Suit up! After you’ve nailed down what Species you’re playing, what Career you’re leading and customizing your Characteristics and Skills, you’re going to need a big stick.
Everyone starts with 500 credits each.
You cannot buy any item with the (R) tag, meaning Restricted.
Here’s a quick breakdown of what all the columns mean. We’ll start with a weapon, the Axe, as an example.
Name - The name of the item; here it’s “Axe”
Skill - This shows what skill is used when making attacks/checks with this weapon. The Axe uses Melee (Light) so if you have some Ranks in that, this is a good weapon for you
DAM - How much Damage the weapon does. For the Axe, it’s listed as +3, meaning it’ll be based off your Brawn (since that’s used for Melee), +3 (so if your Brawn is a 3, you’ll do a total of 6 Damage on the attack). This is in addition to how many successful hits you land
CRIT - How many Advantages you need to get in order to trigger a Critical hit, so long as you made a successful attack. Typically the lower this number is, the better. When you get a Critical hit, you can roll to Critically Injure an enemy
RANGE - How close or far you can hit that person. The Axe is listed as Engaged, meaning you need to be literally right next to the person to hit them. Range span from Engaged, Close, Medium, Long, Extreme
ENCUM - Encumbrance; how heavy or bulky that item is. For reference, your character’s Encumbrance threshold is your Brawn+5. The Axe counts for 2 points of Encumbrance.
HP- Hard points. Most items can be modified, whether attachments or physically altering it. The more Hard points something has, the more customizable it can be and improved past it’s basic stat line. A basic Axe isn’t being modified much with only 1 Hard point.
PRICE - How many credits it cost. If an item has a (R) next to it, it means Restricted. Typically in game that means it’s illegal and you're subject to being stopped or arrested by any law enforcement types and/or people being VERY wary of you since you’re carrying something so lethal. An Axe only cost 150 credits.
RARITY - How rare an item is; this will affect typically when and where you can buy items. An Axe is very common with a Rare rating of 1.
SPECIAL - Any special characteristics; they’re normally listed in the Equipment pdf sheet or Core rulebook. The Axe is Vicious 1; that means when you Critically Injure someone, each rank of Vicious adds 10x to the Critical roll.
To just quickly cover Armor, it has many of the same categories, but the two biggest ones to look at are Defense and Soak.
Defense
Each rank of Defense adds a Black die to the attacker’s dice pool.
Soak
Each point of Soak subtracts from the Damage total (Example if someone hit you with a total of 8 Damage and your total Soak value was a 3, you would take a total of 5 damage)
Congratulations! You made it! Now you can really concentrate on the fun stuff; backstory!