Post originally by Darrin at 2004-10-08 08:40:35
Converted from Phorums BB System

Super strength would be covered under the mutant power "Adrenalin Control" (Classic Only). Page 143, or thereabouts. Violence/Agility and Violence/Unarmed Combat get temporarily boosted to 18.

To address the broader question, though (i.e., what happened to Abilities?)... it's not entirely intuitive, but the new skill system is not built around specific physical/mental stats. It's built around "what effect is the character trying to accomplish?" rather than "My BLAH+X stat gives me a +X bonus on any BLAH-related actions."

Think of it like this... a character in another game might have an 18 Strength or Dexterity, which gives him a +4 to a specific and defined list of actions, skills, saving throws, etc. From there you derive a target number or DC, using as many 300+ page books as possible.

Paranoia XP reverses that... you start with the desired result and sort of work backwards, assigning a skill category according to whatever would best produce that result. The players essentially assign the DCs for all their rolls up front and you handwave the physical/mental attributes with something about Computerized-trait-selection and genetic breeding programs. You can just say all clones have roughly the same physical/mental stats because, well, they're CLONES for one thing.

Example: You decide, in blatant defiance of the whole genetic breeding thing, that your clone is much more physically impressive than the other characters, and you want to bully them around. You can do this by punching someone in the nose, which is essentially an application of brute Violence (specifically, Unarmed Combat specialty). Or he could flex his muscles and shout really loud, which would most likely be Management/Intimidation. Is he really physically stronger than the character he is threatening? Well, it doesn't really matter... he may have a higher Violence score because the Computer decided to genetically breed in stronger muscles, or maybe his Secret Society taught him the treasonous secret skills of the ancient art of Pro Wrestling. He's most likely going to die horribly so maybe it's not really worth it to quibble about actual physical stats.

It's not perfect... characters become a little more difficult to individualize. You also run into problems when characters go up against non-human opponents, like robots and 100-foot cockroaches.

Does that make any sense or am I just rambling incoherently?