Click on the above image for the Google Doc of the rule book
When compared to 5e D&D, B&B differs in a few ways due to its intended genre of sci-fi instead of fantasy. The majority of these changes are blatant in the new character sheet, which uses only 4 core attributes instead of 6 and a slightly different set of skills. Additionally, B&B does not use a class system, instead, all characters choose 1 feat from a common pool of feats (available here) at each level up allowing for growing customization of the character instead of being locked into a type from a class choice. This system yields more than 10^14 unique combinations of feats for level 10 characters. The last changes have to do with modifying combat and proficiencies to the genre.
The core attributes have been shrunk from 6 to 4. Constitution and Strength have been combined into Strength, and Intelligence and Wisdom have been combined into Intelligence. The skills have been changed from 18 to 15. Athletics, Acrobatics, Stealth, Sleight (sleight of hand), Investigation, Medicine, Insight, Persuasion, Deception, Intimidation and Performance persist from 5e. The new skills are; Pilotry (the skill of driving and piloting), Knowledge (a combination of history, religion and nature from 5e), Technology (the skill to interact with advanced and digital technology) and Mechanics (the skill to work with mechanical systems such as firearms and vehicles).
Due to the elevated importance of range in the sci-fi weaponry context, several new weapon types have been added, detailed below. Additionally, the way armour, health and attack rolls work has been modified.
After level 1, your maximum health doesn’t increase significantly. All armour grants temporary health. Hit die can be used to repair armour for half of their rolled value. If an attack roll is above or equal to your AC it damages your health, but not your armour’s temporary health. If an attack roll is below your AC it damages your armour’s temporary health and can spill over into your character health.
If an attack roll is less than 6, it doesn’t damage you at all. This value, known as the minimum hit roll (MHR for short), is consistent for all players but varies for NPCs and can be modified by special armour, cover and feats.
If an armour piece reaches 0 temporary health, unless it specifies otherwise, it is destroyed and cannot be repaired.
Players and most NPCs do not automatically have reactions, instead, on their turn, an action must be used to ready a specific reaction such as an attack, defensive move, etc. Reactions can be triggered by any event of the player’s choosing.
In addition to the above major changes to combat, the following are miscellaneous changes to combat:
It takes a bonus action to switch weapons
Dual-wielding 1 handed weapons reduces the attack rolls by 6
All weapons have a stat called “critical range” which determines how many attack roll outcomes count as a crit (in 5e this value is 1, hence only nat 20 is a crit) by default all weapons have a crit range of 0
Initiative is not rolled but rather it is a constant value in the character sheet equal to Dexterity + Athletics modifier or Intelligence + Deception modifier, tie breakers are determined arbitrarily at the DM’s discretion
Instead of being binary (you have it or you don’t), inspiration points can be accumulated to a maximum of 20, using inspiration points (maximum of 5) simply increases a given roll by the amount of inspiration points used instead of granting advantage
Being prone increases the reload time by 1 step along the following list:
free action → bonus action → action → full turn → [n > 1] actions.
You can change the direction you are facing on your turn as a free action any number of times or as part of a prepared reaction
You automatically change direction to face your target when you make an attack
For the sake of simplicity with regard to keeping track of ammo, an optional rule exists called “encounter packages”; instead of counting the exact number of rounds a character has in their inventory, each character consumes an encounter package once per encounter per weapon they use. The package is consumed regardless of how many rounds the weapon expends. Packages are unique to each ammo type and some weapons, such as rocket launchers, will still require individual rounds be tracked (at the DM’s discretion). This way, player need only track the number of remaining shots in their weapon’s magazine
Some obstacles on the battle map may be identified as partial or full cover at the DM’s discretion. Such obstacles should be capable of covering most or all of a character and reasonably be able to block a bullet. For example, a car’s engine block would count as partial cover, a nightstand would not count as cover because a bullet could pass through it, a shipping container would count as full cover.
When a character is adjacent to partial cover, their MHR against attacks incoming from the other side of the partial cover is increased to 11, such that said incoming attacks that roll an attack roll less than 11 do no damage.
Full cover works the same way as a lack of line of sight, such as if your target were around the corner of a building. Assuming you know the location of your target, you could still attempt to shoot at them with the intent of shooting through the full cover, however, if the cover is bulletproof, such as a shipping container, the attack will be unsuccessful.
Explosives and some other effects destroy or reduce cover (at the DM’s discretion).
Difficult terrain in B&B works the same way as difficult terrain in 5e D&D. Movement cost is doubled when moving over difficult terrain. Additionally, you gain no attack roll benefits from going prone on difficult terrain.
There are four classes of defensive apparel one can equip:
Light Armour
Medium Armour
Heavy Armour
Shields
The three classes of armour differ only slightly by the magnitude of their defensive capacity and a few traits each set is likely to have. Being proficient in an armour grants no additional bonuses unless otherwise stated, not being proficient in an armour reduces its AC by 2 and reduces attack rolls by 1.
Shields function differently to armours in a few ways.
The direction in which they provide protection is relative to the direction you're facing, by default, this is a 90° span in front of you, such that any attack made from within that span interacts with your shield, and any attack made outside of that span ignores it
Shields do not modify your AC, instead they use a different value; shield class, which functions the same way as AC
If you have both a shield and armour equipped, when you receive an attack, one of four outcome occur depending on the attack roll
If the attack roll is below your MHR, the attack hits your cover or is simply negated
If the attack roll is above your MHR but below your shield class, it damages your shield (assuming the direction is appropriate)
If the attack roll is between your shield class and armour class, it damages whichever is higher
If the attack roll exceeds your MHR, shield class and armour class, it damages your character's health
Unless otherwise specified, shields occupy a hand and thus negate use with larger weapons
A creature can only benefit from one shield at a time regardless of however many are equipped
Being proficient with shields allows you to reload a one handed weapon in your unoccupied hand (a process that would normally require two hands)
not being proficient in shields reduces their shield class by 2 and reduces your attack rolls by 1
Vehicles in the sci-fi context differ greatly and vary more widely than that of 5e. As a result, most of the vehicles fall into 1 of 3 types and all other vehicles will denote their unique attributes individually.
The first of these vehicle types are interplanetary ships. In the context of B&B, interplanetary vehicles are usually reserved for transportation, as combat at the scale of star destroyers is barely influenced by a reasonably sized party of players. Hence stats and rules aren’t relevant. The outcome of such battles is instead determined by the preference of the DM.
The second of the vehicle types are gunships. These vehicles are large enough to house and transport a party of players through space while also giving each player an impactful role in combat, be it piloting, operating a mounted gun, conducting repairs, etc. A good example of a gunship would be the Millennium Falcon. The smallest vehicle to still qualify as a gunship would only have enough room for its pilot, for example, the Banshee. Combat with gunships is not entirely dissimilar to regular combat but it comes with a few restrictions to add an element for strategy and realism.
The first is that turns are planned and then occur simultaneously with other characters instead of sequentially. For example, the players would plan how their ship will move and what it will do with its action at the same time as the DM, then all the movement and actions take place simultaneously and planning for the next round begins.
Secondly, gunships can only move to a position within a cone in front of them instead of any position within movement range and have a minimum distance they are allowed to move in each round. The dimensions of this cone are noted individually on each gunship’s stats. See combat vehicle movement for more details.
The effect of these two rule changes attempts to emulate realistic dogfighting, which involves a great deal of attempting to anticipate and outthink the decisions of your opponents.
The third type of vehicle is terrestrial. This refers to everything from motorbikes to mega-tanks and includes VTOLs and helicopters. Terrestrial vehicles are incapable of space flight. A good example would be the warthog or the hornet. Combat with terrestrial vehicles is the same as regular B&B combat except of course that the passengers are always in the same location as the vehicle and that the passengers and the vehicle can be targeted independently.
Vehicles will denote their movement with a few stats, an example is given in the above image.
The first stat of the movement cone is a fraction that represents the number of steps to the side for each step forward the vehicle can move. In this example, for every 5 steps forward, the vehicle can move up to 3 steps sideways. The greater this fraction, the more manoeuvrable the vehicle. In this case "steps" can mean any unit of distance.
The second stat of movement cone is the maximum distance the vehicle can move in 1 turn. In this case it is 100ft. This distance includes distance moved sideways.
The minimum movement stat denotes the minimum distance the vehicle can move each turn. This represents how some vehicles (such as planes) can't be stationary, they can only slow down.
At the end of each movement, the direction of the vehicle is straight away from the location it started its movement.
The following are miscellaneous rule differences to 5e.
Players may attempt an “I know a guy” if they think their character would know someone helpful in the scenario in question even if the NPC in question hasn’t been mentioned before. The player makes a generic Charisma check against a DC determined by the DM based on the likelihood of the relationship in the given location. On success, the player does in fact know a guy that could be helpful in the given scenario.
1 Handed Weapons can be used in akimbo (one weapon in each hand). Doing so doubles the potential damage and ammo consumption of each attack but reduces the attack rolls by 6 and requires that each weapon be reloaded individually.
2 Handed Weapons require 2 hands to operate
Semi-Auto: fires once per action
Auto: fires up to [weapon dependent] times per action. The attack roll for an attack with an automatic weapon is made only once per attack regardless of the number of actions the attack consumes. The attack roll of each successive shot is reduced by the stat labelled "recoil". For example if the first attack roll were 16 and the weapon's recoil were 4, the attack rolls would be; 16, 12, 8, etc. A fresh attack roll may be made only after the user of the weapon has spent a full turn not firing the automatic weapon. Taking damage from an outside source while firing an automatic weapon reduces the attack roll by 5 for all following shots until a new attack roll is rolled.
Partial Load: Reloads 1 round per reload action (unless otherwise specified)
Targets a Cone: Damage is evenly spread between all targeted 5x5ft spaces.
Fires A Projectile: weapons with this trait fire projectiles that are affected by gravity and can be reacted to.
Does AOE Damage: the weapon affects an area.
Causes Afterburn: affected targets take 1d4 fire damage for the next 3 turns unless extinguished.
Requires a Bonus Action to Cycle: This weapon requires a bonus action be expended between shots.
Malfunctions on critical failure and critical success: When making attack rolls with this weapon, a natural 1 and a natural 20 both cause malfunctions unique to the item.
Stationary Weaponry: Stationary weapons can't instantly aim in any direction. Instead, where a different class of weapon would indicate range, stationary weapons have a targeting cone, such that they can aim at anything in that cone. The direction of that cone is relative to the current direction the weapon is facing. Unless otherwise specified, the direction the weapon is facing, and thus the area covered by the targeting cone, can be changed on an action. Additionally, stationary weapons cannot be ready to fire and ready to move at the same time. Instead they can be transitioned between states on however many actions are specified on the weapon's stat sheet. When ready to fire, the weapon is deployed on the ground. When ready to move, the weapon is packed up.
The range of a weapon is the maximum distance to the target at which no penalties are suffered. Beyond each multiple of this distance stacks disadvantage on the attack roll and damage.
Some weapons and weapon mods also have a minimum range. Attacks made to targets within less than or equal to this minimum range incur disadvantage on attack rolls and damage.
By default, all ranged weapons have a minimum range of 5ft. Such that if the target is in melee range, then a ranged attack suffers disadvantage, similar to how ranged weapons work in 5e.
Some weapon mods can modify the maximum and or minimum range of a weapon.
All weapons make noise when used. The audible range is the maximum distance from the weapon at which the sound of the weapon can be both heard and identified. The following table details the default audible ranges for each class of weapon. If a given weapon has an audible range stat on its stat sheet, that stat overwrites the default value. Audible range can be affected by feats and weapon modifications such as suppressors. In each case, the noted change overwrites the default.
Weapon mods are items that can be attached to a weapon to alter aspects of its function. This differs from modifications which dramatically alter the weapon directly and require relevant feats and equipment to implement.
Weapon mods don't require tools or special knowledge to implement unless otherwise stated. Such an example of a weapon mod is a detachable grip, which affixes to a tactical rail on the weapon to give it more controllability.
Notably, each weapon mod specifies an equip slot on their data sheet. The vast majority of weapon slots fall into one of three categories but there are exceptions. These categories are
Barrel ext
barrel extension
attaches to the muzzle of the barrel
Sights
Optics
attaches on top of the weapon and provides a crosshair to enhance aiming
Tac rail
Tactical rail attachments
attaches to tactical rails on various locations throughout the weapon for various purposes
In general, a weapon can only have 1 mod in each category at any moment unless otherwise specified (DM's discretion).
Each weapon will specify what munition it requires. Weapons can be modded to accept different bullet types. Some munitions require the gun to meet certain compatibility prerequisites to utilise them. Munition types that are indented and separated by a dotted line instead of a solid one are variants of the unintended type and unless otherwise specified can be used by the same firearms without modification. Stats applied to a munition type also apply to its variants unless otherwise specified.
(Due to the constraints of this website to display images and tables, the following information is more clearly presented in the google doc)