Utgardloki said:
I was watching Highlander today, and thinking, "How would I implement one of those "highlander" immortals in Runequest?
The big problem is figuring out how high an immortal character could improve his skill level. The "highlanders" are even worse, since when one of them kills another, he gains all of his foe's experience.
I did some calculations, and concluded that a 400 year old "highlander" could very easily have a Sword ability at 720% or even higher, much much higher. With a 72% chance of getting a critical hit, I ought to make up rules for Ultra-Criticals.
Well, the first things is to work out what is different about certain character types and then work out how that affects them in a RQ environment.
With the Immortals from the Highlander films/series, they have certain abilities:
1. They are immortal and do not age after they have initially been killed
2. They have to be dealt a fatal blow in order to become immortal
3. They can sense other Immortals
4. They can only be killed by being beheaded
5. If an Immortal beheads another Immortal then he gains their powers, memories and some of their skills
Other people might think of other abilities, of course.
How to handle these in RQ?
1. Immortals do not naturally die, are immune to disease and poison and do not age.
2. An immortal who is dealt a fatal blow doesn't die and realises he is different.
3. They get a Sense Immortal skill that allows them to sense if another Immortal is nearby. It will only work with similar Immortals, so wouldn't trigger if a vampire came acalling.
4. Non-beheading blows are not fatal. Other locations hit regenerate at a rate depending on how powerful the immortal is.
5. Beheading another Immortal allows them to take some of the POW, memories and abilities of the killed immortal. Perhaps they get 1/10th POW and weapon skills.
Utgardloki said:
Fortunately for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Vampires are a lot easier to handle with my theories, since they don't acquire the experience of their defeated foes, and they spend so much time whining that they don't raise their skills as rapidly in any event. A 400 year old vampire would be more likely to have a combat ability at around 120%.
Vampires are tricky as RQ/Gloranthan vampires are not the same as vampires in Buffy or The Vampire Chronicles.
Generally, non-Gloranthan Vampires have some of the special abilities:
1. They are undead and are immortal
2. They are super-strong, super-fast and super-hard-to-kill (cut head off, stake through the heart, burn to death)
3. They do not have reflections or shadows
4. They can turn into bats or wolves
5. They must drink blood to survive
6. They cannot enter a building without having previously been invited in
7. Sunlight burns them
8. They don't like the Crucifix
9. They get more powerful as they get older.
So, in RQ terms:
1. They do not age and are immune to diseases and poisons
2. STRx2, CONx2, Vampiric Hit Locations (doubled HPs in each location), turn to smoke if smashed in a non-vital (head/chest), take double damage from fire/can't regenerate from fire, they regenerate damage doen to them at 1 point per round/minute/hour/whatever etc
3. Cosmetic effects
4. Shapechanging ability
5. As RQ3 (must drink HPs, gives them Fatugue Points - HPs in RQM - but lose 1D6 MPs and their MPs in fatigue points - HPs in RQM - each day.
6. Cosmetic effect
7. They take 1D6 non-regenerable damage per round of exposure to any hit location exposed to sunlight, armour does not protect
8. Crucifixes cause them to shy away and damages them on contact - they take 1D6 damage if hit by a crucifix
9. Some vampire types need a measure of how powerful they are as Vampires, some abilities become more powerul as they become more powerful. Perhaps a VAM characteristic that can be increased, skills limited to VAMx5%, regenerates VAM/10 HPs per round and so on.
Utgardloki said:
My theory is that a character's experience increases by the square root of his age, so if character A is four times as old as character B, she has twice as much experience. For a human-level intellect, advancement slows down to 1/3 after reaching 100% skill level, and I am judging that a motivated human can reach approximately 100% skill level over a 50 year career. (Most don't, but I can assume that vampires and highlanders are motivated.)
It shouldn't necessarily depend on age. It might depend on power/innate ability.
For instance, Lestat, in the Vampire Chronicles, is a very powerful vampire not because he is very old but because he drank the blood of an incredibly ancient vampire. The ancient vampires are skilled in some respects but are not super-skilled. They do have very strong vampiric powers, though. So, Vampires should top out at a certain point, but that point should increase with age/power.
There was a TV series called Werewolf back in the eighties that had a character who was a tramp and an old werewolf (he lived in America "before the Ice went") he was a powerful werewolf but didn;t have any other skills.
Utgardloki said:
Vampires are only active for half the day, and spend a lot of time whining, so they only advance 1/3 as rapidly as a "normal" immortal. A 400 year old vampire has lived for 8 times as long as the benchmark 50 year career, so he's gained 2.828 times the experience. Subtracting 1 and then multiplying by 100 to represent the first "time" was used to gain 100%, he's got 182.8 more "points" which are divided by 3 because he's advancing only 1/3 as rapidly after reaching 100. That's about 60.9, but I divide by 3 again because vampires advance 1/3 as rapidly as other immortals, so he has 20 points over 100 or about 120%.
An individual may vary considerably from the average, of course.
I've got my own views on how vampires work, but generally not all vampires are interested in building up skills. Many vampires don't have the time or motivation for training/experience, they are just trying to survive. The ones that do are interested in building up useful skills, so they will be linguists, musicians, artists and diplomats rather than soldiers. After all, you don't get to be 400 years old by continually fighting. So, vampires will have a lot of non-combat skills. They might also have good magical skills, if they are magicians.
Utgardloki said:
A 400 year old highlander will, on the average, work his skill up to 160% by his own experience. But a highlander can also gain the experience of his defeated enemies. I assume that if a highlander defeats a more skilled highlander (which is probably not likely), he gains the higher skill, plus the benefit of where he's learned things his foe has not. If he defeats a less skilled highlander (which happens more often), he's already learned most of what his opponent learned, but there may be a few tricks and techniques that are new to him. So I'll assume a highlander will be able to add 1/5 the lower score to the higher score, and that will be his new skill level. Thus if a highlander with 160% defeats another highlander with 160%, he will gain 32 points, and be at 192% after the battle.
I just guessed that the average highlander will have to defeat 2d6-2 highlanders every 100 years, or an average of 5. Good highlanders probably don't get into as many fights, so maybe they average 1d6-1 victories, while evil highlanders average 3d6-3. Just arbitrarily, I assume the average highlander gains 20 points after a battle. So a 400 year old evil highlander will have defeated 28 enemies and gained 20 points from each, for a total of 560 points, plus the 160 points he earned from his own experience. His total sword ability is something like 720%.
Well, if you like combat-skilled characters then yes, those figures are OK. I would give each character a limit to their skills that meant that skills over that limit were hard to increase. Most of their training time is spent maintaining their current skill, for instance.
Utgardloki said:
Has anybody else considered how to determine the abilities of ancient characters? Do my numbers seem reasonable or way off base? I'm open to any feedback or considerations.
As to other immortals, it depends on the game setting and powers of those immortals. Generally, though, I would put a limit on how high their skills can go and increase that limit by age. So, older immortals would be more skillful, but this is because they are more experienced immortals.
Hope that helps.