SWN Rules Explained: How NPCs Work in Stars Without Number

Rules Explained

Oct 1

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This episode of SWN Rules Explained looks at how NPCs work in Stars Without Number, from the Xeno Bestiary chapter of the revised rulebook. Brian walks through the general NPC table on page 195 and how to read hit dice, armor class, attack bonuses, and morale scores, plus when the Star Master should actually call for a morale check. From there he covers robots and virtual intelligences, including the rules for playing a VI as a character, and wraps up with beasts and how to run a swarm of them as a single NPC. He frames it against the crew getting looped back in time right as they arrive at Prometheon Station in Episode 32, "Twenty-One Loops," racing to get inside and save the Doctor before the loop resets again.

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[00:00:03] Brian: Access approved. Hey there, Dark Star Adventurecast listeners, from here to Polyphn and beyond, and welcome back to another episode of Stars Without Number Rules Explained, the mini-series where we take a look inside the rulebook and learn a thing or two about the systems of Stars Without Number. While we don't always need a set of rules to come up with exciting and interesting stories with our friends, the rules of a tabletop role-playing game like Stars Without Number can give us settings, tools, and limitations to enhance our experiences and inspire all sorts of adventures and challenges. As always, this is Brian, the voice of Captain Thorndraxxus, Assistant Star Master and occasional backup Game Master, and I will be your guide on this journey through the pages of the rulebook. The topics for today's episode were inspired by feedback from our listeners and, as always, by the events of the latest Adventurecast episode, Twenty-One Loops. The captain's chair, the communications panel, the gyroscope in the distance. The crew is somehow jolted back in time to just when they arrived at Prometheon Station. What is happening here? Now that they know what to expect, can they get inside and save the Doctor before it's too late? If you haven't already listened to the episode, you'll have to go do that to find out. If you've played D&D, then you've probably heard of a Monster Manual. Well today, we're looking into Stars Without Number's Xeno Bestiary. We'll talk about different kinds of NPCs and enemies that Star Masters can use for their games, the information important for running encounters with those NPCs, and some options for players who want to play non-human characters. So without further ado, let's get started.
The Xeno Bestiary starts on page 193 of the revised rulebook. This is the section where the Star Master is going to find basically everything they need to run encounters across an entire sector. From giant sandworms to cyber assassins, pirate lords to janitor robots, if you need an NPC, you'll find the information you need in this chapter. Page 193 also has the reaction rules table that I talked about a bit in the Rules Explained episode about the Expert class. The Star Master can roll 2d6 when creating an NPC and cross-reference this table to determine how that NPC will react when the players arrive. Sometimes the narrative dictates that a specific NPC will behave a certain way, but oftentimes an NPC in a scene could be in any mood for whatever reason. Reaction rolls can make your world feel more alive and interesting by giving variety to the people within it. For more information on that, check out that previous episode. On page 195, you'll find another one of the most useful tables in the entire rulebook. This is the general NPC table. For every random cop, smuggler, or bandit your players stumble upon, you have an entry in this table that gives you just about everything that you're going to need to adjudicate the interactions your players will have with them. Not only that, but since you have various sorts of NPCs listed here together, you can start to understand how their abilities relatively compare. Then you can make your own minor adjustments to those values as you see fit, without worrying if you're making something too weak or too powerful relative to the rest of the world. The value of this table and the others like it in this chapter cannot be overstated. Let's quickly run through how to read these tables.
HD stands for hit dice. This is the number of dice used to calculate this NPC's hit points. Much like player characters, stronger NPCs will have more hit dice and therefore are harder to kill. Unlike players, however, NPCs don't have base attributes. So instead of d6s plus Constitution, they use a number of d8s to calculate their hit points. Roll this randomly when you create the NPC. AC is armor class, and it works basically the same as it does for players. Assume any human NPC that has an AC above 10 is wearing some kind of armor, or is very agile. You can cross-reference the armor table on page 65 to estimate what they might be wearing, but remember the value could sometimes incorporate some kind of bonus if that NPC is more dexterous. Just keep in mind that if they lose access to their armor somehow, it might affect their AC. If the armor says primitive, TL4 and up weapons would ignore it completely. If the armor says combat, then it's very obvious at a casual glance. This means the NPC is visibly armored, and they might not always wear this armor in social situations. If the armor says powered, then something about the armor makes the NPC immune to primitive weapons. Attack is the NPC's attack bonus. Add this number to the d20 when they make an attack roll against a player. Some NPCs get multiple attacks with a single main action. If it says plus four times two, for example, then that NPC gets to attack twice with a plus four bonus each time. The damage column varies depending on the table, but for many generic NPCs, they'll be wielding some kind of weapon. If the damage says by weapon, then you should cross-reference the ranged and melee weapons tables found on page 67 and 68 to determine what the NPC is wielding. More deadly NPCs will have a bonus on top of the weapon's base damage, similar to how a player character gets a bonus to damage from their attribute modifiers.
Move is the distance they can move with a single move action. ML is the NPC's morale score. This is an understated mechanic of Stars Without Number that can give players a slim chance against otherwise seemingly insurmountable odds in combat. A morale check works similar to a saving throw that an NPC or group of NPCs need to make when faced with extreme peril. The Star Master should roll 2d6 versus the NPC's morale score when their morale is tested. Rolling equal to or under the score means the NPC steels themselves and can carry on normally, but rolling over their morale score is a failure. Thus, more hardened warriors will generally have a higher morale score. Players will never make a morale check, but NPCs should make it in the following situations. For non-combat NPCs, like hostages or innocent bystanders, they should make a morale check as soon as some kind of lethal combat begins. If they fail, then they're too scared or stunned to do anything, and they either completely freeze up or they run away in terror. NPC combatants should make their first morale check the first time one of their allies is defeated. If they fail, then they'll surrender or flee as appropriate. But if they succeed, they fight on. They should roll another check the first time it looks like they're losing the fight. If they succeed both of these checks, then they're inclined to stay and fight until they fall, or at least until all hope is lost. Most NPCs are extremely unlikely to fight to the death, and will choose to run or surrender before giving up their lives. But plenty of monsters or cultists have no qualms about fighting to the last breath. Skills tell you the bonus to give the NPC if they ever need to make some kind of skill check or opposed skill check. Only add this bonus if they're doing something that makes sense for them to apply their skills and training. The martial human template lists a plus one skill bonus, but a barbarian probably wouldn't add this plus one to a program skill check, and likewise a peaceful office clerk might not add it to their exert check. And the last column, Saves, tells you the NPC's saving throw target. Just like player characters, if an NPC needs to make an evasion, physical, or mental saving throw, this is the target that they need to roll equal to or above on a d20 to succeed. Usually the NPC's save is 15 minus half their hit dice, rounded down. With just these eight pieces of information, you have an entirely fleshed out NPC.
It may seem boring to use only a dozen or so NPC templates across all of your adventures through space, but remember that the stats don't make an NPC interesting and memorable, the fiction does. Don't be afraid to think outside the box for your NPCs in your narrative, but then just apply an appropriate template to your design when you need the dice to make a decision for you. Just that single table will carry the vast majority of adventures for a lot of groups, but not every NPC is going to be some kind of person. In a sci-fi game, you're more than likely to stumble onto robots at some point in time. The section on robots and virtual intelligences starts on page 196, and there's a table of robot NPC templates on page 197. This table works exactly like the last one except for the additional cost column for when a character wants to purchase a robot of their own. Robots in Stars Without Number are generally programmed using what's called an expert system. This programming might give them the ability to talk in a way that seems human, but they are in no way sentient. The quality of the expert system in a robot can affect its stats. Apply the values in the table on page 196 to the robot NPC templates as appropriate. By default, a robot has a level 1 expert system, but fancier or more powerful bots can have their programming upgraded to improve their performance. Much like human NPCs, the robot's skill bonus should only be applied when it's doing something relevant to its programming. If a robot is ever put into a situation that's not covered by its programming, it can get confused. When this happens, the Star Master can make a confusion check by rolling 2d6 plus the robot's skill bonus versus a difficulty based on the weirdness and danger level of the situation. On a success, they react in a way that makes sense, but on a failure, they follow their default programming in some inappropriate fashion. A robot can have its hit points repaired by a technician with at least Fix-0, using a toolkit and a unit of spare parts to recover hit points equal to its expert system level. This process takes 15 minutes. But once they're reduced to zero HP, they're destroyed and cannot be salvaged. Robots have a morale score as well. Though they don't feel morale per se, most are programmed to retreat when things look grim. So the same morale rules apply as normal.
If you've ever seen any kind of sci-fi before, I assume you know what a robot is, but what the heck is a virtual intelligence? In the default Stars Without Number setting, there aren't really any true artificial intelligences anymore, but with the right technology, some systems are able to manufacture extremely sophisticated robot systems that essentially qualify as sentient beings. This is what is called a virtual intelligence, or a VI. In some places, VIs are treated as people with equal rights, but in others they're treated no different from robots. They can be manufactured for 10 times the cost of an expert system robot of the same type and expert system level. The Robots and VIs section of the rulebook has a lot more juicy information on how VIs work and how the world treats them inside the text. If you're interested in these kinds of hyper-advanced robots, then you should give that a read. Some players may even wish to play a robotic player character. In that case, the book offers rules for VIs as players, starting on page 199. In order to make a VI player character, the player needs to choose one of the three VI origin foci listed on page 199 as their character's starting focus at level 1 when they create it. They can choose to be an android, nearly indistinguishable from a human, a worker robot, or a vehicle robot. Each type represented by one of the three origin foci comes with a unique bonus. Apart from that, VI player characters are very similar to humans. Their AC is still 10 when unarmored, they have HP, attributes, skills, foci, and everything else calculated in the same way it would be for a normal level 1 human character, with the additional restriction that they cannot choose the psychic class or partial psychic adventurer.
When a VI player is damaged, they can heal the same way a robot would. They can do it themselves regardless of their skill level, or a technician with at least Fix-0 can take 15 minutes and 1 unit of spare parts to heal hit points equal to the VI's character level. VIs are a bit more resilient than normal robots, so when they're reduced to zero hit points, instead of being destroyed like a robot, or being mortally wounded like a human, they become badly damaged. They're incapacitated and it takes a technician 24 hours to repair them. They can be jerry-rigged to operate again with the normal 15 minutes of healing, but if they're reduced to zero HP again before getting those 24 hours of repair, they're permanently destroyed. VI player characters are immune to most normal diseases and poisons, but they would likewise be susceptible to effects that would interfere with their wiring or programming. They do not need to eat or sleep, but they consume a type B power cell for each week that they're not connected to a power supply. They can't use cyberware, but they can graft equipment or weapons into their chassis. The equipment costs twice as much as it normally would, and it takes a week to properly install. A VI can have half of its Constitution score, rounded down, worth of encumbrance added to its body in this way, but some gear may require external ammo or power supplies.
So we've covered people and robots, but there's still one last important category of NPCs, the titular monsters of the Monster Manual, beasts. The section on beasts starts on page 200, and that's where you're going to find the all-important table of beast templates. You can also use the tables on page 201 to come up with all kinds of alien monstrosities for your players to stumble upon. The most interesting table is possibly the Harmful Discharges. This is for beasts that have some kind of additional effect on their attacks. You can roll the effect randomly, or you can use the table to inspire creations of your own. These additional effects are on top of the damage that the beast deals on a hit with its attack, but the player characters should likely get to make some kind of physical saving throw to resist those added effects. If a character is afflicted by some kind of venom or poison, then they could be healed using a medkit or a stim of antidote. Failing that, a medic could make an Int/Heal check versus a difficulty of 9 to try to halt the effects. Page 200 also has rules for running beasts as swarms. If you want the players to fend off a swarm of rats or insects instead of worrying about each one individually, you can lump them together into a single NPC called a swarm. A swarm has four times the hit dice of a single beast of that type, and it can attack anyone that's in contact with it. Even if the attack misses, the swarm still deals its minimum damage to the target, assuming dealing damage is possible. Any attacks against a swarm automatically hit it, again assuming the weapon has any effect. As the book says, a revolver is going to be a lot less effective on a swarm of ants than a flamethrower.
And unfortunately, that is all the time we have for this episode of Stars Without Number Rules Explained. Thank you so much for listening, and I hope you found something that I talked about today useful. It really means a lot to me to hear that these segments have been helpful to some of the Stars Without Number gamers out there, so shoutouts to all of you. If you like this kind of thing, please leave a like or a comment wherever you're listening. We'd love to hear from you. You can also come check us out on Patreon at patreon.com/darkstaradventurecast, where subscribers get access to each new episode two weeks earlier. Stay tuned for more DSA content when Jeff's Star Master Log premieres next. If you'd like to learn more about all of our behind-the-scenes antics, then come check it out. Thanks again to everyone out there supporting us, and as always, keep following that signal.