DREDD Full Eagle Day and Specific Mishap Questions

[vonshavingcream]

i posted this in the rulesmaster forum a few weeks ago with no type of response. If anyone here has any input it would be great.

I was generating some PC's tonight and we came across two things that brought up questions.

First:
On page 37 of the dredd book it says that you must roll a 12+ with DM's applied.

However, in the sample PC Judge Walker example pg 44 it says that be survived full eagle day with a 9+

I'm wondering which one is correct or if you can shed some light on why they appear different.

Second: (I think I know the answer, but wanted to get confirmation)
There is a specific mishap (pg 25 tek judge #5) that states you get Flyer(any)0 if you pass.


After which if the tek judge gains a point in flyer (any) what happens?

My answer was that Flyer(any)0 simply removes the -3 DM from a roll that would otherwise have it applied while gaining any point after that would simply be a +1.

The PC argued that judges would have a general knowledge of all skills and while 0 skill point applies to traveller as a whole it does not apply to Dredd specifically.

Any ruling on this one would be great.

Thanks a lot.

Chris

 

[whoknows]

I will answer your second question first. Basically, as I understand it, when you get a skill that looks like Skill(any), any means its basically telling you to choose a specialty for that skill. So Flyer(Any) 0 could look like Flyer(Personal) 0, Flyer(Grav) 0 etc.

What would then happen is if you gain another level of Flyer(any) 0, you would choose another specialty or increase the level of one you already have.

Your first question would have to be answered by the rule masters or who ever created Judge Walker because when I read the character generation rules and look at his write up, I find a lot of contradictions, confusion and questions to how they arrived at certain results based on the rules of the text. Its more than just typos. In fact, I don't think Judge Walker should have passed his Full Eagle Day whether you would roll against either a 9+ or a 12+! And how do they figure you could roll a 1 on a 2D6 if there are no negatives involved?

There are other instances where he may or may not have had to roll on the Mishap table for Term Three. As well as, whether or not you stlll roll for events after a mishap because the character generation checklist on pg. 12 states if you roll a mishap you go on to Step 3 for your next term. It doesn't tell you, you can still roll for events until you get to the actual tables where they say "Every character gains a roll on the Events table".

I also assume when rolling characteristics, I'm rolling for that particular characterisitic, yet its not really clear. In Traveller, you just roll 6 times and apply the results to which ever you choose. I only mention this because in the text for Judge Dredd they say your rolling for characteristics in turn or sequence as they are outlined. For example, my first roll would be for Str, and I get a 5 so Str is 5.

I find it disheartening that this game has been out for over a year now and there are simple questions that don't get answered because the rulesmasters aren't clarifying with errata or official responses. It boils down to players and GMs making their own interpretations of what is supposed to be official and what isn't. The game then becomes broken and flawed.

I'm not trying to be so critical of the system because it is a cool concept and a cool setting but when I read your question and started studying the text more thoroughly, I too would like to know what's up with this or that.

 

[whoknows]

I thought about it some more and want to clarify that Judge Walker does pass Full Eagle Day if you add his +7 modifier to the roll of 8 regardless of what the Survival DM actually supposed to be, which I will tell you its probably 12+ since its requires a lot of various skill DMs to be applied as well as the nature of it is supposed to be difficult.

That's just my opinion and only the rulesmasters can tell you what it actually is but they don't seem to include the modifiers from his skills and characteristics to other results leaving you wondering whether he should have had as many Mishaps as he did.

Also, if you're still confused about the whole Flyer(any) 0 thing, its because in Traveller, you are not supposed to be able to specialize in a skill until its rank 1. In Judge Dredd that doesn't seem to be the case. The Travellers Core Rulebook explains the whole specializing in skills and how those are handled better than I can.

Hope this helps.

 

[vonshavingcream]

first off .. thank you for the reply.

It has been so long since I posted this question in the rules master forum, that I had to make a ruling myself on both of these.

Basically I had the players role their PC's and we've been using the 12+ as the threshold. No one has failed out yet.

as for the other issue, I basically did what you said.

My only issue with both of these, is that I made the decisions. So if my Players would go to another game that is running Dredd, the GM for that might have interpreted inconsistencies in a different light.

I am really annoyed that the rulesmaster forum doesn't have more activity. If the books didn't have so many typos or contradictions in them I wouldn't be as upset that my question still has not been answered in that forum.