More Robot Wars system mechanics

Costs

Most stats are bought on a sliding cost scale. The base cost to do so is as per the table below.

Level 1 - 1 CP - Hobbyist/Amateur
Level 2 - 3 CP - Trained
Level 3 - 6 CP - Professional
Level 4 - 10 CP - Skilled Professional
Level 5 - 15 CP - Experienced Professional
Level 6 - 21 CP - Expert
Level 7 - 28 CP - Master
Level 8 - 36 CP - Ancient Master
Level 9 - 45 CP - Superlative
Level 10 - 55 CP - Exemplar

In short, the base cost to improve a stat costs (current level + 1). Depending on the stat being bought, this may be multiplied as follows.

Attributes have a x5 multiplier.
Specializations have a multiplier of (2 + 1 for every additional specialization in the same attribute)
Skills have a variable multiplier. If no value is listed, it has a multiplier of 2.

Attributes & Specializations

These are the defining 'hard' characteristics of your character. Attributes provide additional dice to be rolled to any associated skill, while Specializations increase success cap under appropriate circumstances.

Physique

This is the raw physical prowess of your character while she is on her own two feet, governing everything from strength, agility, endurance, athleticism and general toughness.
Available specializations for Physical are:

Dextrous

Big

Fit

Intellect

Your innate intelligence, as well as your ability to notice things and act on your feet.
Available specializations for Intellect are:

Quick-Witted

Intelligent

Perceptive

Charisma

Charisma measures the likeability of your character in several ways. Although few player characters are anything but superior in physical attractiveness, those with high Charisma do tend to be the coolest or hottest, and they do tend to sell more figurines.
Available specializations for Charisma are:

Attractive

Manipulative

Friendly

Aleph

Alephs (or colloquially, Newtypes) are, depending on whom you ask, the next stage in human evolution, an ability gained due to the invaders, their faith in God, or something that has been with us all along. Your character's Aleph rating governs her access to "magical" abilities.
Available specializations for Aleph are:

TBD (role-specific)

Skills

Skills are things your character has learned how to do. Swordsmanship, spellcasting, accounting, monster ranching, all are skills. Skills are broken into various groups, depending on what attribute or specialization they are controlled by. Skills provide both rolled dice and success cap.

Somatic

This includes things like swordsmanship, fistfighting, track and field training and null-gravity movement.

Athletics

Brawl/Martial Arts

Melee

Firearms

Legerdemain

Stealth

Endurance

Zero-G

Drive

Pilot (3); rolls Physique + Quick-Witted; this skill covers conventional joystick-and-footpedal piloting schemes.

Gunnery (3); rolls Physique + Perceptive; this skill covers the use of weapons on mecha and fightercraft that require both a keen eye and twitch reflexes.

Mecha Fighting; this skill covers mecha-scale melee and unarmed.

Academic

This is intellectual skills, ranging from mundanities like mecha engineering or accounting and languages to exotica such as infometric theory and ancient history.

Awareness

Investigation

Academics (Field)

Bureaucracy

Computer (3); this skill deals with complex programming and infosecurity tasks.

Engineering (Field)

Medicine

Strategy (3)

Tactics

Security; this skill deals with mundane security systems, both setting them up and avoiding them.

Artillery (3); this skill covers large fixed weapons that use computerized targeting systems, exemplified by the batteries on warships or heavyweight missiles.

Remote Operation (3); this skill covers the operation of remotely-piloted craft, ranging from recon drones to mobile dolls. The maximum skill level (Pilot, Gunnery) usable via remote operations is 2x the Remote Operations skill level. Remote Operation can also replace Pilot. The key roll here is Intellect + Quick Witted

Neural Interfacing (3); this skill acts similar to Remote Operation, except it covers mecha piloted via direct neural interfaces. The key roll here is Intellect + Perception

Electronic Warfare (3)

Helmsman (3)

Social

How to make friends, exude good impressions and sleep with that hot White Rose princess.

Red Tape

Intimidation

Interrogation

Subterfuge

Politics

Savoir-Faire

Command

Etiquette

Performance (Field)

Aleph

Aleph skills center around training the still poorly-understood abilities of Alephs.

Telepathic Weapons (3)

TBD?

Resolution Rules

Fundamentals

Dice pools are rolled with D10s, with every dice equal or exceeding the target number scoring one success. Dice pools are equal to the appropos Attribute + Skill, with a maximum number of successes that can be applied to any task (The success cap) equal to Specialization + Skill. Having a suberbly-toned mind or body doesn't make up for lacking in critical skills. Having more rolled successes than the success cap has no added effect.

For most tasks the target number will be 6 to score a success, but many things may modify this up or down. Note that positive modifiers increase the target number and are thus bad whereas negative modifiers decrease the target number and are thus good.

Rule of 1s
A 1 on any dice eliminates one rolled success; a reduction to less than zero successes results in a fumble. Fumbles are generally disadvantageous in some form but should not be specifically punishing or lethal (unless it's a rather explicitely dangerous situation, like fumbling your Use Lightsaber or Tightrope Over Lava rolls).

Rule of 10s
By contrast, a 10 can do one of two things.

A 10 can add one extra kept success, above and beyond the success cap or.

A 10 can explode in which case it is rolled again as a bonus dice. The succes cap does not increase in this case though.

Additional Actions
A character may opt to Go All Out in which case in which case their success cap is removed. However, a character doing this may not take more than one action and may not default to another action (such as a dodge) - they are simply too focussed on what they're doing to change in mid-stream.

Alternately, a character may Trust Their Luck in which case the success cap is removed - however, they suffer +2 to all difficulties. Lady Luck can be fickle in her affections.

Damage and Survival

Hitting with a weapon requires at least one success; bare-handed attacks, melee weapons and ranged weapons with Precise add one dice to their damage roll for every additional success scored on the to-hit roll. Attempts to dodge, parry or otherwise avoid the attack eliminate successes on a 1:1 ratio.

All normal characters (ie humans or transhumans) have the following hit point tracker: -0 hit points equal to Physique plus Big, + 1 -2 hit points equal to Fit + 2 -4 hit points equal to Physique + 1 Incapacitated hit points equal to Physique plus Big, +1 Any damage past this will land the character in the morgue or, if they're lucky, in a long-term regeneration tank or download pod.

Mecha Resolution

Mecha and other war machines are unsurprisingly a core part of More Robot Wars and have their own statlines, and for the following section 'Mecha' can be taken to read as any vehicle-sized object such as tanks, airplanes, giant robots, etc. Starships and similarly-sized entities are broadly similar with a few additional rules to reflect their size.

Mecha Stats

The following stats are the core values for mecha and serve to describe the platform itself.

Agility: Agility is a measure of how responsive a mecha is to its controls. Agility adds a positive modifier to to-hit rolls made against the mecha, as pilots will naturally take advantage of a machine's agility to avoid shots. Agility also adds a negative modifier for melee attacks' to-hit rolls.

Speed: Speed is a measure of how fast a mecha moves. Speed can also be used to Zoom and Boom (see Advanced Actions below).

Strength: Strength is a measure of how strong a mecha is. It acts as a negative modifier for melee damage and additionally is the size limit for any non-fixed weapons - weak mecha can't exactly carry around 500mm hyper mega autorails.

Electronics: This is a measure of the generalized onboard electronic gear of a mecha, ranging from sensors to targeting equipment to ECM. See the Special Moves section for the full effects of Electronics.

Stealth: This is a measure of how difficult a vehicle is to detect with sensors. See Advanced Actions for more detail.

Armor: Armor is a measure of how difficult is it to breach the physical defenses of a mecha. Armor subtracts from the damage inflicted by weapons strikes.

Durability: Durability is a measure of how resilient a mecha is to internal damage. More durable mecha can fight longer.

Carrying: This is a value for how much 'stuff' a mecha can carry externally, such as mecha-scale assault rifles, missile packs, sensor pods, etc etc. Most giant robots and aircraft have high carrying values as they use externally-fitted weapons. Carried weapons and systems provide flexibility, but the downside is that they are much easier to lose.

Weapon Stats

Weapons have their own distinct statline with several values as follows.

Accuracy: Accuracy is a measure of how easy it is to hit with a weapon, and it adds a negative modifier to to-hit rolls.

Burst: Burst is a measure of how fast a weapon can fire and adds its value to the dice pool on to-hit rolls.

Slow: This is for weapons with extremely long cooldown periods; a weapon with Slow must wait for that many rounds to fire again.

Range: This is how far the weapon can fire accurately. Going up to double this imposes a -2 Accuracy modifier, tripling -4, so on.

Penetration: Penetration is the dice pool rolled to penetrate Armor on a successful hit.

Strength: Strength is how much additional Durability damage a weapon can inflict. Generally speaking, Strength also correlates to explosive power/area of effect; Strength 0 is pure kinetic/energy impact and increasing levels represent some form of explosive effect.

Advanced Actions

The rules above cover basic combat as portrayed in most scifi, with intense close-range furballs and madly jinking attack craft. While these will suffice for games that do not have a strong vehicular combat component, for ones centered around military units or other situations where giant robot combat is common the following rules provide greater depth and diversity.

Melee Lock

Mecha fighting each other with melee weapons can be likened to humans doing the same. And like their small counterparts, a mecha trying to disengage from a melee fight risks getting hit before it can open the intervening distance. This is Melee Lock, the tendency of melee combatants to stay in melee.

Breaking Melee Lock is an action, with associated penalties if multiple actions are taken. It is an opposed roll, Mecha Fighting modified by Agility. If this roll is failed, there is no effect; an opening is not found. If it is successful, the initiator must now roll Piloting/Speed against the enemy's Mecha Fighting/Agility. If this second roll succeeds, the initiator can immediately make a normal move. If the roll is failed, the enemy can immediately make a counterattack at current penalty (if any), and then the initiator can immediately make a normal move.

If any time a melee combatant botches a melee weapon strike roll, the enemy craft can disengage from Melee Lock with no roll and move its remaining move away, if desired.

Zoom and Boom (aka Lightning Strikes)

While the normal flow of combat assumes that fightercraft will be engaged in turning contests and complex, high-agility maneuvers to gain position, in some situations high-velocity craft will instead perform rapid strikes before pulling away to come about for another pass. This is common in air combat and rather less so in vaccum.

In space, a Lightning Strike allows the performing unit to accumulate excess velocity above the norm and essentially 'slash' past the target(s), firing all weapons then (hopefully) coming about outside of the target's defensive envelope. For every turn a unit is Lightning Striking, it may increase or decrease its maximum move by 100% (one 'level'); however, its minimum move is also increases (or decreases) by one full level. EG, a mobile suit with move 5 doing a lightning strike can move between 6 and 10 spaces on its first turn. Machines doing Lightning Strikes must also move their minimum distance before making a turn of no more than one side.

A craft doing a Lightning Strike has other advantages; it replaces its Agility with its Speed for offensive

Dive Bombing (aka landing on a spaceship and shooting the crap out of it, point-blank)

Mecha that are at 0 or 1 range from a ship are assumed to be 'dive bombing', which allows them to ignore many defenses a ship has as well as precisely place their shots in weak spots.

Stealth

Hiding