Armor – Clothes, Barding and Accessories 3 page

Fuel reserves are vulnerable to weapons fire (due to their pressurized, highly volatile contents), and have 30 DT. If a tank is punctured while more than half full, its contents will explode outward in an impressive fireball that deals 1d10 damage for every five units of fuel it contains in its first five-foot radius, and has an AOE increment of 5d10. Needless to say, it carries the Fire special weapon effect (see weapon effects, later in this chapter). If the tank contains half or less than half of its maximum allowable contents, it instead will begin to leak. If ignited while leaking, it catches the wearer on fire as per the Fire special weapon effect. The wearer cannot extinguish themselves without water or outside assistance. Punctured tanks will leak 10 units of flamer fuel per combat round.

Munitions Case – Sitting atop the battle saddle, this armored metal box is a belt-and-loose-ammunition storage unit. Grants your extra ammunition a little bit of protection from the elements, 20 points of DT, and gives you a place to keep all the extra random bullets you keep digging out of filing cabinets besides your saddlebags. With an expert (MFD ½) repair roll, you can even rig up a crude gravity feed that can adequately reload a breech-loaded weapon as a single action in combat without the aid of an auto-loader.

Retractable Bit – Standard battle saddles have the trigger bit mounted on wires that lead to the weapons on either side, with either a direct wired connection, or, less commonly, a hydraulic line that leads to the actual firing mechanism. This bit is always suspended about half an inch away from the wearer’s face for easy access, making it possible to talk and move the head around, but preventing more in-depth actions requiring oral dexterity.

A retractable bit is a mechanical system that allows the trigger bit to be moved off to the side, away from the mouth, freeing it up for things like picking up items, reloading, more easily accessing saddlebags, working with terminals, etc. A simple flick of the foreleg moves it out of place, and a second one will replace it in firing position. Moving the bit back or away is a free action.

Semi-Automatic Loader – Not as sophisticated as an automatic loader, these fully-mechanical devices can be triggered to load any DTM or belt-fed weapon using a hoof-activated lever near the gun mounting. They’re not as versatile as their more expensive automated counterparts, and must be configured manually for each weapon (even if they’re already configured for a weapon that uses the same ammunition), which requires a repair roll MFD 1 and at least five minutes. Activating a semi-automatic loader system takes a single action, and only reloads a single weapon hooked up to the system. On the plus side, systems like these do allow for reloading without using the trigger bit—those things are widely considered to taste like moldy ghoul ass.

Automatic Loader – These fantastic devices are a must-have for any characters that actively use battle saddles. Every auto-loader is sized to fit a specific weight-class of battle saddle, but beyond that most auto-loaders are capable of working with any caliber of ammunition to load it automatically into a weapon. Auto-loader modules are capable of integration with any detachable magazine (DTM), breech, or internal magazine -fed weapons to enable automatic (only costs you a single action) reloading during combat. Many belt-fed detachable magazine weapons can even be rigged up with a more advanced auto-loader to make reloading at all totally unnecessary. In terms of price, light-barding compatible autoloaders are generally more expensive (3000-4000) due to their being fairly uncommon pre-war; medium models are extremely common due to their mass production for military use and therefore are quite cheap in comparison (1000-1500), and heavy models are somewhere in between the two. Weapons that use nonstandard ammunition sizes (anything larger than .50 caliber rounds, such as 120mm shells or 40mm grenades) tend to require specialized autoloader systems rather than standard units; double the listed maximum value for such units should the party come across one and try to buy or sell it. Weapons that use non-conventional munitions, such as energy weapons, bows, flamethrowers, and melee weapons, gain no benefit from an auto-loader.

These modules are typically controlled by an additional control system that modifies the standard bit of a battle saddle, giving it a third button or a pull-to-activate function that makes reloading a free action.

Food and Drink

Food and drink are of utmost importance to anyone living out in the wasteland. Even heroes need to eat every once in a while.

Food

Not all types of food will actually give a pony the nutrition required to survive. To that end, all of the foods listed here are marked with a handy indicator as to what can actually feed who. Nearly all foods listed provide sustenance for someone, and the furthest right column denotes what diet a character must have to gain nutritional benefit from it. Not all species present in the wasteland can eat and survive off of the same things, after all.

Foods marked “Carnivore” only provide sustenance to carnivores and omnivores. Similarly, Foods marked Herbivore will only provide sustenance to herbivores and omnivores. Those few foods marked “omnivore” only provide nutritional value and stave off starvation for omnivores. Characters can obviously still try to eat foods that they don’t gain nutritional benefit from, but expect them to develop an upset stomach shortly afterward, and gain little to no real nutritional benefit from doing so. For bacon, it might be worth it.

All food that provides a nutritional benefit to a character removes one wound over the course of the next hour after being eaten. All foods are assumed to provide nutritional benefit unless noted otherwise in their effects column entry. For further information on staving off starvation, see the Starvation heading in chapter 11, or the beginning of chapter 10.

Some foods provide more than one meal’s worth of sustenance. These foods can be split apart and eaten in sections over the course of multiple days (rationing), or can be consumed all at once by one or more ponies. Such food items cannot provide sustenance to more ponies than the number of meals they count as. Counting as two meals does not restore additional wounds unless otherwise noted, unless the food item is actually consumed as two separate meals either at least an hour apart or by different ponies at the same time.

Those foods that either provide hydration or heal for multiple wounds when consumed (or both ) which also count as multiple meals provide their additional healing or hydration effects in full even when only consumed in part. In other words, if you split up a pomegranate into two meals, it hydrates you twice. If you eat those meals at least an hour apart, it will also restore one wound each time. Similarly, if you split up a caravan lunch between three ponies, it dehydrates all three, heals them all for two wounds, and provides each with a meal.

Preparing and combining foods, as well as cooking in general, is tied to the Survival skill.

Table XV: Food

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 748