Unreal : The Competitors

[Xornik]

Unreal - The Competitors

Reaper: "Respawners? ...On a battlefield?"

In 40291, in an attempt to control violence among deep space miners, the New Terra Government legalized no-holds-barred fighting.
The Liandri Mining Corporation established a series of leagues and bloody public exhibitions.
Soon, Liandri discovered that the public matches were their most profitable enterprise.
The professional league was formed.
A cabal of the most violent and skilled warriors from the known spheres, selected, upgraded and genetically modified to fight in a grand tournament.
Now, it is 40341.
You have been chosen and modified to fight in the professional league.
The time has come to prove you are the best.
To crush your enemies.
To win the tournament.

Abilities

Respawn
Unreals start with 5 Respawn charges and have a maximum number of Respawn charges equal to 5 + Dominance. Outside of combat, an Unreal may spend 5 Frags over the course of an hour to gain an additional Respawn charge.
If an Unreal would die, instead they may spend a Frag and a Respawn Charge to Respawn nearby in a safe location out of combat. When they Respawn they have full HP and all of the Armor, weapons and equipment that they had when they died barring any weapons that were currently being wielded or weapons that were picked up during the scene. These are in the condition they were at the start of the the scene in which you died. If you have no Respawn charges left and die, then you are permanently eliminated from play unless you burn a hero point. If you burn a hero point to survive, you Respawn at the start of the next scene.

Instagib Physiology
The Unreal do no use Willpower to calculate hit points, instead they use only twice their Constitution. During combat, they can not regain hit points by any method aside from those granted by your Exaltation and Exalt Assets. Taking any point of critical damage instantly kills them, causing the Unreal to explode into giblets, bionics and flesh, which splatter the nearby surroundings. Any currently wielded weapons drop to the ground at your feet when you die.

Heads Up Display (HUD)
The Unreal's brain and senses have been genetically modified and probably has got some funky stuff wired into your brain that gives you a constant feed of information about everything going on around you.
You have the access to the abilities and effects of following items as if they were implanted in your head : Auspex, Chrono, Data-slate, Mini-Map, Micro-bead Magnoculars, Speakers and a Pict Recorder that always records your combat encounters. The Speakers also loudly announce whenever you perform a killing spree or multi-kill.

Autopickup
During combat, if you make a movement action over certain items and equipment you can spend a free action to absorb that item and gain an effect for the remainder of the scene.
● Absorbed armor is added to your AP that the armor would have covered, but lost after taking damage that exceeds the AP granted.
● Absorbed First Aid will heal a number of hit points equal to half your Dominance rounded up.
● Drugs will cause you to instantly gain the drug's effect
● Miscellanious gear, wonders and hearthstones, if applicable will add their utility or abilities to your Heads up Display until the end of the combat at which point they rematerialize in your inventory.

Power Stat: Dominance
Dominance is an indicator of the Unreal's overall reputation, progress and ranking the tournaments and leagues. As they progress and work their way up through the divisions their dominance increases.

Resource Stat: Frags
Unreals gain a Frag any time you kill, incapacitate, completely defeat or contribute to doing the aforementioned to a hostile entity or competitor.
Unreals have maximum Frags equal to 5 + Dominance + Level.

Power Stat: Dominance
Dots	Ability	Description
●◌◌◌◌	Hyperspace Arsenal	An Unreal can store a number of weapons equal to twice your Dominance in your Hyperspace Arsenal. These weapons count as hidden when stored and the Unreal may Ready, Stow or Switch between these weapons as a free action. These actions do not Provoke an attack of opportunity.
●●◌◌◌	Fast-Paced	When combat starts, you're always on the move, trick jumping, going prone, dodging, shifting, strafing, bunny-hopping your way to victory. For each movement action the Unreal takes in their turn, they gain an additional reaction for that round which can only be used to Dodge.
●●●◌◌	Gun Magnet	If the Unreal walks, runs or come within reach of any weapon or ammunition that is currently not equipped or wielded by an active owner. You spend a free action to pick it up and add it to your Hyperspace Arsenal. You may do this in the middle of Movement action. You can now also Reload any Weapons in your Hyperspace Arsenal as a free action. Both of these do actions not provoke an attack of opportunity.
●●●●◌	Rocket Launcher	When an Unreal finds themselves in the blast radius of an attack that would deal X-type damage, they may chose to immediately make a special move-type jump action that does not provoke as a free action after any damage has been dealt. While making this special move action, the character gains the Flyer trait and can move X Meters in any direction, where X is equal to (Speed + Hit Points lost from the attack - meters from explosion.)
●●●●●	Tournament Champion	You've dominated the tournament and don't intend on losing your position as champion. Once per scene you can spend X frags to activate a Damage Amplifier bonus which boosts the damage done by all weapons in your hyperspace arsenal. While this ability is active, double the total damage of any standard attacks you make before the target applies damage. This bonus lasts for a X rounds or until the end of combat (whichever is sooner). This also makes all Hyperspace Arsenal weapons pulsate with a fluorescent neon purple glow and emit a loud electronic keening noise upon activation, deactivation and when fired.

Unreal Mutator Assets
Mutator Asset	Ability
Low Grav	Gravity affects you less than others.
No-clip	Did he just walk through that wall?
Team Beacon	Working together as a team mates is the path to victory!
Third Person View	Ever feel like someone is looking over your shoulder?
Vampirism	Because the best way to beat a Bloodsucker is to become one.

Low Grav
Double the distance (both vertical and horizontal) of all jumps made.

No-clip
Once per session, you may spend a Frag to gain phasing for a round. If the Unreal would become corporeal while inside of a solid object, they are shunted a random direction outside of the object, to the nearest legal space, taking Falling Damage as if they fell the total distance moved + 2m.

Team Beacon
You can always see how far away and in what direction your team-mates are. This information will show up on your Heads Up Display - even through walls.

Third Person View
Your HUD allows you to switch your perspective between First Person and Third Person twice per session and can fully display a view of yourself from behind you in a slightly elevated a third person perspective. You can use this to peek around corners or see things immediately behind you. This gives you a +2k0 bonus to Perception tests.

Vampirism
Any time you would gain a Frag, you may instead Heal 1 Hit point. Healing this way works with the Unreals Instagib Physiology.

Taking Inspiration from:

• Classic 90's First Person Multiplayer Shooters - Primarily Arena Shooters
  
• Unreal Tournament
  
• Quake series
  
• Doom series
  
• Wolfenstein 3D
  
• Duke Nukem 3D
  
• Tribes
  
• Early Halo
  

[/ul]
TODO:

• More Balance
  
• More Fluff
  
• Playtest / Gather Feedback
  

[/ul]

Finally ported this and took out the table based abilties as per feedback from the first version.

This is a Fluff-lite, Combat-Based exalt and is pretty much the opposite of what I usually do. But for some reason, I was inspired to make this and followed through.
Feedback is appreciated, balance definitely needs work.

[GuardianTempest]

The fluff of this exaltation is too out-of-context to fit in with the universe. Even the Avatar, another Exaltation about video game mechanics, still has the basic explanation of "these people are from other universes". Where do these Respawn Charges come from? How does genetic modification result in backup bodies or item absorption? Could they carry those powers outside the arena? What if I play an Unreal with dots only in Artifacts and Inheritance? If the Unreal just represent how they play inside a codified arena, then perhaps this would just be turned into an alternate game mode instead of an Exaltation. My recommendation for the fluff would be to take cues from the Wraith and the Unshackled, in that the Unreal (as their name implies) have a tenuous anchor onto reality and slowly dissipates the more they are killed. Maybe the Liandri corp does more than genetic modification.

Well, that's about my only real complaint, the rest are just grammatical nitpicks.

Autopickup: Seems like a bookkeeping nightmare especially the Armor part but I understand why you worded it that way. Also, what do you mean First Aid? Do you mean Medkits?

Hyperspace Arsenal: Does the "these actions do not provoke" clause only applies when interacting with stored weapons or does it apply to you always?

Gun Magnet: I think the pickup part could just be folded into Autopickup while the reloading part is folded into Hyperspace Arsenal.

Rocket Launcher: The wording is kludgy. How about this?
When an Unreal finds themselves in the blast radius of an attack that would deal X-type damage, they may chose to immediately jump that does not provoke as a free action. The distance traveled is multiplied by one plus the amount of Hit Points lost in the attack.

Tournament Champion: "double the total damage of any standard attacks you make before the target applies damage" sounds very weird because damage could either mean the result of damage rolls, or wounds (hit points lost in an attack). Maybe you could change it to something like "Double the result of your damage rolls using weapons from your Hyperspace Arsenal". Hold on, what about currently-equipped weapons? Do they also count or only after you've stored them inside your arsenal?

No comments on assets (so far)...wait I have some. The assets could instead be inspired by different iconic multiplayer FPS games and their quirks (for a dumb example: Counter-Strike lets you move faster while equipped with a melee weapon). Alternatively the assets could be styled around Samsara's playable characters. (Damage, Defense, Utility, Marksman, Brawler, Crowd Control, Suppression, Artillery)
forum.zdoom.org/viewtopic.php?t=51771
doomwiki.org/wiki/Samsara

[berserkx33]

I have been writing new crystal spheres for my setting for my table, and I refluffed the whole Unreal thing to be a sort of catch all deathmatch thing. Since the whole theme of the setting is "Immortals fucking shit up, reality goes KABOOM", each crystal sphere has a huge immortal problem popping up.

The new crystal sphere I made to be the more Punk part of the Cyberpunk genre (Based on Over the Edge, Fallout, Shadowrun, Paranoia, Cyberpunk proper and TORG Eternity) is called The Marketplace, a hypercapitalist cyberdystopia, and they have functional "Infinite Spare Body" immortality for the rich akin to Cruelty Squad's plot.

So in this setting the Unreal are all made by people who are playing under the multiple Calypso Industries tv shows (be it prisoners looking for parole, adventurers looking for a specific prize or just thrill seekers looking to make a name for themselves), all deadly games. The competitors have limited spare bodies that have live backups of their minds installed thanks to the brain implants that the Calypso Industries plants on their heads (That allows for the Heads Up Display thingy and also cause them to explode when taking critical damage, all to increase the goryness of the shows.)

While outside of the shows (Only people that survive atleast 1 match can leave the shows with their implants) they are still technically "Calypso Industries" property, so they can still use the Revives and the rest of their skills as long as they are creating entertaining footage for them (As all of their senses are being recorded 24/7).

The games in my setting are not exclusively FPS, but a more general Deathmatch style show, so you can get a wider variety of classes working in the fluff. It includes stuff like Madworld, Let it Die, Cruelty Squad, Twisted Metal, Forsaken, Manhunt, Dead by Daylight, etc, etc, etc.

I will probably rework the assets to be based on the possible shows in universe.