Drakeish Metahumans, Hideous Attributes Options

[Lilt]

Looking over the rules for drakes again (for no other reason than I am a raving munchkin with nothing better to do at midnight on a monday) I noticed that the rules for drakes say that they may switch between drake and a single human or metahuman form. Until now I had always thought of them as working like Shifters (which by the SRComp can turn into 'Humans' and nothing else).

Essentially: What sick combinations can people think of?

An Albino Gnome Drake could be quite the astral guardian with willpower 10, astral armor 6, and +1 reach.

A troll Physad Drake could reach very high strength and body, reaching 21 body (22 with dermal armor) and 20 strength without breaking a sweat. Cyclopse Drakes can reach 22 strength from chargen too. If you take the stat line from Threats 2 then these monstrosities have 6 natural armor too.

The night-one adept drake with quickness 16 and a flying multiplier of 5 deserves a mention too.

[Rajaat99]

Wow, you must have nothing better to do. :D

[snowRaven]

Hmmm, would a Cyclops Drake have only one eye in it's Drake form? And can Drakes be ghouls?

[Lilt]

I don't see any reason why they couldn't become ghouls.

For all I know a cyclops drake has 3 eyes, but I'd give them 1 to be fair. As they're dual beings whilst in drake form anyway it shouldn't matter significantly. (or was the discussion about dual beings and depth perception not sorted after-all?)

[booklord]

Personally I'd handle Drakes the same way I handle shape-shifters. The character has to pay for two sets of physical attributes and 1 set of mental attributes. So a troll drake would have

+5 Body +4 Strength -1 Quickness in troll form
+4 Body +4 Strength +1 Quickness in drake form

-2 Intelligence -2 Charisma in both forms.

That would result in a drake where its humanoid form has a significant chance of having better physical attributes than its drake form. In a curious twist a giant metahuman drake could actually shrink when it takes drake form.

[Lilt]

Heh. The funny thing is that many people consider Shifters to be underpowered even with the regeneration power they get (primarily due to having to buy 2 sets of attributes).

Shafting drakes in the same way, whilst it would remove possible munchkinning opertunities, would probably make it even less worthwhile to play a drake than a shifter.

Also remember that you also need to buy whatever race you've got the base statline of meaning a drake Night One or Cyclops is a 40-point-value race.

[Shockwave_IIc]

Im still curious as to what happens to the mental attributes, since your actually a drake, that can shift into a metahuman form.....

[Lilt]

The Ns listed in the statline are the normal attributes in human or metahuman form (at-least in threats 2) so I'd presume they stay the same.

Dragons may have originally just made man-drakes or just made dwarf-drkes, or whatever, but the mixing of genes and metagenes that happened throughout the 5th age evidently allowed the other metahuman and drake genes to mix...

[snowRaven]

Hmmm - a Cyclops Ghoul Drake Adept... :grinbig:

Of course, as a starting character you have less than 50 BPs left for Attributes, Skills and Resources, but still...

[Lilt]

Not really sure you need the ghoul bit... After-all: with the points you save you could buy yourself a higher willpower and some resources so you can afford a ghoul contact to infect you early in the game :)

[booklord]

Geez why not make a Drake-Fox shapeshifter while you're at it? Think about it.... 3 sets of physical attributes...... 1 set of mental attributes.

[Shockwave_IIc]

[A Clockwork Lime]

Screw a ghoul contact. Make it a Nosferatu contact with a crush on you and the desire to have an immortal companion and equal through the centuries. <nods sagely>

[Lilt]

Good point. What you really need is someone to cast a powerful increase attribute (willpower) on you, or some form of spell/edge to reduce the TN by a bit.

[toturi]

I do not know why anyone would want to ghoul a drake in metahuman form. It is one of the drake's advantages that in metahuman form, it isn't dual natured and can turn astral perception on and off. It is one of the things that make drakes quite powerful.

[Lilt]

I think the reason they want it is for the +2 body and +1 strength, IE: The icing on the cyclops's munchkin-cake.

[toturi]

But that's only in metahuman form(or at least I think so, the rules in DOTSW are so vague)

[Lilt]

Hmm the rules in Threats 2 clarify things a bit, but I should probably explain how I got the numbers.

Logically: the stats in Dot6W would be largely accurate if you plugged a character with 3s in all attributes to the drake stat line in Threats 2. That stat-line lists N+4/6 for body, N+1 for quickness, N+4 for strength, and Ns for all the mental attributes where N is defined as "the drake's natural attribute in human or metahuman form". (Drakes are described in threats 2 from pages 72 to 80)

There is one inconsistency apart from that. The stats in threats 2 as I listed above also give the drake 6 points of natural armor. As all other dracoforms have armor (True drakes get it through their hardened armor power) I think the Dot6w stat line is just a bit screwy.