The Inquisitor Revised Edition (often abbreviated to IRE) is a project to develop a fan-made second edition for the Inquisitor game.
Design Goals[]
- Maintain the feel and vision of the original game.
Although Inquisitor's unusual hybrid of skirmish and roleplay styles makes it a bastard child to many gamers, there are any number of more pure-bred games out there for others to play.
IRE is specifically intended to appeal to existing Inquisitor players, keeping the same style of game-play, but with more refinement.
- A high degree of compatibility with the existing Inquisitor Living Rulebook.
Character sheets for IRE should ideally be fully back-compatible with the 1st Edition rulebooks, making it possible for gamers to swap back to the older rules without issues. (And minimise issues migrating characters to IRE). Making it as easy as possible for individual groups to use the rules without cutting themselves off from events being run using the official rules will hopefully help the rules maintain traction.
Although achieving 100% success here is not going to be fully practical without limiting the capacity to overhaul rules sections, it should still be seen as a goal to aim for.
Although suggestions like converting Inquisitor to a D20 game are common, they fall outside the scope of the IRE project. (Even if it might be a viable choice for an official second edition).
- A genuinely living project.
Although Inquisitor's non-competitive nature and very loose sense of game balance means that the game doesn't require errata to rein in killer combinations running rampant in tournaments, it is still possible for rules to be improved through experience and play-testing, or for community members to make suggestions that haven't previously been considered.
Differences from the Living Rulebook[]
These are summarised by section:
Basic Conventions[]
No real changes, other than adding a note about D5 dice to allow players/GMs to potentially use them in rolls.
Characters[]
- Characteristic tests now use a "The Price is Right" approach to determine how much a test has passed by - a character now wants to roll as high as possible without going over their target number.
While ditching the "roll low = best" mindset can take a bit of getting used to, it dramatically speeds and simplifies the maths, particularly in opposed tests. If a D100 roll passing on 23 means it has passed by 23, it's just less maths than having to subtract it from 67, and much simpler to compare to someone else's pass of 45.
Actions[]
- Action rolls have been changed to a 3+. This is mostly to interact with the new reaction mechanics.
- Risky actions are ditched in favour of "Hazards". Risky actions were statistically screwy and didn't allow different actions to have different risks. Hazards instead use the units die of a characteristic test (or a separately rolled D10 for actions which don't need a roll) to determine the risk.
- Because of the introduction of the Reaction system, being aware of a character reacting to them allows a character to attempt to change their actions. (Although, as before, this is riskier than using Pause for Breath, as failing the Initiative roll immediately ends the character's turn).
Reactions[]
This is probably the core mechanical change in IRE, although it does actually have grounding in 1st edition.
Reactions fall into two sets of two broad categories:
>> Out of turn Actions and Defensive reactions; overwatch and counter-attacks, for example, are cases of out-of-turn actions you'll already know. Parrying, dodging (both the close combat version and the special skill) and psychic nullifications are examples of what IRE calls Defensive reactions. (Defensive reactions in IRE are largely now opposed roll-offs though).
>> Prepared and Reserved reactions; Prepared reactions happen automatically when triggered (overwatch is a 1st edition example), Reserved reactions are declared when used, but require a reaction test (the IGT version of Lightning Reflexes is closest, but close combat reactions are broadly similar) reactions.
Reactions come primarily from actions the character has set aside to use (in whichever combination of these ways). This makes it easier to keep a cap on how much a character can do in a turn and, combined with the increase to action rolls, allows a natural fluidity where characters can act more quickly when they're not having to keep responding to their enemies. You'll naturally see games get to the meat of the action quicker, with fewer turns wandering around ignorant of each other.
IRE also introduces the Engaged state. This is essentially a generalised version of the close combat state in 1st edition, allowing characters to declare one action at a time, react for free, but at the cost of only being aware of their immediate environment. The main difference from 1st edition is that the state is voluntary, and can be used for non-close combat purposes.
Aside from reactions giving a more dynamic sense to the play, standardising how characters act outside their turn will hopefully make the rules more robust and less prone to exceptions.
Movement[]
- Any Risky movement actions have been updated to the new Hazard system. - The "Evade" action has been renamed to "Weave", to allow "Evade" to be used elsewhere in the rules. - Minor unifying and simplifying of things like the climbing/falling rules.
Shooting[]
- Fire Arcs have been broadened to 90 degree arcs. (45 degrees always felt too restrictive and 45 degrees is much harder to measure/approximate in game if you need to).
- Placed Shots have been rolled into aiming, and are now a form of called shot (where levels of aim can be used to modify hit location rather than hit chance). This makes it possible both for a character to plan a called shot (as opposed to only getting them at random) and works better with semi-auto fire (you can now roll to hit for a batch of shots without having to keep track of whether they're placed shots).
- Semi auto, Full auto and Flame weapons get new rules. Semi-auto and full auto are now hit bonuses (but with increased penalties for range) and there's an "exploding dice" mechanic for successive hits. Flame weapons now roll once per target, with more hits based on the success on the hit roll. (Semi-Auto may go back to a similar system to 1st edition. Depends on how things play test).
- Blast weapons scatter D3 yards for failure and each degree of failure on the hit roll, in order to make the margin of failure more important than in the old system. Indirect fire is now rolled into this as a GM determined penalty depending on the difficulty of the throw/launch.
- There's a shooting specific Defensive reaction: Evade (the movement action has been renamed to "Weave". The old rules used the term "Dodge" as both an anti-shooting reaction and an anti-melee reaction, and they both worked differently. "Evade" was the best term I could think of here).
- More in-depth rules for Friendly fire, using the new hazard system. The closer a friendly character is to being in the way, the more likely you are to hit him instead.
Close Combat[]
This is one of the more considerable overhauls.
- Close combat builds into the reaction system, in order to standardise things. Parries and dodges are now defensive-type reactions and now have to beat the hit roll to succeed, so no more dodging a master swordsman as easily as a knife wielding scribe.
- As these reactions are now declared before rolling off, a parry may counter-attack even if the attacker misses. (A knife wielding scribe will now leave more holes in his attack than a master swordsman, as opposed to the backwards effect as it currently is).
- The halving of WS for successive parries has been completely removed (being mechanically replaced by the need to bet the attacker's roll). The halving was cumbersome mathematically, and it put too much emphasis on an attacker getting as many hits as possible (as halving the defender's WS was usually preferable to flanking them), encouraging the infamously repetitive combats of 1st edition.
- Reach modifiers are now compared to the separation between characters, with weapons taking penalties the further they are from their preferred engagement distance. Positioning has become much more important, with long weapons needing more room to be used effectively. (As a result the special cases of arm's length and up-close have been discarded).
- Successful attacks and parries now grant the character a free two-yard positioning move, encouraging characters to use their environment and try to flank opponents.
- More choices of close combat actions, including the option to grapple opponents, and use any gun in close combat (although the heavier it is, the less likely it is to hit!)
- Close combat weapon profiles have been slightly extended in order to allow more variety in close combat weapons.
Attack Penalties have been added to allow particularly agile or cumbersome weapons to be represented, and special Reach characteristics modify the bonus the weapon gets for being at its ideal range.
Psychic Powers[]
IRE introduces Psy Rating (borrowed from Dark Heresy) in order to allow the power and skill of a psyker to be separate. For example, you might have an Inquisitor who is very skilled with his telekinesis, but weak - he might be easily able to pick a lock with the force of his will alone, but not be able to lift more than a few kilos - or a completely untrained rogue psyker who can summon huge fireballs but mostly in the wrong place.
The portion of their Psy Rating that a psyker uses determines both the riskiness and actual punch of the powers (all standard Rulebook powers have been re-written to incorporate this, with powers from other articles planned for rewrites in the long run).
IRE also establishes Willpower as the standard to hit characteristic for psychic bolts. (Hence allowing psykers to be a crap shot, but decent at throwing a lightning arc).
Injury, Damage & Recovery[]
- Although many people played this way anyway, Injury results are now expressly cumulative, so an Acute wound now adds up to a bigger speed penalty than a Heavy wound.
- However, Stunning now doesn't stack (a character just counts the highest result) in order to avoid characters missing the entire game. There's also a maximum cap on any single stunning result of three turns (although a character can be stunned for a longer total duration than this by taking subsequent hits).
- System shock has been standardised to a fixed 10 point threshold, in order to remove the near immunity of high toughness characters (and stop low toughness characters fainting on every single hit). Particularly high damage attacks now call for multiple SS tests.
- Recovery from out of action is now written in, allowing allies to be able to assist unconscious characters. (Before, the letter of the rules was that only True Grit could overcome out of action)
- Healing actions now use the character's Sagacity. Being tough might help you shrug off an injury in the first place, but it doesn't mean you know how to splint a leg.
- The result for a Heavy injury to the Leg has been replaced with "Prone" rather than "-1 speed".
- A few community written damage effects like Rending (treats the target's Base Injury value as 1 lower) and Tearing (roll an extra die for damage, discard lowest) have been added to help add breadth to the damage system.
Awareness[]
Nothing particularly drastic is going on here. I'm going to a greater length to explain the concepts of awareness, and also suggesting that the section is more guidelines than rules (which is how most GMs handle it anyway).
Conversation[]
Another new section, although it's mostly based on rules that the community have been using for years. Improving the rules for characters communicating and allowing them to talk more easily gives them choices other than just shooting each other.
The conversation state allows characters to respond as a form of reaction, allowing conversations to happen without them taking several turns.
Rules for persuading/threatening characters have also been introduced.
Abilities[]
Some original abilities are updated to work with changes to the rules, but the section is being expanded to include other common skills that didn't show up in the first rulebook.
Armoury[]
Some rebalancing of weapons and cleaning up some of the more rule-intensive weapons.
- The basic CCWs have been updated as much as necessary for the new CC mechanics.
I'm planning on revisiting chain and power weapons - power weapons in particular will stay nasty but they won't be capable of quite such extremes of damage as are possible in the core rules. The intent is to make it so that the weapons don't have to be routinely ignored for being overpowered.
- (WIP rule) Daemon weapons now ignore the relative Willpower values of the daemon and character, and instead force a character to test for possession every turn.
However, but under normal circumstances the wielder will receive a considerable bonus to their Wp (and the roll does not automatically fail on 96-00). However, in vulnerable moments (getting pinned or stunned, for example), even a weak daemon can potentially find its way into its wielder's mind.
- (WIP rule) Bionics are potentially up for overhaul, being represented with high armour, but a low Base Injury Value (independent of the character's own). Hence, a knife is unlikely to do much more than scratch the finish, but anything powerful enough to do actual damage is likely to rupture hydraulics or shred circuit boards.
Vehicles[]
This is a WIP section.
NPCs[]
This is a WIP section.