Please help me make a Swarm Power

[Jed Clayton]

All right, so here is what I am trying to build in the Hero System:

 

I think one of the most intriguing and powerful images I recall from Francis Ford Coppola's Dracula movie (Bram Stoker's Dracula, 1992) was the one scene where Van Helsing and the other heroes were frantically chasing Dracula and he was coming down a corridor or something, and then when the heroes caught up with him, he dissolved into a swarm of rats. The characters just grabbed his cape and there was no body... Instead Dracula had turned into this swarm of little scary rodents. Besides that having a strong shock effect on the heroes (because no one expected it), it also meant that they couldn't catch him at that point because the rats were uncannily fast and you could never catch all of the rats in the swarm.

 

There is a similar thing in The Mummy, where the guy can basically turn into a swarm of insects, and later into a giant sandstorm.

 

I'd like to build a power like that for a villain. The villain should not be Dracula or the Mummy per se, but his main gimmick is that he can split and reassemble his body freely, and operate as a swarm of many tiny creatures--preferably locusts, mosquitos or even wasps.

 

For example: A hero tries to throw a punch at the guy and at first it will seem that he has connected, but he fails to do any actual damage because his body disassembles into thousands of small individual organisms. Some of those organisms can even land on the hand of the hero and try and bite him (several tiny painful insect bites). The same bad guy could also disassemble and thus be present in an entire area (an entire street, or several floors of a tall building, several houses of a village or fort, etc.), making it hard for even a skilled team of heroes to fight him directly. Every small insect unit should have a "hive mind" and thus get the character's core stats like INT, EGO, maybe DEX. The other stats wouldn't matter. Split into the tiny component beings, this character would not have his full STR, CON, BODY, and be limited to a few appropriate skills, an insect OCV and DCV. Each of the insects would also be very fast (high SPD, Flight Power?) and almost certainly be able to escape. Hitting and squashing an individual insect won't hurt the character much. You would have to burn, gas, drown, trample, suffocate or otherwise destroy at least 1/4 of the swarm. The other 3/4 of the swarm form would then swiftly reassemble into the base humanoid form and start recovering damage.

 

I was just wondering which Powers do that and how many points it costs.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Please help me make a Swarm Power

 

If you are trying to do this then you have to have a clear idea of what you want to do.

 

1 - damage avoidance (by turning into small creatures you become immune to damage or partially immune as the creatures can be attacked). I'd probably model this as damage reduction.

2 - ability to move in spaces that would otherwise be impossible? Shrinking does the trick.

3 - the biting back - I'd have a small NND damage shield to simulate the fact that if anyone puts their hand in it gets nibbled.

 

I would have KB resistance to counterbalance the shrinking and would scale the damage reduction against area effect attacks and I would have a bunch of STUN and BODY set aside beside my actual STUN and BODY (when in swarm form, that would take damage first and when it was gone the ability to swarm would be lost until it had fully healed).

 

I would link the powers so that they could not be used individually.

 

 

The rest is special effects....

 

 

Doc

[prestidigitator]

Re: Please help me make a Swarm Power

 

I'd normally do it as a form of Desolidification with Cannot Pass Through Solid Objects and usually area-affecting attacks that still harm the character (which might include some spread energy blasts in addition to Area of Effect attacks and the like).

 

You might want Affects Physical World (+2) on some of the character's Strength and/or an attack power or two.

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Please help me make a Swarm Power

 

If you are trying to do this then you have to have a clear idea of what you want to do.

 

1 - damage avoidance (by turning into small creatures you become immune to damage or partially immune as the creatures can be attacked). I'd probably model this as damage reduction.

2 - ability to move in spaces that would otherwise be impossible? Shrinking does the trick.

3 - the biting back - I'd have a small NND damage shield to simulate the fact that if anyone puts their hand in it gets nibbled.

 

Thank you very much for your reply. I appreciate it.

The "biting back" part is optional, it need not always happen. Damage Shield sounds like a usable thing, though.

 

What I'd have to add to the three main effects, i.e. Damage Reduction, Shrinking and Damage Shield, is an ability that expresses that the character can be present in several places at once (within a certain maximum distance, of course). Is that Duplication? I'll have to check that in the rulebook again.

 

It's not like he would create an exact duplicate of himself, but change between a solid human-like form and a swarm form: The swarm is not a collection of many equivalent forms.

 

I would have KB resistance to counterbalance the shrinking and would scale the damage reduction against area effect attacks and I would have a bunch of STUN and BODY set aside beside my actual STUN and BODY (when in swarm form, that would take damage first and when it was gone the ability to swarm would be lost until it had fully healed).

 

I see, that is a good idea. Buy extra STUN and BODY, then take the other powers with the Disadvantage "Stops working when X STUN and BODY has been depleted"?

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Please help me make a Swarm Power

 

I'd normally do it as a form of Desolidification with Cannot Pass Through Solid Objects and usually area-affecting attacks that still harm the character (which might include some spread energy blasts in addition to Area of Effect attacks and the like).

 

You might want Affects Physical World (+2) on some of the character's Strength and/or an attack power or two.

 

I just checked in my book. Yes, that would work very well.

 

I had not thought about Desolidification providing that kind of effect. The secret of Hero is just that all the nice goodies are already hidden somewhere in that big Powers chapter, but you have to know which powers and add-ons you have to combine to achieve your desired effect.

 

For the character I have in mind, I'm thinking of this:

Desolidification [40 Active Points], Does Not Protect Against Damage (-1), Cannot Pass Through Solid Objects (-1/2), Gestures (-1/4), Concentration (-1/4). Total cost: 13 points.

 

That would still be combined with something that automatically provides more STUN and BODY, and Damage Reduction, as suggested above.

 

The cost of the Desolidification power could be reduced even further, much to my surprise, and I'm thinking of using "Charges" (for -1) and something like "Limited Power: Does Not Work When It's Raining" (-1/4). Very nice.

[Fearghus]

Re: Please help me make a Swarm Power

 

I'd normally do it as a form of Desolidification with Cannot Pass Through Solid Objects and usually area-affecting attacks that still harm the character (which might include some spread energy blasts in addition to Area of Effect attacks and the like).

 

You might want Affects Physical World (+2) on some of the character's Strength and/or an attack power or two.

 

I agree. I created a villain similar to the demon that attacked Constantine in the movie that was essentially made out of bugs. He had it built as desolidification. It worked really well but giving him any kind of attack was ridiculously expensive because of the effects solid advantage I had to put on everything though.

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Please help me make a Swarm Power

 

I agree. I created a villain similar to the demon that attacked Constantine in the movie that was essentially made out of bugs. He had it built as desolidification. It worked really well but giving him any kind of attack was ridiculously expensive because of the effects solid advantage I had to put on everything though.

 

All right. Well, it looks like I'm well on my way now with this character using an odd version of Desolidification. Thanks again.

 

If this is only for a villainous NPC, I don't worry about "ridiculously expensive". Most of the published Champions villains I've looked at in some older books are expensive, too. They usually come with 3-digit amounts of Villain Bonus.

[Doc Democracy]

Re: Please help me make a Swarm Power

 

I'd normally do it as a form of Desolidification with Cannot Pass Through Solid Objects and usually area-affecting attacks that still harm the character (which might include some spread energy blasts in addition to Area of Effect attacks and the like).

 

You might want Affects Physical World (+2) on some of the character's Strength and/or an attack power or two.

 

 

This was my first thought as well but then you get the problem that anyone with an affect desolid advantage on their attack are also very effective against this character for no particular reason that makes sense (and in my campaign I have a couple of multipopwer freaks who always have an effect desolid slot...)

 

 

 

Doc

[Jed Clayton]

Re: Please help me make a Swarm Power

 

This was my first thought as well but then you get the problem that anyone with an affect desolid advantage on their attack are also very effective against this character for no particular reason that makes sense (and in my campaign I have a couple of multipower freaks who always have an effect desolid slot...)

 

 

Doc

 

True, Doc. That could cause a bit of a mess there.

However, currently my player-characters do not have the "Affects Desolid" advantage anywhere, so for the time being--and with no one else at the table having a lot of experience with the Hero System char-gen as far as Powers are concerned, I would be safe.

[prestidigitator]

Re: Please help me make a Swarm Power

 

This was my first thought as well but then you get the problem that anyone with an affect desolid advantage on their attack are also very effective against this character for no particular reason that makes sense (and in my campaign I have a couple of multipopwer freaks who always have an effect desolid slot...)

 

I sympathize, but I never let something like that get in my way. There are plenty of SFX of Desolidification that shouldn't be affected by all or even most SFX of Affects Desolidified. I don't take that as reason in and of itself to ignore the fact that Desolidification is the best way to simulate certain effects. This is similar to blanket Hardened or Power Defense. Deficiencies in the system, perhaps, or else builds that the GM should have insisted be more limited.