Chapter 3: Traits
So, starting on page 127, we get into the actual traits that determine the game. This chapter, which clocks in at 26 pages, does not describe any of the mega-attributes or quantum powers, just the mostly basic traits that baselines carry around in the game, alongside a few new and critical traits like quantum and taint.
First up is Nature, which works pretty much the same as in other White-Wolf games: gain willpower back when you arbitrarily accomplish something in line with your nature. The natures listed are a bit different than those in VtM, but many of the usual suspects re-appear. They suggest that quantum powers should perhaps match nature in certain ways, which is actually a half-way decent prompt, since comic book archetypes do tend to play that way. The natures are of course not balanced, with some being much easy to ‘trigger’ for willpower restoration than others.
Allegiance follows, and this is where we finally get a coherent summary on the various factions you (might) want to join. To briefly summarize: there’s the Aberrants, who are the nominal good guys of the setting. They believe Project Utopia is corrupt, but that it’s also done good, and they’re trying to find out the truth. Project Utopia consists of the outward good guys, but they’re also corrupt and have a secret project within them. The game spews a lot of flak about how much Utopia sucks and gives out essentially zero motive for playing as a Nova who works for them, even though that’s the obvious way for a Nova team to form. Thanks for that. Project Proteus is the secret conspiracy within Utopia. Their objectives are completely unclear, but they’re ruthless and nasty and secretive in pursuit of…something. Oh, and you absolutely don’t have enough information at this point to run a game as a bunch of Proteus ops, so I’m not sure why it’s even given as an option. More ink is spilled regarding the Teragen than any of the other factions. They believe that Novas are a new species and that human laws don’t apply to them and they should build their own society. They embrace the darkest parts of the ‘we’re better than you’ aspect of superhero fiction – so of course White Wolf will eventually (in future supplements) make them right about everything and give them special powers that make them cooler and stronger than the other Novas. The Directive is next, they’re SHIELD, enough said. Also, Novas can choose a corporate allegiance if they want, though the only one really established is as a combat merc.
reasons to join the Teragen, yes, you are a duck, this is not considered a problem
There’s a sidebar here about Wheels within Wheels, and it includes an awful lot of handwringing about allowing deviations from canon and letting people do what they want. However this supposed commitment to flexibility (which they won’t maintain anyway) makes it impossible for Aberrant to have the courage of its own convictions. Though that’s not entirely bad given that its convictions boil down to ‘Teragen forever! Fuck the baselines!’ This is also the spot were WW reveals their true colors and essentially claims that the ‘right’ way to run Aberrant is as a game of deep conspiracy and that anyone who wants to play traditional pulp superheroes is having Bad Wrong Fun. Sure they claim that you can use the game to be the Justice League, but they make it very clear that you’re going to have to chuck pretty much the entire metaplot and a good portion of the setting to do so.
This was fun. Aberrant would get very mad if you were to try and do this.
Back to actual stat-like things: Attributes. The standard nine storyteller system attributes show up as expected, with a few minute differences. First, attributes are linked to mega-attributes in that you can’t have more mega-X than you have of X. Second, any attribute above 4 dots gets a ‘quality’ which allows you to reroll 10s for that attribute. This actually matters because dice pools can get pretty freaking big and so this little mechanic induces all sorts of little distortions to the RNG. All of the attribute descriptions, have the standard 1-5 dot explanation charts that are found in basically all White-Wolf games despite their inability to describe the functionality of your actual dicepool. Amazingly they managed to avoid this explanation fail with the abilities (well, they just do it once for all of them).
Unlike in most storyteller games, where the abilities are organized according to some arbitrary system with some BS story reference like Exalted’s essences, Aberrant explicitly groups Abilities according to the attribute they will be rolled with 90% of the time. This kind of renders them pointless as a category, but whatever it’s actually a better setup than some others. Of course, the abilities are not distributed evenly across the 9 attributes, which gives away the game from the start that some attributes are more important than others. Strength gets only Brawl and Might, while Intelligence is linked to 9 abilities, so maxing certain attributes will make you flat out better at more things than other ones, though of course you will roll some way more often than others. There are 34 abilities in all. Most will be familiar to anyone who’s played the storyteller system, though some are new, like Might, which is basically used to roll super-strength things like throwing and lifting.
Abilities also have specialties attached. Unlike WoD specialties that allow you to reroll tens, these add an extra die, and you can have up to three per ability. Effectively this means base dice pools expand out to 11 instead of 10 before adding any superpowers. The minor distortions continue to pile up.
Backgrounds: By now everyone should be expecting the standard brokenness typical of backgrounds in storyteller system games. You shall not be disappointed. Many of the expected backgrounds: Allies, Backing, Contacts, Followers, Influence, Mentor, and Resources all show up. Then there’s the new ones. Attunement, which lets you make it so you powers don’t destroy your clothes, or your weapon, or your motorcycle. This is a relevant ability, but it’s kind of a dick move to make people pay for it compared to other far more useful things. I mean, if you want to be Ghost Rider you shouldn’t have to spend five dots to make it so you don’t melt your bike.
5 background dots for the bike, because coolness must come with crippling costs
Cipher, which is basically the Arcane background from Mage and it means that your special secrets (assuming you have any) can’t be used against you. This is really pointless because if a player bothers to write up a complex and convoluted backstory they probably want to use it, and standard issue murderhobos can just have nothing to hide, or if they join the Terragen just not give a fuck.
Dormancy gives you the ability to ‘power down’ and make your powers undetectable, and at high levels even have a human form/nova form split like the Hulk. There’s a lot of weird implications to this background and how it interacts with other powers like Attunement, but if you want to have a secret identity it is not optional. It is not made at all clear how this ability interacts with Taint, which is a huge oversight considering that it is absolutely the most useful for characters who have significant taint problems.
Eufiber is a background that represents a sort of super-fabric that allows your character to have a gravity-defying superhero costume straight out of the comics or anime. It also allows you to store quantum points at a one per dot ratio. It’s only moderately powerful, but highly useful for certain builds. This is also pretty much the sole form of ‘superhero tech’ present in the game. There are a few other things in the background, but generally the technology level is roughly the same as you’d expect.
yes, there is a special background just for funky outfits, it actually doesn't suck
Node is the big offender. The node background governs how many quantum points you can spend per turn, and boosts your recovery of quantum. It is a straight-forward power increaser. Of course, like all other good things in Aberrant, there’s taint involved, and having more than 3 dots in node means you get taint dots.
High node is kinda like that
Willpower: mostly unchanged from other storyteller systems, in Aberrant willpower also allows you to resist taint induced mental disorders and to ‘max out’ quantum powers. There’s also a rule for what happens when you hit temp will 0 – you get ruled by your nature. The meaning of this is, of course, unclear, but it is essential a license for the GM to fuck you over. So basically you can’t spend that last willpower point. Oh, willpower is also used to resist certain mental powers. This is very important because of how willpower caps at ten, while the number of dice you use to make mental attacks well… doesn’t. So, having high willpower is really fucking important to avoid getting mind controlled in about two seconds flat. Considering that Willpower starts at 3 – rather low – and is comparatively expensive to raise (costing 2 bonus points or 1 nova point per dot) the game is essentially imposing a severe tax on players who wish to avoid being dominated.
It is impossible to have sufficient willpower to stop him from ganking you hard
Quantum: Here we finally enter the realm of Aberrant’s unique mechanics. Quantum is both a trait that has a level, and it also provides a pool of points to work with. Powers have efficacy determined by your quantum level, and certain powers require a minimum level. So generally, having higher quantum, which also increases your quantum pool, makes everything better. Except you can’t start with quantum above 5 and having quantum 5 gives you taint.
Your quantum pool is 20+(Quantum rating*2), though if you really want to you can spend points specifically to increase your pool (you shouldn’t). Resting restores quantum, and if you have a high node, or a specific power, you can recover quantum a lot faster, with recovery times measured in hours – an incredibly inconvenient unit for adventuring purposes that doesn’t correspond to the storyteller system’s flexible timekeeping setup at all. So basically sleeping recovers your quantum to full, otherwise fight with your GM over how many hours have passed.
The importance of your quantum pool is vastly inconsistent. Some builds, organized around high-end, multi-use powers like Elemental Mastery will churn through quantum like nobody’s business, while others will use very little quantum at all. For example: the Human Torch needs to spend quantum for everything he does. The Thing doesn’t spend quantum on anything. This may or may not matter depending on the type of encounters you are likely to face in the game. Builds that expend lots of quantum are vulnerable to being swarmed under – though in some sense everyone is vulnerable to being swarmed under in this system.
this build literally burns through quantum
this build doesn't, and is therefore significantly less vulnerable to being pwned in several specific ways
Oh, and you can burn health levels for 2 quantum points per health level. Note that the ‘Healing’ power allows you to heal health levels for 1 point per health level, but you can’t create an infinite loop this way because you can only use healing ‘once per scene.’ Can still get up to a lot of mischief though.
In addition to normal uses, the game allows players to spend quantum up to their rating to ‘maximize’ powers to provide fairly modest bonuses. Since you have a maximum quantum of 5 and have to roll extra successes to provide these bonuses and spend additional quantum points, it won’t usually be worth it unless trying to do a devastating one off maneuver. Then again, it might be just enough to make the difference between no damage and instant death.
Taint, or Why we Can’t have Nice Superheroes.
So, Marvel has spent decades pushing the thematic line ‘With Great Power comes Great Responsibility.’ White-Wolf decided to do something else. Taint is the mechanic that basically translates into ‘With Great Power comes Inevitable Transformation into a Crazed Tentacle Monster’
this is the Cancerverse, it lies at the end of the road down which Aberrant Taint travels
Taint is like willpower, it has temporary and permanent tracks, but instead of spending it, you gain temporary it. Every time you hit ten that converts into permanent taint. There’s lots of ways to gain taint. First of all, the more powerful you become, the more taint you gain. More than 3 dots in Node? Taint. Quantum of 5 or higher? Lots of taint. Bought some tainted powers at Chargen? Taint. Temporary taint can be gained from botching max power use, trying to boost quantum recovery and failing, and just being insane (and since permanent taint makes you insane, this becomes a vicious spiral pretty quickly). Oh, and you can acquire permanent taint by buying powers and mega-attributes tainted with xp.
Having taint sucks hard. When your permanent taint hits 4 you acquire an ‘Aberration’ and you get one for each further point you gain. You also gain increased difficulty on social roles and willpower roles to resist mental disorders (attempting to produce a high-powered diplomancer runs into this
hard). If your taint hits 10, then say goodbye, your character is now an NPC.
There are three classes of increasingly bad aberrations, depending on your taint level. These range from relatively mild like having green skin, to horrific like being a walking dirty bomb. A clever power-gamer can utilize the aberration system to gain a few beneficial side-effects. The system is also set up to incentivize players taking physical aberrations over mental ones, because mental ones make you vulnerable to more taint accumulation.
has fewer ingame drawbacks than...
this
Effectively Aberrant strongly incentivizes the player to rocket up to taint 3 and then work very hard to avoid gaining more taint. However, since gaining high quantum means gaining more taint, the world of Aberrant inevitably degenerates into one dominated by malformed and maddened uber-gods. It also encourages power-gamers to say ‘Fuck it!’ then take a huge number of tainted powers at chargen and play as horribly mutated Teragen murderhobos – because the Teragen faction explicitly doesn’t care about your aberrations and in some ways actively encourages them.
In some sense Taint forcibly pushes certain transhumanist themes into Aberrant. That can be considered a good thing, but the implementation is terrible. Taint is pretty much all cost, it’s something your character suffers in order to gain more of the powers they actually want, not part of a transformation into some glorious new form – especially since there’s no reason for aberrations to accrue in any sort of directed way.
The real problem with taint is that the benefits are so game-breakingly large, especially when it comes to XP. Want to go up to quantum 6? That’ll be 40 XP. Except, if you take it tainted, it’s only 20. All the way to quantum 10? The difference between the no taint pathway (280 XP) and the all-taint pathway (140 XP) is impossibly vast. You’ll never have the necessary XP to achieve godhood straight-up, but through taint it is actually feasible in a suitably lengthy campaign with a generous GM (25-30 sessions, which is possible in a yearlong campaign, albeit not especially common).
Because taint explicitly links increasing superpower with losing control of body and mind, and because taint is unavoidable as power increases even for the most scrupulous heroes, the system is a huge mess. Playing an untainted character is a huge-self-imposed handicap. Instead the incentive is to totally game the system by choosing aberrations with surgical care to avoid them being noticeable, or to join the Teragen and indulge in brutal power-fantasies. It’s a mess, especially given that the billions of baseline humans are utterly unable to access this frightful transhumanism and are therefore pretty fucking justified in being afraid of the mad gods emerging all around them. So even if you discard the metaplot it’s pretty much impossible to imagine a peaceful future emerging from this system – every single nova is destined to become Apocalypse (or actually, Cthulhu) as they become more powerful.
this is seriously the end game, I'm not even kidding in the slightest
Next Up, Mega-attributes
