House Rules

Table of contents

• Template Cost Breaks 
• Mastery of Skills 
• Metric System 
• Spending CIPs 
• Partial CIP expenditures and intermediate skill levels 
• Unskilled skill use 
• Sensing the Unknown 
• Luck and Luck Points (LPs) 
• Willpower (WPR), Current WPR, and Recovering WPR 
• Fear Checks 
• Fear Check Modifiers 
• Shooting from melee 
• Firing two pistols 

Template Cost Breaks

Mastery of Skills

Metric System

• Movement 6 + AGL/10 meters
• Sprinting 15 + AGL/3 meters
• Normal lift is STR x 3 kg
• Student Feat of Strength is STR x 10 kg
• Teacher Feat of Strength is STR x 15 kg
• Master Feat of Strength is STR x 25 kg

Spending CIPs

• No more than four CIPs can be expended per month, up to two on skills and up to two on attributes.
• Only one CIP may be normally spent on a given skill/attribute in a given month.
• This level of training (4 CIPs per month) is considered very active training, so you can not "double up" on your CIP expenditures for a given skill/attribute, except in very unusual circumstances, e.g. actively fighting the Unknown.
• If you feel a skill or attribute was especially used by your character in the course of an adventure, then you can spend a CIP on it immediately, with my approval.  I will usually give out one CIP per adventure in this fashion automatically.
• Please run all CIP expenditures by me.

Partial CIP expenditures and intermediate skill levels

• For every 1 (2 for Martial Arts) CIPs spent en route to a higher level of skill, the PC enjoys a +5% bonus to the skill.  For example, a normal skill (not Martial Arts) would progress as follows:
• 1 CIP  would be Student
• 2 CIPs would be Student +5%
• 3 CIPs would be Teacher
• 4 CIPs would be Teacher +5%
• 5 CIPs would be Teacher +10%
• 6 CIPs would be Teacher +15%
• 7 CIPs would be Master

Unskilled skill use

• Combat - no special modifications
• Knowledge/research - normally, there are tidbits of knowledge associated with each level of success.  Unskilled use of such a skill only gives the knowledge associated with the specific success rolled.  So, a High success will give you a highly useful tidbit of info, but you will not also get the Medium and Low tidbits.  This allows for the random bit of suddenly useful trivia knowledge but still reflects the greater breadth of knowledge that an expert in the field would have.  Never expect to get the same knowledge a skilled person would.

Sensing the Unknown

Luck and Luck Points (LPs)

• I secretly roll all rolls that use Luck for the players and keep their current Luck total secret.
• I will tell the players when their Luck refreshes or when it runs out completely.
• PCs and major NPCs start a scenario with LPs equal to their LCK, +10 for every level of the Edge Good Fortune.
• LPs can be spent one-for-one to modify rolls.  The player can declare a desired success level, but using this for Colossal successes can result in a PC failing and running out of LPs in one fell swoop.  Be careful.
• A player can negate an attack that would kill a PC or render it unconscious by spending one half of the original LP total in LPs.  Example: a PC with 30 LCK and two levels of Good Fortune would start a scenario with 50 LPs and would have to spend 25 LPs to negate a killing/incapacitating blow.  The PC must have this amount of LPs to accomplish this effect, if the PC in the xample had 24 LPs, this option would not be open to him.
• LPs regenerate between scenarios.  A scenario will probably generally correlate to one night's worth of gaming, but it might not.  Multiple scenarios might occur or less than one.  Don't waste your Luck.

Willpower (WPR), Current WPR, and Recovering WPR

• Rousing speech by fellow PC or NPC.
• Learning something about the Creature being fought.
• Learning a weakness of the Creature (cumulative with learning something).
• Rest, relaxation, and reflection.  The form depends on the character concept, and can include meditation, going to the gym, driving in the country, going for a walk, etc.  This should take about two hours, can only really be done once per day normally, and is generally an individual task.
• PC is incensed by Creature's actions.  This could be just about anything that would generally piss off a PC, for want of a better term.  Examples could be the Creature killing, threatening, or tormenting someone; burning down the PC's home; tearing the engine out of his muscle car; etc.  The PCs are welcome to be creative provided they do not try to abuse the rule.

Fear Checks

1. Fleeing
2. Spending Current WPR (CWPR) to stay your ground

1. Fleeing or Cowering in place - if you fail your Fear Check but don't want to distance yourself from the party, you can cower in place.  You must do one or the other.  This is somewhat subject to CM fiat.  You may have to make a STA check to avoid fainting and/or embarrasing physical processes spontaneously occuring.  AGL checks may be called for to avoid getting in the way of others.  All rolls are made at 1/4 the normal chance to succeed.  The cowering lasts for the same amount of time the fleeing would have lasted.  You have no defensive bonuses for melee skills.
2. Acting in spite of the Fear - if you decide to have your PC raise their trembling hands against their Fearsome foe, then you can do that as well.  No CWPR is expended, but the PC's skills function at 1/4 value and they do not gain the benefit of defense bonuses for melee skills.  These adverse effects last only as long as Fleeing would have lasted.
3. Spending CWPR to stay your ground - this is the same as in the book.

Fear Check Modifiers

Zombie (-20)

Instead of the number of encounters, you will record your PCs current Fear check modifier.  This may seem to demystify it a little, but it gives you an idea how scared your PC is of a given thing and offers you a role-playing opportunity when you know of an upcoming encounter with something you find particularly scary.

With newly encountered Creatures of the Unknown, you can write down a description and then try to research it when you get back.  For example, you see a walking corpse and you are unfamiliar with the concept of zombies
(let's say you came from a little known tribe in Africa).  So, you write down:

Walking corpse, had to shoot it in the head (-40)

For example, you meet a ghost like thing, which falls under the general category of apparition.  However, you are told in advance that Ghosts could be killed a certain way and the Creature you encountered died that way, so it seems.  So you might write down:

Ghost? (-whatever your current modifier is)

Fear check modifers will decrease when you successfully face down a creature, or at least don't flee madly.  There are cases when it could increase too.  You may ask if learning more about a Creature will lower the Fear check, but that is already accounted for in my house rules for recovered Willpower.  It is still possible that remarkable advances in your knowledge about a creature could affect the Fear Check Modifier.  The more negative the modifier, the more llikely that learning something about it will have a positive effect.

Shooting from melee - you are under melee attack and trying to shoot 

Firing two pistols (NOT set in stone) 

• Any melee defense modifiers for shooting from melee double. (See above)
• Unskilled get two shots and have a -20 penalty to the first and -40 to the second.  So, for most unskilled people, the second shot has no chance of hitting.  It is not wise for an unskilled person to try to do this.
• For a skilled user with two pistols, you may have up to twice as many attacks.  Such a choice reflects abandoning skillful, aimed fire so as to put as many rounds as possible down range.  You get a flat -20 plus an additional -10 for every additional bullet beyond your normal rate.  For example, a Master in Firearms could get 8 shots with a penalty of -60, respectively.  This would generally be a bad idea unless you are facing a twelve-foot tall beastie at point-blank range (+30 for size and +15 for point blank).  This skill abstraction gives more shots to more skilled shooters, because the cyclic rate of a weapon is never really the limiting factor in this game.