The BlackHammer CyberPunk Project

The MonSTeR's house rules

Personally I have developed very few new rules, if you're interested read on.

The first is to do with skill points and IP modifiers.
I get rid of all IP modifiers altogether. I find that they unbalance the game way too much. I draw this on personal experience. For me Japanese was no more difficult to learn than german, and I don't see how Karate is twice as easy as Thai Kick Boxing (I Kick box). This also gets rid of players desperately trying to use skills with high IP modifiers just to get the points for using them and thus interfering with the game play.

The second is to do with Pilot skills.
I operate what I call a 3 and 1 system. The 4 pilot skills Gyro, Fixed, Dirigible and VecThrust, I find are too much fun to be so seperate. Basically no-one wants to specialise in one else when they need to fly they have learned the wrong vehicle, which again can slow down the game whilst the PCs argue about who has to fly the vehicle this time.
Thus the rule we introduced was when you have one pilot skill at +3 the others go to +1 If they then get improved they do so from the new level (ie+1) When the highest pilot skill reaches +6, the others go to +2. Similarly at +9 the other go to + 3.
This can be used in character generation and over the past 5 years has not presented any real problems, all of which have been outweighed by the excitement of aerial chases etc. The sort of theory (!?!?) behind this is that even if the vehicle in which the PC is flying is unfamiliar the basics of flying, and the knowledge of wind currents, navigation etc remain constant.

The argument was raised that this should also work for firearms skills but as you can imagine this threw the game way out of proportion so we didn't use it for more than one playtest.

Third new rule was how to determine starting cash.
My players always complained that they didn't have enough cash to buy the cool stuff they wanted at the beginning of games. Eg I want a custom crystal cyber hand with etc etc.
So here is what I came up with.

  • (highest skill level (+4 to +10) +lowest skill level (+1 to +10)
  • (include career skills and pickup skills)
  • Divide this by 10.
  • Then multiply by the total number of skills the character has improved.
  • Divide this number up into chunks of 1 to 10
  • eg 24 = 2lots of 10 plus 1 lot of 4 and consult the approprite strting funds table using the level of the highest skill NOT the special ability. (eg a solo may not have a high combat sense but a really high Rifle so gets hired as a top sniper.)
This leads to characters who are "jack of all trades" with lots of skills improved at +1 to +4 having more cash than super concentrated characters with+7 to +10 in 5 or 6 skills. We feel this relects the way that a broader range of skills can help you pick up more odd jobs etc than a character who is just "the kung fu guy" or "the demolitions guy"