Piper Wright
Fallout: Wasteland Warfare will include a variant of SPECIAL, adapted for use with d20 dice and tabletop wargaming.
Overview[]
Every model in the game is represented by a unit card which contains all of their SPECIALs, which determine skills. Not every unit uses the same SPECIAL stat to determine their skills, allowing for specialization and a greater degree of versatility in the game (for example, Health is determined by Endurance among super mutants, but a lithe character like Piper Wright instead uses Agility to determine Health).
Every action a model makes, whether it is shooting or searching, is determined by a dice roll: In order to succeed, the model needs to roll an amount lower than their effective skill. The effective skill level is determined by summing up all applicable modifiers and applying it to the model's base skill.
- For example, a Brotherhood Paladin tries to shoot a target in cover with their rifle (base skill 6). A long scope gives +1 to their skill, while the cover gives a -2 modifier. The effective skill is therefore 6+1-2=5. The Skill dice roll must be 5 or less.
The Skill dice roll is determined by taking the effect of the d20 roll and comparing it with the game's roll result tables. The table is structured to avoid a situation where a skill of 1 gives 10% chance and a skill of 10 100%. Instead, depending on the table, of course, a skill of 1 will give a 25% chance of success, while a 10 will cap it at 85%.
Behind the scenes[]
We chose this carefully so the S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats can be meaningful in gameplay. The world of Fallout has such massive variety that the steps in capability need to be subtle, whilst remaining relevant. We need to create a situation where lots of variety can exist without some units being so far superior to others that normal units become ineffective or even redundant. A person with a gun is still a threat even if untrained, and even power armour will eventually succumb to enough minor threats.
The S.P.E.C.I.A.L stats primarily range from 1 to 10. If a d10 was used for skills with these stats, a skill of 1 would be almost useless at 10% whilst a 10 would be too powerful at 100%. It would result in most units ending up with stats in a narrower middle range in order to make them fun to play and not be over-/under-powered and this would lose the unique differences that make them so cool.
The d20 in Fallout: Wasteland Warfare allows us to have the range of 1-10 numbers but the number of available faces means we can have several 1s - so that a stat of 1 actually has a 25% chance of success - as well as some X results (which always fail) -so a 10 will always have a maximum 85% chance. This system makes the full range of stat numbers useful, whilst each additional point in the stat still gives more chance of success.
”— Modiphus
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