[Aberrant] Avoiding Transcendence

[Mateus Luz]

On the Chrysalis topic, I don’t think there is any other source of knowledge related to it other than Mal and his crew.

He, being awesome and really interested in self evolution and all, took a about 50 years to learn how to do, so I think it’s not something easy to develop. Mal learned he can do anything, and the only limits to his powers are the ones he imposes unconsciously, and then learned how to control this limits, what must be absolutely hard, like for us to control peristaltic movements or hearth beating.

I think Chrysalis is the ultimate result of Terat philosophy, controlling every aspect of self to unlock all limits of body and mind and become a god (or the closest thing to unlimited power), not a recreational activity Terats do or something they teach to anyone.

And it’s all for a 1 dot edge…

[Firanai]

For me, avoiding transcendence is first and foremost about staying connected to the rest of humanity. The problem is that the more power and transformations you have, the harder it is to relate to baselines, but what if there was a way to connect with humanity at their level? What does superman do to not became a literal alien? He "becomes" Clark Kent, a brilliant but clumsy human reporter, he "limits" himself to a human perspective. However, in aberrant it's not enough to interact with humanity, to truly connect you need to remind yourself what is to be as limited as a regular human, without superpowers of any kind.
That's why I want to create a house rule that if you have Dormancy at two you have an option to stop transcendence and, with a lot of work, even reduce it. My initial idea is that whenever a character accumulates 10 points of flux instead of gaining an automatic point of transcendence they have the option to immediately activate Dormancy to stop it, at which point they must remain in that state for a period of 10 hours + Quantum (At first I considered days, but that's too long) and live like a regular human being (They can still help their allies, but they must do it without powers). At the end of the period, they can shed one point of flux and avoid transcendence. Any interruption of this process will result in gaining the point of transcendence.
Now, reducing it is obviously more difficult. Following the theme of sacrifice, a player must spend a period of 10 days + Quantum in dormancy at which point, and after a period of reflection, a player can sacrifice one permanent point of their quantum stat to get rid of one point of transcendence. The Nova chooses to sacrifice power in the name of their humanity. Not an easy choice to make, even for the most virtuous of Novas.
Since I'm not an expert in systems or mechanics, I would like to hear your opinions and suggestions about it. Thanks in advance.

[Dataweaver]

I fully agree with the premise of your idea. But let's look at the specifics:

The existing mechanics for Grounding cover much of that already: to use it, you have to engage with baselines on their terms, which means not using Nova abilities. Dormancy helps with that, in that if you shut off your Nova abilities you don't have to worry about using them; but it's not required. As written, Grounding doesn't help you once you've reached 10 Flux; but what it does do is to help you avoid getting to 10 Flux in the first place. So far, so good.

The only area that I can see where the existing Grounding rules are inadequate is less about the Grounding rules themselves than the hard link between Quantum and Transcendence: no matter what a Nova does, there is no way to avoid gaining a point of Transcendence when you gain your fourth dot of Quantum, and another point of Transcendence for every increase in Quantum after that; and there's no way to lower Transcendence at all. Thus the house rule that this thread is all about: allow the Nova to use Grounding to directly combat Transcendence, not just indirectly doing so by opposing Flux. The mechanism I chose was to establish experience point expenditures that let you avoid or reduce Transcendence, and to gate those expenditures through Grounding in the same way that increasing Nova traits is gated through Maxing Out. That's the core idea; the rest is just a matter of deciding how much experience it should cost to reduce or avoid Transcendence, and how much Grounding you have to do to justify spending that experience.

[Deadmanwalking]

On the topic of mega composure dots and mega attributes in general. I think the fan material from first edition did a good job of describing it. It doesn’t give the same sort of alien/nonhuman feeling as taint/transcendance but it does cause a gap between baseline and nova with the nova causing jealousy and feelings of inadequacy. When someone described a nova with mega composure as being eerie to baselines I would say that would be in cases with some levels of transcendance or transformation, otherwise I would say the nova would cause frustration and anger from keeping his cool and being level headed. Like how they would single the nova out for not freaking out in stressful situations.

Well, I'd expect Mega-Composure is indeed quite eerie when the Nova actually demonstrates it. Being utterly calm at unusual times is generally perceived as creepy...but Mega-Composure is inherently a superhuman degree of emotional control, meaning it should, thematically, allow the Nova to demonstrate the appropriate emotional reaction if they wish, it's just a choice for them whether to do so.

On the Chrysalis topic, I don’t think there is any other source of knowledge related to it other than Mal and his crew.

He, being awesome and really interested in self evolution and all, took a about 50 years to learn how to do, so I think it’s not something easy to develop. Mal learned he can do anything, and the only limits to his powers are the ones he imposes unconsciously, and then learned how to control this limits, what must be absolutely hard, like for us to control peristaltic movements or hearth beating.

I think Chrysalis is the ultimate result of Terat philosophy, controlling every aspect of self to unlock all limits of body and mind and become a god (or the closest thing to unlimited power), not a recreational activity Terats do or something they teach to anyone.

And it’s all for a 1 dot edge…

Personally, while I agree that learning Chrysalis on your own would be a long and difficult process (though not as long as it was for Mal if you know it's possible...that always makes things easier), I'd say the Teragen are probably very willing to teach people how to utilize Chrysalis, but would use it to actively recruit while teaching. Jeremiah Scripture, just to pick one example, seems the sort who would happily teach anyone sincere who asked him the path to enlightenment...and take the entire time he was teaching to proselytize, using all his Mega-Social Attributes to make sure you were a Terat by the time you learned it. Which isn't impossible to resist, but is gonna cut the number of non-Terats who have Chrysalis down a lot (especially since the Terats most likely to be approachable for this are almost certainly gonna be notably Mega-Social).

The rulebook says you need a mentor to talk you through your first Chrysalis, and must have some understanding of Teras, but says nothing about devotion or belief, so it's a logistical obstacle for a non-Terat to learn rather than a hard limit per se, but it's a pretty big logistical obstacle.

[Dataweaver]

For what it's worth, I think that's the general rule of thumb for all faction-specific benefits: none of them are truly unique to the faction in question; but all of them are much harder to acquire without the faction's help.

[Aliasi]

And, in both editions, Chrysalis is explicitly a thing that can be learned. It's not implausible to use faction-specific edges for other situations, and honestly even if someone wasn't a Terat it's like other cases of invention: knowing it can be done makes it easier to duplicate.

Not easy, of course. And my post was more about "variants that use some portion of the rules without necessarily being literally the same thing".

[Mateus Luz]

First, sorry if it sounded offensive, my post was more about my opinion than trying to change anyone’s view of the setting. Now, while I agree if you give enough time, novas can do anything, Chrysalis is a very specific thing that most novas are not even aware of existence, and the number of Novas is yet too low to random discovering the same stuff. Sure by Aberrant War this knowledge will be much more available and will not be a exclusivity of treats, but not yet.

On a small change of subject, 1e Teragen book had more than a few aberration/taint manipulation powers. Those are not present in the rules so far. That would explain how chrysalis become more common among terats in 1e and also how the general population become aware of this possibility.

[Eternl Knight]

Quick question - has anyone actually asked the devs about the Mega-Composure interpretations. I'll admit I read it as Dataweaver did (cannot use for grounding purposes) but we do get frequent answers on the forum and it would settle the issue with authority (rather than seeing the back & forth of competing player views).

[Deadmanwalking]

Quick question - has anyone actually asked the devs about the Mega-Composure interpretations. I'll admit I read it as Dataweaver did (cannot use for grounding purposes) but we do get frequent answers on the forum and it would settle the issue with authority (rather than seeing the back & forth of competing player views).

To be clear, nobody is saying you can use it for Grounding directly (well, it can be used at half rating for some kinds of grounding, like all other Mega-Attributes). The question is whether the Difficulty reduction is somehow conditional, or applies to all Composure rolls no matter what (in the latter case, it can be used on Forming Bonds, which is helpful to Grounding in a roundabout way).

But no, it hadn't been asked officially, so I just did that.

[cKnight]

I think an easy house rule would be to create an edge for those that wish to hold on to humanity.

Keeping my humanity. 1-2 dots
Requirements: haven't/can't lower exp cost by taking transcendence.
At 1 dot character may buy 4 quantum without transcendence
At 2 dots character may buy 5 quantum without transcendence