[MH] Would like help with some characters

[Morgan]

Hello everyone!

I am creating some characters for a mini Monster Hunters campaign that I'm going to play at my local club. It is going to run for between 3-5 missions with the option to continue if people like it enough.

I'm using the Agents of ORCID article from pyramid 3/73. The characters are going to be a Commando, a Sage, a Sleuth, a Techie and a melee focused character. The characters are going to be around 500 ish points. The Commando, Sleuth and Techie were easy. I have two problems, however:

1. I'm unsure what to give the Sage instead of their magic. I'm not using it because I feel Ritual Path Magic to be a bit complex for a game that is only going to be four or five sessions long and the Sages abilities are less useful in the field. I would like them to have some minor supernatural gifts due to spending so much time studying the occult but I'm at a loss what to give them.

2. I am also struggling with making a melee character in a setting where an assault rifle deals 9d pi++ without giving the melee guy a load of extra points to buy weapon skills, strength and loads of attacks. I have tried using the Warrior and the Experiment templates and I didn't like the result of either. The Warrior didn't have a high enough skill to ensure the final word in melee and the Experiment didn't seem to do enough damage, at least compared to buckets of dice the Commando is going to be rolling every turn.

One point I should make is that I don't want anything electrical on the melee fighter. The character's background is that they are bioengineered human created specifically for killing monsters. I have no objections to weird and wonderful abilities with other limitations but I would like this to be the one character that isn't completely hosed by an EMP. I want their abilities to be a part of their DNA rather than cybernetic. Everyone else is chromed right up.

I would prefer to stick to characters that have a wildcard skill or two because I find them a bit easier for newer players. Three of my potential five players are familiar with GURPS and I'm fairly intimate with it and everyone else is pretty smart so the characters don't have to be too simple.

I have most if not all of the books for 4e and quite a few pyramids issues as well. I have a few quid I'm willing to drop on books that think are absolutely neccessary.

Whew. That was longer than I was expecting. So if any of you fine people have some solutions or even just some suggestions for me, that would be super duper and I shall be eternally grateful and will be your best friend forever.

Thank you very much!

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Morgan

2. I am also struggling with making a melee character in a setting where an assault rifle deals 9d pi++ without giving the melee guy a load of extra points to buy weapon skills, strength and loads of attacks. I have tried using the Warrior and the Experiment templates and I didn't like the result of either. The Warrior didn't have a high enough skill to ensure the final word in melee and the Experiment didn't seem to do enough damage, at least compared to buckets of dice the Commando is going to be rolling every turn.

first: Which riffle are you using? that's a LOT of damage.

second: the warrior excels in MH because of liberal use of injury tolerance. homogenous does a lot to negate the commando's paper dice. And if you allow power blow...

[Morgan]

Originally Posted by ericthered

first: Which riffle are you using? that's a LOT of damage.

second: the warrior excels in MH because of liberal use of injury tolerance. homogenous does a lot to negate the commando's paper dice. And if you allow power blow...

Thanks for the quick reply. :)

The storm rifle in ultra tech does that much damage and the Warrior doesn't have the skill levels to soak the penalty for combat uses of power blow unless I pump it up or ignore the penalties for quick use.

The game is TL/9 for those unfamiliar with the Agents of ORCID article.

[Rysith]

Originally Posted by Morgan

Thanks for the quick reply. :)

The storm rifle in ultra tech does that much damage and the Warrior doesn't have the skill levels to soak the penalty for combat uses of power blow unless I pump it up or ignore the penalties for quick use.

The game is TL/9 for those unfamiliar with the Agents of ORCID article.

As was said, building monsters that are resistant to bullets in one way or another helps a lot. Maybe they need to be attacked with a special material, or maybe without a magically-enchanted weapon attacking them they can become diffuse or even insubstantial. Maybe they are human enough to wear TL-appropriate armor, which has split DR and is weak to cutting or impaling. Maybe they have high enough active defenses that without being able to deceptive attack it's going to be difficult to land a hit.

Another option is limiting the size of your weapons - maybe gauss and laser weapons are available, as well as conventional guns with fancy ammunition, but caseless ammunition never took off[1]. With rifles especially, if you make things that can get into close combat (by dropping from overhead, for example) you can cause the gun-wielders to take bulk penalties, as well as putting everything in range for your melee person.

A third option is having at least some of the fights happen in places where stray shots would be a Bad Thing. Power plants, gas stations, areas with gas leaks, hospitals, etc. The average gunslinger, especially if they are trying to pump out a lot of damage, is going to miss with a substantial portion of their shots. And if those 4 shots in the burst that miss the monster light the whole place on fire, it's a reason for those with guns to slow down while your melee person gets to hack away with impunity.

[1] Maybe caseless ammunition never took off because it doesn't play well with the special ammunitions for whatever reason, and you can give your players a choice between a 7d pi battle rifle that can take explosive and incendiary ammunition at RoF 10 or the 9d pi++ Storm at RoF 3. Maybe personal armor advanced faster and the (2) from lasers or the (3) from gauss weapons is seen as 'more important' as long are you aren't fighting unarmored monsters that are doing cutting and crushing rather than piercing damage.

[Christopher R. Rice]

You might get some mileage out of my Designer's Notes for "The Department of Occult Defense" as Frick and I collaborated on some material to intermingle the two (as did the other authors in that issue except for HANS).

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Morgan

Thanks for the quick reply. :)

The storm rifle in ultra tech does that much damage and the Warrior doesn't have the skill levels to soak the penalty for combat uses of power blow unless I pump it up or ignore the penalties for quick use.

The game is TL/9 for those unfamiliar with the Agents of ORCID article.

The storm rifle in UT does pi+, not pi++ (that's errata). Also, why are you using TL 9 stuff?

If you need to pay points for power-blow, pay points for power-blow. Most of the time it's worth it (and it may just mean lots of Will, if the character also focuses on Intimidation and any other will-based skills).

Finally, as others have noted, monsters tend to be immune to bullets, or highly resistant to them. You might be able to bless a blade but not a gun, and so on.

Of course, if you mean it in a general sense, like this is some sort of black ops game where you have a cyber-ninja and a cyber-soldier both fighting aliens, and you note that in a TL 9 setting that melee is inferior to gunfire... well yeah. Melee is inferior to gunplay. If you want melee characters in a setting that also features gunplay, you need to establish things that make melee a viable choice, rather than rely on default GURPS assumptions, because, out of the box, GURPS realistically treats blades as inferior to bullets.

[Mathulhu]

A rifle that does 9d pi+ is wonderful, but only very slightly better than sword that does 2d cut if the target only needs 10 points of damage to be taken out of the fight.

I often use the rules from High-Tech that cap wound size (maximum damage a Piercing or Impaling attack can do is equal to the wounding modifier times its hit points) for monsters with injury tolerance to reduce the instant lethality of firearms even if I am not using the same rules for PCs.

[Morgan]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Also, why are you using TL 9 stuff?.

The game is set at TL 9. You even quoted the part where I said that ;).

But in all seriousness thank you very much everyone for all your replies.

I have a better idea what to do now but I'm not running these games for a few more weeks so if anyone else has any ideas feel free to jump in. I'll be checking this thread regularly so I will see your posts.

Thanks again :).

[Tinman]

As for the sage, why don't you give him a few pre-made spells. If they are set up as conditional rituals they are very useful in the field.

In my MH game that lasted 2 years the warrior char was brutally effective.
Don't forget to apply weapon master bonuses & the use of wildcard points.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Morgan

The game is set at TL 9. You even quoted the part where I said that ;).

But in all seriousness thank you very much everyone for all your replies.

Okay, reading comprehension failure.

But my question still stands, I just phrased it badly. Why are you choosing a non-standard setting for your MH campaign? I see that there's an article associated with it, and I'm not familiar with it, but I don't need you to justify it to me in any case. You seem to want a TL 9 MH campaign that features both guys with (TL 9) guns and guys with (TL 3) swords. Why? I note with a brief perusal of the article that this is meant to be Black Ops redux, and that melee-focused characters don't really seem to be in there. So why do you want a melee character in there?

This is not a rhetorical question meant to make you realize the errors of your way. But rather, if you articulate this to yourself, you might see what you're trying to get at, and that might give you your solution. If it's because it "looks cool," then you need cinematic solutions. If it's to create tactical diversity, new strategic solution to defeating bad guy, then adjust the monsters to allow that character to take advantage of his unique capabilities. When you can frame the problem well, the solution usually presents itself.