HMHVV Infection Power Change

Due to the extreme severity of the Ghoul instant plague power I’ve decided to change it a bit.

Vector: Injection
Power: 4+Damage Boxes Taken

Now the Ghoul must actually harm it’s intended victim and depending on the severity of the wound the infection will become more powerful.

Sounds pretty reasonable to me, Maybe AH would be nice enough to make a comment on it sometime

I don't think there's a problem with the Infection ability of Ghouls. The reason there's no "Ghoul-splosion" is because of the standing bounty on their heads in many countries.

no, the reason there's no ghoul-splosion is because the devs said so. as written, you touch a ghoul, you have to make a series of tests with a ridiculously high threshold, and each time you fail you get closer to being a ghoul. and in all probability, you will fail. a lot.

Meh. How often do you touch people in a world of guns? If someone runs at you in a dark alleyway, acting for all the 6th world as a Fast Zombie from an early 2k tridflick, you shoot him out of reflex - you don't let him touch you.

Maybe guns are the reason you don't have a Ghoul-splosion.

Or, they do like many meat eating predators do, they lay in wait, hiding in an ambush and swamp you in numbers. Fast zombie is not the same as stupid zombie - and the SMART ghouls use stupid ghouls as bait and THEN they strike - you wouldn't survive long in my games.

Let's see...

Smart Ghoul+Guns+Ghoul Blood+Capsule Rounds

Smart Ghoul+DMSO+Ghoul Blood+Splash Grenade

See, Ghouls can be evil too...

Oh, and i almost forgot - Ghoul Suicide Bombers...lots of infected flesh/mist going your way.

Not only that, but you are looking at the ghouls coming after a PC - level character. The ghouls are going to go after "low hanging fruit" the way most predators do, they get the sick, the old, and the young. If I was a ghould I would try to get into a school and infect a pile of kddies/ Failing that, a hospital where you can get to helpless patients and expose health care workers at the same time is pretty vile. Hell, even nursing homes (or bingo halls) would yeild up some tasty and relatively helpless meat.

Sneak onto concert grounds early.
Hide in bathrooms till the noise level hits 11
Join mosh pit.

i was tending to assume the ghouls are not deliberately spreading it. regardless, mere contact will spread it, and that includes contact with stuff the ghoul has had contact with potentially. and once you get it, it's extremely hard to get rid of.

Reference?

^^ From a story on pg 100 of 6th World.

The whole African Cup of Nations bit (2068) would have gone down quite differently (or to be more accurate, wouldn't have gone down at all) if "stuff the ghoul has had contact with" could spread the virus.

you want a reference for how difficult it is to not get turned into a ghoul? ok, sure.

first off, per runners companion, there's no drugs to help you. dwarven resistance to disease, and the cure disease spell, can help however.

next up, we have:

"HMHVV III is responsible for the creation of ghouls, and
is typically spread by unprotected contact with those creatures or
their bodily fluids." (runner's companion, page 83)

ok, so unprotected contact with them can spread the disease. ie, if you touch one directly, with no protection, you can get it. a ghoul that has been someplace will leave something behind; dandruff, dead skin, oil, etc. touching those things can presumably also spread the disease.

next we get to the mechanics of the whole thing.

you must score 8 hits on your disease resistance test to resist the effects of the virus on any given day. for the record, your disease resistance test is your body attribute. oh, but you also get to add 2 dice if you're a dwarf, and as was mentioned the cure disease spell can help... assuming you have a ludicrously good magician casting it on you, you might get as much as, say, 6 extra dice on your test. so let's assume it's a troll, with body 10, and our supermagician helping out for +6 dice. i'm not sure if the disease's penetration would apply against the spell, but let's assume not for the sake of argument it doesn't (if it does, then you don't get any dice until after 6 net hits on the spell).

so now you're rolling against a threshold of *8* with a dicepool of 16. and you'd better make it, because if you fail 10 of these tests before fully shaking it off, you're a ghoul. note that you absolutely *must* make 10 of these tests, minimum, and if you don't reduce the disease power to 0 on those first 10 tests, they add to the difficulty of the next test. now, 8 hits on 16 dice is by no means impossible, but it's not a very good chance, and that's with pretty near the absolute best case scenario barring cyberzombie trolls or 4th world magicians. and even one failure to resist completely gets you 1/10 ghoulified and lowers your chances of making the next one. if we choose a more plausible "average guy" with 3 body, no edge, and no magician to help out, well... let me tell you, the chances of getting 8 hits on 3 dice aren't looking very promising. note that even after those initial 10 tests, the disease merely stops adding the power of the previous failed attempt... so assuming you manage to make 2 or 3 of those first 10 tests (most likely the first 2 or 3, by spending edge), you still have to resist the remaining power (which has probably been steadily increasing by 2 or more points for the last several tests, and likely has a power of over 20 by now) until you have accumulated enough hits to completely reduce the power to 0.

so you combine all this information, and you get a disease that at best 1% of the population might have a moderately decent chance of not succumbing to in their first bout with it, and this disease can be spread by any contact with those infected.

oh, and i also forgot to mention above... if you get it again (from touching infected material again), your previous failures still count towards you turning into a ghoul. you don't get immunity to the disease, you get *more* vulnerable.

now, probably this wasn't *intended* to be an instant ghoulification for almost every single person on the face of the planet. but that's what it does.

It's a leap of logic to think that a magical virus behaves like a regular virus.

I'd think that, since mundane methods of prevention don't help, one can't apply mundane logic as to how it propagates.

Also, don't forget to put edge in those equations...


But, yeah, HMHVV-III is ridiculous.

Even if it's direct contact, it's still insane; even with even generous Edge. Just ignore the rules like everyone else.

oh, sure, we'll make it a lucky troll with 7 edge, too. so umm... what... we're looking at 23 exploding dice on the first 7 tests, with a threshold that starts at 8 and increases if you mess up. of course, this doesn't make it any more helpful for the guy with 3 body, no medical genius magician, and no edge, who is unfortunately much more common than the 10 body 7 edge troll with a caster buddy that can toss around force 6 spells and expect 6 net hits on them. and even then, it's a bit dicey for our lucky troll... a couple of bad rolls in a row could ruin his chances.

and it clearly states it's spread by contact with their fluids, which is essentially saying it does propagate using mundane logic.

I'm happy with the OP's suggestion. Honestly, something character-transforming is in the realm of GM-fiat at our table anyway.

Sounds like you want to compare e-peen sizes. Have you even read the stuff I produce here? I keep the best for myself.

Also, don't forget there's a plethora of ways to be totally IMMUNE to HMHVV.

A "supermage" gets 6 successes? I come out of the box being able to buy 6 on a bad day.

What about O-Cells? Rating 9 O-Cells will reduce the Ghoul Virus to -1 Power... you might get a sniffle, but nothing more.

Yes, 22,500 is a bit much to pay, but let's be honest, you reduce the power of EVERY disease by 9! Not too shabby.

Huh. Surprised I didn't notice that one. Good job.

an average mage is magic 3, and probably spellcasting 3. 18 dice to be able to expect 6 hits IS supermage. you're probably looking at magic 6 (pinnacle of metahuman achievement in magic before initiating), 7 skill (the pinnacle of metahuman skill period) 2 specialisation, 2 mentor, 2 power focus for 19 dice... not sure where you're pulling the other 5 dice out of (aid sorcery, perhaps?), but really, treating this sort of character like they're just another random mage is absurd. this is like saying that just because michael jordan is really good at basketball that therefore the local highschool basketball team in every town must consist primarily of players who are michael jordan's equal in playing basketball.

in fact, most magicians designed by a player are going to be supermage. this is because if you were no better than bob the regular wagemage, you wouldn't exactly be able to run against bob the regular wagemage who works security for the corporation and has access to far more resources than you can readily get your hands on. you'd probably fail something like 50% of the time, which means if bob can simply force you to oppose his passive defenses 3 times you're quite likely to fail at least once.

by definition, the 400 BP shadowrunning magician is not a standard magician. so who gives a crap if you can build a magician who can expect 24 dice on one specific spell category or whatever it is. that's really nice for your magician, who is in fact a rather remarkably powerful and skilled magician. it does absolutely dick all for mr/ms average who has a body of 3 and doesn't know any magicians with a dice pool of 24 for casting cure disease.

and remember, once this starts to infect that first 99% of the population, you're going to get exposed to it regularly. and if you ever fail more than 10 times total, ever, between all the times you are exposed to the disease and have to roll those minimum 10 times, you are a ghoul. the end. that's all.

does nothing. HMHVV-III is an awakened virus, which category is specifically mentioned as being not stopped by conventional methods, and is further explicitly noted as being not stopped by conventional methods right in the description. furthermore, even if it did apply, it would only add 3 dice, because HMHVV-III has a penetration value of 6 (which as i mentioned should probably be applied to the cure disease spell bonus since there are apparently no technological aids that can add to the value, so having a penetration value would otherwise be pointless)

Point taken. I can expect 19 dice on any Test, +2 for my spec, not including mentor, and if I need to I can get another 6 to any school for a total of 29 if I really need something dead. I think that firmly places me in the realm of Supermage.


You seem rather agressive.

That said, the average ghoul (since you like talking about averages) is feral and stupid. That means it isn't worried about spreading HMHVV. That also means he's an easy target.

As is pretty much every other PC mage, doesn't really help the 99.99% of the population that doesn't have a PC healing mage available to help them survive.

Nothing of the sort, I jst reacted to how you described Ghouls.

Just because they CAN be a stereotyphical slavering running zombie does not mean that they will happily scamper across open ground into your waiting gunsight. They might be primitive but there is nothing that says they do not hunt in packs and are cunning hunters.

Your post sounded like you regarded a lot of oppossition as just paper targets that you easily shoot at your leasure.

This I DO have to disagree with.

They are feral, that is they are no longer a sapient creature but more akin to a wild dog with a disease. There is nothing by RAW that says that they are completely without animal cunning and without pack mentality and hunting skills.

the average ghoul doesn't have to be worried about spreading HMHVV, that's the problem. you shoot one, and suddenly you need to send in a full biohazard team to sterilize. one of them grabs at you but your armor stops it, well, if you got any saliva on you or it screamed at you, you've got a problem.

it's not that the ghouls are out to spread HMHVV. it's that as written, HMHVV is so ridiculously virulent that it's nigh unbelievable that it *hasn't* infected everyone, given the stats for it.

simply making it injection vector is a huge difference. making it lower power is another huge difference. at least now, exceptional people might possibly shrug it off.

It's because compared to the game I "grew up" in, by comparison everything else is just a paper target.