Re: [HOE] Doomsayers and pollution

[Pat Gamblin <shosuro@nbnet.nb.ca>]

>*shrug* It seems that until the Lost Vegas sourcebook comes out, the Cult 
>of Doom will continue to get short shrift.  Unless I missed something, it 
>seems to be all-Combine, all the time, as far as what the major threat is, 
>mentions of it in the back-of-the-book section, etc.  Hopefully at some 
>point Silas is going to bust a move a bit stronger then sending out 
>missionaries. Children of the Atom certainly implies he's got big plans, 
>but the Combine menace seems to have usurped any importance he has in 
>Pinnacle's meta-campaign.

While I do agree that probably Silas should get more 'air time' in the 
books, I do think that he is the smaller of the two threat, and by quite a 
long shot. I'm probably forgetting some group, but here's what strikes me 
as the three most dangerous groups in HOE, barring the reckoners 
themselves. There's spoiler space because one of them's a secret.























(1) Raven's army o' necromancers and undead (and other abominations). I'm 
also leaving the main servitors out of this, but raven's army itself, even 
if he wasn't around, would likely beat just about anything if it came 
across the Miss. Even the Combine.

(2) The Combine. The biggest publicly-known thing around. There's good 
reason why Junkyard's looking for any remaining unused GR bombs.

(3) Silas and the greenrobes. While they would definitely give 
Throckmorton's forces a hard time, the Combine likely has too much 
firepower for the Doomies to hold out for very long, even with EMP and Nuke.


Also, it's a matter of 'villain scale.' The Combine is the big background 
villain, like the Imperial Navy in Star Wars. Something so big that you 
can't really fight it head-on. Silas' dudes are more personal-scale 
villains, like Jabba or Darth Vader, or, heck, wrestling. They're the guys 
that the party gets harassed by, the ones who threaten towns that the PCs 
happen to be in.. A party should be more afraid of running across a group 
of greenrobes than a group of Black Hats, but that same party should wet 
themselves to hear that the Combine is on the move.

Silas just doesn't have the resources or forces to usurp the Combine's 
place as 'most fearsome public badguy.' That said, I do think doomsayers 
should be used more in adventures, as they make excelent PC-level baddies. 
A nemesis is generally cooler than an army. After all, who was cooler, 
Darth Vader, or the Imperial Navy?


Just some ramblin' thoughts.

Marshall Paddy