Wear
If you
use something for a while, chances are it’ll stop working after a while. So it is with things in CARE; this
phenomenon is called Wear. Wear is also
known as the Curse of the Red Four.
Why, I hear you ask? Well,
whenever the player uses an item, and draws the Four of Hearts or Four of
Diamonds, that item automatically gains 1 point of Wear, whether you’re using a
knife or an interstellar death-ship.
Some items have more Wear available than others:
|
Item Type |
Wear |
Threshold |
|
Electronics |
5 |
- |
|
Close Combat Weapon, Bow |
5 |
- |
|
Firearm |
5 |
- |
|
General Mechanics |
10 |
- |
|
Armour |
10 |
- |
|
Vehicle, Small (Bike) |
15 |
3 |
|
Vehicle, Medium (Car) |
25 |
5 |
|
Vehicle, Large (Bus) |
40 |
8 |
|
Vehicle, Very Large (Tank) |
60 |
12 |
Vehicle Wear works slightly differently to other items
– they have what is known as a Threshold.
Threshold is how many points of Wear an item can take before it starts
to degrade.
Wear affects items in different ways:
Close Combat Weapons – every point of Wear removes 1 point from the Base
Damage of the weapon, to a minimum of 1 point of Damage.
Firearms – every point of Wear adds 1 to the Target when attacking with that
gun.
Armour – to 5 points of Wear, armour is unaffected. After 5 points, the Armour loses 1 point from all of its ratings
for each point of Wear suffered.
Vehicles – Every time the vehicle sustains its Threshold value of Wear, it loses
20% from its Top Speed and Acceleration, and gains 1 point of Handling. It may also have other detrimental effects,
at the GMs discretion (trunks may pop open, turrets may jam, the breaks may
fail to work, you get the idea).
Weapons vs. Vehicles
Ballistic and heat-based weapons do normal damage to
vehicles. Close-combat weapons will do
half-damage, and hell, if you want to attack a tank with a club, you get what
you deserve, really.
Travelling
The body is an amazing machine. It can move in all three planes, if only for
short distances, and it can travel across most surfaces unaided.
X and Y – Running
A character can walk (Dexterity÷2) metres in a turn,
run (Dexterity×2) metres, or sprint (Dexterity×4) metres. Running characters may do so for
(Size+Athletics) turns; after this, they suffer 1 point of Green damage for
every turn thereafter. Sprinting
characters may do so for ([Size+Athletics]÷2) turns, at which point they suffer
3 points of Green damage per turn thereafter.
Z – Jumping
The Targets for Jumping are listed below. These Targets are for a decent run-up, say
five metres or so; every extra turn spent running in the direction of the jump
lowers the Target by 1, and every turn spent sprinting lowers it by two. Bear in mind that the character must have
sufficient run-up room; a standing jump will increase the Target by 2.
|
Jump Height (Centimetres) or Distance (Metres) |
Target |
|
Less than 10%/less than half the character’s
height |
2 |
|
11-20%/up
to character’s height |
4 |
|
21-30%/up to 1.5 times the character’s height |
6 |
|
31-40%/up to 2 times the character’s height |
8 |
|
41-50%/up to 2.5 times the character’s height |
10 |
|
51-60%/up to 3 times the character’s height |
12 |
|
61-70%/up to 3.5 times the character’s height |
14 |
|
71-80%/up to 4 times the character’s height |
16 |
|
81-90%/up to 4.5 times the character’s height |
18 |
|
91%/up to 5 times the character’s height (Maximum
unaided jump) |
20 |
The draw is made against the character’s Athletics
score. Note that vertical leaps are
measured so that the character lands on their feet by default; if the character
is aiming to, say, catch the bottom rung of an ascending ladder, then subtract
the character’s height from the total distance.
X, Y and Z – Aided Movement
There will come a time that the character will have to
make use of a means of transport, whether that means is a horse, a car, or an
interstellar cruiser.
The character may do certain things without the need
of a test: move in a straight line, accelerate and decelerate normally – think
of a person driving in regular traffic.
It is when this traffic becomes thick, or starts to shoot at you, that
the character must make a test.
|
Vehicle Type |
Cargo |
Top Speed |
Handling |
Acceleration |
|
Dirt Bike |
4 |
130 |
6/5 |
5 |
|
Street Bike, regular |
5 |
150 |
6/8 |
10 |
|
Street Bike, high performance |
5 |
200 |
5/8 |
15 |
|
Street Bike, hog |
9 |
170 |
6/9 |
12 |
|
Car, off-road |
15 |
120 |
6/5 |
5 |
|
Car, low-end |
30 |
100 |
6/9 |
3 |
|
Car, regular |
30 |
150 |
6/8 |
10 |
|
Car, high-performance |
25 |
210 |
5/7 |
20 |
|
Truck, small |
60 |
140 |
6/10 |
5 |
|
Truck, regular (Van) |
100 |
120 |
7/11 |
5 |
|
Truck, large |
175 |
100 |
7/12 |
3 |
|
Bus |
200 |
90 |
8/13 |
3 |
|
Semi-trailer |
500 |
90 |
8/13 |
2 |
|
Plane, Prop-driven |
150 |
135/350 |
7 |
30 |
|
Plane, Jet |
300 |
200/1600 |
6 |
50 |
|
Helicopter |
75 |
250 |
8 |
15 |
Cargo – how much
stuff the character can carry with them in the vehicle. Each unit is worth approximately 10 kg of
gear, whereas a rider will automatically fill Cargo space equal to their
Size. Hence, you won’t get a whole lot
of bulked-up characters riding a dirt bike.
Top Speed – how fast
the vehicle can go, in kilometers per hour.
For airborne vehicles, the lower score is the minimum speed that the
vehicle must be traveling in order to remain airborne.
Handling – the Target for the character to perform
more-than-average tasks while behind the wheel. The two numbers are the on-road and off-road Targets,
respectively. Note that there are some
factors, such as weather, surface conditions, and vehicle damage that may also
affect the Handling of the vehicle; these factors and the bonuses/penalties
therein are up to the GM.
Acceleration – how fast the vehicle can speed up or
slow down. If the character wishes to
do either thing, they make a test against the vehicle’s Handling; every success
allows the character to slow down or speed up by the factor listed.
Al is shooting up the I-69 on his Yamaha
(high-performance Street Bike), when he hears a siren start up behind him. Eyeing the two saddlebags full of cash
strapped behind his seat, he decides to make a break for it. The Cop behind him is driving a regular Car,
and is currently doing 120 km/h to keep up with Al. Al has Bike: 5, and the Cop has Car: 4; the Cop has a Target of
6, while Al’s well-tuned Bike gives him a Target of 5. Al’s player draws three successes, while the
GM draws four for the Cop. Despite the
fact that the Cop gained more successes, the Top Speed of his car only allows
him to accelerate to 150 km/h, while Al’s faster bike pulls away at a brisk 165
km/h.
GEAR
Load
Because the Matrix is a virtual world, the Resistance
does not have to buy anything they use against the Machines – They simply
upload it instead. Why, then, do they
not just upload a couple of hundred tanks and go blazing across the machines
like a German dictator through Poland?
Well, the answer lies in the broadcast gear that each of the Resistance
Hovercrafts carry. The hacking
transmitter only has a limited bandwidth with which it can project items into
the Matrix. While any Freeminds that
head in there are duly compensated for, the stuff they take in is not. Every gun, knife, and motorcycle they bring
into the Matrix takes up a part of that bandwidth. This is known as LOAD.
The translation and broadcast technology built into
each jump chair tops out at 1000 units of Load; so, a fully-functioning
five-man Hovercraft has a total Load of 5000.
Teams must therefore be careful that the Load needed by the brace of
SAMs that the combat specialist is taking doesn’t mean that the other members
are left to jack in wearing only their underwear.
Kits, Shops and Facilities
From repairing a
Hovercraft to patching wounds to blowing things up, characters will need
equipment to get the job done.
There are three types of
said equipment. Kits are the man-portable tool-bags for the mechanic on the go;
good for patch-ups, but nothing serious.
Shops are more expansive, and
can handle more detailed work, modifications and so on; think of shops as the
contents of a toolshed, or the workbench in the garage. Facilities
are the top-of-the-line, able to produce items out of component parts, like a
hydroponics farm, or a fully-stocked garage.
There are two parts to
this equipment: its Tech rating, and its Complexity. Tech rating is how
technologically advanced the equipment is.
In a medical analogy, think of a standard first aid kit, complete with
bandages, antiseptic, maybe some painkillers, compared to its 23rd
century partner: and expert system-driven nanotech medkit that can reset bones,
stop internal bleeding, and do a much better job than all of the other shlubs
on your team that never take First Aid as a skill...
Complexity is how detailed (and often how big) the
equipment is. Think of it as the difference between a field surgery – cramped
conditions, low on everything, makeshift operating tables – and a top-level
medical facility.
The two Tech ratings are Low and High, to correspond with the Basic (a household first-aid kit) or
advanced (a Special Ops Trauma kit) nature of the gear. There are three levels
of Complexity, Low, Medium and High.
A 20th century first aid kit would be Low complexity, while
the equipment in your average trauma ward would come in around the High end.
What does all of this low
and high stuff have to do with anything, I hear you say? Well, the Complexity and Tech levels affect
the performance of the item, and also the Load. Kits may only be Low Complexity; Shops can be Low or Medium, and
Facilities can be whatever the heck they want to be. Multipliers are cumulative; so a Low Tech, Medium Complexity set
of equipment will be multiplied by 6.
The type of equipment
affects the performance of the character using it. If the character is experienced in the procedure being attempted
(ie they have the skill for it), then the equipment adds its Rating to the
character’s skill Level for the test, to a maximum of 10. If the character does not have the skill,
then the item gives them the skill at half of its Rating.
|
Base
Multiplier: |
Rating |
|
|
|
||
|
Type |
Load
multiplier |
|
|
Kit |
10 |
|
|
Shop |
100 |
|
|
Facility |
1000 |
|
|
|
||
|
Tech
Type |
Multiplier |
|
|
Low |
×2 |
|
|
High |
×4
(+1 to Rating) |
|
|
|
||
|
Complexity |
Multiplier |
|
|
Low |
×2 |
|
|
Medium |
×3
(+1 to Rating) |
|
|
High |
×5 (+2 to Rating) |
|
Boomer, a Freemind demolitions expert, wants a Demolition Kit. Boomer’s player is pulling out all the stops, making the kit High technology (+1 to rating), and Low Complexity (hey there’s only so much room in a bag...). He already has Demolition at Level 4, so he plays the numbers, making it a Rating 5 kit (so when he uses it, he’ll be using his Demoliti