Written by Alex Boucher, December 1999.

Since the great catastrophe, the humanity has been left in a complete anarchy. Global superpowers now battling each other's again, not for racial, religious or territorial aspects but for the control of the powerful Matrix System that may enable them one day to create the ultimate Utopian nation…

Every time your character accomplish quests, defeat foes in combat, learns valuable information, train his skills, work and each time you role play well, your DM will award you Experience points (XP) for theses accomplishments, depending on the difficulty your encounter. After a while your character will grow more experienced, confidant, skilled. This expertise is listed in Levels. A character of Lv 1 to 5 is considered has a newbie, an inexperimented adventurer. From Lv 6 to 10 your character would be considered has experienced and good at his job, while a character of Lv 11 to 15 would be a pro, a veteran and finally higher than 15 would be a best of the best…

Each time your earn your way to a Level of experience, you will gain skill points. Those points are what you use to upgrade your skills. Skills are rated from 1 to 25. Skills of 1 to 5 are mediocre and untrained. From 6 to 10 are novice and still not very good. Reaching 11 to 15 your character would be considered has a professional; not a pro but he'll be able to get the job done. Veterans and hotshots are in the 16 to 20 range while Elites are from 21 to 24. A legendary skilled character would have a rating of 25. When your gain skill points you may want to spend them to upgrade your skills. Upgrading a skill by 1 point cost 1 skill point if it's in the Untrained, novice or professional range. If your want to step in the veteran range it will cost you 2 skill points for every upgrade of 1 point. Climbing into the Elite will cost 3 points per upgrade and finally getting the legendary 25 will cost 5 points. Each time you gain a level you are awarded (Int / 2) +1 skill points

Each time you gain 3 Level of experience, Lv 3, 6, 9, 12, 15… etc… You'll be awarded a perk. A perk is a special ability that will enhance some of your skills. For example: the perk thief would give you a skill bonus in pickpocket and lock pick while the perk sharp shooter would give you a bonus to hit your target if you are using a small arm. Anyway here's the chart of experience points.

  Optional traits are facultative details that give your character a more personal touch. They boost some stats and skills but they lower some others. So you see, optional traits are neutral. You may chose 2 optional traits if you want 1 or even none. Choosing one or two will cost you no skill point or anything.

  Before leaving the section about all surrounding the character and his statistics, I have to explain how to create a character.

The first step his to define his Attributes. Attributes are the physical and mental capacities of your character. Theses will be extremely difficult to change so think much before confirming your Attributes scores. All attributes starts at 5, the average, and when you are creating a character you will be awarded 6 Attribute points that you will put in your Attribute, where ever you want. You may wish to lower one Attribute below 5, to receive additional points to put somewhere else. This is an example: Bob his creating his character. His stats are theses: Str 5, End 4, Agi 4, Per 7, Int 8, Wil 6, Cha 8, Lck 4. When your Attributes are confirmed you have to calculate your Secondary traits with the simple formulas listed before.

The second part his to select your skills. First you must select up to 3 skills in which your character will be trained. Each skill that you chose will receive a +3 bonus at the start. After you have selected those tag skills; you'll able to select 4 secondary skills. It's the same procedure has for the tag skills selection except for the fact that every time you select a skills has a secondary, you'll receive a +1 bonus on that skill at the start.

After you have selected all of your Attributes and skills, the last part will be to select your optional traits, if any…

To determine who will act first, every fighter rolls 1d6 and adds the current number to his/her Combat sense score. Then the one with the strongest Combat sense act first. If some of the fighters are equal in combat sense the one with the best Perception will then act first. If the Agility of the fighters is equal, then the one with the best Agility will act first.

After the combat order has been determined the fighters enter the action phase, where they spend their round to move and then to perform specific actions like firing a weapon, reloading a magazine, use a stimpak… etc… Only some specific actions will take more than 1 round to perform. It will be noted later on.

Except for the actions of attacking, the other action does not really require much explanation. When performing an attack against an opponent, you must first perform a check to see if you successfully hit that target. To do the check you must roll 1d20 and if the roll is lower or equal than the attacker's chance to hit, a hit has occurred. This is the equation when performing and unarmed attack or a Melee attack: Chance to hit target = Skill - AC of target + Attack modifiers. If performing a ranged attack the equation gets more complex but still, it more fun to blow someone's whole upper body instead of only ripping it open. So here's the equation: Chance to hit target = Skill - AC of target + range modifiers + All movements modifiers + Attack modifiers. If the target is attacked from his/her rear, do not count his/her Agility in the AC rating. If the target is attacked on his/her flank, count half his Agility in the AC rating.

* Does actually applies to every action perform, not only combat.
** If the enemy comes in point blank range treat stress level has one step lower has natural instincts kicks in.

If the fighter did not move he may attempt a second action after everybody else has made their action, but burst fire is not included if it goes beyond the maximum rate of fire per round. Example: Bob stay stationary this round and fire a burst of 5 rounds with his SubMachineGun at a thug. Since he was stationary he can fire again. A common SubMachineGun can fire up to 20 rounds of ammunition per round so this means that for his second action he could fire 15 rounds if he would like.

All firearms have a ROF (Rate of Fire) rating. ROF of 1 means that this weapon cannot fire more than 1 round per shot while a firearm with a ROF rating of 15 would mean that it could fire up to 15 rounds of ammunition per combat round. The calculations of the modifiers are rather simple. For each 5 rounds fired at the target you'll receive a bonus of +1 on the accuracy of the weapon, easily causing more critical hit with automatic weapons and for every margin of success the target will take (ROF/10) extra points of damage. By this great factor of accuracy delivered by the amount of rounds fired at the target, burst weapons are among the most deadly but it's impossible to aim a specific body part while using burst fire.

 When a successful hit occur you must check how hard you hit your target. To determine this you must calculate the margin of success by this equation: Chance to hit - current attack roll. If the margin of success was very high a critical hit may occur. In melee combat it's easier to inflict a critical wound so a margin of success of 5 and higher is all that is required to inflict that critical hit, while in ranged combat you need an 8. To calculate the damage you simply roll de damage of the weapon and then subtract the listed amount of point accordingly to the type of attack and the armor the target is wearing. This damage amount is then deduced from the target's hit points. If a critical his occur double damage his received.

When tossing a grenade, you can still hurt your target even if there was a margin of failure. For each margin of failure, the attacker has missed his target by 1 meter. So if the target is still in the grenade's radius he will still receive half of the damage.

Bob and George are fighting in a dark alley. They roll their combat sense. Bob rolls a 3 and adds it to his skill and gets a 15 while George rolls a 5, but since he had to draw his weapon (-3), he gets a total of 13. Bob wins the initiative and decides to walk toward George who decides to stay stationary.

Bob fires at his opponent with his 9mm Pistol. His chances to hit George are those: Small Arms skill (13) -2 (walking), -2 (Target his in Medium Range of his pistol), +0 (George is statuary), -3 (George's AC) and -2 (dim light) = 4. Bob only has 4 chances on 20 to hit his opponent, but he decides after all to still try to shoot. He rolls a 7 on his attack roll, good but not good enough, he misses by a margin of failure of 3.

It's now George's turn and after he has draw his Laser Riffle he open fire on Bob. His chances to hit Bob are: Small Arms skill (18), +0 (stationary), -1 (Bob is walking), -2 (Bob's AC), +0 (Short Range), -2 (dim light) = 13. He rolls a 4 on his attack roll, creating a critical hit because the margin of success was bigger than 8. George calculates the damage inflicted. A common Laser Riffle inflicts (2d8+15) points of damage. He rolls a 7 and a 4 and adds 15, totaling 26 but since it's a critical hit it's now 52 points of damage. Since Bob was not wearing any armor no points are reduced from the damage amount. So after all the calculations, 52 points are reduced from the current Bob's average 30 hit points, totaling a now -22 Hit points… Bob has been cut in half by the accurate laser beam of George's Laser Riffle. Sorry Bob…

If a character suffer injuries in combat or by other means his wounds may degenerate or naturally heal depending on his current state.

If the character is in "Ok" condition, he will naturally heal 1 HP per 6 hours. If in the state "Slightly Wounded", that character's wound will take more time to heal, at a rate of 1 HP per every 12 hours. If in the state of "Seriously wounded", the wounds will stay stationary, not degenerating or healing if the wounded character has received First Aids. Else he will gradually lose 1 HP every 6 hours. Thus if the character is unfortunate enough to fall in the "Mortally wounded" state, he will lose 1 HP every 2 hours unless a successful First Aids skill test will slow the degeneration to 1 HP every 6 hours.

If the wounded character is travelling the wounds will take twice the time required to heal than usual and they will degenerate at double speed. Under very stressful circumstances like travelling and fighting, wounds will not heal but degenerate 3 times faster. If the wounded character is under medical attention, his wounds are automatically considered has stabilized and he will regain 1 HP per 4 hours, until fully recovered.

If a critical hit occurred on a specific location, no double damage will be received but that location will be beyond use. Like a critical hit to the left leg wound result in a inability for the character to use this leg. That would be a crippled leg and a loss of half his movement rate. Fortunately modern medicine can make miracles… well… they can't heal a critical hit to the head but they can handle pretty much every wounds now… at a cost… Doh! Anyway finally, when receiving a critical hit to a specific location, the character must roll a successful System shock roll and if they fail that roll, the poor unfortunate person will receive a permanent injury. And it's up to your DM to determine that permanent injury considering the type of damage you received; normal, laser, fire, plasma, or explosion.

Falls are one of the few hazards possible in a role-playing game. I made the falling damage rule very simple. For every meters fallen the character will receive 1d6 points of damage for the first 5 meters, then after those 5 first meters it will become 1d8 for the next meters. The first meter of fall his always ignored. Unfortunately, body armor does not cut some of the damage, only softened floor like sand and water may halve the damage but hard surfaces like asphalt will double it. For example, the poor Bob, miraculously resurrected from the dead, takes a fall of 8 meters. The DM rolls 4 times 1d6 and 3 times 1d8. The results are: 5, 1, 6, 2, 5, 8, 7, and 1 totaling 35 points of damage… SPLAT!

Drugs are one common thing in the world of Cybernetic Soldier. Some boost your physical prowess and other simply send you flying in another strange and wonderful world. One thing all drugs have in common his addictiveness. I am not going to list all existing drugs but they all have a potency rating. To check if a character that just consumed a drug will stay addicted, he must roll a successful System Shock test minus on his score the potency of the drug. If the roll his failed that character his now dependant on that drug and will receive stats penalties if his body his lacking of this specific drug. The effects of the drugs and the dependence penalties are all up to the DM but here's some drugs to give you some ideas.
 

When your character his overloaded with stuff he his carrying he will start to suffer from encumbrance. Encumbrance his reflected by penalties in Movement Range, Armor Class and Attack accuracy.

WA: Weight Allowance rating
MP: Maximum Press rating

Unfortunately for the characters, this section will only be available to the game masters due to the fact that people in the apocalyptic world of Cybernetic Soldier are pretty ignorant of the values and availability of all equipment. Thus it will be an exciting experience for the players to discover all new sorts of items and weapons they did not even tough that existed.

I will not list everything that exists in the world of Cybernetic Soldier but I will give a general idea of what kind of technology is available in my world, in the early 2060. Handguns, riffles, automatic firearms, energy weapons, chainguns, rocket launchers and other heavy weapons, metallic armors, bullet proof vests, full combat suits, cybernetic implants, cyborgs, clones, mutants, teleportation pods, personal cloaking devices, cyborg combat armors, cyberspace (matrix), and much much more are all available depending on where you look.

   Cybernetic Soldier