Real Monster Hunter (based on Monster Hunter)

Monsters aren't real, right? Well that's what you thought before you were infected by a demonic bite. You got through the illness and control, eventually slaying your monstrous master. But it left you...less than human. Even so, you've vowed to do what you can to rid the world of other demons, so no one else has to suffer the way you have.

Juncture: any

Attributes:
Body 5 Chi 5 Mind 5 Ref 5

Divide 5 points among primary attributes.

Skills:

Creature Powers +7 (=12)
Martial Arts +7 (=12)
Guns +8 (=13)

Add 6 skill bonus. Swap Guns and Martial Arts ratings if desired.

Schticks
2 gun or weapon schticks.
2 Creature Powers

Unique Schtick: Monster Slayer: You know all about various monsters weaknesses, where to hit them for the most effect. You know the weak points in their armour and their vulnerabilities. As a result, you gain a +1 to your combat AVs when fighting demons, be they Supernatural Creatures or Abominations.

Unique Limitations: You are vulnerable to the Summoning schtick of Sorcery, and the Magic Cop's scrutiny.

Weapons: 2 from appropriate juncture.

Wealth Level: poor

Quick schtick pick
Gun schticks:
69 & 1850: Razor-Sharp Reflexes, True Strike
contemporary & 2056: Hair-Trigger Neck Hairs, Eagle Eye

Creature: Transformation, Flight

Weapons:
69 & 1850: sword, bow
Contemporary: Glock 17, Mossberg Special Purpose
2056: Buro 9, Buro Crimestopper

Wealth: poor

NB: for a non-demonic, all-human variant, drop Creature Powers for Info/Underworld +7 (12), and trade the Creature schticks for another gun/weapon schtick. Guns is +9 (=14) too. Obviously the unique limitation does not apply to the human hunter.

Second is based on either the Crow, Revenant from old AD&D or the Harrowed from Deadlands:

Harrowed Gunslinger/Revenant (based on the Ghost)

For some people, death is not the end. They refuse to go quietly, and such is their desire to make right what went wrong in life, they return. In the case of the Harrowed, the soul comes back with a passenger. A manitou is an animating demon which strives for control with the bodies original occupant. The revenant's plot hook tends to be related either to revenge from beyond the grave, or unfinished business.

Juncture: any

Attributes:
Body 5 Chi 0 (Mag =7) Mind 5 (Wil =8) Ref 5

Divide 6 points among primary attributes, max for all primary attributes is 10.

Skills:

Creature Powers +3 (10) [Max 12]
Martial Arts +6 (=11)
Guns +9 (=14)
Driving +5 (10) [Max 12]

Add 6 skill bonus. Swap Guns and Martial Arts ratings if desired.

Schticks
3 gun or weapon schticks.
Creature Power: Regeneration
Creature Power: Damage Immunity (usually bullets, except magic and blessed)

Unique schtick: Veil of Normality: The Revenant can drop the illusion of mortality and show themselves in their true, graven selves. They often appear ashen, and all the wounds that resulted in their death are visible. This functions the same as Supernatural Creatures Horrific Appearance, giving +2 to Initimidation checks, but giving an effective Charisma of 2 for all other purposes.

Unique Limitations: You can't be healed by characters using the Medicine skill, unless the learned it in AD69.

Weapons: 2 from appropriate juncture.

Wealth Level: poor

Quick schtick pick
Gun schticks:
69: Fast Draw, Symphony of Slaughter II
1850, contemporary & 2056: Fast Draw, Carnival of Carnage II

Weapons:
69: staff, sword
1850: twin Colt Walker revolvers
Contemporary: twin Colt 1911s
2056: twin Buro 9As

And Lastly a revised version of my earlier Lycanthrope:

Lycanthrope/Hengyokai
You are the shapeshifting man-animal of legend. You are a were-wolf, were-tiger, hengyokai monkey, or something similar. Either way you can take on the form of one animal, and a monstrous half-man half-animal form in between.

Juncture: 69, 1850, contemporary
Attributes: Bod 5, Chi 0 (Mag=7), Mnd 5 (Per 6), Ref 5
Add 6 to Primary attributes, maximum for any is 10.

Skills:
Creature Powers +6 (=13)
Martial Arts +5 (10) [Max 14]
Deceit +8 (=13)
Add 8 Skill bonuses.

Schticks:
Regeneration
Damage Immunity (bullets or hand to hand weapons - except silver/gold/jade/etc)

Unique Schtick: Lycanthropic Transformation
Has three forms, natural human (uses normal stats), animal (uses appropriate physical stats for that kind of creature) and the half-human half-animal "war-shape".

In the war-shape the shifter gains three points of Attributes which are assigned between Body and Reflexes. This is decided at the start of play, and is fixed.

Shifter also gains three additional Creature schticks usable in animal or war-shape chosen from the following: Abysmal Spines, Amphibian, Armour, Domination, Flight (if winged), Poison and Tentacles. Should make sense with regards the particular shape.

Unique Limitation: Lycanthropes cannot gain the standard Transformation power. Any additional Creature schticks they gain in play apply only to their animal or "war-shape".

Hideous appearance applied in war-shape. Cannot talk in either man-beast or animal form.

Wealth: poor

Kiero

I think this sort of thing is probably better done through play; either having an ordinary template and asking the GM to get you shafted over by demonic powers, or playing a Supernatural Creature and then branching out into other skills. I tend not to enforce the 'no extra italic skills at character gen' too harshly as long as they only take the skill at a suitably low value.

Funny enough, my old game was based around various archetypes running around as masked avenger types (my game was adapted from Dark Champions, but the pc's fit well as ex-special forces, etc). One player decided to have his character die between the old game and restarting under Feng Shui, and came back as a ghost. His "Gun" was actually a special effect of his blast schtick. The gun would never be drawn, just appear in his hand. The player had the character seemingly unaware that he was a ghost, in total denial. It was pretty fun to play out during the game.

Allowing italicised skills at the start, though does have the danger of concept bleed. I'd say preserving that is more important than certain schtick combinations. None of them are especially unbalanced, and it's even been pointed out elsewhere that their starting AVs may actually be a bit low.

But then I'm more expansive with my interpretation of what I'd allow.

Kiero

When mixing Supernatural with Gun schticks, I was always very fond of Benjamin Baugh's Supernatural Cop (on Bryant Durrell's site):

http://www.innocence.com/fengshui/house-rules/supernatural-cop.html

I like your "Real Monster Hunter", though... it kind of fills a thematic niche that Supernatural Cop doesn't exactly cover, sort of a "Cursed Hero" or "Reformed Monster" a la WB's Angel. I think you need to clarify the unique schtick... actually, I'm not sure I'd call it that, since its more of a serious limitation than anything else. Is the RMH explicitly forbidden from taking Damage Immunity: Sorcery, or even if he does take this schtick, then he's still vulnerable to Summoning and Scrutiny?

For the Harrowed/Revenant archetype... with the Unique Schtick, this char's getting the equivalent of 3 Gun and 3 Supernatural schticks. I'd drop the Gun schticks to 2.

The Lycanthrope/Hengyokai also seems schtick-heavy... they get 2 Creature powers, a variation of Transformation that would cost another supernatural creature at least two schticks, horrendous appearance (limited a bit), and THEN three more creature powers. I'd probably drop this last set down to two more creature powers.

Also... could you clarify what happens to the three attribute points that go into BOD/REF? Do these bump the skills based on these attributes up a similar amount, thus allowing a lycanthrope to wind up with a 16 in Martial Arts?

But the unique one isn't really a schtick - it's just the ability to drop the Supernatural Creature's Horrendous Appearance at will. Just thought it needed writing down in case anyone failed to realise they are really a demon/ghost. That's why I'd be tempted to leave as is.

On the Real Monster Hunter. Yeah, the Supernatural Cop was an inspiration. That is one cool archetype. I went with two variants, where the all-human doesn't have any Creature Powers, but I thought that best balanced up with another Gun/weapon schtick. I suppose the sorcery immunity could apply to the demonic variant, but I think it's still appropriate that they be vulnerable to Summoning.

Lycanthrope is a troublesome blighter. In the same way you can't use Transformation to end up with a Supernatural Creature with Martial Arts 17 (Wolf in Sheeps Clothing), can't do that here. Choose where they go at the beginning, but increases in Ref don't boost skills. Just faster on shot counter.

Kiero

Applied some edits, a new unique schtick for the Monster Hunter, and raised the Max on Martial Arts for the shifter.

Kiero

First, the way I understand it, having creature powers mean the character is automatically affected by the Summoning schtick, by the creature juncture modifier and has the deceptive speed and scary looks creature schticks. No choice there! As a result, most of your archetype will have a really hard time in the modern juncture!

Second, I usually prefer to work with the existing archetypes without creating new ones. And to this end will occasionnally allow to switch one combat skill for another, e.g. Sorcery for guns for the ghost, or even arcanowave devices for guns and guns for creature power for the monster hunter.

Now, I find the Monster hunter chi attribute of 5 too high. With his martial arts skill, he can easily and quickly add useful Fu powers on top of everything else (e.g. the anti-magic schticks of the path of the turtle). As a comparison, the magic cop and both creatures start with a much lower chi attribute. Otherwise, it is quite underpowered in the modern juncture.

For the Harrowed Gunslinger/Revenant, why not simply make a ghost with the blast (conjured weapon: gun with bullets) creature power, and the movement sorcery schtick for fast drawing. If you absolutely want to give him gun schticks, let him develop gun schtick+Blast power combinations, or a fast draw effect which lets him use the speed movement schtick as long as your first action is a 3 shots gun-blast.
I also find interesting that his home juncture is "any" when ghosts do not seem to arise in junctures with negative creature modifiers. From the description I would have guessed the juncture was 1850. Poor creature does not even have a bow to use his gun skill in AD69!

Finally, the were is weird, but is still pretty much a supernatural creature which starts with 7 creature schticks (counting the 2 transformation schticks for his 2 alternate forms). What creature would have domination as a schtick? It also has too high a mind attribute for a feral creature IMO.

OK ,I criticize a lot, but I always like to see new archetypes. I may not like your builds much, but I am always happy to read about new ideas. Maybe I will post a new archetype some time later myself...

In defense of the first two, however, both are simply tweaks of existing archetypes. The Real Monster Hunter is a slightly modified Monster Hunter. Thus the Chi of 5. If that is unbalanced, then surely the archetype in the book is? His starting Martial Arts, even with a Chi of 5 hardly puts him on a level with the Martial Artist, Old Master, Scrappy Kid, Ex-Special Forces or Ninja. Not least because he doesn't even start with any Fu schticks.

On the Harrowed Gunslinger. The Ghost was used as a template, again very little is that different. The real point though, is that it is thematically very different to what the Ghost was designed for. The Ghost is to represent the traditional Chinese ghosts from many a wuxia film or supernatural love story. Not someone come back from the dead after vengeance.

Twisting the Blast schtick just doesn't cut it. Because aside from the fact that they are back from the dead, the Harrowed are not magically inclined. That's why the relatively poor Creature Powers skill. Reason he doesn't have a bow in 69 is that he's more likely to be a Martial Arts based character in that juncture. Thus gun OR weapon schticks. As I remember, the quick schticks for 69 I used we weapon, not gun.

On the "automatic Supernatural" (and associated juncture penalties, deceptive speed, hideous appearance etc), that's something I see as negotiable for these ones. In the various traits (juncture penalty aside) don't apply to a Supernatural in human form (Transformation). Besides which, same as the Magic Cop doesn't get a magic penalty in his home juncture, same goes for these brands of Supernatural.

>First, the way I understand it, having creature powers mean the >character is automatically affected by the Summoning schtick, by the >creature juncture modifier and has the deceptive speed and scary looks >creature schticks. No choice there! As a result, most of your archetype >will have a really hard time in the modern juncture!

Well, that is only partly true of course. Ghosts have supernatural powers and while they are affected by Summoning and by the creature juncture modifier, they do not have deceptive speed and scary looks.
In fact most of them are babes.

i like your version of the monster hunter... much more interesting than whats currently in the book..

perhaps it might be best to label the hunter currently in the book, as a troublesome collector...

yours is similiar to things like buffy... in a way