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Equipment: Part 4 – Armour

I am aiming for characters to have between 3 and 5 equipment slots. Each piece of equipment takes up one slot. Having 3-5 equipment slots should ensure that each character has enough space for 1 or 2 weapons, a piece of armour, 1 or 2 utility items and possibly a grenade or two.

Today’s post is talking about armour. Each character can only wear one piece of armour during a mission. The difficult thing about converting the armour from the RPG to the board game is the energy rolls (mentioned in a previous post), really helped to balance them out. Having to roll to see whether your use of the armour had made it break, balanced the better items against the poorer items.

I am now thinking of reintroducing the energy rolls. What had stopped me before is that in the RPG, you rolled after each combat encounter in which you used the equipment. However, in the boardgame each mission is basically one big encounter. But I have realised that as each mission will be using a track to keep track of the rounds (plus other things such as security level of space station etc.), that I could have it written on the track that every 3 rounds players must roll energy rolls. However, I don’t want to slow the game down too much by having each player roll for every piece of equipment, so I think I will just use this for armour.

Faraday Cage
This simple piece of armour allows electricity to flow around youwhile you are unaffected like you are at the eye of an electricalstorm.
Energy Roll: N/A
Effect: You gain Resist 1 Electric while wearing this armour.
Insulating ArmourThis armour is almost too good at keeping in the heat
Energy Roll: 3
Movement Phase: You may give up two hexes of movement to 
activate/deactivate the insulating armour.
Effect: While the armour is active, you gain Resist 2 Cold and 
Vulnerable 1 Thermal.
Cooling ArmourThis armour dissipates heat into other dimensions
Energy Roll: 3
Movement Phase: You may give up two hexes of movement to 
activate/deactivate the Cooling armour.
Effect: While the armour is active, you gain Resist 2 Thermal and 
Vulnerable 1 Cold.
Mirror ArmourThis armour consists of thin, light, highly reflective metal that reflects lasers and other beam weapons
Energy Roll: 6
Movement Phase: You may give up two hexes of movement to 
activate/deactivate the Mirror armour.
Effect: While the armour is active, whenever you are targeted by an 
attack with the Beam keyword, you may deflect the attack. To do so, 
pick a hex face adjacent to the hex face that the attack was coming 
from, the attack continues in that direction until it hits something 
or has used up its range (your hex does not count as a hex for the 
purposes of counting its range). If the deflected beam hits a 
creature, make an attack against that creature using the dice 
the original attacker would have used plus an additional d12.

Phase ArmourThis armour produces a small field around you that briefly phases you into another dimension
Energy Roll: 6
Movement Phase: You may give up 1 hex of movement to activate/deactivate 
the Phase armour.
Effect: You may move through solid objects but you cannot end your 
movement in a hex containing solid objects. If you are the target of an 
attack that has the Ballistic keyword, you ignore the attack and make 
the following attack:
Phase Armour AttackKeywords: Ballistic
Target: All creatures in Burst 2 that are further away from the 
original attacker than you are.
Attack and Effect: [Whatever the original attack stated as the 
Attack and Effect]

Thunder ArmourA blast wave emanates from this armour, knocking back those close by
Energy Roll: 6
Movement Phase: You may give up 1 hex of movement to 
activate/deactivate the Thunder armour.
Effect: When activated, make the following attack:
Thunder Armour AttackKeywords: Ballistic, Thunder
Target: All creatures in Burst 1
Attack: 2d12 v Fortitude
#    Effect
1    The target is pushed one hex
2    The target is pushed two hexes

Gravitic ArmourGravity is just a play thing, something that bends space-time to your will
Energy Roll: 7
Movement Phase: You may give up your entire movement to 
activate/deactiviate the Gravitic Armour.
Effect: While the gravitic armour is active, you are rooted to the 
spot. Any attack made with a weapon with the keyword Ballistic where
the projectile will move through a burst 2 of the gravitic armour 
has a greater chance of missing The attacker makes a targeting check 
using a medium DC. If the targeting check is successful then the 
attack continues as normal. If the check is a failure, then the 
target gains Resist 2 All for that attack.

Heisenberg ArmourTaking inspiration from the uncertainty principle this armour masks 
your position when you move, with the faster you travel – the more 
your position is obscured.
Energy Roll: 3+
Movement Phase: You may give up 1 hex of movement to 
activate/deactivate the Heisenberg armour.
Effect: For each hex you move away from your starting hex, while the 
armour is active, you gain a cumulative Resist 1 All for the first 
attack you are hit by during the action phase. Each time you are hit 
by an attack during the action phase you can use all or part of the
resistance you gained during the movement phase. Any resistance used 
against an attack is lost for the rest of the action phase. So, for 
example, you move 5 hexes, and gain Resist 5 All. You are then hit 
by 3 attacks. For the first attack you use Resist 3 All. You only 
have Resist 2 All for the next two attacks. Luckily the second 
attack isn’t very strong and you only need to use Resist 1 All to 
nullify it. This means you can use Resist 1 All for the final 
attack. For each attack you choose how much resistance to use after
the attack has hit.

There we go. Once I get playing, I am sure I will need to balance the pieces of armour against each other a bit more.

In Thursday’s post I will start talking about the Species that a player can choose to be.

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