Korentin_Black:
For me the main problem SLA has is its combination of media-friendly combat with 1.5 second combat rounds. It's easy to do cool things, but cheesy dialogue is out of the question, otherwise I rather like the system. One thing to bear in mind with the proposed change however is that SLA runs off a bell-curve and DH doesn't, which is to say that in SLA, the most common die roll is 11 and the more extreme results are progressively less likely, whilst in DH all results are equally likely. That means that - for example - you get good results out of relatively 'low' skill levels in many areas even when called to roll them. The knock-on effect there is that instead of coming out of Meny with the potential to be competent in several areas and very good in one or two, DH graduates would start out thoroughly inept in several areas and indifferent in one or two. That's a pretty serious flavour change and I've no real idea how to address it from inside the D% system.
Yeah, the system was pretty much (which is understandable taking into account the role of the characters) geared towards fast moving, deadly combat scenes, though I think that Dark Heresy or Only War can pull that off quite well – also with the addition of Aptitudes you can (given a few tweaks here and there during character generation) use the Only War system to build starting characters with a couple of higher level skills and/or combat related Talents that will make them more competent than the basic DH starter level character. Or…. The O.R.E by Arc Dream Publishing is highly adaptable and there is already a fan made module that gives rules for all the races presented in the MRB and some Ebb powers.
Korentin_Black:
Onnn the other hand, AtB is an awesome world... I love Paladium games, I really do but it's a stretch to accuse them of having anything as organised as a system. Savage Worlds has a pretty simple 'race creator' in the main rules which would probably serve rather well for the purposes of making critters, the system is extremely simple and fast-paced and again, characters can start competent at what they do fairly easily but mastery takes a while (and you're generally better off learning new things). Hmmm, the Dark Heresy series would probably match the original system better however - and balance out some of the slightly crazier extremes of strength and damage capacity. The mutant traits from Black Crusade would be a good place to start for animal features and the weapons and armour lists are already pretty extensive, needing minimal adjustment. This one's probably the easier of the two.
Never played any Savage Worlds based game, I’ll have to check it out. I think once you match the TMNT stats to DH ones its just a case of scaling them correctly for the racial bonuses and size levels (20 levels in TMNT vs ?? levels in DH (tiny, small, regular, huge, gargantuan??).)
Again, I’d say the ORE system would be worth a shot.. Wild Talents has rules for creating aliens and mutants etc from scratch, though it’s a die pool system so I know some people are happier making straight D20 or D% rolls rather than rolling a bucket of die.
