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I've been working on a detailed backstory for my character based on the three questions. I'll update the profile with it eventually, but I'm having trouble deciding on what her normal age should be. Because of her own pile of anxieties, I'd like her to be the oldest biological female in the group, but I don't want to make her too much older than high school aged.
As her spider limbs go on autopilot, Drider takes another glance around the room from her slouched position on the floor. She notes one book, then another, then more. Slowly she stands up, absently tucking the stress induced silk weave into her belt. She glances along the shelves, the top right appendage tracing a line through the air, noting the height of where the slashes would be made roughly in her mind. "Hey, the police probably thought of this, too, but," She starts before looking over to Snapdragon, "You think the mess is a red herring? Maybe there wasn't a kidnapping at all?"
Kala rests the head of her hammer on the ground as the man speaks, keeping it available, but nonthreatening. She glances at the rubble the man indicates and hefts her weapon to secure it on her back before moving forward to start toss the stones aside.
Drider curses under her breath as she hits the floor, her chitinous body ignoring the glass shards. She pushes herself up into a sitting position against the wall, angrily tearing the bits of wall off the end of her limbs and tossing them aside. Freed of debris, the bottom pair instantly begin weaving as she hugs her human legs to her chest and rests her chin on her knees.
Drider quickly skitters across the outside of the building and slips through the window after the others just in time for the light to come on after her. Remembering that Janice didn't want them messing with anything, she clings to the wall with her spider limbs, keeping herself a few inches above the floor. Glancing over the wrecked room, she furrows her brow in confusion and asks, "Is it normal for an abduction scene to look this trashed and not have any traces of blood in it? You said there wasn't any sign the girl was hurt, right?" The arachnoid legs carry her along the wall, careful to avoid knocking anything over as she glances into the other rooms, curious if the chaos extended into any of them.
Looks like Drider will be taking a few hours longer to get herself looking unassuming than expected, her tailoring and disguise rolls were pretty terrible.
With Snapdragon's insistence on going to the crime scene to help keep it preserved during the search, and Pixie going with her, Drider thought it ultimately better to accompany Mud to keep a buddy system. Before setting out, she has Mud give her a crash course on streetwise, so she can be of more help, and bundles up with her tailored disguise to keep from being outed casually.
"Things never seemed this complicated in the TV shows," Drider mutters, mostly to herself.
I have a rather kick ass stealth, nothing close to Pixie's, but 15 or less is admirable. I also have conversation, though prolongs interactions with 'normal' people is the exact opposite of what Drider would like to do, given her state.
Drider falls silent at Mud's deduction, realizing she should have considered the chance G-Ray may have been unable to mitigate the consequences. "I still think the abductions should be our most immediate concern. If we have any ideas on how we can predict the next attack on the second case, then that one next..."
Drider decides to contribute as the others start discussing their thoughts for disguises. "I've been working on a few things to help with that," she says, standing up and wrapping her spider limbs about her waist before slipping on the trench coat-like silk garment she was working on. "I'll need some sunglasses to hide my eyes, but with enough preparation time, I should be able to at least pass for human." "If we're going to choose one over the other, I'm more worried about the abduction than the gangster," Drider puts in her vote, "It sounds like that G-Ray guy wasn't obviously in danger. He was probably hired as super muscle."
Drider wipes her eyes with the silk and raises her head to give Mud a weary smile. "They're in check, for the most part," She says, "Thanks for the offer. If we're going to do what we're meant to here, it'll help to keep ourselves in practice." She glances at the wall behind her, at one of her sketches. "You're relatively amorphous, right?" She asks, "Would getting measurements be worthless if I were going to make you something?"
"I'm not sure there will ever be enough time," Drider admits. "It's been about eight months since I turned into this." She pauses in her sewing, staring at the chitinous armor covering her hands. "From what I can tell, there was no trigger. I was hospitalized with severe pain for a few days, but the doctors sent me home when we thought the pain was managed. I woke up the next morning to... this tearing its way out of me..." She falls silent, a desperate grip on the silken garment in her hands, and her body shaking. "I was in a panic," she muttered. "I couldn't control them," she added, her voice growing quiet and uneven. "I didn't mean to..." She whimpered, barely a whisper as she curled up and hid her face with the silk garment.
"The only dreams I have now are nightmares," She replies, thoughts of her injured father flashing through her mind. She takes a moment to examine her room, bolts of silk lay in a neat pile in one corner, while partially completed outfits hung in another. Then, she glanced at the sharp spider limbs, the bottom right currently providing her thread. "Have to? No. It's just the only good thing to come from my transformation, and working eases my mind. It's far more refreshing than sleeping is now, at least...."
Drider looks up from her sewing at the knock. Hearing Mud's voice she returns her attention to the silk cloth in her hands. "Not since changing," She replies, "The door's unlocked."
Drider focuses most of her attention on sewing curtains throughout the month, or as long as she could. Mud would quickly notice the light in the Attic, Drider's room, would almost always be on as the spider mutant toiled seemingly from dusk to dawn. As needed, she'd help with wiring, painting, or lifting tasks well out of reach, scolding Pixie any time she found the mischievous messages. Unlike the social Mud, she remained mostly silent at house gatherings, concentrating on eating while the lower pair of spider limbs would weave her silk beneath the table. Anyone visiting her room would find various sketches of outfits stuck to the wall, some seemingly for the others, many for herself. In her long nights of work, she'd started on a few of the designs, white silk garments hanging on web lines and bolts of silk cloth waiting for Drider to get her hands on dyes to add color.
"Wait, there are just ships locked in the swamp?" Drider asks, distracted from the list of tasks to do. She glances about quickly, not really expecting to see one of the said ship so close by. "Whatever, if you need curtains, I actually have a stockpile of silk bolts I've been working on. I should be able to fashion some curtains with some time to sew." She nods towards a silk wrapped bundle she'd nearly forgotten about, thanks to the duplicators shenanigans.
"Ugh, this is going to get annoying," Drider mutters to herself at the thought of multiples. She gives the second to last copy a curious look before blinking and leaning to look through the window at the strange, alien title. "Couldn't just stick with the Roman?"
Drider blinks at the woman's energetic request. Before she can give a reply, however, their "host" dashes off, only to make yet another request. By the time the woman mentions "spidery type people" Drider is rather low on patience. The second demand for power cords sets her off. "Give me a chance to get to it first!" She snaps, moving over to snatch two of the cords before leaping onto the side of the building to start her climb. She throws the first cord through the window angrily before hopping back down to the first floor, landing on her spider legs and chucking the second cord through the necessary window.
Away we go then? I totally didn't just forget to check the discussion thread. <.<
Drider gives a grimace. "Finding a place is going to suck..." She sighs, "But I guess we'll manage?"
Drider grimaces slightly at the mention of medical bills, the soft clacking of her toiling claws pausing for a moment. She wills them to continue before speaking up, "Do you have a base in mind? For us? Or do we need to find one ourselves?"
Drider can make clothing and sell it over the interwebz!
Drider sits quietly at the small meeting, distractedly staring at her chitinous palm as her lower pair of spider limbs toil away to create a small sheet of silk. At Janice's question, the news Shadowcat had shared with her during her recruitment popped back into her head. "They wouldn't be logged as paranormal, though..." She looks up to Grid and Bolt. "Would they? People are trying to cover all this up. Getting to those files wouldn't be a simple matter of asking, right?"
If we go with the synthetic spider silk front you suggested, then we can still have the equipment, even if we can't use it just yet.
Drider grabs at one of her spider limbs, examining the sharp point. With the match over and Pixie relatively unharmed, her angered outburst turned to concern. She didn't seem to have drawn any blood, as the claws seemed dry. She gave a sigh of relief before moving to join the others. "Were you always able to shed your chitin?" She asks Arachnid, ignoring the somewhat less than welcome compliment to her 'offensive.' "Or, did you have to figure that out...?"
I think a ground based Running/Leaping debuff? Pulling the points from the Dex and Perception penalties, one could be at -3 and the other -4 in the area without altering point cost.
There's no way Drider would be able to accomplish a feat as advanced as making silk armor plate inserts so early. She's just a Tailor at the moment! To start out, she won't need more than the Lab. Once she's exposed to more metascience and the like, we can worry about making Silk Tank Cozies.
Split between four effects, the Change Environment (Drider's Web) seems to be spread a bit thin. Thematically, they all make sense for a field full of webbing, but I think it would be more fulfilling to use if it concentrated on hampering modes of movement?
You could make it a tailoring "Lab" like their mentioned in the Base and Vehicle section on page 468?
Drider would only really need the Base to provide Bonuses to her Tailoring skill, justified by having the right equipment and near endless supplies, since she produces the silk thread herself. Then, the time it takes to make garments would be determined by her skill roll. If she rolls well, she can toil a full outfit in a day or two, if she rolls poorly, it'll take her a few weeks, and nonsilk materials, to get the idea off paper. EDIT: So, I don't think it has to be a transform.
The only actual change I'm really looking at is replacing the damaging Web Blobs with a more utility power, probably some area denial mobility debuff like the Change Environment I'd mentioned earlier.
We can throw points towards a Base, sure! And I'm fine with a noncombatant NPC teammate.
I think I'll have to throw points at making my Claws less punishing, END wise eventually. Our first bit of XP, I'll probably put towards some OCV with my Entangle/Spinneret powers and more movement.
The thing about Entangles, unless you can carefully manage how much BODY you deal and still get respectable STUN numbers, it's usually better to just let the Entangled target sit there and waste endurance trying to get free than attack them. MDT made Drider cleverly enough that I can Claw people in my Entangle without worrying about setting them free. Which brings up a question that I'll check on after I ask it. Calling an Autofire attack ensures they all hit that location, correct?
That seems to be the case, yes. Move by/through on multiple targets eats END.
Well, they have to find it, too. They're not the ones with the nice HUD showing a giant red X on the enemy Brick's left kidney.
You'd have to by it with usable by others to grant other people the effect.
They're one Hex tall and a half Hex wide, though. You might have been remembering that. But yeah, I would like to have a nifty cool utility/lockdown something in that slot. Going back to the Change Environment idea, I believe a 4" Radius (1" doubled twice) that reduces both Running and Leaping by 4" would cost about 40 Points, adding Costs Endurance Only To Activate would bring it up to the Multipower's 50 point limit.
Entangle Barriers are one Hex long for every point of BODY in the Entangle, actually.
I thought about a Force Wall effect for Drider, but I can get a similar effect by using my Entangle to create barriers. I can't Abort to it like I probably could with Force Wall, but that's minor, I'd say. I had toyed with the thought of either giving her a "tremor sense" (Ranged and Targeting on Touch Sense" by creating strands of silk to float in the air that she can feel disturbances with. Another thought was a Change Environment to reduce Running, Jumping, and/or Perception. I quickly dismissed an Aid to her Entangle's DEF, as that would be rather rude. Her 6 DEF, 4 BODY holds you down, then she walks up and just spins more webbing around the target until it has 12 DEF? I'd call that a bit abusive. EDIT: Unfortunately, it's a Web Multipower, could put a DEX or STR Drain neurotoxin in that slot or something, otherwise.
It does mean I'm ignoring roughly 5 more points of defenses, give or take, than a Normal Attack. That makes damage calculations swing in my favor. As long as the 6d6 KA only come out when we're doing something COMPLETELY wrong, I think I can handle. In any case, I don't plan on using the web blobs much, as I stated earlier. I'd rather Entangle at range. I'm trying to think of something to replace the blobs, but I'm drawing a blank on what to make in its place.
On a related note, my Claws can't overcome the DEF of my Entangle, BODY wise without pushing/haymakers. If I barrage a target in my Entangle with claws, how much stun does the Entangle prevent? Six for it's defense? Or Ten from it's combined DEF and (average) BODY? The way Entangle is worded, it almost sounds like the Entangled target is completely immune to damage until the Entangle is destroyed.
One of the GMs I play with in real life used that deadlier killing rule for a long while, and I don't like it personally. Even as I'm trying to get Drider to work well using a HKA, I would rather have nonresistant apply to my Killing Stun than be conned myself. I could be very biased, however. Said GM had a tendency to throw 4/5d6 Killing Attacks at us. Even with my 22 rPD/rED, they utterly wrecked my STUN. As long as the Brick has 30 rPD/rED and Damage Reduction, I guess he thought that was "fair" to the rest of us.
You can't autofire two seperate attacks. That would require a multiple powers maneuver/them to be linked or combined in some way. She could, however, Autofire grenades to pepper a location with three explosions. She'd eat a crap ton of endurance to do so, though. I've read over Autofire, and I swear there was a point in the rules somewhere that made it so Autofire attacks don't auto-coordinate/stack. They apply to defenses separately, that I found, but I can't find where it says what gets through is counted separately for CON-stunning targets. EDIT: Okay, I found it, it was in the Fighting Section of Chapter Two and not under the Autofire Advantage itself.
I was under the impression characters only spent END on STR once on any given segment, no matter how many times or different ways they use it. Applying an advantage on it, however, would muddy things. Especially one like autofire. That changes my END expenditure on a full barrage from 11 (3 for full STR and 8 for four claws) to 20 (3 for full strength and 2 for a claw, four times). You did a bit different math, assuming only enough STR to get the die lowers expenditure by one for each strike brings END usage down to 16 for a full barrage. Painfully expensive, but potentially devastating. You said HKAs only go up against Resistant defenses, and I'd like to state that they do for BODY, but if a target has ANY resistant defenses, ANY at all against an attack, they get to use their FULL Defenses, resistant or not, against the STUN. With the Reduced Penetration you put on the Claws, the only time I'll ever do body is against someone with at most 5 rPD, cause 6 rPD will eat every point of BODY I can generate with my claws. However, if the same target had 25 normal PD on top of that, I'll also have to roll 11 Body total with an average 3 STUN Multiplier to do any stun at all. Or 7 BODY with a max 5 STUN Multiplier. We'd probably not have to worry about over 25 total defenses, given your campaign parameters, though.
I'm reading over how STR interacts with Advantaged Killing Attacks and I can get the extra damage from STR on my autofires, it just takes more strength to get to that extra +1d6. Normally HKAs get an extra +1d6 of damage per 15 strength used with it (Drider has double that at 30). To calculate how much strength is needed to get +1d6, the section says to calculate what the cost of 5 Strength would be with whatever advantages are present. In this case, Autofire is a +1/2 advantage, meaning the 5 Strength would cost half again as much for 7.5. To get the extra +1d6 on my Claws, I'd need 22.5 Strength, which I have more than enough to qualify. Autofire eats the hell out of endurance, and only provides a chance at extra hits. If I miss, I waste 11 END for nothing (3 for STR and 2 for each attack). I kind of like the fact that I can be EXTREMELY dangerous if RNGesus wills it, but the claws base damage is still a bit lack luster. If you gave the claws a +1 Stun Multiplier, that would bring the average Stun output to around even with 8DCs at 24 Stun. The minimum damage at that point would be 4 (snake eyes times 2), while the max would be 72 (boxcars times 6). It's a +1/4 advantage, bringing the cost of the Claws up to 15 (advantages and limitations would cancel out) and raises the minimum STR for the extra +1d6 to between 9 and 10 (not sure on the exact fraction at the moment), meaning Drider's 30 Str would be JUST enough to keep the extra die.
I never really imagined Drider as damage dealing web artillery, more melee. Preferably she'd be somewhere between a Martial Artist and a Brick, a balance of DCV and DEF rather than one or the other. I like the entangles, helps disrupt annoying targets and allows me to get in range. So altering the build to focus more on her Claws would be my take on it.
I was going to say something about my potential damage output being rather lackluster for my claws (Average of 2d6 HKA with average Stun Multiplier is only around 18-21 Stun), but you have my damage output being pretty high on your chart there. I assume that's based on the 10d6 web blobs? Average there is 30-35 Stun, which is a fair bit more respectable.
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