Re: [HOE] Doom sayers

["Marshal Matt "Got Guts?" Crawford" <matt@severian.chi.il.us>]

> How do other Marshals feel about using Doom sayers (Green Grapes or Purple)
> in their campaign?  Are they verboten, or used sparingly, or a campaign
> source of woe?
> Any opinions would be appreciated....

I've only been marshalling a couple of months, but here goes.  I let
everyone pick any sort of character they wanted and wound up with two
doomsayers (one purple, one Hekant with sidekick), two sykers
(identical twins, hence identical traits, but different skills), a
templar who had a dynamite draw, and a now-deceased martial artist.
(He did foolish useless stuff alone underwater and got eaten by
shraks.  And he wasn't even the one with the death wish!  That one
went solo onto the Delta Queen and made it back.)

The MIRVs bug me -- too easy, too flexible.  There ought to be at
least a bump in the to-hit roll for each additional target or
something.  Still, as long as my badguys appear at close range, or
have ranged attacks themselves, they get their licks in.  (I did
engineer a lovely standoff situation last session but one in which
the posse was discarding action cards left and right because they
didn't know who was friend and who was foe.  Came within epsilon of
driving their pickup off a bluff into ol' muddy.  And they came out
with a new chum name of Destinee.  Need I say more?)

One of them used that miracle which turns a lump of ghost rock into a
grenade.  It was not a problem.

Here is my possible problem though.  That late lamented martial
artist's player is working up his next character -- a Cyborg.  I
don't want to say no categorically, but what's going to give him
pause at AV 4?  He's wanting to make a heavy can, although he'll tone
it down to light if I insist.  Either way, though, the armor would
likely be the same.

I can come up with plenty of threats directed at a 'borg, but I don't
want to be that lame.  I would like to spend maybe half or more of
the total time on the many packaged adventures and dime novels I have
on the shelf, but I wouldn't want them all screwed up by a tank on
legs.

My question is, how difficult is my job (challenging them to the
limit while being entertaining) going to be with a heavy cyborg in
the group (stand-out plasma gun, armor, samson unit, and so on).  I
can work against his ROEs to some extent, but I draw the line at
having every random raider suddenly packing AP ammo.