Project Beta: Rules

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Setting Rules[edit]

The following Setting Rules are in use:

  • Fast Healing: Wild Cards make natural healing rolls every 24 hours instead of every five days.
  • High Adventure: Characters can spend a benny to gain one-time use of a Combat Edge. They must meet the Rank and Edge requirements normally, but may ignore any Trait requirements. Multiple bennies can be spent to gain multiple Combat Edges.
  • Unarmored Hero: Wild Cards who choose not to wear any armor gain +2 on Soak rolls.
  • Wound Cap: Characters can never suffer more than four Wounds from a single hit.

Races[edit]

The PCs of Project Beta are anthropomorphic animal-people. They will be built using the race rules in SWADE, with a total of +4 points.

All PCs should be based on animals, not plants or other exotic life-forms. Each PC is built individually, so don’t worry if your wolf and someone else’s wolf have different racial traits. Characters should be loosely based on normal earthly animals.

The racial abilities Construct and Super Powers may not be chosen.

Skills[edit]

The following skills deserve special note.

Faith and Spellcasting do not exist, and neither do their associated Arcane Backgrounds.

Languages covers languages in general, not just one specific tongue. If you’re trying to communicate in a foreign language or decipher unknown writing, this is the skill you need.

Occult deals primarily with psionics and related phenomena. This is a SF setting, so traditional wizardly magic does not exist.

Starting Skills[edit]

At the start of the RP, the characters are all prisoners of The Facility. It would therefore not make sense for them to have learned certain skills, such as Survival. That’s fine. Take whatever skills you want your character to have. They may not even be aware that they possess said skills until they encounter a need to employ them. Feel free to take the skills you want, and roleplay your character discovering their proficiency when the situation arises.

Skill Potential

Each player may reserve up to six (6) points from their starting skill point total as Skill Potential. These points may be assigned as needed in the course of play, but once assigned they are permanently set. For instance, if a character with no ranks in Fighting encounters a combat situation, their player may choose to assign two skill points, giving them a Fighting of d6. In this way, characters can be customized on the fly.

Skill points cannot be changed once assigned. Once a character earns their first Advance, all remaining skill potential must be assigned; none can be carried over.

Hindrances[edit]

The following hindrances are not available: Doubting Thomas, Elderly, Obligation, Poverty, Wanted.

The following new hindrances are available:

Fumbles (Minor or Major)

When you mess up, you mess up bad. As a Minor hindrance, whenever you roll snake eyes (ones on both the skill die and the wild die), you don’t just fail, you fail catastrophically. As a Major hindrance, this result occurs whenever you roll a 1 on the skill die, regardless of the results of the wild die. You cannot spend bennies to reroll a fumble.

   GM’s note: I normally don’t use critical fumbles by default; if you roll snake eyes you just fail and look silly.

Unstable (Major)

This hindrance is special. You can take it as an extra bonus hindrance, even if you’ve already maxed out your hindrances, and get extra points for it. However, you don’t get to know what it does. Just be aware that at some point during the game, you may undergo some . . . changes.

Edges[edit]

The following edges are not available: Arcane Background (Magic, Miracles), Aristocrat, Connections, Fame/Famous, Linguist, Rich/Filthy Rich, and all Power edges that relate to Magic or Miracles.

The Beast Master edge cannot be taken at character creation, but can be taken later if desired.

Arcane Background: Gifted can represent racial abilities of exceptional animal types (such as armor for a turtle’s shell, or stun for a skunk’s musk). Alternatively, it can represent a variant form of psionics, a wild, innate talent.

Arcane Background: Psionics operates normally.

At the player’s discretion, a character with psychic powers (either AB: Gifted or AB: Psionics) may be aware of their abilities, or may discover them in a dramatic moment of stress or need.

Arcane Background: Weird Science represents a phenomenal scientific aptitude, and can be used normally.