Statistics
Primary Statistics
There
are up to eight primary character statistics (Stats for short) in
Lead and Chrome: Strength, Toughness, Coordination, Agility,
Intelligence, Know-How, Geniality and Nerve. GMs may rename or remove
any of these Stats to fit the style of their campaign, as they wish.
Strength: This is a measure of the character's physical might, their ability to lift and carry heavy loads and so on.
Toughness: This measures the character's stamina, endurance, resistance to extremes of heat, cold, alcohol, drugs and infectious diseases, and the general ability to withstand and recover from injuries.
Coordination: This stat indicates how well developed the character's fine motor skills (also termed manual dexterity) are, and thus how good they are at tasks like driving, piloting aircraft and shooting.
Agility: This is the counterpart of Coordination and shows the level of the character's gross motor skills, which govern walking, running, climbing and other athletic activities.
Intelligence: This stat reflects the character's powers of reasoning and deduction, quick-wittedness and cunning, and their aptitude towards academic study.
Know-How: This rates the character's ability to understand technologies and techniques such as car repair, electrical wiring, musicianship and painting.
Geniality: This tells us how good the character is at relating to other people (what is known as emotional intelligence). It governs sensitivity to the emotions of others, and so affects making friends, romance, and the ability to tell when someone is lying.
Nerve: This is will-power, cool, grit, whatever you want to call it. Nerve is what you need to face down an opponent or keep your head in a crisis.
Primary
stats are generated by rolling 2D4+1 for each one. This gives a range
of 3-9 for each statistic. Players may reorder their stat rolls to
fit the kind of character they want to create, but they cannot take
points from one stat and add them to another. Once they have arranged
their stats to their liking, players may add +1 to one primary stat
of their choosing.
This potentially allows one stat to be raised to 10, the human
maximum.
Alternative stat generation methods
1) Roll 3D4+1 for each Stat, discarding the lowest die. This will
tend to produced higher average stats within the normal range.
2) Roll 1D6+3 or even 1D4+5 for each Stat. This will guarantee higher
minimum values (4 and 6 respectively) and a higher average too, with
a greater probability of rolling a 9.
3) For truly heroic games, roll 2D4+2 (or 1D6+4 or 1D4+6) for each
Stat, but remove the optional +1 bonus to one Stat. This makes it
possible for characters to have more than one Stat at level 10.
4) Points-based: Assign a number of points to be distributed between
stats. Assuming the eight primary stats, 40 points generates 'rookie'
or weak characters, 50 points builds average characters, 55-60 points
makes 'elite' characters and 65 points produces 'heroic' characters.
Derivative statistics
Once
you have rolled and assigned your character's primary stats, it's
time to calculate the four derivative stats. These are:
Size: Strength plus Toughness divided by two, rounding halves up.
Reflexes: Coordination plus Agility divided by two, rounded up.
Looks: Geniality plus Agility divided by two, rounded up.
Sanity: Geniality plus Nerve.
This can be summarised as:
Size:
(Strength + Toughness)/2
Reflexes:
(Coordination + Agility)/2
Looks:
(Geniality + Agility)/2
Sanity:
(Geniality + Nerve)
Derivative Stats are much easier to change than Primary Stats. Size
changes with growth and ageing. Looks reduces with age and following
injuries that leave ugly scars, and can be improved with plastic
surgery. In Cyberpunk-genre games, Reflexes can be increased through
the use of cybernetic implants.
Statistic modifiers
Once
you have determined your character's primary and derivative stats,
you may need to add or subtract a modifier to or from them. Adults
between 16 and 65 years of age usually have no modifiers applied to
their stats, but children and elderly people do.
Children
between 12 and 15 years old, and people with congenital dwarfism,
subtract one point each from Strength, Toughness, Agility and Size.
For
each two full years less than thirteen, subtract one point each from
Strength, Toughness, Agility and Size, to a minimum of one (at 10-11:
-2; at 8-9: -3; at 6-7: -4; at 4-5: -5; at 2-3: -6; at 0-1: -7)
Elderly
people (generally over 65, but this threshold may be raised or
lowered at the GM's discretion) subtract one point from each from
Strength, Toughness, Agility, Size, Reflexes and Looks, but add one
to Geniality and Nerve.
Thus
the minimum value for each stat for an adult is two, and the maximum
is 10. These values represent the extremes of human physical and
mental development. Characters can only have one stat at 10 – if
they're lucky – and the GM should make them justify this.
Consider
this: Intelligence 10 means you are as clever as Sherlock Holmes.
Size 9 or 10 means you are at least six foot six and possibly over
seven feet tall (2m plus), and well built with it, as big as actors
Richard Keele, Bud Spencer or André the Giant or basketball player
Shaquille O'Neal. Looks 10 is that possessed by the sex symbols of
their age, such as Elizabeth Taylor or Marilyn Monroe. Clint
Eastwood's Man with no Name character and real-life world-record
trick-shooter Ed McGivern (who could put five shots from a revolver
into a 1¼” circle at 15
feet, in less than half a second) have Coordination and Reflexes of
10.
Stat checks
Occasionally
a character must make a die roll one of their Stats in order to avoid
something unpleasant. This is called a Stat Check. The player or GM
rolls a D10. If the result is equal to or less than the character's
relevant Stat, they pass the check. If the roll is higher, they fail.
A natural roll of a 10 (before modifiers) on a Stat Check is always a
failure (but not a fumble like with skill checks, below), while an
unmodified roll of a 1 is always a success.
Sanity and psychological trauma
Sanity is a special stat: there are no skills associated with it, and
it cannot be increased, only reduced.
Every
time a character suffers a psychological trauma (such as witnessing
the murder of a loved-one, having a near-death experience, suffering
torture or killing someone in cold blood) they must make a Sanity
stat check – rolling a D20 instead of a D10. Failure means the
character loses one point of sanity and one point of either
Geniality or Nerve
and therefore a point of sanity. Thus, the more your mental health
deteriorates, the more fragile it becomes.
The GM or source book may rule that certain traumatic experiences
affect Geniality and others Nerve.
Alternatively, and when in doubt, the stat point that is lost can be
determined randomly. Roll a D6: On a result of 1-3 the character
loses a point of Geniality, on a 4-6 they lose a point of Nerve.
Sanity check modifiers
Some situations are more potentially damaging to one's sanity than
others. To reflect this, a positive or negative modifier may be
applied to the die roll.
Nerve point loss
Losing your nerve, as you might guess, leads to neurotic conditions,
primarily anxiety but also including depression, phobias, obsession
and hysteria.
A character with Nerve 3 or 4 is pretty nervous. At Nerve 2 they jump
at everything , commonly experience panic attacks and manifest
irrational fears and obsessive, ritualistic behaviour. At Nerve 1
they suffer a complete nervous breakdown. Paranoid delusions take
over and the character begins to suspect others, even their friends
and relatives, of plotting against them. They may resort to violence,
even murder, to defend themselves from such imagined threats.
Geniality point loss
Losing points in geniality represents the process of brutalisation
and alienation, as is often experienced by soldiers and civilians in
war or by prison inmates. This leaves the character progressively
colder, more callous and alienated from the rest of humanity
(including friends and loved-ones).
Someone with Geniality 3 or 4 is a bit of a 'cold fish' who has
trouble relating to others. If Geniality falls to 2, the character is
very cold, distant and uncaring. At Geniality 1 the character becomes
a complete sociopath, viewing other human beings as simply a means to
an end. Other people are dehumanised and objectified in the
sufferer's psyche, and so the social inhibitions against dishonesty,
theft, assault, rape and murder break down. Such a person can be very
dangerous.
Psychotherapy
OK, you did one too many tours in the 'Nam (Tottenham that is), and
now you just sit staring at the walls of your local bar all day,
hitting the dirt every time a car exhaust backfires in the street
outside. When your wife's lawyer served you with divorce papers, you
almost snapped his neck like a twig. It's time you sought
professional help.
A
qualified psychiatrist, counsellor or psychotherapist can help you
confront your mental traumas and overcome them, but you will always
at risk of a relapse. In game terms, a successful Psychiatry task by
the professional treating the character allows them to regain one
lost Geniality or Nerve point. However, lost Sanity points cannot
be restored in this way, leaving the character more vulnerable to
psychological trauma in the future.
The difficulty of the Psychiatry task (to restore one point of either
Geniality or Nerve) depends on how many times it has been done.
Restoring the first point is an Easy task, the second an Average
task, the third Difficult and so on. If a stat is regained and lost
again, the difficulty level to restore it again still rises one
level, so a record needs to be kept on the character sheet of how
many points of each stat have been lost and restored. No amount of
expensive therapy will keep your marbles together if you get shot at
every day or torture and murder people for a living.
The therapy task takes one month of daily treatment, during which the
patient needs to be in a stable, serene environment (but not
necessarily a mental hospital) and away from the cause of their
trauma. It doesn't work if the character is getting into gunfights or
carrying out mob hits between their therapy sessions. In game terms,
a good time for such therapy is in the down-time between scenarios.
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