SWN Rules Explained: How Drones Work in Stars Without Number

Rules Explained

Jul 23

This week's SWN Rules Explained covers drones, cyberware, and equipment mods. Brian uses the security drone spotted at the Helium Dock in Life Is Unfair as the case study, then walks through drone stats and combat rules straight from the Stars Without Number revised rulebook. He also gets into system strain and cyberware installation, plus how the Fix skill covers modding and maintaining gear.

[00:00:00] Brian: Access approved.
[00:00:05] Brian: Hello out there, all you Dark Star adventurers, and thanks for listening to another edition of Stars Without Number, Rules Explained. This is the segment where we look beyond the fiction of the AdventureCast episodes and dig into the game systems underneath and how they affect our stories. As usual, Assistant Star Master and occasional backup Game Master Brian here, the voice of the scapegoat's own Captain Thorn, and your guide through the rules of Stars Without Number. While the main AdventureCast episodes focus on the exciting stories of our games, there's also fun to be had with the rules and mechanics that power any tabletop roleplaying game.
[00:00:41] Brian: If you're keen to know more about how the systems work behind the scenes, then you've come to the right place. The topics for today's episode were picked based on the events of the latest episode of the main adventure cast, Life is Unfair.
[00:00:55] Brian: After dealing with an Omnitech assassin, the crew takes the Aurora out to the Helium docks to find the ownership module they desperately need to finally drop this tale.
[00:01:05] Brian: I'm sure they'll be able to waltz right in and take it without any issue. If you haven't already listened to that, you should go check it out. Today we're talking about drones, cyberware, and equipment mods, three classic tropes of many sci-fi adventures. We'll go through how each of them work, and of course, how to get them, install them, and maintain them. In the latest adventure, the team clocks a drone inbound to the Helium Dock while Felix is attempting to bypass the security systems. Omnitech is able to get eyes on them safely before the team's able to do anything about it.
[00:01:41] Brian: So how could a group of player characters use something like that to their own advantage? The rules for drones can be found on page 80 of the Stars Without Number revised rulebook, and they're pretty straightforward. A drone is like a remote-controlled flying device that can be used for surveillance and for attack. They can be controlled by a pilot using a handheld remote, or by using a drone control module, which is a type of cybernetic implant.
[00:02:08] Brian: Felix found one recently while we were looting a few episodes back, but more on that later. There are several types of drones listed in a table on that same page, each with their own specifications and applications. A drone has a few important stats.
[00:02:25] Brian: Obviously there's a cost, but they also have an armor class, hit points, a maximum control range, an encumbrance that they impose when carried by a character, a tech level that tells you how advanced they are, and therefore what sorts of places they'd be available, and a number of slots for fittings. On page 81, there's a list of fittings that you can attach to a drone. There are lots of different options depending on how you're planning to use that drone. They can be equipped with an ammo pack that they carry, they can shoot healing, they can drop bombs, and more. You can even attach a ranged weapon to a drone as long as it has an ammo pack to use. In combat, whoever is controlling the drone can use their main action to tell the drone to move 30 meters or to shoot or use a similar fitting. If the character is controlling the drone by a handheld device, they can only control a single drone at a time. And if they don't use their main action to control it, there's always a 2 out of 6 chance that the drone simply crashes. Using the drone control cyberware, however, a drone pilot can control one plus their program skill drones at once, and there's no risk of crashing.
[00:03:36] Brian: It's a lot more difficult to get access to the technology to install a drone controller, but it certainly has a tangible benefit. Another really interesting aspect of drone combat is how its attacks are calculated. When a pilot uses their main action to fire a drone's weapon, the attack uses the pilot's attack bonus, their intelligence modifier as an attribute, and they can use the better of their pilot or program skill.
[00:04:02] Brian: This opens up a lot of really interesting options for characters who might not be great at shooting, like experts without many ranks in the shoot skill, or any character that suffers from a low dexterity score. Not to mention, using the drone means the pilot can stay safely out of combat in most cases. Just remember that a drone can be spotted with a difficulty 10 wisdom notice check, as long as it can be seen by eyes or by sensors, and difficulty 8 once it's up close. The book also mentions the prolific use of quantum ECM in most civilized areas that prevents the use of unwired device control. So make sure you're in an area where remote-controlled drones won't be immediately jammed before you try to use them to spy in heavily populated areas. With all this talk about using intelligence and programming to control drones, and the drone control link that Felix found, it's hard not to think a guy like him could make pretty good use of something like that. But then, I hear you asking, how would he go about getting something like that and getting it installed? And then how would it work? So let's talk about cyberware. Cyberware, or cybernetic implants, are devices that are essentially fused with the human flesh to allow a person to use them as though they were a part of their own body. When the crew talked with ISO, she mentioned that she could install something like that, but only if she had the appropriate tools. Cyberware in Stars Without Number is rare and expensive. There's a table on page 83 that lists a bunch of sample implants. Most of them grant some kind of passive effect or modify an action that a character might take. Some of them come into effect automatically when a character does a certain thing, while others require the character to pay a cost in the form of system strain in order to activate them. System strain, as we've talked about before, is how much modification a body can take before it just can't take it anymore. It's often an important factor when using healing drugs or biosionics, but it's also a key factor of cyberware. As a reminder, a character's maximum system strain is equal to their constitution score, as described on page 32 of the revised rulebook. Anytime an effect would cause the character to gain system strain, it fails to function if they do not have enough available. Most system strain recovers by one point for each night of rest, but installing any piece of cyberware incurs a permanent amount of system strain.
[00:06:32] Brian: The only way to recover this strain is to have the cyberware surgically removed. So if ISO could find the right facility, Felix might be able to get his drone module, or the crew could each install the set of ghost talkers that they found. But doing so would mean that their bodies would be less able to handle drugs and healing in the future, so be careful not to install too much. Make sure to skim through the list in the book of all the various cyberware options. Don't forget that most of the time these modifications are rare and expensive, but if you get the chance to install some dermal armor, I'm sure you won't regret it.
[00:07:09] Brian: So we've talked about modding our bodies, but what if we simply want to mod our gear, or even craft our own gear? The rules for modding and building equipment start on page 90 of the revised rules. A character can use their Fix skill to create and modify weapons and other kinds of gear in all sorts of ways. There's a list of sample mods on page 91, but you could theoretically come up with many more kinds of mods between players and Star Masters that could be applied to just about any kind of item. But once something is modified, it also needs to be maintained. Each mod has an associated fix skill level that a mechanic needs to meet in order to install or maintain that mod. For example, the pistol that the crew found along with the Aurora back on Wafisa has the auto-targeting mod. This requires a fix skill level of 2 to install and maintain. It also takes one week per skill level required in order to build and install the mod.
[00:08:06] Brian: So a mod like that would have taken a technician two weeks or half that time if they had an assistant with at least fixed level zero. All mods have a cost associated with them that is required to create and install them.
[00:08:21] Brian: There aren't normally any sort of generic mods that can just plug into any device. They need to be crafted uniquely for the device or user that they're being installed for. Many of these costs are simply in credits, but some of the mods require pre-tech salvage components that usually must be sought out by Quest or Adventure. The specifics of the salvage aren't the important part, but they won't be easy to find. If you want to know more about the setting of Stars Without Number, and what I mean by pre-tech, make sure you check out the History of Space section of the rulebook, starting on page 121.
[00:08:58] Brian: Once a mod is installed, a technician needs to keep it running.
[00:09:02] Brian: Mods require maintenance every day, and they will stop working if they're not maintained for 24 hours. Any character who wants to be responsible for mods can calculate their maintenance score by adding up their constitution and intelligence modifiers, plus three times their fixed skill level. That maintenance score is the number of mods they can maintain within their normal duties. Trying to handle more than that could have narrative repercussions, or the extra mods will start to break down.
[00:09:32] Brian: And if a mod goes without maintenance for a whole week, the item it's installed in could even become damaged. Mechanics who want to craft their own adventuring gear can do that as well, provided they have access to the appropriate facilities.
[00:09:47] Brian: The book has the full rules for how to calculate times and costs for crafting various kinds of equipment, but essentially the technician has three options. They can create the item as normal, by taking the normal amount of time and paying the normal costs. They can create a quick, cheap, jerry-rigged version that can't be modded and must be maintained as though it were a mod with a fix-zero maintenance requirement. Or it can be mastercrafted for an exorbitant cost, but the first mod installed into it doesn't cost any maintenance at all. If you're planning on playing a gearhead or if you just want new ways to make a couple ranks and fics feel more useful, definitely check out these rules and give them a try. Thank you everyone so much for listening, but with that, we have reached the end of this week's edition of Stars Without Number, Rules Explained. I hope you found this episode informative in some way. Maybe now you have an excuse to try to install some item mods or cyberware. Whatever you do, I'd love to hear about it. Please leave us a comment wherever you're listening. And if you like the AdventureCast or segments like this, please give us a positive review as well. It's one of the best ways to get the word out to other listeners. You can also let us know what you think on our Patreon at patreon.com slash darkstaradventurecast or just leave us some feedback on Reddit. I really appreciate anyone who gives us even a single listen or shares our adventures with the people they know. It really means so much to me and the whole DSA crew. Once again, thank you so much for listening and as always, remember, keep following that signal.