Alternate Core Documents

[Kkat]

I have come to realize how much of the core document by Sunrise is supplanted by revisions. As such, for the sake of new players, I have created an alternate version of the core rulebook. This version just contains character creation and character advancement rules. It strips out the sections of the original document which most people use revisions for, and instead includes imbedded links to the most commonly used of those documents. Most of the rules are mechanically the same, although many things like the roles of skills and SPECIALS are greatly expounded on for the sake of new players who might be unfamiliar with Fallout mechanics. There are a few exceptions: the skills set uses Firearms and Battle Saddles, and natural healing now has an Endurance-based rate. Additionally, I have hammered out a Traits list.

Check out the document here!

Please leave any suggestions or comments on this thread.

In addition, I have a reworked character sheet here.

TenMihara has crafted an extended character sheet here, and
Viewing Glass has created an alternate sheet with built-in formulas here.

Geoff, from the RL playtesting group, as also created a very nice version of the character sheet, primarily designed for RL play. Check it out.

Rabbs has also created an alternate tiered weapons list, expanded and combined with the Random Items list. Now available for playtesting:
Mad_Modd's Tiered Equipment List

[Wirepony]

A thing of beauty!

Two comments - I ran this through my Ignorant Party (I keep a few people willing to look at things from a blank slate perspective - quite handy).
They wanted to know what was next, how combat and skill checks worked, how damage dealing and damage taking worked. That doesn't appear to be handled in this document 8(

The second comment is a Trait suggestion - Touched By Luna could certainly use Kissed by Celestia as a daytime variant

This is such a clear and usable document!

[AMARDA]

About the weapons document. Has it been looked at recently? Cause the weapons on it sorta feel underpowered. Just my own personal opinion, that's all.

[Kkat]

The group I've been running has been using TenMihara's weapons document and it seems to be working quite well. However, my game is fairly light on combat. I don't know which of the other groups are currently using it, so you might want to check with TenMihara.

uSea and Mimezinga have an excellent alternate system with tiered weapons lists.

Combat is largely covered in the combat rules document. There is an imbedded link in this document (in the Agility section since that is where the formula for AP is given). I've added a "Gameplay" section with rules on SPECIAL and Skill rolls, most of which is lifted from Sunrise's document, as well as an expanded section on wounds and healing. This section includes a fair amount revision.

[Calbeck]

Going over the Wounds section, there's some apparent problems that arise from the fact that crippling a limb requires taking half your full hit points in damage.

First, this means you can only cripple one limb at a time without hitting zero HP. In theory you could get multiple cripplings if you did some standard healing (i.e., nothing to actually fix the crippling) in between. But this would still mean a mine or grenade could not cripple you at all without killing you outright, since explosive damage is spread across all limbs (50% of total damage times more than one limb = Dead).

Unless there are to be rules for going into negative numbers (governining unconsciousness? bleeding out? etc), this seems kind of broken. I would otherwise recommend dropping the amount of damage needed for crippling to, say, 20%-30%, or applying crippling explosive damage to a random limb (or even a random number of limbs).

[SilverlightPony]

Going over the Wounds section, there's some apparent problems that arise from the fact that crippling a limb requires taking half your full hit points in damage.

First, this means you can only cripple one limb at a time without hitting zero HP. In theory you could get multiple cripplings if you did some standard healing (i.e., nothing to actually fix the crippling) in between. But this would still mean a mine or grenade could not cripple you at all without killing you outright, since explosive damage is spread across all limbs (50% of total damage times more than one limb = Dead).

Unless there are to be rules for going into negative numbers (governining unconsciousness? bleeding out? etc), this seems kind of broken. I would otherwise recommend dropping the amount of damage needed for crippling to, say, 20%-30%, or applying crippling explosive damage to a random limb (or even a random number of limbs).

One thing to keep in mind: explosive damage is typically dealt evenly to /all/ parts of the body simultaneously.

[Kkat]

I agree that the crippling rules aren't ideal. But I'm at a loss for a better system than the one Sunrise created. The system that the Fallout games uses gives your limbs more hit points than you have, and then doesn't allow limbs to heal as swiftly as you do. The result is that you have to nearly die multiple times before your limbs will get crippled.

The current rules make headshots an effective kill method. But that would apply to the PCs as well. Lowering the HP of each limb would make for frighteningly easy PC kills.

[Strobe]

Well, keep in mind that crippling the head in games like Fallout 3 and New Vegas doesn't kill your character, or anybody else, for that matter. My take on it was to reduce the total limb health to something like 1/3rd total health, with the torso getting 1/2 health. This ended up making a starting character have a limb health of between 34 and 43 points, depending on their Endurance, and a Torso health between 52 and 65. Using the weapons from TenMihara's sheet, a typical limb could take one or two direct hits before being crippled, and still conceivably leave a character with 50 or 60 health left, even at the very beginning of the game.

There were a few other variations, namely Unicorns, Pegasi, Griffons, and Alicorns getting additional hit locations like the horn or wings, and the use of a custom hit location table to better account for different numbers of hit locations, and I never got to test it, but the intent was to make limbs easier to cripple without crippling the system.

To that extent, healing limbs was also more difficult than healing overall health. Limbs would remain crippled until a character had regained half or more of their limb health, and would become crippled again when it hit zero again. Using spells or potions specifically to heal limbs would heal them immediately, but would not restore much of a character's overall health. Limb health would recover at a rate similar to resting, applied evenly across all limbs. This meant that a limb that was actually crippled would take several full days resting just to get back to working order, much less full health. EDIT: Interesting enough, this made crippled limbs significantly more bothersome the higher level your characters got, seeing as natural healing rate didn't increase but limb health did. This made for crippled limbs to be simultaneously easier to avoid and harder to fix as the game got longer.

An alternate way of doing things was to have any given armor's DT cut in half for the purposes of location damage, if the armor even covered that part of the body at all. If the armor didn't cover that part of their body, it would take full damage, regardless of the DT from the armor. For example, wearing Security Barding without a helmet meant that a headshot would deal full head damage, but overall health damage would still be figured with the DT subtracted (after the damage was doubled, of course, because headshot). Wearing a Leather Jacket meant that the limbs were unarmored and would take full damage from hits, but damage to overall health would still work as if the DT covered the whole body. This had the effect of making helmets actually useful and not completely useless, incidentally. That said, I was leery to implement this because it's not very nice to things like Powered Armor, which was suddenly significantly less effective against actually protecting the user from small arms.

My two cents on the matter.

[Kkat]

One minor change from Sunrise's rules is that with this ruleset, Carry Weight is calculated as per Fallout 1 & 2:

Carry Weight = 25 + (STR x 25).

Should that be kept? Or changed back to the Fallout 3/NV formula of:

Carry Weight = 150 + (STR x 10)

[SilverlightPony]

One minor change from Sunrise's rules is that with this ruleset, Carry Weight is calculated as per Fallout 1 & 2:

Carry Weight = 25 + (STR x 25).

Should that be kept? Or changed back to the Fallout 3/NV formula of:

Carry Weight = 150 + (STR x 10)

Last I checked there wasn't anything in Sunrise's core doc for carry weight at all. Octagon Group's just been leaving it up to GM discretion to say if and when we're carrying too much.

Not saying it shouldn't be implemented, just throwing that out there. If it is implemented, I'm not sure which version I'd prefer.