Essence Drain power Options

[Johnny the Bull]

Long time no see everyone.

I'm playing a game at the moment and I can't find my copy of critters. Could someone post up the essence drain power. IIRC its like the karma drain power for Shedim, but I can't be sure and don't want to jip my players when I break out the great form blood spirits.

[hyzmarca]

If you have access to a computer there is no excuse for not having critters.

http://battlecorps.com/catalog/product_inf...products_id=793

Essence drain allows a critter or spirit to drain the essence of a living creature. It requires a strong emotional connection, such as lust or fear. Any emotion will do but it must be strong and it must be directed at the creature using the power. For this reason, critters with essence drain will seduce or terrorize their victims.

Essence drain requires several minutes undisturbed and the victim must not resist physically. The victim can either be willing or restrained in some way.

Being drained produces a feeling of ecstacy and victims, willing or not, must make a willpower (4) test or become adicted to being drained.

Beings with essence drain can be drained without the pressence of strong emotion. This requires an opposed Essence (4) test much like melee combat. The victor drains the loser by the number of net successes.

A critter can only drain up to its current essence in one use of the power. A critter with essence drain can gain up to twice its maximum essence using this power. (Vampires, for example, can have 12 essence, twice the maximum of 6)

Some critters require a physical component for their essence drain ritual. Vampires, for example, require a victim's blood. These critters can't drain essence from astral targets.

[nick012000]

I'm surprised there isn't any cyberware that makes you immune to Essence Drain by removing your ability to feel emotions on demand.

[fistandantilus4....]

That's acutally a neat idea Nick. With Simsense technology, there's no reason that there coulnd't be. Most likely no one really saw a reason to do it I suppose.

When we do Essence drain, we've played it as being a temporary drain, as in the victims essence can come back slowly if they survive. Anyone else ever done this? I'm wondering how the difference effects the campaign.

This post has been edited by fistandantilus3.0: Jan 19 2006, 05:40 AM

[nick012000]

[hyzmarca]

Removing all emotions would be bad if it is possible. Complete apathy means not caring about anything at all and being unaffected by all outside stimulus. In other words, such a person wuld be autistic at best and a pseudocorpse at worst.

However, it should be trivial to flood the brain with 'calm' BTL emotive tracks. The other emotions would still be there but the calmness would drown them out. The result is that essence drain is impossible while fear and control emotions are much easier to resist however, the character sn't so apathetic that he forgets to do his job.

Such personafixes have appeared in fluff somewhere.

[nick012000]

[fistandantilus4....]

hyzmarca, what you describ eactually sounds suspiciously like a cyberzombie.

But really, if Simsense can invoke emotions and sensations, it should be fairly simple to block them as well. Hell, easier, because they don't have to first record the emotion that it's supposed to superimpose on the user.

[nick012000]

Well, I was originally thinking of something like a cyborg Vulcan. ;)

[hyzmarca]

As much as Vulcans will deny it, it has been well established that they do possess a full range of emotions. They are simply expert at sublimating them.

I don't think it would be possible to just block an emotion using a normal simsense device. Blocking an emotion would require blocking off every possible path that emotion could take through the brain. It would require replacing a good chunk of the brain with cyber, so much so that it might be fatal. There is also the chemical component to consider, which is even more difficult to block electronicly.

Using BTL 'calm' tracks one would need much less cyber. It is just a matter of introducing the emotion into the brain and letting it propagate naturally. Likewise, the intense emotive tracks would probably induce the release of large ammounts of certain chemicals into the brain, enough to drown out those chemicals associated with other emotional states.

[PiXeL01]

I have to admit I have never used Essence Drain with a necessary emotional component. For creatures (hope I do not offend anyone typing this) such as Vampires and Wendigos I have always linked the drainage to feeding, so for vampires and wendigos it would be the blood loss and meat loss. It is noted under the Wendigos I think that the flesh tastes better when it is feeding with it's cannibal slaves ...

In Equilibrium they flood the brain with crimicals losing every emotion but as well as touch it seems.

On a small side note, anyone use cyberpsychosis? It might block fear and other powers as well

[Pendaric]

In combat situations the edge of adrenaline would be lost with inappropriate calm. See the control emotion spell.
Though a external BTL zen chip would probably be quickly removed in such cases, a headware copy could pull this off easily but the crash would be costly.
Occasionally useful in much the same way a pain editor is.

As a derangement cyberpsychosis does effect the 'normal' emotive responses, useful in the above examples but bad for all those squishies surrounding the 'borg. :dead:

[Johnny the Bull]

Cheers hyzmarca. Like I said, I do have it, I just can't find it amid my pile of books. Thanks for the quick reply though, and seeing as its free I'll download a copy for my laptop.

[blakkie]