Space_Odyssey

The Black Nova Ruleset. 2.0

Character generation.

Your character is made of three parts.

Attributes:
There are three attributes in this game. These attributes combine with skills to create the bonus to your rolls or are rolled 'raw' without adding skill in the event you're doing something no skill applies to. Each attribute can have a rank from zero to three, each rank costs an attribute point. You have six attribute points to spend.

Strength.

Dexterity

Intelligence:

Perks:
Alternately you can spend attribute points on Perks which are special talents or quirks of the gaming universe. Each one costs an attribute point.

Flight: You can fly using wings integral to your character. You cannot fly in space for obvious reasons. You require exceptional strength to carry a passenger.

ESP: You are a psionic character able to sense, read and communicate with other minds.

Inscrutable: you are immune to ESP, completely. Your mind cannot be detected, read or controlled. To psionic senses you're simply absent.

Exceptional luck: You can reroll a roll you made in game once per session. You simply declare it after the dice is rolled and you can roll again to change the result, no takebacks though you cannot go back to the first result if you don't like your reroll.

Universal attraction: Aliens. Want. To. Have. Sex. With. You. The reason often defies explaination but when you're reduced to zero hp by an attack that attack can lead to being raped by something exotic.

Skills:
There are seven skills and two effects. The effects may not be invested in but simply balance out Strength with the other attributes. Three skills are Dexterity related and three are intelligence related where as only one is related to strength. This relationship is one of addition, all skills add their related attribute to make their overral bonus. You have 7 points to distribute to skills and each skill can have from zero to four ranks.

Strength skills and effects:

Melee: The art of hurting someone in hand to hand combat both with and without weapons. (If you have three ranks of strength your melee attack does twice as much damage)

Health: each point of strength gives you an extra hitpoint.

Inventory space: If you have strength of rank 2 or 3 you can carry four items instead of three.

Dexterity skills:

Gunnery: The use of ranged weapons that aren't personally carried such as emplacement guns, vehicular guns or starship weapons.

Marksmanship: The use of ranged weapons that are handheld.

Piloting: The ability to fly starships and air craft of various kinds.

Intelligence skills:

Medicine: This skill allows you to heal people in the field using a medkit and in addition you have some biology knowledge that may be useful for dissections and such.

Engineering and robotics: Technical skills allowing you to fix, repair and modify high tech devices.

Science: A sort of grab bag of biology and physics that'd do a mad scientist proud. Good for analyzing alien technology and lifeforms or determining what the quantum fluctuation is gonna do before it turns the redshirt into a housepet or something.

Derived attributes:

You have hitpoints equal to 3+strength.

You have the ability to carry three items by default, four if you have 2 or more ranks of strength.

Non combat dice rolls:
You roll 1d8 and add either the relevant skill and the attribute related to that skill to the roll (for instance for a piloting roll you'd roll 1d8+dexterity+piloting) or just add the attribute the gamesmaster states (for lifting heavy things, climbing walls, spotting space ninjas. Etc)
If your result is higher equal to or higher than a number set by the gamesmaster you succeed in whatever you were trying to do.

Contests:
This is similar to the above except another entity or entities is trying to hinder or beat you. Examples include trying to outrun a hungry alien beasty or games of chess.
In this you roll either a skill or raw attribute roll as outlined above but your opponent rolls as well and whoever rolls highest wins.

Combat: In all combat scenarios a Tie goes to the attacker or initiator of the attack. So the defender must exceed the result of the attacker in order to escape harm. If the defender fails to achieve this then they're hit and suffer the loss of hitpoints or other affects that depend on the type of attack.

Ranged combat: This is performed in a back and forth fashion. The defender rolls to dodge or evade and the attacker rolls to shoot.

Modifiers:

+2 to defence against ranged attacks when behind cover.

Duel wielding incurs a -1 penalty on your primary hand and -2 on your off hand.


Melee combat: This is performed simultaneously, so if the defender wins the defence roll not only do they avoid taking harm but they inflict damage on their attacker.

Starship combat: This is mostly identical to ranged combat. Except size matters and all ships have a size value. Bigger ships are easier to hit and vice versa, take the difference in size values and make it a bonus or penalty to the attack roll. Examples: a person is size 0, the nova venture is size 2, therefore the nova's gunnery is at a -2 penalty to hit a person but the person is at +2 to hit the nova with marksmanship. Some systems exist which can mitigate this effect.

Note on scale: Starships and some vehicles use a different scale for hitpoints and damage points in comparison to people. Conversions up to this scale are done by dividing by 5 and conversions down to personal scale are done by multiplying by 5. Anything that does less than 1.0 damage when converted up will only be able to cause damage small craft and vehicles if that.

Called shots: A gunner or marksman operative can perform a called shot at a -3 penalty to try and damage a specific target subsystem such as the engines or weapons. If it hits the subsystem is damaged provided the attack does at least one point of vehicle damage (this overrides the threshold for system damage).

Damage, armour and shields: Each attack has a set damage value by which the target's health is reduced by on a hit unless armour or shields come into play. The way these things work will be described below.

Starship armour: This reduces an attack's strength by the level of armour and if it stops an attack entirely takes no damage, however each hit that exceeds the armour's resistance reduces its strength by1.

Personal armour: Expendable extra hitpoints essentially. Wearing an armour vest would give you +2hitpoints that could absorb some attacks, damaging the armour vest instead of you.

Shields: Whether personal or starship shields have two attributes. The first is the amount of hitpoints of damage they can absorb known as their strength or energy, thankfully unlike personal or starship armour shields regenerate to maximum after each engagement. The second is the total amount of damage they can absorb from one attack, their resistance. Additionally a shield reduced to half strength or less has its resistance halved, rounded up.

Vehicle system damage:(provisional rule, open for discussion)
If a spacecraft or vehicle suffers hull damage equal to its size category from a single attack the gamesmaster rolls 1d8 to see what subsystem (such as weapons, drives.etc) is damaged by the attack. (this adds threshold mechanics to the impaired functionality rules, however in this case I will keep track of hull points more rigorously in future.)

Affects of an attack that reduces you to zero or less hitpoints: This can leave you dead, unconscious or critically injured in most cases.. but if the attacker's melee attack would reduce the opponent to zero hitpoints on a hit they may choose to attempt to vore their opponent with success reducing the target to zero hp and allowing the attacker to start gobbling them down without further dice related shennanigans. In addition on targets who have the universal attraction perk this vore attempt may be exchanged for a rape attempt with similar incapacitating effects on a hit.

Critical success and critical failure: a natural roll of 8 is a critical success and a natural roll of 1 is a critical failure. A critical success with an attack doubles your damage. Critical failures result in something awry happening for instance laser pistols have a habit of overheating.
However if the total bonus to your roll is 7 then you are immune to critical failures and instead its treated as an 8.

BNI standard issue:

p10 Vigilante laser pistol:(strength 1) Standard sidearm for BNI crew members. Combines a laser beam emitter with an underslung electro stunner giving BNI operatives a versatile combat weapon at an economical price. It must be stated that the weapon's overheating issues are not nearly as drastic as its critics claim and operatives are encouraged to continue using the weapon.

Robot interface laptop: The mining robot has rudimentary controls on its back panel and can be remotely controlled from terminals aboard the base ship. For those wishing to combine mobility and remote access however the robot interface laptop with its midpower transmission equipment and ports for wired connections is an ideal accessory. Also comes with a pack of games and common applications.

Medical kit: Combination of first aid pack and an assortment of wonder drugs and sprays.

Tech kit: Contains simple diagnostic and repair tools, this is the minimum required to actively use engineering skills.

Scanner: Handheld, or space suit integrated device that provides the following functions: light amplification, vision magnification, IR imaging and broad spectrum detection of radiation and other radiative emmissions. The Scanner also comes with active sensors such as mini radar and material analyzers but be warned the signals given off can be detected by other sensors.

Third party armaments:

Torrid Inc Laser rifle: (strength 1, reduce range or precision shooting penalty by 1.) An accurate and reliable laser rifle sold to several corporate security divisions. Its enhanced optics allow for long range beam coherency and its advanced gas expulsion cooling system limits overheating to a minor nuisance.

FCS Man Portable Particle Accelerator Cannon: (strength 3, 3 shots on a full charge. recharges from internal nuclear cell) Rejected by the military due to its low ammo quota this shoulder braced heavy weapon uses a scaled down version of the particle beam technology of advanced starship weaponry to inflict ruinous damage on personal scale targets.

Revant Coil Rifle (Long ranged, strength 4, one shot every other turn. Requires a turn to be spent aiming and bracing before each shot) A ballistic weapon firing pebble sized metallic slugs at incredible velocities via the use of a magnetic caterpillar impeller along the length of its barrel. Due to recoil it is unsuitable for use on the move and hence is equipped with an optical/thermal scope for sniping work.

P2 handgun:(strength 1) 13 shot ballistic sidearm. Has limited stopping power but good handling characteristics and clipsize with manageable recoil.

Third Party supplementary craft:

Booster and Sons Tsunami general purpose starfighter: Bought by Chiyo Aesir this craft features three micro fission engines with the outer pair on single axis vector mounts for VTOL capability and improved manouverability. Currently equipped with a class 3 Beta shield for defence and a fixed axis class 2 lasercannon under the nose as standard this two person sublight fighter was modified further to Chiyo's specifications. The belly bay hardpoints were permenantly sacrificed in order to mount a twin axis class two lasercannon turret and the two wing hardpoints bear a pair of emp missiles. This design decision impairs high speed atmospheric flight due to uneven drag and the drive system does not provide enough power to allow both lasercannons to be fired simultaneously.

Tsunami hardpoint ordinance stockpile:
Emp missiles: grade one tracking system, class 3 shield penetrator, class 1 emp warhead. Quantity: 2 mounted, 2 in stores.

Plasma Charge Missiles: Grade one tracking system, class 5 warhead. Quantity: 2

Alien armaments:

Space dragon lightning pistol:(strength 1) Fires a form of ball lightning resulting in shock and minor burn damage to the target. Weapon energy reserves are moderate though integrated powercells prevent swapping in combat. Space dragons seem dependent on wireless power transmission which their guns simply recharge off of when its present.

Space dragon lightning rifle:(strength 2) more powerful version of the lightning pistol. Cannot be easily wielded by human sized individuals without modification. Weapon potency is significantly higher resulting in a much reduced number of shots between recharges and a greater dependence on power transmission.

Space dragons: Coming soon.