That One Cyberpunk Ruleset

May have plenty of cyber, punks may be optional.

Character Stats

Basics: 1d10 dice pools. 4+ = success on easy tasks, 6+ = success on normal tasks, 8+ = success on hard tasks, 10+ = success on legendary tasks. No successes and at least 1 '1' = critical failure.

Serious Version

Characters have four stats: Sneaking, Fighting, Hacking, and Schmoozing. What they do should be relatively self-explanatory. These stats go from 1-10, and are used as dice pools.

Fighting: Fighting covers everything you wanted to know about hurting people and avoiding getting hurt (but were afraid to ask about). From shivs to strike drones, from muskets to military-grade railguns, if it hurts someone it's covered by this skill. Similarly, Fighting also covers physical conditioning to some extent, along with Sneaking.

Hacking: Hacking covers everything intellectual that is relevant to a cyberpunk game. It doesn't cover airy academic treatises, no, but it covers practical engineering and computer science. Modifying or repairing hardware and software, from bicycles and swords to high-end quantum computers, is based off of Hacking.

Sneaking: Sneaking is used for anything which involves being sneaky. Forging IDs, being an invisible ninja, disappearing into the middle of a crowd, creating a valid disguise-all of this is Sneaking. As there are no fat ninjas in fiction ever, Sneaking is the other half of physical conditioning, and ironically being very stealthy makes you harder to kill.

Schmoozing: Schmoozing covers all forms of savory and unsavory personal interaction. Forging rapports, making friends, threatening to shoot someone's dog and burn their house down if they don't tell you what you need, getting someone to lend you money, making someone believe that yes, you actually are Emperor Norton of America, the possibilities are endless.

Character generation is simple: You have 1 stat at a rating of 5, 1 at 4, 1 at 3, and 1 at 2. Past that, you may increase any single stat by 1, up to a maximum of 6.

Not-Serious Version

Characters have four stats: Hotness, Smugness, Fighting, and Concept-dropping.

Character generation is simple: You have 1 stat at a rating of 5, 1 at 4, 1 at 3, and 1 at 2. Past that, you may increase any single stat by 1, up to a maximum of 6. Hotness should never be your lowest stat. Or else.

Other Stats

Hero Points

People don't get hit until their luck runs out. Hero Points, or HP for short, represent a character's luck, will to survive, narrative inertia, and ability to duck. Weapons deal HP damage before they start taking actual physical damage.

As an alternate use, a character can spend 1 HP to reroll any dice result.

Characters may trade starting Hero Points out for additional equipment or cyberware. This doesn't represent any metaphysical wackiness like cybernetics eating your soul, it just means that guys who survive on the mean streets as a street samurai with just rusty 1st gen wired reflexes and a 1980s vintage MP5 are clearly luckier than the guys who do so with top of the line mods.

Starting Hero Point Levels

0: Paranoia

5: Extras: The Dying

10: War Movie Characters

15: FPS Protagonists

20: Action Movie Heroes

25+: JRPG Protagonists (cutscene mandated death or bust, guys!)

Health

If you get hit, things tend to go awfully pear-shaped very quickly. Health is how much punishment you can take physically before dropping dead, and is calculated simply: Add your Fighting and Sneaking, and then double the result. That's your health. Now, this sounds like a lot.

Except basic pistols deal 1d10 and even at max you'll have 20 health. If you are at less than 3/4ths health, you take a -1 penalty to all dice pools. At less than 1/2 health, you take a -2 penalty to all pools. At less than 1/4th health, you take a -3 penalty to all pools. At 0 health or less, you are dying. Dying is bad. Don't die.

Action Points

Characters can take actions in their turns during combat. This uses Action Points. Characters start with a default of 5 action points per turn in general (this can be increased by reflex-improving augmentation). Most actions take 2 action points, with certain basic actions (such as moving a reasonable distance, etc.) taking 1.

Augmentation

Augmentation can grant characters either internal equipment, extra traits, or bonuses to one of the four core stats.

Attribute Augmentation

Attribute augmentation is the most basic augmentation, giving a character a +1 specialty to a single attribute for 1 equipment point. A single augmentation 'package' may actually give multiple bonuses, but this is fluff and has zero bearing on the augmentation cost for chargen.

Examples:

Ballistic Tracking Software/Weapon Link System: +1 Fight (Ranged Combat)

Boosted Musculature: +1 Fight (Melee Combat), +1 Fight (Using Big Things) [2pts total]

Sound Dampener: +1 Sneak (Covert Intrusion)

Medical Database: +1 Hack (Medicine)

Trait Augmentation

Trait Augmentation covers one of two things right now: Additional health or additional AP. The former can be achieved by replacing and shielding vital organs, having backups, or other fun stuff. The latter can be achieved via nervous system boosts like neurachem or wired reflexes.

It costs 1 equipment point for 1 point of health. Additional AP costs more as you buy more: Each point of additional AP has a cumulative cost of 5 points. I.e. the first point costs 5, the second 10, the third 15, the fourth 20, and so on. Being able to act significantly more than the other guy is a massive advantage and is priced as such.

Implanted Gear

Any gear can be bought as an augmentation, which costs nothing if the gear is largely cosmetic or common (implanted shades or an implanted cell phone would cost nothing), or 1 point otherwise beyond whatever the gear costs.

Gear

You will buy gear via equipment points. Equipment points are fun! I'll have to figure out equipment point costs sometime. Gear will be designed using a system which will be listed if you want custom tech.

Combat

Initiative

Initiative is decided by comparing scores. First, arrange characters from order of highest Sneak to lowest Sneak. Then, if there are ties, arrange those characters in the order of highest to lowest Hack, then highest to lowest Schmoozing, then finally highest to lowest Fight. Non-stealthy fighters should invest in initiative augmentation.

People act in initiative order, spending their AP until they have none or wish to discard remaining AP.

Actions

Attack: 2-5 AP

Attacking costs a variable amount of AP depending on the weapon and attack type. Most attacks are 2 AP, although bursts and melee weapon power attacks or flurries of blows cost distinctly more.

Draw/Holster Weapon: 1-5 AP

Drawing or holstering a weapon costs 1 AP for a pistol or small melee weapon (such as a knife or riot baton), 2 AP for a rifle or larger melee weapon (sword), and 5 AP for a heavy weapon such as a gatling gun or assault cannon.

Reloading: 1-5 AP

Reloading an empty weapon costs 1-5 AP depending on its magazine type, but normally costs 2 AP. Most weapons reload via magazine, but some reload a single round per reload (such as shotguns).

Dodge: 1 AP

Dodging allows you to roll your Fight to defend against a single attack with a TN of the enemy's (Fight + 3), each success reducing a Fight success from the enemy's attack. Although dodging is often less efficient than disengaging, it does not penalize your own actions.

Disengage: 2 AP

Finding cover allows you to roll your Sneak (with a TN of the enemy's Fight + 3) to defend against all incoming attacks by disengaging and moving to a safe location. Each success reduces a Fight success from an incoming attack. Disengaging is, unlike dodging, applied to all incoming attacks. However, a disengaging character halves his own attack pools (round down), making his fire much less accurate.

Overwatch: 1 AP + Action

Overwatch is used to save AP to use later. An overwatching character may interrupt, at any moment, the turn of another character with lower initiative to perform an action.

Resolution

The difficulty of any attack roll is normally (Fight + 3) for melee weapons. For ranged weapons it is (Fight + 1) at short range, (Fight + 3) for medium range, (Fight + 5) at long range, and (Fight + 7) at extreme range. If an attack succeeds and its target has any HP left, it does HP damage. If a character has no HP left, it does health damage instead.

An attack deals a default of 1 HP damage, +1 if it's an area of effect attack (such as a grenade). Bursts deal additional HP damage, +1 for short bursts, +2 for long bursts, and +3 for sustained bursts. Melee attacks, out of game balance (and also because have you seen any action movie ever?) deal an additional +2 HP damage.

If an attack deals health damage, it deals the damage listed in its sheet. Unarmed attacks always deal only 1 health damage. Bring a weapon.