by Rewired » Thu Dec 29, 2016 3:20 pm
I'll see if i can brainstorm something up to pick up the slack...
Hmm...
1. Doctor/mad scientist who travels the world, peddling medicine, genetic mods (changes target attributes, such as pred or prey state, et cetera) and his own personal invention - a miniature personal cloning device. He can give you a prototype right away for free, or he can tag along for three days and a med-high sum of coin to make one for a random member of your group, or take triple the regular one's price and follow you for a whole week making a deluxe model. The differences are that the prototype:
>has a decent chance of messing with the user's attributes and traits, like changing pred/prey state or hair color or other such,
>has a somewhat smaller chance of misfiring from regular, nonlethal injuries leaving you with a slightly askew copy of the user,
>has a slight chance of not working at all.
>isn't reusable, but isn't limited to a specific user.
and the regular model:
>has a slight chance of messing with the user's attributes and traits
>has a minuscule chance of misfiring/firing early if you are able to save the user from death.
>isn't reusable and is also specific to a given character. Think biological keying.
and the deluxe model:
>doesn't mess with the user's attributes and traits
>has a minuscule chance of misfiring, again only if it's user is saved from death.
>is reusable, but again is also only for the char it was made for.
Buying enough from him or having him around for a full month leaves you with an apex model:
>all the benefits of deluxe
>can be misfired at will, as long as it's powered.
>reusable, not keyed.
2. Maybe some crossover stuff? Like Irongut from Mysta's Myst Adventure, or someone else.
3. Old ruins full of some mechanical/biological monstrosities who can possibly be recruited, but have a tendency to snack on your prey and pred alike. Metal slimes that propagate by converting organics and machines to more metal slimes, plant people, et cetera
4. A character someone from your crew claim is their wife/husband/lover. You can recruit the fella, and he's pretty good at a lot of things, but there's a chance he's developed into a fine pred and decides to snack on someone - rarely, to be fair, but it adds up and saps morale as he might not be particularly subtle about it.
5. For that matter, slime infestations that consume crew members but the slimes work decently in any task they're set to, and more slimes boosts the chances of success. Your preds could use straws to drink the slimes, your strong members could stuff them into barrels to refill water supplies, and, of course, if you do nothing about it, eventually the pool of slimes consumes the caravan leader after everyone else is consumed, leading to a game over as the now slime caravan leader leads the pool to consume another unsuspecting caravan. Maybe if you have the mad scientist above, or someone else like him, he can be asked to do something, at which point he uplifts all "mature" slimes to the level of regular pred caravan members. This stops the infestation.