Horrors Options

[Req]

They make fun backstory?

Of course the PCs should never fight Verjigorm. But escaping from one of Artificer's mazes...fighting with one of Giftbringer's chosen...trying to figure out what in the HELL is going on to all these of Chantrel's friends... These all sound like interesting campaign ideas, to me.

I mean, the Arcology is one of the most awesome campaigns ever. Deus is nothing if not "rediculously overpowered" and yet he's a great overall foil; you just don't ever fight him directly. Same with the good Horror plots, in my opinion.

[DocMortand]

[LinaInverse]

Not a fan of Cthulu or the genre. Seems pointlessly nihilist to me.

I play RPGs because I enjoy playing chars that can make a difference, at least for themselves if not for society as a whole. If I want to play a mindlessly hopeless situation where I'm just a cog in the machine, I'll just concentrate on RL, thank you very much.

The point I have is this: If any of these "minor" (let's not even talk about what defines a "major") shows up, then the PCs are just plain dead. No chance, no escape is going to be possible, don't even bother rolling dice, with the given stats listed there. And game situations like that tick me off. I never resort to them as a GM and I sure as hell don't care for it as a player. What's even more insulting is listening to everyone else's loving rapture for "low powered PCs" from the recent "Too much Karma Pool" and "Low starting chars" threads.

Yes, I understand that a campaign has entities beyond anything any runners can touch (ie, Corps, etc), but for the most part, these entities are not singular with the sole purpose of wiping out the PCs; they are mostly nebulous entities with lots of other ancillary goals, which makes it possible for a group of smart, resourceful PCs to succeed in small goals from time to time (or at least get away if overmatched). That's a far cry from having a singular invincible monster who's solely there to waste the player's time with a futile and hopeless slaughter.

[nezumi]

Here's an evil question...

The horrors cannot currently attack the earth because the mana level is too low.

Mana level comes and goes in cycles, but is connected with the amount of life in an area (hence, magic is mana-poor and Earth, being a single, huge living thing, is mana-rich), (this is ignoring the interpretation that life makes 'pure mana' and not-life creates 'corrupt mana'). Hence, horrors are significantly more likely to attack earth, which is a million tons of life, than an orbital which is only a few hundred pounds of biomass, and a lot of dead metal.

This leads me to two questions:
Would mana levels be higher deeper in the Earth? The idea being that the farther underground you go, the more 'enveloped' you are in life, the more magic there is to harness. This would also go far, far deeper than humans have ever been, which is a measly few miles.

If mana levels are higher deep in the Earth, would this allow horrors to begin coming through deep underground? Would this amount of magic allow them to survive underground even when on the downturn of the mana cycle? They wouldn't be able to get close to the surface, because there's not enough magic and they'd disappear, but they could live in our dimension. Would this give rise to the idea of hell and demons being underground?

Would the same idea be compatible with being deep underwater? Would this allow for the 'Cthulu napping under the South Pole' kinda stories HPL wrote? And could some horrors hibernate, like dragons do?

[nezumi]

Lina -

No, a minor horror can still be defeated, just probably not (easily) through combat. After all, even in Lovecraft the heros rarely kill the enemy, but oftentimes they defeat the enemy. They destroy an important artifact or kill their worshippers, preventing the powerful creature from doing whatever it was trying to do. Beyond that, there are examples of magical traps in ED capable of holding a horror indefinitely. If you're going to bring back the monsters, it would make sense that these tools are available as well. So the result is maybe you find yourself in a situation where there's an enemy you simply can't outshoot, but you can outthink and the mission is oriented around coming up with an ingenious plan to stop the horror using powerful tools and ancient magics.

That, and a lot of people just like playing a desperate game against incredible odds. Its just a question of preference.

[Moon-Hawk]

Ehhhhh, possible, I suppose.
Remember that horrors can persist in lower mana than they require to come across. So if there was enough for them to come across down deep, there's probably plenty on the surface for them to persist.
But perhaps they're persisting down there since the 4th age. Just enough mana down deep for them to persist, but not even that much up here, yet. Possible.

I'm not sure I like the idea that there's more mana down deep, though. I know the earth is a weird case, in the sense that it's aura is very difficult to pass through and what not, but with so much life on the surface I'd expect less mana underground. Not anything close to the level 10 warp of space, but neither would I expect deep underground to be as mana-rich as power sites in the jungle. It's certainly possible, I mean, the nature of mana is only vaguely understood in the SR world, where it's inarguably real. I can't really say for sure either way how it 'should' work, but it seems a bit off to me.

[LinaInverse]

[DocMortand]

The idea of only being able to circumvent Horrors through ancient magical items or fantastic technology doesn't appeal to me, IMO. I always try to give runners multiple ways of killing things so that it's not always the case of requiring a Forlorn Hope to secure the walls.

For instance - what would happen if a Baggi swallowed some C12 + detonator? I doubt even a 20 Body can withstand that from the inside.

There is a reason the Major horrors are not recommended for some campaigns - they truly require certain artifacts or a powerful group of beings to be defeated. I might consider it in my campaign when the Mages are several initiate levels, but never for beginning shadowrunners - that's discouraging and not fun.

[nezumi]

Survival IS possible. Thats why they invented Kid Stealth legs and dwarven party members.

To answer your first question, well it doesn't have to be a deus ex machina tool (personally, I wouldn't even consider that an example of deus ex machina, unless very poorly executed). Its the party members who need to quest to find this item, who need to research how to use it, and who finally need to make a plan to pull it off. The tool may be the easiest way of defeating the horror, but its not the only one, and it won't work all on its own.

Plus there are plenty of other ways of using horrors, and not all minor horrors are all that tough to kill in combat. You find a Native American tribe where they hunt and kill the babies of their neighbors, and commit horrible acts. You find they're being driven by a horror and you need to save (or slaughter) them, or find the horror and reveal it to the world so it can be properly dealt with. You discover lore on horrors past and run a campaign based on exploration. Someone in your party is horror marked and suddenly begins doing odd things. Your missions begin failing or party members are attacked by strange creatures until you figure out the horror mark and somehow erase it.

Horrors are only as limiting as the GM who uses them.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[LinaInverse]

Don't get me wrong nezumi; I appreciate what you're trying to say and based on the scenario you describe, I can see the bare-bones of a story.

But if by "Kid Stealth legs" you mean sneak or run away, I would say that it's not possible given the critter has 3x your Quickness and Intelligence, which means outscoring it in Stealth, Invisibility, and all other conventional methods I know of isn't going to happen (hell, it's even "prettier" than most party members, which is sort of the final insult*). Not sure what you mean by dwarven party members.

*yeah, yeah, Char <> Physical beauty.

[Nikoli]

Dwarves have a x2 running mod

Yo don't gotta be the fastest, just don't be the slowest.

[LinaInverse]

[LinaInverse]

[Nikoli]

That's where your splat or net guns come into play...

[DocMortand]

[Nikoli]

I meant for teh 2 dwarves who would find themselves as bait. That x2 modifier isn't so bad when the troll is now glued to the spot and you pass them.

[Erebus]

[LinaInverse]

Last time I checked, I think I have about 4 boxes of Barret ammo and about the same amount of standard APDS Remington rifle rounds. The latter really isn't going to do much against Mr. Baggi (only Power 9) and even the Barret would probably take about a box worth to bring the Baggi down.

[Cynic project]

Do people so quickly forget the mana spikes from Aztlan,the Tir's,tibet,Amazonia, ETC...

The GDD was a big mana spike but not the only one.It wasn't even the only one in the Americans.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Nikoli]

Or, when said horrows arrives, you wait till it slaughters the few dozen or so waves of LS and then loot the corpses for their sniper ammo as the ATGM's should now be en route to deal with it.

[LinaInverse]

Barrett ammo is 14; I know because I've been trying to score on it for months. None of that other stuff has been seen in our current game besides the APDS ammo which was just as hard to score. This is with a face char, with an Eti 5 and a lvl 2 arms dealer contact. In our last game, we did score on finding an MMG though, so we are making slow progress. It'll likely be mounted on our dwarf rigger's heavy van's turret I think (will be talking about that this weekend).

[Lantzer]

I suppose the attraction of Horrors - and what really causes fear of them among players - is the fact that they don't _follow_the_rules_. What really makes them scary in ED isn't uber stats or ugly looks. It's the fact that they can do things you can't even dream of, can't stop, and screw with your ability to use those meager powers you _do_ have.

It would be entirely within character in a 6th world horror invasion for a minor-until-now horror to be found that likes the taste of cyberware. Or gains power from radiation. Or possesses bullets. Or has a body made out of bullets. All a horror needs is an internal logic, that may use assumtions totally at odds to how the rest of the world works. That's why no two of the buggers are quite the same.

Sort of like the hound of ?tintalos? in Lovecraft. A beast that hides from sight and resides in corners, because of the way right angles bend the universe. A lot of horrors would be laughably silly, if they weren't so horrible. A runner seeing one for the first time might laugh, until he notices it is carefully eating his freind's brain from the inside out while looking so funny.

[DocMortand]