Wise Turtle Publishing

I've a question: one of the characters in the next scenario will be a scavenger with a strange ability: he can mind control rats, call and control them, see through their eyes and so on...

The question is: do you think it should be a standard ability or it should be considered a knowledge/narrow/specializated ability at half cost? (since it works only on rats it can be a sort of specialized version of an "animal control" ability)

Should it have a cost to bé mantained?

I ask this mainly because I am not sure how to make this a balanced ability.

An idea I had is considering the rats as "summonable" flunkies... but I also need a sort of "charm animal" skill.

I vote for various Abilities with a Restriction "Rats Only".
The other vote will be to an Unique like Gear, but with every separate power being upgradeable with exp.

Interesting...
I realized that the whole ability could be made with a "packages of abilities" such as:

Flunkies (rat swarm)
Knowledge: train rodents


Another weird character I'll have is a blind ranger that can perceive every living being as long he's outside (has penalties when indoor, and when in a "civilized area" he's totally blind). Probably I'll handle this one using Weaknesses for the problems he has when not in his faourite enviroment.

markodude wrote:Interesting...
I realized that the whole ability could be made with a "packages of abilities" such as:

Flunkies (rat swarm)
Knowledge: train rodents


Another weird character I'll have is a blind ranger that can perceive every living being as long he's outside (has penalties when indoor, and when in a "civilized area" he's totally blind). Probably I'll handle this one using Weaknesses for the problems he has when not in his faourite enviroment.

OVA doesn't have Flunkies anymore. The Ability is now Minions. I fear you are using the old book and should get the updated version.

sniffycrab wrote: OVA doesn't have Flunkies anymore. The Ability is now Minions. I fear you are using the old book and should get the updated version.

You're right. It's like Filthy Rich that became Wealthy... my mistake!
I own both editions so sometimes I make mistakes

Any thought on converting the starstone treasure to the new edition?

sniffycrab wrote:Any thought on converting the starstone treasure to the new edition?

I second this definately! It would be nice for an OVA newbie like me to see the structure of a OVA adventure.

As I mentioned in another thread, The Starstone Treasure was a winner of a contest and not work I actually created for OVA myself. As such, I don’t really feel comfortable updating it to be in line with the current edition.

I do hope to have more content soon, but in the mean time you can get some random thoughts and ideas based on various anime at my blog (www.claygardner.com)

Back to the topic of the thread, I would definitely just create Abilities and have their “rat-ness” either relegated completely to fluff or make use of various Requirements, Focuses, etc.

The blind ranger, likewise, could have his weakness represented by a Unique Weakness. A –3 Penalty to seeing checks, even if it’s only indoors, is still a pretty substantial weakness. (Saspar, a similar concept in the book, has a –2 Weakness covering the limitations of his perception.)