I watched Evil Dead II/Army of Darkness again lately, this time during a midnight showing at a local theater. During the course of both movies, I noticed that Ash got posessed by the evil not once but twice (well, three times if you count the ‘mitosis’ thing in Army of Darkness). Almost other character that got possessed was usually dispatched very quickly-no chance of saving them it seemed. (Well except Sandra…I guess getting a spear in the gut will snap you out of that whole ‘possesed’ thing) Of course, every time Ash got posessed, there was some convenient device on hand to help him snap out of it all by himself, but because it happens so much, it makes me feel like he almost had a ‘resistance’ to posession, or at least unnatural luck on his side when he did get posessed.
So what would Ash be like if he was a AD&D character? Or a Vampire:The Masquerade character? I’m not too keen on the rules of those games so I couldn’t think up what he would be like in those games, but I’m sure some dopers could be very creative with the concept.
-Ash wields his shotgun with one hand, and it counts as a close combat weapon for assault purposes. Because of this, Ash gets +1 attack for having 2 close combat weapons.
-Ash gets a 2+ invulnerable save vs wounds inflicted by daemons.
-When ever a Chaos psychic power is used against Ash, he may ignore its effects by taking a psychic test of his own and passing.
-Ash, and any squad he is leading, is considered fearless in close combat vs Daemons.
I dunno much about role playing, but I’d have to give him a pretty low Intelligence, but also give him a special saving throw for ingenuity, possibly a Gear Head-type Feat to enable him operate/create technology. In fact, I’d give him a very low Int. score. He’s suprisingly stupid for someone who knows a great deal more than anyone on the planet (not alot of medieval types who can fix a car engine).
As far as AD&D goes, I’d say that Ash has respectably high strength, decent dexterity, a remarkably high constitution, low intelligence, high wisdom, and decently high charisma.
It’s been a long time since I’ve played any roleplaying games, and even then, it was Vampire, which doesn’t equate well to human characters much. It’s got a six point scale. Still, I think he’d be a little above average in strength (about a 3), rather low in intelligence (about a 1), yet his dexterity and stamina would be crazy high (about a 5). He’s a deadeye with riffles, and is apparently apt enough with weapons he’s never seen to be able to train an army.
Plus, he’s also going to have some sort of LUCK bonus. I mean, shit, if it weren’t for luck, he’d be dead to rights straight from the beginning.
On second thought, that should be “God-like luck, but cursed so that it alternates between good and bad.”
He has the worst luck in the world when it comes to getting into bad situations in the first place, but then manages to escape those situations largely by dumb luck.
We can flesh him out a bit with 3rd edition skills and feats (with an extra background feat from Arcanum). Some of my numbers may be a bit off, as I don’t have my rulebooks on hand at the moment.
Strength 13
Dexterity 14 (It’s reduced because he lost a hand.)
Constitution 19 (Sawing off your own hand without passing out? Yikes–serious fortitude save.)
Intelligence 4 (This is about the minimum for intelligible speech.)
Wisdom 10 (He’s a fool, but he’s obviously not taking heavy penalties on his will saves.)
Charisma 16 (Groovy)
Feats
Born Under a Sign (Arcanum–critical successes and failures are both more spectacular than normal, e.g. quadruple damage instead of double.)
Point Blank Shot
Rapid Reload
Shot on the Run
Exotic Weapon Proficiency (stump chainsaw)
Dodge
Power Attack
Cleave
Run
Iron Will
Weapon Focus (shotgun)
Weapon Specialization (shotgun)
Shotgun–
Range Increment: 5’/15’/25’
Damage: 1d12/1d8/1d6 (by range increment)
Type: Smithereening (Well, piercing, I suppose.)
Critical: 19-20/x2 (Criticals are only possible within the closest range increment.)
Special: The shotgun provides a +3 to Ash’s missile attack bonus and may hit one additional target for each range increment beyond the first.
Weight: 6 lbs.
You knew, of course, that somebody was going to nitpick. An ability score of 4 is only a -3 penaly, not a -5 (you need a 0 or 1 to get a -5), and for most creatures (humans included) Climb is a STR skill, not DEX. And in 3rd edition, range increment is a single number, not the separate short/medium/long of 2nd. And you’re short a Feat: Remember, humans get a bonus one. I’d add Great Cleave: He levels zombies left and right repeatedly, right?
And no, I don’t happen to have my rulebooks handy… Why do you ask?
I’m not sure why everyone thinks Ash is stupid. He’s brash, frequently cowardly, and lacking in wisdom, perhaps (he is, after all, a loud-mouthed braggart from the future!), but not really of moron-level intelligence. He forgets the wise-man’s words (in AoD) because he’s not interested in hearing his explanations, not because he’s too stupid. He’s at least smart enough to take a JC-level chemistry class, and understand “alloys and compositions and things with molecular structure” - and he’s able to make gun powder by reading his textbook!
I would give him maybe a 9 Intelligence on a 3-18 scale, and give him a 6 or 7 Wisdom. Alignment-wise, I’d put him more towards Chaotic Good (he’s basically a good guy, but more interested in saving his own hide than anything else). If he’s got the chain-saw hand, I’d give him more or less normal strength; if he’s got the mechanical hand, I’d give him Ogre Strength (18/00 in 1st and 2nd Ed. AD&D rules) in that hand.
I have a quibble with your intelligence score. My understanding of the INT score is that it is booksmarts. I highly doubt that someone with a score of 5 would be able to understand a Chemistry 101 book well enough to make gunpowder. I’d probably write him up like this:
Yah, I knew someone would nitpick. That would be the reason for my disclaimer and the quizzer by the -5 penalty for intelligence. I just plain screwed up on Climb, and I should know better, since my current character is a rather acrobatic sorcerer who uses it all the time.
As for feats…hrm. I know I counted the human bonus feat. So a human fighter gets:
1 (base feat) + 2 (bonus feats for class and race) + 1 feat per 4 levels after first (general) + 1 feat per 2 levels after first (fighter bonus feats). That gives us 3+12/4+12/2=12 feats. Oh, right–Weapon Specialization is a separate bonus. I was counting it against feats. Yeah, Great Cleave is a good one to add.
I made the range increment business up for the shotgun, since the weapon’s characteristics don’t really fit the standard range rules too well. I suppose you could just call it a 10’ increment weapon, but I might back the damage down to a d10 for the closest increment. I was trying to model the shotgun’s devastating effects at extreme close range while severely limiting its longer-range capabilities.
You could be right about the chainsaw, ultrafilter, but that’s why I made the criticals so nasty on it. Not many things crit on a 17-20, and I can’t think of any of those that do triple damage. A normal hit will only do 4-13 points of damage…but with Ash’s Sign feat, his criticals with it are horrific. Signs adds two steps to the crit multiplier, so if he backs up a threat, he does about 20-65 points of damage. That’s ugly. Still, I could see changing it to something higher–maybe 2d8–and backing the crit down to x2? That would give him damage ranges of 5-20 for normal hits and 20-80 (yikes) for crits. His average hit will be about 12 points, which should generally drop a bottom-rung undead creature. I would also say that a chainsaw automatically bypasses damage resistance against slashing damage, and possibly some other resistances. I’d probably treat it as a +1 weapon for resistance purposes.
I set Ash’s intelligence score so low because of his lousy memory and his often idiotic behavior, but I see everyone’s point about it. Maybe it should be wisdom 3, intelligence 11 (or thereabouts). Of course, that screws up his will saves. Maybe a Sheer Cussedness feat that lets him use his charisma bonus on will saves instead?
There was a 2e supplemental book that split the scores in half. I’d have to go dig it up, but it’s probably the right way to approach this. Ash is a damn fool, but his willpower is impressive.
To be completely realistic, the chainsaw should do more damage (maybe 2d10?) and have a higher critical hit rate, but for play balance, what you have is fine. How about 1d4 + 6, though? It seems unlikely that a chainsaw would do low damage.
All right, I think I remember the names of the split scores, although not the effects.
Strength was split into stamina and power. Stamina basically determined how much the character’s speed suffered at a given percentage of max encumbrance, and power was everything else.
Dexterity was split into aim and balance. Aim affected the hit rate of a character’s ranged attacks, and balance affected the AC bonus.
Constitution was split into health and toughness. Toughness determined hp bonuses and regeneration rates, while health affected diseases and stuff like that.
Intelligence was split into memory and reason. I don’t recall any details on the effects.
Wisdom was split into intuition and willpower. Again, I don’t remember the details.
Charisma was split into appearance and personality. Appearance affected reactions (maybe) and personality affected the number of followers a character would get.
