Nice icons, but what do they MEAN?

We interrupt your scheduled Professions post for a quick chat about the player boards and icons.

Over the past few weeks I have been getting the player boards ready so I can actually play test this thing. In doing so, I’ve been trying to work out icons for the various abilities. Here is half the Species half of the player board:

Player Board for Stishak race

The two abilities we have seen before in the Species: Stishak post, namely “You have Resist Lightning” and “You can carry 3 pieces of equipment”. But what do the symbols mean?

The guy running is the speed of your character. On your Move action you can move that many hexes. Pretty straightforward, huh?

Now onto a Profession Player Board:

Player board for the Lawyer profession

Again, the two abilities were outlined in the Profession: Lawyer post: “You use Intelligence when using a Black Hole Blade” and “Twice per mission you may use Inspiring Speech”.

But what are the icons?

The flexed arm is Physique. This number is the number of dice you roll when your character is using Heavy weapons where finesse and precision take a back seat to just blasting everyone. It is also used to defend against attacks that target Physique, which are attacks that you wouldn’t really get out of the way of, but test your intestinal fortitude.

The brain denotes Intelligence. This is used for weapons and equipment that requires programming or some other smart interaction. It is also used for the number of dice used in defence against attacks that try and warp your character’s mind.

Originally, the Physique score was going to denote the number of pieces of equipment that a character could carry, but as this score would be 1 for certain characters, this was problematic. I didn’t like a character only being able to carry one piece of equipment as that would almost certainly be a weapon which means they couldn’t use utility equipment or have any of the fun armour. So I decided to set it at a flat 2, with the Stishak characters getting an extra piece of equipment.

Also originally, the Vision score was going to determine the initiative score of a character. but I decided to make sure that there could be no ties in the game so that is no longer the case.

And finally, originally, each piece of equipment was also going to have a tech-level, which required a character to have an Intelligence score equal to or greater than the tech-level to use it. But uncoupling the Physique score from number of pieces of equipment carried and uncoupling Vision from initiative meant that Intelligence was by far the strongest stat out of the three, so I have ditched the tech-level on pieces of equipment.

The two halves of the player boards go together to make a bigger character sheet for the player to use. The word EQUIPMENT at the bottom is for the player to place their equipment cards on to keep organised.

So there you have it. A bit of an update on some of the game rules and an explanation of the icons used on the player boards. Monday sees the resumption of the Profession blog posts.