One such character follows: Bertolli the Teenage Mutant Ninja... Cat
First, we roll for his animal type: Urban Animal. Sweet! I could all kinds of crazy stuff, like almost any common pet animal, various rodents, bats, and of course, turtles. Zoo animals are a different chart. Various wild and rural animals get their own too, including Aardvark, tiger, porcupine, baboon... Lots of options, each with its own description and powers. (This part of the problem with Palladium games: You pretty much need random generation or there's no way you could make all these choices by yourself.) Next I roll for type: Cat, Domestic.
Oh.
Not that cats aren't cool, I have one here I like quite bit, but it's a little tame, no pun intended. I coulda been like a flying squirrel or something. Anyhow, we'll move on. Next up, Cause of Mutation: Accidental Exposure. Crap, just like the Turtles. Could've been natural, could've been a vile scientific experiment, anything to give me a little sum'in sum'in, but no. 'Course, accidental exposure is the largest category on the chart, so I can't be too upset. So I roll on the Wild Animal Education Table to see how I learned my skills, and we get... "Adopted by a "mentor" who teaches and guides the character in some form of special training. This is often Ninjitsu..." Fuck! I'm a generic Ninja Turtle-- Cat. Ninja Cat. Now, Ninjutsu and Cats go together like, I dunno, anything similar. Always land on my feet, see in dark, have claws for ninja climbing, it makes sense, it's just a little, I dunno... Predictable? Middle-Aged Mutant Accountant Baboon is at least surprising, right?
Eh, we go for the next bit. You get BIO-E points to modify the character, but most choices result in some kind of penalty, so I make the smallest amount of decisions possible and still get a recognizable animal character, so we buy Fully Human Hands, Biped status, Speech. I buy Partially Human Looks so we get something a little too furry for most folks that can pass for human in lowlight conditions (For reference sake, The Ninja Turtles have No Human Looks) I bust up my size category to 6, which has no penalties, buy Nightvision (Ninja darkness, bitches!), razor-sharp Teeth, and souped up Retractable Climbing Claws which also cause damage like a cheap katana (Yes, katanas have price categories). Stack it with the stats I rolled up, and you have a bad-ass ninja who is ultra sweet with razorhands.
In any Palladium Multiverse product (Rifts, Fantasy, TMNT, Ninjas and Superspies, Nightbane, and many, many, many more), you get a class that lets you pick certain skills which you don't buy in levels. They're automatic and just level up with you. I like this, but it can result in skill bloat, in which every game writes new skills to cover ever more esoteric positions. AD&D has 36, most of them for rogues, World of Darkness had 30 per game, with a few that would swap out, Savage Worlds, like 25. All told, Palladium Skills top out at a no-art stripped down document is over 100 pages long and includes Optic Systems Communication, Mining: Space, and Balloon Animal Making. Of course, in my career, Lighting Technician: Live Shows would give me a 25% plus 5% per level to improve live shows.
This is taking me away from my purpose, so back to my cat ninja. Taking certain physical skills adds directly to your statistics, so I actually can't take you step-by-step through my attribute adjustments on here, but I can give the final count:
Intelligence Quotient 14 Mental Endurance 10 Mental Affinity 15 Physical Strength 14 Physical Prowess 29 +7 Bonus to Strike, Parry, Dodge Physical Endurance 13 Physical Beauty 11 Speed 18 +1 dodgeI also have an SDC (Structural Damage Capacity) of 52, which is, uh, a lot.
The Palladium Megaverse System has a massive fixation with acronyms. For example, some OCCs will give a bonus to PE and SDC, but you have to have a decent ME and IQ to qualify. (Whaa?) Every stat has its own two letter abbreviation which is used exclusively in the text, meaning you have to keep all this stuff in mind every time you read something. This is not an elegant solution. Sure, in D&D and Savage Worlds most folks use a 3 letter designation for their attributes, but when Physical Beauty, Physical Strength,Physical Prowess and Physical Endurance all start with P, and then you add PPE (Potential Psychic Energy) as measuring something radically different from PE... Confusing. Not very elegant.
So, then we find a series of charts to roll on for various physical dimensions... Consider my chagrin when I found out that Size Category six tops out at 75 lbs and 5 feet tall, so my bad-ass cat ninja is... 65 lbs, 4’4”. To fix that would require backtracking and re-doing some of my stats, not taking the human attributes, etc. etc. Doesn't change anything for this exercise, so we'll move on and ignore the fact that he's less than a a foot taller than the guy who played Willow.
But that leaves us with the following skills:
SKILLS Mathematics: Basic Read/Write Native Language Speaks Native Language Acrobatics - Athletics - Climb 98% Dance 45% Detect Ambush 45% Detect Concealment 35% Escape Artist 35% Fencing +1 Strike, Parry Gymnastics - Prowl 61% Running - Sing 45% Tracking 35% 65% + 5% per level — Sense of Balance 65% + 5% per level — Walk Tightrope or High Wire 85% + 2% per level — Climb Rope 75% + 8% per level Back Flip + 6 to Roll with Punch/Fall + 1 to parry and dodge + 1 to strike with a body block/tackle; does 1D4 damage Fearless of heights Leap four feet high and five feet long, plus 2 feet per level of experience. Weapon Proficiency: Chain, Sword, Paired Weapon +1 to Sword +1 Chain +1 body Block/Tackle Can pair weaponsTo make sense of all that, a +9 to Strike translates to automatically hitting anyone without combat training, all the time. And then causing enough damage to kill a civilian. So, every turn, I kill a random guy in the crowd. Make that two, since all mutant characters get two attacks per melee turn. Put in my decent Prowl and most folks never know I'm there. Nearly automatic Climbing due to my claws, and everything is sweet.
So we have some random housecat, whacked on the head with a bucket of radioactive goop, who then turns into a miniature badass as raised by a reclusive ninja master. He ends up with a wicked high agility and high-end circus training that makes him fairly invisible. Aside from re-working his tiny size, I'd totally play this character, although I'm not fully sold on Palladium as a system for it. Any one got experience with it?
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