Revision as of 00:20, 12 December 2010

Custom Rules

Adding depth to a campaign is mainly about storytelling and interaction, but a few extra mechanisms for translating events in the story into game effects can be useful. Most of these optional rules add a little colour to the general campaign setting, enhancing the players’ feeling of immersion and involvement in a living, breathing world.

The Cost Of Living

Housing and Income

To live and be unemployed n Downtown Mort is to live in poverty.

Subversives who are from the ranks of the unemployed get 160u p/m + thier housing paid for.

Food

Vehicles

Social

Friends and Enemies

Reputation

Sponsorship

All Darknight op's are under sponsorship of DarkNight, and receive payment per month according to thier rank.

Rank	Income
Conscript	50u
Subversive	100 - 180u
Insurgent	200 - 210u
Interceptor	250 - 330u
Agent	500u

Sale of Footage

Ops can edit and sell the footae of thier missions to Channel resistance, better portraying the fight against the corruption of SLA Industries.

Combat footage will generally bring between 20 and 50 credits per second, but various skills can extend the footage length with interviews and setup footage, and raise the price through better quality recording.

Footage fees per second:

Combat: 40-100u
Interview: 20u
Padding: 10u

Footage length:

Combat: As per actual combat length
Interview: 1s per point over 10 for interviewee's Communique roll
Padding: 1s per point over 10 of cameraman's Cinematography roll

Fee modifier rolls:

Telegenics (subject): +5% per point over 10 for combat footage
Cinematography (cameraman): +5% per point over 10 for combat footage
Interview (interviewer): +5% per point over 10 for interview footage

Channel resistance will take the best results of everyone's footage, so if five people film something, the one piece which would make the most money is used.

Medical

The medical rules add an extra element of realism and risk to combat. Characters may find themselves incapacitated and in need from their friends. Serious injuries may have long-running effects as extreme forms of medicine are used. Characters suffering a lot of damage can’t just shoot up with kick-start and carry on, they must find medical attention and squads may be temporarily weakened as members recover.

Torso Hit Points

The problem with having the same amount of hits in the torso as total body is that it is very cut and dry between being alive and fighting and being dead. With the torso at two thirds of total body, the character can be effectively taken out of combat without killing him. This may lead to characters being taken out of combat more often, but should prevent them from being killed outright, leaving them to fight another day. It also gives their colleagues something else to think about.

Injuries

Loss of hit points is the game’s representation of the body taking damage. As they stand, the rules for damage represent the amount of damage a location can take before it becomes unusable, but in reality the transition is not as black and white. Operatives are fit, healthy, and combat trained. They can take a certain amount of cuts, bruises, abrasions and minor tissue damage and continue to fight with little ill effect. Kick Start is designed to promote fast coagulation and recovery and can make a light injury negligible in seconds. It cannot re-grow muscle, bones, organs, and sinew though. These alterations blur the line between healthy and unhealthy and a little more reality to the way characters become injured. A location which reaches negative hit points will become useless until restored to positive hits, however, serious damage has been sustained and Kick Start or normal Ebb healing cannot fully repair the injury. Negative hit points must be healed by Ebb regeneration or with surgery and cannot be restored in the field. This has the effect of reducing the maximum number of hits the location can be healed back to by the negative amount, although total body hits can still be restored. A location taking such serious damage will be bleeding badly and as such every point below zero counts as an additional wound. These wounds can be counteracted with Ebb healing, but drugs will only heal any wound taken from the penetration. Either way the negative hit points remain. As these are very painful injuries, the negative modifier to skills incurred by the wounds are also accumulated. These negatives remain even if the wound is healed, although these can be countered with drugs such as Pain Away. Lastly, there is a 10% chance per negative point that serious damaged will be sustained such as losing an eye or finger, or having an organ damaged. Such damage will need a replacement, as described under LAD. A location that reaches a negative equal or greater than half its total hit points is considered to be severed or destroyed. Assuming the character survives, a destroyed limb may be replaced by Karma or Dark Lament. If the torso or head are reduced to negative half hit points the character dies.

Example; An Operative is shot in the leg and it is reduced from 8 to -3 hit points. This has multiple effects: The Op will collapse as the limb will no longer take his weight. The Op, in addition to the wound from the round penetrating his armour, has 3 more wounds. The extra wounds cause all rolls to be at a -3 modifier, making -4 in total, and the Op is bleeding at a rate of 1 point of total body every 3 rounds. The Op must make a phys roll at -4 to remain conscious, both from the amount of damage taken and from being reduced to negative hits in a location. There is a 30% chance that the Op has a serious injury such as a broken leg or torn sinew. The leg can now only be healed to 3 points below its normal level.

Later in the combat an Ebon comrade reaches the stricken Op. The Ebon heals the Op as much as possible, raising the leg to 5 (3 below the location’s maximum hits). The Op can now stand on the leg providing it isn’t broken (failed the 30% chance of a serious injury, at GM’s discretion). The Op is still bleeding and in a lot of pain though, and struggles to contribute to the remainder of the combat from the injuries.

After the combat the Op takes some medical drugs. A couple of doses of Kick Start stop most of the bleeding, and a dose of Pain Away removes the negative modifiers (at least until it wears off 6 hours later). The Ops should hope that this is enough to keep him alive long enough to get medical attention.

Medical Skills

Paramedic

The paramedic skill is used to apply battlefield first aid to injured personnel in the field. It is quick and dirty, and designed to prolong life enough for the recipient to get to proper medical facilities. Mere flesh wounds are easily treated by Kick Start, but combat healing drugs have little effect on more serious wounds. Those wounds taken from a location being reduced to negative hit points cannot be healed by Kick Start, but paramedics can attend these more serious injuries and stem the bleeding. Each wound, regardless of cause, requires a seperate roll to treat and takes two minutes. The results are applied at the beginning of the action in order to prevent characters bleeding out while being treated, but will resume bleeding if the medic is interrupted. A successful roll will result in that wound being treated so that the bleeding is greatly reduced, however only medical treatment at a hospital will fully stop it. Paramedic can only be performed with the aid of a medical kit.

Wounds	Hit loss
1	1 per 30 mins
2	1 per 20 mins
3	1 per 10 mins
4	1 per 5 mins
5+	1 per min

Medical Practice

The Medical skill allows more advanced healing once a character is in a properly equipped facility.

Hospital Treatment

After sustaining serious injuries, a character must seek professional medical attention if they are to recover. The basic cost for this is 20c per negative point of the injury. Extra fees will be incurred, for example Killcopter evacuation or an ambulance will cost 500c and 100c respectively, and if the Op is still down hit points or is bleeding he will have to cover the cost of the Kick Start used to stabilise him. The Op will be hospitalised for an amount of days equal to the sum of all negatives in all locations. People can also opt for Ebb regeneration, which is faster but more expensive (and a bit creepy for non-Ebons). Limbs cost 30c per negative hit point and take between 5 and 10 minutes, while torso and head costs 50c per point and take around an hour. While medicine cannot recreate lost limbs (although Karma can, see below), Ebb healing can regenerate body parts in a matter of days. The time and cost depends on how much of the location is destroyed, and the replacement will be identical to the one lost.

	Cost	Duration
Arm	250c – 600c	12-36 hours
Leg	200c – 700c	8-48 hours

Drugs

Drugs are often a neglected part of campaigns. Characters rarely take enough to be addicted, unless already so, and even more rarely suffer detox effects. Certain combat drugs could be considered unbalanced and out of character with the harsh realism of the combat in the game. Elaborating the rules on drugs allows the GM to introduce a few more interesting effects and withdraw some of the less appropriate ones.

Ultra-Violence, Blaze UV and Shatter

The Ultra-Violence based combat drugs are designed to give the user increased speed, fearlessness, resistance to damage, and immunity to pain. They represent these factors very well in all but one aspect – the resistance to damage. The drugs do not make a character’s body harder or tougher, they simply give the user the ability to ignore the effects of the damage. Halving the damage taken, therefore, feels more like a game mechanism than a representation of effects. As an alternative, a GM may consider this variation on the damage modification aspect of UV, Blaze UV and Shatter. All other bonuses from the drug are retained, but rather than halve all damage taken UV users take no point of bruising damage if a weapon’s damage and penetration fail to exceed their armour. Additionally, the user’s ignorance of their injuries negate any modifiers to rolls due to wounds and serious injuries. While this now makes Frothers less powerful than they were, their drugs still give them quite an advantage over a non-UV enhanced human.

Pain Away

With the addition of the serious injury rules, Pain Away can be given the optional effect of reducing the negative modifiers from wounds. It is described as a powerful pain killer, and for the duration of the effects it is not unreasonable to assume that a character under the effects could ignore the distraction caused by the discomfort of their wounds.

Multiple drugs

While most Ops are aware of the danger of becoming addicted to the drugs that form part of their daily routine, less are aware of the dangers of taking cocktails of drugs. Individually these drugs are relatively safe, but any Op who cares to read the instruction will see that it is recommended that they are not mixed with others. While it states in the SLA Industries main rule book that cocktails of drugs cannot be taken, this more than likely refers to several drugs mixed into one syringe. Few would be insane enough to try this, but should someone attempt it an instant PHYS roll with negatives depending upon the mix should be made to avoid overdosing (see below) immediately. Passing this roll leaves the user still feeling ill but otherwise fine. Regardless, none of the intended effects work. Drugs taken at the same time but not mixed together are a safer option, but are still risky. The effects will act as normal, but a modified PHYS roll must be made when the effects kick in three phases later. If this roll is failed the character will overdose, otherwise they can continue unaffected. Kick Start is designed to allow several doses at once to be taken without ill effects, but different varieties of Kick Start still run the risk of an overdose. In the cases of both cocktails and simultaneous doses the PHYS rolls are compulsory, and drugs such as Pain Away and UV will not exempt a character.

PHYS modifiers for multiple drug use

	Cocktail	Simultaneous
Medical/Medical	-4	-1
Medical/Soft	-6	-3
Medical/Combat	-10	-8
Soft/Soft	-8	-5
Soft/Combat	-12	-10
Combat/Combat	-14	-12

Overdosing

Even without shooting up cocktails of drugs, a character taking too many doses in too short a space of time can still risk an overdose. To work out if a character may overdose, the two addiction statistics for the drug are used. The first statistic (eg, -1 PHYS per 15 doses) indicates the amount of doses that can be safely taken, and the second statistic (eg, 1 dose/day) is the space of time the aforementioned doses must be taken within to risk overdose. If the amount of doses is exceeded within the timescale the character must make a PHYS roll at -1 for the first dose, and any subsequent doses will accumulate another -1 PHYS. If the character fails a PHYS roll, he will OD. The effects of overdosing are the same as the detox effects of the drug, or the combined detox effects of all the drugs if several have caused the overdose. Flush may be used to prevent an overdosing character taking any detox effects, effectively forcing the character to pass his PHYS roll for that occasion. No other drugs will prevent the PHYS roll from having to be taken.

Firearms

Ranged combat is an integral part of SLA Industries, and this selection of advanced firearm rules can add more realism and tactical considerations to gunfights.

Aiming

The rules for taking multiple phases to aim are ambiguous with respect to how long you recieve the bonus for. Any marksman is trained to re-aim after every shot, at least partly because the recoil will kick your aim out anyway. So aims only apply for one shot, after that the modifiers are reset to 0, with no bonus or penalties.

Overwatch

A character who knows exactly where a target will appear (to within a few degrees) can bring to bear in advance. This is called being in overwatch, and when the target appears the firer can bring to bear for free on a DEX -2 roll. A character in overwatch cannot aim in advance.

Auto-fire

A character using auto fire, i.e. firing a burst at a single target, should roll to hit as normal using the appropriate weapon skill (rifle/pistol). If the attack is successful, the amount of rounds that hit are worked out using the same roll, but with the auto/support skill instead. For every two points over 11 of the remaining score, a round hits up to the RoF of the weapon. This translates to an additional hit on 13, 15, 17, 19 etc.

Suppressive fire

A character using suppressive fire is firing fully automatic fire against an area or group of targets, locking the trigger for a continuous stream rather than a burst. The firer must declare the area or group they are shooting at and roll to hit as normal. All normal firing modifiers apply (range, rate of fire etc), but the firer recieves no bonus for aiming (so all shots are at -3 for being wild). Target modifiers are taken into account later. The amount of rounds which hit depends on the range of the targets and uses the firer's Auto/Support skill;

0-5m: One hit every 2 points (11, 13, 15, 17 etc)
6-10m: One hit every 3 points (11, 14, 17, 20 etc)
11-20m: One hit every 4 points (11, 15, 19, 24 etc)
21m+: One hit every 5 points (11, 16, 21, 26 etc)

The hits are distributed among the targets in order from the ones with the least modifiers to hit to the ones with the most until those modifiers bring down the roll result to a point where the round would miss. The distribution of the targets will also cause modifiers. Every lateral meter between targets will accrue a -1 modifier to the roll, while multiple targets within a meter span will give a +1 per additional target. Suppressive fire is effective on every phase, regardless of whether the firer normally acts. However, on those phases where the firer does not act their weapon skill is not added to the roll.

Example 1:

fires his at a squad of six 10m away who are each on average two meters apart. When he makes his roll he has the following modifiers:

-3 for suppressive fire (wild shot)
-2 for target spacing
+4 for rate of fire
+8 for rifle skill

He must make a roll at +7 to hit anything at all. Assuming he does, at 10m he will hit an extra target for every 3 points of his roll, using his Auto/Support skill. So, if Fk'Khr rolls an average 11 his result to hit is 18. Having successfully hit the group, he can work out how many rounds of the burst hit. Assuming his Auto/Support skill is also 8, the result of 18 will cause three hits - 11, 14, and 17.

Example 2:

Now lets put the squad in a 2m wide corridor, at the same distance. This time there are 6 targets in a 2m span, giving him the folowing modifiers:

-3 for suppressive fire (wild shot)
+2 for target spacing
+4 for rate of fire
+8 for rifle skill

Rolling an 11 again now gives him a result of 22, he hits the group with four rounds - 11, 14, 17, and 20.

Example 3:

This time four of the original squad are in heavy cover. The rolls are the same as in example 1, but this time the amount of rounds that hit are distributed among those not under cover first. The third hit suffers from the -3 modifier for the cover, dropping it below 17 and hitting the cover instead.

Weapon Jamming

While modern weaponry is designed to be extremely reliable, even the most reliable firearm will jam eventually unless properly cared for. Operatives in particular put their weapons through a lot, getting water, dust, sewage and gore in them. Add to this the amount of rounds that are sometimes fired from them and the chances of the weapons jamming increases by a huge amount. Correct maintenance and the correct equipment to take care of a firearm can minimise the risk of such an occurrence. If at any point a double 1 is rolled when firing a weapon there is a chance of it jamming. This depends on several factors: the type of the ammo, whether the weapon has been customised, the rate of fire, and how well looked after the weapon is. Should a double 1 be rolled a weapons maintenance roll should be made with the appropriate modifiers (see below). If the roll is passed then the result is a simple miss, but if the roll is failed the gun will jam and several actions (and another weapons maintenance roll) must be spent to un-jam it again. The amount of actions taken should be equal to the amount the roll was failed by. If the unfortunate firer rolls a double 1 for his weapons maintenance roll something has gone badly wrong in the mechanisms and the weapon is rendered unusable until it can be repaired.

Ammo:	Std	0	Rate of fire:	1	0
	AP	0		3	-1
	HP	-2		5	-2
	HEAP	-1		10	-3
	HESH	-2		20	-5
	DU	0	Other:	Gauss	+4
	HIVE	-1		Extended clip	-4
	Blank	-4		Clip not full	+2
	Hotline	-3		Custom repeat action	-2
	Shot	0		Rebored	-2
	Slug	-2		No maintenance kit	-5
	Flechette	-1		Filthy conditions	-2
	Chopper	0		Very wet conditions	-3
	Disc	+2		Very cold conditions	-1

Using SMGs and rifles one-handed

Submachine guns are small enough to be used one handed, but are designed to be supported by the other hand. Rifles are not designed to be fired one-handed, and the balance of the weapon makes it very difficult to do so. Characters firing an SMG or rifle one-handed have the weapon's recoil doubled, and in the case of rifles suffer an additional -3 (-5 for oversized rifles) penalty due to the size.

Sniping

At long ranges there are a lot more factors to take into account. Snipers have many considerations, and to take those extreme range shots will need to do some preperation to have the greatest chance of hitting their target. Bear in mind that these rules won't affect combat most of the time, it's really designed for very long range, aimed shots.

Bullet Drop

A round will always fall at the same speed, the only factor is how far it gets before it lands. Snipers need to account for the round falling over long distances and aim high. This can be easily done by adjusting sights to the correct range, which raises them in compensation. Spending a phase setting sights for shots at long or extreme range will add +1 to the roll.

Wind

Not all shots will be affected by wind, but considering that most shots over long range will be outdoors due to the distance involved, it's fair to say most will be. Shooters need to adjust their aim against the wind in order for it to take the round onto their target. This translates to between a 0 and -3 (or more in exceptional circumstances) modifier depending on wind strength, with an average on Mort of -2 at long range. Wind modifiers are doubled at extreme range. Wind can be compensated to some extent by measuring wind speed in advance, and shooters taking a wind measurement before their shot can reduce the wind penalty by half. Alternatively the shooter can make a marksmanship roll to guess the wind. A successful roll reduces the modifier by 1, and a roll over 20 reduces it by 2.

@@ Line 27: / Line 27: @@
 |Rank || Income
 |-
-|Conscript || 20u
+|Conscript || 50u
 |-
-| Subversive || 60 - 100u
+| Subversive || 100 - 180u
 |-
-| Insurgent || 120 - 180u
+| Insurgent || 200 - 210u
 |-
-| Interceptor || 200 - 290u
+| Interceptor || 250 - 330u
 |-
 | Agent	|| 500u

Difference between revisions of "Extra Material"