Psionics and Steel

Lately I've been thinking about psychics and cybernetics. I want a simple system to bolt onto the ever-changing Dark Sorcery rules. I have a list of psionic powers that fit the type of electropunk world I'm thinking of right now, which I will probably revise and post on this blog this month.

Note that my system has no armor rules (the Steel score is effectively an armor save) and that a single damaging attack can be serious (courtesy of yet another wound system.) A simple damaging attacks causes the character to gain the Wounded status, while a Critical success causes a roll on the knockout table.

But, for now, the rules for cybernetic implants:

Faux-Persian mini-skirmish thing

Going through my archives I found this little skirmish type of rules-skeleton that I think was inspired by Dungeons of Dredmor of all things.
These rules have holes I'm sure and are pretty raw, but I think the idea of only rolling if you dodge, block or counter an attack instead of rolling if you hit is pretty cool. Cover/concealment could be implemented with a 'miss-chance' type of thing. Also I think the health system is redundant. Maybe only for larger monsters/heroes? The weapon categories can be combined, I think, so that you can be armored and have a shield and light weapon or unarmored with a heavy spear.

But yeah, bare-bones, as I found it, rules for Persian combat:

Damage table

After thinking of several different schemes for RPG health systems, I found most of them lacking. Specifically, they weren't brutal enough. I want my players to be actually worried at the chance of physical conflict, and have them prepare for it instead of just kicking the door down. So, the rules I chose favor the attacker and most fights are over in just one round. Don't worry, though, player characters still get those three magical 'fate points' (name pending) that allow them to basically deflect any one attack.

So, without further ado, here's the wound effect table in its most basic form:

New Rules for Psychic Powers

So, I've been revising and rewriting the ruleset yet again...
First of all, the players have 5 Skills, which are

Might - Toughness, strength, health..
Will - Mental strength & resistance, intimidation..
Agility - Dodge, acrobatics, speed..
Smarts - Lore, mechanical skill, medicine, persuasion..
Intuition - Awareness, empathy, searching..

I'm considering adding specializations that you could make a bumbling tech-whiz or a weak-willed pyrokine etc.

You distribute the following amounts of dice into these skills in any order you like: 3, 3, 2, 2, 1.
If you want a jack-of-all-trades, you can also put 2 into all the skills.

When you roll a skill, you roll all the dice and all that exceed the target difficulty count as success dice. Usually your target difficulty is your opponent's highest die value.

If you want to play a psychic, you can lose one die from a skill in order to get one psychic talent. These are things like pyrokineticism, psychometry, animal control (beastmasters!), etc.

Psychic powers are not tied to any one skill, though Will is the most common one used.

I have a new hitpoint-less damage system as well, which I will talk about next time.