- Books: Core (4e or 4ea) + Arsenal + Augmentation + Street Magic
- Matrix: Replace all previous Matrix rules with The Ends of The
Matrix rules instead.
- However, there are to be No Player Technomancers. The game is set very early in 2070, before the Emergence happens, so Technomancers are still just a spooky/weird rumor at this point. OOC: Player Technomancers will probably be allowed later on, but I just plain don't want to deal with that craziness to start.
- Other: There are some bonus
houserules
at the very end of the EotM book, at the end of that page under "Alternate
Resolution Rules". Most Notably:
- Adept Powers: There's a lot of reduced costs for Adept Powers.
- Hardened Armor: Drones get half their listed armor in automatic hits, and they roll the other half + Body as dice. Spirits get their Force as automatic hits against normal weapons when Materialized and they also roll their Body. In both cases, any Armor Piercing on the weapon subtracts from the automatic hits first.
- Exotic Weapon Skills: There aren't exotic weapon skills that you take individually. Instead, any exotic weapon is placed into a normal weapon skill but tagged as "exotic" so you take a -1 to attacks with it if you don't have a specialization for it. There's also a new Close Combat Group skill called Flexible Weapons.
- Magic/Matrix: Spirits and Sprites will both share the following
properties:
- Summoning Drain: Half Force (round down) + Resistance Hits
- Binding Drain: Half Force (round down) + Half Number of Resistance Hits (round down)
- Banishing Drain: Resistance Hits
- Skills: Ranks equal to Force up to 6, but capped at 6 above that.
- Edge: 1 if Unbound, Half Force (round down) if Bound
- Magic/Matrix: When stacking Signal Defense or Counterspelling, simply use the highest available defense as the base value and then each assistant must buy hits with their assistance dice (meaning that they give +1 with either 4 ranks or 2 ranks and a specialization, and +2 if they have 6 ranks and a specialization). Don't actually roll a full teamwork test each time, that's insanity. As normal for a teamwork test, the total pool still can't be improved with more assistance dice than the primary pool has ranks to begin with.
- Magic/Matrix: Your maximum Magic / Resonance is equal to your Essence + Grade (rounded down), but Essence loss does not reduce the value of your special attribute until the new maximum goes below your current value.
- Magic (Adepts): Your total ranks in Improved Ability (across all skills) is capped by your Magic attribute, in addition to the individual cap per skill.
- Undoing 20th Anniversary Failures:
- Magic: Net hits used to increase damage on Combat spells do not increase the Drain Value of the spell. Combat spells are dubious enough as it is compared to just having a machine gun and grenades.
- Magic: The Object Resistance table goes back to 1/2/3/4+
- Critters: The Movement power for Spirits isn't affected by the Body of the target.
The backstory is that you're all fairly new to running, and also new to Seattle itself (you arrived within the last month). Your characters have not met before. You all get called in specifically because you're outsiders to the Seattle running scene. Other than that your backstory options are fairly open, and feel free to leave it blank and come up with it later.
- You start with 400 BP, and any that isn't spent by the end of character creation is simply lost.
- You can probably expect to gain 3-5 Karma per mission (depending on the mission). You get one karma base for completing a mission, and then there's usually one or more chances to gain extra karma as well. Similar to After Sundown, you also give 1 karma to any other runner on the team at the end of a mission.
As noted in the Bonus Houserules section of Ends Of The Matrix, linear Build Point costs and triangular Karma costs in the same game are a bad time. However, in the past some people have been upset that everything being in BP only makes it unclear as to what's allowed at character creation and what's only allowed for after character creation. So, instead, in addition to the BP cost of some things being updated, all Karma costs are set to be the same as the BP cost. However, things that were only available with Karma are still only available with Karma.
The following table compiles all the new numbers, and they should be the same numbers as listed in the normal rules and in the EotM Bonus Houserules. If they're not please notify me and I'll either fix the chart or perhaps decide to keep it as is but note it as such.
| Item | BP | Karma |
|---|---|---|
| Non-human Metatype (Elf/Dwarf/Ork/Troll) | 25 | - |
| Basic Attribute or Edge (non-maximum) | 10 | 10 |
| Basic Attribute or Edge (maximum) | 20 | 20 |
| Basic Attribute or Edge (1 past maximum) | - | 20 |
| Magic or Resonance (up to maximum) | 10 | 10 |
| Skill Rank (1-6) | 2 | 2 |
| Skill Rank (7) | - | 4 |
| Skill Group Rank (1-6) | 5 | 5 |
| Skill Specialization | 1 | 1 |
| Knowledge Rank (1-6) | 1 | 1 |
| 5k of starting nuyen (max of 250k) | 1 | - |
| Spell or Complex Form | 3 | 3 |
| Membership in a Magic Group/Network | - | 3 |
| Metamagic or Echo | - | 15 |
You cannot spend more than 200 BP on Basic Attributes, and only a single Basic Attribute can start at its maximum.
As with the core rules, the basic starting maximum for an Active Skill is 4 ranks. However, two skills can start at rank 5 OR one skill can start at rank 6. A given skill can only have a single specialization, and this is true both at character creation and later on.
Instead of the default rules for bonus knowledge ranks based on stats, you just get 40 knowledge ranks regardless of your Intuition and Logic. Assign them however you like (meaning that as many as you want can be above rank 4).
You can purchase up to 35 BP worth of Positive Quality, and get up to 35 extra BP from Negative Qualities as well. Qualities can be gained or removed during the game as well, as appropriate to the quality, and with perhaps a little ret-conning. It's one of those "case by case" things.
Contacts: We'll use some rules that make it easier to have more low-ranking contacts:
- A contact has a "contact point" cost equal to their Connection * Loyalty.
- 1 BP gets you 3 contact points.
These are a little more complicated because they can have discounted prices. The base Karma cost is
10 + 3*Grade
If you're part of a Magical Group or Technomantic Network you get 1 discount, and if you take on an Ordeal during the process, you get 1 discount. Each discount gets you a 20% reduction to the price (round the reduction up). The full chart for totals up to grade 5 is as follows:
| Grade | Karma (no discounts) | Karma (1 discount) | Karma (2 discounts) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 13 | 10 | 7 |
| 2 | 16 | 12 | 9 |
| 3 | 19 | 15 | 11 |
| 4 | 22 | 17 | 13 |
| 5 | 25 | 20 | 15 |