Scavenging
These rules replace the scavenging rules on pages 280 and 290 of the Numenera core book.
When scavenging for Numenera players can look for oddities, cyphers, or artifacts. Scavenging requires 3d4x5 minutes and an Intellect based task. Depending on the roll, the player can choose any of the following they beat the difficulty for. For beating difficulty 4 they produce d6 oddities, by beating a difficulty 7 task they produce 2d4 cyphers, while a difficulty 9 task produces one artifact. The actual Numenera devices are not determined until after the choice is made, though the number may be.
Tinkering and DeconstructingThese rules expand on the Tinkering With The Numenera rules starting on page 107.
Most cyphers and artifacts use numerous smaller components in their construction, any of which would be oddities unto themselves. A scavenger can disassemble these, generally more useful devices, to recover these strange components. To do so requires the sacrifice of a cypher or artifact and d20 minutes, and success at a difficulty 3 Intellect task. Success produces d4-1 oddities from a cypher or 2d4-1 oddities from an artifact.
All of these oddities are randomly determined after the roll has been made.
People in the Ninth World regularly combine various Numenera devices to create new and different devices. To produce a new cypher or artifact requires the sacrifice of at least one Numenera device (oddity, cypher, or artifact). The tinkerer can then attempt a intellect task difficulty 10 to create a random cypher or artifact. In addition to having greater skill or other assets, the difficulty can be reduced with the sacrifice of more Numenera devices for parts and components.
When attempting to create a cypher, each oddity sacrificed reduces the difficulty by one, while each cypher reduces it by 2, and each artifact reduces the difficulty by 4.
If the desired result is an artifact, each two oddities used as components provides a one point reduction in difficulty. Each cypher sacrificed for parts reduces the difficulty by one. Sacrificing another artifact reduces the difficulty by two.
If the character wants to produce a specific cypher or artifact, rather than a random one, the difficulty is increased by 3.
These rules replace the scavenging rules on pages 280 and 290 of the Numenera core book.
When scavenging for Numenera players can look for oddities, cyphers, or artifacts. Scavenging requires 3d4x5 minutes and an Intellect based task. Depending on the roll, the player can choose any of the following they beat the difficulty for. For beating difficulty 4 they produce d6 oddities, by beating a difficulty 7 task they produce 2d4 cyphers, while a difficulty 9 task produces one artifact. The actual Numenera devices are not determined until after the choice is made, though the number may be.
Tinkering and DeconstructingThese rules expand on the Tinkering With The Numenera rules starting on page 107.
Most cyphers and artifacts use numerous smaller components in their construction, any of which would be oddities unto themselves. A scavenger can disassemble these, generally more useful devices, to recover these strange components. To do so requires the sacrifice of a cypher or artifact and d20 minutes, and success at a difficulty 3 Intellect task. Success produces d4-1 oddities from a cypher or 2d4-1 oddities from an artifact.
All of these oddities are randomly determined after the roll has been made.
People in the Ninth World regularly combine various Numenera devices to create new and different devices. To produce a new cypher or artifact requires the sacrifice of at least one Numenera device (oddity, cypher, or artifact). The tinkerer can then attempt a intellect task difficulty 10 to create a random cypher or artifact. In addition to having greater skill or other assets, the difficulty can be reduced with the sacrifice of more Numenera devices for parts and components.
When attempting to create a cypher, each oddity sacrificed reduces the difficulty by one, while each cypher reduces it by 2, and each artifact reduces the difficulty by 4.
If the desired result is an artifact, each two oddities used as components provides a one point reduction in difficulty. Each cypher sacrificed for parts reduces the difficulty by one. Sacrificing another artifact reduces the difficulty by two.
If the character wants to produce a specific cypher or artifact, rather than a random one, the difficulty is increased by 3.
Oddly Useful
This rule is added to Immediate Benefits, per pg 110.
One of the most interesting things about oddities is that, for all they are useless and bizarre in the everyday existence of the Ninth World, their existence requires some context in which they are useful. By expending an Experience Point the player can declare how an oddity has found a context, whether it was the original context or not. Perhaps it can be used as part of a key to a sealed portal, or an unusual interaction can break an otherwise unbreakable casing with dramatic effects.
The GM may accept the proposed use, make it a task with a difficulty determined by its plausibility, or reject it outright. The difficulty of the task should be stated before the experience point is accepted by the GM and the attempt destroys the oddity as soon as the experience point is spent.
If a player can describe how they might use an oddity to produce the effect of a cypher, a base difficulty for the task would be 5.
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The central goal of these rules is to increase the number of oddities in play. While there are explicit rules for actively searching for new cyphers and artifacts in the Numenera rulebook oddities are completely left to GM decision. This is almost certainly because artifacts and cyphers are predictably the more desired types of Numenera devices given that they have game effects. The idea here is to make oddities both more common and less bound to GMs thinking about adding these little pieces of flavor.
The Scavenging rule, alone, only brings more oddities into play by making them a minimum bar. Without further alterations, mechanically it is simply a decoration on a failure state. This is where the Tinkering and Deconstruction rule comes into play. However, the risk is that oddities become less interesting for what they are than a simple numerical value of what they can be used as components for. This brings us to the Oddly Useful rule, which requires both storytelling and sacrifice.
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