Damage From an Evil Vending Machine

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by sir-talen

harmless but stale muffins

How do you know that they're harmless?

Mold spores might have had a millennium to figure out how to survive and thrive on the muffins' surface. When hurled, the muffins might burst into a cloud of malevolent mutant muffin mold spores, dealing out whatever wicked effects the GM can imagine. Perhaps some combination of hallucinogens, toxic damage, and fungal disease.

Twinkies, being utterly immune to mold, bacteria, etc. even over geological time periods, might have hardened into the equivalent of creme-filled sling stones.

[sir-talen]

Thanks everyone for your suggestions. Here's how it worked out when I wrote it up for the adventure (I'll post a link to the full scenario when it's completed).

Narration: You see several large rectangular boxes emerge from the edge of the woods, each moving on a pair of small treads. Each of the boxes have colorful cracked plastic fronts, with VendiPax printed in glowing letters across them. "Greetings, new customers! Please enjoy these free samples!' the VendiPax machines call out cheerfully, before they begin to fire.

The VendiPax machines will continue to fire "free samples" randomly. Roll d6. On a 1-2 they fire a soda can (normal damage, 3-4 a scalding cup of hot coffee, 5-6 a stale muffin or ancient candy bar (no damage). Should a PC successfully catch a free sample, the VendiPax that attacked them will immediately retreat into the woods.

VendiPax

ST: 10, DX 10, IQ 20, HT n/a, HP 10.

Defenses: DR 5, Dodge 7, Parry n/a

Basic Speed 6, Basic Move 4.

Skills: Throwing 12

Drink can, damage 1d-2 cr, 1/2D 10 yards, Max 15 yards.
Coffee cup, damage 1d-3 burn (non-incendiary), 1/2D 10 yards, Max 15 yards.
Muffin, damage 0 cr, 1/2D 5 yards, Max 10 yards.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by sir-talen

ST: 10, DX 10, IQ 20, HT n/a, HP 10.

Are they really IQ 20?

[sir-talen]

Originally Posted by johndallman

Are they really IQ 20?

The VendiPax are a subset of Pax Machina, a distributed AI. In the Reclamation Project setting any networked computer or any device that qualifies as "smart" has been co-opted by Pax, which was created when the world's military computers got mixed with an online advertising virus. So the IQ 20 is legit, but Pax is rarely sane enough to get much use out of its superintelligence.