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Is giving non sentience to a character ever appropriate?

Posted: Tue Sep 27, 2011 2:52 pm
by BeardedDork
My players had a very brief encounter with Man-Bat last night and for the brief moment of the encounter I simply used the Animal Genius replacing it's super speed with flight with the wings limitation. But as I'm actually building the character I was wondering if it would be appropriate to give him the normal disadvantage and the nonsentience advantage, possibly also with alter ego.

Posted: Wed Sep 28, 2011 3:26 am
by BASHMAN
This character is an NPC, yes? If so, then yes, it is fine. This is basically like some sort of feral were-wolf with no real sentience during transformation, cannot distinguish friend from foe, etc.

I'd also be sure to add "Alter Ego (Inconvenient)" and "Uncontrollable Transformation"

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 1:44 am
by kevperrine
BASHMAN wrote:This character is an NPC, yes? If so, then yes, it is fine.

Confused.
Why does it matter?

I understand NPCs/Villains having some latitude for the Narrator to "fudge" the rules. But is that what this is, or is there a rule or something?
I really like when NPCs function very similar to PCs in building and play style.

Just wondering
-kev-

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 3:31 am
by BASHMAN
kevperrine wrote:
BASHMAN wrote:This character is an NPC, yes? If so, then yes, it is fine.

Confused.
Why does it matter?

I understand NPCs/Villains having some latitude for the Narrator to "fudge" the rules. But is that what this is, or is there a rule or something?
I really like when NPCs function very similar to PCs in building and play style.

Just wondering
-kev-
It says in the description of Non-Sentience that PCs cannot have it.

Posted: Thu Sep 29, 2011 10:47 am
by BeardedDork
What is the reason behind it saying that, what if I had a player who would uncontrollably turn into a bestial bat creature with no more control over themselves than a dog? Would it not still be appropriate?

Posted: Fri Sep 30, 2011 3:45 am
by BASHMAN
In that case I guess it would be fine, but what would the character do in their sentient form?

Also, the Narrator would probably take control of the character when it was in non-sentient mode.

Posted: Thu Oct 06, 2011 12:49 am
by kevperrine
BASHMAN wrote:In that case I guess it would be fine, but what would the character do in their sentient form?

Also, the Narrator would probably take control of the character when it was in non-sentient mode.

I think this could be an interesting fun take on a classic Jekyll & Hyde - except the "non-sentient" is controlled by the Narrator (and could be completely animal-like - as in a semi-heroic style version of classic Hulk or potentially a animal-element-of-nature destructive villain) THEN the PC-Hero would be under the player's control that could have any sorts of powers they like to fight crime and/or fight to stop/clean-up the damage his alter-ego did...

This is inspiring an idea for me! :)
-kev-