In HOE there will be 4 kinds of bennies/chips - colour coded into White, Red, Blue and Gold
A WHITE chip can be used to reroll a result.
A RED chip can be used as a WHITE chip plus it may be used to add an extra d6 to an existing roll, however each time oyu use a RED chip to gain an extra roll the GM gains a chip pick.
A BLUE chip can be used as a WHITE or RED chip but does not generate a benny for the GM.
A GOLD chip is a Legendary chip and can only be created by victory within the game. Once used it is may be discarded (50/50). It can be used as any other chip but also for other special effects.
Benny's can be used for all the normal things listed in the rules, plus the following.
W: Re-roll a result
W: Soak a wound on self or pet
R: Soak a wound on any other player.
R: To play extra adventure card
W: To swap an adventure card during play
R: To reroll a randomised treasure roll.
R: To add an extra power (one only) to a newly found magical RELIC! each. Bennies may come from anywhere.
R: To bind a RELIC! item to you and access the first power.
W: To establish a relationship
W: To incite a Passion
R: To modify one word on an adventure card, within the limits that one=>few=>some=>many=>all.
R+W: to draw a new adventure card (which gives you an extra play as well).
2B: to draw your choice of an adventure card (non-treasure)(and an extra play). Bennies may come from anywhere.
2R: to draw any card from discard pile and play it (non-treasure). Card is then removed for rest of session. Bennies may come from anywhere.
R: Add +1d6 to a Trait roll
R: Recharge a power storing device from your own power.
G: Save a character from death.
G: soak roll at +4
Black Rain
Area: 1d10 miles in diameter
Duration: 1d20 minutes
Visibility: 25 yards
TN: 3/10 minutes
Warning Time: 2d20 minutes
Every round spent in the rain, the Marshal draws a card from his Action Deck (use the card just like a player does during character creation). Then he rolls that number of dice as if it were an Aptitude roll (read the highest die; don’t add them). The victim makes a Spirit roll, and if it is less than the Marshal’s roll, he takes the difference in Wind. Once his Wind reaches 0, the victim collapses. Continue rolling until the poor waster dies from Wind loss (just like bleeding; see the Deadlands: Hell on Earth rulebook) or someone drags her to safety. Only sealed armor (like powered armor) protects from black rain. All other types are ignored. Umbrellas and the like add +2 to the character’s Spirit roll, but don’t completely protect the character as some of the vile liquid certainly gets in. Spiritual armor such as the Templar gift armor adds to the character’s Spirit rolls when resisting the effects of black rain. Harrowed do take Wind damage from black rain.
Duststorms
Area: 1d6 miles in diameter
Duration: 1d20 x 10 minutes
Visibility: 1d4 yards
TN: 7/1 minute
Warning Time: 1d20 minutes
Each round spent in a duststorm, a hero must make an Onerous (7) Vigor roll or lose the difference in Wind. On a bust, the hero actually catches a mouthful of choking dust and begins to strangle. Raise the TN of the Vigor roll by +2 for the next 1d20 rounds. Surviving a duststorm isn’t as hard as it sounds. A simple bandanna across the face adds +1 to the hero’s roll, and lying facedown on the earth and covering his head adds another +1. A hero with a gas mask or sealed suit can ignore the duststorm entirely. Note that few horses can survive in these conditions. Unlike in radstorms, Wind lost in a duststorm is restored normally after the storm passes. The bad news is that if a hero goes to 0 Wind and isn’t in shelter, he may choke and die in the stuff. Harrowed take no Wind damage from duststorms. When the storm finally abates, prominent features are uncovered, and level or low-lying areas are buried under several inches to several feet of silt. Unless a hero fell in a hole, he should be able to crawl out with no problem. Though the effects above are dangerous, they’re rarely fatal. The real danger of duststorms comes from wandering blindly through hazardous terrain, and possibly losing equipment. A character who runs, falls, or is otherwise jostled while moving through a duststorm may lose any loose equipment in his hands or hanging from his belt or pack. Have the hero make a Fair (5) Deftness roll anytime he falls, tumbles into a ditch, or so on. If he fails it, some random piece of equipment is lost or dropped. The TN to find it is Onerous (7) if the hero doesn’t move. It’s 15 or better if he has to retrace his steps to find the lost object. Either case takes a full round for the search. When a duststorm touches a Deadland—an all-too-common occurrence—there’s a chance a creature called a dust devil is born to the storm. About 1 in 10 duststorms carry these deadly horrors. The statistics for the dust devil can be found in on page 155.
Hellstorm
Area: 1d10 miles in diameter
Duration: 1d2 hours
Visibility: 50 yards
TN: 3/30 minutes
Warning Time: 1d4 hours
Hellstorms are pure fury and destruction. Everyone fears them. Make sure your heroes do too. Anyone caught out in a Hellstorm has a 1% chance each round (every 5 seconds) of being hit by lightning. Those unfortunates who catch a bolt suffer 8d20 damage to their guts. Thanks for playing. Even if you’re not made crispy by lightning, the hot rain and wind cause blisters and scald flesh. Every round spent in the rain, a character takes 1 Wind. Umbrellas and the like don’t do jack because the rain rips them to shreds in seconds. Heavier materials, such as a piece of metal or Kevlar held over a hero’s head, keep off most of the rain but not the wind, so the hero takes 1 Wind every other round. Sealed armor shields a waster from the blistering storm. Other types of armor reduce the damage to 1 Wind every other round, just like an umbrella. The only protection from a Hellstorm is to get in solid shelter, such as a vehicle, a building, a cave, or so forth.
Radstorm
Area: 1d100 miles
Duration: 1d6 hours
Visibility: 1d4 yards
TN: 5/1 minute
Warning Time: 1d4 hours
If you think duststorms are nasty, try getting caught in a radstorm. Anyone caught out in a radstorm suffers all the usual effects of a duststorm (see above), but must roll to resist intense radiation as well. Every 5 minutes the character is caught in a radstorm, he must make a Hard (9) Vigor roll (in addition to that made to resist the dust). Should he fail, he loses –1 point of Wind to radiation. Make sure to keep up with how many points of Wind are lost to the dust and how many are lost to radiation damage, as they heal at different rates. Wind lost to the dust heals as described under Duststorms (page 124). In Chapter One see the rules on healing Wind lost to radiation. Should any character go bust on her Vigor roll, she loses –1 Wind and suffers a mutation (see the Hell on Earth rulebook). One last note. Radio waves are totally disrupted by radstorms. They cannot penetrate into, out of, or through such a storm. Harrowed take no damage from radstorms. They must still roll every five minutes, however, as a busted Vigor roll still causes a supernatural mutation.
Toxic Clouds
Area: 1d100 yards
Duration: 1d6 hours
Visibility: 1d20 yards
TN: 3/10 seconds
Warning Time: Sight
Yup. These things are just what Jo said— wandering clouds of damage. Walk into one, and a brainer automatically takes –1 Wind to the lungs every five seconds. Feel free to adjust this rate up or down for stronger or weaker toxins as you see fit. A waster who gets Winded collapses and continues to take Wind in the usual way. This is cumulative with any other Wind loss he’s experienced. As Wind continues to go negative, it causes damage to the guts area just as with bleeding (see the Hell on Earth rulebook). A standard gas mask allows a hero to ignore the cloud. A wet cloth reduces the Wind loss to – 1 every other round. Most folks just go around these deadly clouds. Of course, if something the party really wants is inside the fumes…
The ghost-rock bombs devastated everything within their blast radii when they first fell on September 23, 2081, leaving phenomena know as ghost storms behind. Most of the storms have abated now, except for a 10-yard thick “wall” surrounding ground zero, the 5-mile radius around the impact point of a bomb.
From ground zero out to 30 miles or so causes radiation poisoning (see Radiation). Passing through the walls of the remaining storms is more dangerous. Whenever a character does so, the Marshal pulls a card. The value of the card (check the Traits & Coordinations Table on page 28 for this) is the amount of spiritual damage the character takes. The Marshal rolls the damage, and the character makes a Spirit roll. The difference is read as actual damage to the guts. Armor does not protect against this. On a red Joker, the Marshal rolls no damage. On a black Joker, the Marshal rolls 5d12 damage, and the character develops a mutation.
It’s a Doomsayer’s best friend, but that warm glow coming from the ruined cities is a sure killer for everyone else. Here are some quick rules for low-level
“background” radiation. Remember that the bombs dropped in Deadlands: Hell on Earth were made of irradiated ghost rock, so the energy produced is a weird mix of supernatural and radioactive power. That means you may see much stranger things than these simple rules in certain blast zones.
A character must make a Vigor roll every hour spent in a radioactive area. Within 5 miles of ground zero the TN is 9, and between 5 and 30 miles is a TN of 5. Lesser sources, such as crossing a stream that runs through a blast zone, have a TN of 3. If the roll is made, the character suffers no harmful effects. If the roll is failed, the hero loses 1 Wind that cannot be recovered except by magic or a day after a scrubbing shower in clean water. On a bust, the character has radiation poisoning and picks up a bad case of the glows. That’s the ailin’: chronic Hindrance, brainer.
When a junker draws a Joker during device construction, use this table to put him in his place.
Junker Backlash
2d6 Result
2 Fried Synapses. The junker forgets all knowledge of the power he was building into the device.
3 Scrambled Brains. The junker loses 1 level in science: occult engineering.
4–5 Attack. The manitou causes 3d6 damage to the junker’s guts.
6–7 Energy Flare! Roll a contest of Spirits between the junker and the manitou (determine its Spirit randomly). If the junker loses, he suffers the difference as damage to the guts.
8 Side-Effect. The power has an unintended side-effect of the Marshal’s choosing.
9 Arcane Leak. The device’s power system isn’t shielded properly, allowing G-rays to leak. Each day the device is used, everyone who was within 10 yards of it while in operation must make a Fair (5) Spirit roll. If the roll is failed, the victim gains a mutation.
10 Misinformation. The manitou pulls a fast one and gives the junker bad information. The full construction time and components are spent, but the
power does not work.
11 Back Door. The manitou builds itself a back door into the device. Once a session, it may use the power in the device for which this result was rolled.
12 Ghost in the Machine. A malicious spirit has been bound into the machine. It can use any of the device’s powers at any time. If the device has any levels of AI, the spirit is the device’s AI (which may make it smarter or dumber than intended—Marshal’s call).
Clubs
2®: Violence solves everything. Your hero is a deranged lunatic and a grim servant o’ Death. Worse, his friends often suffer for his love of
carnage. Anytime he misses with a shot or a hand-to-hand attack and there’s a chance it can hit a friend, it does.
3®: A bad case of the glows gave your hero thick, balloon-like veins and a supernaturally fast heart rate. If he ever takes a maiming wound to a limb, it literally explodes like a blood sausage, killing him instantly.
4®: If your hero was born before the Apocalypse, she had the bad luck to be looking at a distant city when it was hit by a ghost rock bomb. The image of a skull-shaped mushroom cloud is forever burned into her eyes. She can see, but must always look slightly askance to focus. This makes her more than a little weird to talk to, and gives her the bad eyes Hindrance at level 3. If she was born after the bomb, radiation caused cataracts with the same effect.
5®: The hero has “Methuselah Syndrome.” Every year that passes counts as five. 6®: Your hero ages far faster than he should. Every year that passes counts as two.
7®: The hero gives off weird radiation that kills plants and small animals (rabbits and smaller). Most plants wilt after a few minutes of contact with the hero. Animals run away. If they can’t, they take 1d6 damage every minute they’re within a yard of him. (Sentient plants—should your hero run across such a thing—take damage just like small animals.) Marshal: 201 Arcane Happenin’s
8®: The hero looks like a Harrowed and is often mistaken for one by those who know about such things. When attacking him, they tend to shoot for the poor soul’s head. He’s also ugly as sin.
9®: Your survivor has a few telltale signs of radiation poisoning, but there is no ill effect. This time.
10®: Hello, hypersensitive-boy. Radiationheightened senses gives your hero the keen Edge.
J®: Your hero’s toad-like skin is thick and rubbery. He’s ugly as sin but has the thickskinned Edge.
Q®: Your hero’s skin is tough and leathery, providing light armor. He subtracts –2 from damage he takes to any location.
K®: The hero can store rads in his body and release them in short but lethal bursts. On physical contact (skin to skin), the mutant can choose whether or not he wants to release some of the strange radiation he stores inside him. If so, the target must make a Fair (5) Vigor roll. If she fails, her heart cooks, and she dies in 1d6 rounds.
A®: Radiation covers the character from head to toe. He makes Geiger counters click like a baseball card set in the spokes of a speeding bicycle. Fortunately, radiation doesn’t hurt him. He’s immune to low levels of natural radiation, and he gets a +4 to resist more powerful radiation effects, including any spell cast by a Doomsayer.
Hearts
2™: Your hero needs sunshine vitamins. He’s scrawny and must go shirtless in the daytime or suffer a –2 modifier to all Trait and Aptitude rolls after one hour’s time. He always suffers this modifier during the night (one hour after the sun goes down until one hour after it comes up).
3™: Thirteen years without a toothbrush (and a bad case of the glows) has made your hero’s teeth fall out. He can’t chew anything and must subsist on liquids alone. He’s scrawny, ugly as sin, and cannot have a Strength or Vigor die type greater than d8. If either Trait was previously at a d10 or higher, reduce it (or both of them) right now.
4™: Radiation infects any food the hero touches. It becomes ruined and disgusting to anyone but him. Anyone who eats it must make a Hard (9) Vigor roll or upchuck. It never provides nourishment to anyone else, even if they manage to wolf it down.
5™: The survivor’s metabolism is so great he can never get enough to eat. He’s scrawny and must eat twice as much as any other.
6™: Food does not break down normally in your mutie’s irradiated belly. It bloats up and makes constant and embarrassing gas. He’s an obese big ’un with a bad flatulence and burping habit.
7™: Freaky. Your hero has a potbelly and spindly legs. Subtract –2 from any Nimbleness based rolls made to jump, run, or maintain balance.
8™: The hero is gaunt and thin to the point of strangeness. Some folks might even mistake him for a faminite, which isn’t going to endear him to their hearts. He’s also ugly as sin.
9™: Your survivor has a few telltale signs of radiation poisoning, but there is no ill effect. This time.
10™: The hero’s body can’t break down “cooked” meats. He now has a strange taste for raw meat. Even weirder, he ate an irradiated cat one time, and now he has the thing’s eyes. (How they got into his face from his belly is anyone’s guess, but there they are in all their glory.) They glow when hit by direct light, but they also allow him to see in all but complete darkness as if it were twilight.
J™: The hero’s fingernails grew into long, sharp talons, then turned black and died. He doesn’t have to cut them, and they can’t be replaced if lost (anytime you go bust on a fightin’ roll in hand-to-hand you break a nail). As long as half the fingernails are left (not the thumbnail), they add 1d4 to your fightin’ damage.
Q™: Irradiated food is yummy! It doesn’t seem to bother this brainer a bit. He can pass any kind of poisoned or irradiated substances through his system with no harmful effects (including the 4™ mutation). He’s not immune to radiation, but his digestive system is.
K™: Your survivor has somehow gained the ability to draw nutrients from another’s body. By touching someone’s skin, he can sap her Wind at the rate of 1 per action (or every five seconds if not in combat rounds). If the mutie has lost Wind, the stolen energy replaces it. Once his Wind is restored, excess energy is lost, but he can keep draining his victim until she’s dead or fights back.
A™: Your hero’s metabolism is as slow as molasses. He eats half as much as most folks and ages only one year for every decade that passes. Marshal: 202 Arcane Happenin’s
Diamonds
2©: Your character’s body is decaying rapidly with something like leprosy. The hero has the ailin’: chronic Hindrance, and every time he goes bust on a Vigor roll at the beginning of a session, he loses some small piece of his body, such as a finger, a toe, a bit of ear, or so forth. After five such occurrences, the hero loses an entire limb.
3©: Your character is where stories of “radiation vampires” come from. Radiation causes his blood to break down and run like water, so he bleeds at double the normal rate. Also, he must drink enough blood to replace his entire supply every week. Each day he goes without a half-pint or so, he suffers a –1 penalty to all Trait and Aptitude rolls. If the penalty ever reaches –7, he collapses. One day later, his body turns into a disgusting mass of gelatinous flesh. He’s dead, and he can’t come back Harrowed. (What kind of manitou wants to inhabit a jelly donut?)
4©: Radiation has gotten into your hero’s bones. The pain feels something like minor arthritis, giving him the ailin’: minor Hindrance.
5©: Disease and radiation have made the brainer a sickly, anemic creature. His Wind is equal only to his Spirit.
6©: Your survivor was near a city when the bombs hit (or she was born near a blast site). Her body was burned and scarred horribly, making her ugly as sin. In addition, sand-laden winds and the sun’s burning rays force her to keep her skin wrapped under layers of the softest cloth she can find. If she is exposed to the elements, she suffers a –2 to all her die rolls.
7©: The blood in your survivor’s veins is thin and doesn’t clot right. He suffers twice the normal amount of Wind when he bleeds.
8©: The hero has patches of hair, ugly boils, and other signs of the glows that make him ugly as sin.
9©: Your survivor has a few signs of radiation poisoning, but there is no ill effect. This time.
10©: Your hero has the regenerative capabilities of a lizard. She always succeeds at her natural healing rolls.
J©: A mutant born after the bomb came out of her radioactive momma with huge flaps of skin between her arms and side. If she was born earlier, the flaps of skin grew while she was laid up in bed with radiation sickness for a month. The bad news is your heroine is ugly as sin. The good news is she can now glide with these to a limited extent. She can’t “take off,” but if the heroine falls 10 yards or more, she can glide safely to the ground. Her arms must remain outstretched during this time, so anything heavier than a pistol in her hands must be dropped. The survivor can carry no more than a
light load on her back due to the flimsiness of the “wing” membrane.
Q©: Your hero’s pheromones make roses smell like stinkweed. The opposite sex can’t resist her. Add +6 to persuasion rolls made to seduce others in a calm situation (not in the middle of a firefight!).
K©: Say hello to Typhoid Mary, circa 2094. Your mutie carries disease while rarely being affected by them herself. She adds +4 to any rolls she makes to resist the affects of disease or infection. In addition, once in contact with a disease, she can store it in her cells up to 24 hours. Then, if she can make contact with human flesh, she can release it into one person who immediately suffers its effects.
A©: The hero is completely immune to natural poisons, infections, or disease. He’s not protected from supernatural poisons and radiation however.
Spades
2´: Your hero loves the smell of napalm in the morning. He’s entirely deranged and bloodthirsty. He feels a need to lead others into battle and destroy the weak. Whenever there’s a chance for conflict, especially violent conflict, he has to provoke it.
3´: Radiation has caused your hero’s nerves to be hypersensitive. He gets a +4 to search or Cognition rolls where touch is involved, but he doubles his normal wound penalties.
4´: The character’s entire body glows in the dark. Subtract –8 anytime he tries to sneak in dim light or darkness. On the plus side, he can see as if he was holding a small candle.
5´: Your hero’s pores ooze radiation, causing her to glow dimly in the dark. Subtract –4 anytime she tries to sneak in dim light or darkness.
6´: Radiation has made the mutie’s bones brittle. Anytime she takes a serious wound to a body area, something breaks. In the guts, this is usually a rib. In the noggin, it’s a concussion. Increase the difficulty of healing serious or greater wounds by +2, both for natural and magical attempts.
7´: The mutie’s ears are supersensitive. He gets the big ears Edge with double the normal modifiers to hearing rolls. The downside is gunfire within 10 feet or so deafens him. He’d best get some earplugs or learn fightin’.
8´: The hero scars easy. Impressive after a battle; not so fun on a date. He’s ugly as sin.
9´: Your survivor has a few telltale signs of radiation poisoning, but there is no ill effect. This time.
10´: Your hero got lucky. Radiation caused his “flight” reflex to wither. He adds +2 to his guts checks and gains the nerves o’ steel Edge. The downside is he must make a Hard (9) Smarts roll to run away from a fight.
J´: The brainer has developed the uncanny ability to draw oxygen from water. If he was born after the Apocalypse, he has gills. Otherwise his physiology is just weird. Either way, he can breathe underwater like a fish.
Q´: The bad news is your hero walked into a radstorm and got his synapses fused together. The good news is they fused in all the right places. Your hero is never surprised.
K´: The touch of radiation has made your hero the perfect killing machine. His muscles and reflexes grow to incredible levels. Raise both Strength and Quickness by +2 die types.
A´: When the adrenaline starts pumping, your hero’s brain kicks into turbo. If you make a Hard (9) Smarts roll at the beginning of each round, you can swap any one of your character’s Action Cards with any other Action Card on the table, including the Marshal’s. The only thing you can’t swap are Jokers or cards up your or another character’s sleeves.
Jokers
Here’s what happens if a player pulls a Joker when checking for his hero’s mutation.
Red Joker You can choose your hero’s mutation from any on the list.
Black Joker If this card was chosen during character creation, choose any Deuce as the mutation. It’s bad, but you get some choice. If the card’s drawn during play, the mutation’s fatal. Your survivor now isn’t. He might still come back