So my runners are headed for a wild life amongst the swaying palms trees and horrifically large bugs of the Awakened Pacific Rim. I see much time spent bobbing around in the ocean or hiding in shaded river inlets. All that whiz gear they bought is all well and good but now they're going to be very far from the nearest Stuffer Shack and industrial crates of CLP 2070.

Do any of you have a simple and reasonable way to represent or track weapon durability and the wear and tear a weapon suffers when it's not being properly cared for? It is a little simulationist for my tastes but I'd prefer a mechanic rather than their weapons breaking down whenever it's least appropriate. I'm already going to have glitches and critical glitches factor into their survivability.

Well, seeing as there is no body/structure attribute or anything to base rules on, you'll have to be arbitrary.

Let's see. You can take a base number, like 6 for weapons and ballistic or impact (whichever is higher) for armors.

Now you cook some modifiers like +2 for "simple" weapons (shotguns, grenade launchers, heavy pistols, non high-tech melee weapons, etc..), -1 for automatic-fire capable weapons (SMG, assault-shotguns, etc.), -1 for high-tech/complicated weapons (miniguns, gauss rifle, HV weapons, monowhip, etc.). Those modifiers are cumulative of course.

After that, you take that number, had edge, and make the player roll it.
Every passing week away from civilization, you remove 1 dice from this pool.
For each day of rest in a favorable environment, you had +1 to this DP.
If the player has the opportunity to clean their item the DP is reseted.

The base threshold is, let say, 2.
Now you can also had modifier to the base threshold.
For example:
Temperate environment: -1
Very high/Very low humidity: +1
Extreme temperature: +1

I pretty much write it as I was thinking, so it's likely it's not perfect yet.
Just giving you something to start...

Edit: Forgot cyberware. I'd choose a base number of 8 for standard grade.
But there I 'm not sure if alpha/beta/etc grade should have a higher or lower base...
And internal cyberware should have a high bonus, something like +4 or even +6.

I forgot cyber as well... hmm... it's going to be fun to see what kind of deals they'll have to make to get basic maintenance done.

You're rules look pretty good, we'll run them and see if they work. Anything new strikes your fancy let me know

They probably need some tweaking, but what kinda annoys me is the fact that after a certain time, any item WILL fail no matter what.
Maybe adding that the dicepool can't get smaller than Edge. So after a certain time, the item will ride on luck alone...

Ho, and if you do use those rules, be creative with the glitches. There is many ways for a weapon/armor/cyber to malfunction

Well I think that I'm only going to use these rules when players don't have access to the ammenities (read:lifestyle) they are used to.

I'm also going to offer "low maintenance" as a weapons mod. Like those shotguns that are designed for ship use and won't rust away if they get a little salt on them.

But yeah, I just want something to throw a little chance into the mix and to give the teams armorer something to do besides touch Arsenal inappropriately.

I was assuming those rules were only to be used in harsh environment, hence those:


The "low maintenance" mod is a nice idea.
What would be the effect? A bonus modifier or something different like halving the time before lowering the DicePool?

Edit: Ho, by the way, if you have players with gremlins it can apply to those tests too.

Hehe... it will absolutley apply to those test (gremlins).

Hm... I'm half tempted to make low maint a mod that comes in levels, each level adds extra dice to the test.
As a side benefit it also reduces or negates the effects of glitches with that weapon.

But it would also work pretty well if it just lowered the threshold by it's rating. Maybe max it out at rating 3.

The default of lowering the threshold is that it would make some weapons impervious to usage wear.
I'd rather make it add a bonus to the dicepool.

Making it also works like a reversed gremlins (less glitches) is a good idea.


So it could be something like that:

Low Maintenance Modification (Rating 1-4)
Slots: Rating
Threshold: Rating x 6
Tool: Shop
Cost: Rating x Half Weapon Cost (round down)
Availability: Rating x 3
Special Skill: Armorer

Edit: Maybe it's a little too pricey. I'm thinking about it...
How about: Rating x 250¥ + Half Weapon Cost (round down)

Extra dice it is, that makes more sense in a way, it makes it harder for your weapon to crap out, but you still might have a bad week.

GM is of course welcome to add modifiers based upon what's been done with the weapon. Dropped off the side of a mountain? +1 threshold.

Hm... how about mods making the complexity go up? You have a stock colt manhunter, that thing will probably last you forever. You have an Ares Pred IV with all the fixings, somethings more likely to break.

So lets run some examples with what we've got.

Ares Predator IV
Week (1) Base:6
Complexity:+2

Base Threshold:2
Enviroment (Hot): +1
Enviroment (Humid): +1
Abuse (none): 0
Days in good enviroment: -2

Final Threshold: 2

So 8 dice rolling against threshold 2. Players can buy successes and roll on with their bad selves.

Gauss Rifle:
Week (1)Base:6
Complexity:-2
Low Maint 1: +1

Same Enviroment

5 dice against threshold 2.... Hm... maybe you need to leave the gauss rifle in the box.

So what happens if they don't make the test? Weapons mucked up and needs someone to make and armorer check on it? Weapon glitches on more one AND twos than successes?

That's looking pretty good.

The result of the failed test depends on the failure itself.
Glitch: There will be a problem with the weapon on the next use (jamming, scope aiming wrong, etc), the player will have to fix it.
Threshold not met: For the next week, two also count when calculating glitch for test concerning this weapons.
Critical Glitch: Something bad happen. The weapon is critically jammed or broken, the player can't use until an armorer fix it.

Hm... so everyones weapon magically breaks on Sundays when we roll that weeks stress test?

I think that the weapon will know (they're smart right?) that something is wrong and alert the user that it's time to go see the gun doc.

Now on a critical glitch, the system never reports that.

Well, I was thinking the test was rolling when first using the weapon said week, but yeah that's pretty much it
(yes that means you can go some time without actually rolling, but the malus/week still stacks, and the next test will just be that much harder)

The weapon are smart indeed, but can they sense their mechanism is becoming obstructed/dirty? Or that the aiming has gone wrong?
I'm not so sure about that...

Sounds like a glitch to me

And yeah, it definitely makes more sense to have them roll the first time they use it. Handy since we usually advance game time in 1 week increments.

Ugh... paperwork. But I think it'll add to the setting I'm developing.

That's the price to pay for added granularity :x

Indeed... i actually figured out how to use Excel, maybe I'll just make a tracking spreadsheet

I seem to be coming to the conversation a bit late, but if it was me, I'd have the team make Armorer Tests every now and again. I'd make the threshold 1, since the lowest threshold on p. 125 of your hymnal is 2, and that's for repairs; this is just maintenance. If I was feeling nice, I'd have failure cause a (cumulative) -1 dice pool penalty for using the weapon until it was repaired. If I was feeling mean, I'd have failure indicate a broken weapon.

It really depends on how well the characters take care of their gear. your numbers seem to be assuming that the characters will never clean their weapons, when any competent operator will do this every couple of hours in the worst sorts of conditions.

You are probably much better off trying to model 'instant' stuff that might make your weapon fail, rather than just assuming the PCs are illiterate savages that never maintain their weapons and gear. this article is a pretty good demonstration of what difference proper care and cleaning can do.

So, for example, if the PCs are in the desert, and helicopters are flying over during a gunfight they are in, then you might ask them to make reliability rolls for their weapons. Of course, if a helicopter flies over while the PCs are just dicking around, then they will probably be cleaning their kit and cursing all chopper pilots shortly thereafter. If you are riding around in a helicopter, you put your weapon in a garbage bag or something to keep all the dust the chopper throws off from getting into it. Even just putting a condom or something over the muzzle during your chopper ride will help a lot.

The weapon reliability stats should largely be based on the basic weapon design itself. In addition, the reliability of the weapon has no direct relation to its price.

The 'marine' versions of various weapons are really for long term ship based duty. For example, standing watch in port to stop boarders. The fact that the weapon will be out next to the ocean for an 8 hour watch for at least days at the time would really impact a non-marine version of the same weapon. Just dragging your (regular) weapon out to have a firefight on a ship and then cleaning it afterwards won't make any difference it it's reliability or operational life.

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So what about the rules?

If the PCs weapons are exposed to bad environments during a firefight,
have them roll edge
+/- additional pool based on the reliability of weapon design they are using
- some dice, depending on how bad the condition are (Only up to -2 for the worst possible conditions)
- some dice if they are using a particularly beat up weapon (-1 at worst, unless you built the gun out of parts from a junkyard)
- some dice if they are not taking proper care of their weapons (-1 if you just don't clean that often or well, -2 if you don't clean at all)

All the manual action weapons (bolt, break, pump, revolver) are very hard to screw up. Something like +3 dice on the reliability table.

Then, -2 to +2 based on the weapons basic design.

So note that a bolt action rifle know for its reliability will have between +4 to +5 dice to resist malfunctions. Even if the idiot conscript that carries it never cleans the rifle (-2), and it has been used to beat several people to death (-2 for being in bad shape), it will still be at +1 or +0 dice on a basic reliability test.

Also note that most weapon failures will not represent a broken weapon, but simply one that needs a little 'love' to get working again. Most failures will just take a simple action to feed the next round. Bad failures will requires 3-5 complex actions to fix. Only the most severe make the weapon completely useless.

I'd apply the KISS principle, unless your palyers love micromanaging gear.

One way is to simply have each runner roll 1d6 each session, 1 means something of theirs needs a fixing.

Another way is to simply reduce the treshold for glitches by 1 or 2 depending on how finnicky a piece of gear is, and let the dice do the rest - after all, most gear is smart these days, and will announce trouble, so odds are, it'll fail during operation, else it would not be carried into a fight.

(Which reminds me of a scene from my basic training. During some exercise, I jumped into a foxhole at a post, and the Lt. in charge of it described me the situation, enemy 15 meters away, in a foxhole, and my rifle malfunctions. What do you do?

He expected me to do the drill (chamber another round, check magazine, check muzzle, etc.), I went "handgrenade!". Ah, to be young again.