Ghouls., Attempting to unshaft them. Options

[Baatorian]

Basics. Last night my favourite character caught "tEh gh00l". Which basically totally ruins the character, or will require so much adaption that the entire personality and lifestyle will have to change. It's around a year long "campaign" type thing, so I'm going to naturally try to bear with it.

Due to this, I've actually gone out of my way to proper read ghouls and such and realised that they're horribly unbalanced, they get totally, TOTALLY shafted. Favourite character aside (although I wouldn't be doing this if it wasn't for that fact), ghouls are supposed to be pickable as a PC race... yeah, right, who's going to do that?

Flavour is nice, yes. Although I'd compare picking ghoul to the flavour of shit.

So anyway, for the last couple of hours, I've been adding things up and jotting down some suggestions and trying to work out some of the extra modifiers that are hard to apply things with.

Basically, I'm trying to rebalance them so they come to a +0 total, slightly under or higher works too, which ever way, but they should end up a reasonable choice, despite all the negatives that happen.

Anyway, this is what I've kind of worked out with my odd logic, I'm sure not everyone will agree on the values and points I've added up. I'm mostly looking for suggestions and such to balance them up.

The creative minds of this lil' place should sure come up with more than myself only. I'm just going to paste my notes and such below, it's a little messy, but shouldn't be hard to read.

[Ancient History]

"Shit happens."

I mean, really. It's like complaining your character gets shafted because they get an organ transplant and catch AIDS. YES! You too will have to deal with significant, life-changes when you become infected wtih Teh Virus!

But hey, imagine the look on thevampire's face when you take a bite out of him!

[Baatorian]

Yes, shit does happen.

That doesn't excuse the fact that ghouls get shafted. If suggested as a PC playable race, there needs to be a balance. There is an inbalance.

Out of curiousity, why do you always reply to my posts with a "Meeeh wateva" attitude?




- Baatorian

[Velocity]

Yeah, with all due sympathy for your character's plight... it is supposed to suck, being a ghoul. The rules to make them playable were added (IIRC) to cover situations like yours, where a PC was infected. They're playable, they just aren't ideal.

I gotta ask, though: why was the character infected? Isn't there, like, a three-month incubation period for the virus? One of my PCs was infected and had ample time to get the necessary treatments. Rattled him a bit, but he was never in any real danger.

[Ancient History]

[Baatorian]

Okay. Firstly. I'm not posting to try to "fix" my character, I'm posting for ideas to fix a *supposedly* playable race. If it were just to "fix" my character, I wouldn't have bothered posting here and I'd just make a boat load of changes.

What I want to do is try to make being a ghoul a little more appealing. There's never been a PC ghoul in my group before, hell the only combat with ghouls ever was last night. I hadn't really bothered to properly look over them, due to what happened, I now have and when I find broken bits, I try to fix them.

Secondly. How. As far as I'm concerned, it was an absolutely unnecessary combat situation. The PCs had just managed to escape a serious Lonestar attempt at killing (not capturing) them, they managed to get away despite serious odds and flee through an old underway system in Redmond.

Enter unnecessary combat with a pair of ghouls. My PC takes a moderate. No successes on the test. They (he) didn't realise they were ghouls at the time, then headed off for a safe house to lay low for a few months to lose LS attention... several months later.

Bugger.





- Baatorian

[Baatorian]

[Nyxll]

The long and short of it, is bad things happen to good characters. Some mages get shot up really badly and lose magic points, some lose a leg and have to get a cyber replacement. Apparently someone found a synthetic flesh for ghouls to eat. An advantage is now you do not have to hide bodies, you can just eat them.

I am not in favour of the enhanced ghoul idea, although I feel for you. I had a gm once take my favorite character and make in into a cyberzombie because he thought it would be cool. Sometimes you just have to roll with the punches. (in that case I never played with that gm again.)

[Ancient History]

Ghouls are very playable - as far as roleplaying, as opposed to rollplaying. They're a challenge to play, to be sure, and a rare choice for a PC race...but then again, few PCs choose to become ghouls!

Consider this: A ghoul can access the astral without becoming a magician, and they can accept cyberware. Sure, they've got some social stigma attached, but they're better at intimidation too. If you survive the change well, you don't suffer quite so bad with stat losses either.

Oh, and you would have noticed something those first few months you were infected - sickness and the like.

[Baatorian]

Trying not to spam post here.

Okay, please, imagine I said nothing about my character, imagine I said. "Hey, I bought the Shadowrun Companion yesterday, dang, I read ghoul and man, it's a pile of horse shit. Man, I LOVE game balance and choice and damn, they're unbalanced for the worse and a choice no ones even going to consider".

.. and yes anyway. I don't want to make ghouls more than they are, just more balanced, that's all. I don't want them in ANYway being nearly equal to say, Vampires or Nosferatu. Just a little more in there.

Here, these are some of the things I was thinking about, BUT, they come from my impression of ghouls and what ghouls should be able to do (makes them more scary, hey, ghouls ARE for horror if you ask me).

Roof Hopper - Quickness is considered +4 for jumping distances. Ghouls also recieve +2 dice for jumping tests.

Wall Hanger - Ghouls recieve a -2 TN modifier for climbing tests, or +2 dice and can cling stationary to one point with a STR5 test or STR8 for ceilings.

Resistant - Due to HMHVV, ghouls recieves +1(+2?) dice to resist future pathogens (maybe toxins too).

.. can't think of anything else right now, they'll come to me however, but here's some other things, that could be added in, to try and fuck them a little less.

Astral Shutdown - Ghouls can temporarily seal themselves off from astral space for Will Power in combat turns. The astral backlash however strikes them for 4(5?)M stun when it "snaps" back.

Dual Nature - Dual Natured beings recieve impressions from everyone around them all the time. They're treated as automatically recieving 1 success on an assensing test. They can still roll for more if they want to.

Magically Enchanced - Not sure about this. Being dual natured suggests to me that ghouls (or anything else), becomes linked with magic just like all other magically active. You could allow these victims, as long as they could find someone willing to teach them, to actually purchase a magic rating as per initition at say double cost.

Dunno about actually getting magic powers. Hermetic/Shamanic I'd say no point blank, physical adept type powers I'm not sure. It'd at least allow them to try to get a form of masking. At whatever rate, starting a magic 0 and charging double initiation is pretty damn expensive/prohibitive, but does allow SOMEthing to be gained from basically losing the ability to acuire 'ware.





- Baatorian

[Baatorian]

[Nkari]

Um, my last remake I considered a ghoul alot, the only thing I didnt like about the ghouls as PC's is that you get the ghoul mods +the roll on the 3rd stage table.. Ghouls would be perfectly fine with just the negatives they get from their normal listing IMHO.. No need to roll on the table, we assume the character made it with 2-3 sux on the table, since well.. 1 sux you can pretty much scrap the character anyway since hes more of an animal than anything else..

[Baatorian]

Yes, that roll does suck. We automatically assumed three successes. Otherwise we'd be "going back in time" or quiting SR for a good few months.

Out of curiousity, was your character magically active?

Really, picking ghoul makes a nice change roleplaying wise, but paying 10 BP, ontop of metatype costs is just ridiculus to the extreme. Hell, if anything, you should be AWARDED 10 BPs, if you did that, I bet no one in my group would still choose to be a ghoul.




- Baatorian

[Nkari]

No I wasnt really magically active, just thought it be nifty to be dual natured guy with a digestive problem, and some hrm.. slight personality issues..

Tho it isnt THAT horrid to be a ghoul mage you loose a total of 2 magic pts but then again, becoming a ghoul should not be a possitive thing..

and 10 bp is fairly cheap IMHO.. but only if you choose human.. :P

So if I where you I would accept it and get the GM to let you burn Karma when rolling on the chart.... :P instead of changing the rules..

[mmu1]

If you're going to change things retroactively, you're better off letting the character get the treatment he should have had ample chance to receive.

"No outward signs of turning into a ghoul" is not remotely the same thing as "no symptoms of serious viral infection whatsoever".

He shouldn't be getting shafted because you let several months of down-time pass without a word to let him know IC that he was sick.

[Velocity]

You actually make a compelling argument, Baatorian. If ghouls are really intended to be viable characters, there is a balance issue. Specifically:

[Baatorian]

Velocity - Thanks and finally someone seeing things from my side of the debate.

As the heading says in the Shadowrun Companion "New Character Types", which is both Ghouls and Shapeshifters. You can make no mistake that they are supposed to be playable as a PC race. You can also make no mistake that they are severely unbalanced.

Roleplaying and flavour is all good and true. Yet to roleplay something a little different you shouldn't have to get a raw deal at the same time and basically end up with something with a list of weakness so major it's a joke.

.. and pay 10 BP for the privilege? That's laughable. Honestly.

I look forward to seeing what you type up, I'm going to have a phone conversation with several members of my group in a bit, I'll see what comes from that also.





- Baatorian

[Lucifer]

As someone who's played a ghoul (not been turned into one, but chosen ghoul at chargen) let me just say that it's a pretty telling difference. It's like playing a street-level character in a professional shadowrunner campaign.

I designed the character well enough, for the only task ghouls are really suited for (melee combat with a minimal stealth insertion backing; can't get much more than minimal after dropping so many points just to get 'average' in other areas), and despite this my character was constantly overmatched in everything.

The other players were mostly inexperienced, and several only had the core book, so they weren't going crazy with optional gear and rules. I certainly wasn't out of my depth as a player, but my character was more than over his head.

My personal suggestion: make some of the disadvantages more mild. It's mentioned that some ghouls don't suffer from blindness, 'obvious' physical deformities (hair, skin, etc.) or at least don't have them to the same extent. So, make the base ghoul template not have those features, but allow ghoul players to take them as additional Flaws much like Changelings can take extra Flaws.

Not a huge change, but it's a start; 'combat' ghouls would get 5 BP or so back from the disadvantages to invest elsewhere, and non-combat ghouls would be a little more likely to occur.

[hyzmarca]

The face is actually one of the least shafted archetypes when it comes time to get ghoulified, assuming that he gets three successes. Physical signs of being a ghoul can be defeated with cosmetic surgery and/or makeup. The eyes can certainly be replaced with realistic cybereyes and possibly bioeyes. BO can be defeated by clean metabolism.
Replace his lost CTPs (assuming he had any), as well.

On the other hand, the razorguy is lucky that most of his crome broke because, if it hadn't, he would have instantly droped dead from essence loss due to his sensitive system. He still might drop dead from essence loss. Characters with essence <= 1 can't survive the transformation at all.

The magician gets to astrally percieve without penality to physical action, with a slight drawback but he also loses a point of magic. This can be geased away and can be replaced with initiation. On the other hand, essence loss (and magic loss) from cyber is also amplified. In order to pass a magician will have to sacrifice, at least, another point of magic.

The adept also lose 1 point of magic but that can be geased away or replaced with initiation. The adept must also sacrifice another point of magic to pass. The adept isn't quite as safe in astral space.

The rigger and the decker, I'm not sure. Sensitive System shafts the heavily chromed but doesn't do much against the lightly chromed. Otaku aren't really hurt at all. They're already freaky kids with their own little world.


So, the order of screwed is -

Full Magicians

Aspected Magicians with spellcasting ability

Uncybered mundanes

Adepts, Aspected Conjurers, and lightly cybered mundanes

Heavily cybered mundanes, AKA dead.

Passing would give you the Dark Secret flaw in exchange for 0 social modifiers. So long as you don't solicit your butcher for ripe baby you should be alright.

[ShadowDragon8685]

Yeah, I'd say that's the right definition of 'screwed.' It's better to just take a shot in the face from an assault cannon. Not that either is much of a choice, but...


I'd say the character is pretty much out of action for good. Still, he was a razorboy, which raises possibilities...

You could go the way you were going with the rebalancing, give him mad jumping and wall-hugging and wall-climbing abilities, turn him into a real industrial-punk-gothic nightmare, running across rooftops and dropping down on his enemies amid a hail of gunfire, taking a big bite out of the first one's neck and then leaping to the second.

Alternatively, you could just say that, after a night or three of paranoid dreams, he decided that the thing in the night was a ghoul, a vampire, a nosferatu, a werewolf, and any one of a thousand other nasty infecty beasties, and went to get diagnosed and treated.

[FrankTrollman]

I haven't liked the whole idea of Krieger Strain HMHVV since it was introduced. I'm an old-schooler at heart, and Ghouls in my campaign have always been a form of goblinization.

That being said, I've never understood the "rules" for playing Ghouls, since what you got at the other end didn't particularly resemble the Ghoul that exists as a critter to be encountered in the wild. A Ghoul, as per the critter write-up, should look like this as a PC race:

(starting value/natural maximum)
Body: 5/10
Agility: 1/6
Reaction: 3/8
Strength: 4/9
Charisma: 1/4
Intuition: 2/7
Logic: 1/5
Willpower: 3/8
Edge: 1/6
Essence: 5
*Magic: 1/5

Specials: Dual Natured, Enhanced Senses (Hearing, Smell), Natural Weapon (Str/2 +1 P).

Ghouls have the following flaws: Allergy (Sunlight, Mild), Dietary Requirement (Metahuman Flesh), Blind.

OK... so the Blind drawback is pretty close to meaningless, because they are Dual Natured. So you might as well cost that flaw as it really is: Illiterate. Their Allergy to Sunlight is a 10 pointer and non-trivial, and their dietary requirement is mostly a flavor concern - it really just adds about 500 :nuyen: a month to your lifestyle (in clonal tissue), and grosses people out. That one is probably worth about 10 points as well (mostly because of the social stigma, more than the thought that you might actually starve to death). So you are walking out with about 25 points of uncompensated flaws, plus maybe an additional 10 pointer for "Hunted in CAS", or whatever you want to call it. Your stats, on the other hand, are about 5 points better than any other metatype, so that still doesn't quite balance out.

All told, you should probably be able to pull off "Ghoul" for 40-50 BPs. That is, until they start pulling out all the crazy like extra additional drawbacks like Sensitive System, and major statistic reductions like they did in the Shadowrun Companion. My suggestion is just to ignore all that crap (and for that matter, the entire plotline that characters could contract ghoulness), and just run them like a metatype with the statline they have in the book. I'd probably charge people about 50 BPs to be on the safe side.

-Frank

[Velocity]

[FrankTrollman]

Very true. Of course, unlike the truly illiterate, they can still type. Let's just say: they get the same number of points for being "blind" that Daredevil would.

On a different note: I would also give Ghouls an extra 2 dice for resisting pathogens in general. They are metahumans who eat decaying metahumans as a normal thing. They have got to have the Porsches of immune system world. And like Dwarves, I don't think that I would charge them anything for that.

-Frank

[Baatorian]

FrankTrollman - Hey, this isn't the SR4 forum =)

I'm with Velocity here, their blind flaw is more than just illiteracy, it's also colour blind and computer incompetence. Where as I'm sure it says astrally percieving people can see colours somewhere or other, it states that ghouls cannot in the Shadowrun Companion.

Although, I am with you with the Critters write up.. looks to me that they should get +4 Body, +2 Quickness, +3 Strength, -2 Charisma, +1 Intelligence and +2 Will Power, as well as the other bits. Which is a ridiculusly high set of stats, but if you assume that the stats written down for critters are average 3's, then that's what the bonuses translate to.

I finally worked on this for starting PC ghouls.

+3 Body = +6 BP
+2 Quickness = +4 BP
+1 Strength = +2 BP
+1 Running Multipler = +3 BP
Double Jointed = +1 BP
Natural Leaper = +3 BP
Natural Climber = +3 BP
Pain Resistance Level 3 = +6 BP
Enchanced Smell (-2) = +2 BP
Enchanted Hearing (-2) = +2 BP
Immune to Vitas = +2 BP

It still leaves a big negative inbalance, but it sorts out a lot of problems and makes ghouls a touch more scary. What with clinging from walls, dropping down from above and leaping that gap straight in to you. Also works more the way I like to see ghouls, I DM mostly so I like having packs of things out there to scare my players with.

We also agreed that they have a venom gland in the roof of their mouth and that HMHVV Krieger can only be passed on via the bite of a ghoul, not just sharing a cigarette with one, or being scratched.

Regardless, I'm still interested in any other ideas.




- Baatorian

[Nikoli]

Immune to VITAS should cost more as it's not an available quality to players typically.