Equipment Modifiers reflect the reality that "The quality of your equipment modifies your skill rolls for tasks that normally require equipment"
| Equipment | Modifier | Description |
|---|---|---|
| None | -10 | Sometimes a character needs to fix something, but all they've got is a prayer. Maybe they just smack the side of the machine and it works. |
| Improvised | -5 | A clever adventurer sometimes needs to make do with whatever they've got around. Perhaps they succeed, but with some important side effects--the radio keeps cutting out, or a poor patch job on a wound makes acrobatics more difficult. |
| Basic | 0 | Not much to say here. This is what lots of professionals have. |
| Good | +1 | From here, tools and equipment becomes more reliable, more streamlined, more robust. |
| Fine | +2 | This level of tools is for dire situations. The crash kit, the van-portable workshop, the holdout steamer trunk. This equipment might come into play in the third act of a story, when the adventurers have just discovered what their Big Bad's weakness is, and they need to build some special item to defeat them. |
| Best Possible | +2 to +6[1] | Equipment this good tends to be immobile, so it tends to be part of a setpiece--a hospital wing, a computer mainframe, an extensive machining workshop, a library of arcane lore, etcetera. |
| Condition | Modifier | Description |
| Missing Items | -1 | Missing items may have simple penalties to effective skill, although it may be more exciting to make a side quest for the key missing item. Antivenom, proprietary security codes, a titanium diboride drill bit, a monkey skull. Getting these items may be a quest of their own--and time should be short. |
| Damaged Equipment | -1 to -3 | A hero may deal with damaged equipment as well--perhaps that crash kit was damaged in a crash. In this case, you can use the Missing Items method above. For cinematic gadgeteers, damaged equipment can be brought into working order with a few tricks--but will likely fall apart right afterward. For a long-term fix, you might need a whole other bit of equipment to fix this one![2] |
Specialized Equipment[]
"When all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail." -- The Law of the Instrument[3]
Some equipment may be specialized giving a bonus in one area at the cost of efficiency in other related areas.
Computer Programming[]
Even through they are not hardware, but software, the programming tool and language one uses for computer programming could be considered an "equipment modifier". In the past there was a trade off between easy to use and speed. For example assembly was far faster than compiled code back in the 1980s but 2020 computers are so fast that next to no one writes in assembly anymore.
Reference[]
- Basic Set, p.345