all, since each transformation would be mutually exclusive of each other, it only increases your options, not your power so much.