Too powerful?

[taalismn]

In Rifts Thundercloud Galaxy we have a random table of Dominator reactions(to those using Dominator tech), which gives some ideas of how Dominators might think...there's also one Dominator (as listed in Anvil Galaxy, I believe) who hunted down other Dominators. It's highly unlikely that the PCs will be lucky enough to stumble across a 'good' Dominator(because he might then choose to dominate the group as defacto leader, much to the players' disgust), but a smart Dominator might allow himself to be 'defeated' and 'captured' in order to gain more intelligence on the strange world he's trapped in....or he might fake his own destruction in order to return to cover, hide, and observe the PCs, and possibly manipulate them into his schemes(or see where they take any purloined technology). The Dominator might even pull something like ARCHIE-3OZ, and have a few robot duplicates laying around for the PCs to destroy. If they;ve never encountered a Dominator before, they might come to the wrongful conclusion that the Dominators are cyborgs, judging from the one they just 'killed'.

[Subjugator]

Sure, I'm the one who first mentioned the dominators would definatly have bigger and better weapons--that's not the point. the point is they're not unbeatable by any streach, even if you gave it time to get out of it's stasis pod and strap on the dominator versions of full battle garb and high end assult rifle. Nothing is unbeatable, even if one lone GB has almost no chance, if he's smart, and makes sure he has more than just a glitter boy to work with, there may still be a way to find victory.

I'd say the best way to beat a Dominator if you're anything short of a Cosmo Knight is to be too interesting to kill and make whatever you want him to do more interesting than what you don't want him to do. A being with an infinite lifespan has got to get bored at some point.

/Sub

[Blue_Lion]

I would be more worried about the thousand mile explosion that does millions of MD when they die, and the ship that is linked to them blows up. That sounds like it could be....inconvinent. Although a helpful (and precognicant) god or ai might arange for a rift to vent the blast, or d-shift the ship just before it goes up, thereby removing the earthshattering ka-boom.

Or hope the gas has gone stale after all that time...

Or maybe some other bugger snuck aboard and chewed through the detonation mechanism connections.

Dominator: "Oh RATS!"

The detination mechnisim is a realy upset life form. If I rember right upon defeat of the dominator it gets free and takes it revenge by going boom. Did i say it was realy upset?

[Blue_Lion]

Option A) He pulls the trigger a secodn time...

Option B: He shoots the Glitterboy in teh back...

Option C: He shoots the Glitterboy when he has surprise...

Option D: He pulls a bigger gun...

It isn't that a Glitterboy can't beat a Dominator, its that no single character has the ability (or arguably, the right) to take that sort of threat down by itself. It should be that a Glitterboy gets the finishing shot, after the 4-7 other heroes present have combined their efforts to whittle it down some. (In fact, I would argue the Glitterboy is arguably a better whittler than a finisher here, it would be more epic if a less powerful character pulled the finishing maneuver instead. Say, a "normal soldier, or even a scholar. Heck, even a vagabond would be more prosaic here really.)

The main issue here is that this really is a hard win to carry through. First, you have to know what a Dominator really is, and what they can do. Their tech is so impressively superior you can't begin to expect "mere" Rifts: Earth cahracters to handle thsi. So you has better make it veruy clear to them early on. Have then find a recording of some sort so that there is no question how bad this situation really is.

Next, they realize how massively bad the typical Dominator "failsafe" really is. As in, make sure you make it clear to them what's at stake. Rather than a recording, have them run into something else. Maybe a being (a very obviously alien being would be best here too) who is a survivor of a world that fell to just such a failsafe device. Give them some particulars, and have a list of viable options in your head to ensure they have some way of getting around the threat of a nebula sized explosive being.

Hmm...could a party you intend to take on a Dominator actually best a single Fallen Cosmo Knight? Perhaps the survivor is a mini boss all on his own who simply tells them how foolish they are, and that even if, given some truly unlikely series of events, they best the Dominator, they will still lose. (Combine the two perhaps? He is a survivor, but he was a Cosmo Knight once, and even after he defeated a Dominator, his planet was lost, and he Fell as a result of not getting a good answer from the Cosmic Forge as to why such a thing should happen, you know, the classic "Why God, Why?!" sort of thing. Another Dominator managed to scoop him up somehow, and then ran into something that landed them On/In Earth.)

Next, be aware that the stuff they can get out of this sort of adventure is likely to be impressive in the extreme, and you will be irrevocably upgrading the level of your game, similar to the Africa setting and its efforts to take on the Four Horsemen. Serious "firepower" is required, some of it not really gun and bomb related, and unless you make it so they can't keep it (which is sort of cheesy), then they will come out of this sort of thing with the chops to take on really serious threats.

And lastly, however you go about it, you need to ensure some option is available to eliminate the Dominator's vessel at teh end of things...this is NOT something ANYONE should get hold of,even modest sized pieces of it really. If say, the C.S., Triax, Japan, or some other advanced tech group got hold of it, bad tings would eventually be in the pipe somewhere down the line.

I do not know I think a scare crow burster might be able to take him down. What is that you say you can only be hurt by fire and are immune to fire.......
Now I was in a group where there where three players and together they could easy beat a dominator but they where from a deployment where we played for 4-6 hours every other day for a year. Starting out in ninjas and super spies at the end in rifts. Needles to say at the end we had all become quite powerfull but the charters themself started to get some what board with the constant save the megeverse quests. At one point they stoped fighting things and just lounged around the megaverse for a few decades. ON a side note they did manage to help form the CS in the game.

[Subjugator]

I do not know I think a scare crow burster might be able to take him down. What is that you say you can only be hurt by fire and are immune to fire.......
Now I was in a group where there where three players and together they could easy beat a dominator but they where from a deployment where we played for 4-6 hours every other day for a year. Starting out in ninjas and super spies at the end in rifts. Needles to say at the end we had all become quite powerfull but the charters themself started to get some what board with the constant save the megeverse quests. At one point they stoped fighting things and just lounged around the megaverse for a few decades. ON a side note they did manage to help form the CS in the game.

I think a scarecrow Burster would lose to a Dominator, not because the Dominator could hurt him, but because he could imprison it forever or throw it into the sun or something (and a related quasi-canonical ruling is that something of that power will bypass common immunities (when Maryann was still a part of Palladium she said that Impervious to Energy would be overwhelmed by the SDF3 main gun).

/Sub

[earthhawk]

I decided to put the dominator into an escape pod that crash landed into the ocean off the east coast of the United States. Over the millennia the pod has been over grown and has turned into a small island (still thinking its been 20,000 years). Due to a wicked storm (perhaps caused by the pod itself) the PCs are forced to take refuge on the island. Hell, I could have the island inhabited by flora and fauna that's grown super large due to the influence of the escape pod.

[Zamion138]

I decided to put the dominator into an escape pod that crash landed into the ocean off the east coast of the United States. Over the millennia the pod has been over grown and has turned into a small island (still thinking its been 20,000 years). Due to a wicked storm (perhaps caused by the pod itself) the PCs are forced to take refuge on the island. Hell, I could have the island inhabited by flora and fauna that's grown super large due to the influence of the escape pod.

Love this idea.......

[Blue_Lion]

Quantum Disentanglement Caster...poof, no more Burster scare crow...which ought not to have existed in the first place really.

More than that, a Burster, alone, isn't going to take out a Dominator. Even Burster that you technically couldn't harm. A Dominator would simply imprison such an annoyance inside constantly regenerating force field, teleport him into space, or simply dimensionally port him to someplace that doesn't get along real well with such things. Dominator's are the sort of thing that you don't attack unless you are positive you have surprise AND you can take him out in less than two melees. Otherwise, he recovers, and any one of a thousand different preperations kick in at that point.

Its a little like saying you are planning on mugging Gandalf or Elminster...smart people realize this is not something you attempt unless you brought alone a convenient nuclear warhead.

As I pointed out earlier, make sure that you give the players a real chance here. Perhaps instead of a full up Dominator vessel, he is aboard a minions vessel that he used to escape, something with a much more conventional power plant, like anti-matter...hmm...

Anyhow, going after a Dominator on their ship, old crashed beater or not...is...contraindicated...

You are right it should not exist but is often braght up as a unbeatlebe munchkin charter on the boards.