Table C.8 and a few other questions.

[Spectre]

Hi. I just got hold of Seven13:CoE; so far, I'm pretty impressed with what I see. It's a beautiful book with a rather interesting setting.

I'll probably write a review of it; it was terribly hard to get any details about the game, and I intend to change that. Such a pretty book deserves a bit more attention.

While browsing the book, I came across a few things that gave me trouble.
On page 288, under Street Armor, there is a reference to a Table C.8, which doesn't seem to appear anywhere in the book. Could you reproduce the contents of this table for me?

Also, I'm unsure how layering armour works. Assuming I have a soft leather armour (a heavy leather coat or jacket) and wear a heavy kevlar vest beneath that, would that result in an armor of 3 (2 for the leather +1 for the Kevlar layer) or of 4 (3 for the kevlar +1 for the leather layer)?

Finally, is there any way of obtaining a PDF of the book or the appendix? I think this part would make a great handout to the players, as it sums up the system quite nicely and contains all the tables and formulas needed for referencing.

-Spectre

[Christopher Ashe]

To be honest man, I'm still finding typos in the book, honestly it's rather infuriating, but I suppose with a first edition I have to deal with it. What you have with old table C-8 is one that I never designed. The appendices were written in a frantic haze and received the least consideration and revision. C-8, as far as I can dig up with a search of the company files, doesn't actually exist. I think my intention was to rewrite part of that and talk more about working based on materials given from armor, but I will make a point to start working that table up for you, gods know I could use a copy of it.

As for your leather jacket with kevlar question, basically you work from the highest form of armor you have and layer (system-wise) from there. I just read that section of the book and believe I did a terrible job explaining this, so I'll try again.

In this example, your most protective armor is kevlar, which is ballistic so you might want some good leather to absorb a bit more shock, or you just don't want the average passerby noticing that you're wearing a vest (Ignore this if your campaign is set in LA or Dallas). You would take your highest class (in this case class 3 for heavy kevlar) and subtract the lowest class to find the difference (here the leather gives you class 2, a difference of 1). Modifiers to total armor class, by resulting difference, are as follows:

1-2 +1
3-4 +2
5+ +0 (No real benefit here)

Ergo, if you built some street armor out of light leather scraps (2) and riveted some plates (class 5) on it (we'll assume you did a good job and your GM doesnt penalize you for poor construction), you would have a difference of 3 and wind up with +2, or class 7 armor.

You know, looking at that, I think I must have been up too many hours when I wrote that system. You might want to make some house rules on that one for now while I find some time to rewrite it ;). I've been working on advanced rules anyhow, I might as well add that to the list.

As for the PDF version of the appendices and whatnot, I'm actually considering doing a PDF version of the game, as that's all the rage these days, but I've considered PDF'ing C and D at least for a while now using the cleaner look I've been working with for the advanced rules so that they print off well for handouts. There are a lot of projects I run at any given moment not to mention my day job, but knowing that someone is looking for it really makes me want to work on it more, so perhaps this week I'll hop to it on some of these things. I'll keep you updated on what I come up with.

- Ashe

[Spectre]

Thanks for the quick response.
I ran a few test fights the other day in order to get a grip on the system. As a result, I'm back with another couple of questions.

1) Unarmed Combat and Armour
Am I right in assuming that unarmed attacks are treated as a Class 1 weapon? (Which, in turn, would render an armoured opponent pretty much immune to melee attacks, unless they are directed at chinks in his armour or unarmoured body parts?)

2) Range
I can't seem to find any range modifiers in the combat sections. Not that I miss those fiddly bits, but I wonder if this was done on purpose? (Nice automatic fire rules by the way, I like those. Oh, and firearms are truly nasty under Seven13.)

3) Shields
There seem to be no stats for an Ora Shield Glove in the book; the description mentions it as similar to a medium shield (which is also nowhere to be found).
There is an Ora Glove in the Demo Character Pack. Is this a "standard" Ora, or are there variances in class and size?
And while we're at shield rules, those are a bit confusing. Let me see if I get this straight:

Hitting someone who is wielding a (normal) shield incurs a penalty, depending on the size of the shield. This is a passive ability of the shield.

A shield may be used to block an attack. This uses the hand melee skill (or any other, -1, or a raw Dex+Shield size roll). If successful, the attack is blocked and inflicts no damage; the break factor of the wielding arm however is reduced by half the usual amount (just like armour). If the Class of the weapon is lower than the class of the shield, no damage is inflicted at all, just like with armour.
This requires a reaction roll.

4) And, by special request of a player who wanted "something special":
How would you handle a bayonet? Simply use comparable polearm stats (i.E., those of a spear)?

-Spectre

[Christopher Ashe]

Sorry it took me so long to get back to you on these, it's been a busy week ;)

I'll try to organize this:

1) By the basis of the book, yes, Unarmed combat is treated as a class 1 attack - however I'll provide a bit more explanation here. A person attacking with fists and legs against an armored opponent really does next to no damage. Attacking chinks in the armor or manipulating the opponents force against him via throws, holds, locks, etc. is the end all best way for an unarmed opponent to deal with an armored one. Now, to a point, in the advanced version I'm working on this, because demons and massive strength characters are a different story. A juggernaut hits like a ton of bricks and so could a normal character. A variation you might use is +1 class per 2 STR and +1-2 if the character possesses the Precision Striking gifts. To be honest though, most of the rules here were based on my being a psycho, donning armor and having men larger than me beat on me for a good while. The armor really does absorb the hell out of punches and kicks. However, beware the Aikido or Grappling master if you wear armor, because a lock would virtually ignore it if the manipulation was right.
Bottom line on this one: being unarmed is a distinct disadvantage unless you are a master martial-artist or pugilist. The rules are designed as a rule to err on the side of realism rather than fairness ;)

2)First off, yes, firearms are really nasty. I've seen first hand what happens when a person gets shot ( I have an uncle who works in ballistics and a few friends in law enforcement) and well damn it just sucks to be shot ;).
As for range modifiers I flat out went lazy on that one to be honest. When I run game, I gage range on suspension of disbelief or stand on the shoulders of those who care far more about ballistics than I do (I recommend the NWoD Armory or d20 Modern Weapons locker supplements for these sort of extras) - even those books fall short as far as I researched. When I went into doing firearm research for the game I found the amount of information daunting. My best practice is to understand the firearms. A TEC-9 has crap range and a Barret M95 is amazing. Basically I rate it by character vision, presence of scope/aiming or not and concentration. If a character is firing more than 100 yards, I usually up the complexity. When you get farther than that you damn well better have a scope. Basically I consider range as a thought along with visibility, moving target and character time spent aiming. Most guns are far more accurate than their wielders, after all, and personal and environmental factors I find to be far more important considerations for complexity.

As the GM in seven13, understanding those 7 ranks and inverse 7 (severity or complexity) are the greatest tool you can possess. I can tell a character very quickly why he is firing at -5 rather than -3 just based on definition and factors I use to rate the overall difficulty of the shot from 1-7.

Nonetheless, there will eventually be ranges, but I'm shelving that one right now for supplementals. Honestly I dont even really enforce my own range rules for Ethromancy in game, I chalk it up to the same sort of thing.

3)This one may take some explanation as well. See, the shield rules fall under what Felix (my editor and respected fellow penman) might refer to as "pillbox rules" or "codeine rules". Like many artists I fell victim to illicit substance abuse. Basically I had bad teeth, constant tooth infections and got hooked on pain medication for a good part of when the draft of CoE was being written. While Felix helped a lot, there are a few bits of wording in the book I look at and have to shake my head and say "Wow, I must have been gone that night." Anyways, to make a long story short I'm clean and I explain things a bit better now so I'll take a shot at throwing you a more concise shield set:

First, about the Ora, a medium shield bestows a class 3 status by default. Back in the day, the seven classes were UltraLight (1), Light (2), Medium (3), Heavy (4), Extreme (5), Monstrous (6) and Colossal (7), but the titles only really sounded right for weight and didnt apply to a full generic sense, so I reverted to numbers only.

Looking at shields right now (and its a bit late after having been awakened at 8:15am this morning) I'm gonna have to get back to you with more on shields, as they are one of the things that I need to piece together from Ch2, Ch3 and AppC to remember what in the name of the gods I was thinking when I wrote it. ADHD, a couple of years since draft and a haze of memory will do that to ya ;)

4) Bayonet to me is easy, the character mus wield it as Melee -1 for being a non-standard type of weapon. He may do this for hand melee or polearm in my opinion, as neither really is superior to know for bayonet fighting, it is a method all its own, though polearms if probably slightly closer, but the weight and balance are far different.


All-in-all, there is a lot of work I find myself doing here and there on the original book, clarifying and whatnot. In actuality, I totalled all the information that was going to be in CoE once and it was well over 700 pages, so there was a lot edited out here and there to be expanded on later, and I've been bad about getting all of that done. Hell, I really still need to do a lot of work to get this website up to speed and whatnot. I really do continue to appreciate your feedback, it gives me a reason to focus and get back to this stuff. There has been a while here where with work outside of seven13 and whatnot I have fallen off the steady constant state of system and setting design I once used to be into and hearing from people always reminds me why I do this. Sometime I'd love to hear about the angle you guys are running and what how it's turning out. Until next time, I'll try to get back on working through some of this stuff and being better about getting more info up on the website.

- Ashe