Dealing with Ruthenium Options Track this topic Email this topic Print this topic Download this topic Subscribe to this forum Display Modes Outline Switch to: Standard Switch to: Linear+

[Narmio]

I'm hoping someone can help me out with this most irritating substance.

I've got nothing against stealth characters getting huge bonuses from a burglar's tux, but frankly, ruthenium polymer bodysuits and cloaks are just abusable.

Hitting a character who constantly uses a ruthi-suit is nigh-on-impossible, and actually tailoring an encounter to challenge him or her seriously restricts a GM's options. While the cost is not negligable, there is a horrible possibility that every Resource A streetsam can show up to a new game completely invisible, there's no way to stop them, they throw their entire combat pools into shots, and are untouchably broken.

There is one particular character (Hi Ranneko!), a sniper/infiltrator who greatly irritates me in that he cannot be seen by most enemies, and happily snipes away even when in the middle of a combat, taking aim and making fifteen dice sport rifle shots with a TN of 2, killing ANYTHING thrown against him. That thing took out a boat in one shot, he staged the damage up so high with successes it took way-more-than-Deadly damage despite having TN2 to soak (I bet they'd be regretting not having *slightly* heavier armour, if they weren't so dead).

Even mooks with thermo or ultrasound get +4 against him, seriously reducing the number of successes from any attack. Only astrally perceiving foes can really do much, and manaballing the team and killing half of them falls under what I would consider "Bad GM form" just as far as "grenading all the runners".

I have already said they can't have visibility TN modifiers above +8 (M&M says +12 from the suit), as that's the amount from total invisibility or blind fire. Of course, the more scanners, the faster you can go without dropping below that +8. Arguments then arise over whether this makes the thermographic and ultrasound TNs +6 or +4.

So, what methods can people think of for handling this character and other transparent abuses (pun very intended)? I have a few ideas, most of which my players probably will not like, but they're logical enough, they should get the idea...

1) Simply boosting the availability of ruthenium and/or the image scanners to 12-15. This is, of course, a bandaid option, they'll acquire them eventually, but it may stave off the worst abuses.

2) Ruling that the modifiers, as a particularly pedantic look at the book may reveal, apply to perception tests only, not firearms tests, but this flies in the face of the logic that it is HARD to hit someone who you can't really see.

3) Houseruling out the image scanners and replacing them with a rating-based scanner package, limiting starting characters to +6 in any case, again a mostly bandaid measure.

4) "No, you buggers just can't have the bloody stuff. Go abuse Dikote instead!"

5) Hard-capping the bonus at +4, IE: No additional scanners.

6) Tailoring all my runs to have some method of defeating ruthenium (Drones, loads of magically active foes, hell, even ink grenades), thus devaluing it and having players dislike me (Although the ink grenades thing is a cool idea. *ponder*).

I'm still trying to think of a better way of handling this, what do people use in their games? Any suggestions would be appreciated.