equipment

In any AD ASTRA game, equipment is going to be an important component of the game. All characters begin with a certain number of credits: 1,000 + 3d4 x 100. Characters with the Psionic weapons ability receive 3d4 x 100 credits (but start play with the ability to manifest psionic weapons.) Characters with the Nobility Affinity start the game with 2,000 + 3d4 x 200 credits.

Characters use this starting wealth to purchase starting equipment. During the course of play, additional wealth and equipment will no doubt fall into the character's hands. It's often a fine line to walk between an overly generous Monty Haul GM and an overly stingy Mr. Scrooge one. As the GM, try to use swashbuckling fictional source material to be your guide when it comes to what kind of equipment and wealth a character should be expected to possess and use. You may be surprised to find that it's more generous when viewed that way than you think.

Melee Weapons

Ranged Weapons

NOTE: Rifles and larger weapons (further down the chart from Rifle) incur a -3 penalty if fired while in melee; they're simply larger weapons that are not meant to be used at close range effectively. Weapons like missile launchers can normally only be fired once per combat, although if you take three rounds to reload and can do that without getting wasted, then you can fire it again. Flamethrowers can usually make two consecutive attacks before they need to be reloaded with more fuel as well.

In addition, the following equipment can be installed into a suit, or used as is, for the price listed. For most of these the use is either obvious, or the GM can dictate what it is. These are meant to be examples, not an exhaustive list.

Let's see if I can pull all of this together, shall we? Here's an example. To create the classic fully-loaded Cilindarean commando suit, you need to start with +6 Medium armor (5,000 credit base.) The commando suit has three integrated weapons, and each has a cost of 50 credits to install above the cost of the weapon itself. The radium pistol is therefore 550 (500 + 50), the flamethrower is 1,050 (1,000 + 50) and the missile launcher is 5,050 (5,000 + 50.) That brings the total for the armor so far to 11,650. Cilindarean commando suits also grant a +1 to DEX (2,000) and come equipped with scanners, which grant the Perception affinity (2,000 + 25). This brings the total to 15,675 so far. Adding in a commlink (50 + 25) a breath mask in the helmet (500 + 25), the jet pack (2000 + 25) and the utility cable (250 + 25), we get a grand total of 18,575 credits for a fully loaded Cilindarean commando.

That's pretty pricey, but if you consider that we'd never see anyone in one who's conceivably lower than the mid-levels (and maybe quite a bit higher, for that matter) it can serve as a very rough guide of what a higher level character should be able to afford. I envision someone like an iconic Cilindarean mercenary, for example, has the armor above, two heavy blaster pistols, his own small corvette or other personal space ship and is probably about a 7th or 8th level Soldier or Gunslinger.

As a very rough guide, a character should have equipment worth about his level x 3,000 or 4,000 credits to him, but that guide is meant to be very rough, and could vary considerably according to style. But keep in mind, that scrounging for equipment doesn't really ever seem to be an issue with any characters we ever see in the type of source material that this game is meant to emulate. This is one occasion where erring on the side of generosity will feel more true to the source material rather than erring on the side of stinginess. And that guideline isn't good for much other than a very rough estimate of how I personally would do it.

The converse consideration is that characters loaded down with tons of stuff doesn't really feature in swashbuckling space opera adventures either. A ship, maybe a grav-bike or grav-car—these are big expenses, and where characters have them (as probably most should after a few levels) that makes loading up on armor or other equipment a bit more tricky. Another "sink" for credits besides ships and/or speeders would be a robot cohort, and robots can be pretty pricey if you load them up with gear and equipment. A standard repair droid can be created (as probably a 1st level expert and a ton of equipment listed here, including several affinity packages) will easily be a several thousand credit sink. Depending on the format of your group of PCs, you might want to consider allowing the PCs to have a robot or two as a cohort, probably a couple of levels lower than the PCs, and probably not combat focused bots. An repair bot, for example, is an invaluable resource to the players, and frankly also to the GM, who can allow it to "soak up" all kinds of challenges due to their specialties, so the PCs themselves can just say, "R2, see what you can do with it" and expect R2 to provide some kind of solution. Robot cohorts should cost 5,000 credits per level, plus whatever equipment they also have.

And finally, expensive gear like battle-suits, ships and robots can get damaged, or even destroyed, requiring the PCs to spend their money all over again. Be careful about how you do this so the players don't feel like it's a punitive gesture, and you can get away with bleeding off accidentally overly generous credit allowances to replace a robot or fighter that got totally scrapped in a major combat.