Has anyone attempted to ST a Child nova? I'm working on a character who erupted at 5 (and a few weeks later nearly killed his parents, but that's another story...).

The biggest problem I'm finding, is that while his ability (Mainly Water Elemental Anima) allows him considerable power, there doesn't seem to be much information in the books I can find about how to manifest the following:

1) As a child, the character would be highly manipulable.

2) As a child, he'd not have any particular skills in anything. His intelligence and strength would be particularly low too.

Any help would be most appreciated (for anyone's information, I'll likely not even play the character meself, I much prefer making characters as opposed to playing them)

Well, I haven't had to ST such a character yet, but I will soon have an NPC like that in the game. a character has given birth to a 2nd gen nova, actually fraternal twins. Their powers should develop fairly quickly.

As for the limited stats and so forth, start the character with less dots to build it. probably cut the stat dots by 1/3, and ability dots by 1/2. Make base Will 2, or even 1 if you'd like (to make him more manipulable). Also set a max of 3 for stats and 2 for abilities. That should handle most of your problems.

Thanks a lot. I didn't expect such a speedy reply.

Most of that makes sense. I'll try it and get a friend to playtest it.

Follow WildCards lead, but add this. Scope out the progression of his powers with the player (what he will be working on) and modify the cost for his powers to compensate for his lack of starting abilities. Or, to simulate the strength of second generation novas. Figure a 2/3 ratio for the nova point or exp. point curve (for every three effective points he gives up in stats and skills, give him two in powers). Or, you could give him extra xps each session to use just for powers. The best thing is to make the most of the roleplaying experience. It should be great. Hilarious, tragic, happy and sad. That's why we play the game.

Stat-wise I don't see a need to reduce points given, perhaps restrict their placing though? Depends on the age of the child too. We actually played a game with an 11 year old character. Strenght was low but dex and sta could be high. (Kids are made of rubber don't you know?) Manipulation, charisma and appearance could be as high as an adults. The same could be said of mental stats, especially after eruption.

Skills would be lower at the start but give an xp break on them and they should shoot up to normal pretty quick.

Roleplaying children in a Nova group can be very hard. In our group the child nova was adopted by another member of the group. Funnily enough the history was nearly identical to that of the Nova described in the first posting...parents died in fire, had elemental anima powers. How the heck do you get a water manipulator to have a bath when they don't want to...and no Mox is not the answer.

Social stigma for the stinky one? Remember, intellectual maturity does not equal emotional maturity, so be careful thinking this is just a small adult. If anything, this kid is going to suffer from severe islolation growing up and the team needs to understand it. Be parents first and friends later. It sucks, but its the way it is. Take it from a former child nova.

Well, finally getting my rule book back, I've managed to get the character on paper. I'll put just the stats and skills down here (as a possible guide for those wanting to try out a child character).

NOTE: I practically ignored the skill quota, (considering most of the skills require some form of training, and a kid ain't going to get that) and tried to figure a formula for stat placement. I think I have it about right.

Damian Chase:
Willpower 2

Strength 1
Dexterity 3
Athletics 1
Legerdemain 1 (Always taking things without anyone noticing...)
Stealth 2 Sneak (Well, you did when you were a kid, didn't you?)
Stamina 2
Endurance 3
Resistance 3

Perception 2
Awareness 1 (They do tend to see things adults don't)
Intelligence 1
Wits 2
Rapport 2 Emotional State (Like the Awareness)

Appearance 3 (Oh, he's so cute!)
Manipulation 2 (To be honest, I wondered whether it should be 1 in line with his Willpower, or two on the account of temper tantrums)
Charisma 2
Perform 1 Impersonation (Maybe not, but certainly a kids perform a bit better than adults)

For those that haven't figured it out yet, I tried the stat ratio at 5/4/3 (it did work, with few problems)

Comments please. Remember, any skills you think should be added can.

Argh! Wrong Stat ratio. It was actually 4/3/2, not 5/4/3. My bad, didn't check properly

You should include a skill for computer game playing...little sods never seem to leave the screen these days :-)

How about a skill for embarressing adults in public..."but you told Mr Leviathan that Cestus Pax looked stupid in that wig"

Sorry, just can't help myself. I think the Mage:The Ascension players guide gives a nice set of rules on child mages which could be applied to Novas.

Well, he's supposed to be an athletic little kid (plus, the idea is that he's at large in the world, and enjoying the whole freedom bit).

The Embarrasing to adult thing would go under the Awareness (possibly an Embarrasing Mega-Attribute could work? nah)

Hey, guys. Roleplay it. There is no need for an extra skill or stat. If anything, assign an extra difficulty to resisting his 'charms', or ease up on his difficulty in seeing through others. Kids can be dangerously simple that way. We are hardwired to respond to them. It's in our genes.

Well, you got a few good points, but to be honest, I was only really being semi-serious there (I have severe difficulties with smilies, as a result, noone gets my jokes on the internet)

When/If I ever play this character, I'm going to have a lot of fun...

That is why we do this. To have fun and go places and do things we can't or won't. By and large, a pretty good hobby.

And to be honest, I don't know why I didn't start earlier...

I couldn't have started much earlier...I think I was about 12-14 or so. I met a guy in his late thirties in a game store in Boston a few weeks ago (I was over visiting a friend) who had started RPGs recently as a way of de-stressing. I am wondering how other people stumbled on the the hobby? Myself I heard about RPGS from a guy in school, read some Fighting Fantasy books, borrowed the D&D rules to read and here I am. I GMed my first game after about 3 sessions of D&D. The first game I ran was Dragon Warriors a now defunct fantasy game which was published in a series of six paperbacks. Now over a decade later I have played a huge variety of games and have spent far too much money on this hobby...but I wouldn't give it up for the world.

Well, I started about 2 months ago (only very recently bought the paperback Aberrant rulebook), it was one of my friends that got me interested in RPGs (although, he was more interested in Trinity than Aberrant). I'm just amazed that RPGing could be this fun (especially making up characters and stuff)

Well you are in the right country for Trinity...home of the Legions and all that. OK, so they hang out in Sidney, you can forgive them for that :-)

TWO MONTHS!!! Crykie, but your a young-un. I have been at it twenty-one years and still going. Met my first girlfriend gaming and ended up meeting my wife through gaming. When my first kid gets here in July, I will wean her on D&D and have her playing Aberrant by the time she can walk (not really, my wife would kill me). Man, now I am all misty-eyed over the old days and missing basic D&D and DragonQuest. Have fun and remember, it beats going out and getting wasted and ending up as roadkill. At least that is what I always told my mom.

To be honest, I think my mum's glad I'm getting into RPGing. As soon as I find a group in Melbourne who's willing to play with me (or, just a group of people willing to play period), I'll actually have something to do during the week (something that hasn't happenned for a while...)

Ah, Legions, who needs 'em? Not when you can be an Orgotek boy and shock your opponents from the inside out

I've been at it for about 12 years...sheesh thats a long time. OK, nothing near 21 but still don't time fly? Keep it up Kirby, its a great hobby. Also, as it turns out its the golf of the IT industry, in Ireland anyway.

Orgotek rock. I have a particular fondness for the "new prometheus" alternate technique.

New Prometheus technique? Now I am interested (though, this is probably more appropriate for the Trinity board)

Ditto. What's up with the "new Prometheus"? Has Orgotech found a way to trump the Dyon?

Not what you might be expecting. Its mentioned in Aurora Australis. The new prometheus is a reference to Mary Shellys novel; "Frankenstien".

It allows the Psion to animate a recently dead body using bioelectricity...handy for setting off booby-traps and frightening the bejesus out of enemies. (Need the appropriate Electrokinesis Aptitude at 5...I think its called bioelectric manipulation or something?)

Riiight.

And I think it's Electromanipulation.

And hey, does anyone else find it strange that Electrokinesis doesn't have a specific mode for controlling electrical energy outside of the body? They have Electromanipulation, for internal body electricity, Photokinesis, for light, and Technokinesis for computers. I just found it really strange that they don't seem to be able to control Electricity outside the body!

It could be that the voltage (or is it amphs) is too high for sub-quantum particles to manipulate. At least that is a sound gaming reason why. Maybe they didn't want lightning throwing Orgetech boys and girls outshining the Legion?

Keep in mind that once the child erupts, the sky is the limits. There is no reason a child couldn't be a brick (Rage anyone?), or as frail mentally and physically as humanly possible.

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The Eleventh Wonder of the World.

Hype, Sacrelige, Uniforms...

Kane, could you please explain your last post for me? I missed something.

I think he's talking about the original topic of the thread...child Novas. And on that topic how about taint ridden child novas? Think about that kid from Earth X who could control anyones mind...megalomaniac anyone? How about a kid that erupts while playing with mud, gaining permenent bodymorph: Mud?

It also gets into the responsibilities of the parents. What if the kid remains emotionally the same, but becomes a nova? He/she becomes incredibly dangerous to both themselves and everyone around them. Public schooling is probably out of the question, specially if the child is tainted in some visible fashion. It gets worse if it is a mental aberration, but the parents might not catch on to it right away. What would the Teragen reaction be to "baselines" raising a nova child? Would they 'allow' it, or would Nova Vigilance intervene? Could parents legally abandon their child to the care of the state? Would a nation take the child away from the parents? This is far from a dead issue. Thanks Ranger/Kane for opening up the floodgates of possibility.

In the design of the Child nova I was making, It was actually a full 6 weeks before anyone really realised that the kid was a nova. When the parents found out, they figured that there was no way they were going to be able to raise the kid on their own, so they were going to send the kid to the nearest Rashoud Facility, and then move near the facility so they could stay with the kid. But of course, the kid heard them making the plans, thought that they were "sending me away", got into a temper tantrum, and promptly burst every pipe within 100m.

At that point, I figured it'd be easier to make plot hooks if the parents survived, so I put them in comas. I had the kid run (well, swim) away in the nearby river, never to be seen again (until the next story starts, therefore giving the prospective player an easy way into practically any story.)

I had designed the character to be usable by people who can't be at a RPG game every week. I had a built in escape clause that if the player can't play, the character would simply slip into a pipe or something and once again, you'd not see him again. However, it'd be easy to have such a character stay on full-time, and you could even have a scenario where the character's parents were threatened (or, when the kid figures out exactly what he's done to his parents)

I never really though about designing an NPC specifically for guest players to use. Good idea. We did have a floating PC in a Star Wars game I ran. The character started as a Curious Explorer from a primitive culture but ended up being called the Curious Target as every time a battle started the CT would be hit and invariabley be knocked out.

Oh, that's cold! Curious Target. Man, I can't stop from laughing. Okay. It is an interesting idea of how to handle quest players or people who can't make every session. As for the baby swimming through the pipes, >shudder< that reminds me of the Aberrant game I was in, but not nearly as pleasant. It was far darker and disturbing. Let's just say the GM really got to all of us with this one.

Evil, taint-ridden babies in the toilet bowl? Remind me of senator kelly in X-Men. Also of a Rote in Mage called "blindside"...

I had to think about how to reply to this one, a bit. It seems that the baby erupted when it was being aborted. It killed the doctor and scarred the nurse before fleeing down the pipes. When we ran across it, it had been around for a few years. It was a large (~200 cubic feet) mass of bloody fluid with the "child" suspended in the middle. The mass of fluid had a cell-like membrane and it had a porclein mask that it used for a face. It could seep through cracks with the fluid (that's how it got into places)as well as bludgeon people with it. It hid out in stack farms (imagine a pig stye ten stories tall were all they do is raise pigs). We traced it by DNA evidence at the scene of a rape/murder (the bloody fluid was its embyotic sack) and by fecal matter. This was an horrific run for all the players as well as the characters. It led us down a whole bunch of dark, depressing paths. We never caught the creature. It is still difficult to talk about this. Great job of game-mastering.

Sounds harrowing to say the lest. Would probibly make a good storyline for the SLA Industries game.

Jager, that is seriously creepy and reminds me of a Vampire game I played in. The story was based around stopping a chtulian (I hate trying to spell this damn word) god named Ebon from entering our world. In the climax it took a beat-up old chevy smashing through the ritual alter to close the partially open gateway. Unfortuanately the Setite of the group (we thought she was Brujah) was touched by one of the tentilces oozing through the dimensional opening. 3 game months later, during a particularly important Camarilla this hideous, wet, ripping noise fills the room, and where there was once a mildly attractive Setite there now stood a full grown scaly-slimy....Thing. Needless to say, we all went running for the hills at that point.

Without a doubt, that game master does horror really well. Even his non-horror games can get eerie at times.