Fria Ligans forum

One of my players had a question regarding starting attributes last night. He was using Hammer (pregen from DOW), who has an Empathy score of 1. According to the core rules, the minimum attribute score is 2. We just went with the 1, and attributed it to him being a vat baby.

After our session, I busted out the CMOM and looked up the AW's. Their attributes don't list a minimum score, only maximums. So I flipped forward to the MOS section to see what it said about attributes. Again, maximums are listed, but no minimums.

My questions:
1. Is Hammer's Empathy score a typo? If not...
2. Is 1 the new minimum Attribute score for Marines?

No it's not a mistake. Hammer is a special kind of marine - an Artificial Womb Soldier or AWS, grown in a vat and bred for combat. See Kurt Russell's Sgt. Todd in "Soldier" or the character of Cooper Hawkes in "Space - Above & Beyond"for examples of this concept. All fully detailed in the Colonial Marines Operations Manual supplement.

"They weren’t raised to get along—they were raised to follow orders and kill the enemy. In childhood, they are taught to take advantage of a rival’s weaknesses. In many cases, this has produced psychopaths." Low empathy. Sgt. Seax also has Empathy 1, as do the W-Y Dogcatcher teams in CMOM.