House rule collection

[ccatkins]

Hi All,

I've been playing D6 Star Wars since 87 and over the years have come up with a number of house rules ranging from the absurdly complicated to the overly simple. I have finnally settled on the below list, many of which have been adapted or stolen from other rules discovered over the years.

Please have a look through and give me some feedback on if you think these a)make sense, b) seem fair and workable and c) stick to WEGs KISS philosophy.

Thanks

Initiative Actions – Haste Actions

You may add dice to your initiative roll to ensure that you are the first to act. Each dice added incurs a –1D penalty for each action in the round, thus reducing each skill roll in a round equal to the number of dice added to the initiative roll. You may not add more than the value of your Dexterity attribute to your initiative roll.

This option can only be used in the first round of an encounter.


High Initiative Actions

The highest initiative takes one action per five points higher than the next initiative before anyone else gets to act.

For example; if Joe rolls an initiative of 24 and bob rolls an initiative of 11, Joe gets to act at 24,19,17 and 12 before Bob gets to take an action. If Bob had rolled a 12, Joe gets to act at 24,19 and 17 before Bob gets to take an action. Normal MAPs apply.

This option can only be used in the first round of an encounter.


Reaction Skills

Many skills can be used as reactions including melee parries, dodges and some defensive force powers including telekinesis.

If a character needs to use a reaction skill before their turn in the initiative order, or in addition to any declared actions, this entails a –1D penalty in addition to any normal MAPs incurred.


Protecting Others

Some reaction skills can be used to protect others from harm. These incur an additional -1D penalty per character protected. Only adjacent characters may be protected in this way.

E.g. Bob the Ambassador is being shot at, Joe wishes to use lightsabre defence to protect Bob from harm but has used up all of his actions. Not only does this incur –1D for using a reaction skill without having any declared actions remaining but also –1D for extending the defence to cover Bob. If Joe wanted to protect both Glen and Bob the penalty for extending defence would be –2D.


Spray fire

Many ranged weapons are capable of spraying an area with the intention of injuring everyone in the area or to provide suppression or covering fire. Spraying an area covers a 2m x 2m area and can be used to prevent people from firing from around or over cover.

Spray fire is considered a full round action and is in effect for the entire round. The attacker makes a single attack roll using half their attack dice. This attack roll is compared against anyone starting in or entering the area during the round. If the score is higher than the difficulty to hit then the target receives full damage. If the score is over half the difficulty to hit then the target receives half damage. This combat option uses 20% of the total weapon capacity per round. Normal combat modifiers apply.


Dice Pool

Attack dice may be split between accuracy and additional damage. The weapon damage cannot be increased to more than double its original value.


Lucky shots and precise hits

Each attack dice that comes up with a 6 add an additional dice to the damage roll. The weapon damage cannot be increased to more than double its original value.


Simultaneous Actions

Performing two actions simultaneously incurs an additional –1D penalty per extra action taken. This reduces the chance of success for each action but enables more things to be performed quicker.

E.g. Bob is wielding two blasters. If he were to fire the blasters one after the other obeying normal action rules this would not incur any additional penalties but would count as two actions. If Bob wished to fire both weapons at the same time this would result in a total of –2D to each roll, -1D for taking two actions in a round and -1D for performing two actions at once.


Strength Damage

Strength damage is equal to one half the characters Strength attribute score or lifting skill, rounded up. Weapons wielded in two hands may add an additional die to the damage if appropriate.


Delaying Actions

Delaying an action costs an action, and incurs a normal MAP, but allows a character to jump in with an action during another characters turn but before the other character completes their declared action. This does not affect the initiative order.


Heavy Weapons

Some vehicle and starship scale weapons damage a ground or building area equal to twice the damage of the weapon plus the scale modifier. This applies to turbolasers, missiles, bombs & torpedoes and all walker scale or above weapons. The affected area is subdivided into two blast regions with the damage of the weapon decreasing to represent the distance from the target point. The central blast region area is equal to the weapon damage die plus the scale die code causing full damage. The outer blast region causes damage equal to half the damage die code plus the scale die code.

Eg A 6D Walker Scale weapon affects an area equal to ((6D damage + 4D scale)x2)m = 20m. Damage regions =
0m – 10m / 11m - 20m
6D (+4D) 3D (+4D)


Parrying Large Scale Weapons

A character using lightsabre combat may attempt to parry and deflect blaster weapons up to Walker Scale. If a character attempts this then there is a penalty equal to the scale of the weapon imposed on the characters lightsabre defence roll.

If the parry is successful then the bolt may be redirecting following the normal rules and applying scale modifiers to hit the new target. If the parry is unsuccessful then, oops, shoulda dodged.


Doing more with the force

At the discretion of the gamesmaster some force powers may be used as reaction skills to resist physical attacks or to rebuke other force powers. They may also be extended to protect others as outlined above.

Some force powers may be used to affect a clustered group of characters by rolling half the relevant skill dice and comparing the result to all characters within a 2m x 2m area. Power effects cannot be kept up. Normal MAPs apply.

Some force powers may also be split to cause the same effect to multiple targets simultaneously. Each extra target incurs a MAP and an additional –1D penalty to all force skill rolls involved. This represents taking multiple actions by splitting the characters concentration. If the power is kept up all penalties apply. Normal MAPs apply.

[gollummen]

[KierlanVass]

I like the high initiative action... I'm still unfamiliar to the rules but this gives a sense of some other games (like 7th sea) that I have played before.

I also like the precise shot rule... it kind of progresses like instead of being "a hit", it upgrades to a head shot or right between the eyes.

These are good. Thank you

[ccatkins]

Thanks for the feedback guys.

The spray fire rule was adapted from SW SAGA edition rpg.

The precise shot rule came about as an easy way of giving damage bonuses to those that roll high for atttack but without needing to do any extra math.

And the high initiative roll came about after having a player roll a good 20 points higher than the next in line but not getting any bonuses for it.

Glad you like them.

[noctum_carpe]

I might steal some of these.
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[ccatkins]

Go for it - let me know how they play out.

[Ankhanu]

About the only one I like is the delaying action rule (incurring a MAP). The rest are too... I dunno, d20... for me. They don't really jive with d6.
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[ccatkins]

As well as growing up on D6 I dabbled in D20 until SAGA came along and I felt the need to go back to D6.

Any tips on how you would make these more D6ish?

[gollummen]

[Orion]

[ccatkins]

Hi Orion,

Sorry for the late reply.

Anyway, the idea was that this would give the cinematic feel of the old western gunfight where the one that goes first does get to take'em down before anyone else acts but this does only apply to the highest as when the next initiative number comes up the round plays out as normal.

Seems to work ok for my group but i will keep what you have said in mind.

[K21DUBIE]

when it comes to gunfights I like to keep it simple. Here are some of the ways I have ran Gunfights(old western ones) Speed drawing is one of my favorite things to run. One way I have done it is split up the die pool between intiative, to hit , and damage. Letting the characters put as many die in each, Works nicely when you have a big die pool. The other way is to use a difficulty on speed drawing which only applies on the first roll including all MAP's. I use a standard 20 + range. This makes it difficult. However if your character is specialized in a weapon then this difficulty is lowered to 10+ range over PB. This way works the best and I like it because it gives the character one more reason to specialize in a type of blaster.


Hope that helps you a little.

[ccatkins]

Update after play test.

Strength Damage - The players prefer to use the original rules for Strength Damage. They have succesfully reasoned that a hand weapon could do more damage then a blaster but you have to get real close for it to work.

Reaction Skills - Any additional reaction causes a -1D penalty to actions in the next round. This seems to make things easier to keep track of.

Lucky shots and precise hits - A score of 1 on an attack dice results in a -1D penalty to weapon damage and could cancel out any bonuses.

But apart from that things seem to be working really well.

[Rerun941]

[schnarre]

I still remember Haste Actions from 1st Ed. (some good memories there--namely a good way to deal with players throwing so many dice into particular skills! ).
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