I gotcha.

From the Book:

JURY RIGGED

Activation: Passive

Ranked: Yes

Trees: Gadgeteer, Outlaw Tech

The character chooses one personal weapon or piece of armor per rank of Jury Rigged. He may increase the damage of the weapon by one; decrease the Advantage cost on its Critical, or any single other effect by one to a minimum of one; or increase armor's ranged or melee defense by one. Alternatively, he can decrease the encumbrance of the item by two to a minimum of one. The bonus only applies so long as the character is using the item. If the item is ever lost or destroyed, the character may apply Jury Rigged to a new personal weapon or piece of armor.

So - you got some of what you wanted, but not other things.

Still very ott, this on a vibro sword or blaster rifle.. makes them VERY lethal

Still very ott, this on a vibro sword or blaster rifle.. makes them VERY lethal

It does. While an outlaw tech isn't going to be the best combatant, necessarily (mitigating this somewhat), it's still available to Gadgeteer Bounty Hunters, who are much better combatants. The real clincher, though is that no one but YOU (who did the jury rigging) gets the benefit.

Also, the Gadgeteer has this listed as a 4th Tier (20 XP) talent, that will require a minimum of 50 XP worth of talents to get to it on the tree, assuming you get there as fast as you can. The real question is whether this level of badassery is balanced at a 70 XP cost.

The Outlaw Tech also has this as a 4th tier talent, twice on his tree. While it's a bit easier to get to it (only 30 XP of prereqs), it's still down there a good ways, and will have a 50 XP cost to nab it. [shrug]

Thank you for the swift reply, GM Chris.

I need to fish around to see what other lingering issues the community identified when beta came to a close, and see which ones were addressed in the CR. I'm encouraged that Jury Rigged now specifies what happens when the item is lost or destroyed, though I fear a galaxy ful of auto-firing bounty hunters is on the horizon

Also, the Gadgeteer has this listed as a 4th Tier (20 XP) talent, that will require a minimum of 50 XP worth of talents to get to it on the tree, assuming you get there as fast as you can. The real question is whether this level of badassery is balanced at a 70 XP cost.

Also listed at a 10pt second tier talent for a Gadgeteer.. thats no change from Beta.. thats only an investment of 15exp..

Both Bounty Hunters in the game I ran over the weekend chose this talent and commented on its cheapness

Assuming word spreads about this, how expensive is it for a character from a different class to grab the 2nd tier version? Is it still 20xp to buy a spec tree from another class? Would that make it 35?

In other news, I think I have discovered my campaign's first house rule.

Also listed at a 10pt second tier talent for a Gadgeteer.. thats no change from Beta.. thats only an investment of 15exp..

Both Bounty Hunters in the game I ran over the weekend chose this talent and commented on its cheapness

WHIFF... TOTALLY missed that... Thank you, Nobble.

Assuming word spreads about this, how expensive is it for a character from a different class to grab the 2nd tier version? Is it still 20xp to buy a spec tree from another class? Would that make it 35?

In other news, I think I have discovered my campaign's first house rule.

Buying into a new career specialization costs 10x the total number of specializations that would bring you to. So your second in-career spec would cost you 20 to access it. (Buying into a non-career specialization is the same cost +10.)

So a Bounty Hunter (Assassin) with access to Melee as a class skill (and bent on becoming a vibro-sword master) could buy into Gadgeteer, then buy into Jury Rigged for a total of 35 XP. Wooooof.

Even worse would be a Hired Gun (Marauder) who buys into Gadgeteer and Jury Rigged for 45 XP. That's, like... 3 sessions of good XP. Yikes.

I don't see the problem with this. Picking the Talent for 35 XP only lets you change one property of one item in your possession and only for yourself. Hand that rifle off to another character and it loses the change. Big deal. I don't see why players should be "punished" for this.

I don't see the problem with this. Picking the Talent for 35 XP only lets you change one property of one item in your possession and only for yourself. Hand that rifle off to another character and it loses the change. Big deal. I don't see why players should be "punished" for this.

I don't think players should be punished - and I'm not sure if it's imbalanced. Yet.

But the talent can be used to reduce the Advantage needed to activate a special weapon quality or critical rating. Consider that vibro-weapon only have a Critical rating of 2 as they are... so a Jury Rigged Vibro-weapon can Crit off of a single advantage.

For a Melee-focused character (such as a Marauder), who will almost always roll an advantage when they hit - it has the potential for crazy Criticals.

I'm not sure if that's a bad thing (unless I decide to kit out an NPC Nemesis in this fashion), but it definitely changes things up.

A heavy blaster rifle is already nasty enough as it is, at least in the last update to the beta. Reducing the autofire activation cost to 1 through Jury-rig on it makes it an insanely good weapon, especially if you manage to make the rifle Superior as well.

So they'll be hacking down minions in one shot? Nice, send moar minions! I can see some nice after action scenes to describe in my future.

My players so far seem to favor gonzo action as much as comedic failure, so this talent sounds ripe for abuse.

If they're any good at shooting, they may well be hacking down Rivals and Nemeses in one shot with those two upgrades combined.

If they're any good at shooting, they may well be hacking down Rivals and Nemeses in one shot with those two upgrades combined.

And they paid to get that, so why not. They paid in XP to jury-rig their gear and to get better weapons (which might draw the attention of others just wanting to upgrade for themselves).

15 XP and 5000 credits to become an obscene death-engine capable of pumping out 36 damage on what might reasonably be called a very modest roll (1 Success, 2 Advantage) does not seem particularly balanced to me. At best, it trivializes combat encounters. At worst, it encourages the GM to escalate combat by either concentrating on making NPCs capable of surviving the chain-gun of doom or by responding in kind and making every combat encounter a game of rocket tag.

Would it be out of the question to impose the potential for critical failure on a jury-rigged item?

Something like:

2 - 3 Threat - Equipment is disabled until time can be spent to repair the item. (1 hour?)

4 Threat or 1 Despair - Item is destroyed beyond repair, must be replaced at full cost.

Also, just add a downtime requirement, so that they can't just pick up any old blaster and link their jury-rigging talent to it. I noticed the wording doesn't specify the time it takes to actually jury-rig the item.

Hell, if you are really nasty, a despair could mean it explodes in the hands of the user, but that seems a tad harsh.

In my admittedly limited experience with the game, a heavy blaster rifle triggering auto-fire with a single advantage (because it was jury rigged) is simply the best weapon in the game,and well worth blowing a few sessions of xp to ****** up the Jury Rigged talent from the Gadgeteer tree. You make that investment early on and you're a killing machine for the rest o the campaign.

For my part, I think the talent is still plenty good without the reduction in special quality activation. That's the part I think I'll house rule. I'm open to ideas for alternatives if anyone wants to propose one. Maybe that weapon instead ignores 1 Threat symbol each time it attacks or some such.

Would it be out of the question to impose the potential for critical failure on a jury-rigged item?

Something like:

2 - 3 Threat - Equipment is disabled until time can be spent to repair the item. (1 hour?)

4 Threat or 1 Despair - Item is destroyed beyond repair, must be replaced at full cost.

Also, just add a downtime requirement, so that they can't just pick up any old blaster and link their jury-rigging talent to it. I noticed the wording doesn't specify the time it takes to actually jury-rig the item.

Hell, if you are really nasty, a despair could mean it explodes in the hands of the user, but that seems a tad harsh.

I love this idea... because it's jury-rigged it's more prone to break or have some other problem. Great suggestion.

Would it be out of the question to impose the potential for critical failure on a jury-rigged item?

Great idea, that's exactly what I'd do.

I'm with GM Chris in that I'm not convinced that Jury-Rigged is quite as broken as the OP is inclined to believe.

The heavy blaster rifle is pretty boss, but it's also expensive (you're required to take +10 Obligation if you want a starting PC to have anything more than just the rifle), it's buiky (6 Encumbrance eats up the majority of character's Encumbrance value), as the Cumbersome trait (so you need to be fairly buff to wield this thing without penalty or need to spend some additional money for a weapon sling). There's also the matter of the PC walking down the street with an assault rifle strapped to their back. Try doing that with an M-16 in today's world and you can expect the police to want to have a few choice words with you along with a visit to the local lock-up.

There's still the matter of auto-fire adding an extra difficulty die to the attack roll, which makes you less likely to generate the overabundance of Advantages needed to trigger auto-fire quite as many times as others think.

But if the OP or anyone else acting as the GM for their group feels that being able to reduce the Advantage cost of a weapon's quality is too good, then simply house-rule it for you game that Jury-Rigged either doesn't offer a cost reduction on weapon qualities, or that it can't be applied to auto-fire at all.

After mulling this over a bit, I'm thinking I'll include a house rule that would add the following paragraph to the end of the Jury Rigged Talent description:

"Jury-rigging a weapon carries an inherent risk because the boosted power output often comes at the expense of safety features like power regulators and cooling systems. As a result, such weapons tend to be more prone to malfunction. When an attack made with a jury-rigged weapon results in [Threat] [Threat], the weapon has malfunctioned and becomes unusable for the remainder of the combat unless it is repaired. Repairing a jury-rigged weapon that has malfunctioned is an action that requires an Average Mechanics check to succeed."

After mulling this over a bit, I'm thinking I'll include a house rule that would add the following paragraph to the end of the Jury Rigged Talent description:

You could also use the equipment damage rules almost as is. The rules were in the beta book. Not sure if they're still in the core book.

If I remember correctly, there were three levels of damage to an item, each adding a setback dice when using the item. The level of damage dictates to the difficulty of the repair check. Each level of damage could be imposed when rolling a despair. You could lower that to 2 threats as above for jury rigged. I'll have to read it again to make sure I'm not sharing bull.

Certainly. I'll have to check those rules out. Maybe that's a more elegant solution.

Found the rule snippet in the beta. Can'T confirm yet if it's in the finalbook.

Weapon Maintenance, page 108

I was a little off regarding the penalties of damaged weapon :

Invariably, weapons start to wear down. Rolling "Despair" may indicate a weapon has malfunctioned…

DAMAGE         REPAIR DIFFICULTY    PENALTY FOR USE

Minor          Easy                 1 additional setback dice
Moderate       Average              1 additional difficulty dice
Major          Hard                 Unusable   

* Repairing a weapon requires adequate time and tools, generally one to two hours per difficulty level. If a character attempts repairs in less time, increase the difficulty one step. Likewise if the character lacks proper tools, increase the difficulty one step. (Cumulative)

Speaking of that, has anyone else considered letting people use items with Major damage, but have them add a Challenge dice to the roll? If an item breaks beyond the Major slot, it is irrevocably destroyed as far as I know. Not letting them use it at Major damage makes that permanent item destruction threat somewhat moot.

Personally, I think I'd let them use it and just add the Challenge dice to the check. That way, it increases the chance that the weapon can break if they REALLY need to use that item to get out of a jam.