Posts in 2021
Reduce Mod God Edge requirements
Saturday, April 24, 2021 in New
Reduce the requirement on the Mod God edge from “Repair d10+” to “Repair d8+”. The latter was a bit too high for a secondary skill.
Guns & the Matrix
Wednesday, April 21, 2021 in New
Add some setting notes clarifying what a “modern” firearm is, in the context of our campaign. Also defined rules for “throwback” guns - ones that have no on-board processing at all, so are unhackable and undetectable on the Matrix, but cost more to acquire and cannot use some accessories.
Streamline Matrix networks
Tuesday, April 20, 2021 in New
- Dropped PAN/s-PAN/WAN terminology. They’re all just “networks” now. No rules changes from this, it’s just a wording change.
- Changed rule to allow sleaze Hacking versus a network being run by a cyberdeck or dronedeck. However, the owner of the ‘deck can oppose the Hacking roll with Notice; if they get a success, they realise the hack occurred.
- Tiny change to Denial of Service attack modifiers; it’s now the same -2 if the target is in any kind of network, regardless of if that network is controlled by a commlink, cyberdeck, or host.
- Changed tacnet rules. Dropped the “Bennie pool” they used to give, instead:
- at start of combat, one character on the tacnet rolls a Battle test
- Success grants an anti-Bennie
- this can be used to force a re-roll on the opponent’s dice
Magic
Monday, April 19, 2021 in New
Lots of changes to magic:
- Arcane Backgrounds
- reduce to only two ABs (physical adept and mage)
- reduce to one skill, now used for all spellcasting and summoning - Magic
- remove spellcaster/summoner split in skills and Arcane Backgrounds
- added reckless casting - spend a Benny to cancel 2 points of penalty on a Magic roll
- Added new summoning traditions page
- new rules for attuned summoners like Eddie. Attuned summoners can create their own roster of spirits and learn more spirit types as a downtime action.
- Small changes to rules for creating spirits
- Old concepts of greatforms/lesser forms dropped
- Added clarification for spirits that use Powers themselves
- New Power for spirits - Accident
- Arcane Backgrounds
Languages
Sunday, April 18, 2021 in New
Tiny tweak to the languages and multi-lingual characters; now, “partial” command of the language gives you the language skill at a rating equal to your Smarts die. It used to be Smarts, minus one step. On reflection, the “minus one step” bit feels needlessly fiddly.
Human attributes
Sunday, April 18, 2021 in New
Change human racial traits to remove the “free extra Bennie” trait and replace it with “one free attribute starts at d6” trait instead. (I have stolen this from Savage Worlds Pathfinder, and it seems as reasonable a way to make humans at +4 racial bonus as any other option.)
Languages
Friday, April 02, 2021 in New
Added some houserules and setting information for languages and multi-lingual characters.
The goal is try and keep some flavour of a multi-linguistic, multi-cultural urban sprawl, and encourage face characters to distinguish themsleves through language skills, while keeping the skill point cost to do so under control.
Matrix editing pass
Thursday, March 25, 2021 in New
Substantial edit pass through the matrix section. No big rules changes, just lots of rewording to use consistent terms and explain stuff better.
- Matrix stats for all types of devices now consolidated to an easier to read table
- Added hacking vehicles page to the rigger section.
- Added Parabellum to the commlink defence programs
- Still need to do more on dronedecks.
Summoning changes
Monday, March 22, 2021 in New
Some streamlining to summoning
- Drop concept of services, spirits just last some number of hours now
- A raise on the summoning roll makes the spirit tougher instead of granting more services
- Add a reminder to the page about the Power Preparation rule from core SWADE