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omnipus
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Re: House Rules (1.0 edition)

Tue 30 Nov 2021, 20:26

For quick encounters I've used CUF rolls. Succeed and you go before the NPCs. Fail and you go after. A nice thing about this is that it doesn't require any additional stats, and you can very easily apply modifiers to suit the situation.

I haven't ended up moving forward with any skill changes, mostly because I haven't wanted to deal with the nuisance of branching the Foundry system build we're using.
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Oddball_E8
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Re: House Rules (1.0 edition)

Tue 30 Nov 2021, 21:38

Check this. Start at 4:00 minutes
https://youtu.be/4NVPPTs6Z7Q

This one at 3:00 minutes
https://youtu.be/rQh2n4Lgc4E

And this one at 5:00
https://youtu.be/0x6ntFONOXQ

It strikes me that those penalties are pretty large - maybe -1 and -2 and not -2 / -3 are more appropriate.

Alternatively, perhaps one can propose that these guns cannot be aimed unless they are deployed - so the -2 always applies for a LMG and the unarmed penalty is -3 for a GPMG. That’s probably what I’ll do - a GPMG seems to be hard work because it’s not designed to be shot offhand and is super heavy!
To be fair, you can't see what he's hitting from those videos.
He might be spraying all over the place.
 
Crone
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Re: House Rules (1.0 edition)

Wed 01 Dec 2021, 10:13

My thoughts regarding house rules are as follows.

First of all my group are more for a story/character driven game where rolling the die is only done when the characters do something under stress or the situation is not a normal task. Combat is an exception.
As an example if a CIA assassin see an unaweare soldier, guarding a door or a bridge, and the agent going in for the kill he/she has to roll for recon to move up close but the kill we wont roll for. If the agent decides to kill the guard with a gun at short range he/she will succeed without a roll. This applies on skills at B or higher. With a skill at C or lower a roll is needed. This does not apply to the attribute level. This applies to all skills depending on the situation.
We used this house rule in Coriolis and it worked very well.

When it comes to skills and specialities i have added that some specialities are needed to do something like drive a tank or fly a helicopter.
Reworked the command skill totally (wrote about this in another thread) and added specialities to command.

At character creation I added that when choosing a military career the specialities are free to change depending on what branch you go. E.g. a Navy SEAL may choose diver instead or paratrooper.
I have also changed the attribute roll for age. After the age of 35 you roll for stamina as the first thing you do in your next term. If you fail you lower either AGI or STR one step or you can use one of your skill points, during that term, to remove the negative effect of aging.

When it comes to combat I will remove the elevation bonus, it will instead negate the full cover bonus (situational)
HMG and LMG need two explosions on the ammo dice to get thier REL lowered and three or more to jam.
Scopes and sights on weapons negate the range modifier instead of giving a bonus

I think thats about it..
 
sgt
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Re: House Rules (1.0 edition)

Wed 01 Dec 2021, 18:29

For quick encounters I've used CUF rolls. Succeed and you go before the NPCs. Fail and you go after. A nice thing about this is that it doesn't require any additional stats, and you can very easily apply modifiers to suit the situation.
Just CUF, single die? Pushing allowed? If not, the players are at a disadvantage since they need a B in CUF to be in a 50-50 situation (which is the same as drawing randomly). And A would be just 58%.

Unit Morale doesn't make sense. Could CUF be paired with another existing stat like Intelligence?
 
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omnipus
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Re: House Rules (1.0 edition)

Wed 01 Dec 2021, 23:30

For simplicity, I've just treated it as a normal CUF roll -- you get the unit morale die if it would apply. Otherwise you don't. If that seems too brutal or like it doesn't fit, you could just use CUF x 2... ie, a C rating rolls 2d8, and so on.
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sgt
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Re: House Rules (1.0 edition)

Thu 02 Dec 2021, 10:53

I'm considering Intelligence to be the second attribute to give quick-thinking / perceptive civilians some edge. Although I don't want to do this if Int is already stronger than other attributes (this I don't know).

My thinking...
Average stats:
  • Civilian: CUF D, INT C
  • Soldier (or e.g. marauder): CUF C, INT C
  • Veteran soldier: CUF B, INT C
  • Elite solder: CUF B, INT B
If a civilian meets a civilian, they should have a ~50% chance of acting before or after the other civilian --> with D/C stats this is an unmodifed roll (49%).
If a soldier meets a soldier... 49% is achieved with a -1 modifier.
Veteran soldier: -2.
Elite soldier: -3.

So, the rule would be:
When a player character meets a group of people and combat begins, she gets a modifier (0..-3) to the CUF+INT roll based on the average level of the group. The odds for the PC to act before the NPCs would be:
The PC's    NPCs' average level:
level:      Civilian   Soldier   Veteran   Elite
D/C         49%        31%       17%       17%
C/C         61%        49%       31%       17%
B/C         69%        61%       49%       31%
B/B         75%        69%       61%       49%
B/A         82%        75%       69%       61%
The NPCs can be divided into multiple groups in which case multiple rolls are required. This might make sense in some situations.

Things I have yet to think through:
- Player characters' order. E.g., let's say the of 5 player characters 3 are acting before and 2 after NPCs. Is the order of PCs random? Would PCs with more successes act first?
- How are combatants entering an ongoing combat handled?
- Does this make high CUF (and high INT) characters too strong?
- Is pushing allowed?
- In which situations is this roll made? E.g., if PCs are succesfully ambushed/surprised, they don't get to roll. How about "social ambushes" (e.g., the other party decides to attack in the midlle of a negotiation) or stanf-off situations?
 
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omnipus
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Re: House Rules (1.0 edition)

Thu 02 Dec 2021, 19:21

I've specifically used it for sudden, unexpected confrontations... usually for opening theater of the mind confrontations or close combats and things where I didn't want to kill the momentum of the scene by switching over to "combat mode."

But yeah I'd say a nice thing here is that you can use whatever skill or attribute seems to fit the situation. Ambushed while crossing a precarious bridge? Agility/Mobility seems like it would fit. The door you're standing next to suddenly slams open? Let's try Strength and Stamina.

One that comes to mind was using Mobility as a save against an NPC suddenly tackling the character out of an alleyway. They failed the roll, so they ended up knocked to the ground with their gun at their feet. We ran 2 rounds of close combat, no battlemap or initiative was necessary and it just flowed quickly and easily.

In other words, basically situations where most likely the character is at a disadvantage due to surprise - but if they pull off their roll they've got a chance to be at least on an even footing. In situations like this I do sometimes let the character push their roll (keeping in mind the basic premise that you can only push something your character is actively doing) -- but usually it's a clear devil's bargain and I make it clear how much worse things could be if they push and still fail. This one I've used a bunch in social encounters. In fact, right now as we speak one of my group's characters has an AK at his back being marched across town in a cliff-hanger because of exactly such a situation...
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jbickley00
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Re: House Rules (1.0 edition)

Thu 03 Feb 2022, 03:02

I have a couple house rules I use:
1 Aging loss of ability only applies after the character is 36. While I appreciate the gameyness of having a risk built into the lifepath (yea I played OG Traveller), I think the aging penalty is unduly punishing. So Characters under 36 aren't going to lose abilities due to aging. 36 is a pretty arbitrary number. but it works.
2. Like others in this thread I think the Machine Gun rules are less reflective of the way an MG is used. My take, however, is that the MG is more likely to affect multiple targets in an area. So I allow a player to choose whether to use additional sucesses to increase damage on one target, or to affect additional targets in the same or adjacent hexes. my thinking is that the player can decide if they are hosing down a single target or spraying an area to supress a group of enemies. This likely doesn't do justice to the Automatic setting on an assault rifle, but it helps the MG stand out as a weapons choice.
 
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omnipus
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Re: House Rules (1.0 edition)

Thu 03 Feb 2022, 04:36

So you just extend it out one hex?
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jbickley00
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Re: House Rules (1.0 edition)

Fri 04 Feb 2022, 02:27

I imagine it can be in any hex adjacent to the target, as long as you have the extra hits. these are 10 meter hexes, so a potentially 30 meter pattern. If a player has only one extra success they can hit the target and one adjacent hex, with two extra successes they can hit the target hex and any two adjacent hexes. So potentially they could hit a line of three hexes.

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