It can’t be bargained with. It can’t be reasoned with. It doesn’t feel pity. Or remorse. Or fear. And it absolutely will not stop—ever—until you are dead.
Assuming you are its target.
Even if you aren’t, your odds of survival are, like, 20%.
Welcome to Essential Builds, the blog that takes a pop culture icon’s clothes, boots, and motorcycle and makes an Essence20 Player Character.
Before advances in special effects turned sci-fi action into the dominant movie genre of the millennium, science fiction movies were limited to often-ridiculed cult classics and the rare cinematic masterpiece. With Terminator, James Cameron and his team took a B-movie premise and created one of the most popular and enduring films of its era. Then they did it again a few years later.
I could have saved this build for until 2029, when the original film’s opening scene takes place, but I’d rather use an option from the exciting new Essence20 sourcebook I just downloaded now, while the PDF is still hot.
One note on this build’s name. I’ve known this Terminator model as the T-800 for as long as I can remember. However, in researching this build, I may have incorrectly assumed T-800 referred to the Arnold Schwarzenegger-looking robot. It seems to only refer to the endoskeleton, and the Schwarzenegger meat makes it a T-101. I don’t know whether the T-800 and T-101 names are too inside baseball so I’ll just be calling this build The Terminator.
Who Is The Terminator?
Cyberdyne Systems Model 101 killing machines fought humans on the front lines of the future as mechanical soldiers with steel skulls for faces. As the war waged on and the machines adapted, they began applying organic tissue to these mechanical endoskeletons to ambush targets and infiltrate bases.
Beyond unfeeling and unflinching devotion to their programing, The Terminator’s ability to learn makes it especially deadly. They aren’t mindless machines. Their artificial intelligence programming may not be as agile as the human mind, but with time to analyze data, they can formulate counters to enemy tactics and defenses against enemy attacks.
Between sequels, the titular Terminator went from villain to hero without losing any of its cool yet terrifying qualities. The T-800 is big, monotone, and glacial. He kills without pausing, walks off damage that would kill most living creatures, and uses humanity’s dependence on technology to his advantage.
Building Essence20 The Terminator
Obviously, The Terminator needs to be a bulky bot that passes for human. With the PDF of Transformers Roleplaying Game: Transformers ONE going out to anyone who preordered the book (including anyone who preorders the book before its September release), we now have three different Origins for Common-sized, human-passing characters.
Once we have the robot endoskeleton built, we can flesh it out with a combat-focused Role.
So far, pretty straight forward.
But like how cinematography and direction elevated a story about a time traveling robot assassin, some fun Influence picks and Essence Score distribution will make this build more than just a boring bot with a big gun.
What I’m really hoping for is an option that reflects The Terminator’s ability to learn and adapt. That would make this build killer. Well, killer-er.
Origin
Pretender (Field Guide to Action & Adventure)
Ain’t this always the case: When considering subjects for my next build, I settled on The Terminator because I wanted to showcase Transformers ONE’s new Bot Origin. But when I set about actually building it, I realized a much more appropriate option has been available for years.
The Pretender Origin is named after a Transformers line of figures but the Origin more broadly applies to the idea of an infiltration robot. “As a Pretender, you hide your robotic physiology, aiming to blend in with the organic population.”
It can convert, which you might think disqualifies it for a Terminator build, but its Alt Mode is themed around dropping pretenses more than completely changing shape. And since we often see The Terminator adjusting how human it acts based on the scenario, it fits.
The Pretender gains a bump to Social. Not the first Essence Score I associate with The Terminator, but actually an important part of the lore. Kyle Reese even tells Sarah Connor that Cyberdine’s first infiltration models had rubber skin and were easy to spot. Arnold may be a huge human, but he still looks human. The Terminator uses Deception to pass for human when he needs to. When it’s time to go out, guns blazing, that’s when he converts to Alt Mode. Even if the conversion is mostly body language, you can tell when The Terminator drops the act.
Role
Warrior (Transformers Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)
Everything about the Warrior Role works with The Terminator.
Hardcore lets us lose limbs instead of Health and Tough It Out lets us shrug off damage, because we absolutely will not stop. Foot Soldier lets us act more quickly than our Speed Essence suggests.
Wisdom Through Experience lets us review our recordings to formulate new strategies. How I Got These Dents represents our late movie appearance where we’ve lost chunks of flesh and our metal endoskeleton and red LED eyes are showing.
Sub Rules
Focus: Sentinel (Transformers Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)
Continuing the unstoppable trend, I went with the defensive Warrior Focus. Sentinel gives us a few fun toys to play with. We get either a shield or a parrying weapon when requisitioning equipment. The Terminator may usually go for weapons when given the choice, but the point is he often gets the choice, with most scenes including at least one scene in which he builds up his arsenal. If you’re having trouble picturing The Terminator with a shield, the shield gained from Stalwart Defense doesn’t take up any hands. You can picture the Defense bonus as coming from our metal innards.
Faction: Autonomous Bots (Transformers Roleplaying Game: Transformers ONE)
It’s funny that the new Autonomous Bots Faction from Transformers ONE is supposed to reflect the cogless Cybertronians uniting, but also totally works to represent Skynet turning on humanity.
Conveniently, though one of Autonomous Bots’ design goals was to give a Transformers Faction option with no ties to converting, you can join the Faction even with an Alt Mode.
The We Improvise Faction Perk adds a Story Point to the pool at the start of combat, in case we need a truck to be conveniently parked outside the police station.
Influences
1st Intense (My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)
2nd Cybertronian Military (Field Guide to Action & Adventure) with Glacial Hang-Up (Transformers Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook)
3rd Time Traveler (Power Rangers Roleplaying Game: A Jump Through Time)
I am so glad I worked a My Little Pony option into a Terminator build, and am not surprised it’s an Influence.
Intense shows up often here, but to reiterate, it gives us a bonus to Willpower against attempts to influence us. Because we can’t be bargained with. We can’t be reasoned with. We don’t feel pity. Or remorse. Or fear.
Cybertronian Military is one of the best Influences in the game, but fits a very specific build. Luckily, this build qualifies. It lets us take a G.I. JOE Origin Perk as our Influence Perk. Let’s go with the Marine Origin from the G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Sgt Slaughter Limited Edition Accessory Pack. Hard Corps makes us even more unkillable. As a Hang-Up, we’re taking Glacial, which penalizes our Persuasion Skill Tests unless we’re telling the truth. Picture any Terminator movie info dump. That’s what we’re going for there.
Finally, Time Traveler. We can spend Story Points to ignore a Snag. It’s a strong option, but I’d have settled for a weaker benefit as long as the flavour stayed the same. We get to ignore that Snag because of our knowledge of the future. The downside: we have an increases risk of fumbling.
Essence Scores and Skills
We ended up with predictable Skill Selection. Might and Targeting for fighting. Intimidation and Deception for talking. Alertness and Technology for investigation.
Bonus, because we have a Transformers Origin in the Transformers Setting, we get Energon Points equal to our lowest Essence Score. Three’s not bad, especially since we also gain extra Story Points and a unique way to use them.
No Ranks in Driving is a bit unfortunate, but given than that we can ignore Snags, we can hop on a Harley when needed. We also have a few other tricks up our sleeves.
Strength 5
Intimidation +d4
Might +d6
Speed 4
Initiative +d2
Targeting +d6
Smarts 4
Alertness +d4
Technology +d4
Social 3
Deception +d6
General Perks
You thought we were done ponifying The Terminator?
Two General Perks in the My Little Pony RPG Core Rulebook capture The Terminator’s neural net processor perfectly.
First, Adolescent Attitude. This Perk helps us avoid mistakes and stride where we might stumble. It also captures the moments in Terminator 2 when John Connor teaches The Terminator how to be more than just a killing machine. The Terminator was build yesterday (but also, somehow, tomorrow), so the flavour of Adolescent Attitude represents his naivety.
Second, Dabbler. Every day we can lower one Skill by a rank to increase another. The Terminator may not sleep, but we’ve seen him sitting quietly adjusting his programing.
Once we have these two Perks picked, we can start looking at more combat focused options. Fortunately, as a Warrior, we already have that built in.
Conclusion
There’s no two ways about it, I nailed this build. It’s an unkillable killing machine, with some flavourful options adding convenient flexibility. Not much more to say than that.
Until next time, hasta la vista, baby.
Resources
Field Guide to Action & Adventure
G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
G.I. JOE Roleplaying Game Sgt Slaughter Limited Edition Accessory Pack
My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
Power Rangers Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
Power Rangers Roleplaying Game: A Jump Through Time
Transformers Roleplaying Game Core Rulebook
Transformers Roleplaying Game: Transformers ONE
Ryan Costello is one of the designers of the Essence20 system and an author on the G.I. JOE, Transformers, and My Little Pony Roleplaying Game Core Rulebooks. As of this writing, he’s written over 300 000 words for Essence20, contributing to over a dozen products and counting.
