Digging Deeper into Star Smuggler - Surprises in the Events Booklet - Military Equipment (e018)

In my first post in this series, I detailed the Battleship found in e081. This post will cover the cool military gizmos found in e018. This encounter plays the reader against a military force determined to capture Duke and the gang.

These soldiers have standard equipment such as side arms, heavy weapons and plus some items really meant to take down a criminal lord. The force numbers between 6 and 9 men. 

The first item is a frag grenade. These weapons have a variable tech level, but also are reduced by 3 tech levels to reflect the fact that they are thrown weapons or fire indirectly. The rules don't specify how much damage they would do, but I think we can safety assume they do damage like a heavy weapon with explosive effects. They should be able to do damaged to everything smaller than a ship and probably can't be used against a hopper or ship's boat in flight.

Next up is a dalurium-screen helmet. It protects the officer in charge from psionic attack. I haven't mention psionics before, but it is one of the options for the reader. This helmet makes the officer immune to attack by mind powers.

The third item is a shimmer-screen. It imposes a -2 to hit the target. If the characters take them, they are subject to a breakdown roll and once this occurs, they cannot be repaired.

The four item is really fun, a field scrambler. On a hit from this weapon, it forces a breakdown roll on 4-6. Otherwise it does no damage. It cannot affect ships with ECM.

This equipment is super fun for they player to deal with and expands the setting with new tech not obvious from a read through of the rules. These items aren't overpowered, but do present more challenges and surprises to the player.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 123 – April 13th.

We decide to go right back to where we began, Regari.

I'm not sure what I'll do there, but it'll be nice to be home. We pass through the Palatek system and meet no troubles. The same for Regari. We'll head to the spaceport to refuel.

We have 72,573 in cash, have 6 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 122 – April 12th.

We enter the Palace area. We get a chance to steal some statues, but we are here to sell a bed for a base price of 1,100. We have a 10 times multiplier. The crew is hysterical because Duke uses another one of these pheromones to double the price. We take in another 19,850 while the crew gets 220 each.

We move the ship over to the spaceport and try to replace our hypercharges. We end up doing it by the end of the day. Not bad for a day’s work.

Where do we go next?

We have 72,573 in cash, have 8 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.

Episode 001 - Why I hate Walking Dead and the New Star Wars Films almost as much as I hate 5th Edition D&D

Title says it all, come on over to the dark side and take a listen as to why.

While you are processing that, let me tell you about the music. It is a track called Sovereign by Kevin MacLeod, available through the Creative Commons License.

Sovereign by Kevin MacLeod.
Link: https://incompetech.filmmusic.io/song/4397-sovereign
License: http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/



The Original is acceptable.

This is also acceptable.

I don't think so...

Strictly (Duke) Springer - Day 121 – April 11th.

We blast off for Imperia. One of the special rules I made for the Buffalo was that it couldn’t double jump. So we have to jump from New Karma to Nipna, Talitar and finally Imperia. Surprisingly, nothing happens on any of these jumps.

We spend the last two hours moving two units in. Tomorrow, we will set down at the palace.

We have 54,723 in cash, have 4 hypercharges.  We now own our ship. We are wanted on Palatek.