RE: [HOE] A question about Servitors (possible light spoilers)

["Jeff Yates" <jyates@primaryfunction.com>]

> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-hoe@gamerz.net [mailto:owner-hoe@gamerz.net] On 
> Behalf Of Shawn Willett
> Sent: Tuesday, October 14, 2003 7:53 PM
> To: hoe@gamerz.net
> Subject: [HOE] A question about Servitors (possible light spoilers)
> 
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> This should be a Marshal only topic so heres some spoiler space
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> Ok, since we are on the subject, I have a few questions. 
> 1) This has been a bone of contention in my other group, that 
> servitors don't know thier weakness. I've ALWAYS run them as 
> if they knew the one thing that would kill them and avoided 
> it like the plague. That's why the Lone Biker in my game 
> always take a few minutes after the slaughter to burn the 
> bodies and the town and why Modeen has an escape route 
> planned.  Do servitors know their weaknesses?

Usually.  If the posse can find out what the weakness is, so can the Big
Bad.  If there is someone (a third party) that knows the weakness, the Bid
Bad could be gunning for that third party to eliminate knowledge of the
weakness.  So if anyone knows, it's safe to say that the servitor knows.

I could see a story where no one knows the weakness.  But then you've got
the challenge of getting the posse to figure it out before they're dead.
Say a servitor who has a severe allergy to diet pills, but doesn't actually
know it.  He/she just avoids them, tends to have them destroyed when found,
etc.  But shows no actual fear of such things... Until the pills have been
forced into the mouth...  But why would you wrestle a servitor to the ground
just to stick Dexatrim down it's throat?

> 2) Another point that caused much argument was whether or not 
> servitors knew they had gone to the Dark Side(tm) <G> In my 
> game, they know that they are evil, but in my buddy James' 
> game we traveled with a whiny librarian NPC that was a 
> servitor of Death and was unconsciously raising dead people 
> to attack our group. I figure if they know thier weakness and 
> they know they are evil, they will be much smarter when it 
> comes to those pesky heroes (and their damn dog too) figuring 
> out how to kill them. 

They know.  The whole process involves them being tempted with bits of power
if they just do a little bad.  Then a little more bad gets them a little
more power.  They know they are doing bad, but they like the, um, perks.
They may not know the Reckoners by first name, but they know the evil they
do.

That doesn't mean that there aren't critters that do bad or weird things
unknowingly, just that the hand-picked servants of the Reckoners know that
they're Evil.

> 3) Can a servitor be stunned? This happened when S-Swat (my 
> first group) ran into Modeen. The doomie in the group 
> launched Mirv and racked up enough damage to stun him. One 
> low card for him later, and the group's Templar had 
> shish-kabobed him. I think it's much scarier if the party 
> mows him down in a hail of gunfire and then he pops up on the 
> next card undamaged and laughing. I've always taken 
> immunity:all to mean (much like the scene from the Preacher 
> graphic novel) you could drop a 20-megaton nuke on his 
> forehead, it would detonate and when the smoke cleared, the 
> big bad would spit and growl "not enough gun". 
> Appreciate any help that anyone could give me on this. 
> 
> 
> "All I want for Christmas is a monster that'll survive longer 
> than 3 rounds!!!"

Stunned?  Sure, if you think the posse needs a break.  Like Jeeb (sp?) from
MiB -- you can shoot off his head, and that makes him grumpy, but it doesn't
kill him.  Does take a moment or two to grow back.  You could even say that
a servitor can be blasted to paste and he stays that way.  For a while.
Then, weeks later, the posse can meet the servitor miles away at a bar, and
say "But we killed you!".

Or not.  It could be totally impervious.  I'd still probably have Howitzer
shells to the chest knock human-sized servitors across the map, but there's
nothing that says they'd be hurt in anyway.

The joys of custom made monsters ;-)

Jeff Y.