New ML looking for some seasoned advice

[Demonisec]

First and foremost thank you for taking time to read this, secondly I've only ran one session ever. Its going well I found some free adventures online, and all my players are loving it. Though I'm having a few small problems, number one being one of my players took it upon themselves to go and look stuff up online on the wiki which is great get educated,but they brought up something the wiki says is in the book that I can't find anywhere. Mutation Upgrades which is basically just stating that when you level up you can upgrade a Mutation and forego your level bonuses, but I can't find it anywhere in the book so I'm hesitant to allow this. Secondly I have a mutant plant in group who has the Plant Mutation Accumulated Resistance which reads as follows "With this mutaion, the Plant has learned to change its structure to gain complete immunity to any energy-based attack that it has experienced in the past, including heat, cold, electricity, radiation, or energy weapons." There is also a Mental Mutation called Accumulated Resistance which reads as follows "Through years of exposure to a certain substance (chemicals or radiation), or concentrated form of energy (such as heat, cold, or light) in the mutants environment, a resistance against said source has been accumulated, allowing the mutant to take more damage from one of these sources. This mutation gives the mutant a hit point reserve equal to his total hit points. This hit point is used to take damage from the substance he is resistant to before it begins to affect his regular pool of hit points. This separate pool heals in the same manner and at the time as the character's hit point pool, even if that rate is changed by other mutations such as acute hyper healing or body adjustment." So my question is should I treat the Plant variant the same as the Mental and give them a reserve of hit points or should I allow the Plant complete immunity to eventually every form of energy attacks?

[Necrosis]

I'd vote for consistency and resource management. So, I'd go with the reserve hit point pool.

[Gregorius21778]

Hi there,

I would advise to take the "hit point reserve" as well, and to explain to the player that everything else would leave you, the ML, with to much of a problem in the game.

Regarding the other part of your question, the "Upgrade", I guess that is part of the "Mutant & Mazes" rules at the end of the rule book. In that rules set (that was meant to allow a mix with the material of LabyrinthLord) the mutations had different levels. Please check that section, too. If you started running with the "basic rules" it is best to ignore the "Mutants & Mazes" rules (imho).

[Malcadon]

The differing rule with Physical and Plant mutations Accumulated Resistance is due to how they were named in Gamma World. The Physical Accumulated Resistance equivalent was called "Absorption", while the Plant equivalent was called "Adaptation." Where Absorption creates a hit point reserve for one non-changing form of energy-based attack, Adaptation grants instant immunity to any form of attack that did not kill it out right, save for mental attacks and "having its limbs or stalks chopped off by swords or axes." As plants were not playable in early Gamma World, the idea was to have particularly tough plant-based NPCs and monsters.

Oh yes, the Mutation Upgrades was my doing (as the primary user over there, any mishaps, misspellings, misunderstandings and misdemeanors are usually my doing ). You can find the rule here. Folks are more than welcome to add what they like over there.

I left the rule deliberately vague and open-ended for Mutant Lord interpretation. How this rule works is that a Mutant Lord can "upgrade" a single mutation to be better in some minor way (more range, longer duration, more damage, etc.) or to have some useful side-effect. Such "side-effects" could be something like giving a mutant character with Mental Phantasm and Neural Telekinesis the ability to use them together seamlessly to create illusory forms capable of physical contact, or allowing someone with Vampiric Field to redirect siphoned hit points to someone else, and so on.

If not handled right, it could be game-braking. (Mind you, "game-balance" was never a forethought with a game like this game, or the original game this was based off of.) If anything, it puts a lot of burden on the Ref to come-up with creative ways to improve a mutant character in creative ways. Although, asking the player "How would you improve your character with a small change to one of his/her mutations?" could be useful if one is running dry on creativity. (On the other hand, players tend to get a little... too creative, when granted that level of control. )