Wraith
2013-03-30, 06:46 PM
The year is 2023, only nine years after it all began. Just over eight billion people died in the holocaust or in the nine years since. There are only a few hundred million people still known to be alive. That may sound like a lot, but it is not. You can travel for weeks at a time and not see another person or any sign of post war civilization.
In 2014, the largest world war ever almost wiped out Earth's human population. What everyone thought couldn't happen, happened. Somewhere in the Caribbean, a warhead was launched at Moscow. Russia responded with massive retaliation. When the U.S. saw that Russia had launched, they fired on Russia and other strategic targets.
The war was quite possibly the shortest in history, lasting only an hour or so. Even so, within hours the radiation enveloped the globe, devastating more than ninety-five percent of the world's population.
Information Age people have been unwillingly thrust back into the Dark Ages. If you think acid rain was bad, wait 'til you encounter fallout rain. If you thought smog was bad, you can't even see the sun through the dust cloud in the sky. You are now a part of this world whether you wanted to be or not. You must try to survive any way you can. If starvation or the cold of night don't kill you, your friend surely will, for the scrap of food that you found or the weapon that you carry. Whichever way you go, and whatever you decide to do, whether it be to conquer the world or just find your way to a place you can call home, be sure to remember one thing: trust no one.
Every morning when you wake, you will see the same thing: gray skies, incinerated remains, and deadEarth. You will wonder if you will ever see the sun again. You will wish that you could wake up from this nightmare.
deadEarth was published in 1994 and republished in 2002, both times to capitalize upon the fame and fortune that was fulled by the original FallOut and then the re-surged FallOut Tactics. The sort of "aim for the moon and if you miss you'll still land among the stars" mentality that has on occasion birthed some truly great franchises in their own right.
deadEarth is not one of those franchises.
It's badly written, poorly organised and full of contradictive and downright oblivious mistakes, even in the early stretches of character creation. deadEarth is the game that, were it's creators to aim for the moon, they would instead have ricochet'd off a passing satellite and careened wildly into the sun. :smallamused:
And even that, to the right sort of person, can be amusing. Few things are as satisfying as stopping to watch the flames after a really good crash. And deadEarth's character creation process is one hell of a good crash.
Let me put it bluntly; character creation involves rolling everything at random, three times, to give you three characters to choose from.... So that you might have one at the end who a) survives and b) is vaguely playable.
Oh, yes. deadEarth's big claim to fame is that there is a reasonable chance that you might not survive long enough to play it. You have an freakishly high chance of dying during character creation, and it's never quite clear as to what happens if all three of your 'toons end up unviable. Presumably you have to roll another 3 characters, but as written you might just have to sit and watch everyone else play.....
That can't be right, can it? Having heard the stories - nay, the legends - of this game, I thought I'd give it a try for myself and see just how bad it can get.
I'm using some Random Dice Roller (http://www.roll-dice-online.com/) that Google provided for me, and the rules are (legally) free to read at Scribd.com (http://www.scribd.com/doc/19872961/DeadEarth-Players-Handbook-Illustrated?in_collection=2331557). Feel free to join in.
Right, to begin. deadEarth has three major stats. The first is Moves, which is how many actions I can take per round in combat and how fast I can run in Miles-Per-Hour.
A nice simple 2d6 - I roll a nice, middle-of-the-road 8.
Next is Resiliency, which determines how much damage I can take before I explode into chunky salsa. d6 +3 gets me 7, which is pretty good.
The last stat is Strength, which starts at 0 and increases according to my skills and randomly generated 'perks', which are known as Radiations. For the record, 3 is considered "Arnold Schwarzenegger at his Hollywood peak" and 5 is "Super Human".
What happens next is Age, rolled on a percentile. Generally, older people are slower and weaker, but they get a bonus to their skill points. More importantly, older characters have more Radiations than younger ones - Radiations are randomly determined 'perks' that are ultimately responsible for breaking and killing characters, or - if you're incredibly lucky, turn you into a Godlike super-being; there's a d1000 table in the book, and they are full of all sorts of fun and wonderful things, from growing additional limbs and having precarious heart defects to sci-fi symbiotic growths and gender dysmorphia.
And worse.
I first roll 12: roll again, add 50 skills points.
Then, 58; which, apparently, is decrepit. That gives me -9 Moves, -5 Strength and -7 Resiliency, on top of 1130+d6x10 Skill Points and 4d6 Radiations.
....Oh, god.
I'm 4 rolls into the game, and I'm crippled. I have a strength of -5, which gives me a maximum carrying weight of (30+[strengthx10]=) Negative 20 pounds. I can almost wear clothes and walk around at normal speed.
....We.... we can probably resolve that with skills, right? We'll keep going and see what happens.
Next, height: 48+6d6 gets me 26, so I'm 6' 2" tall. This lets me work out my weight, for which I roll 5d6 and then consult a chart. So, 74 inches crossed by *rolls* 16 gets me....
....Umm....
....The appropriate modifier doesn't exist. Table C1 - the same one that told me how old I am - should tell me how much I weigh, and it's blank.
deadEarth : 2 - 0 : My Character.
After a bit of research, Google tells me that my modifier should apparently be either x2 or x3 my height, so I'll go with the former and hope for the best. I'm 74" tall and I weigh 148lbs, which gives me +2 Moves, -1 Resilience and -1 Strength. Hmm. I can now only carry Negative 30 pounds in weight.
I also have -1 Resiliency. I think I read something about this.....
If your resiliency is ever permanently reduced to zero or less, you will have a 33% chance of death every day from common bacteria and viruses. Your body will no longer have the ability to fight off infection, and just about everything will be able to kill you.
.....Yeah, I should probably do something about that.
Luckily, I can now choose to add 1d6 to one of my stats, or 2d6x10 to my Skill Points pool as a freebie before I start buying skills. I'm going to add it to my Strength, hoping that I can buy enough skills to then bring that and Resiliency out of the Negatives. I roll a 5, which brings me to my current totals:
Moves: 8 - 9 + 2 = +1
Resiliency: 7 - 7 - 1 = -1
Strength: 0 -5 - 1 + 5 = -1
Let's see if my Skills can help me.
Character skills begin by rolling 2d6 for each of our skills; any that come up '12' become Natural Abilities, which mean dice using those skills explode more easily, and any that are rolled as '2' become Natural Inabilities, which are much harder to explode. Seems easy enough.
....There are NINETY-EIGHT SKILLS to roll for. What the hell, man!?
*grumble* Fine, here goes; 2d6 rolled ninety-eight times. And we're doing this for fun, remember?
Natural Abilities:
#11 - Brawling
#56 - Mechanics
#84 - Weapon Smithing
Natural Inabilities:
#8 - Bemuse
#67 - Reason
So, I'm looking at a guy who is good with his hands, but not much for conversation. Which'd be really good, if he were capable of lifting a screwdriver. Or even his own fists.
I'm going to try to fix that with skills; they're bought one d6 at a time, so if I have two rank in a skill I roll 2d6 for tests, and so on. Buying Rank 1 costs 10 skill points, 2 costs another 10, 3 costs 10, 4 costs 20, 5 costs 30 and then so on.
A lot of skills also have pre-requisites of another skill at an 'advanced' level - 4d6. So, if I want to buy any dice in, let's say, Beast Handling, it's pre-requisite is Beast Lore which'd have to be at 4d6.
In other words, I have to spend 50 points before I can buy 1 dice of Beast Handling.... And some skills - like 'Robot Engineering' - have up to ELEVEN pre-req skills. That's 550 Skill points in pre-req skills (some of which have pre-reqs of their own!) before you can put a single point into building robots.
I'm not going to try building any robots, I think.
Go back up to my Age roll - I have 1130+50+ (d6x10=30) = 1210 points to spend.
I'll spare the details, but sufficed to say I'm going to buy up plenty of ranks in my Natural Abilities, and also Weightlifting, Running and Boxing as at high ranks they add dice to appropriate stats.
By the end it, I'm looking like this:
Moves: +5
Resiliency: 0
Strength: +3
Armour Penetration 4d6
Boxing .................6d6
+ Brawling ............6d6
Chemistry .............4d6
Construction .........4d6
Drive Automobile ....4d6
Math ...................4d6
+ Mechanics .........4d6
Metallurgy ............4d6
Physics ................4d6
Running ................6d6
Senses .................4d6
Smithing ...............4d6
+ Weapon Smithing .4d6
Weight Training ......6d6
Wrestling ..............6d6
WS Rifle ...............6d6
Skill points left over: 80 (I can use these to buy more Radiations or make final tweaks to my skills when all is said and done).
That's a pretty eclectic list of skills, and even with that lot and their pre-reqs I STILL have a 33% chance of dying in my first session of play even before a fight breaks out. I find myself in the fairly pathetic position of hoping that my Radiations are going to save me. Speaking of which....
I have 4d6 Radiations to roll for. These are, as I said earlier, 'perks' that assign random traits to my character - there's about an equal number of beneficial and disadvantageous, and the important thing is that I must roll for, record, and apply them in order as some Radiations can go back and alter ones that I've already rolled for previously.
4d6 = 10 rolls of a d1000. Let's do this.
(1) 308: Sense of Direction - 'Sense of Direction' is now a Natural Ability. Effect: Binary (It only applies once, as opposed to Cumulatively)
A first candidate for my spare skill points. At least, it would be if 'Sense of Direction' were a skill available to buy - presumably it's an extension of the 'Senses' skill, but I had to pretty much make that up for myself....
(2) 603: Ignition - You can light flammable materials with the power of your mind. Cost: 3 skill points. Range: 20ft. Effect: Binary.
...That's actually pretty cool. This game doesn't seem so bad at all, maybe I was misinformed.
(3) 038: Torment - You can use your guile to drive someone to distraction. If you make a successful guile roll (against your opponent's reason), you can cause someone to be distracted for the rest of the day. This distraction may be an obsession about their clothing, personal appearance, what someone thinks of them, etc. Distraction causes a temporary natural inability to all skills, and a -10 to initiative.
Okay, so now I need to go back and buy Guile. One more memo to bare in mind for later.
(4) 876: Counterfeit - +D6 to guile and outright lie. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: cumulative.
Well, alright!
(5) 501: Elementary Deductions - Add 2D6 to investigate. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: binary.
(6) 831: Subtle - Gain an extra skill point every time you roll influence or interrogate. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: cumulative.
You get 1 skill point - which, basically, is the same thing as XP - whenever I make a check against one of my skills. In other words; double XP for making skill checks. For skills that I haven't bought, mind, but double XP none-the-less. Two more for the list.....
(7) 199: Eunuch - You are now genderless. You have no sexual preference or sexual organs. The groin is no longer a 'double-stun' area. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: binary.
......WHAT?
(8) 323: Insurance - You may spend 10 skill points to add one point to your resiliency reserve. This ability will not add any permanent resiliency, it will simply be a reserve to instantly replenish your resiliency. Cost: 10 skill points. Range: self. Effect: binary.
So I can spend 10xp per day to temporarily avert my save-or-die vs. the common cold roll. Eeehh....
(9) 322: Imminent Death - Count the number of radiations on your list (as of now, 9) and roll percentiles. If you do not roll above the number of radiations in your list, you die. From now on, every time you add a radiation to your list, you must roll percentiles above the number of radiations on your list or you will die. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: cumulative.
Well, this is more like it. I was beginning to think that deadEarth had let me down, but no - I have three save-or-die rolls to make before I even introduce myself to another player. And notice that this Radiation is cumulative - I could potentially roll it again, and have to make TWO save-or-die tests every time I gain a Radiation.
I roll a 43, at least. Nearly there!
(10) 001: Seven cardinal virtues - Gain all of the cardinal virtues. Add (997) faith, (902) hope, (830) charity, (755) justice, (701) fortitude, (099) prudence, and (016) temperance to your list of radiation manipulations. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: permanent.
Oh Christ, why did I say that? So close to the finish line, and I gain 7 more Radiations. Each with Save-or-Die implications. Wish me luck....
Save-or-die: 40 (vs. DC 10)
(10a) 997: Faith - Your belief in a higher power will keep you safe. Remember to say your prayers. Add (271) spirit guide to your list of radiations. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: permanent.
CRAP.
Save-or-die: 22 (vs. DC 11)
(10aa) 271: Spirit guide - You have a little guy on your shoulder telling you what to do and where to go. Lucky for you he knows what he is doing. If anything bad is going to happen to something in your group, the game master will make sure it happens to you last. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: binary.
Save-or-die: 70 (vs. DC 12)
(10b) 902: Hope - As long as you maintain hope you shall never fail. You may double any of your rolls twice per gaming session if it will help someone beside yourself. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: permanent.
Save-or-die: 99 (vs. DC 13)
(10c) 830: Charity - That which you give will come back upon you tenfold. (Well not literally.) For each 10 dollars you give to someone less fortunate than you, gain one skill point. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: permanent.
Save-or-die: 7 (vs. DC 14)
......Well.
......S***.
One down, two more to go, I guess. If you guys want to see it, of course? :smallwink:
Final tally, for those who might want to see a character sheet:
Height: 74"
Weight: 148lbs
Age: 58 years
Moves: +5
Resiliency: 0
Strength: +3
Armour Penetration.....4d6
Boxing.....................6d6
+ Brawling.................6d6
Chemistry.................4d6
Construction.............4d6
Drive Automobile........4d6
Guile........................1d6
Investigate...............2d6
Math.......................4d6
+ Mechanics.............4d6
Metallurgy...............4d6
Outright Lie .............1d6
Physics...................4d6
Running...................6d6
Senses...................4d6
+ Sense of Direction...0d6
Smithing..................4d6
+ Weapon Smithing....4d6
Radiations:
Sense of Direction
Ignition
Torment
Counterfeit
Elementary Deductions
Subtle
Eunuch
Insurance
Imminent Death
Seven Cardinal Virtues
- Faith
-- Spirit Guide
- Hope
- Charity
DECEASED
In 2014, the largest world war ever almost wiped out Earth's human population. What everyone thought couldn't happen, happened. Somewhere in the Caribbean, a warhead was launched at Moscow. Russia responded with massive retaliation. When the U.S. saw that Russia had launched, they fired on Russia and other strategic targets.
The war was quite possibly the shortest in history, lasting only an hour or so. Even so, within hours the radiation enveloped the globe, devastating more than ninety-five percent of the world's population.
Information Age people have been unwillingly thrust back into the Dark Ages. If you think acid rain was bad, wait 'til you encounter fallout rain. If you thought smog was bad, you can't even see the sun through the dust cloud in the sky. You are now a part of this world whether you wanted to be or not. You must try to survive any way you can. If starvation or the cold of night don't kill you, your friend surely will, for the scrap of food that you found or the weapon that you carry. Whichever way you go, and whatever you decide to do, whether it be to conquer the world or just find your way to a place you can call home, be sure to remember one thing: trust no one.
Every morning when you wake, you will see the same thing: gray skies, incinerated remains, and deadEarth. You will wonder if you will ever see the sun again. You will wish that you could wake up from this nightmare.
deadEarth was published in 1994 and republished in 2002, both times to capitalize upon the fame and fortune that was fulled by the original FallOut and then the re-surged FallOut Tactics. The sort of "aim for the moon and if you miss you'll still land among the stars" mentality that has on occasion birthed some truly great franchises in their own right.
deadEarth is not one of those franchises.
It's badly written, poorly organised and full of contradictive and downright oblivious mistakes, even in the early stretches of character creation. deadEarth is the game that, were it's creators to aim for the moon, they would instead have ricochet'd off a passing satellite and careened wildly into the sun. :smallamused:
And even that, to the right sort of person, can be amusing. Few things are as satisfying as stopping to watch the flames after a really good crash. And deadEarth's character creation process is one hell of a good crash.
Let me put it bluntly; character creation involves rolling everything at random, three times, to give you three characters to choose from.... So that you might have one at the end who a) survives and b) is vaguely playable.
Oh, yes. deadEarth's big claim to fame is that there is a reasonable chance that you might not survive long enough to play it. You have an freakishly high chance of dying during character creation, and it's never quite clear as to what happens if all three of your 'toons end up unviable. Presumably you have to roll another 3 characters, but as written you might just have to sit and watch everyone else play.....
That can't be right, can it? Having heard the stories - nay, the legends - of this game, I thought I'd give it a try for myself and see just how bad it can get.
I'm using some Random Dice Roller (http://www.roll-dice-online.com/) that Google provided for me, and the rules are (legally) free to read at Scribd.com (http://www.scribd.com/doc/19872961/DeadEarth-Players-Handbook-Illustrated?in_collection=2331557). Feel free to join in.
Right, to begin. deadEarth has three major stats. The first is Moves, which is how many actions I can take per round in combat and how fast I can run in Miles-Per-Hour.
A nice simple 2d6 - I roll a nice, middle-of-the-road 8.
Next is Resiliency, which determines how much damage I can take before I explode into chunky salsa. d6 +3 gets me 7, which is pretty good.
The last stat is Strength, which starts at 0 and increases according to my skills and randomly generated 'perks', which are known as Radiations. For the record, 3 is considered "Arnold Schwarzenegger at his Hollywood peak" and 5 is "Super Human".
What happens next is Age, rolled on a percentile. Generally, older people are slower and weaker, but they get a bonus to their skill points. More importantly, older characters have more Radiations than younger ones - Radiations are randomly determined 'perks' that are ultimately responsible for breaking and killing characters, or - if you're incredibly lucky, turn you into a Godlike super-being; there's a d1000 table in the book, and they are full of all sorts of fun and wonderful things, from growing additional limbs and having precarious heart defects to sci-fi symbiotic growths and gender dysmorphia.
And worse.
I first roll 12: roll again, add 50 skills points.
Then, 58; which, apparently, is decrepit. That gives me -9 Moves, -5 Strength and -7 Resiliency, on top of 1130+d6x10 Skill Points and 4d6 Radiations.
....Oh, god.
I'm 4 rolls into the game, and I'm crippled. I have a strength of -5, which gives me a maximum carrying weight of (30+[strengthx10]=) Negative 20 pounds. I can almost wear clothes and walk around at normal speed.
....We.... we can probably resolve that with skills, right? We'll keep going and see what happens.
Next, height: 48+6d6 gets me 26, so I'm 6' 2" tall. This lets me work out my weight, for which I roll 5d6 and then consult a chart. So, 74 inches crossed by *rolls* 16 gets me....
....Umm....
....The appropriate modifier doesn't exist. Table C1 - the same one that told me how old I am - should tell me how much I weigh, and it's blank.
deadEarth : 2 - 0 : My Character.
After a bit of research, Google tells me that my modifier should apparently be either x2 or x3 my height, so I'll go with the former and hope for the best. I'm 74" tall and I weigh 148lbs, which gives me +2 Moves, -1 Resilience and -1 Strength. Hmm. I can now only carry Negative 30 pounds in weight.
I also have -1 Resiliency. I think I read something about this.....
If your resiliency is ever permanently reduced to zero or less, you will have a 33% chance of death every day from common bacteria and viruses. Your body will no longer have the ability to fight off infection, and just about everything will be able to kill you.
.....Yeah, I should probably do something about that.
Luckily, I can now choose to add 1d6 to one of my stats, or 2d6x10 to my Skill Points pool as a freebie before I start buying skills. I'm going to add it to my Strength, hoping that I can buy enough skills to then bring that and Resiliency out of the Negatives. I roll a 5, which brings me to my current totals:
Moves: 8 - 9 + 2 = +1
Resiliency: 7 - 7 - 1 = -1
Strength: 0 -5 - 1 + 5 = -1
Let's see if my Skills can help me.
Character skills begin by rolling 2d6 for each of our skills; any that come up '12' become Natural Abilities, which mean dice using those skills explode more easily, and any that are rolled as '2' become Natural Inabilities, which are much harder to explode. Seems easy enough.
....There are NINETY-EIGHT SKILLS to roll for. What the hell, man!?
*grumble* Fine, here goes; 2d6 rolled ninety-eight times. And we're doing this for fun, remember?
Natural Abilities:
#11 - Brawling
#56 - Mechanics
#84 - Weapon Smithing
Natural Inabilities:
#8 - Bemuse
#67 - Reason
So, I'm looking at a guy who is good with his hands, but not much for conversation. Which'd be really good, if he were capable of lifting a screwdriver. Or even his own fists.
I'm going to try to fix that with skills; they're bought one d6 at a time, so if I have two rank in a skill I roll 2d6 for tests, and so on. Buying Rank 1 costs 10 skill points, 2 costs another 10, 3 costs 10, 4 costs 20, 5 costs 30 and then so on.
A lot of skills also have pre-requisites of another skill at an 'advanced' level - 4d6. So, if I want to buy any dice in, let's say, Beast Handling, it's pre-requisite is Beast Lore which'd have to be at 4d6.
In other words, I have to spend 50 points before I can buy 1 dice of Beast Handling.... And some skills - like 'Robot Engineering' - have up to ELEVEN pre-req skills. That's 550 Skill points in pre-req skills (some of which have pre-reqs of their own!) before you can put a single point into building robots.
I'm not going to try building any robots, I think.
Go back up to my Age roll - I have 1130+50+ (d6x10=30) = 1210 points to spend.
I'll spare the details, but sufficed to say I'm going to buy up plenty of ranks in my Natural Abilities, and also Weightlifting, Running and Boxing as at high ranks they add dice to appropriate stats.
By the end it, I'm looking like this:
Moves: +5
Resiliency: 0
Strength: +3
Armour Penetration 4d6
Boxing .................6d6
+ Brawling ............6d6
Chemistry .............4d6
Construction .........4d6
Drive Automobile ....4d6
Math ...................4d6
+ Mechanics .........4d6
Metallurgy ............4d6
Physics ................4d6
Running ................6d6
Senses .................4d6
Smithing ...............4d6
+ Weapon Smithing .4d6
Weight Training ......6d6
Wrestling ..............6d6
WS Rifle ...............6d6
Skill points left over: 80 (I can use these to buy more Radiations or make final tweaks to my skills when all is said and done).
That's a pretty eclectic list of skills, and even with that lot and their pre-reqs I STILL have a 33% chance of dying in my first session of play even before a fight breaks out. I find myself in the fairly pathetic position of hoping that my Radiations are going to save me. Speaking of which....
I have 4d6 Radiations to roll for. These are, as I said earlier, 'perks' that assign random traits to my character - there's about an equal number of beneficial and disadvantageous, and the important thing is that I must roll for, record, and apply them in order as some Radiations can go back and alter ones that I've already rolled for previously.
4d6 = 10 rolls of a d1000. Let's do this.
(1) 308: Sense of Direction - 'Sense of Direction' is now a Natural Ability. Effect: Binary (It only applies once, as opposed to Cumulatively)
A first candidate for my spare skill points. At least, it would be if 'Sense of Direction' were a skill available to buy - presumably it's an extension of the 'Senses' skill, but I had to pretty much make that up for myself....
(2) 603: Ignition - You can light flammable materials with the power of your mind. Cost: 3 skill points. Range: 20ft. Effect: Binary.
...That's actually pretty cool. This game doesn't seem so bad at all, maybe I was misinformed.
(3) 038: Torment - You can use your guile to drive someone to distraction. If you make a successful guile roll (against your opponent's reason), you can cause someone to be distracted for the rest of the day. This distraction may be an obsession about their clothing, personal appearance, what someone thinks of them, etc. Distraction causes a temporary natural inability to all skills, and a -10 to initiative.
Okay, so now I need to go back and buy Guile. One more memo to bare in mind for later.
(4) 876: Counterfeit - +D6 to guile and outright lie. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: cumulative.
Well, alright!
(5) 501: Elementary Deductions - Add 2D6 to investigate. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: binary.
(6) 831: Subtle - Gain an extra skill point every time you roll influence or interrogate. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: cumulative.
You get 1 skill point - which, basically, is the same thing as XP - whenever I make a check against one of my skills. In other words; double XP for making skill checks. For skills that I haven't bought, mind, but double XP none-the-less. Two more for the list.....
(7) 199: Eunuch - You are now genderless. You have no sexual preference or sexual organs. The groin is no longer a 'double-stun' area. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: binary.
......WHAT?
(8) 323: Insurance - You may spend 10 skill points to add one point to your resiliency reserve. This ability will not add any permanent resiliency, it will simply be a reserve to instantly replenish your resiliency. Cost: 10 skill points. Range: self. Effect: binary.
So I can spend 10xp per day to temporarily avert my save-or-die vs. the common cold roll. Eeehh....
(9) 322: Imminent Death - Count the number of radiations on your list (as of now, 9) and roll percentiles. If you do not roll above the number of radiations in your list, you die. From now on, every time you add a radiation to your list, you must roll percentiles above the number of radiations on your list or you will die. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: cumulative.
Well, this is more like it. I was beginning to think that deadEarth had let me down, but no - I have three save-or-die rolls to make before I even introduce myself to another player. And notice that this Radiation is cumulative - I could potentially roll it again, and have to make TWO save-or-die tests every time I gain a Radiation.
I roll a 43, at least. Nearly there!
(10) 001: Seven cardinal virtues - Gain all of the cardinal virtues. Add (997) faith, (902) hope, (830) charity, (755) justice, (701) fortitude, (099) prudence, and (016) temperance to your list of radiation manipulations. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: permanent.
Oh Christ, why did I say that? So close to the finish line, and I gain 7 more Radiations. Each with Save-or-Die implications. Wish me luck....
Save-or-die: 40 (vs. DC 10)
(10a) 997: Faith - Your belief in a higher power will keep you safe. Remember to say your prayers. Add (271) spirit guide to your list of radiations. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: permanent.
CRAP.
Save-or-die: 22 (vs. DC 11)
(10aa) 271: Spirit guide - You have a little guy on your shoulder telling you what to do and where to go. Lucky for you he knows what he is doing. If anything bad is going to happen to something in your group, the game master will make sure it happens to you last. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: binary.
Save-or-die: 70 (vs. DC 12)
(10b) 902: Hope - As long as you maintain hope you shall never fail. You may double any of your rolls twice per gaming session if it will help someone beside yourself. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: permanent.
Save-or-die: 99 (vs. DC 13)
(10c) 830: Charity - That which you give will come back upon you tenfold. (Well not literally.) For each 10 dollars you give to someone less fortunate than you, gain one skill point. Cost: none. Range: self. Effect: permanent.
Save-or-die: 7 (vs. DC 14)
......Well.
......S***.
One down, two more to go, I guess. If you guys want to see it, of course? :smallwink:
Final tally, for those who might want to see a character sheet:
Height: 74"
Weight: 148lbs
Age: 58 years
Moves: +5
Resiliency: 0
Strength: +3
Armour Penetration.....4d6
Boxing.....................6d6
+ Brawling.................6d6
Chemistry.................4d6
Construction.............4d6
Drive Automobile........4d6
Guile........................1d6
Investigate...............2d6
Math.......................4d6
+ Mechanics.............4d6
Metallurgy...............4d6
Outright Lie .............1d6
Physics...................4d6
Running...................6d6
Senses...................4d6
+ Sense of Direction...0d6
Smithing..................4d6
+ Weapon Smithing....4d6
Radiations:
Sense of Direction
Ignition
Torment
Counterfeit
Elementary Deductions
Subtle
Eunuch
Insurance
Imminent Death
Seven Cardinal Virtues
- Faith
-- Spirit Guide
- Hope
- Charity
DECEASED