Terminator – Metal Dawn

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Introduction

“Keep down, you idiot!”

Sergeant Walker whispered as loudly as his experience would allow, but not loud enough to warn one of his platoon about the Hunter Killer. Rapid-fire beams of iridescent blue light leapt from the massive armoured machine and tore the man in two.

“Stupid… Stupid…” Walker cursed quietly to himself as the HK rolled on past his position. He prepared the explosive pack, turning to face his partner, Reece.

Reece was a young man, fresh out of the bunker, but seemed to have the balls for HK hunting. At times he would find Reece looking at a crumpled photograph of a woman. He would ask who it was, but the answer would usually be Reece smiling at him and him putting the photograph back in his breast pocket.

“Keep your head down, son, and don’t move until the HK is history.” Walker patted Reece on the back once before moving out of the ruined building and sprinted towards the rear of the HK.

Antipersonnel cannon twisted on their gimbals in response to the movement of the human soldier, but didn’t get time to fire as two bursts from Reece’s assault rifle ripped them from their mounts.

Walker threw the explosive cylinder, the fuse being dragged from it’s position as it flew towards the HK. He dived behind a wrecked car and clamped his hands over his ears as the powerful explosives ripped the HK into chunks of metal.

Walker rose to view his handiwork, only to die in a hail of laserfire as a T-101 Terminator Endo blasted him in the back.

Reece looked on from his hiding place as the Endo walked away from his position. A single tear dribbled down his cheek before it fell to the ground, the dirt already rust-red with the blood of those that had previously died fighting against the machines…

Basics

Most White Wolf supplements allow the player to run a character that was, once upon a time, human. Terminator Metal Dawn is different, as it gives the player an opportunity to play characters that have never been, nor attempt to be, overtly human.

The Terminator T-800 (called the T-101 in the films, but known as the T-800 in tyhe novelisations and graphic novels) is the first Terminator model that was/is indistinguishable from a human being – at least until the human tissue has been removed. Terminators are used to infiltrate and destroy human resistance units and the bunkers that they live in. The first Terminators had artificial skin and were quite easy to recognise, but the newer T-800 series use human skin tissue to increase their chances of successfully completing a search and destroy mission.

To combat this, the human resistance utilised the almost supernatural ability that dogs had for recognising Terminators, regardless of model. This has met with some success, but the failure rate is still disturbing.

In the world of the future, humans battle with Hunter Killers and the T-800 Endowarrior, which is basically the endoskeleton of a T-100 series Terminator without the skin, and full-time data communications capability between individual Endos and Skynet, the computer responsible for the whole damn mess.

A recent development in Skynet’s arsenal is the experimental T-1000 Terminator, made from quasi-liquid alloy, or liquid metal. The T-1000 is a powerful Terminator model with the ability to change forms into any simple object or person of roughly equal size. This enables it to take the form of any person it touches, and it can resemble such things as rocks, small trees and even part of a floor. It can create various cutting, bludgeoning and stabbing weapons from its very limbs, and is completely impervious to all forms of attacks except extreme cold or heat (when I say heat, we are talking about temperatures measured in the region of 1,500º).

Characters

Players can select to be one of two character types. They may either be members of the human resistance sent back to protect one of the many Sarah Conners that lived in Los Angeles in 1984, or can play T-101 Terminators that are either looking to kill Sarah Conners and/or John Conners, or possibly another T-101 sent back to protect them.

Human Characters

Players who are brave or prefer the comparitive roleplaying safety of a human character can choose to be a member of the human resistance. Born and raised in the world after Skynet burned the majority of life from the face of the planet, You are a soldier first and foremost, and a human being second. You have been sent back to find and protect a Sarah Conner from the possibility of a Terminator being sent to kill her and her son John.

Being chosen from the best that humanity has left to offer, player characters get 6/5/4 dots to share between their attributes, and 13/9/5 dots for their abilities. They also gain extra training in the form of one free dot on every combat skill on the sheet, including Awareness, plus the extra Skill of Demolitions. They also get two dots in the Other Trait of Weaponsmith, enabling them to repair, modify and even make firearms and ammunition.

Terminators

Player characters who are T-101 Terminators gain the following attributes. These are preset, and cannot be altered either during character generation or through experience. The technology of the T-101 is so advanced as to be beyond anything other than the most simple repairs.

Terminator T-101

Strength 7 Charisma 1 Perception 7
Dexterity 5 Manipulation 2 Intelligence 4
Stamina 9 Appearance 3 Wits 3

The player then has a whole range of abilities as shown below:

Talents: Alertness 5, Athletics 6, Brawl 5, Dodge 1, Impersonate 7, Intimidation 4, Leadership 1, Streetwise 2.

Skills: Drive 5, Firearms 6, Melee 5, Repair 4, Security 2, Stealth 2, Survival 2, Weaponsmith 4.

Knowledge: Bureaucracy 1, Computer 4, History 5*, Investigation 3, Linguistics 9*, Medicine 5*, Terminator Systems 6*.

Unless the Terminator can get some outside help – which is pretty unlikely if it’s mission is to kill Sarah or John Conner – it cannot learn new skills or human behaviour. To enable it to do so, the terminator must have a small switch flipped over, which is situated in the skull, underneath the Terminator’s CPU. While the CPU is removed, the Terminator is like any other computerised doohickey without power – totally useless and completely powerless.

Terminators do not get any Backgrounds.

Extra Stuff

All Terminator T-800s get the following extra stuff:-

  1. Automatic 8 successes against soaking normal forms of damage excluding extreme heat (1500º+, so Lure of Flames doesn’t count…). Only 4 points of aggravated damage can be soaked. Electrical attacks are soaked with the T-800’s Stamina.
  2. As a cybernetic organism, a T-800 is totally immune to all lower forms of mind control, until the learning system is activated. Higher mental powers (levels 6+) will have some effect on Terminators, although this is up to the storyteller. As a guide, the higher the power, the more effective it is.
  3. As a cybernetic organism, the Garou Ragabash gift Gremlins (Lvl 3), and the Glass Walker gifts Control Complex Machines (Lvl 3) and Summon Net-Spider (Lvl 5) can be a Terminator’s nemesis, although Gremlins requires not 5 but 8 successes to permanently deactivate a Terminator, due to the fact that the “spirit” of a T-800 is it’s programming. The difficulty of Control Complex Machines is 9, and the Garou requires 3 successes to do anything more than bring a T-800 to a stop. Summon Net-Spider will work according to the Garou rulebook, a T-800 being a powerful temporary ally for a Werewolf.
  4. Terminators are fitted with a whole host of extra sensors and stuff, and gain -2 to all perception difficulties.
  5. Being devoid of a soul, Terminators do not have virtues or Willpower. They do not hesitate in their mission, and are immune to all forms of fear effects, such as the Delirium.
Location 0 0 0 0 -1 -2 -3 X
Head o o o o o o o o
Left Shoulder   o o o o o o o
Right Shoulder   o o o o o o o
Left Upper Arm     o o o o o o
Left Elbow       o o o o o
Left Lower Arm     o o o o o o
Left Hand         o o o o
Right Upper Arm     o o o o o o
Right Elbow       o o o o o
Right Lower Arm     o o o o o o
Right Hand         o o o o
Main Body o o o o o o o o
Left Hip   o o o o o o o
Left Thigh     o o o o o o
Left Knee       o o o o o
Left Leg     o o o o o o
Left Foot       o o o o o
Right Hip   o o o o o o o
Right Thigh     o o o o o o
Right Knee       o o o o o
Right Leg     o o o o o o
Right Foot       o o o o o

Unliked humans, Terminators do not have a wound status as such. Instead, each part of their body has it’s own damage record:-

When a location takes enough damage to give penalties, those penalties only apply to skills that require those damaged locations. If at any time a body part is damaged enough to bring the location to the “X” level, then that location is destroyed. If the head is destroyed, the Terminator is effectively “killed”. If the Body is destroyed, the terminator’s power supply is shattered beyond repair, and the Terminator will shutdown until it’s internal backup supply (located in the head) can come online (typically taking between 1d10 minutes. This power supply will last about two hours, which is usually enough time for the T-800 to find an alternative means of power, even if it requires plugging into the mains until it can repair the primary supply.

Note: A Terminator T-800 can effectively last 120 years on its own internal supply, but this doesn’t take into account the use of external and/or alternative power sources.

Terminator “Skin”

A T-800 cannot heal damage done to it. An excessive amount of bullet and knife wounds can overload the human tissues ability to repair itself, which then leaves the Terminator in the position of being easy to spot. Every attack on a Terminator will deliver 1 wound to the human tissue. Each wound can be healed separately in one week (if a T-101 is shot four times, this equals 4 wounds, but these are all healed within the same week as they occurred at the same time). In the event that the number of wounds exceeds 40, the human tissue will stop healing for an amount of time equal to one week for each wound over 40. In the event of the number of wounds exceeding 40, the human tissue will die. From then on the Terminator will slowly start to resemble a walking corpse until, in 1 months time, the last of the skin tissue slurries off to reveal the naked T-101 Endoskeleton underneath. First aid can help repair minor damage, reducing the healing rate to to 1 wound per two days. Major damage (approaching 80 wounds) requires either a Terminator Human Tissue Vat or extensive medical attention (about 2 months of grafts and tissue replacement).

Repairs to the Endoskeleton require the Terminator find somewhere to initiate repairs.

Repairs

A T-800 isn’t something that can get replacement parts in the local garage or motor-shop. It’s a highly advanced piece of cybernetic hardware with a human tissue sheath over the top.

To repair such a device requires the full knowledge of advanced robotics and especially the systems of a Terminator Endo. Luckily, Skynet sees fit to incude this knowledge in a Terminator’s programming.

All Terminator repairs begin at difficulty 4. Each boxed filled in a location increases the difficulty by one. Repairs to the head are at +1 difficulty due to the awkwardness of the repairs. If the Terminator is one of a pair, they will work on each other, negating this penalty.

Each success will allow the player to rub-out one box in the location being repaired. If the player rolls no successes, the Terminator will require more tools to make that particular repair. A botched result will mean that the damage is so serious that it cannot be repaired with the tools of the 20th century, making it permanent.

To make repairs, the T-101 must cut through the human tissue that it is covered with. It will do a number of wounds equal to 3, plus the number of boxes filled in for that location, plus the value of the damage penalty if applicable. This counts as one wound, and will therefore require up to several weeks to heal.

Eg: The Terminator returns to it’s apartment, and begins repairs after it’s meeting with Reece. It cuts open it’s right arm and makes some repairs to the finger actuators. The damage done to the arm was two boxes, requiring a difficulty 6 repair roll using Dexterity + Terminator Systems. As it is a non-stress situation, the referee rules that the T-101 succeeds in repairing the damage. The Terminator was forced to do 4 wounds worth of damage to the arm’s skin, which will heal in about 4 weeks.

Personality

Terminators are inhuman cybernetic organisms. They can seen cold even next to an inhuman Sabbat pack member.

To simulate this cold and inhuman facet of a Terminator, they get the attribute of Personality instead of Humanity. All Terminator characters begin with a Personality of zero.

Personality is a measure of how human the T-800 comes across to “normal” flesh-and-blood people (or wraiths, for that matter). The Terminator may not attempt any social interaction rolls requiring charm, charisma, finess or generally being human with more dice than their current Personality level.

Experience

Human characters gain and spend experience just like any other White Wolf character, but Terminators work in a different way. Firstly, unless the Terminator has had the self-learning system switched on in their head, they do not earn any experience whatsoever, apart from the minimum 1 point per session. This can only be spent on increasing the Terminator’s Knowledge abilities, and even then is limited to Computer, Linguistics, and Science.

If the Terminator is lucky enough to have the self-learning system switched on, they earn experience just like a normal human being, and should use the table below:-

Trait Cost
Current Talent 3x current rating
Current Skill 2x current rating
Current Knowledge 1x current rating
New Ability 5
Personality 1 10
Personality 2+ 5x current rating

Maximum ratings in all Knowledge abilities is 9. All other abilities can be increased to 7.

End Note

Terminators are very powerful “creatures”, especially compared to normal mortals. They’re tough, fast, strong, and virtually indestructible. Storytellers who worry about game balance should think twice before allowing a player to bring a Terminator into the chronicle. as they can easily mop up a whole pack of Sabbat, and can stand toe-to-toe with a Crinos-form Garou.

As an antagonist, the Terminator is a nightmare, but is not completely unstoppable. Yes, it’s effectively bullet and blade-proof, but a few dots in Potence or the expedient use of Rage can do some serious damage to a T-800.

Just be thankful that it’s not a T-1000… (coming soon to a timeline near you!!!)