Okay, I’ve recovered a little bit of confidence and tried to stat out my lineages a bit more firmly. I suspect these will turn out to be wildly imbalanced, but it’s a bit hard to say right now. Hopefully I can come up with enough things to make most of them reasonably balanced, without having to cut out too many cool traits from others or producing massive lists. One thing I haven’t touched on is varying thermal capacity, but it’s always an option.
Each lineage confers a set of Traits. A few are simple modifiers, mostly an extra Wound; I’m not yet sure about these and may end up swapping them out. A lot provide a situational modifier whenever that trait would be important; in some cases this is very often, and I’ll need to think about whether things like Strong should provide near-permanent bonuses to Combat, for example. The third type provide special abilities such as toxic skin, extensible tongues or night vision.
Anuran:
- Ballistic tongue (Close range, can pick up small objects, can inflict Pinning on enemies)
- Skin toxin (Blind 1d4)
- Skin breathing (water)
- Swimming +2 or Climbing +2
- Jumping +2
- See Motion +2
Basilisk:
- Fast +5
- Water running (can run across liquid or fragile surfaces; must reach solid ground by end of turn or resolve as normal; cannot jump)
- Swimming +5
(unless I can think of some more traits for these, they’re in trouble)
Caudatan:
- Skin toxin (Blind 1d4)
- Skin breathing (water)
- Regeneration 1*
- Shed Tail (1 week/1 month recovery)
- Swimming +5
Chameleon:
- Chameleonic skin +2/+5 (varies by amount exposed)
- Ballistic tongue (Close range, can pick up small objects, can inflict Pinning on enemies)
- Climbing +5
- Ultraviolet vision
- Keen Eyesight +5
Chelonian:
- Shell (functions as Body Armour 8)
- Sturdy +2
- Stay still +5
- Swimming +2
Crocodilian:
- +1 Wound
- Scales (Armour 2)
- Secondary Eyelids (Visor 2)
- Strong +2
Geckonid:
- Shed Tail (1 week/1 month recovery)
- Night vision
- Climbing +5
- Fast +5
Heloderm:
- +1 Wound
- Tough +5
- Bite toxin (Slow 1d6)
Varanid:
- +1 Wound
- Ignores Carrier’s Constraint
- Strong +2
- Keen scent +5
* Regeneration will speed up recovery from lingering injuries, not yet discussed. It doesn’t affect short-term injury.
Armour
I hadn’t thought about this until we got to chelonians, but I think Armour needs to be divided into categories. I don’t want to rule categorically that they don’t stack, because a certain amount of stacking makes sense. I think I’m just going to say that you can’t exceed Armour 10 by stacking. If you’re already wearing reinforced bulletproof plating, having thick skin isn’t really going to do much. This will also discourage people from piling on several armour types in defiance of common sense. In the case of chelonians, they effectively come with built-in carapace armour; they can't benefit from other forms of body armour, but can gain a bit of extra protection by adding on protective clothing, and they don't have to worry about the weight or bulk because it's natural to them. I'd also allow them to use other armour types for special protections, if I decide to introduce any more granular rules like resistance to particular weapons, since in theory you could make or rig up armour that fits over the shell.
You can also, logically, only wear one armour in each category. In some special circumstances a GM might rule that (for example) wearing nine sets of clothing at once results in a higher Armour value, though it would come with a swathe of associated problems like total inability to move. Even fields are subject to this rule; from a technical point of view, projecting multiple energy fields around yourself causes interference, in the same way that running several firewalls does, and generally just results in none of them working properly.
- Natural armour – scales, tough hide and so on.
- Fabric (like clothing)
- Body armour (chestplates, chainmail, lacquered leather and all that).
- Powered (servo-assisted suit)
- Field
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