I: House Rules

Since the discovery of this blog by the crew over at the juhlin forums (take a look for a vibrant T2K community) I've had several requests for how I run the game and any house rulings I use.  This series of blog posts will discuss the rules I use, the reasons I use them, and some of the thought that went into the changes.  Pleas feel free to discuss in the comments section!  Feedback is appreciated.

Basics

 I had three goals with the changes I made for my gaming group.  

1. Reduce the use of division and crunch to speed play.

2. Keep as much of GDW's printed material as possible in play.

3. Have as many points of familiarity as possible for my players to games they've already played in order to reduce discomfort and increase familiarity.

First Steps

The first steps were recalibrating skills.  Most of my player group was already familiar with D&D 3.5, so they were used to rolling a D20 and adding.  Taking a cue from Twilight v2.2 I decided to use the SKILL + ATTRIBUTE as the basis, only with a roll over instead of a roll under.  The basic chart for that is as follows;

10+  Easy (EZY)

15+  Average (AVE)

20+ Difficult (DIF)

25+ Formidable (FOR)

30+ Impossible (IMP)

The initial point of for DIF tests were based on my call that I wanted well trained individual of average ability to succeed half the time.  For me, that is a person with an ATTRIBUTE & SKILL of 5, total bonus of 10, which set Difficult tasks at 20.  The five point spacing for additional and lesser successes seemed a natural progression.

First Hits

Next came changing how damage worked.  I wanted to drop individual hit locations and values for a single pool of points.  Doing so reduces some of the character durability since they can't take a succession of small wounds spread out over their body, so the pool has to be fairly large.  However, it can't be too large, or they'll never be threatened by small arms.  I used the following bands and consequences at each wound level;

Scratch = 2x CON

No effect

Slight = 2 x (STR + CON)

-1 to initiative

Serious = 3 x (STR + CON)

-2 more to initiative

Need to make a DIF:CON test before any action

Damage past the end of the Serious track is a Critical wound.  Characters with a critical wound cannot preform any actions, except crawl away (and scream as a free action!), and require a Medical skill test to stabilize or they will bleed out in time.

Armor

Ok, so the hot locations are gone.  How do you deal with body armor?  

My first thought was to just assume it hit armor all the time and apply a flat reduction to damage, but it didn't feel right.  Instead, I use an armor save roll when a character is shot in order to get their armor.  Based on their gear, they need the following on a D10;

Helmet 10

Flak Jacket 6 to 9

Kevlar Vest 4 to 9

Hits to the helmet inflict double damage after the they penetrate.  I assume that random combat always hits the helmet.  Only for a called shot to the head do I reach back into the rule book for an additional roll to see if the called shot hit the helmet or face/neck

Next up - Guns and Melee