The Campaign Builder's Guild

Thanks Beejazz, but I meant to say "Coup/drawback ideas for Gun  monsters". Sorry about that. But still, having a special Famine-monster digestive related attack is good. It would need a drawback of some sort, like having the vomit attack would rot out all your teeth or something.

Coup aren't always attacks or combat related. One player killed a giant fat famine monster, and now he can go for weeks without eating; when he does eventually eat, however, he gorges himself and bloats up to superfat for a few days. Another player killed an animated, humanoid, metal beast; which formed suddenly from debris in a ruined city (mainly an old shell of a car) when the players walked by. He gained a large bonus to hiding in urban areas.

Gun monster special absorbed power Coup/Drawback...

Auto-proficiecy...
"Natural" weapon guns.
Alternately, a special defense against gun attacks.

Interesting!

I'm not about to let my players automatically know how to use any gun they pick up; what else are they going to dump their hard earned bounty into? But maybe, just maybe, I'll lessen the severity of the "untrained" penalty, maybe by half.

I could just have a gun grow out of the PC. That would be alot of fun. I'd have to make it kind of slow, like a cancer, then one day the character starts getting firing mechanisms in funny places, start thinking about girl guns, and then suddenly a big gun barrel comes sticking out of his palm.
"Does it hurt when that pops out?"
"Everytime..."

Special defense indeed. But what... something odd or strange. Maybe an inherit armor value...

Do you smell that? I love the smell of forum posts in the morning. That's the smell of progess.

So here's the coup I think I'm gonna settle on. The character can declare at any time he's adding any number to his next shooting damage roll. This number is then added to three to determine his TN for a Spirit attribute check to resist the urge to start blasting everything in sight; including (sometimes as a priority!) his friends. The bonus to damage remains while "Overkill" is going postal, which lasts 1d4 rounds, plus whatever bonus he chose. Whether it's demonic manitous, gun spirits, or just the heros own tainted soul, he flips out every now and then and kills something he shouldnt have.

What do you guys think? TN to high or too low for the spirit check? Most characters have a spirit attribute of about 3d6; it's kind of a "trash stat" for non-spellcasters. How about the duration of the madness? Too short, too long?

What do they roll to make the spirit check (say it was 3 + their chosen 5 = 8). Make it hard of ourse, you don't want every kill to be a friend-blasting extravaganza. Also I would go shorter length for the same reason, PC's might get frustrated if it happens too often but a few times is cool.

Quote from: So-KeherWhat do they roll to make the spirit check (say it was 3 + their chosen 5 = 8). Make it hard of ourse, you don't want every kill to be a friend-blasting extravaganza. Also I would go shorter length for the same reason, PC's might get frustrated if it happens too often but a few times is cool.

Thanks for the input! There's nothing worse than a ghost-town thread with an undiscussed issue.

I certainly don't want it to happen all the time, but control of the frequency of this problem is really in the hands of the player. He can use or abuse the power as much as he likes. Say he chose to do two extra points of damage. His spirit TN would be 5; reasonable, as the game considers this to be the baseline "fair chance" target number (kind of like 15 in D20); you can easily succeed if you've developed that area/skill at all. If he did actually fail, for two rounds (anywhere between two and eight actions total), he's going to be blasting his friends. Deadlands is the kind of game where the players are often tempted into an evil situation.

Now mind you, the posse has tackled things much worse than each other, and they've only persevered through teamwork. So the real handicap isn't so much that their buddy is shooting at them, so much as their buddy is no longer shooting at the bad guys.

Let's consider the player's feeling lucky, and decides to add six to his damage. This makes his TN pretty damn hard for an average Spirit roll. He can expend a poker chip to add to his roll and increase chances of sucess, but those chips are valuable. If he does fail, he's going to be blasting at his buddies for six fraggin' rounds (anywhere from six to twenty-four actions!). He's likely to run out of ammo before he's done! That is damn harsh. Maybe half the amount he chose shall be the duration of his madness... four rounds for such a gamble is fair I'd say, while still giving me something to work with if he only chooses to add two or four.

The way I see this going down is the player will use the power often and choose a conservative  bonus like +1 or +2, and usually pass the roll. Occasionally he will botch it, look really surprised, curse a bit, and either save his ass with chips or let me kill something. Sounds about right, doesn't it?

It's shaping up allright, but I'm still open to suggestions.