Disabling Machines and Spell Matrices

The best thing about technology is this: it tends to have an off switch. Many of the more technologically inclined characters will probably make use of this fact at some point (see the Robotics Expert perk). Unfortunately, problems tend to arise when you can’t get to aforementioned switch without being disintegrated, perforated, or worse.

Pre-war Equestria devised a solution to this problem: Spark and Electrical weaponry. Spark, Shock and Electrical weapons and ammunitions tend to have a blue-band or similar markings on them, and deal bonus damage to machines, including cybernetic enhancements, powered armor, all manner of automata, and any device that contains a spell matrix.

When a weapon that deals bonus damage to a piece of technology does so to items that aren’t capable of moving on their own power (such as powered armor), calculate the damage as normal.

If the item has DT, it is deactivated permanently if you’ve done more than half of its maximum DT value (round down if odd) as damage with the shock, spark or electrical weapon. Don’t worry, it can be restarted, and no pony was stupid enough to make an air filtration system that required power to function. For powered armor and other spell-matrix-containing helmets, unless they’re being used independently of an appropriate set of barding, add their DT to the powered barding to determine what the maximum DT value is before dividing. A helmet is not deactivated in this case unless the barding it’s attached to is also deactivated. If a helmet or powered accessory is used independently of armor, use that accessory’s DT. Only use this method for determining of a device is deactivated if it has no degradation steps or endurance score.

If it’s an item with a spell matrix that has degradation steps, i.e. weapons, treat each degradation step like a point of endurance. All weapons have damage per wound value of 10, regardless of their size and complexity (this fact is also used for damaging weapons if you target them with conventional weapons). If the damage dealt by the bonus damage to technology is enough to ‘cripple’ the weapon, it is deactivated (temporarily disabled until it is restarted using a repair and science roll). If the damage dealt would ‘maim’ the weapon, its power supply has overloaded. The overloaded power supply destroyed all ammunition loaded in the gun, as well as damaging it to the point where it will be unusable without a few hours’ worth of repair.

Unlike most powered armors and electronic accessories, most weapons with spell matrices have shut-down activated backups; when you only temporarily disable a weapon with a spell matrix component, it will usually come back online in 1d4 combat rounds. With the exception of magical energy weapons, most weapons do not include spell matrices. Non-energy weapons that do usually use that spell matrix to produce an effect or provide targeting assistance. Such weapons can still be fired when deactivated, but do not provide the bonuses to the user that the spell matrix normally would facilitate.

For Cybernetics and Robots, systems can only be temporarily disabled by Spark, Shock and Electrical damage effects. Good engineering practices thankfully require shutdown-activated backups which will re-initialize and restart most cybernetic enhancements (Remember to tip your cyber-doc!). For creatures that are entirely robotic, simply use the same methods for determining if it was deactivated as though it were a weapon or other item with degradation steps. The only differences are that you use the character or creature’s damage per wound value instead of 10, and that robots and cybernetics remain deactivated for longer – 1d4 minutes instead of 1d4 combat rounds. The same goes for cybernetic limbs. This can be debilitating to robot characters and cyborgs – anything with a spell-matrix wired directly into their central nervous system is be knocked unconscious if that spell matrix gets shut down. Fortunately, unless they’re practically more machine than flesh their cyber components probably aren’t all linked, and should be treated as individual devices for the purposes of tech-disabling effects. Still, hope they have a friend nearby to cover for them until they wake up!

Even systems without an endurance score, a number of degradation steps, or a listed DT value can be resistant to spark and electrical weaponry. This is usually accomplished by shielding, often with a counter-magical field or the use of heavy-metals. This value is represented in materials, where present, as a “Spark Shielding DT”, or SSDT. Note that very few items have this, as it is prohibitively expensive (either in terms of finance, power requirements or weight) and hard to maintain.

Deactivated systems can be reactivated by characters with a functioning, non-disabled pipbucks or other computer systems. It requires physical contact with the armor and a Science roll, MFD ¼. The character’s pipbuck or other computer must have proper authorization to be able to reactivate a given device (a Stable Tec Pipbuck might not necessarily be able to activate an MWT suit of powered barding…).

Wondering why this was included in this section? Consider making your character an Implanted 3-point Cyberpony if you’d like to find out sometime.

How to Die

Most ponies don’t need to learn this one – it just comes naturally (or unnaturally, depending on the circumstances). A character will die immediately if they ever suffer a number of wounds to their head or torso equal to their endurance attribute score, or from any spell or effect that is said to cause death in its description, as appropriate.

This should be modified appropriately for characters in special circumstances – Canterlot ghouls, for example, cannot be killed except by weapons that would completely separate the head from the torso or would otherwise dismember or destroy the central nervous system. Cyberdogs and other extremely cybernetically augmented animals can only be killed if the brain casing in their “head” is smashed. Some characters and creatures simply cannot be killed, either permanently or sometimes even temporarily, by traditional means. Dealing an appropriate number of wounds to the torso will still debilitate or disable creatures like these, but it won’t put them down for good.

Of course, there are numerous other ways to die – radiation poisoning, taint, enervation, disease, poisoning, starvation, dehydration, suffocation, and being shunted into a solid object via teleportation, among many other fine gems. They’re just less common than taking gratuitous trauma to the head or torso. Rules related to these other methods of fatality are explained in more detail in Chapter 11, in the “Everything Else That Might Kill You” section. Poison is specifically addressed in multiple other locations as well, such as the Medicine and Drugs section of chapter 4.

GMs should handle character death with care. Replacement characters should start with between 50% and 100% of the experience their recently deceased character had – the exact percentage is up to the GM.

Ongoing Effects

There are a number of things out in the wasteland that won’t do you the favor of hurting you in a straightforward and honest fashion. They instead tend to hit you once and then try to bide their time while you slowly weaken.

Ongoing effects are usually the lingering after-effect of some sort of attack or spell. They deal damage or other negative effects over time to characters or creatures, rather than up-front. Some ongoing effects, like disease or starvation, may not deal damage at all, but can be extremely debilitating nonetheless. What the effect on a character or creature is and how frequently it occurs depends heavily on the effect; disease and starvation take much longer to harm a character than poison or fire.

Nearly all ongoing effects have some method available to a character that can mitigate their effect, either partially or entirely. For example, ponies on fire may spend actions to extinguish themselves as outlined in the Fire special weapon effect description. Those affected by poison have an initial END roll to resist becoming poisoned, and my ingest antidote or an appropriate antivenom to remove the poison from their system if they failed to resist the poison’s initial effects. The only ongoing effect with absolutely no method of mitigation is the Electricity special weapon effect.

As a rule, ongoing effects that occur during combat occur at the beginning of the affected character’s actions. If a character suffering from an ongoing effect moves out of turn (i.e. to dodge or block), then the effect resolves whenever they use their first action in the round (i.e. before they roll to dodge or block).

If they have a chance to prevent an effect from occurring or reoccurring, then the appropriate prevention or effect resistance rolls are also made before they engage in their first action. If the effect would reoccur, then the effect happens before the resistance roll is made. If they’re trying to prevent a first occurrence (i.e. they’ve just been lit on fire or poisoned), then the character may attempt to resist it (i.e. put it out or force it out of their system) before it happens.

Fear and Horror

Your wastelanders may occasionally encounter creatures or situations so horrifying that it makes them wish they’d never left the stable. If that occurs, then it warrants a fear check.

Fear checks are made by rolling Intelligence. This is not a normal roll; instead of trying to roll beneath a target number set by the MFD – the normal conditions for success – your character is actually trying to roll above the TN. That’s right folks – fear rolls are succeeded by failing. No wonder Blackjack (of Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons) is always so brave! What are some things wastelanders have to fear? See the table below.

Table XXX: Fear source table, sorted by ascending scariness.

Bonuses and penalties on fear checks, as a result of this topsy-turvy arrangement, are applied by adding the bonus value to the roll or subtracting it from the roll, respectively.

One noteworthy result of this system is that more frightening monsters or situations will have higher MFDs for their rolls, a representation of the simple fact that anyone with half a brain should be scared out of their pants (if they’re even wearing pants) by such a creature.

The penalties suffered as the result of failing a fear roll differ both depending on how much you’ve failed by and on the situation – out of combat failures will be affected differently than in-combat failures. Critical failures (so rolls of 1-5) do not automatically receive the worst possible outcome on the effects table. They do, however, get an additional 25% tacked on to the amount that they failed their roll by for the purposes of the tables of effects. Don’t forget, spending luck cards to re-roll increases your critical range…

Date: 2015-12-11; view: 869