New Rules

 

General

In any case where a division or average is called for in the manual, the result will be rounded down unless specified otherwise.

 

Statistics

Whenever a point is added to or subtracted from a stat, such as racial modifiers or points from traits, these numbers will affect the minimum and maximum values of the stats they modify as well as changing the number of points available to be allocated to stats.  Statistics still may not go over 10 or under 1.  These values are only applicable at character creation.  Events after the game has begun may raise or lower stats past their maximums or minimums.

 

For example, if Bob takes the Bruiser trait he will gain 2 points of Strength.  These points are added to the minimum value of his Strength, so his minimum Strength is now 1 + 2 = 3.  Also, if Bob chooses to play a Ghoul, he will lose 2 points of Charisma.  This means that the maximum Charisma he may choose is 8.  If Bob makes his Charisma 8 at character creation, he may still increase it within the game by any number of methods, including the Gain Charisma perk or surgical augmentation.  However, he may not increase it past 10.

 

Traits

Although the manual does not explicitly say it, you may take up to 2 traits as in the Fallout games.  You may take fewer than 2 if you wish.

 

The Small Frame and Bloody Mess traits are unavailable.  Encumbrance will not be used since it takes too much time for too little benefit so Small Frame is invalid.  Bloody Mess will be hard to simulate in a pen and paper RPG.

 

The Heavy Handed trait will alter the way critical hits work.  If you roll a damage bonus on the critical hit table it will have 30% deducted from it.  If you roll a crippling, blinding, or unconsciousness, another roll must be made on a 1d100.  If this rolls is less than 30, the critical hit will fail and it will be treated as a normal hit.

 

The Jinxed trait will change the range for critical failures for anyone near the character with that trait.  Rather than having critical failures occur on attack rolls of 97-100, they will occur on rolls of 93-100.  When and who the Jinxed trait will affect will be left to the GM’s discretion.

 

Skills

Although it is not mentioned in the manual, we will use the rule that states that each percentage point in a skill over 100% costs two skill points.  However, if it is a tagged skill each percentage point will cost one skill point.

 

A new aspect has been added to the Repair skill.  It is now the Repair and Building skill.  If you wish to create something from scratch such as a gun, an arrow, or a computer, this is the skill you will use.  The creation of some objects may require a penalty to the skill roll, however.  If you try to create a year 2000 level computer from spare parts you may find that you have a 50% penalty, so that even with 100% Repair and Building skill you only have a 50% chance to make the computer.  If you fail in an attempt to build something, you may not try again until the next day.  You may make small items, such as arrows or bullets, in batches, however, provided you have the materials.  Also, if you have a critical failure trying to create a specific kind of item, you may not try again until you have gained a level.  This is to prevent people with a 1% chance of creating the “Super Blasto Death Ray(tm)” from spending months of game time trying to create it.

 

For the Doctor and First Aid skills, for every 4 points above 100% in the skill, and additional hit point is healed on each use.  So a Doctor with 115% Doctor skill would always heal 2d10 + 3 hit points when using his skill.

 

I am introducing the concept of specialization to the skill system.  Each skill will have some sub skills in which you may specialize.  When you specialize, you lose some points from the general skill, but in the specialized area you gain twice those points.  You can choose how many points you wish to use to specialize, but the number of points cannot exceed 15 and your basic skill cannot go below 1%.  Specialization can only be set at character generation.  When you add points to the skill both the general skill and the specialization rise at the same rate.  For Unarmed Combat, the specialized skill is used to determine when new moves are available.  For perks that require a certain level in a skill, the base skill level will be used, not the specialized level.

 

For example, say Bob has a Small Guns skill of 40%.  Bob wishes to specialize in pistols and devote 15 points to the specialization.  Now whenever Bob uses a pistol, it will be as if his Small Guns skill was 40% + (15% * 2) = 70%.  However, if he tries to use a shotgun or other Small Gun, he will only have a skill of 40% - 15% = 25%.  If Bob gained a level and chose to add one point to his Small Guns skill, he would now have a skill of 71% with pistols and 26% with all other Small Guns.  If Bob wanted to take a perk that required a 50% Small Guns skill he would be out of luck; even though his specialization in pistols is over 50%, his base skill is only 25% which is not high enough to meet the requirement.

 

Listing of skills and specialization areas:

 

Small Guns: Bows and Slings, Pistols, Sub-machine Guns, Shotguns, and Rifles

Big Guns: Flamethrowers, Heavy Machine Guns, Rocket Launchers, and Large Support Weapons

Energy Weapons: Laser, Plasma

Unarmed: Punching, Kicking

Melee Weapons: Cutting (swords, knives, axes), Bludgeoning (hammers, crowbars, baseball bats)

Throwing: Cutting (throwing knives, throwing axes, darts), Bludgeoning (rocks, baseballs, grenades)

First Aid: No Specializations Available

Doctor: No Specializations Available

Driving: Cars, Tanks, Boats, Planes

Sneak: No Specializations Available

Lockpick: Normal, Electric

Steal: No Specializations Available

Traps: Traps, Explosives

Science: Biology, Chemistry, Physics, etc (ask me if you have one in mind)

Repair and Building: Repair, Building

Speech: No Specializations Available

Barter: No Specializations Available

Gambling: Poker, Blackjack, Craps, etc.

Outdoorsman: No Specializations Available

 

Items

When a weapon has a Strength requirement, a character may still use it if their Strength is lower than the requirement.  However, for each point of Strength lower than the requirement, the character will suffer a 20% penalty to their rolls using that weapon.  For example, assume that Bob has a 50% Big Guns skill and a Strength of 5.  If Bob wants to use an M60 which has a Strength requirement of 7, he will incur (7 – 5) * 20% = 40% penalty, giving him an effective skill of 10% in Big Guns when using the M60.  No skill benefit is gained if your Strength is over the requirement.

 

Weapons will not become damaged each time they miss.  Rather, weapon damage will be a common critical failure.

 

Books work differently in this game than in the computer version.  Rather than giving a skill a one-time boost, a book will enhance a skill roll when used with that skill.  Each book will apply to a skill or a specialization of a skill, and the bonus that the book gives will vary between books.  Don’t plan on carrying a library, though; you can only carry so many books.

 

Combat

Light and cover modifiers will not be used. However, cover will alter the available targeted shots. If you can only see an opponent's head, for instance, you can only target the head or eyes, and in fact you must do so. 

 

The rule that states that unused action points are converted into armor class at the end of a round will not be used as it requires too much bookkeeping.

 

Because calling a targeted shot on the torso increases the critical chance, it should be more difficult to hit.  Targeted shots on the torso will receive a 10% penalty.

 

The critical failure table has been changed, but it still uses 1d10 to determine the effect.  Because not all weapons have ammo or can jam, I have created three different tables.  One covers guns of all kinds, one covers melee weapons, and one covers unarmed combat.  The tables are shown below:

 

Critical Miss Table for Guns:

1-5

Weapon is Damaged

6

Bad Ammo (remaining ammo is lost)

7

Weapon Jammed

8

Loss of Action Points for Round

9

Hit Something Else

10

Weapon is Damaged Twice

 

Critical Miss Table for Melee and Thrown Weapons:

1-5

Weapon is Damaged

6

Damage Self at 50% Damage

7

Weapon Drops to Attacker’s Feet

8

Loss of Action Points for Round

9

Hit Something Else

10

Weapon is Damaged Twice

 

Critical Miss Table for Unarmed Combat:

The attacker takes damage here rather than the weapon.

1-5

Lose 1d4 Hit Points (bypasses armor)

6-7

Fall Over

8

Off Balance: Lose Rest of Turn

9

Off Balance: Lose This and Next Turn

10

Lose 2d4 + 2 Hit Points (bypasses armor)

 

The method of determining knockdowns in melee combat is changed.  Rather than using the number rolled by the attacker to determine the chance of a knockdown, the number rolled divided by three, rounded down, will be used.  For example, if Bob has a 50% chance to hit a critter and rolls a 47, the chance he will knock the critter over is 47 / 3 = 15.667 = 15%.

 

The manual suggests that a critical hit will be scored when an attack roll comes under the attacker’s critical chance plus one.  Technically, this will make the critical chance a true percentage.  However, I would prefer to say that a critical hit will be scored if the attack roll is less than or equal to the critical chance.  This will have the effect of making everyone in the game 1% less likely to make a critical hit, but will reduce confusion.

 

The critical hit table has been changed slightly.  I removed instant death and replaced it with another bypass armor.  Here is the new table:

 

1-2

Bypass Armor (ignore DR and DT)

3

150% Damage

4

200% Damage

5

300% Damage

6

Target becomes unconscious for 1d4 turns

7

Target’s leg is crippled (roll 1d2, 1 is right, 2 is left)

8

Target’s arm is crippled (roll 1d2, 1 is right, 2 is left)

9

Target is blinded (Perception is reduced to 1)

10

Target is knocked down

 

Perks

The Animal Friend perk’s minimum level has been lowered to 3.

 

Comprehension now grants a 50% bonus to the bonus a book provides on a skill role.  For example, if the Big Book of Science normally provides a 20% bonus on a science roll, a character with the Comprehension perk would have a 30% bonus instead.

 

The Healer perk has a typo.  With one rank it adds 5-10 points on each use, and with two ranks it adds 10-20 points.

 

The HtH Evade perk will be available but that will be the only time the unused action point rule is in effect.

 

The Pack Rat and Strong Back perks will be unavailable because encumbrance is not being used.