House Rules

New Characters

New characters are built with 100 Character Points, and up to 50 points in Disadvantages.

I would strongly suggest that you read through the information on the milieu before setting out to build a new character, since some character concepts may simply be unplayable within the confines of this campaign. The campaign will take place primarily within the Terran Empire itself, though it may stray beyond the boundaries of the Empire from time to time.

I'd also suggest that you give some consideration to the make-up of the rest of the party when creating your own character — and whatever you do, don't build a surly homicidal loner, since I would be forced to kill you off in the first five minutes in order to maintain intra-party relations.

Normal Character Maxima is a compulsory Disadvantage, for which you get no points at its basic level. You do get the points for any additional Age Disadvantage.

Any ability which remains with the character when he or she is stripped down to their Space Undies must be paid for in Character Points. Abilities gained through gadgets which can be taken away are usually paid for in cash. The amount of cash a new character has to equip themselves will be dependent on the character background and the presence of any Wealth Perks or Disadvantages.

Skill Levels

The maximum benefit a character can get to any skill roll, including combat skills, from assorted personal skill levels is +8. Any further increase will have to be obtained by means of environmental or circumstantial variables — for example, by taking extra time over the performance of a skill, by attacking a target from behind or by surprise, by using tools of exceptional quality, etc.

Note that this applies only to skill levels, it doesn't affect the base Characteristic roll (if applicable) or bonuses to combat gained through the use of specific combat maneuvers.

Excess combat skill levels can be used to increase hand-to-hand damage as per the rules in Fred.

Normal Characteristic Maxima

I've decided to lower the Normal Characteristic Maxima cut-off points for physical characteristics, the rationale being that in the future people's reliance on machines to do their work for them will tend to make them punier than their hugely-muscled barbarian ancestors. Since everyone has to have NCM by default, this will affect how characters are built.

The cut-off points are:

	Age Bracket
Char	NCM	40+	60+	10-
STR	15	12	8	5
DEX	20	15	12	12
CON	15	15	10	8
BODY	15	12	10	8

For 40+ read "middle-aged"
For 60+ read "old"
For 10- read "juvenile"

......regardless of the actual life span of the character.

If you are building a character based on an archetype which includes characteristic increases or decreases, The NCM cut-off will change likewise. For example, a Human Heavy-worlder gets +5 STR in the package deal, so the NCM cut-off rises from 15 to 20. A Human Martian starts with -2 STR, so their NCM cut-off would be 13 instead of 15.

It's not impossible to have characteristics over the theoretical species maximum, but you have to pay double for them over that limit.

Fate Points

Fate Points are points which can be used to avert a horrible fate. They will be given out from time to time, at the whim of a capricious GM, to reward particularly clever or inventive play, or particularly good "in character" behaviour. They can be used as follows:

1 Fate Point can be used to make a minor change in the storyline as it plays out. Examples might be suddenly "remembering" that the piece of equipment you need right then is actually in the thigh pocket of your shipsuit, and not back on the space station as everyone had thought, or an NPC turning out to be an old aquaintance (i.e. a one-use Contact). The point must be paid by the character who benefits.
1 Fate Point can be traded in for 1 Experience Point when spending xp; for example, if you want to learn how to speak the binary language of vaporators but just don't have enough unspent xp to get proper fluency, you can use any accumulated Fate Points as well.
2 to 5 Fate Points can be used to move a wound from a hit location to a more or less nasty one. For 2 points, the location can be moved up to two places (e.g. from hit location 9 to 11), for 3 points, four places, for 4 points, eight places, and for 5 points, sixteen places. All points must be paid by the character who benefits. NOTE: This works both ways — e.g. one character shoots another in the back and spends 3pts to turn a hit on another from a shoulder wound (hitloc 9) to a head wound (hitloc 5), whereupon the victim could spend their own Fate Points to turn it back into a shoulder wound. This can keep going until one or the other runs out of Fate Points to spend.
5 Fate Points can be used to make a single major change in the storyline as it plays out; typically this would be used to avert the death of a single character. The points can be paid by any or all of the party.
10 Fate Points can be used to make a single very major change in the storyline as it plays out; typically this would be used to avert the death of two or more characters. The points can be paid by any or all of the party.
15 Fate Points can be used to make a single paradigm-shifting change in the storyline as it plays out; this might make a barren planet life-bearing, place a colony where there was none, or similar. The level of change permissible is at the discretion of the GM, who may get stubborn if it is abused. The points can be paid by any or all of the party.

Experience Points can be spent in the same way as Fate Points, after which they are gone and cannot then be used to improve a character's abilities. Effectively, Fate Points and Experience Points are interchangeable.

Extended END Use for Equipment

Unless specified otherwise in the equipment description, all gadgets are assumed to have a SPD of 2 for the purposes of calculating END use.

In addition, I have created a variant to Reduced END to model equipment which draws energy more efficiently than normal:

Extended END Use

A power with this advantage expends Endurance less often then once per Phase.

A power which expends its END per Turn, per minute, per 5 minutes or per 20 minutes is at +¼ (in addition to the +¼ for ½ END, if that Advantage has already been assigned).
A power which expends END per Hour (or less frequently) is at +½ (effectively the same as a power taken at 0 END).

This Advantage cannot be taken with any equipment that is already at 0 END.

The rationale for this modification is to allow equipment of varying power requirements to be built which work with standardized battery packs, and to allow those batteries to be swapped between equipment if necessary. For example, a battery used in a low-drain device like a GPS locator could be used for a couple of years, perhaps using only 20 END in that time. The battery could then be swapped out for use in some other equipment, such as a flashlight shield which uses END at a much higher rate; the shield emitter would then only get 80 END from the partially used battery.

In most cases, this new Advantage will be of limited interest to the players. I present it here simply so that you can see how and why some equipment works the way it does in this campaign.