Weird Powers: The Hive Mother

[oneofmanynameless]

So I had this weird idea. It's sort of something that you'd have on enemies more often then PCs so it's not strictly necessary to build it. However, I was very curious how to build it and couldn't quite put my finger on it.

So here's the idea: A character has the ability to "give birth" to drones which it can then control as minions. The most classic example of this are "Queens" of hive creatures that will birth hundreds of drone creatures which then act as expendable slave minions.

The key factors here are that the character can create a theoretically infinite number of drone minions given enough time, the drones are the characters biological children and the character must actually go through the process of gestation and giving birth, and the drones are loyal minions of the character all sharing the same racial template.

So how would you build this?

[AlexanderHowl]

You could do it with Ally Group (Drones), with it just being a feature that you give birth to your drones. The drones would be 50% your value with an availability of Constant and the Minion, +50% enhancemt, so 100 drones would cost 144 points. You would have to pay additional points as your swarms grew beyond your purchased capacity.

[Andreas]

Another option would be Mind Control with Conditioning Only and only for targets in your womb. If you have roughly the same length of pregancy as humans, that would almost certainly be long enough to get a permanent duration on the conditioning.

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

You could do it with Ally Group (Drones), with it just being a feature that you give birth to your drones. The drones would be 50% your value with an availability of Constant and the Minion, +50% enhancemt, so 100 drones would cost 144 points. You would have to pay additional points as your swarms grew beyond your purchased capacity.

It is worth noting however that allies who don't have identical character sheets don't get that ally group cost reduction (even if they were born exactly equal but then learned different skills or something).

[whswhs]

One way to do this might be to used an Impulse Buys mechanic to spend character points on adding Allies.

[gibberingmouther]

Cell from Dragon Ball (Z) had this. his "offspring" were nicely overpowered, but he could only create a few of them at once. Cell also had kind of an insectoid character to his appearance.

[AlexanderHowl]

Cell would probably have a few conditional summonable Allies rather than an Ally Group.

[oneofmanynameless]

The one problem I thought of for Ally group is that it doesn't provide for the potentially infinite number of drones that could be made.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

The one problem I thought of for Ally group is that it doesn't provide for the potentially infinite number of drones that could be made.

Yeah it does if they're minions. That allows for an unlimited number of replacements for drones lose in action. It doesn't allow unlimited numbers of drones all at the same time...but neither does reality. You can't have everything. Where would you put it? Your population is going to be limited by your ability to feed your population and your ability to balance your generative capacity versus combat losses. At some point it becomes more practical just to dub yourself Empress-Mother and give yourself Status 8+ of course.

[Flyndaran]

An infinite number and power of allies or any advantage would cost an infinite number of points.
While I and others will occasionally mention exceptions for certain forms of absolute abilities, I don't see how infinite allies could be one.

It's probably best to buy the maximum you can have, and accept that the GM and "circumstances" will endeavor to keep the number from ever exceeding it.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by oneofmanynameless

The one problem I thought of for Ally group is that it doesn't provide for the potentially infinite number of drones that could be made.

Ultimately, that's going to be a problem with any build. Infinite anything is going to cost infinite points, in GURPS. The best you'll get is potentially infinite, if you spend the points, which I think whswhs' suggestion of allowing Impulse Buys to spend points on Allies nicely covers.