[Space] Anyone Ever Run A Campgain Based Off Of Wild Life?

[ericthered]

Bad temper, Loner, Selfish, Oblivious, Curious --- Oh, and broad minded. I have no idea why they have broad minded if they only . If anything they would function better in a large society -- one where mistakes can be moved on from. The [-5] intolerance is a fair start (though I think a group that large is [-10]). I'm trying to imagine what else would make a society unable to function at sizes larger than 300. Perhaps a tendency to factionalism? I think the broad minded, Oblivious, and curious are an attempt to make the society work, but I'm not seeing it. The really hard part is that its quite possible what makes us different from animals is not our intelligence, but our ability to communicate and function in very large groups.

I personally get the impression the author was trying to recoup all those points he spent on their arms -- the octopus build is insanely expensive, particularly for the benefit it gives you (no, not even +12 to grappling is worth 100 points). I did a rework where they have 'four' arms -- meaning that they only have the ability to do the work of four hands, and are doubling up limbs for a lot of their work. I also made their arms short as well as flexible (hydrostats really struggle with swinging things compared to endoskeletons). I'm debating adding extra legs to indicate their stability from multiple limbs as well.

The ascended are especially weird for me, because their shape is something of a deja vu moment for me. I built a set of aliens with an emphasis on physiology a while back and one of the things I got was a swimming, climbing invertebrate with 12 limbs and a prehensile tail. It ended up with six tentacles, six fins, and filling a very similar ecological niche to the ascended. Half of me thinks of treating them the same. The other half imagines what they would think of each other.