Rule Clarifications

CrispyGM

Banded Mongoose
Fellow Travellers,

During our Discord pbp games, some questions pop up from time to time that we don't know the answer to, or need clarification for. Thank you for helping me with these questions. We are currently using the MgT 2nd Edition Core 2022 Update rules.

1. If a Traveller is injured with three Characteristics damaged and the Medic fails First Aid, can Surgery be applied right away after if facilities are available, or is there a waiting period before Surgery can be "applied"? And, if proper facilities are not available, is Natural Healing the only last option?

2. Animals and creatures don't have characteristics listed, so if there is no melee skill in their description for attacking wary Travellers is it rolled at Unskilled DM-3? What about Characteristic bonuses?

3. Since space combat is in 6 minute rounds, can each Traveller perform a Maneuver, an Attack, and take an Action, if they were able to? I don't think it's possible, but just asking anyways.

4. Looking at the Law Levels, say a planet is Law Level 5, does that mean that all the weapons and armor listed banned from 4 and below also apply?

Thank you my friends.
 
Fellow Travellers,

During our Discord pbp games, some questions pop up from time to time that we don't know the answer to, or need clarification for. Thank you for helping me with these questions. We are currently using the MgT 2nd Edition Core 2022 Update rules.

1. If a Traveller is injured with three Characteristics damaged and the Medic fails First Aid, can Surgery be applied right away after if facilities are available, or is there a waiting period before Surgery can be "applied"? And, if proper facilities are not available, is Natural Healing the only last option?

2. Animals and creatures don't have characteristics listed, so if there is no melee skill in their description for attacking wary Travellers is it rolled at Unskilled DM-3? What about Characteristic bonuses?

3. Since space combat is in 6 minute rounds, can each Traveller perform a Maneuver, an Attack, and take an Action, if they were able to? I don't think it's possible, but just asking anyways.

4. Looking at the Law Levels, say a planet is Law Level 5, does that mean that all the weapons and armor listed banned from 4 and below also apply?

Thank you my friends.
1. No waiting period needed before surgery can be used. Soon as possible is best. if no facilities, then natural healing (poss with Slow Drug) is the only option until at least you get one of the characteristics back, then you can more options.

2. I also wondered that at first. . I though it's odd a giant megaelephant would not get bonus damage for having strength 200. But what they have done is kind of represented that high strength by giving them having large damage dice. They would most likely use Melee(Natural) rather than unarmed. I assume all animals have 0 at least in this, but the book does not. It assumes only 2 skills, survival and athletics at 0. I am not sure how a giant slug has athletics but there ya go...

3. Yes, space combat is 6 mins per round as opposed to the normal on-the-ground 6 secs per round. So space combat is very abstracted, and that section of the book gives you options for crew. You can ,if you want, switch to 6 sec rounds when the fight somehow becomes up close and personal. even within a round of space combat. For example one of your crew is ambushed by a stowaway mid space combat , would entail you pausing the space combat for a while until the melee is resolved.

4 Yes.


As you will see these rules are not watertight and are more "sandbox" in nature, so look out for disagreements or alternative interpretations below. :p
 
Before answering, I'll just preface with the usual caveat: these are the ways I, personally, interpret the rules based on my reading of the book — but each Referee has the prerogative to do things differently if they wish!

With that out of the way:

  1. Yes, I would say that having failed the First Aid task, if the character is in facilities conductive to doing so, surgery could be attempted straight away (and honestly, quite probably should to prevent an Unscheduled Character Expiration). Page 82 says that First Aid '(...) must be initiated within one minute of the injury and can only be successfully applied once', so I'd say that in theory, if starting on the turn immediately after a character is injured, one could perform First Aid up to ten times, as long as none of the first nine attempts were successful. But after that, it's either surgery or natural healing, and depending on the nature of the wound, it's much more likely for a character to be further injured by the natural healing process than actually heal (which simulates things like blood loss and infections/secondary complications really well, in my opinion).

  2. I'd say yes, if animals do not have a particular skill, they would suffer from the -3 DM penalty. Do note, however, that Page 84 says 'unless otherwise stated, all animals have Athletics 0 and Survival 0' — this means that any attempt an animal makes to do some that requires Strength, Dexterity or Endurance would not suffer from the negative DM, as they are considered 'familiar' with all of the Athletics sub-skills. As for characteristics bonus, given animals do not have characteristics like characters do, they do not get any. That doesn't mean that you can't have an animal you design be built like a house of bricks though; instead of using a Characteristic modifier, you can instead 'include' it into a skill modifier. If you want your animal to be super-duper strong, consider giving it an Athletics (Strength) 5 skill. If you want it to be super nimble, give it an Athletics (Dexterity) 5 skill instead, and so on and so forth.

  3. In theory, yes, but I'd say that when space combat is taking place, you shouldn't be concerned with that minute a level of detail. Note how Pages 171 and 172 note the Actions that different characters aboard a ship can take, including Reassignment (Page 172): 'Any Traveller may elect to change their assigned duty instead of performing any other action. They do nothing else in this round but will have adopted their new duty in the next round'. This covers movements within a ship when operating within the Space Combat timescale.
    Now, if you are in a dogfight, however... given that uses the normal combat timescale of 6 seconds/turn, then I think you could use the normal Manoeuvre/Attack/Action scheme for players. Similar situation if the ship is being boarded and you wish to resolve it with actual, player-scale combat instead of the abstracted system in Page 175 — if you are, I wholeheartedly recommend you also check out the relevant chapter in High Guard 2022.

  4. Yes, that would be correct, but this is where you can call in your Referee Fiat™; the table is provided as a general guideline, and as long as you keep to that general idea/feel, you should be able to tweak it. Say, maybe a world has a Law Level of 8+, but the culture in that world greatly values artisan-crafted knives as status symbols... so if your character has a high enough SOC, they could walk around with their ceremonial knife in the open.
    The values are there to impose yardsticks and spur creativity; don't ever feel completely bound by them if your creativity sees a more interesting alternative, just remember to be consistent and fair.
I hope these have been helpful! And again, this is just how I, personally, would do it.
Have fun playing!
 
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1. Since most of the players aren't medical professionals in real life, it tends to default to the rules as written. I tend to think the patient has to be stabilized and the injuries diagnosed, and as I understand it, the Americans and Europeans have a different technique (or maybe tradition), with the European medics on the scene trying to stabilize, while the Americans rush the patient to the hospital.

If in doubt, freeze the patient.
 
#4 also only applies if weapons are actually among the things restricted by the government. What gets limited by the law level varies from place to place and, usually based on the government type, and they may care more about some of those things than others.

(Also, something being legal to own doesn't necessarily mean that it's legal to walk around with in a ready-to-use state.)
 
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