Aberrant 2.0 Vehicle Rules

Vehicle General Errata

Safe Speed and Max Speed are in km/h. The speed in meters/combat round is given in parentheses. Maneuver is the dice bonus or penalty to any control rolls (Dex + Pilot or Dex + Drive). Armor also has a value in parentheses, which is the amount of soak given to the passenger in the event he is directly attacked. Armor soaks both bashing and lethal damage at full value.

Structural Integrity

Vehicles use a simplified health track without -0/-1/-2/-4 HLs. Instead, a vehicle's penalties are listed below-note these add penalties instead of dice. All penalties are cumulative, even penalties from the same damage level-so if a vehicle with minor damage is maneuvering (+1 difficulty) at maximum speed (+1 difficulty), it suffers +2 difficulty.

Has lost 25% or less of its HLs: Cosmetic damage, no penalties.

Has lost 26-50% of its HLs: Light damage, +1 difficulty to maneuver rolls, +1 difficulty to any rolls made when moving at maximum speed.

Has lost 51-75% of its HLs: Heavy damage, +1 difficulty to all rolls

Has lost 75-99% of its HLs: Critical damage, safe speed only, +1 difficulty to all rolls (total +2), +1 difficulty to maneuvering rolls (total +2)

Has lost 100% to 150% of its HLs: Disabled, all systems nonfunctional

Has lost 151% or more of its HLs: Destroyed

Repairs

Vehicles require 1 hour to repair 1 HL if they have taken only cosmetic damage, 2 hours to repair 1 HL at minor damage, 4 hours to fix 1 HL at major damage, 8 hours to fix 1 HL after taking critical damage, and 1 day per HL lost when disabled.

Basic Rules

Crew: Most vehicles have multiple crew, allowing them to take multiple actions without penalty. Each crewmember may take any number of actions using normal multiple action rules, allowing military vehicles to act several times in a single round without inordinate multiple action penalties. The crew use their own dice pools for their individual actions, and are often given fixed roles.

Damage: Vehicles take damage differently from humans. Vehicles ignore Stun damage, and do not take Bashing damage normally. Instead, every 2 levels of Bashing damage inflicted in an attack become 1 level of Lethal damage, rounding the conversion down. Vehicles take lethal and aggravated damage normally.

Optional Rule: Reducing High Dice Pools: Vehicle weapons and armor can achieve extremely high dice pool numbers, with munitions such as tactical nuclear weapons often requiring 90-100 dice to resolve. Similarly, novas may end up with extremely ludicrous dice pools. In this case, one may convert a portion of that pool into automatic successes. Every 10 dice in a pool becomes 4 successes (0.4 chance of success). With a relevant quality or dealing with heavy weapons that automatically reroll 10s, every 20 dice in a pool becomes 9 successes (0.4444... ~= 0.45 chance of success per die). Convert a dice pool into automatic successes until 10 dice or less are left, then roll the remainder.

Ramming: A vehicle used in a ramming attack deals damage to both it and the unfortunate target of the attack. To ram, the driver rolls Dex + Drive or Dex + Pilot at +1 difficulty, while the defender can dodge or defend however they wish. A successful ram deals a base 5B damage at Safe and 10B damage at max speed to both parties, modified by the below factors. Note that the below factors do not at all simulate the actual physics of colliding objects and are intended for drama rather than simulation.

Speed: A vehicle has a safe speed (equivalent to a character's running movement) and a max speed (equivalent to sprinting). However, unlike characters, vehicle drivers can take action normally even if moving at maximum speed.

Vehicle Scale: Multiply base damage by Size difference (min 1, max 3).

Damage Adds: A vehicle adds a number of damage adds equal to (Size + 2) when ramming.

Vehicle Soak: Every 2 points of armor a vehicle has adds an additional +1B to the damage, while every 5 points of armor adds [1] to the attack's damage add-round fractional points down.

Vehicle Velocity: A vehicle deals +5B [2] damage to itself and the target if its velocity is between 50 and 100 km/h, with an additional +5B [3] if its velocity is between 101 and 200 km/h, and is lethal if its velocity is above 200 km/h. If a vehicle's velocity is over 1000 km/h, add another +10L [5], and add yet another +10L [5] if the vehicle's velocity is over 5000 km/h.

Ramming a target at significantly less than normal safe speed reduces this damage by ST discretion.

Size

Vehicles have a Size, which represents how large they are. Size 0 is considered to be "human" or close to human, such as motorcycles or hovercycles. Each Size level is approximately 2 times the mass and volume of the previous scale. Size increases the difficulty of a vehicle's weapons to acquire smaller targets and the vehicle's ability to evade smaller targets, but makes the attacks of smaller foes decreasingly relevant.

• Size -6 ~= 0.5-1 kg
• Size -5 ~= 1-2 kg
• Size -4 ~= 2-5 kg
• Size -3 ~= 5-10 kg
• Size -2 ~= 10-20 kg
• Size -1 ~= 20-40 kg
• Size 0 ~= 40-125 kg
• Size 1 ~= 126-250 kg
• Size 2 ~= 251-500 kg
• Size 3 ~= 0.5-1t
• Size 4 ~= 1-2t
• Size 5 ~= 2-5t
• Size 6 ~= 5-10t
• Size 7 ~= 10-20t
• Size 8 ~= 20-40t (APCs and IFVs)
• Size 9 ~= 40-80t (Main Battle Tank)
• Size 10 ~= 80-160t (Trinity supertanks)
• Size 20 ~= 160,000t (aircraft carrier)
• Size 23 ~= 1.3 million tons (Trinity-era space cruiser)
• Size 25 ~= 5.1 million tons (Leviathan Jumpship)

Every difference in Size becomes an external penalty or bonus to post-soak damage-a Size 0 character against a Size 2 car reduces all post-soak damage by 2 health levels, while shooting at the Size 9 tank reduces all post-soak damage by 9 health levels. A Size 0 character attacking a Size -4 cat deals 4 extra health levels of damage. Furthermore, every full 3 points of Size difference add or subtract 1 from the difficulty to hit a character (down to the minimum of 0). The smaller being finds it easier to evade the larger one's attacks and easier to hit the larger foe. To continue the example, the Size 0 human attacking the Size -4 cat would be at +1 difficulty to all attack rolls, but the cat would be at -1 difficulty to attack the human.

Size-increasing/decreasing powers and body modifications will need to be rebuilt given this, most likely so they no longer give bonuses to soak/Stamina and possibly reducing their health level bonuses. Similarly, Mastery increases the effective scale of character's powers by an undetermined amount.

Cars

• Compact Car: Safe/Max Speed 100/150, Maneuver +0, Passengers 3, Armor 6, Size 3, 16 HLs
  • A compact car is a cheap and efficient method to transport a family, but is rather vulnerable to gatling gun fire and antitank missiles, making it a poor vehicle choice for most PCs.

• Midsize Car: Safe/Max Speed 100/200, Maneuver +1, Passengers 4, Armor 8, Size 3, 18 HLs
  • Midsized cars can carry an average family of 4 in decent comfort.

• Large Car: Safe/Max Speed 100/175, Maneuver +0, Passengers 5, Armor 8, Size 4, 20 HLs
  • Large town cars are stylish and tasteful ways to show wealth and power. And with a hypercombustion engine or fuel cell, they aren't even bad for the environment anymore.

• Sports Car: Safe/Max Speed 100/250, Maneuver +2, Passengers 0-2, Armor 7, Size 3, 16 HLs
  • If you need to get somewhere fast but can't afford a helicopter you probably want one of these. If you want to show off how much money you have you probably want one of these as well.

Trucks and Bikes

• Motorcycle: Safe/Max Speed 50/150, Maneuver +2, Passengers 0-1, Armor 4, Size 0, 10 HLs
  • The preferred transportation for advanced robot assassins, bad boys, and other ne-er-do-wells, a motorcycle is lightweight and maneuverable but provides negligible protection to the operator.

• Small Truck: Safe/Max Speed 80/150, Maneuver -1, Passengers 2, Armor 8, Size 5, 22 HLs
  • Small trucks carry cargo. An entire range of vehicles, from larger pickup trucks to small 6x6 wheeled trucks fall into this category.

• Large Truck: Safe/Max Speed 60/150, Maneuver -2, Passengers 2, Armor 10, Size 6, 25 HLs
  • Large trucks are much larger and tend to pull several tons' worth of cargo behind them. They are in a very real way critical to commerce, and in an emergency make decent kinetic weapons when barreling towards someone at full speed.

Civilian Aviation

• Small Prop Plane: Safe/Max Speed 200/500, Maneuver +1, Passengers 4, Armor 6, Size 5, 20 HLs
  • A small prop plane is a small civilian aircraft, little more than a toy. That said, they can land almost anywhere and are relatively cheap.

• Large Prop Plane: Safe/Max Speed 400/600, Maneuver -2, Passengers 40, Armor 8, Size 7, 36 HLs
  • Larger prop planes have more commercial applications but tend to be slightly less convenient.

• Small Jet Aircraft: Safe/Max Speed 400/800, Maneuver +0, Passengers 20, Armor 6, Size 7, 36 HLs
  • A personal jet is a necessity for any globetrotting multimillionaire.

• Jumbo Jet: Safe/Max Speed 600/900, Maneuver -5, Passengers 300, Armor 9, Size 12, 60 HLs
  • And for the rest of us, you have large air transport which is good at several things: 1. Carrying lots of people across long distances with a minimum of comfort, and 2. Becoming an impromptu cruise missile at the hands of someone sufficiently crazy.

• Civilian Helicopter: Safe/Max Speed 150/250, Maneuver +3, Passengers 4, Armor 6, Size 4, 28 HLs
  • Civilian helicopters combine the convenience of a military helicopter with the legality of a thing that isn't bristling with dangerous weapons, and are fast and maneuverable, if fuel-inefficient, methods of getting from Point A to Point B no matter how rough the terrain at Point B is.

Military Aircraft

• Strike Aircraft: Safe/Max Speed 600/1000, Maneuver +3, Passengers 0, Armor 15, Size 8, 36 HLs
  • Strike Aircraft are (relatively) heavily armored aircraft designed for CAS, armed with heavy rotary cannon and a variety of very deadly missiles.

• Fighter Aircraft: Safe/Max Speed 900/2500, Maneuver +3, Passengers 0, Armor 9, Size 8, 30 HLs
  • They might be old, but venerable fighter aircraft with proper updates can still put up a pretty impressive fight at an eminently affordable price point. That is, affordable to the average nation-state, not a single person.

• Advanced Fighter: Safe/Max Speed 1200/3000, Maneuver +4, Passengers 0, Armor 9, Size 8, 30 HLs
  • Later-generation fighters designed and built in the late 20th and early 21st centuries are common in the arsenals of large power blocs such as the EU, China, and the United States, combining speed, maneuverability, firepower, and defenses to create deadly birds of prey.

• Superfighter: Safe/Max Speed 2000/4500, Maneuver +5, Passengers 0, Armor 9, Size 8, 30 HLs
  • These cutting edge prototype designs are often the brainchildren of Nova designers, combining bleeding-edge electronics and materials science to create flying supercomputers with the combat effectiveness of an entire fighter squadron and a comparable price point.

• Bomber: Safe/Max Speed 1000/2000 , Maneuver -3, Crew 4, Armor 10, Size 11, 50 HLs
  • Bombers find themselves assigned to the role of carrying large amounts of ordinance and dispensing it with varying amounts of discrimination on various countries.

• UCAV: Safe/Max Speed 600/1000, Maneuver +3, Passengers 0, Armor 9, Size 7, 24 HLs
  • Cutting-edge combatants and the possible next generation of conventional warfare, UCAVs are fully autonomous strike aircraft. They're still kind of dumb right now, but as science advances by leaps and bounds they are becoming more and more capable of performing even complex maneuvers successfully.

Military VTOLs

• Attack Helicopter: Safe/Max Speed 200/400, Maneuver +3, Passengers 0, Armor 16, Size 7, 36 HLs
  • Gunships carry an autocannon and a variety of rockets and missiles into combat, generally performing strike missions or escorting transport helicopters.

• Transport Helicopter: Safe/Max Speed 200/400, Maneuver +0, Passengers 10, Armor 12, Size 7, 28 HLs
  • There are few better ways to move a bunch of light infantry into combat fast, but transport helicopters tend to be vulnerable to AA weapons. Lightly armed for clearing landing zones, transport helicopters can engage lighter foes with some success but their pilots prefer to not deal with hot LZs.

Military Ground Vehicles

• APC: Safe Speed 30 (24), Max Speed 60 (48), Maneuver -2, Passengers 10, Armor 16, Size 8, 36 HLs
  • APCs are wheeled or tracked armored vehicles with light self-defense armament intended to increase the mobility of infantry.

• Infantry Combat Vehicle: Safe Speed 50 (40), Max Speed 80 (64), Maneuver -3, Passengers 7, Armor 18, Size 8, 40 HLs
  • IFVs are upgunned APCs, trading some infantry capacity for additional firepower and armor.

• Light Tank: Safe Speed 50 (40), Max Speed 100 (80), Maneuver -2, Passengers 0, Armor 18, Size 8, 44 HLs
  • Light tanks are smaller tanks, used as tracked reconnaissance vehicles, skirmishers, or airmobile armor.

• Main Battle Tank: Safe Speed 50 (40), Max Speed 80 (64), Maneuver -3, Passengers 0, Armor 25, Size 9, 50 HLs
  • The pinnacle of the armored combat vehicle, your average MBT is fast, incredibly tough, and armed with enough firepower to smash just about anything in its way.

Combat Robots

• Danguard: Safe Speed 30 (24), Max Speed 50 (40), Maneuver +1, Passengers 0, Armor 18, Size 6, 24 HLs
  • Built by Kuro-Tek originally and with similar designs coming off the assembly lines of a half-dozen companies, these large and heavy combat robots have Strength 16 [4] due to their massive musculature, and have arms and legs, allowing them to make hand to hand combat maneuvers.

• Gunsen: Safe Speed 30 (24), Max Speed 60 (48), Maneuver +2, Passengers 0, Armor 12, Size 2, 12 HLs
  • A much smaller design, the Gunsen is barely 2 meters tall and masses only about a half-ton. Much weaker and more lightly armed than its bigger brother, the Gunsen is often used for internal security. The Gunsen's fast-contracting artificial muscle reduces multiple action penalties by 2, and its artificial muscles have Strength 10.

• Cybertank: Safe Speed 60 (48), Max Speed 90 (72), Maneuver -2, Passengers 0, Armor 30, Size 9, 60 HLs
  • The Ogre is coming! the Ogre is coming! Run for your life! A cybertank is a fearsome war machine, 70 tons of armor and high-endurance powerplant and firepower with no pesky crew chambers to take up space or get tired.

Vehicle Features

Military Aircraft

• Strike Aircraft: Hardpoints x 6, 30mm Rotary Cannon

• Fighter Aircraft: Hardpoints x 6, 20mm Rotary Cannon, Stealth (+1 difficulty to enemy awareness and attack rolls), Advanced Sensors (+1d to awareness and attack rolls, no penalties for darkness or poor vision conditions)

• Advanced Fighter: Hardpoints x 6, 20mm Rotary Cannon, Stealth (+2 difficulty to enemy awareness and missile attack rolls), Advanced Sensors (+2d to awareness and attack rolls, no penalties for darkness or poor vision conditions), Computer Assistance (-1 multiple action penalty, +3 Initiative)

• Superfighter: Hardpoints x 8, Tactical Laser, Stealth (+3 difficulty to enemy awareness and attack rolls), Advanced Sensors (+3d to awareness and attack rolls, no penalties for darkness or poor vision conditions), Computer Assistance (-2 multiple action penalty, +5 Initiative)

• Bomber: Hardpoints x 20, Stealth (+2 difficulty to enemy awareness and attack rolls), Computer Assistance (-2 multiple action penalty)

• UCAV: Hardpoints x 4, Stealth (+2 difficulty to enemy awareness and missile attack rolls), AI Piloted (Init 15, 6d for attack and piloting rolls before adding bonuses), Advanced Sensors (+3d to awareness and attack rolls, no penalties from poor vision conditions or darkness)

Military VTOLs

• Attack Helicopter: 30mm Cannon, Hardpoints x 8, Advanced Sensors (+1d to awareness and attack rolls, no penalties from poor vision conditions or darkness), Computer Assistance (-1 multiple action penalty)

• Transport Helicopter: Miniguns x 2 (one per side), Hardpoints x 4

Military Ground Vehicles

• APC: Light MG x 2, Vehicle Grenade Launcher x 1

• ICV: Heavy MG x 2, 30mm Cannon x 1, Hardpoints x 2 (missiles only). Alternately Heavy MG x 2, 105mm Cannon x 1

• Light Tank: Heavy MG x 2, 105mm Cannon x 1

• Main Battle Tank: Heavy MG x 2, Tank Railgun x 1. Alternately Heavy MG x 1, 120mm Cannon x 1, Vehicle Grenade Launcher x 2

Combat Robots

• All Machines: AI Piloted (Init 13, 6d for attack and maneuver rolls before adding bonuses), Advanced Sensors (+3d to awareness and attack rolls, no penalties from poor vision conditions or darkness), Remote Control Option (can be remote-controlled, uses controller's attributes)

• Danguard: 30mm Autocannon x 1, Vehicle Grenade Launcher x 1, Light MG x 2 (linked, both fire as one action), Anti-vehicle Vibroblade (Damage Str + 7L, AP (3)), Multitasking Computer (+2 actions/turn).

• Gunsen: Vehicular Grenade Launcher x 1, Light MG x 1, Vibroblade (Damage Str + 5L, AP (2)). Alternatively, Portable Laser x 1, Light MG x 1, Vibroblade, Multitasking Computer (+1 actions/turn).

• Cybertank: Tank Railgun x 1, PD Masers x 2 (as Maser, may defend against missile attacks), Vehicle Grenade Launcher x 2, Multitasking Computer (+3 actions/turn)

Large Vehicles

Some vehicles, such as wet-navy warships, hypothetical future starships, are large and relatively compartmentalized, and therefore have multiple components, which each have individual soak and health levels. These vehicles are as much terrain as they are vehicle, though, and should often be treated as such. Therefore, a unit will often be considered to be made up of multiple components, which each take "damage penalties" and have their own soak ratings and whatnot.