Aberrant 2.0 Equipment Errata

Armor

Armor provides defense against most forms of attacks via two methods, increasing soak and granting additional health levels. Armor health levels represent armor's ability to absorb initial blows more capably than repeat hits, as the material degrades from repeated abuse, while armor soak represents its ability to absorb damage without degradation.

Armor Stats

• Soak: Armor soak is added to the wearer's soak, giving them additional protection against bashing and lethal attacks. Armor does not grant aggravated soak in most cases. Soak does not generally degrade with multiple attacks.

• Armor Health Levels: Armor has additional health levels which take damage before the wearer. These health levels only apply if the armor has not been bypassed-weapons that bypass armor or called shots which bypass armor provide no protection. Armor health levels are unaffected by stun damage, and absorb bashing damage as well. Armor health levels can be repaired outside of combat using an Intelligence + Engineering (Materials or similar engineering type) roll for more advanced armors. More primitive armors can use Intelligence + Art (Sewing) or Intelligence + Art (Blacksmithing) instead. Each roll takes 1 hour and repairs 1 health level per success.

• Penalty: Armor penalty is the dice penalty armor gives. Armor Penalty applies to all Athletics and Stealth rolls, and also to any Endurance rolls to withstand harsh conditions. Penalty applies to defensive maneuvers as well, so heavy armor is a tradeoff-increased protection, decreased mobility.

• Bypass: Armor can be bypassed by called shots. The Bypass rating is the additional difficulty needed to ignore the armor's soak, added to the base difficulty of the called shot itself. Bypassing armor bypasses both the health levels it provides and the bonus soak it grants.

• Destruction: Armor is not indestructible. Any attack with base damage + damage adds exceeding an armor's Destruction rating destroys the armor although it still provides soak against that one attack.

Armor Types

• Thick Clothing: Soak 2B/1L, 0 HLs, Penalty -0, Bypass +2 (upper and lower body), Destruction 10, half effectiveness against firearms (round down)
  • Although not capable of protecting against serious attacks of any sort, thick clothing can protect against a mugger's knife or a hard blow, or just the thorns and brambles of barbed wire or bush.

• Reinforced Clothing: Soak 2B/4L, 2 HLs, Penalty -0, Bypass +1 (upper body), Destruction 15
  • Reinforced with shear-thickening fluid and kevlar, armored jackets can provide reasonable ballistic protection with only minor bulk and heat problems, and provide some protection against melee blows.

• Sports Gear: Soak 8B/6L, 4 HLs, Penalty -0, Bypass +2 (torso, shoulders, upper legs), Destruction 15, half effectiveness against firearms (round down)
  • Used in various contact sports, sports gear is designed primarily to protect against blunt trauma, although the hard plastic and thick padding provide some measure of protection against blades and claws. Firearms, however, not only halve its soak, but deal double damage until the armor's health levels are depleted (so 1 level of damage from a firearm damage roll inflicts 2 levels of damage to the armor and user until the armor's HLs are depleted, after which firearms inflict only normal damage).

• Light Armor Vest: Soak 4B/6L, 3 HLs, Penalty -1, Bypass +1 (torso), Destruction 18
  • High-strength fibers combined with dilatant fluids for impact resistance are used in current-generation body armor. This is a light vest, usable by police, covert agents, and bodyguards, as it can be concealed under heavy clothing.

• Heavy Armor Vest: Soak 5B/7L, 4 HLs, Penalty -1, Bypass +1, Destruction 20
  • A heavier armor vest with trauma plates and thicker armor weave, this armor provides significantly improved protection for the torso. Heavy armor vests cannot be concealed, and must be worn over clothing.

• Combat Armor: Soak 7B/7L, 5 HLs, Penalty -2, Bypass +3, Destruction 22
  • This is a heavy armor vest with enhanced trauma plates for greater protection and mass, paired with a combat helmet, forearm, shin, and thigh guards, knee and elbow pads, and an armored collar. The result is near full-body protection against pistols, shrapnel, and SMGs, and head/torso protection against rifles.

• Riot Gear: Soak 10B/6L, 6 HLs, Penalty -2, Bypass +4, Destruction 25
  • Intended to protect against knives and blunt trauma, riot gear covers more of the body than combat armor but provides worse ballistic protection, as many of its elements are merely impact-resistant plastic.

• Advanced Body Armor: Soak 10B/9L, 6 HLs, Penalty -3, Bypass +5, Destruction 30
  • Some concepts get revived centuries later, such as plate mail. Although it might be made of high-tech composites instead of steel, advanced body armor is recognizable as a successor to the full body hard armors that dominated the medieval battlefield.

• Bomb Suit: Soak 12B/12L, 7 HLs, Penalty -5, Bypass +5, Destruction 35
  • Designed for specialists who need protection against close-proximity explosions, bomb suits are very difficult to move in but extremely protective.

• Power Armor: Soak 12B/12L, 8 HLs, Penalty -3, Bypass +5, Destruction 35
  • The cutting edge of 2020-era armor technology, power armor masses nearly 70 kilograms but negates most of it with a muscle suit of electroactive polymer and a load-bearing exoskeleton.

Armor Accessories

• Ablative Trauma Plate: +1 HL
  • Ablative Trauma Plates provide limited protection against heavier attack by shattering or ablating away to carry away force.

• Auxiliary Protection Systems: +2B/2L soak, +1 bypass, -1 penalty
  • Most armor is modular, and can be quickly equipped with thicker overlapping armor elements which provide superior protection for most of the body. However, this protection is tiring and difficult to move in.

• Exoskeleton: Strength + 1, reduces armor Penalty by 1 (min -0), 16 hours powered duration.
  • A powered exoskeleton increases the wearer's strength and agility by reducing the effective weight of his armor.

• Combat Optics: Night Vision (no penalties for low light conditions) and Thermal Vision (+2d to detect objects significantly warmer or cooler than their surroundings, -2d to detect objects with similar temperatures to surroundings)
  • Combat optics in 2021 combine IR and nightvision capability to provide all-environment imaging.

• Reinforced Strike Faces: +1B to unarmed damage
  • hard plates, reinforced gloves, and other methods of improving the power of a blow can greatly assist a soldier in a fight.

• Personalized Fitting: reduces armor Penalty by 1 (min -0)
  • fitting an armor explicitly for a person and their quirks can reduce the difficulty of moving around and fighting in it, but is extremely expensive to do en masse.

Chemicals

The variety of toxins and drugs available in the Nova age is an extensive litany of performance enhancers, recreational drugs, and toxic chemicals for help or harm. This system covers chemicals as well as diseases as both can be modeled in a similar fashion.

Rules

All chemicals, toxins, and diseases have several traits, listed below with their explanations. The effects are listed per dose, or per turn of exposure. If a drug does damage, it does

Vector: The method the drug or toxin is delivered. Ingested, inhaled, injected, skin contact, etc. Potency: A drug or disease's potency is the difficulty penalty to resist the drug's effects (applied to a Stamina + Resistance roll) if they're unwanted.
Addiction: The addiction rating of a drug is the difficulty penalty on the Willpower roll to resist addiction. A drug with an addiction of "-" has no addictive qualities.
Effect: What the drug does. This may be attribute or situational bonuses, damage, penalties, or just about anything.

Novas

Novas are heavily resistant to most drugs and diseases, and gain no benefit from most everyday drugs. Novas add an automatic success on all Stamina + Resistance rolls made to resist the effects of a drug or disease, and halve the potency of all drugs that are not Nova-derived (round down, min 0). This is applied in addition to Mega-Stamina's effects. Some Quantum-active or superscience drugs may have special rules when applied to Novas.

The automatic successes from Mega-Stamina and just being a Nova apply even if the Nova is not rolling to resist a drug's effects. Therefore, a Nova is always immune to any drugs with potency less than double (Mega-Stamina + 1).

Toxins

Alcohol: Well, it's not really that much of a toxin, but it is a depressant. One 'dose' of alcohol represents a fair amount more than just one beer.

Vector: Ingested

Potency: +0

Addiction: +0

Effect: -1 to all dice pools, -2 to Willpower for the scene, 1 level of bashing damage. Successive doses increase the dice pool and willpower penalties by 1 each. If incapacitated by alcohol damage, the character suffers from alcohol poisoning and will die without medical aid.

Riot Agent: A standard anti-personnel riot agent. Causes burning pain, choking, and other nasty but nonlethal stuff.

Vector: Inhaled

Potency: +1

Addiction: -

Effect: -(6 - Stamina) to all dice pools and 1 level of stun damage per round. Success on a resistance roll halves the dice penalty (after Stamina is subtracted, round down) and negates the damage. Exceptional success negates all effects.

Sweet Dreams: A more humane and potent riot agent, designed to disable targets via a combination of euphoriant and soporific effects. Under investigation by the UN due to its potentially psychological addictive qualities.

Vector: Contact

Potency: +2

Addiction: +1

Effect: -(6 - Willpower/2) to all dice pools (round penalty up), must succeed on a Willpower roll at +1 difficulty to take any hostile action.

Nerve Gas: Your normal everyday VX-alike nerve gas.

Vector: Contact

Potency: +4

Addiction: -

Effect: -(10 - Stamina) to all dice pools and 2 lethal health levels of damage per turn. Success on a resistance roll halves the dice pool penalty and reduces damage to 1 bashing level/turn. An exceptional success (5 successes over difficulty) on the resistance roll negate all effects.

Nanokill: Nanotech anti-personnel weaponry that lyses cells in vital organs.

Vector: Contact

Potency: +10

Addiction: N/A

Effect: 2 lethal health levels of damage per turn. Success on a resistance roll negates the damage for that turn.

Eclipsidol: Anti-Nova biochemical weaponry. Quantum-active.

Vector: Contact

Potency: -

Addiction: -

Effect: A Nova dosed with Eclipsidol loses all control of Quantum powers and wastes his or her Quantum Pool as quickly as possible (a Nova with Node 0 uses up 6 quantum/round, a Nova with Node 5 uses up 20, etc.). While dosed with Eclipsidol, all Mega-Attributes work at half effectiveness (round down) and no Powers or Enhancements work.

Drugs

Panacea: Triton has created a cutting-edge anti-disease drug that provides broad-spectrum protection against all known diseases.

Potency: -

Addiction: -

Effect: +2 automatic successes to rolls to resist disease.

Nootropics: Cognition-enhancing drugs are in their relative infancy but still effective.

Potency: +0

Addiction: +0

Effect: +1 to any one mental attribute (maximum 5) for 1 scene, -2 to all mental attributes (minimum 1) for an equal amount of time later.

Stimulants: Drugs that increase the mental and physical speed and reaction of a character, stimulants are sought after by the sleep-deprived, the junkie, and anyone whose life may depend on their reaction speed.

Potency: +2

Addiction: +0

Effect: +1 to Wits, +1 to Dexterity for a scene. After use, +1 difficulty to all physical actions due to lethargy.

Analgesics: This covers a variety of pain management drugs, from over-the-counter medications to addictive ones like morphine and opium.

Potency: +0 to +4

Addiction: - to +2

Effect: Wound penalties are reduced by anything from -1 (aspirin and other over the counter pain medication) to -5 (things like PCP). The potency of the drug is equal to the wound penalty negation -1 and the addiction is equal to the potency -3 (so a drug that negates 5 points of wound penalty would have a potency of +4 and addiction of +2). A negative addiction is considered to be (N/A).

Red 7: Advanced designer combat drug derived from Novas, developed by French pharmaceutical companies for brief performance boosts. Psychological addiction rates are considered high but acceptable.

Potency: -

Addiction: +0

Effect: +2 to all physical attributes (maximum 6) for 1 scene, -2 to all physical attributes (minimum 1) for an equal amount of time.

Mite: Nova-harvested steroids.

Potency: +4

Addiction: +1

Effect: +1 Strength/Stamina upon use. Continuous use for a month makes this increase permanent. Past Str/Sta 5, another month of Mite use grants the character the Large body modification and -1 to Appearance, and one last month of continuous use grants Mega-Strength 1 after that (further reducing appearance by 1). Further usage just maintains the character's superhuman physique. Each month of Mite use requires the character to make a (Stamina + Resistance) roll, failure means heart attack. Novas do not gain any permanent effects from Mite.

Adrenocilin: Designed to improve Nova control of quantum powers, adrenocilin is also a pain deadener.

Potency: - or +2 for baselines

Addiction: +0 or - for baselines

Effect: +1 to all Quantum powers and -1 to all wound penalties. Baselines take 3 dice of unsoakable lethal damage per round for (10 - Stamina) rounds instead. Succeeding on the potency roll reduces the damage to bashing.

Moxinoquantamine (Mox): Mox reduces a Nova's ability to use quantum powers.

Potency: - or +2 for baselines

Addiction: -

Effect: +1 difficulty for all Quantum power or Enhancement rolls, reduce all Mega-Attributes by 1 (min 0), reduce all temporary Taint gains from botched rolls by 1. Baselines take 3 dice of unsoakable lethal damage per round for (10 - Stamina) rounds instead. Succeeding on the potency roll reduces the damage to bashing.

Soma: Derived from a processed Nova M-R node, Soma is very illegal, very difficult to make, very expensive, and extremely powerful.

Potency: -

Addiction: +3

Effect: +1 to all Mega-Attributes and Powers a Nova possesses. A baseline which ingests Soma must roll (Stamina + Resistance) or instantly die. If the baseline survives, he gains 6 NP worth of powers/Mega-Attributes/enhancements and a quantum pool of 5 points for a scene.

Diseases

The Common Cold: The most aggravating disease in existence, the cold is adaptable but weak and generally nonlethal.

Vector: Contact

Potency: +0

Effect: -1 "wound" penalty for the duration of the disease (typically 5 - Stamina days, min 1)

Influenza: Influenza is a somewhat more dangerous but still generally nonfatal disease. Symptoms include coughing, headache, muscle pains, and lethargy.

Vector: Contact

Potency: +1

Effect: -1 "wound" penalty for the disease duration (typically 7 - Stamina days, min 1).

AIDS: Acquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome is caused by the HIV virus. An effective antiviral and vaccine for the disease have been created by Utopia's Triton medical facilities, but in poorer countries the disease still exists.

Vector: Bodily Fluids

Potency: +4

Effect: Cumulative +1 difficulty to any roll to resist disease per (Stamina) years.

Aberrant 2.0 Body Modifications

Body Modifications are "powers" which give capabilities via physical mutation, rather than channeling quantum forces. These powers are generally much less effective than Quantum powers but far cheaper. At chargen, a Nova may trade in 1 NP for 8 XP worth of body modifications. Furthermore, with superscience genetic or cybernetic engineering, baselines may acquire body modifications. Attribute dots gained or lost from body modification do not increase the limits for a character's Mega-Attributes, but can decrease them.