Digging and Climbing

The claws ofHellhounds and Sand Dogs are versatile tools, and can be used to dig extremely quickly. Digging is not like flying – you can’t just do it whenever and wherever you please, because some areas are not suitable for digging through. Stuff is already present, and you have to may displace it with care to avoid your tunnel caving in behind you (or even on top of you!).

Whenever you are about to dig (or climb), you should rolling your dig skill against base MFD 1 (may vary depending on the terrain and environmental conditions). Critical success and success mean you may dig as you please. Failures mean you can’t dig as quickly as you’d like due to obstructions hidden beneath the surface, and force you to move at only half your maximum digging speed. Critical failures mean there’s either an impassable obstruction or that the terrain is very unstable and will collapse if you continue digging, and prevent you from digging in that area. While digging in a tense combat situation, you should roll dig once per round whenever you use it to move around. Out of combat, you only need to re-roll this skill if the soil, tunnel or environmental conditions change.

The dig skill is also used for climbing. Climbing allows vertical locomotion at the character’s full ground movement speed (not their dig speed – that is specifically for digging and moving through tunnels), and can be used to allow a dog to ascend surfaces to escape incoming fire.

Dig can be very useful for setting ambushes and launching surprise attacks from beneath the ground. Digging allows dogs to very easily sneak up on characters even during combat (being beneath the ground grants concealment, after all – equivalent to a 2 MFD non-magical stealth field) at a very fast rate, but neither race is capable of digging a hole so fast that they can dig to dodge out of the way of fire. The skill cannot be used to dodge unless via climbing, but in the case of hellhounds the sharpness of the claws does allow use in making cover quickly from nearby materials. See the blocking and cover rules later in this section for more detail on how that process functions; suffice to say, it’s easier for a hellhound to make their own cover out of their surroundings than it would be for most ponies.

Teleportation

Teleportation is a form of movement via magic (this is generally a Unicorn/Alicorn spell) that is functionally instantaneous point to point transit. Used in combat, it can be an extremely powerful way to dodge incoming enemy fire or to achieve a superior strategic position and thus gain the advantage over an enemy. For more information on this form of movement, see any of the various levels of teleportation spell, available in the magic section. Teleportation can be used by characters to get up, move, dodge, hit the deck, take cover, or block (by teleporting something into the way of the attack).

Extreme magical mishaps made while teleporting can lead to a phenomenon commonly referred to as teleport-shunting, also known as “splinching.” Simply put, part of the normal process of magical teleportation involves determining a destination location, converting a target or targets into pure magic, and then rematerializing the converted magic at the destination location. Splinching is what happens when the materialization doesn’t go as planned – the target rematerializes inside a material that already existed at the target location. Normally, the spell provides safeguards against this. In fact, probably about 80% of a teleportation spell is composed just of magical safeguards. But when you’re trying to cast complex magics in a rush or while being shot at, occasionally things do go wrong.

Splinched characters end up fused with solid objects, similar to possible negative side effects associated with the Ghost and Phantom spells, or a bad run-in with pink cloud. In most cases, the object that they’ve materialized inside of is large and/or solid – this automatically maims whatever parts of a character or creature have undergone critical re-materialization failure. In other cases, the splinch may be relatively minor – a character that materializes stuck in a chain-link fence, for example, might not die immediately. It’ll be a hell of a time getting them out, and they’ll probably end up with tetanus and a phobia of wire cutters, but with a little luck they’ll probably survive, even if the splinched area was their torso. Such occurrences only cripple the affected area, and tend to prevent movement.

In summary – teleportation is effective as a means of movement, but when it goes bad, its goes REALLY bad. Re-growing or otherwise replacing limbs lost to splinching accidents is not usually a player-preferred method of character development. The magnitude (or possibility) of a splinch should be left to GM discretion, but generally they should only occur on critical failures. Careful spellcasters should be able to avoid splinching altogether, simply by refraining from teleporting into close-quarters spaces or areas where they may end up occupying the same space as the furniture upon rematerialization.

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 950