Spellpunk

Spellpunk Cyberfight: Revised

What is this?

Spellpunk Cyberfight is the best setting known to man, but unfortunately shackled to the brain-dead corpse that is 5E rules no matter how much it struggles to break out. This is an attempt at an alternate system that gives more weight to the narrative elements over the boring crunch elements. It's vaguely based on Unisystem, but it probably won't bear much resemblance to it in the end.

Fundamentals

To do things, you roll 1d10+Stat+Skill as appropriate. If you get a 9 or higher, you succeed. If you're attempting something complex(like, say, shooting down a chandelier so it lands on top of a guard on its side, then rolls down the corridor, flattening two more guards, before hitting a chair, ramping off it, flying through a window and landing in front of a car that's about to run over a dog) you may need to roll higher than a 9. Natural rolls of 10 are rolled again and the next roll is divided by 2 and added to the original. There's no upper limit to how many rerolls can result.

Each time a character uses the same skill in a row(skills used for defense and skills used to do things are counted separately), they get a -2 cumulative modifier until they use another skill, to encourage variety. Also both villains and natural laws will catch on if you try to bamboozle them the same way each time.

All characters are able to suffer a number of Scratches(glancing blows that for some reason never slow the protagonist down, like getting shot in the shoulder or having a narrow cut in their cheek) and Injuries(the stuff that may actually take them out of a scene, like getting dramatically impaled) before they go down. Scratches are always ticked off first and Injuries second. Once a character is out of both Scratches and Injuries, they aren't dead(unless they choose to be), just out for the scene.

If a character chooses to die, they may: make a last dramatic statement or gesture AND take one last action. If the action results in a roll, it's always a natural 10 with the accompanying reroll.

All characters have Motivation equal to the average of their stats. Motivation can be used to: Ignore any penalties, reroll any die and take the higher roll or to do the same things for a fellow player who's run out of Motivation(in this case the character helping their buddy out should yell advice, or something motivational, or otherwise do a cool little narrative bit to explain how they're helping their friend).

The stats are as follows:

Moxy: Self-confidence and ability to control everyone's attention.
Avoirdupois: Not getting killed by things.
Rapidity: Doing things real fast.
Brilliance: Being extremely smart and knowing things
Lustiness: Raw power.
Enlightenment: One-ness with the cosmos, friendship with small animals, how much the Gods notice you

Each stat has one or more skills that it's usually combined with:

Moxy
Discouraging: Making someone stop what they're doing by letting them know it's a real bad idea i.e. it may get their legs broken and their dumb face thrown out of a window
Entertaining: Keeping people entertained with force of personality, not talent.
Luck: Catch-all for any time no other skill will save your ass.

Avoirdupois
Living: Anything that requires resisting exhaustion or pain.

Avoirdupois also determines how many Scratches and Injuries you can suffer before you have to bow out of a scene.

Rapidity
Gymnastics: A catch-all for keeping your balance, moving fast and doing cool jumping stunts.
Palmistry: When you attempt to move a thing from A to B without anyone noticing what you're up to. Less advanced systems call this "pickpocketing."
Anti-Perceivability: Attempting to move yourself from A to B without anyone noticing what you're up to.

Brilliance
Trivia: When no other skill is applicable to knowing things about things, you roll Trivia.
Probing: For those montages where the protagonist flips through moldy tomes, peers intensely at maps and suddenly realizes where the villain is hiding.
Biologenics: It's like Trivia but it's for knowing about living things and where they live.

Lustiness
Convincing: When you're trying to appeal to someone's better nature rather than their cowardice.
Sport: When a physical activity calls for raw power, it's usually a sport.

Enlightenment
Animal Affinity: Making friends with animals and understanding what they want.
Judgment: Picking up whether someone is giving off higher vibes or lower vibes.
Panacea: With all the ways people can get hurt, and all the shapes people come in, trying to fix them with medicine would require a completely implausible coincidence of situation and knowledge. Instead, Panacea relies on understanding the fundamental existential vibes underlying all ills and rectifying them by the same vibrational methods.
Awareness: Noticing stuff with any of your senses between first and eighth.
Faiths: Trivia skill for understanding religions, cults and gods.

Skill Tables

When you roll a skill and succeed, you get to describe, in a short sentence, how you succeed. However, for every two you roll over 9(i.e. at 11, 13, 15, etc.), you get to make a more elaborate description. Letting the GM have half of your description to cause trouble for you gives you one point of Motivation, letting the GM have all of your extra descriptive power gives you two points of motivation.

Example:

The player uses Gymnastics to get out of a sticky situation and roll a 9, they describe: "Surrounded by guards, my Hamling Hero snatches a rifle from one of them and uses it to polevault over their heads!"

If the player rolled an 11, they might instead go: "Surrounded by guards, my Hamling Hero snatches a rifle from one of them and uses it to polevault over their heads! Touching down nimbly on the other side, they're out of the door before anyone can react!"

If the player rolled an 11 and gave their extra description to the GM: "Surrounded by guards, my Hamling Hero snatches a rifle from one of them and uses it to polevault over their heads!" GM: "But as they make the leap, they accidentally put their finger on the trigger and fire a shot into a chandelier above! It's about to come down!"

GM modifiers should generally complicate the situation but not do damage to the players, instead give them more fun things to act on or react to, choices to make. Does the Hamling Hero stop and call out a warning to the guards about to be crushed? Or do they simply speed up?

The skill tables contain more specific details for each skill.

Discouraging

Entertaining

Luck

Living

Gymnastics

Palmistry

Anti-Perceivability

Trivia

Probing

Biologenics

Convincing

Sport

Animal Affinity

Judgment

Panacea

Enlightenment

Special Abilities

Hero

Moxyman

Spiritualist

Xian

Soldier

Centermost Soul Warrior

Galactic Knight

Ryoshi

Rapscallion

Blood Magician

Spacecaster

Metaphysicist

Special Equipment

Fighting

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