The Sangre Del Diablo tree from page 26, WAR! is a frightening idea. Not so much in practice though. Its Magical Guard power would make it formidable, except the fact it has no Counterspelling skill, and its Exotic Ranged Weapon (Sap) would be very intimidating if it were linked to an actual weapon (such as Energy Attack [Sap] or Natural Weapon [Sap]). So basically we're just left with a vaguely annoying tree that can Engulf you if you get too close.

The Del Drago trees suffer from the same problems also. It also has Exotic Ranged Weapon (Sap), but this seems counter-intuitive to it hiding, since its sap heals. Would the person who gets hit, after they panic a little, realise exactly which type of tree just sapped him/her?

It seems like more time was spent writing the Notes for these trees than actually reviewing the trees for plausability.

These Epileptic Trees have actually been around since Year of the Comet - I believe they received such prominence in War! because they'd been sorely underutilized in sourcebooks since YotC.

Frankly as for Rodents of Unusual Size.. i don't believe in them.

It's by far the most infuriating thing about War!

RUS's sound like something that should be fielded by the Amazonians. But you won't find stats for them in War!

We could make stats for them in War!...

Well, it sounds like they've been heavily modified in the interim (I certainly can't find anything that explains why they're called "epileptic" in YotC). That said, the way they work in SR3 is that they have a solid Willpower of 6, reducing the number of successes casters are likely to be getting on them, and their Magical Guard power gives them 8 points of Spell Defense. They did not have a ranged attack in YotC, instead using the Compulsion power to get victims to cozy up to the tree—since it's an Opposed Test of its 8 Essence against the target's Willpower, most characters (6 Willpower) will be at a disadvantage here. The Sludge Engulf causes 8M armor-bypassing damage, too, so once you're in you're probably dying in five turns.

~J

I use 'Epileptic Tree' as a joke - it's a TV Trope. I prefer it to saying 'Sangre del Diablo/Draco'.

Not only does War! spend way too much time with trees and way too little time wit, well, war, it also fails to remember what these trees were like. I wonder if Hardy even has access to pre-SR4-era SR books? BEcause he sure doesn't seem to have the grasp of the setting a Line Dev ought to have.

As for Rodents? There are critter design rules in RW.

DAMNIT! Disclaimer this crap! Just lost another hour of my life to that damned site. LOL

For ROUSs just take a Devil Rat, double it's size, double or triple it's stats, and there you go.

HAAAA HA HA HA HA HA HA HAAAAAAA

They have one

I know. You'd think I'd learn by now.

You too huh?

This site lifes off stolen lifetime.

Nothing personal at all meant, but I am getting so full of the shit that I have to do in game BECAUSE of War!. Never has a book caused me so much trouble as a GM.

I think I have heard someone say likewise for every other SR4 rulebook.

They do come out separated by time, so you could have heard someone say likewise for each one and still have each of them be right.

~J

Easy solution: Ban the book from your table?

He runs games which are required to be canon. That includes all of canon. This "solution" is not an option.

~J

Used to run. I'm stepping down on Thursday. I'm still keeping on with the game on Sunday, but War! is going to be the first book that we do ban from the table. Hell, it will contain the first rules and information that we ban. It's really an awesome feeling that I feel wonderful about...

Ah, I didn't realize he ran a strict canon table.

Though your point was made moot, thank you for at least bringing information I didn't know about previously. So much happens here that I don't keep up with threads that exceed 5 pages or so. (or that are as volatile as the war thread is presently... been yelled at for getting involved before, so I have to try not to these days).

We have a passionate crowd, that has never been questioned. When I first started posting here I got reamed a few times. Ok, more than a few times. hense my early sign up date and comparatively recent posting history. But you grow a skin as thick as a pile of rhinos and a superiority complex that rivals that of some dictators and eventually you get mentioned as a hater in The Champagne Room!

You have an early sign-up date? I don't have an early sign-up date!

~J

Ok, well, you win this one

Oh man. I also realized I now have more posts than Fortune.

I… I don't know how to deal with that. I'm going to go reexamine my life now.

~J

I've still got a member number lower than yours, if that helps.

Only one-eighth of your posts, though.




-k

Post count ain't everything.

You're listed as most posts in the forum...

More posts than ANYONE. Old man.

90 more posts and I make it to the first page. Better get cracking.

(On topic, I read too fast before and only now realized the title - "Blood of the Stupid". Lol.)

Nothing personal at all taken. You've seen the discussion I've been involved in.

This whole thread has made me realize DS has become greybeards and grognards all while comparing member number ePeens... sad really

Your just now realizing this?

You have to understand, this was a major part of how I was able to justify to myself that I'm not spending too much time on Dumpshock—"it's not a problem, Fortune has more posts than I do."

And now I can't do that anymore. It's the end of an era

Edit: and actually, you're the first person to bring up member number. The ePeens compared thus far have been join date and post count.

~J

I started posting here because of the greybeards and grognards...

I'm too much of a graymuzzle to even bother with ePeen comparisons anymore.
(And yes, my member number here is not terribly impressive, but that's here)

Edit: How many dragons have accounts? Big D is certainly an old fart at member #5! Though Lofywr got his snout in first at #4.

When *I* was young we had to Dodge and Defense pool both ways, uphill through snow! And we decked naked!

Ah damn, I think you just made my day.

Who doesn't?

/me looks above his post at KarmaIferno's post
/me rereads Kagetenshi's post

huh?

Adarael, I award this thread to you!

Member number and join date have a 1:1 correspondence. Given that member numbers are handed out incrementally: earlier join date -> lower member number.

To bring us back on topic (And my ePeen is bigger than your ePeen, as far as member number goes. So nyah! <grin>)

Yeah, the stats in War! for the Sangre Del Diablo were a bit... Lackluster. Since the tree hadn't made an appearance in SR4, and it was one of my favorite bits of creating, I redid the stats for the Dumpshock Datahaven #1. I did send those stats over to Mike Wich as a suggestion, dunno if he or Jason or whoever changed them. <shrug>

Here's he DDH write up:

(>)Since Dr. Shapiro apparently isn’t up on her parabotany and didn’t include any awakened plants in the Running Wild compilation that Jackpoint dropped on us recently, especially some of the nastier stuff out there, I’ll see about writing some up. I’ll start off with something familiar, that I first published to Shadowland a decade ago: the Sangre del Diablo.

The Sangre del Diablo was first discovered deep in the Yucatan rainforest during Aztlan’s war in 2061, during the Year of the Comet. No record exists of the tree before that time, so it’s believed that it Awakened due to the spike in the ambient mana level during that year. I was able to get a look at one first hand, and it’s a horrible creature. Even today, a decade later, I can still remember how irresistible its call was, how comforting it would have felt to touch the tree. *shudder*
(>) Wright

Sangre del Diablo
Croton Diabolus

Habitat: Rainforest and Jungles
Range: Amazonia, Central America, Madagascar, Africa
Frequency: Rare
Identification: This foul tree is an awakened form of the Sangre del Drago (Croton lechleri), or Blood of the Drago tree. The Sangre Del Dragon was a plant that has been considered for centuries to have natural healing properties in its dark red, blood-like sap. The Sangre del Diablo (Blood of the Devil), on the other hand, is a killer through and through.
Growing up to 40 meters in height, this enormous tree has a larger than normal trunk, with larger tree’s reaching 15 to 20 meters in diameter. The leaves are a very dark green, almost black, and streaked with red veins. Long vines covered in small black flowers hang down from its high branches. The bark and wood has a dark finish to it, a red so deep it’s almost black. The sap from the tree, like its cousin, is a bright red that resembles blood.
Habits: The Sangre del Drago is only found in Central and South America, and the Sangre del Diablo was first discovered there as well, but in recent years these trees have been sighted in Africa and Madagascar as well. In Amazonia, they are cut down as soon as they are found, by order of the government.
These trees don’t feed off Chlorophyll, as a normal plant does. Instead they have the ability to magically lure in living creatures. Their vines are flexible, and will wrap up and pull the victim to the trees bark, where it will then quickly engulf the victim. Then its sap slowly digests the hapless being, feeding the tree.
The wood of the tree is incredibly strong and resistant to both cutting and flames, and the tree has a natural resistance to magic.

(>) The wood from one of these is incredibly valuable. It’s prized for wooden furniture for its unique dark red color and rarity, and it’s reportedly a very potent exotic reagent for enchanting. If anyone’s interested in hunting one of these down, I know someone who pays well.

(>) Caleb

(>) I said it back then, and I’ll say it again. Support your local Deforestation Project today!

(>) Bull
“The Best Ork Decker You Never Met”

Sangre del Diablo

The Sangre del Diablo will use it’s compulsion power to lure in a victim. Once the victim is close enough, the tree will wrap him up in its vines (Treat this as an attack to Subdue if victim has resisted the compulsion) and draw him to its bark. The tree will then make an Engulf (Plant, unresisted if victim is still under the compulsion) and once he is unconscious, it will pull him partway into its trunk. It will then make a Corrosive Secretions attack once every hour, slowly dissolving its victim and absorbing the nutrients.
To free a victim, you have to do at least 9 boxes of physical damage to the trunk surrounding him. The tree will continue to make compulsion attacks each turn, plus has anywhere from 4 to 12 vines that it can attempt to entangle with.

B A R S C I L W EDG ESS M Init IP
16 5 5 14 5 5 2 6 3 6 8 10 1

Movement: N/A
Skills: Counterspelling 6, Perception 4, Unarmed Combat 6
Powers: Compulsion, Corrosive Secretions, Engulf (Plant), Immunity (Fire), Magical Guard

Other Notes: The wood from the Sangre del Diablo retains its toughness even after the creatures death. It is much stronger than normal wood, and is considered to be Structural Material for purposes of Barrier Rating (SR4A, p.166) and is considered to have Fire Resistance 6.
When harvested, the raw wood from the Sangre Del Diablo is worth 1,000¥ per cubic meter. It may also be used as an Exotic Reagent for purposes of enchanting.

I, um, sorta forgot about KarmaInferno.

Nothing to see here, move along.


Not really, insofar as there's a big lump of over two thousand people with the same join date (due to non-migration of earlier join dates).

Or rather, they correspond in the way you indicate, but it's not 1:1 (bijective); lower member number -/> earlier join date.

~J

Makes much more sense. I think I'll use those instead, and graft some of the Notes section from War! onto it (see what I did there?).

What about the Drago tree?

In YotC, there are only rumors of an Awakened version, and no stats or other information to indicate that the rumors are true.

Edit: just reread the first post. Man, they made them real? That makes me sad.

~J

The 2000 or so members who have the same join date is either from when we transitioned over from Deep Resonance to Dumpshock or from switching the board software over to IP.Board (The latter, I think). We just transferred over the member data base, so I *think*, more or less, that most of the member numbers are still in order. A lot of the really LOW numbers accounts are the original Deep Resonance Founders and a bunch of Shadowrun names that we created accounts for to "lock them out" (I'm not even 100% certain why we did that back then, honestly).

Kagetenshi: Which were rumors? The Diablo, or the "Healing tree"? I assume you mean the latter, since the Diablo got a whole write up in YotC (And the Diablo is an Awakened tree )

Basically, there is a real life tree today, called the Sangre Del Drago (Blood of the Dragon) that grows in the rainforests and jungles of South and Latin America. Natives of those areas have believed for centuries that the tree's sap has healing properties, and today the tree's sap is harvested by a couple pharmaceutical companies that extract certain enzymes for use in medications.

The Diablo is a twisted, evil, semi-toxic variant of that, created for Year of the Comet partly to fit in with some of the stuff going on with the Yucatan plot, with the idea of the very earth awakening to defend itself (in abstract, anyway), and partly because Mike Mulvihill wanted an "Evil, Sentient, Carnivorous Tree". I made it as tough as possible, and gave it the compulsion power to give it a way to be effective at range, since as a stationary plant it wouldn't normally really be that much of a threat. But in a dense jungle, you'd be within it's range before you were able to see it through the trees.

The Draco (Which, in my head, I'm translating as Blood of the Drake, since the mundane one is Dragon) is a somewhat natural further extrapolation of that idea, going back to the original plant and the myth surrounding it. I also like the idea that it's camouflaged by resembling the Diablo.

I'm slightly biased, obviously, but I don't really have a major problem with the general idea as presented in War! The idea of seeding basically a treeline of these is interesting, and would make for some good ground defense, especially if they're more or less spread out so that they overlap a bit. Stagger a couple lines of them, and ground forces would have to go through several of their compulsion fields to get through.

Of course, this should only be one part of a larger strategy, obviously. Even a massive treeline with hundreds of these things aren't going to be able to stop everything, and they're still trees at the end of the day, so they can be dealt with safely.

Now, as to why the Amazonians would be unhappy about this? These trees are bad mojo. They're effectively a toxic plant life. Miles of these plants would completely destroy the biosphere around them, as they killed and devoured all animal life that came through there. This is not a long term sustainable idea, because eventually the trees themselves would starve. These are not trees that naturally grow in groups.

In my head, they reproduce naturally by growing flowers only at the very top of their branches, so that when they spawn seeds, the wind carries the seeds away from the current tree. They also do not produce that many seeds, and the conditions have to be right for them to naturally take root. (I worked up a lot of this stuff for YotC, but when you only have a few hundred words to work with, you need to keep it to the point).

<shrug>

Bull

Wouldn't the awakened tree population semi-follow the same rules as the awakened creature rules? That is, that even a perfect clone might not be awakened.

No. They're trees. Carnivorous trees, yes, but no more evil than flytraps. Amazonia loves trees. Amazonia loves trees more than people. Amazonia probably would have planted the trees on its border itself, just to keep the Azzies out. And whoever screwed up the stats in War! needs to be walloped. Your "evil trees" shoot sap at you.

Besides they're a row of Evil Trees that don't reproduce well in the middle of a mountain range. Who cares?
They're gonna die out within a couple of years anyways.

Besides, I'm Amazonia. I've got Mages with Plant Spirits, and I have Adepts with "Talk to Plants" powers.

Am I really scared of Sentient Giant Fly Traps?

Last time I checked they also like nature in general and something that could wipe out the biosphere around them is seriously bad. Any conservationist worth his/her salt would have these things destroyed or at least severely limited in numbers. Anyone else is just an eco radical who can't tell the difference between what's balanced with nature and what isn't.

EDIT: it's not about being scared, it's about what it would do the surrounding environment. That is a lot of needless destruction.

Yeah, but it's a lot of needless destruction in the mountains.

And they /have/ been funding some eco terrorists without brains.

I would think that Amazonia could deal with those things without resorting to a War.