Small Rules for Lanthanide Horizon (Dissection, Climbing/Caving)

Usually, I shift between genre with each campaign - but I'm now two failed Navigator sept campaigns deep and still haven't stopped thinking about them, probably because of the. failing...

As a break from three hundred years in the mines making Lanthanide Horizon hexcrawls I can't post because all my theoretical players read this, here are some leetle rules-modules I stapled to the latter campaign and barely used. 🙂

(later - I want to alter the Navigator backgrounds (i don't like Skald or Ropemaker), rewrite the Navigator septs so they can be used as NPC factions, and write some kind of generator for their Imperious management-kings) 

Machine Dissection

Ripped off from this system by Benign Brown Beast, but inverted - assigning dice, then rolling them, instead of rolling them before being assigned. 

When you move to salvage, pool 2+[INT bonus] d10s - with a relevant skill, add 2 more. Before rolling, divide them as you wish between three categories:

• Receive answers to [dice] questions about this machine and others like it (HD, AC, attacks, purpose, etc).
• Obtain [sum] slots of minor components - the last digit of the [sum] determining what is collected (see below). Any results that say "either X or Y", the player chooses.
• Take [best] on a secret table of attempts to recover a major component - a machine-specific tool that could be repaired, with work. (OK I realized that this is kind of a pain in the neck, "the table" is honestly probably just. 1-5 you really do it wrong and the dying machine catches your hand in some gears and crushes it, 6-8 you get Nothing, 9-10 you get "broken component that could do Thing The Machine Does In Its Statblock if you fix it) 

Minor Component Table

1. Wire (either stout copper or beautiful fiber-optic).

2. Either intact batteries, or manganese dioxide (flammable, used as a dark green pigment).

3. Propylene glycol, used as a coolant and lubricant - startlingly, somehow, safe for human consumption.

4. Jumbles of small springs and synthetic tendon, or fragments of soft solder.

5. Elbow-sized servomotors, or shin-long electric pistons.

6. Contact adhesive, or screws and bolts.

7. Multicolored plastic insulating sheaths, or dice-sized blocks of graphite.

8. Strings of status LEDs, or single lightbulbs.

9. Lengths of metal skeleton, or external plates.

0. A clicking mechanical eye, or the tangled-bismuth brain - a piece you can’t understand, but the men of the Vault will buy. ("the men of the Vault" are a local group of Foreign Types - more generally you could just say "[...] understand, but have value as decoration and trophies.")

Climbing/Caving

Also ripped off, this time from Sam Sorensen's Lowlife, and this blog post by Xenophon, and the classic Veins of the Earth system. I've been alternating between this and a stat-damage-mapped-segment thing with every campaign and I'm not happy with either of them, but this one is faster which makes it better.

When climbing/caving, roll 1d6 - looking for a 4-in-6 normally, or a 2-in-6 under poor conditions (evil overhang wall, evil your-head-is-touching-the-wall-and-ceiling-simultaneously tunnel). 

Add 1 to your chances if:

• you have an already-set rope line
• you have 15 or more STR (for climbing) or DEX (for caving)
• you have a theoretically relevant skill (if you literally have Climbing or Going Through Tunnels, add 2) 
• you've had at least ten minutes to study the route

and subtract one if:

• you have at least 5 filled inventory slots
• you have something in one of your hands
• you are in darkness
• the ascent is, in some way, out to get you (a general situational penalty for icy climbs, rubble-filled tunnels, or other such things)

If you pass, you're good! Probably. Reroll every 10 minutes or if your situation ever suddenly changes.

If you fail, roll 1d4 - this is how many quarters (25/50/75/99.9) of the obstacle you made it through before either falling on a climb, or becoming trapped in a tunnel. If you have and are using sufficient rope and pitons, you fall only 1 quarter and take that much fall damage before becoming caught. 

If you ever have to crawl vertically, do the math for your chances at both and then roll a single d6. Experience the wonders of falling 30 feet down a pipe and getting stuck still 80 feet up.

(this system removes the large tables of possible failures in Lowlife and Veins. Instead, I get to build on this basic system by keying climbs and tunnels - electrified walls, pipes flooding with boiling water, or places with added or changed failure penalties - "fall one segment before being caught in the moving gears", "fall, and also wake up the robots that live in the walls", etc)