Ok, this thread is NOT about how I feel re neocons despite the title :cool:  but rather about Daleks.

At a convention last weekend I saw the season finale' of Dr. Who that involved daleks and cybermen. While cybermen are quite easy to do in most systems has anyone ever tried to do daleks in some generic systems?

The daleks from the new series are a lot tougher than the original series ones, which could be destroyed by someone hanging a hat on their eyestalk. (Seriously.)

In the first ep in the new series with a dalek, one killed 200 people in an underground complex, including a number of armed and trained security, and it used some clever tactics in the process.

In later eps they were equally deadly, and more intelligent and cunning than ever before.

So now that they can fly and everything tyey become a serious menace to a good SFRPG, and I wondered if anyone has done stats for them yet.

Any particular system you had in mind?

Cybermen: "We have two million cyberwarriors, how many are there of you?"

Dalek: "FOUR!"

Cybermen: "We are the superior being!"

Dalek: "YOU ARE SUPERIOR IN ONLY ONE SENSE! YOU ARE SUPERIOR AT DYING!"

God, I loved that episode.

And yes, I've had daleks all over the place. Basically any sci-fi setting where you can think of having a would be master-race that despises anything that is not itself will suit having the daleks.

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditCybermen: "We have two million cyberwarriors, how many are there of you?"

Dalek: "FOUR!"

Cybermen: "We are the superior being!"

Dalek: "YOU ARE SUPERIOR IN ONLY ONE SENSE! YOU ARE SUPERIOR AT DYING!"

God, I loved that episode.

And yes, I've had daleks all over the place. Basically any sci-fi setting where you can think of having a would be master-race that despises anything that is not itself will suit having the daleks.

RPGPundit

Ok, I just saw it and it was indeed funny, like when the cyberman said the daleks lack "Elegance" and the dalk shrieks "The daleks have no need of elegance!"

To which the cyberman replies calmly "This is obvious."

Other funny bits where when the cyberman leader informed the daleks they had declared war on the cybermen, and the dalk shrieks "This is not war, this is pest control!"

So the cyberman asks if the daleks believe they can destroy 5 million cybermen with 4 daleks and the dalek sneers "We would destroy 5 million cybermen with ONE dalek!"

The bit about the dalek telling the cyberman that they were better at dying was funny too.

It seemed like the daleks were creaming the cybermen, but then again those were 'super daleks' and not the grunt variety, I wonder how they regular daleks would have done against the cybermen. Oh, loved the new cyberman outfits BTW

Quote from: GRIMAny particular system you had in mind?

Gurps 4e I guess.

I would wonder one major issue: How long could a dalek go sans some form of maintanence, recharging, etc. A dalek claimed that one dalek could destroy 5 million cybermen, I really have to wonder what kind of tech could allow that many shots to be fired from the weapon without burning it out, running down the batteries or depleting the reactor fuel depending on the dalek's power source.

Cybermen were always gimped in comparison to Daleks.

This is something that set up a fascinating scale, because Cybermen were also WAY more powerful than humans, including humans with high-tech.  So that sets up a good contrast to what humans were like in comparison to Daleks.

As for how long can Daleks go, it appears that they're made to be practically self sufficient.  The one fucked up dalek we see in the 1st season of the new Dr. Who is only screwed because it had been hurdled millions of years through time or something like that, from whatever that final battle with the time lords that wiped both races out was.

Dammit; now that I'm running the Legion, and about to run the Three Kingdoms campaign, the only unfulfilled DMing ambition I have left is to run a successful Dr.Who campaign.  Someday...

RPGPundit

Quote from: RPGPunditCybermen were always gimped in comparison to Daleks.

This is something that set up a fascinating scale, because Cybermen were also WAY more powerful than humans, including humans with high-tech.  So that sets up a good contrast to what humans were like in comparison to Daleks.

As for how long can Daleks go, it appears that they're made to be practically self sufficient.  The one fucked up dalek we see in the 1st season of the new Dr. Who is only screwed because it had been hurdled millions of years through time or something like that, from whatever that final battle with the time lords that wiped both races out was.

Dammit; now that I'm running the Legion, and about to run the Three Kingdoms campaign, the only unfulfilled DMing ambition I have left is to run a successful Dr.Who campaign.  Someday...

RPGPundit

I think that fucked up dalek repaired itself from the "energy" it got from Rose's DNA and the power it sucked out of the powerlines, so it was up to full power when it engaged the guards. Even so it was supposedly vulnerable to sustained fire, as were the daleks in the season finale.

The ones in the second season finale seemed to be impervious and had much more powerful shields, but I suspect that they were 'super daleks' and heavily upgraded over the grunt models.

The Cybermen in the new series are a different set from the old guys so we can't really tell how the Mondosian/Telosian Cybermen would do in a war against the Daleks.

The Daleks we see are the final (i.e. most advanced) version of the race -- the survivors of the Time War that destroyed the Time Lords. This is why they have force fields, flights and even personal time jump capabilities. Based on what we've seen they run on "time energy" (which they can absorb from any time traveller or from travelling through time themselves) so it would seem likely they would practically never run out of energy under normal circumstances.

One Dalek could probably end the human race .

Now you get a more interesting Cyberman vs. Dalek match up if you choose the combatants from different eras. For the Daleks we start with naff robots that run on static electricity and cannot leave their city, through Daleks with machine gun weapons, up through an evolution to the recent Time War Daleks.

Cybermen run from moderately weak semi-cybernetic post-humans through to fully armoured battle robots. Add in these new guys and you get quite a points spread. (Geek Moment: If you plot out cyberman continuity there is strong evidence that they were developing time technology too!).

If I were statting all this out for a game I would develop different versions (like D20 templates) to cover all the variations: You could base each version on a 'historical' era so that we would have something like:
Industrial         Machine guns, hat over the eyestalk idiocy.
Space Opera    'Standard' killer robots -- the classic model!
Time War         Forcefields, flight, "This is not war, this is pest control!'
etc.

Damn! I need to run a Doctor Who game!

First generation daleks: Exterminate! Exterminate!

Cthulhu: [eats daleks]

Second generation daleks: Exterminate! Exterminate!

Cthulhu: [eats daleks]

Time Lord whomping daleks: Exterminate! Exterminate!

Cthulhu: [eats daleks, burps]