Equipment in the Galactic Guide is designed to be used and abused, however it does have a limited life span. Equipment can be damaged, hacked, infected or simply fail due to wear and tear.
The following rules cover how equipment can be repaired, how glitches occur and how to harden equipment against glitches.
Quality is a sliding scale from 0 to 6, where 0 is broken and 6 is brand new. General equipment starts at quality level 6 and can be reduced by damage, glitches or hacking.
Certain Techglomerate Gear can have a Quality as high as 7 or even 8, this gear can take a few extra knocks and bangs before becoming glitchy.
When equipment is damaged, the quality rating is reduced by 1 point. If the quality rating reaches 0, the equipment is considered broken and no longer functions.
A Glitch occurs when a piece of equipment takes a lot of damage, is hacked, infected or fails in some way. Depending on the nature of the glitch it can spread to take down an entire system.
Combat gear can and is often hardened against glitches though they can still occur if equipment is not maintained, tuned or takes damage.
All Equipment starts life with a quality rating of 6, unless specified otherwise.
When a piece of equipment is damaged, the quality rating is reduced by 1 point. If the quality rating reaches 0, the equipment is considered broken and no longer functions.
When a piece of equipment is used, it can become Glitchy. This happens when the equipment is damaged, hacked or infected. The DM can decide when this occurs, but generally it happens when a player rolls a 1 on the Wild die or an attacker rolls a 6.
If a player rolls a 1 on the Wild die, or an attacker rolls a 6, the DM can chose to have the equipment in use become Glitchy in which case the quality rating drops by 1 point (5).
If the glitch formed due to damage, normally the player would gain (Resistance) from the damage as the equipment absorb the remainder.
Glitched equipment has a cumulative 1/6 change of failing each time it's used, check this only when it matters or once per encounter for weapons.
The DM can decide when a piece of equipment becomes Glitchy, but generally it happens when a player rolls a 1 on the Wild die or an attacker rolls a 6.
Simply have the player roll the wild dice if the number is greater than the remaining Quality something bad happens.
Every time it does glitch, it fails in some way ( DM discretion) the quality decreases (5-4-3-2-1) and the chance of further failure increases, and so on to minimum quality level of 0 (Broken).
Clearing a Glitch
Sometimes the story will tell you how a glitch can be cleared, such as a piece of equipment that has been hacked or infected. In these cases, the player must take an appropriate action or skill check to clear the glitch. If you want something a little more proscriptive, the difference between the players Glitch roll and Quality is the number of actions required to clear the glitch.
Tech-Heads refer to this number as the glitch level.
Once an item reaches Broken with a quality level of 0, it is worthless and no longer functions.
To repair Glitched equipment by one quality level the Target number is 10 + (3 * glitch level).
A Trained Armour Tech can tune and add the appropriate fail safes to a set of equipment at a cost of 100 Creds per slotted item in parts. This Hardening work is not easy and The Target number to get an entire set tuned and protected is 10 + 3 per item in the set. A well fitted Tool-Box, Tech-Lab and Maint-Bot can help reduce this number, however this is definitely not field work.
Each attempt costs the above Creds in parts and if the set has previously been turned it's possible to totally de-tune the entire set if the new attempt results in a lower roll than the previous one. The Tech must be informed of the tuning order of the items, generally the PSU and primary weapon are first follow by other surging equipment then std S.L.O.T items. Once the roll is made subtract 10 and divide by 3. This is the total number of items in the order of the turning list that are now turned and protected from glitches.
Hardened Items wont glitch and a glitch cannot spread to other equipment. If damaged there functionality is reduced if severely damaged they simply shut down.
It's more difficult to hack hardened equipment while it is part of a tuned set. The Target number is +10.
It takes 10mins per slot to hardened a set of equipment, A Tech-Head would normally charge around 300 creds per hour up front, regardless of the outcome.
Equipment repair follows standardized procedures across all categories including Military, Electronics, Mechanical systems, Vehicles, and Spacecraft. Engineers trained in any repair category can provide the "Aid Another" action to grant advantage on repair rolls.
The base difficulty to fix or modify anything is Target Number 10.
To repair equipment by one Quality Level, the formula is: Target Number = 10 + (3 × glitch level)
Where glitch level = (6 - Current Quality)
| Current Quality | Repair Difficulty |
|---|---|
| 6 (New) | NA |
| 5 | 13 |
| 4 | 16 |
| 3 | 19 |
| 2 | 22 |
| 1 | 25 |
| 0 (Broken) | 28+ |
Cannibalization: If you have two similar items, you can scrap one to repair another. Roll against the item with the highest quality - success adds the scrapped item's quality to the repaired one (maximum 6). Excess quality becomes spare parts.
Workshop Benefits: Access to a proper workshop provides skill bonuses and fabrication allowances for creating missing parts or even entirely new items, depending on how well-stocked the facility is.
See Skills - Engineering Repair for further information and modifiers.