Post by omegabase on Mar 21, 2014 9:27:22 GMT -8
One thing that has always bothered me about most postapoc systems is the weak or complete lack of any system for addressing equipment condition and failure. It seems to me that a lot of equipment, especially ancient relics, will be looted or purchased in various crappy non-new conditions. This also provides the option of newly-manufactured equipment like primitive grenades and ammunition having a failure rate right out of the box, due to poor post-war manufacturing processes. Or a rusty old 4-handed sword breaking. While this adds bookkeeping, it adds flavor and more value to certain skills like equipment technician and gunsmith, etc. In my game, players fire ancient weapons and equipment only when really needed, as all but NEW condition stuff can break at any time, and can't be repaired during the fight in most cases.
Here is a system I use for my GammaWorld+homebrew d20 system which could be adapted to any system I think. Actually it would probably work better with a percentile system as you get more granularity that way (units of 1% instead of 5%). The most important aspect is weapons of course, which are handled by simply incorporating the stacked failure rate of applicable weapon, ammo, and power cell(s) directly into the to-hit roll (if you roll low enough, it breaks, etc.). This avoids the need for any additional dice-rolling. So if firing an EXCELLENT condition pistol with POOR condition ammo, in a d100 system, a natural/unmodified to-hit roll of 1-5 indicates weapon failure, 6-25 indicates ammo failure (different effects depending on weapon action type, etc., but usually this means firing is ended for at least that round). This would need to be somehow merged with the existing ME low-roll critfail system.
gamma-world-2754.obsidianportal.com/wikis/equipment-condition
My experience over the past 8 months using this system is that six grades of quality is a bit more granular than we really need, so i'm contemplating dropping the FAIR and EXCELLENT ratings, leaving only BROKEN, POOR, GOOD and NEW (probably also decreasing chances of failure to 1-3/1 in d20 - 15%/5% percentile - for POOR/GOOD condition).
Here is a system I use for my GammaWorld+homebrew d20 system which could be adapted to any system I think. Actually it would probably work better with a percentile system as you get more granularity that way (units of 1% instead of 5%). The most important aspect is weapons of course, which are handled by simply incorporating the stacked failure rate of applicable weapon, ammo, and power cell(s) directly into the to-hit roll (if you roll low enough, it breaks, etc.). This avoids the need for any additional dice-rolling. So if firing an EXCELLENT condition pistol with POOR condition ammo, in a d100 system, a natural/unmodified to-hit roll of 1-5 indicates weapon failure, 6-25 indicates ammo failure (different effects depending on weapon action type, etc., but usually this means firing is ended for at least that round). This would need to be somehow merged with the existing ME low-roll critfail system.
gamma-world-2754.obsidianportal.com/wikis/equipment-condition
My experience over the past 8 months using this system is that six grades of quality is a bit more granular than we really need, so i'm contemplating dropping the FAIR and EXCELLENT ratings, leaving only BROKEN, POOR, GOOD and NEW (probably also decreasing chances of failure to 1-3/1 in d20 - 15%/5% percentile - for POOR/GOOD condition).
