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starwars:mechanics

Wealth

Overview

In a galaxy where effectively all physically-possible technologies have been invented by someone at least once, and having access to that technology is just a matter of having the resources to pay for it, financial power is arguably the most important attribute a person can have.

That said, it is important to note that Wealth rating is very much an abstraction designed to minimize accounting mechanics. To that effect, there is a great deal of handwaving at work. The stat is there to basically set a gauge as to how affluent a character is and therefore quickly answer questions like “How nice of a spaceport is this” or “Can I afford some Mandalorian armor?”

Specifics

A character's Wealth rating is on a scale of 0 to 5.

Rating Description Examples of purchasing power
0 Dirt poor None! You have to beg, steal, or hunt to even eat.
1 Impoverished Bad food, questionable shelter, no transportation. You made your own knife.
2 Stable Sufficiently fed, clothed, and housed. You might have a landspeeder and a decent blaster.
3 Well-off It's not fancy, but you have your own starship and a droid to maintain it.
4 Rich You have custom-fitting armor, and your ship has a full crew so you never have to lift a finger. Your home is a palace.
5 Extravagant You own a moon, and have enough resources to almost qualify as a small kingdom.

Goods

A character with Wealth rating X can own up to X items from the Gear section with Cost equal to or lesser than X. That is to say: a Wealth 2 character can own a blaster of Cost 2 and a landspeeder of Cost 2, but those are the only two items of significance that character can afford at the time.

An item can be sold and traded in for a different item of equal value and same type (i.e.: a spaceship for a spaceship, not a vibrosword for a spaceship, even if they have the same Cost), if it is available in game. Additional items beyond a character's Wealth rating can be earned/found/looted during gameplay and do not count towards the character's inherent Wealth rating. Items lost during the course of gameplay can be replaced without fuss, at the appropriate Cost level, provided they are available.

Example: Bob has Wealth 1 and is proud to own a Cost 1 slugthrower handgun. He kills a Rodian bounty hunter with a lucky shot and takes the greenskin's fancy Cost 3 blaster. Good for Bob! Later, though, a Bothan slips into Bob's seedy apartment and steals both of his weapons. When Bob wakes up the next day, he can easily replace the slugthrower through a secondhand dealer (that's his 1 item of Cost 1), but that looted blaster is now gone.

The idea is that your character has a certain number and quality of items which are treated as semi-permanent fixtures to the character (think Relics in Scion) and anything else you might pick up along the way is effectively easy-come-easy-go material.

Services

  • Any Gear with Cost X can be repaired by someone with at least Wealth X resources available, and the technical skills to enact those repairs.
  • Accommodations are available to rent or own proportionate to the Wealth rating of a character and the availability of the given market. There may occasionally be a GM-discretion bonus to certain things depending upon circumstances, such as recovering from injuries might be easier in a luxurious penthouse as opposed to a shipping crate in a rainy alleyway.
  • Personnel are available to rent or own proportionate to the Wealth rating of a character and the availability of the given market. A specialist NPC can be assumed to have one skill of double the employer's Wealth rating when kept on staff or retainer. For example, a Wealth 3 smuggler might own a Twi'lek slave girl with 6 dice in… some useful skill.

Legend

Legend represents how epic a character is. “Extras” (aka “minions” or “cannon fodder”) possess a Legend rating of 0. Player characters start with a Legend rating of 1.

Legend Points

Capacity

Legend points are calculated by squaring the character's Legend rating.

Legend Rating Legend Points
0 0
1 1
2 4
3 9
4 16
5 25
6 36
7 49
8 64
9 81
10 100

Uses

Spending one Legend Point will allow any character to:

  • Reroll any roll a character makes, once per roll.
  • Gain 1 autosuccess on any die roll, one per roll.
  • Gain +2 to a character's DV against one successful attack.
  • Gain +1 to a character's Soak against one successful attack.
  • Completely resist a mind-control effect or “social attack” for one round.

Legend Points are also spent to power various Force abilities, as defined in each ability's writeup.

Regaining

Stunts

A Stunt is defined as the player's flavorful description of exactly how their character is attempting something that results in a die roll. An example would be saying “I draw my blaster, fire it once, then spin in place as I draw my second blaster and fire it.” This is a preferable narrative over “I shoot twice,” so is rewarded.

The level of reward is strictly up to the Gamemaster's arbitration. Any attempt at a Stunt is worth +1 die to the roll and the recovery of 1 Legend Point (which occurs after the die roll itself). A Stunt that particularly impresses the Gamemaster may be worth +2 dice and +2 Legend Points. A Stunt that is extremely impressive might be worth the maximum of +3 dice and +3 Legend Points.

Any Legend Points recovered which would exceed the character's normal Legend Point cap are discarded.

Natures

A successful attempt at fulfilling one of a character's Natures recovers 1 spent Legend Point. It is the player's responsibility to announce when a Nature has been satisfied. The point is awarded after the action is complete and successful. If an action fulfills multiple Natures, only one Legend Point is rewarded.

Note that this usually makes it a decent investment to spend a LP on an action that you suspect will fulfill one of your Natures to insure that it will be successful, as the point will be then recovered immediately afterwards.

Attributes

Physical

  • Strength [STR]: Capacity to usefully apply raw brute power.
  • Dexterity [DEX]: Agility, balance, and hand-eye coordination.
  • Stamina [STA]: Resistance to physical trauma.

Social

  • Charisma [CHA]: Direct and overt force of personality.
  • Manipulation [MAN]: Indirect and subtle social engineering.
  • Willpower [WIL]: Self-discipline and resistance to coercion.

Mental

  • Perception [PER]: Capacity to correctly interpret sensory information.
  • Intelligence [INT]: Efficiency with memory recall and conceptual complexity.
  • Wits [WIT]: Ability to identify relevant elements quickly.

Enhanced Attributes

Enhanced Attributes are treated as autosuccesses with regards to rolls with their associated Attribute. These autosuccesses are at a 1:1 ratio (unlike the Fibonacci progression in Scion).

For instance – a character with Strength: 3, Enhanced Strength: 2, and Athletics: 4 would be rolling 7 dice on an Athletics test, then adding in 2 autosuccesses to the result.

Some derived statistics add Enhanced Attributes directly into their formula. An example would be that Enhanced Dexterity adds directly into the Physical DV of a character.

Skills

Skills are rolled in conjunction with specific Attributes.

Strength

  • Athletics: Running, jumping, climbing, swimming, and most other non-combat physical pursuits.

Dexterity

  • Brawl: Hand-to-hand combat, or any of the other weaponless fighting techniques. Difficulty = target's Physical DV.
  • Control: Piloting ability. Subtypes are Beasts, Ground Craft, and Flying Craft.
  • Marksmanship: Firing and maintaining ranged weapons. Difficulty = target's Physical DV.
  • Melee: Attacking with and maintaining melee weapons. Difficulty = target's Physical DV.
  • Stealth: The capacity to be unnoticed. Difficulty = target's Perception.
  • Theft: Pickpocketing and other forms of sleight of hand. Difficulty = target's Perception.
  • Thrown: Hurling a physical object at a target. Difficulty = target's Physical DV.

Stamina

  • Fortitude: Withstanding extraordinary physical duress, resist toxins/pathogens, and channel the Dark Side of the Force.

Charisma

  • Animal Ken: Understanding the attitudes and motivations of beasts, as well as influencing their behaviors. Difficulty = target's Mental DV.
  • Art: All forms of art, from performing to practical. Some examples of subtypes include Singing, Dancing, Poetry, Sculpture, and Music.
  • Command: Applying immediate social pressure upon a subordinate or peer to act as instructed. Difficulty = target's Mental DV.
  • Presence: Influencing someone's attitude towards you, usually during a first impression encounter. Examples would be intimidation, placation, and attraction. Difficulty = target's Mental DV.

Manipulation

  • Politics: Negotiating the ever-shifting social landscape of an institution to either change policy or uncover the history of a policy.
  • Persuasion: Causing another person to act as you wish, even if against their will. Difficulty = target's Mental DV.

Willpower

  • Integrity: Resistance to coercion/distraction from established goals and/or values. Also used to channel the Light Side of the Force.

Perception

  • Awareness: Trained observational skills used when actively looking for something.
  • Investigation: Equal parts deduction and induction, the skillset to understand a situation forensically.

Intelligence

  • Academics: Research and theoretical understanding of one of the various fields of study. Examples of field subtypes would be Physics, Biology, Literature, and Archaeology.
  • Medicine: In some ways both a theoretical and applied science, this specifically applied subset of Biology treats physical trauma in patients.

Wits

  • Empathy: Reading another creature's emotional state through both obvious and inobvious clues.
  • Engineering: Taking established technologies and making them work together, this applied science covers both innovation and repair.
starwars/mechanics.txt · Last modified: 2011/09/07 14:53 by mark