THE CHALLENGE

     Mark has posed the question, 'How does one deal with the
Challenge posed by powerful characters?'  At first glance, this
appears to be a worthy question.  After all, powerful characters
have a depressing tendancy to anhilate any obstacle which is
placed in their path.  They make mincemeat of the most powerful
NPCs.  In short, they take a GMs carefully designed and well
balanced scenario and break it into little teeny pieces, a sorry
fate.
      After days, hours, possibly even seconds of mind-numbing
cogitation, I believe that I have discovered a small problem with
one of the assumptions which underlies the question.  Rather
than attempt to describe this problem in detail, I offer this
short story with a moral:


                      THE CHALLENGE

     Morris Minor peered around the corner of the alley.  There
was no one in sight.  He blended back into the night and checked
his gear.
     He wore a skin-tight suit of Xyram, fine overlapping scales
which would resist explosions, energy, projectiles, or blades.  A
combat helmet and filters provided protection against sonic
attack or noxious gasses.  Servos in the armour gave him the
strength of many men.  The armour was covered with a correlation
envelope which rendered it invisible to vision, radar, and
infra-red.
     His weapon was a Kodak HK-47 Instamatic, a powerful pulsed
laser weapon whose coherent beam could burn through the heaviest
of armour, the mightiest of shields, or both, with equal facility.
The effect the beam had on the unprotected flesh within was
alarming.  The weapon was not controlled or directed by anything
so crude as a trigger.  It was connected directly to his nervous
system, which nervous system had augmented to increase its speed
and was interfaced to sensors in his helmet.  Morris could
encompass the destruction of anything that came within range of
those sensors.  In an instant.  With but a single thought.
     The same augmentations which increased his speed also
rendered Morris invisible and immune to psionic powers.
     He was the perfect assasin.
     Morris crossed the street.  Were there anyone to observe,
they might have heard a faint whisper of wind.  They might have
seen the slightest flicker at the edge of their vision.  But no
one listened.  No one saw.  Morris was one with the night.
     He reached his destination, a small machine set into the
wall of a corner building.  He activated a device which supressed
all sounds.  He removed a small card from an envelope at his
waist and inserted it into the machine.  A panel slid up to reveal
a small keyboard.  Morris entered the code he had been taught.
     The machine gave no immediate response.
     Morris repeated the code.
     A message flashed on the screen.
     "Dear Customer, we regret that this ATM is out of order.
Thank you for banking with IPBank."
     Morris stared at the machine in rage.  Was it possible that
he could be thwarted so easily?  This was scarcely likely.  He
was Morris Minor, the Perfect Assasin!  He waited for the machine
to return his ATM card.  He would re-insert the card and try a
second time!
     Nothing happened.
     Realization came quickly.  The machine had swallowed his ATM
card!  How could such a thing occur?  Surely such a thing was not
possible!  Was he not Morris Minor, the Perfect Assasin?  He
staggered backwards in astonishment and was run over by a truck.

AND THE LESSON WE LEARN FROM THIS STORY IS:

     Combat skills are not always particularly useful to a member
of an advanced technological civilization.


Hail Chaos!

Paul R. Gazis
[email removed]          or
[email removed]                    or
something like that


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