Example
MFDs 1-5
– Insanely Difficult – Nearly Impossible ->
Treating a near-lethal multiple-drug interaction, without
knowing the drugs involved. ->
Repairing a 200 year old gyrocopter in two hours with only basic
tools.
->
Disarming a Balefire bomb while under grenade bombardment.
->
Hitting a dime-sized button with a .32 pistol from 500 feet. ->
Causing a Sonic Rainboom (or Sonic Radboom) without ever having
done so before. ->
Reassembling a pipbuck by hoof from memory ->
Sniping the pilot out of a moving vertibuck (without SATS).
->
Treating a near-lethal multiple-drug interaction, knowing the drugs
involved. ¼
– Frustratingly Difficult ->
Blind-firing over a barricade and hitting.
->
Hacking a very difficult computer/picking a very difficult lock.
->
Hitting a dime-sized button with a .32 pistol from 20 feet.
->Repairing
a completely destroyed weapon from scratch without blueprints. ½
– Very Difficult ->
Sniping the pilot out of a moving vertibuck (with SATS).
->
Hacking a difficult terminal/picking a difficult lock.
->
Noticing that the “poorly concealed landmine” will rearm if
picked up.
->
Quadrupling the output of a normal spell ¾
– Hard ->
Getting a fair price trading goods and supplies with a neutral
merchant.
->
Hacking an average terminal/picking an average lock.
->
Cooking a good meal using 300 year old food. ->
Casting a well-known spell beyond its normal limit (may cause
burnout)
1/10 – Extraordinarily Difficult
Your other sets of dice are used mostly for dealing damage with weapons, which I’ll explain later.
All skill and attribute rolls are made using d%, as are the majority of the rolls made during combat. For more explicit rules on how to interpret dice rolls, please look ahead to the section about whatever roll it is you’re trying to succeed on. That being said, the rest of this section will hopefully clarify some things about dice rolls that apply across the board within this system.
Rolling Successes
The main objective of dice rolls using d% in this system is to roll low, lower than a target number. In order to be successful on a ‘to hit’ or a skill roll, players must roll at or below a specific number, which I refer to from here on in as the Target Number, or TN. This number will vary depending on the difficulty of the action that the roll represents. Actions with a low TN are more difficult for a character to accomplish than those with a higher TN. The specific TNs, at least for skill rolls, can be determined by the following equation:
Your character sheet has spaces provided for you to write out what the target numbers for different skills are as you improve your character.
Example
MFDs (cont’d) 1
– Normal
->Noticing
a poorly concealed landmine.
->Hitting
an unconcealed target within normal engagement range on any weapon.
->Performing
basic maintenance on guns and equipment. ->Casting
a well-known spell (such as cutie mark spells, or major
telekinesis) ->Getting
a fair price trading goods and supplies with a friendly merchant. ->Picking
an easy lock/hacking an easy terminal.
1
½ –Easy
->Tracking
a rather un-stealthy pony across the wastes.
->Performing
an easy cutie-mark skill task (such as casting a cutie-mark spell
under non-stressful conditions). ->Sneaking
past sleeping guards 2–
Very Easy
->Noticing
a Sonic Radboom from less than 50 miles away.
->Burning
your cooking (if you intend to). ->Most
dialogue with a friendly NPC.
->Hitting
a target at point blank with a shotgun, using buckshot.
Note:
Even 1/10 MFDs should still be possible,
just extremely difficult. If your characters want to break the
laws of magic and the space-time continuum, have them try for
critical successes instead.
The “Modifier for Difficulty” (abbreviated MFD) term represents the simple fact that, no matter how good you are at something, that doesn’t make it easy (and conversely, the fact that you’re terrible at something doesn’t make it impossible for you to succeed, fantastically and against all odds). Your character may be a master at lockpicking, but picking a lock while suspended upside down in a room steadily filling with water is no mean feat, regardless of your prowess with a bobby pin and screwdriver.
For example, say Lil’pip is engaged in combat. Lil’pip is very proficient with her sniper rifle, and because the target is far away, she uses her scope.
Let’s say Lil’pip’s Small Guns skill rank is 50, and her agility is 6 (for a converted value of 60, of which we can add half to her skill for this roll – this process will be explained later in more detail, in the skills section). We now have a base TN, MFD 1, of 80. Because of both her scope and the fact that she is using S.A.T.S., she suffers no penalty or bonus when shooting at her opponent’s torso (the default targeting location) that might otherwise result from inadequate equipment.
Her opponent is moderately intelligent and has managed to gain partial cover behind a crumbling concrete structure. 25% of the target’s torso is concealed, so the total penalty to her roll is -25. The shot itself is not particularly hard, and she has quite a bit of combat experience, so we’ll say that the modifier for difficulty is 1 (a table of some common examples of modifiers for difficulty – or as we like to call them, MFDs-- is to the right). This makes the final roll TN for Lil’pip’s shot to hit a 55.
So now that we’ve determined what Lil’pip’s player needs to roll under, we have her roll the dice. If she rolls 55 or below, that poor bugger in her sights will have a new scar to show off to his buddies – if he survives the bullet, anyway.
Note that under perfectly normal circumstances there will not be a need for a modifier for difficulty, and that penalties or bonuses are the only thing that will need to be applied to rolls. Good luck trying to find perfectly normal circumstances out in the Equestrian Wasteland.
Oh no! She not only rolled above a 55, but she rolled a 97! In this system, that is a critical failure. Not only did she miss her target, but something went horribly awry!
Critical Failures & Successes
Critical failures and successes can allow a seemingly controlled situation to go bad quickly, or cause a situation with little to no hope to turn in the favor of the players. In short, they are powerful – critical successes and failures can change the game for better or for worse for the players and their characters.
Generally speaking, critical successes are dice rolls from 1 to 5 (or 0-4), and critical failures are dice rolls from 96-100 (or 95-99). These ranges can be expanded in certain situations by perks.
Lil’pip’s player has rolled above a 95 on her 1 to 100 scale; this is a critical failure.
It is ultimately the decision of the GM exactly what goes wrong or what goes right when a critical is scored. A critical success on a repair roll might make a piece of machinery run better than it did 200 years ago; a critical failure might ensure that it never runs again. A critical success against a Centaur’s stare might allow your player to completely resist its effects. A critical failure in the same situation might simply not allow further attempts to break free from control – a devastating consequence.
A common example of a critical failure in combat is a weapon malfunction. Lil’pip’s gun may have jammed, or possibly chambered one too many rounds and damaged its internals upon firing, resulting in a shot that almost certainly missed. It will need to be repaired before it will work properly again.
Contested and Opposed Rolls
Occasionally characters will have to roll against each other. This isn’t always commonplace, but it does come into play frequently with sneaky characters or during direct contests of skill, either against other characters or against environmental conditions.
When rolling opposed, both characters must roll their score and report their resulting roll’s MFD level. The character that makes the lower MFD is the ‘victor’ of the contest. If both characters make the same MFD, simply have both reroll until one clear victor is achieved. Remember to count the full range of MFDs – 1/10 is better than ¼, after all. Critical successes can only be matched by critical successes (resulting in a tie), and critical failures will almost always lose unless the opponent is similarly unlucky. A common opposed roll is one player’s perception score versus another’s sneak score. Magical effects, especially mind-altering ones, frequently call for opposed rolls between the target player’s INT and the caster’s magic skill.
In our example, say Lil’pip was sneaking around a slaver encampment. Trying to avoid unnecessary violence, she activates her stealthbuck and begins sneaking. She rolls sneak and gets under ¼ after the bonus to sneak her item provides her. Her opposed roll is going to come from the griffin currently on patrol nearby. The griffin rolls well on her perception this time, getting a ¼ even after lighting penalties and Lil’pip’s stealth field. This means that both characters must re-roll.
The second roll for pip is below 1/10. The slaver isn’t so lucky a second time, making only a ¾ roll. So pip sneaks past undetected.
Referencing the Fiction
Now that you know the basics about the technical aspects of the system, the setting should be addressed. This system is designed to be set within the confines of Fallout Equestria. The character backgrounds, perks, spells, items, etc. that follow are all either referenced in Fallout Equestria, Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons or one of the larger spin-off recursive fan-fictions, or are drawn from specific ideas in My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic and converted into terms of Fallout 3 or Fallout: New Vegas (or vice versa for that last bit).
That being said, when you play keep in mind that the main purpose of this game is to model the adventures of brave heroes and/or nefarious villains as they save/destroy the Equestrian Wasteland. All of the setting information in this book is either taken directly from or extrapolated from these stories, but your heroes of the wasteland need not stick to the areas around Hoofington, or between the ruins of Ponyville, Fillydelphia, Canterlot, and Manehattan; they needn’t even start from a stable. Plenty of adventures can start in humble settings, such as small survivor communities, scraping by.
The fictions should be referenced as stories within the setting that their authors have created, and your players, if they’re read the fictions, will likely want to see something that combines elements of these fantastic tales with new areas and ideas. Ultimately the decision about how in-depth your campaigns will reference the fiction is up to you, of course. So get ready to go out there and save the wastes with the power of friendship!
Awkward or Adult Situations and Maturity
Ahhh yes-- One last thing, and then I promise the character generation starts next. Adult situations abound in the setting of Fallout Equestria. Whether it be the cannibalism that runs rampant through raider groups and beyond, the sexual interplay that strengthens or weakens relationships between characters, or simply the effect that being forced to constantly, violently, near-fatally scrape along towards survival for themselves and for those around them has on the psyche of the characters (i.e. suicidal thoughts and other emotional or psychological instabilities), Fallout Equestria is simply rife with situations that are only slightly easier to explain to your parents than you enjoying My Little Pony so much.
Equestria is not the nice place it was, and neither are any of the areas that surround it; all of the ponies, zebras, griffons, and what-have-you still surviving day to day within its borders are acutely aware of this fact. If and when you round up a herd of bronies to play this, make sure that they understand that maturity is integral to the setting. Fallout Equestria as a setting doesn’t have too many happy ponies – it’s populated mostly by lots of sad ponies trying to get by and living from moment to moment in whatever way they think will get them the most enjoyable moments overall. If they brutally injure, rape, kill, and/or scream obscenities to get what they want or need, just make sure everyone knows ahead of time that situations like that are par for the course (and make sure their curses are both inventive and pony themed!). And don’t forget to mention the drugs, slavery and prostitution rings that serve as complement to the other harsh realities of survival. Civilization, in all its fallen glory, awaits you.
It is certainly possible for some groups may choose to ignore most of the more mature themes of the setting, but such bowdlerization isn’t built into the rules provided here. That burden lies on them.
2 – Making a Character
The character creation process for Fallout: Equestria RPG is a six step process that may seem familiar to many of you who’ve played Savage Worlds or a similar system. For at least your first character, we recommend that you follow the steps in order so as to get a feel for it.
Race (or species, as appropriate)
Attributes
Skills and Cutie Marks
Hindrances
Traits
These sections are listed in order, starting with a listing of races on the following page. For assistance with recording all this information on your character sheet, check out the “Filling out Your Character Sheet” guide starting on the next page.
Filling Out Your Character Sheet
For first time players, turning all of the stuff we’ve been talking about into a format that you can put on your character sheet can be difficult—Perks, Traits, Skills and Attributes especially. This section is designed to help guide you through the process of putting all of that information about your character onto the character sheet provided. For first time players, this section also contains most of the relevant rules for basic play (or tells you where to find them).
All of the sections of the character sheet are numbered off on the following couple of pages (figures 5 and 6), with small descriptions and explanations of what goes where. The sections are numbered roughly according to the order in which they should be filled out during character creation, or where that fails, from top to bottom on the actual sheet. Hope this helps!
1 – Name, Race, Gender and Racial Abilities.
This section is where you record your character’s name, gender, race or species, and any abilities unique or special to that race, such as flight, digging, or magic. Race or species plays a large part in determining how your character will interact with other characters and with the rest of the wasteland. This information can be particularly useful for players new to the system, especially when handed characters not of their own making, but more experienced players may find it less helpful.
2 – Level, Height and Weight
These spaces are provided for you to keep track of your character’s level, height and weight. Height and weight can be randomly determined using dice given information provided in their racial description or can be picked by the player from within the ranges listed. Both of these characteristics are able to be modified by certain traits and hindrances. It is recommended that characters start their adventures at level 1, particularly for first time players.
3 – Attribute Scores
This box is for recording your characters attribute scores and the corresponding MFD levels, as well as any bonuses or penalties that they might receive on attribute rolls. The far left column, labeled Score, has every row start at 1 point. Attribute scores can be increased by your race, spending character creation points, or by certain traits and hindrances. How to do this is outlined in the Attributes section starting on page 46.
After your scores have been calculated and finalized, you can fill in the rest of the table starting with the MFD: 1 column. To fill in this column, simply multiply the corresponding attribute score by 10. A score of 5, for example, gets an MFD 1 value of 50. The three columns to the right are fractional values of the MFD 1 column, rounded down. For our example value of 50, the ¾, ½, and ¼ columns would read 37, 25, and 12 respectively. If you’d prefer not to muck about with math, there’s a quick reference set of tables at the very end of this document that can provide you with the corresponding fractional MFD TNs based on the MFD 1 TN value. Only the most commonly used MFD values are provided for on the character sheet; most people have no trouble dividing by 10 or multiplying by 2 to determine the MFD target numbers for 1/10, 1.5 and 2, and in most in-game situations these numbers aren’t necessary for play.
The “+” column on the far right of this box is reserved for roll-bonuses – static values that you would add or subtract from die rolls. “Bonuses” are subtracted from die rolls, and “penalties” – which should also be kept track of in this column – are added to die rolls. Rolling lower is better in this system, and bonuses are always good, so bonuses make your dice effectively roll lower.
If that seemed confusing to you, try to think of the MFD values as target numbers to roll below; you add your bonuses to those target numbers to make them larger, and thus easier to roll under, or subtract your penalties to make them harder to roll under.
4 – Traits and Hindrances
This box is a summary of your character’s background; traits and hindrances reflect how a character’s past affects their abilities. Traits, hindrances, and their effects should be listed here. We personally recommend including a short statement after each trait or hindrance explaining its effects on rolls or in different situations, if you can fit it. That helps prevent players from forgetting exactly what effects each trait or hindrance might have in a given situation.
5 – Skills: Ranks, MFD values and Bonuses & Penalties
This table has spaces for your rank in a given skill (the left-most blank column), in addition to an adjoining table for MFDs. Your “Rank” in a given is determined by your starting Skill rank (the calculation for which is displayed under the ‘Starting Skills and Cutie Marks’ heading of the character creation section above), plus any skill rank bonuses from your race, traits, or perks, in addition to any skill points that you may have invested at past level-ups to increase that skill’s rank. Your rank in a skill represents how good your character is at performing tasks related to that skill – higher is better.
The MFD values are particularly important, because they indicate what values on the dice you must actually roll at or below in order to succeed. To find these values, start at the “MFD 1” column. When you’re actually rolling for skills, the values in this column represent the target numbers for a modifier for difficulty of 1. This column’s values can be determined by adding your skill rank to the ½ MFD value of the governing attribute. The attribute linked to a given skill is displayed in the “ATT” column immediately to the right of the skill name. If a character has 30 ranks in a skill, and the governing attribute has a score of 6, then the value that goes in the “MFD 1” column would be 60. The three columns immediately to the right of that are fractions of that MFD value, calculated similarly to the fractional MFD values in the Attribute Scores table. Remember to round down! If you’d prefer not to muck about with math, there’s a quick reference set of tables at the very end of this document that can provide you with the corresponding fractional MFD TNs based on the MFD 1 TN value.
Remember, the “+” column on the far right is roll bonuses and penalties – “bonuses” are subtracted from die rolls, and “penalties” are added. I’ve also been told it helps to think of bonuses being added to the actual target number for the MFD, and penalties being subtracted from that target number; the effect is the same, whichever way you prefer to think about it.
6 – Movement Speeds
These values are the distance your character can cover in combat. For ground speed, your character can move up to 2.5 times their agility attribute score (counting any temporary bonuses such as might be granted by armor or items), in feet, per action in combat (so every 3 seconds, combat rounds being about six seconds long). These values must be rounded down to the nearest multiple of five.
For flight and dig speed, your character can move up to five times their Agility attribute score in feet per action in combat. For flight, this movement limit does not include additional distance that may be covered by making a special aerial maneuver instead of moving normally (such as an Aerial Dash).
Characters that move by digging can only move at their normal land speed underground if they choose not to holster or drop their weapons – use of both claws is necessary to achieve the higher listed speed.
7 – SATS (Slider)
This is where you can keep track of your character’s Stable-tec Assisted Targeting System’s power levels. Characters start out with 40 + (AGIx5) points as their maximum for this slider; because this value changes frequently during combat, we recommend keeping track of this with a paperclip. When using SATS as a combat action, depending on the weapon or spell being used, the remaining “pool” of SATS points available to a player decreases. Every weapon and spell has a listed value for how much a single use of that weapon or a single casting of that spell costs in SATS. These points regenerate at a rate of 5 points per round – a little less than one point every second. SATS use negates visibility penalties, and certain perks grant bonuses to accuracy while using SATS.
8 – Karma and Speechcraft Bonuses
Karma is the traditional Fallout method of determining your character’s alignment – i.e. whether they’re good, evil, or neutral. A greatly positive karma score is a sign that your character is damn good at making the wasteland a better place, and a greatly negative one show that your character has made it their goal in life to make the wasteland even worse than it already is. So much worse that others will look back and say, “Remember when we only used to starve twice a week and had to scavenge daily for useless trash to trade? I miss those days.”
Karma gives you a speechcraft bonus towards those who are sympathetic to your cause, and a penalty towards those on the opposite side of the karmic spectrum. Speech craft bonuses are based on Net karma – positive and negative karma points matter. For every 10 points of karma, characters receive a +1 roll bonus on speechcraft towards those with karma scores on the same side of zero, and a penalty of equal magnitude towards those on the opposite side of zero. In other words, positive karma players will find that towns of good and well-meaning ponies will react better towards them, while negative karma players will find that those with lawlessness, selfishness and rage in their hearts are much more welcoming to the like-minded (though probably not that much more welcoming, considering).
Karma is also used as a measure of ‘global’ renown; the more total karma a character has received, positive or negative, the more widely known they are in the wasteland. The total amount of karma a character has received has a place to be recorded, and has no direct bearing on net karma.
9 – Damage/Wound
The damage-per-wound box is actually related to number 14 – the wounds area. This box is for recording and quickly referencing the amount of damage it takes to deal your character a wound, both in or out of combat. For most ponies this value starts at 10 at level one, and is increased by one point every 3 levels starting at level 3 for a maximum value of 20 at level 30. Large ponies start with a value of 12 (making their maximum 22), and ponies with the Pipsqueak or Young hindrances may start with 8 or 6 (making their maximum 18 or 16, respectively) depending on whether they’ve taken one or both of these hindrances.
10 – Armor and Hit Locations Display
Be it functional or simply fabulous (though no one is telling you it can’t be both, darling), this box is the perfect place to record what your character is wearing. Space is provided for you to record the targeting penalty (listed as SATS penalty) that others take when targeting an area. This value is 0 for most characters, but the targeting penalty suffered by others can be increased by certain traits, hindrances and perks. There’s also space for you to record what armor you’re wearing in a given location, and the DT (that’s damage threshold, in case you forgot) that the armor provides to resist damage taken to that area. The last line provided is for the status of your armor in a given area – statuses such as ‘damaged’ or ‘full of holes, -5 DT’ would go here. It’s a bad idea to keep track of the status of actual body parts in this box – there’s space for that in the wounds area.
11– Armor and Armor Effects
Armor and barding can do quite a bit for your character, not the least of which is keep them alive by negating damage. This box is a place for your character to record what armor or clothing they’re wearing. Characters can wear multiple sets of armor (as long as they don’t have more than one each of the levels of barding on their person at a given time), but only the heaviest armor (the one with the highest DT value) counts towards reducing damage.
Some armors and clothes do things other than directly keep people from hurting you, such as granting bonuses or penalties to attributes and/or skills. This box is provided so that you can keep track of any such bonuses or penalties that your armor provides. Armor or clothing that is destroyed (its DT has dropped to 0) can still provide bonuses to skills or attributes, provided it is still intact enough to be worn. Characters can only wear so much armor – one piece from each of the four categories (clothing, and light medium and heavy bardings) at a time. The terms ‘barding’ and ‘armor’ are used interchangeably in this document.
12 – Weapon Information
This box is for recording and displaying information on the weapons that your character has and uses. Just because they only have five slots doesn’t mean they can only use five weapons, obviously, but there’s only so much we can fit on a single sheet of paper!
This table is specifically designed for ranged weapons like guns, but enough space is provided for the weapons statistics needed to use explosives, melee, and unarmed weapons quickly and effectively in combat as well. For explosives, be sure to differentiate between direct damage and the immediate-area splash damage; there are areas provided or designated to record all of the information necessary to use any of the weapons outlined in the equipment section.
13 – Ammo (Slider)
Designed for ponies that use guns, this slider is to allow for easy recording of how many shots a pony has left in their weapon (or weapons) before they need to reload. You can use it however you want, but we recommend that you start at the top and work down for your main weapon, or start at both ends and work towards the middle if you tend to use two weapons simultaneously.
14 – Wounds
In combat, your character will eventually get hurt. This is where you record exactly how hurt they’ve become. Remember, if your character has received their endurance score or more in wounds to the torso or head (or wherever it is your wastelander keeps their vital organs), they’re dead. The same number of wounds to a non-vital extremity results in dismemberment.
There is also space to record whether or not the limb or area is crippled. Being crippled in an area means that characters take a -25 roll penalty to all skill and attribute rolls related to that area, and it can prevent or hinder movement as well. If a limb is used for movement, crippling that limb slows down that character by a whopping 25%, rounded down to the nearest five foot increment.
Note that even if a pony is fully crippled, they can still drag themselves along at five feet per action.
15 – Radiation Level (Slider)
Because of the longevity of the clouds of ambient necromantic radiation left over from the ending days of the last war, there is a very good chance that your character will become irradiated to some degree just walking around out in the wasteland. That’s what this area of your character sheet is for. For those of you who are more visually inclined, a slider is provided to keep track of radiation your wastelander has absorbed. If you’re more inclined to just keep track of a number, there’s also space provided for that too, on the far left.
Based on how much radiation your character has absorbed, they will begin to suffer from radiation poisoning. Long term radiation poisoning, even at levels as low as 200 rads, can lead to irreversible physical damage such as organ failures, skin lesions, mutations, and possibly even death.
In the bottom left corner of this area is a place to write down your character’s current radiation resistance value. This value, usually a percentage, is how much ambient radiation your character can ignore the effects of.
16 – Sneak Speed
This is the speed that your character can move at while sneaking in combat. Just like movement speed, this value is the number of feet they can move if they spend a single action sneaking. Sneak speed is your character’s movement speed, divided by 2, rounded down to the nearest 5. Any perks that increase a character’s movement speed can also increase sneak speed (though only because of the relationship between the two), and certain perks can increase it independently. Sneak speed is also discussed more in depth in the Combat section.
17 – Temporary Attribute Scores
There are many effect s in this system that will alter your SPECIAL attribute scores in ways that are non-permanent or reversible. This box exists so you can keep track of the altered values. Note that attribute increases and decreases also cause a corresponding bonus or penalty (respectively) to any skills linked to the attribute in question. This bonus or penalty is equal to 5x the attribute increase or decrease, and space to keep track of this is provided in the “LSP,” or “Linked Skill Penalty” column. Temporary alterations to attributes can also affect things like a character’s SATS pool, carrying capacity, the number of wounds they can suffer before dying or becoming maimed or crippled, maximum strain, and their movement speed. Temporary attribute scores have no bearing on perk attribute requirements.
18 – Gear, Food and Drink
An important part of survival in the wasteland is managing your supplies, both as an individual and as a group. This area lets you record what your character is carrying on their person. It’s a good idea to divide medical supplies and food somewhat evenly amongst party members in case one or more characters get separated from the rest. It’s also important to note here how much each of the items your character is carrying weigh; they can only carry so much gear before it bogs them down. How much a character can carry and how the weight carried affects their speed can be kept track of below this area, in section 20.
19 – Money and Ammo
Both money (including bottle caps and pre-war bits) and ammunition are generally considered to be weightless for the purpose of adding up the weight carried by a character. As such, they have their own box to be recorded in so that players can keep weightless items separate from the rest. This area is also good for keeping track of loaded spare magazines and other small items related to weapon maintenance and use, or other small weightless items such as data disks, message tapes (if you carry them around instead of just downloading them to a pipbuck) and memory orbs.
Characters that use many different types of ammunition might need to expand into the normal gear area to keep track of their munitions. For help with this, there’s a ‘character sheet expansion’ page included alongside the character sheet in the back of this document.
20 – Weight Carried, Weight Limit, Sneak Penalty and Maximum Speed
This little box is where you should record the net weight of all of the gear and supplies your character is hauling around the wasteland with them, and the effects of that weight on their movement speed and ability to sneak about. A character’s maximum carrying capacity is 100 + (STRx10) units of weight. The limit on what they can pull or drag is five times that amount. If a character ever ends up carrying a load above their weight limit, it reduces their move speed by 5 feet per action for every 10 units of weight over limit they are (round up). There is a space to record the new movement speed or their current movement speed penalty provided. Remember that characters overburdened cannot fly, teleport, or dig at speeds above their reduced base movement speed.
The sneak penalty due to the weight of a character’s equipment is only relevant if your character is carrying more than 50 pounds of gear. Starting at 50, for every 10 units of weight beyond 50 (rounded up) characters take a -5 penalty to sneak.
21 – Taint (Slider)
Taint is nasty, nasty business. Enough exposure to taint won’t necessarily kill you, but in 99% of the population it will make you wish you were dead. The other 1% may actually receive positive mutations from taint, but if I were you I wouldn’t count on being in that very small percentile when it comes to risking exposure. This slider represents the level of taint present in your character’s body, generally considered in this system as a percentage of the absolutely-lethal dose. Don’t forget, wastelanders: taint is in the water supply. If your GM lets you, you can check out the information on taint and what it can do to characters provided in the GM’s Guide to the Equestrian Wastes, at the tail end of this book.
22 – Experience and Next Level
If your game group and GM choose to keep track of experience to determine when characters increase in level, this area is provided to help do just that. The experience box is a great place to mark down how much experience a character has accrued over their life time in play, and the “Next Level at:” box is perfect for keeping track of precisely how much experience they’ll need to advance. Experience is discussed in depth in the beginning of the Leveling Up Your Character section on page 105.
23 – Occupation
This seemingly unimportant and unassuming little corner box is actually quite valuable as a role-playing tool. The space provided allows players to record what their characters think their occupation is – or just as frequently, what others assume their occupation is based on their dress and behavior.
This little tidbit can speak volumes about the psyche of a character – how they view their own impact on their world. Are they an unassuming ex-stable dweller, a dependable toaster-repair pony, or an incredible, unstoppable bringer of light? Are they the star-maiden, bearer of a great and powerful curse, or are they security, making Equestria a better place by imposing justice on a violent wasteland?
Even casting those extravagant literary examples aside, it’s worth pointing out that any mare who goes around the wasteland helping people out in exchange for goods and services could just as easily consider themself a rough, ruthless and ready mercenary as they could a helpful wasteland adventurer and explorer. Don’t forget that how your character wants to act and how they view themselves within the wasteland affects how the wasteland and its inhabitants will view them in return.
24 – Level-Up and Quest Perks
This large area is organized to make it easy for characters to keep track of their perks. Perks can be gained in one of two ways – gaining a level, or from a quest. Starting at level 2, characters gain one perk every time they increase in level. This is why the majority of this section is numbered from 2 to 30, 30 being the maximum level. The non-numbered lines are provided for overflow in perk descriptions or for perks gained from quests or other means. It’s generally a good idea to write a brief summary of what the perk does next to its name to help you remember what your character is capable of. This is doubly true for perks that only affect specific situations or types of situations.
25 – Spells/Recipes Known Information
This area provides space for a character’s repertoire of currently-known spells or recipes. The % column is for use in learning new spells based on currently-known ones, as explained in greater detail in the Magic section. The MFD to cast a spell or brew a potion also has a column; don’t confuse this with the MFD to use a talisman or potion! The SATS cost here can be the cost to cast a spell or brew a potion, or can instead be the SATS cost to use the end product of an alchemical recipe in its intended fashion. Finally, the cost-column provides a space to record a spell’s base strain cost or recipe’s basic ingredient cost. This box is used slightly differently depending on what type of caster your character is playing; non-casters needn’t use this box at all, except as possible overflow gear storage. Be sure to read through the Magic section for your particular type of spellcasting before filling out this part of your sheet!
26 – Magic /Ingredients Pool (Slider)
This slider is for keeping track of your character’s magical reserves, if they have magic. For unicorns, alicorns, and related spell casters this is where you should keep track of strain. The maximum amount of strain for these casters can vary, and is discussed in more depth in the Magic Kindergarten section later on. Remember that strain regenerates over time.
For zebras, this is where you should keep track of your character’s ingredient pool. This pool can be replenished by rolling survival, as discussed in the Alchemy and Talismans 101 section.
If your character doesn’t use magic, this slider area can be useful as an extra ammunition tracker.
That’s the whole breakdown of the character sheet, piece by piece. For more information on any of the individual sections, look in the related sections of the rules.
Races and Racial Abilities
Now that you know how the character sheet works, it’s time to fill it in.
First, you’ll want to pick your character’s race. This table on the following page summarizes each race and their respective advantages and unique abilities. The races are listed in descending order based on complexity. The further down the list you go, the more difficult it will be to roleplay your character well in a general setting (the order also loosely corresponds to how prevalent the races are in the equestrian wasteland). It is recommended that first time players pick a pony race, or at least not stray below Zebra.
Pay close attention to the racial attributes column. This section outlines the special advantages that each race receives that distinguish them from most other races, including their racial attribute bonus options. When creating a character of that race, you may pick one (or two, in several cases) of these racial attributes to receive an additional point. Normally, a character cannot start with a
Table I: Racial Summary Table
Race |
Brief Description |
Racial Attributes |
Earth Pony |
Well rounded and physically strong, Earth Ponies formed the back-bone of pre-war Equestrian agriculture and engineering. Good for first-time players, they receive two attribute point bonuses and a single free trait at character creation. Their dedicated nature grants them one additional skill point every time they gain a level. |
STR, END, INT +5’ move OR +50 wt cap Free Trait |
Unicorn |
The magical abilities a unicorn possesses allow them to easily and effectively specialize into niche party roles, such as healer or repair technician. At higher levels magic can be quite powerful, but at lower levels their magical focus can make unicorn characters less skill-oriented. |
PER, INT, LUCK Magic (U/A) |
Pegasus |
Pegasi are rare in the wasteland compared to their earth-bound pony kin. During the last days of the war, most pegasi retreated above the clouds to escape the radiation, where they formed the Grand Pegasus Enclave. Their wings and agility make them highly versatile and very capable combatants. |
PER, END, INT, AGI Flight |
Griffin |
Griffin mercenaries made use of their wings and claws as perhaps the most deadly mercenary faction to participate in the zebra-pony war. Many of their mercenary clans still ply their trade in the wasteland today. Griffin characters tend towards combat and support roles. |
PER, END, AGI Flight |
Zebra |
Zebra magic and cunning eventually proved them more than a match for the superior technology of Equestria during the war. While they lack the raw power of ponies, Zebra characters have access to the very versatile magics of their ancient sires. They may also choose to forego magic in exchange for increased martial skill. Not recommended for beginners. |
PER, END, CHA, INT Magic (Z) |
Alicorn |
Alicorns in the wasteland are the long-term end result of magical experiments performed by Equestrian arcane scientists during the last years of the war. Their powerful magic and flight make them relatively formidable at lower levels, but they tend to gain power more slowly than other characters as they increase in level. Due to their origins as a race, Alicorns are difficult characters to roleplay. Not recommended for beginners. |
INT, END, LUCK Magic (U/A) Flight Large |
Hell Hound/ Sand Dog |
The Diamond Dogs were driven from their ancestral homes in the Maripony River Valley by Equestrian scientific and military efforts during the war. The magical pollution that tainted their lands as a result caused those that returned home to develop into Hellhounds, fearsome creatures with razor sharp claws and teeth capable of digging as fast as their ancestors. Hellhounds are extraordinarily powerful characters in close combat, and are masters of ambush-tactics. Like alicorns, the hostile nature of hellhounds towards other races makes them non-ideal for beginning players.
Those that stayed where the ponies relocated them learned to specialize in pony technology; these Sand Dogs are masters of cybernetics, mining techniques, and holding grudges against lying, thieving ponies. Sand Dogs are excellent at repair, and their skill in cybernetics can make them invaluable to any party. They’re significantly easier to roleplay than hellhounds. The digging abilities of both races allow them to rapidly scale walls and create situational cover in almost any environment. |
HH: STR, PER, END Dig, Claws Biped
SD: END, INT, AGI Dig Biped |
Race |
Brief Description |
Racial Attributes |
Bat pony |
Bat ponies are known to have composed Princess Luna’s personal night guard, but are otherwise a very mysterious race whose origins remain unknown to most, even in the wasteland today. Their flight and sonic screech abilities make them quite capable combatants (especially in the dark), but their inability to speak at frequencies other races can hear makes them difficult characters to roleplay. |
PER, AGI Sonic Screech, Flight, Shadowflash* |
Buffalo |
The buffalo have always been a peaceful people, remaining neutral until the very end of the war. Despite their neutrality, the collateral damage that followed the end of the war quickly forced them into shelters, destroying the lands they held so dear. Their large stature makes them a force to be reckoned with in close quarters when threatened, but they tend to lack technological knowledge. Buffalo may receive an extra trait at character creation at no cost. |
STR, PER, END, CHA Charge Dmg Bonus* Large Free Trait |
Donkey |
These wandering merchants were commonplace in cities on both sides of the war long before its end. Donkeys have no ancestral lands to call their own, which has lead them to become a thinly-spread, tough-as-nails, and renowned as merchants, bankers, and shrewd business owners. Donkey characters are excellent for players looking to make merchants or other charisma based characters, and start with a free trait at character creation. |
PER, CHA, END, LUCK Sterner Stuff Free Trait |
Minotaur |
Loose allies of the zebra, these bipedal hulks fought pony-allied nations during the war. They bear many of the same social stigmas as zebra in Equestria proper as a result of this alliance. Their strength and endurance are legendary, and their massive stature makes them a good fit for tough-to-kill characters. Alternative character builds for minotaurs may make use of the fact that some minotaurs are capable of bringing the powerful magic of the zebra into play as well. Minotaurs are good for players who like powerful characters but are looking for a roleplaying challenge less complex than alicorns. |
STR, END Magic (Z)* Biped |
Half-Breed |
Half-breeds are either the result of unusual genetic recombination within races or of interbreeding between two relatively similar species. They tend to be physically weaker than either of their sires, but with a combination of the abilities of both races. Each half-breed is treated as its own race; check out the long description for more details. Half-breed characters are difficult to roleplay, and are designed as a challenging option to more advanced players. You’ve been warned. |
Varies Free Trait |
*Requires a trait.
Ponies
There were many races that once flourished in and around the area that now comprises the Equestrian Wasteland. By far the most numerous among them were the ponies, Equestria having been their homeland. There are three playable types of ponies, outlined below. Each of the races has its own set of racial skill bonuses, abilities, and shortcomings. For first time players, playing a pony character is recommended – earth ponies and unicorns in particular are great for allowing first time players to get a feel for the system.
Please note that the listed height and weight ranges for all of the races on the following pages do not account for hindrances and traits (unless explicitly stated), some of which may alter the listed values significantly. These effects are listed within the hindrances and traits section in the long descriptions.
Earth Ponies
Height: 3’10” + 2d6” – From 4’0” to 4’10”
Weight: 250 + (2d6*10) – From 270 to 370 macs
Diet: Herbivorous
Unique Ability: Earth Pony Dedication: Earth ponies are frequently regarded as the least threatening of the three pony karyotypes. This is not the case – while lacking the wings of the Pegasi or the inherent magic of the Unicorns, Earth ponies frequently more than compensate for this with their sheer tenacity, intelligence, and hard work. As such, they receive Strong Back or High Ho Silver, Away! for free at character creation, and every time they increase in level they get one more skill point than they would otherwise. It was almost exclusively Earth Ponies who designed such things as the Stables, the tunnel network around Hoofington, the guns still in use in the wasteland today, the armor used by the Steel Rangers, Shadowbolt Tower, and every one of the Ministry of Awesome Towers of the SPP network. Many ponies would do well to note that these wonders of the old world are still standing. As a result of their strengths, Earth ponies get one free extra point to two of the following attributes: END, INT, or STR at character creation, and a free 1-point trait of their choice. They may elect to lower the cost of a multi-point-cost trait by one instead of receiving another trait for no cost.
Skill Bonus Ranks:
+5 Science, +5 Repair, +5 Unarmed, +5 Big Guns, +5 Survival (pick any two), -10 Lockpicking (Minimum 5)
Racial Skill: N/A
Special Trait Eligibility:
Free instance of either the Strong Back or High Ho Silver, Away! perk at character creation. Whichever perk is chosen can still be taken a second time as a level-up perk; the effects stack.
Free trait worth one point, or trait-cost reduction of one point
Eligible to take Ricochet, a Level 26 Perk, as a 1-pt cost Trait at character creation.
Stable Dweller (Cannot pick Survival, must take Strong Back)
Cyberpony (GM approval is not necessary for earth ponies)
Unicorns
Height: 3’11” + 2d6” (Includes Horn) – From 4’1” to 4’11”
Weight: 230 + (2d6*10) – From 250 to 350 macs
Diet: Herbivorous
Unique Ability: Magic: Even the lowliest of the unicorns are gifted with some form of magic. All unicorns are graced with the ability to telekinetically manipulate objects. This gives them the finest motor control of all of the pony types, and, depending on the strength of their telekinetic abilities, can also give them the greatest effective strength of all three as well. The fine manipulation granted by magic negates the lockpicking penalty normally incurred by all hooved races, and grants unicorns minor bonuses to tasks requiring a delicate touch. The downside of this is that due to their focus on magic, unicorns tend to rely on it to accomplish tasks, leaving them slightly less skilled on average than pegasi or earth ponies. Unicorns may start with a free cutie-mark spell related to their tag skills, though not all cutie marks grant spells, and may choose to receive one other free level 1 spell (see the “One Trick Pony or Stubby Little Horn” hindrances below for alternative options). At character creation, Unicorns can ignore any listed character level requirements for spells; this does not change the fact that they may still only learn level 1 or 0 spells. Unicorns automatically get +1 PER, INT or Luck at character creation.
Skill Bonus Ranks:
+3 Small Guns, Sneak, Lockpicking, Energy Weapons or Science (pick 3)
Racial Skill: Magic +10, Intelligence Based
Special Trait Eligibility:
One Trick Pony -- Spell limitations in exchange for attribute points of your choice
Arcane Devotion -- Extreme focus on magical studies makes your character better at learning different types of magic
Magical Savant -- Variable benefits, excellent for those specialized in casting spells)
Stubby Little Horn -- Minor spell limitations
Channeler -- Faster magical strain recovery
Pegasi
Height: 3’10” + 2d6” – From 4’0” to 4’10”
Weight: 130 + 2d10*10 – From 150 to 310 macs
Diet: Herbivorous
Unique Ability: Flight: A pegasus without their wings is less than an earth pony; the only known cases of pegasi losing their wings in accidents invariably end with death of the affected by suicide. In addition to their wings, the Pegasi have a limited form of their own magic that allows them to build out of and otherwise interact with clouds as if they were solid matter. This magic is retained even if the wings of a pegasi are removed, but can be “turned off” when desired by the Pegasus.
Most pegasi out in the wastelands have a distinctly different upbringing than that of the surface races, due to the fact that the majority of pegasi society completely isolated itself from the surface after the destruction of Cloudsdayle in the ending days of the war. Because of the Grand Pegasus Enclave, pegasi as a whole have a greater chance of coming from a scientific background or having formal energy weapons and power armor training than any surface pony or zebra. It must be remembered that aside from the rare few pegasi born to earth ponies and unicorns as a result of genetic throwbacks, the only pegasi on the surface are either Dashites, are with the Enclave Volunteer Corps out of Thunderhead, or are operating clandestinely to represent the Enclave’s interests; the background bonuses to skills available to characters from these varied points of origin differ significantly, with most surviving Dashites coming out of the military ranks and a majority of the volunteer corps being younger and from a more scientific or medical background. At character creation, ground-born pegasi get +1 to AGI, END or PER, Dashite pegasi get +1 AGI or PER, and EVC or other Enclave pegasi get +1 AGI or INT.
Skill Bonus Ranks:
+5 Survival, Mercantile, Small Guns or Sneak (pick two) (Ground-Born);
+5 Survival, Energy Weapons, Big Guns or Repair (pick two) (Dashite);
+5 Medical, Science, Survival, Small Guns or Energy Weapons (pick two) (Enclave or EVC);
-10 Lockpicking (Minimum 5) for all three.
Racial Skill: Flight +10, Agility Based. Can perform flight maneuvers. Also allows access to Enclave cloud terminals.
Special Trait Eligibility:
Formal Education -- Free with EVC membership
Power Armor Training -- Free for Dashites
Organization: Enclave Volunteer Corps
Griffins and Zebra
Ponies are not the only races that still occupy Equestria. In one of Stable-Tec’s most elegant political maneuvers, Griffin and Zebra families who paid for Stable-Tec’s services were also assigned to the safety of Stables near the areas in which they lived. These races too now survive in the wasteland, trading and fighting for survival.
Griffins
Height: 4’6” + 2d8” – From 4’8” to 5’10”
Weight: 270 + (2d8*15) – From 300 to 510 macs
Diet: Carnivorous or Omnivorous*
Unique Ability: Flight: Part lion, part eagle, all winged predator, Griffins are one of the only other races besides Pegasi capable of flight. Fiercely loyal within their clans and usually just as loyal to their employer, the Griffins served as mercenaries to both sides during the last war. The largest griffin clan to have survived the last war (at least in the central regions of Equestria) was the Talon Clan, which now leads and largely comprises the well-known Talon Company Mercenaries operating out of Shattered Hoof Mine. All griffins have fierce clan loyalties, instilled in them at a young age along with their military training and an expectation that they too will someday fight and potentially die as mercenaries for their clan. Their individual loyalties are largely tied to written contracts, upon which much of their law and negotiations are based. Griffins possess razor-sharp claws (listed as an unarmed weapon in the weapons section), and, unlike ponies, lack cutie marks. They get +1 PER, AGI or END at character creation.
Skill Bonus Ranks:
+3 Small Guns/Big Guns/Energy Weapons/Melee Weapons/Unarmed. Pick any two.
Racial Skill: Flight +10, Agility Based. Can perform flight maneuvers. Also allows access to Enclave cloud terminals.
Special Trait Eligibility:
Stable Dweller -- Must trade one set of skill bonus ranks for the same number of ranks in Repair, Science or Medicine.
Organization: Mercenary – Recommended due to griffin social structure. The benefits and requirements for this are listed in the Traits section. For griffins, this trait also grants the Named Weapon trait for free.
Opposable Claw – All Griffins are capable of fine manipulation without magic, using their clawed forelegs. Griffins may climb surfaces at half their movement speed, using their Unarmed or Melee Weapons skills to make any necessary rolls. Unarmed rolls should be made for free climbing, while melee weapons rolls should be made if tools are being used. Climbing requires that the character be able to find or create points of purchase on the climbing surface.
Omnivore - Griffins get the Omnivore trait for free if they take more than 3 hindrances.
Zebra
Height: 3’10” + 2d8” – From 4’0” to 5’2”
Weight: 210 + (2d8*10) – From 230 to 370 macs
Diet: Herbivorous
Unique Ability: Zebra Magic: While not magical in the same way as unicorns, zebras possess their own special magic based on use of fetishes, talismans, foci and potions as methods of ‘suspending’ magic to be called upon when needed. Many of the zebra tribes maintained their oral traditions in spite of the apocalypse, teaching the creation of potions, talismans and brews that bestow specialized abilities or create specific effects to their young. Most young zebras growing up within tribes in the wasteland face hunting and survival trials similar to those that their ancestors may have faced in their homeland; it is with this intense survival training that they take to the wasteland as semi nomadic tribes or as individuals. The fact that some of these tribes still feel that the war between ponies and zebras has not ended is a frequent point against many of these individuals, regardless of affiliation. Because of these facts, zebra have a penalty to speech against ponies who do not know them, and bonuses to other skills related to survival and zebra traditions. The zebra magic skill is used to collect and identify alchemical ingredients (survival also works for this), brew potions, create talismans, perform rituals, and recount tales from zebra culture. Zebra recipes use special ingredients to channel natural magic through the caster into their object, and knowledge of how to channel these energies is into specific talismans, rituals or brews is limited, so zebra only start with a number of spell recipes that they can perform equal to their Zebra Magic Skill divided by 10, rounded down (see the magic section for a list of some possible spells). Similarly to Unicorn spells, a zebra character’s starting recipes should not exceed level 1. More recipes can be obtained from other zebra, or from books, locations, or audio or text logs (in lieu of teachers). Characters may even discuss the creation of new recipes based on the setting and GM willingness, and not all zebra need to start with recipes known (see below). Zebras may add +1 to Perception, Endurance, Charisma or Intelligence at character creation.
Skill Bonus Ranks:
+5 Survival, +5 Unarmed, +5 Sneak, -20 Speechcraft vs. Ponies (unless disguised or a Proditor, which lowers this penalty to a -5; this works both ways, as many zebras still greatly distrust ponies), -10 Lockpicking (Minimum 5)
Racial Skill: Magic +10, Intelligence or Charisma Based. Not all Zebra choose to learn magic. Characters may instead distribute this +10 as two separate +5 bonuses to other skills (other than Survival, Unarmed and Sneak; both bonuses cannot go to the same skill). Characters that do this start with no known recipes, but can still learn them through play.
Special Trait Eligibility
Zebra get the Hind Leg Stance perk for free at character creation.
Astronomer – You possess knowledge about the stars rare even amongst Zebras. Primarily roleplaying effects.
Stable Dweller – (Must trade Survival for Science, Medicine or Repair)
Organization: Caesar’s Legion or Organization: Proditor
Alternative Races (Optional) –
Alicorns, Hellhounds, Sand Dogs, Bat ponies, Buffalo, Donkeys, Minotaurs and Half-breeds
In addition to the aforementioned races, there are many other races of sentient creatures present in the post-apocalyptic wasteland that once was Equestria. Of these, the two with the most prominent are not included above simply because of how poorly they play with others - Alicorns and Hellhounds. The other races, listed in the title of this subsection, are not included in the first section because of their rarity – the stables didn’t house them in large quantities (if at all), and far less of them have survived to the present day. I recommend having a discussion with your GM about fitting any one of these races into the game before you start making your character. Alicorns, Hellhounds, Minotaurs and Sand Dogs in particular are powerful and not well liked by many ponies, and they can negatively affect game balance unless the GM is actively making accommodations for them. On the other hoof, having characters that are members of one or several of these races in the party can make for quite a lot of interesting roleplaying.
Also, be warned – depending on your progress within the fiction, the racial ability descriptions on the following pages may contain spoilers. GMs should feel in no way obligated to include these races in their campaigns as playable characters, but the rules for play for these have been included here to enable more variation in adventuring parties or in the creation of more powerful NPCs.
On top of alicorns and hellhounds, and despite the fact that they are referenced for the most part only tangentially in Fallout Equestria and related side-stories (likely because of the show not adding them until after the setting of Kkat’s wasteland had been firmly established) Buffalo, Donkeys, Minotaurs and half-breeds of several different races may also be included as playable characters or NPCs. The rules for creating a character belonging to one of these races are shown below.
Alicorns
The wasteland alicorns are an extremely powerful, all-female race created in the image of the princesses Luna and Celestia by way of a magical compound engineered by the Ministry of Arcane Sciences. They’ve been a major presence in the wasteland since approximately fifty years before the opening of Stable 2, or 150 years after the balefire bombs fell in Equestria.
Height: 5’4” + 2d8” (Includes Horn) – From 5’6” to 6’8”
Weight: 390 + (2d8*10) – From 410 to 550 macs
Diet: Herbivorous*
Unique Abilities: Flight and Magic: At the time of Stable 2’s opening, virtually all alicorns are telepathically linked to a hive mind (“Unity”) controlled by The Great and Powerful Goddess, an enigmatic entity with a desire to convert the rest of the wasteland into alicorns. In at least one case, the hive mind has been known to isolate portions of itself into individual bodies in order to investigate specific phenomena or accomplish specific goals. These portions often carry large amounts of psychological damage or suffer from diminished intelligence, but this is not necessarily the case. Even while the Goddess takes control of an individual Alicorn, the individual personality or personalities that occupy a given alicorn remain capable of some degree of independent action and thought, though not consistently. Wasteland alicorns are known to be quite dangerous, capable of various types of powerful magic dependent on their coloration.
There are three known colors of alicorn, and their repertoires of spells they possess at character creation are linked to their color. For a complete list of alicorn starting spells, see the Magic section under the Starting Spells heading. All colors of alicorns possess Mighty Telekinesis I and Telepathy II. Alicorns begin with up to 9 spells fitting their color, and can learn more by telepathically obtaining the spell via their link with the Goddess, or in the same way as unicorns if they are able to. Most alicorns are not capable of learning new spells on their own – the powerful magic they possess stifles their ability to cast spells other than their normal fare, even if they might have known the spell prior to becoming an alicorn. Alicorns within Unity that can learn new spells are very rare and highly valued by the Goddess. More information on alicorn magic, both within and without Unity’s influence, can be found in the Magic section.
“Original” alicorns - ones who are still tied to Unity and The Goddess - get +1 INT or END at character creation.
Of course, as many of you may know, Unity is shattered during the events of Fallout Equestria’s primary canon. If you’re creating an alicorn at a position in the timeline after the fall of Unity, then be aware that most remaining alicorns have organized into tribes and are working towards a method to produce male alicorns in order to ensure their survival as a pony subspecies. Those not organized are frequently seen as wandering teachers, roaming in twos or threes and looking for large settlements to set up schools, or lone wanderers, roaming the wastes looking for meaning and a place to belong. Some are perhaps searching for their race’s salvation on their own, or are looking to reclaim their old lives or even to start new ones. These alicorns are capable of acting completely independently of each other or even at cross purposes to other members of their race, though it has been shown that many of them are still closely telepathically linked. Post-Unity wasteland alicorns start with +1 to INT, END or Luck at character creation, and may learn new spells in the same way as unicorns.
While a part of Unity, alicorns do not need to sleep. Apart from Unity, they must sleep at least 4 hours every 2d4 days. In either case, just as normal ponies, alicorns must eat at least one meal a day to maintain their health. Unlike normal ponies however, if they fail to eat at least once a day their bodies will metabolize 50 rads instead, removing it instead of starving. Only if they can do neither will an alicorn begin to starve. Radiation can also be metabolized in place of hydration (10 rads per unit, or 30 rads per day), though there’s usually no shortage of irradiated water in most parts of the wasteland.
Alicorn characters are healed by radiation at rate of 1 wound to all limbs every five minutes per 200 rads absorbed, and can regenerate broken or crippled limbs simply by exposing themselves to sufficient radiation levels. Every wound healed in this fashion metabolizes 20 rads. Even maimed limbs can regenerate in this fashion. While normal non-ghouls suffer from radiation overexposure, alicorns are strengthened by it, providing them with a temporary bonus to their attribute scores equal to the penalty that normal characters would take at that radiation level. Above 600 rads, they will begin emitting rads at low to medium background counts, affecting those around them until they drop back to that level. Alicorns who have absorbed a full 1000 rads or more might find that it takes them several days or even weeks before they can safely be around non-ghouls (their radiation level decreases at 1d4*100 rads per day). Every 1000 rads absorbed by an alicorn increases their physical size, temporarily increasing their damage/wound value by one and their height and weight by 2d4” and 2d4*40 macs, respectively.
Both Unity and post-Unity alicorns only gain one character creation point per two hindrances taken, but can take up to eight hindrances instead of the normal six; this compensates in part for how powerful they are at lower levels. As an alternative method of balance, Alicorn characters may opt to receive hindrance character creation points as normal ponies (one per hindrance, maximum six), but instead receive perks only on even-numbered levels as their character progresses. Though they receive the Large trait for free, the fact that alicorns are predominantly not derived from pegasi makes them poor flyers – they must take Flight School Dropout to represent this fact.
Second generation alicorns (those born to alicorn parents) are much less magically powerful than those created via IMP. Such characters start only with the level 1 shield spell (or another level 1 or 0 spell) and potentially a cutie mark spell, similar to unicorns. Due to the decelerated aging of their race, all second generation Alicorns must take the Young hindrance. They receive a lowered bonus to magic, do not receive the Large trait for free (nor are they required to take Flight School Dropout), and receive 2 character creation points less than the number of hindrances taken (up to a maximum of 8 hindrances for 6 points). They learn spells identically to unicorns.
Alicorns are immune to the effects of Taint, and Pink Cloud. Enervation has a dramatically increased effect on them, even at low levels (detailed in Chapter 11).
Skill Bonus Ranks:
Original: +5 Big Guns, +3 Sneak, -40 Speechcraft vs. Ponies unless disguised or first encounter.
Post-Unity: +5 Big Guns, +3 Sneak, -20 Speechcraft vs. Ponies unless disguised.
Second Generation: +3 to Mercantile, Speechcraft, Big Guns, Sneak (pick any two).
Racial Skills: Flight +5, Agility Based. They can manipulate Enclave cloud consoles in the same manner as pegasi and griffins. Alicorns cannot learn level 4 flight maneuvers.
Magic +15, Intelligence Based. (+5 if second generation.)
Special Trait Eligibility:
All alicorns receive a single point in the Channeler trait for free.
All first-generation alicorns begin play with the Large trait (the effects of which are already included in their height and weight values – see trait for additional effects, including sneak penalty) at no cost. They may also opt to take Large a second time at normal cost.
All first-generation alicorns must take Flight School Dropout.
Organization: Crusaders (Requires Foal at Heart trait)
Hellhounds/Sand Dogs (Diamond Dog Descendants)
The hellhounds are the tainted, irradiated descendants of the diamond dogs displaced from the Maripony test facility and its surrounding area. The sand dogs are the slightly less tainted, slightly less irradiated, cybernetically enhanced descendants of those diamond dogs who were brought to Hoofington or other areas and hired to work at digging out tunnels. Both divergent descendants of the diamond dogs are extraordinarily fast diggers, fast to anger, and in possession of extremely advanced military hardware that they know how to use. They also tend to hold a grudge against ponies for polluting the world and driving them out of their ancestral homes in Splendid Valley.
Height: 3’6” + 2d20” – From 3’8” to 6’10”
Weight: 180 + (2d20*10) – From 200 to 680 macs
Diet: Carnivorous or Omnivorous
Unique Ability: Dig: The diamond dog descendants can move through the earth at the same speed that Pegasus ponies are capable of flying, with the possible exception of the occasional boulder getting in their way. They can burrow at five times their agility score in feet per action, and while they are moving in this way they cannot be intercepted and are immune to incoming or suppressive fire (digging in this way can also be used to take cover in combat). They only take half damage from area-of-effect weapons and spells while burrowed and close to the surface – i.e. within half the explosion or AoE effect’s maximum radius in depth), and going deeper underground can negate damage from AoE entirely. Both sub-races can also use their claws to climb most surfaces at their normal movement speed (½ AGI per action). If attacked and successfully dealt at least a single wound while climbing, they must make a Strength check (MFD ¾) to remain attached, or they’ll fall.
In addition to their fearsome claws, which can slash through steel, concrete and flesh alike as if it was tissue paper (4d12 +STR, Ignores 50 DT), the Hellhounds (HH) are in possession of an entire military arsenal of magical energy weapons. Life in their now-tainted and irradiated home has hardened them, making them immune to radiation’s effects similarly to ghouls and wasteland alicorns. Hellhounds are a canine analogue to the equine alicorn, only needing to sleep 8 hours every 2d4 days and capable of metabolizing radiation at the same exchange rate in place of drinking food and water (50 for a day’s food, and 30 for a day’s water) to stave off starvation and dehydration. Unlike alicorns and ghouls, however, hellhounds gain no benefit from over-exposure to radiation. They simply aren’t affected by it.
Hellhounds get +1 STR, PER, or END at character creation, and their claws allow them to dig or cut through solid concrete and non-reinforced steel doors. The downside of this is that their sharp claws make manipulating some items difficult, and accidentally may slice up more fragile items (such as health potions) simply by grabbing them. GMs are encouraged to take advantage of this fact as comedically or dramatically appropriate.
To compensate for how powerful hellhounds and their digging abilities are, they only receive one character creation point for every two hindrances taken at character creation. Their sharp-but-sensitive ears also mean that hellhounds are categorically affected with the Big Ears hindrance, which gives them back a character creation point (or fraction thereof) but counts towards their maximum number of hindrances.
As an alternate method of balance, hellhound characters may opt to receive hindrance character creation points as normal ponies (one per hindrance, maximum six), but instead receive perks only on even-numbered levels as their character progresses.
The Sand Dogs (SD) are a desperate group descended from diamond dog families recruited (often by force) to dig tunnels under many Equestrian cities as part of the war effort. They worked in harsh and unsafe conditions and environments, many of them losing limbs or requiring cybernetic augmentation to survive, which pony mining interests supplied and which the extremely intelligent diamond dogs improved and customized.
Ponies distrust them, and the feelings are mutual. Shunned by pony merchants and settlements, they lack a steady income of supplies needed to survive - food for their starving young or gems to run their cybernetic augmentations. Their only assets are the incredible stealth and weaponry systems built into their enhancements, and their ingenuity when it comes to inventing and constructing devices out of raw materials. Sand dogs are among the most advanced cybernetics technicians and surgeons in the wasteland, many of them living survivors of the last war due to the effect of their enhancements on aging. They possess far less lethal claws than hellhounds and can naturally dig only through normal soil and dirt, but that doesn’t mean they should be taken lightly. It was the Sand Dogs that built most of the facilities underneath Hoofington. Sand Dogs get +1 INT, AGI, or END at character creation. Their sharp-but-sensitive ears mean that sand dogs also must take the Big Ears hindrance, which gives them back a character creation point but counts towards their maximum number of hindrances.
The Dig skill can be used to make tunnels, create traps and pitfalls (which should be accompanied by an INT roll to see how well made such traps end up), and to sneak up behind enemies (accompanied by a sneak roll). Its main use is for digging tunnels, which is why the skill’s base score is Strength based, rather than Intelligence or Agility based. Unorthodox uses of a hellhound’s claws (such as cutting out a lock from a steel door or climbing up the side of a concrete pillar) should also use the Dig skill, receiving situational bonuses or penalties as appropriate.
Skill Bonus Ranks:
Hellhounds: +5 Energy Weapons or Unarmed, +5 Explosives, +5 Sneak, -50 Speechcraft vs. All-non-canine races
Sand Dogs: +3 Energy Weapons, +5 Repair, +5 Explosives, +3 Sneak, -15 Speechcraft vs. Ponies
Racial Skill: Dig +10, Strength Based. This skill can be used to tunnel through any substance that the character’s claws can easily penetrate; while concealed underground, characters receive a bonus to avoid detection similar to a magical stealth field. It can also be used to climb at their normal movement speed, provided that the claws can find purchase in the climbing surface.
Special Trait Eligibility
Hellhounds are totally immune to taint. Pink Cloud and Enervation affect them normally.
Biped – Races which receive this trait are eligible for the racial trait Opposable Thumb or Opposable Claw, and may even such a trait for free. This trait halves their base movement speed (dig and flight speeds are unaffected), but allows them to climb up walls and vertical surfaces at half their movement speed. Races with claws as a natural weapon may climb at their full movement speed.
Cyber Dog (Diamond Dog Descendants only) – See the Cyberpony trait. The 3-point version of this trait costs 1 less character creation point for Sand Dogs.
Opposable Thumb – All Diamond Dog Descendants get this trait for free. This renders them capable of fine manipulation without magic, allowing them to wield non-mouth wieldable weapons, and allows them to climb using the dig skill.
Scent – Diamond dog descendants may choose to take the Scent perk, a level 22 perk, as a 1-point cost trait at character creation.
Bat Ponies
Height: 3’9” + 2d6” – From 3’11” to 4’9”
Weight: 130 + (2d10*10) – From 150 to 310 macs
Diet: Herbivorous
Unique Ability: Lunar Guardians: The bat ponies are a reclusive, secretive race - the only race of ponies that were allowed to comprise Princess Luna’s personal guard. Their racial origins are somewhat mysterious; some of their own folklore suggests that they were once pegasi who were forced from their cloud-homes into hiding within caverns beneath Equestria, where they were changed either by magical means or over time. Other stories suggest that Princess Luna used her magic to turn young pegasi into bat ponies to keep her company during her long, lonely nights. They hid during Luna’s time as Nightmare Moon, only resurfacing to once again take up positions as her personal bodyguard. Most bat ponies survived the apocalypse in the same cave networks that sheltered them for a thousand years during their monarch’s exile, using planned breeding to prevent their population from deteriorating.
All bat ponies start with the Dumb hindrance, for which they do not receive a character creation point and which cannot be permanently removed, but which does not count towards their maximum number of hindrances. This reflected the fact that they can only speak in frequencies too high for normal ponies to hear. They are still perfectly capable of understanding normal speech. The upside of their incredibly high range of speech is that it allows them to issue forth a devastating localized sonic attack (described below; use the Energy Weapons skill for targeting rolls). Their echolocation abilities grant them the ability to ignore all lighting penalties as well as a limited form of echolocation, allowing ‘sight’ up to 60 feet even in complete darkness. Bat ponies are the only race capable of shadow magic. Only adult bat ponies have this ability, and use of it requires the “Shadowflash” trait, listed in the special trait eligibility section below. Bat ponies receive +1 attribute point bonus to either PER or AGI at character creation.
Attack: |
Dmg |
Crit |
SATS |
Range Inc. |
Effects |
Sonic Screech |
3d12 |
X1 |
40 |
10 (30 max) |
+2d12 vs. Machines/Power Armor. Completely ignores armor unless the target is fully encased in sealed armor. |
Skill Bonus Ranks:
+5 Energy Weapons, Survival, Unarmed or Sneak (pick two); -10 Lockpicking (minimum 5).
Racial Skill: Flight +10, Agility Based. Can perform flight maneuvers. Also allows access to Enclave cloud terminals.
Special Trait Eligibility
Shadowflash (Can’t be taken with Young) – Costs 1 creation point. Works as “Teleportation – Level 1” spell, but is only capable of teleporting the user and inanimate objects they hold (objects optional). Casting shadow magic pulls from a magical-strain like reserve, equal to AGI+PER+2. Shadowflash costs 2 strain from this pool to cast. This strain recovers at a rate of 1/hour. Shadow magic is not affected by magical suppression. Can be used to dodge; the dodge is an automatic success if the casting roll (flight MFD ½; ¾ for non-dodges) is a success. Shadowflash does not conserve momentum.
Due to their reclusive nature, bat ponies cannot take organizations with the Organization perk (except for Tribal), except under special circumstances (such as Amnesia, or whatever you could cook up with Wasteland Weirdo).
Buffalo
Height: 3’10” + 2d20” – From 4’0” to 7’0”
Weight: 160 + (2d20*10) – From 180 to 560 macs
Diet: Herbivorous
Unique Ability: Buffalo Endurance: A proud people who have been ekeing out an existence in the deserts and plains to the southwest of Equestria for millennia, the Buffalo were one of the few nations to maintain their neutrality all the way up until the day the balefire flew. Unfortunately for them, their nation’s largest population centers and tribal gathering points were close enough to the Equestrian and Zebra borders that the ambient destruction and radiation ravaged their lands almost as harshly as any others, causing near-total annihilation. Some fragments of buffalo tribes managed to survive in near-starvation conditions in the underground mines furthest from the Equestrian and Zebra borders, but their nation did not have a Stable-Tec presence except in the areas around Appleoosa and near the border, and lacked the technology to construct such advanced shelters on their own.
The buffalo are a hardy people, however, and while many did not survive the balefire holocaust due to a lack of shelter or an unwillingness to cram into the tight confines of an underground stable, the tribal fragments that did survive have emerged and begun to reclaim their lands in the past few decades. The emerging buffalo have lost much of their culture, and are being forced to alter their remaining customs to acclimate to a land made even more inhospitable by the ravages of war. At character creation, Buffalo receive an extra point to two attributes, and may pick between STR, PER, END and CHA. They also receive the Large trait and any other single point cost trait for free at character creation. Instead of receiving a 1-point trait, they may elect to lower the cost of a multi-point cost trait by one instead.
Skill Bonus Ranks:
+5 Melee Weapons, Survival, Unarmed or Medicine (pick two); -10 Lockpicking (minimum 5)
Racial Skill: N/A
Special Trait Eligibility
Buffalo characters receive the Large trait at character creation for free (the effects of which are already included in their height and weight values), increasing their D/W by 2 and their weight capacity by 20, but giving them a 5% penalty to dodge explosives. They may choose to purchase the Large trait a second time at normal cost, similarly to Minotaurs and Alicorns; all effects of the trait (including the height and weight alterations not listed here) stack.
Buffalo with two instances of the Large trait deal 6d20 +STR instead of 6d10 +STR on a charge attack made with both horns.
Donkeys
Height: 3’7” + 2d8” – From 3’9” to 4’11”
Weight: 180 + (2d8*10) – From 200 to 340 macs
Diet: Herbivorous
Unique Ability: Stubborn as a Mule: No one knows where it is that Donkeys hail from, exactly; they have no true homeland. Since prehistory the donkeys have been known as a wandering people, and have successfully spread out and served as merchants and traders across many nations. It is a safe bet to say that every major city in both Equestria and the zebra lands had a small population of donkeys during the last days of the war.
As well as being known for their wandering ways, Donkeys are notoriously stubborn, and excellent at both bargaining and diplomacy. It is believed that at least one of Stable-Tec’s stables was funded and supplied by a coalition of independent Donkey merchant backers as a refuge for their far-spread race should the bombs fall. Travelling merchants frequently encourage this idea as fact, but very few of them are willing to confirm its existence with any sort of physical evidence (and those that are willing tend to have stories that conflict or are riddled with inconsistencies). Some travelling merchants posit that perhaps now that they finally have a small patch of homeland, the donkeys that inhabit it wish to keep it secret.
Donkey characters receive a bonus point to two different attributes of their choice at character creation, and may choose between PER, CHA, END and Luck. They also begin play with once instance of the Sterner Stuff trait for free (they may choose which option they take), and one additional trait at no cost. The trait cannot be their ‘tough hide’ special (see below), but anything else they qualify for is available. They may elect to lower the cost of a multi-point-cost trait by one instead of receiving another trait for no cost.
Skill Bonus Ranks:
+5 Mercantile, Speechcraft, Sneak (pick two); -10 Lockpicking (minimum 5)
Racial Skill: N/A
Special Trait Eligibility
Donkeys, due to their stubborn nature, may take Tough Hide (a level 6 perk) as a 1-point-cost trait, without meeting the attribute requirements. While its effects will stack, taking the perk in this way does not affect a character’s ability to obtain the perk again by normal means at level 6 or above. They can effectively receive 9 DT in this fashion by level 10.
Minotaur
Height: 6’0” + 2d6” (Includes Horns, if present) – From 6’2” to 7’0”
Weight: 520 + (2d6*10) – From 560 to 640 macs
Diet: Herbivorous
Unique Ability: Monsters of Legend: Minotaurs have never been common in Equestria. In fact, they’re so rare that it’s very unlikely that any pony in the area has seen one since before the war, to say nothing of the fact that the minotaurs were aligned with the zebra legions against Equestria’s allies and satellite states. The megaspells launched during the last days of the war failed to wipe them out as a race, though how they managed to escape the balefire that blanketed the earth is unknown, as they lacked shelters as advanced as the Stables. Most of the minotaur lands to the far southwest are unexplored (at least by ponies), and before the war they were regarded as something of an unknown; little is known of their culture or civilization other than the scraps gleaned from their military tactics and the technology they demonstrated during the war, both of which suggest that they shared a great deal of their culture, technology and traditions with the westernmost zebra tribes.
Their biggest advantage as a race is their bipedal form, which causes them to stand much taller than most other races at the cost of movement speed, and evolutionarily led them to develop hands. The hands of a minotaur allow them fine manipulation without the use of magic, and without the risks associated with the claws of hellhounds.
Minotaurs are exceptionally large – larger on average than all other races presented in this document – with toughness and strength to match, gaining the benefits and downsides of the Large trait and an extra point to either STR or END at character creation. The height and weight effects of the Large trait are already included in the dice roll ranges provided above; the trait also makes them more vulnerable to explosives (giving them a 5% dodge penalty) and increases their carrying capacity by 20. They may opt to buy the trait with a creation point as well, in which case the effects of the trait stack, identically to how this ability functions for alicorns or buffalo.
Sorry ladies – most female minotaurs (cows) do not have horns, or at least not horns large enough to use as weapons. To compensate for this, they work harder to hone their other skills, and receive one bonus skill point per level. Make no mistake – a minotaur without horns can be just as deadly as one with them!
Skill Bonus Ranks:
+5 Melee Weapons, Unarmed, Big Guns, Survival (pick two).
Racial Skill: N/A
Special Trait Eligibility
Biped – Races which receive this trait are eligible for the racial trait Opposable Thumb or Opposable Claw, and may even such a trait for free. This trait halves their base movement speed (dig and flight speeds are unaffected), but allows them to climb up walls and vertical surfaces at half their movement speed. Races with claws as a natural weapon may climb at their full movement speed.
Organization: Caesar’s Legion – Of the few minotaurs in the Equestrian Wasteland, many are descended from those who fought alongside the zebra during the war and were trapped in the area when the bombs fell. As such, the Remnants honor their treaties and continue working with minotaurs against their common foe.
Zebra Magic – The similar traditions of their people allow some minotaurs to learn and practice zebra magic. Minotaurs may purchase zebra magic as a two-point trait, granting them zebra magic as a skill. They may choose to link it to either CHA or INT, and receive a +10 rank bonus and starting spells just as any zebra character would. Treat them as a zebra for the purposes of learning spells or for zebra-magic related traits and hindrances.
Large Trait for free at character creation, and can purchase it a second time, similar to buffalo and Alicorns. Like both of those races, the trait’s effects are already included in the height and weight values.
Opposable Thumb – All minotaurs get this trait for free. This renders them capable of fine manipulation without magic. As with griffins and hellhounds, this also allows minotaurs to use their unarmed or melee weapons skill(s) in lieu of the dig skill specifically for the purposes of climbing. For free-climbing, use the unarmed skill. For climbing with tools like claws and picks, use the melee weapons skill. As long as they can find purchase on the climbing surface, minotaurs can move at their normal movement speed while climbing.
Half-Breeds
Height: See Individual Listings
Weight: See Individual Listings
Diet: Herbivorous (Well, probably, anyway)
This subsection is for all of the pony genealogists out there. Characters of this race had parents of differing races-- the possible combinations are listed in a table below-- and are among the rare cases where the genes didn’t mix in the standard way, producing a hybrid with mixed diminished abilities or characteristics of both. Note that this is not the same thing as when two ponies of a differing sub-species have children that aren’t the same sub-species as the parents, like when an earth pony and a unicorn have a pegasi foal. This “race” applies to the rare few that are crosses between two subspecies or between differing species altogether, such as the pony-zebra hybrid, or “Zony.”
Note that on the combination table does not include all races. Hellhounds, Minotaur, Buffalo and Sand Dogs cannot have offspring with ponies, magic-be-damned; they’re all too vastly genetically different. The two subgroups of Diamond dog variants also have little to no interaction, so offspring that are a combination of those two are extremely unlikely. If members of the two races did become intimately involved, they would probably have offspring that demonstrated abilities somewhere between those listed for either parent race (and man would that ever be an awkward family reunion).
Griffins are not listed simply because the physiology of their reproductive processes is too different from that of other races to produce offspring except via extreme magical means. In other words, the fact that griffins lay eggs makes breeding with ponies neigh-impossible.
Bat ponies are not listed because of their extreme isolationist tendencies – while it is certainly plausible that bat ponies and other equine races may interbreed, no one has ever seen it happen (at least not yet), and the odds of a hybridization with any of the other races occurring if such an instance were to occur, is, like it is between all of the other pony-sub-species, very small. Treat the results of any such interbreeding as either pegasi-crossbreeds, unknown crossbreeds, or as a ‘--’ (explained above the table).
GMs may rule that different traits than those listed were dominant if they wish to have crossbreeds with a unique mixing of natural abilities.
The actual effects that this hindrance bestows upon a character vary by their origins; while all half-breeds are infertile, and all of them receive the effects of the “Unstable Genetics” hindrance (though none of them get points back for it), there is no societal stigma associated with a half-breed between the pony races. Rather, such creatures are looked upon with pity, or in extreme cases ‘fixed’ with magic or medicine to appear as normal ponies. Half-breeds are eligible for all of the same traits as their parent races except for those relating to magic and magical abilities, for which eligibility should be determined on a case-by-case basis, and those relating to flight, which require usable wings.
Half-breeds without either magic or flight as a racial ability may select one free one-character creation point trait at creation, or reduce the cost of a multi-point trait by one.
Table II: Simplified crossbreeding table for equine races. It does not account for recessive genes within any of the parents, assuming homozygous phenotype. As such, two earth ponies may still have a half-breed cloud walker or adept, etc. depending on their family history. That ruling should probably be made with or by your GM for backstory purposes. Remember that such half-breeds are exceedingly rare! Zonies and Mules are comparably much more common!
The symbol, ‘--’, represents a case where no half-breeds have been known to occur – all offspring are of the same type as either the mother or father.
Race |
Earth Pony (m) |
Pegasi (m) |
Unicorn (m) |
Zebra (m) |
Alicorn (m)* |
Donkey (m) |
Earth Pony (f) |
-- |
Cloud Walker |
Adept |
Zony |
Unknown |
Mule |
Pegasi (f) |
Cloud Walker |
-- |
Cloud Mage |
Zony |
Unknown |
Mule |
Unicorn (f) |
Adept |
Half Alicorn |
-- |
Zony Shaman |
Unknown |
Mule |
Zebra (f) |
Zony |
Zony |
Zony Shaman |
-- |
Unknown |
Zonkey |
Alicorn (f) |
Unknown |
Unknown |
Unknown |
Unknown |
* |
-- |
Donkey |
Mule |
Mule |
Mule |
Zonkey |
Unknown |
-- |
*Assuming you can actually find a male Alicorn at your point in the timeline, a heterosexual pairing of alicorns produces a “second generation” alicorn.
Half-breeds with minor abilities of each race tend to have stunted growth and reduced physical ability. The half-breed races are listed below, first in order of commonality from most to least common for those strictly the result of pony crossbreeding, and then alphabetically for crossbreeds with other races, such as zonies.
Adepts generally appear as earth ponies, sometimes with extremely small, almost non-existent horns that can easily be hidden beneath their mane all but the most tightly fitting helmet (needless to say, their horns cannot be used as effective weapons in combat). They have an extremely high affinity for magical devices and tend towards scientific interests, particularly those combining magic and earth-pony technology such as energy weapons. They cannot cast magic as unicorns can, but many have extremely limited telekinesis, just enough to hold most weapons and grant them fine manipulation (as Telekinesis level 0). They gain one free point to intelligence, and may choose to add one point to any other attribute except luck.
Height: 3’10” + 2d6” – From 4’0” to 4’10”
Weight: 250 + (2d6*10) – From 270 to 370 macs
Skill Bonus Ranks:
+3 Small Guns, Energy Weapons, Sneak, Science, or Repair (pick three), -10 Lockpicking* (Minimum 5, * see Racial Skill)
Racial Skill: Magic, Intelligence Based (Adepts can only learn and cast level 0 spells). Adepts with magical abilities do not take lockpicking penalties, but must take Pipsqueak (this will adjust their height and weight values according to the hindrance’s listed effects). They do not receive a creation point for taking it, and cannot remove it by buying it off or via roleplaying.
Cloud Walkers have mixed earth pony and pegasus characteristics, and frequently have extremely small, underdeveloped or vestigial-seeming wings. They cannot fly, but if hard pressed they may be able to slow their descent when falling. Even those without vestigial wings are capable of walking on clouds. Due to their small stature most cloud walkers are easily mistaken for immature pegasi, which fortunately allows them to ‘fly under the radar’ and avoid most social stigma. They gain one free point to agility, and may choose to add one point to any other attribute, excluding Luck, at character creation.
Height: 3’9” + 2d6” – From 3’11” to 4’9”
Weight: 130 + (2d10*10) – From 150 to 310 macs
Skill Bonus Ranks:
+5 Speechcraft, +5 Small Guns, +5 Sneak (pick two), -10 Lockpicking (Minimum 5)
Racial Skills: Flight, Agility Based (for use in gliding only; requires wings). Also allows access to Enclave cloud terminals (with or without wings). Cannot perform most flight maneuvers. Cloud walkers with wings must also take Pipsqueak, and do not receive a creation point for doing so (this will adjust their height and weight values according to the hindrance’s listed effects). This hindrance cannot be removed by buying it off or via roleplaying.
Cloud Mages appear as small-horned unicorns with an innate ability to walk on and otherwise interact with clouds, despite the fact that they lack even vestigial wings. They possess magic that tends to be cloud and weather related, but nearly all lack even the most minor forms of telekinesis; the combination of a cloud mage’s abilities makes most unicorns and pegasi subconsciously uneasy around them or towards them. Rather than being small in stature like many of the half-breed types, the combination of magics flowing through the body of a Cloud Mage tends to hyper-accelerate their metabolism, making them “Skinny as a Rail”, as per the hindrance (this hindrance’s effects are already incorporated into the weight range listed), and causing them to age at nearly twice the rate of a normal pony. The effects of this hindrance cannot be removed. They gain one free point to both the INT and AGI attributes at character creation.
Height: 3’10” + 2d6” – From 4’0” to 4’10”
Weight: 50 + (2d10*10) – From 70 to 250 macs
Skill Bonus Ranks:
+5 Energy Weapons, Science, Sneak or Speechcraft (pick two), -10 Lockpicking (minimum 5), -10 Speechcraft towards Pegasi and Unicorns.
Racial Skill: Magic +10, Intelligence Based. Cloud Mages can only learn weather related spells, such as Spark, Zap, Blizzard, Light, Sunbeam, Fog, Cloud, etc. Spells able to be learned by Cloud Mages are subject to GM approval.
Half Alicorns, or halicorns, are by far the rarest type of half-breed pony. While they possess both a small horn and a small, nigh-vestigial pair of wings, they tend to be very sickly and frail, leading to very few of these extraordinarily rare half-breeds to living to adulthood despite the fact that they lack the accelerated metabolism and aging of a cloud mage. It’s as if someone tried to combine all of the different physical and magical characteristics of the different subspecies of ponies into a single body and left very little room for much of anything else, and what they did manage to squeeze in was a little bit damaged by the rough treatment. As a result, half alicorns generally aren’t particularly good at any one thing, and tend towards meekness, depression, and sometimes even suicide as a result. For a halicorn, seeing an alicorn is a reminder of everything they aren’t. It would likely inspire a mixture of depression and indignant rage.
Halicorns gain one extra point to the Luck, Intelligence, and Agility attributes at character creation, but are always “Skinny as a Rail”, as per the hindrance, and very small in stature as per the “Pipsqueak” hindrance (the effects of these hindrances are already accounted for in their height and weight ranges). They do not gain a creation point from either of these hindrances, and neither can be bought off or removed via roleplaying. Halicorns cannot start with an Endurance score higher than 6.
Height: 2’10” + 2d4” (Includes Horn) – From 3’0” to 3’6”
Weight: 160 + (2d4*10) – From 180 to 260 macs
Halicorn Skill Bonus Ranks:
+3 to any 3 skills of your choice, -10 Speechcraft (minimum 5).
Racial Skill: Magic +10, Intelligence Based. Half-alicorns have no spell or magical limitations and are eligible for the One Trick Pony and Magical Savant perks, unlike adepts. Many halicorns have “Stubby Little Horns,” as per the hindrance.
Flight, Agility Based (for use in gliding only). Also allows access to Enclave cloud terminals. Cannot perform most flight maneuvers.
Mules tend to be a rough and tumble lot, the negative associations with their name leaving the majority with a chip on their shoulder and something to prove. They tend to be shy or embarrassed about their heritage when not actively working to prove themselves, hide their irregular physical attributes, or harm those who call them out on their background. They aren’t shown much in the way of special treatment as might be afforded to any of the pony half-breed races above, but neither are mules looked down upon like Zonies. Mostly, mules are simply confusing, both to Ponies and Donkeys alike; the majority of members of either race have trouble with the idea that one of their brethren might have found members of the other attractive to the point of sexual interest.
Physically speaking, mules exhibit a mixture of donkey and pony physical characteristics. Most commonly, mules have a body shape that is closer to that of a pony than that of a donkey, but with thinner legs, substantially longer ears, and a tufted tail similar to a donkey’s. They are capable, like ponies, of having any coloration in terms of fur, mane and tail, and many (though not all) mules have cutie marks just like ponies. Mules, while almost always infertile, suffer relatively few physical deformities when compared to other half-breed races (they’re the only half-breed race that does not start with Unstable Genetics), and receive as their racial attribute bonuses +1 to either endurance or strength and +1 to any attribute other than the one they chose to receive their first bonus point. Mules that take the Hot Blooded hindrance receive two creation points instead of the normal one, though it counts double towards their hindrance limit.
Height: 3’7” + 2d8” – From 3’9” to 4’11”
Weight: 200 + (2d8*10) – From 220 to 360 macs
Mule Skill Bonus Ranks:
+5 Melee Weapons, Small Guns, Unarmed, Sneak (pick two); -10 Lockpicking (minimum 5).
Racial Skill: N/A
Zonies, unlike most pony half-breeds, are not usually able to be ‘fixed’ with magic to fit into normal pony society. They have light or dark grey stripes, but otherwise appear to be off-white earth ponies. Like all other half-breeds (save for mules) they are both infertile and relatively genetically unstable, but unlike pony half-breeds zonies suffer an additional social stigma equivalent to a -10 on Speechcraft rolls as a result of their mixed ancestry and the war. As a result of societal pressures, Zonies tend to be extremely thick skinned and very focused, leading to many zonies becoming extremely skilled in the technical arts. Many pre-war zonies devoted their lives to pursuits that gave them meaning and advanced society as a whole. Zonies get +1 to either their Endurance or Intelligence attribute score at character creation.
Zonies may pay a single character creation point to acquire the Hind Leg Stance perk at character creation as a trait.
Height: 3’9” + 2d8” – From 3’9” to 4’11”
Weight: 210 + (2d8*10) – From 230 to 370 macs
Zony Skill Bonus Ranks:
+5 science, +5 Repair, +5 Survival, -10 Speechcraft vs. both Ponies and Zebras (unless disguised; this works both ways, as many zebras still greatly distrust ponies), -10 Lockpicking (minimum 5)
Racial Skill: Magic +10, Intelligence or Charisma Based. Zonies may learn zebra magics, but lack the natural talent to make or properly use many of the advanced (level 4) talismans, recipes or potions. As with zebra, not all zony choose to learn magic. Characters may instead distribute this +10 as two separate +5 bonuses to other skills (other than Survival, Unarmed and Sneak; both bonuses cannot go to the same skill). Characters that do this start with no known recipes, but can still learn them through play.
Zonkeys, similarly to zonies, cannot be fixed with magic to fit into pony society. They are excessively rare, as their parent races do not frequently interact at all, to say nothing of romance. They appear as lanky-looking zebra with elongated ears and often with they often have dark grey or black coats, rather than brown or striped ones. Like most other half-breed races, zonkeys are infertile and predisposed to genetic anomalies, but they suffer no additional social stigma due to their non-obvious parentage (many confuse them for donkeys). Their ears and other senses are unnaturally strong, meaning that all Zonkeys start with the Big Ears hindrance (for which they do not receive a character creation point). During the war, a small number of zonkeys were implicated in a treason case brought by the Equestrian government, but no concrete evidence against them could ever be produced. The months following the case created a reputation for the stealth abilities of these creatures that borders on superstitious nonsense. At character creation, zonkeys receive a +1 attribute bonus to two attributes, and make select between Perception, Charisma, Agility and Luck.
Zonkeys may pay a single character creation point to acquire the Hind Leg Stance perk at character creation as a trait.
Height: 3’9” + 2d8” – From 3’9” to 4’11”
Weight: 180 + (2d8*10) – From 200 to 340 macs
Zonkey Skill Bonus Ranks:
+3 Unarmed, +3 Speechcraft, +10 Sneak, -10 Lockpicking (minimum 5)
Racial Skill: Magic +5, Intelligence or Charisma Based. Zonkeys, like Zonies, may learn zebra magics, but lack the natural talent to make or properly use many of the advanced (level 4) talismans, recipes or potions. As with zebra, not all zonkeys choose to learn magic. Characters may instead distribute this +5 to another other skills (other than Unarmed, Speechcraft, or Sneak). Characters that do this start with no known recipes, but can still learn them through play.
Exceedingly rare, even more so than Halicorns, Zony Shamans are capable of combining the magics of both races into frightful items of magical power and terrifying spells. They appear as smaller-than-average zonies, save for a small nub of a horn. Zony Shamans may learn spells from the unicorn spell list up to level 3, and may learn any recipe from the Zebra spell and recipe list. Additionally, they are capable of imbuing zebra talismans with unicorn spells, and casting most zebra talismans’ effects, such as invisibility, as spells; the magic casting stat for all Zony Shamans is Intelligence.
The downside to casting magic in a mix-and mash fashion is instability; though nearly all unicorn spells can be suspended as talismans, not all zebra recipes can be projected as unicorn spells. Talismanic effects for example, cannot be projected at all. They can only be used as enchantments in talismans. The full table of usage type to unicorn spell conversion is below. While not explicitly stated below, please bear in mind that line of sight/line of effect is implied as required for all ranged applications of magic.
Recipe Use |
Unicorn Spell Conversion |
Throw (Potion, Item) |
Thrown effect occurs as an AoE centered at a target location up to 50’ from the caster. Magic roll to target. |
Drink (Potion) |
Drink effect occurs to the spell target, who must be within 50’ of the caster. Limited to willing targets, or resisted with Willpower as appropriate. |
Apply (Poison, Talisman) |
For poisons, poison effect is magically applied to a weapon (or projectile, for weapons using ammunition). For talismans, talisman effect is applied to a target within 20’ of the caster. It requires a targeting roll (Magic) for unwilling targets. |
Wear (Talisman, if not always equipped) |
Activated talisman with an unlimited number of charges. (No real conversion needed) |
Cast (Ritual) |
Usage is exactly the same, but allows substitution of strain for ingredients. |
-- (Ritual or Complex Task) |
Varies; those rituals that enchant an area still function, but rather than permanently enchanting an area the do so for 24 hours similar to a ward. Those that have a permanent end effect function as two-action cast instantaneous effect spell, with a base cost of double the converted ingredient cost in strain. |
Use of overglow with a converted zebra spell may not work as intended; please consult your GM on a case by case basis to discern the exact effects, especially in the case of recipe-spells that do not have numerical effects.
When converting a unicorn spell into a zebra-styled recipe, zony shamans have two options: talisman or potion based suspension.
For talismans, all zony shamans receive the Talisman Creator spell (a level 3 Unicorn Spell) for free at character creation, as a natural part of the combination of their two magical fields. Using this spell and its associated guidelines (outlined fully in Chapter 5), nearly any unicorn spell can be converted to a talisman usable by any race – though some talismans are by nature only accessible to those with unicorn magic due to specialized properties.
For potions, only single-use, targeted instantaneous spells can be suspended. If imbibed, it grants the caster immediate use of the spell suspended within, as though it was being cast from them directly. If imbibed by a character without the natural ability to cast the spell that was suspended, it can be targeted with INT. The imbiber need not make a roll to cast the spell.
When casting and enchanting, shamans may use a combination of strain and ingredients as a resource pool; low-rarity ingredients exchange for one point of strain, medium ones equate to two, etc.
As a result of their not-well-understood powers, Zony Shamans are greatly feared by both Zebras and Ponies alike, preventing them from joining most organizations or from belonging to any but the most tolerant of settlements; less tolerant settlements are more likely to organize a witch-hunt if they find out a Zony Shaman is in the area. Of the few in existence, most possess lean, wiry frames and a very high metabolism (though not to the point of more rapidly aging them as would a Cloud Mage) as a result of their body’s tremendous magical focusing ability, and very frequently their wild and conflicting internal magics tend to overwhelm their faculties, diminishing their senses or sometimes driving them either temporarily or permanently insane. Zony Shamans get a +1 attribute bonus to Intelligence at character creation.
At character creation, Zony shamans get to pick INT/3 (rounded up) level 0 or 1 spells from the unicorn spell list, and recipes from the zebra recipe list equal to their magic skill rank divided by 20, rounded up.
Zony shamans may pay a single character creation point to acquire the Hind Leg Stance perk at character creation as a trait.
Height: 3’7” + 2d8” – From 3’11” to 5’1”
Weight: 140 + (2d8*10) – From 160 to 300 macs
Zony Shaman Skill Bonus Ranks:
+3 Medicine, +3 Sneak, +3 Survival, -30 Speechcraft & Mercantile vs. All Equines (unless disguised)
Racial Skill: Magic +25, Intelligence based. Zony shamans may learn both zebra and unicorn magics, and use the same magic skill for both arts, but must choose to take any three of the following hindrances in exchange for their abilities:
Abused, Abandoned, Blind, Crippled, Deaf, Demented, Dumb, “Half-Decked”, Hallucinations, MPD, Optimistic, Pipsqueak, Phobia, Psychosis, Skinny as a Rail, Sadist, Scavenger, Slave, Studious, Suicidal, Uncontrolled Magic.
They do not receive character creation points for these hindrances. Hindrances taken here cannot be removed by roleplaying in conjunction with spending a perk, barring special circumstances.
Editor’s note: Use of alternate races, particularly alicorns, hellhounds and half-breeds, to create overly powerful characters (“Mary Sues”) is highly discouraged; these races are included for flavor and to expand player options. Abusers will be shot. Survivors will be shot again.
Attributes
Each character starts with a minimum score of 1 in every attribute. The seven attributes are:
Strength
(STR) – Affects your melee and unarmed damage, what
weapons you can carry and wield, and your carrying capacity.
Unmodified by perks, traits and hindrances, carrying capacity is
equal to 100 + (10*STR). Characters can only wield weapons of
weight up to twice their strength, though this can be modified by
perks and equipment. Strength is tied to the Melee Skill (and the
Dig Skill for Sand Dogs and Hellhounds), used to target attacks with
melee weapons. Characters with a high Strength attribute tend to be
larger and more muscular than their lower strength counterparts.
When your character’s strength score is low, they tend to be
winded and exhausted all the time. If it hits zero, they are
rendered incapable of lifting even their own weight, and will be
bedridden until it recovers.
Perception (PER) – Affects the range at which you detect enemies under different conditions. Without a pipbuck or similar magical assistance, a character’s range of perception is their perception score times 5’. This doesn’t mean that ponies can’t see beyond that, of course, but they take a 1 MFD step penalty for every perception score range increment they are beyond the first (making maximum perception range five times that amount, or 25’xPER). Perception is tied to the Energy Weapons, Explosives, and Lockpicking Skills. Extremely perceptive characters are very observant of what’s going on around them, and tend to end up as lookouts or snipers due to their abilities. Characters with a low perception score tend to be oblivious, frequently zoned out or not all present. If their perception score is ever lowered to 0, characters so affected are struck blind and deaf until they can recover – if they can recover. Perception rolls are used to notice fine or hidden detail in a character’s surroundings, as well as to detect characters or creatures that are sneaking, making this attribute the one most frequently rolled. Perception rolls made to search locations can generally be made once per hour spent searching.
Endurance (END) – Affects the maximum number of wounds you can take to each limb or body location before becoming crippled, unconscious, or dead. Endurance is also tied to rolls made to resist the effects of radiation, taint, enervation, and poisons. This attribute is tied to the Big Guns, Survival and Unarmed Skills. High endurance characters are tough, and can endure a higher degree of physical abuse than their compatriots. They fit the “strong, silent type” image very well. Low endurance characters can’t take a hit; they bruise and bleed very easily, and are a liability in many, if not all, combat situations. Characters with zero endurance are dead – the sort of dead that (almost) no one comes back from. Don’t let your endurance hit 0!
Charisma (CHA) – Charisma is your character’s force of personality. It affects your natural ability to influence others through speech. Charisma is tied to the Mercantile and Speechcraft Skills (and optionally the Magic Skill for Zebras), and directly represents a character’s force of personality. Charismatic characters have a way with words that typically reflects a quiet elegance or a dogged determined-ness to see things go through their way. More often than not, Charisma is tied to physical attractiveness, though there is not a direct relationship between this stat and how good looking your character is or isn’t, as the case may be. Low Charisma characters tend to be painfully shy, unable to speak their mind, or simply incapable of conveying meaning to those around them. If a character’s charisma hits zero they become completely unable to talk, and are essentially catatonic - unable to form their own opinions or assert their will, even to the point of survival-essential behavior. Any attempts to communicate come out as squeaks or completely unintelligible mumbles. Characters with telepathy and other forms of non-verbal communication are unable to use them – their minds are totally incapable of forming words or ideas while in such a state.
Intelligence (INT) – Affects your ability to think, process, and recall information, as well as the amount of general knowledge your character might possess. Intelligence governs the medicine and science skills, as well as the magic skill for unicorns, alicorns, and some zebras. Extremely intelligent ponies are quick-witted, and are able to frequently outsmart their opponents rather than outshoot or outlast them. Low Intelligence ponies tend to fall into two categories: the moronic and the insane. Characters with INT below 4 have problems talking in complete sentences and understanding speech; characters with INT of 2 or less are usually totally incapable of understanding all but the most basic speech – in the neighborhood of an average canine or other non-sapient critter. You and your GM can decide what type of low intelligence character your pony is if it comes up, though the former are far more common than the latter. Characters with zero Intelligence are rendered catatonic or comatose until their intelligence recovers, if ever.
Agility (AGI) – Affects your movement speed over land, through the air (for griffins, pegasi and alicorns), or through the ground (for sand dogs and hellhounds), as well as your ability to act quickly in combat, particularly using S.A.T.S. Your total SATS pool is equal to 40 + (AGIx5); how to tap into this is explained in the combat section. Agility governs the small guns and sneak skills, as well as the flight skill for pegasi, griffins and alicorns, which is used to perform aerial maneuvers. Characters with low agility tend to be bulky and slow, or potentially overweight. If their agility ever hits zero, then the character becomes completely unable to move; their joints lock up, and when they do manage to move a little they’re so clumsy they fall over. Such characters should seek medical attention immediately.
Luck (LUCK) – Affects all stats indirectly. Optionally (recommended), luck governs the number of luck cards your character gets per session – see the Live by Luck rules below for details. Extremely lucky characters find themselves escaping from insane situations with little more than scratches. Unlucky characters might find themselves breaking a leg walking down stairs. A character’s luck score can never be reduced below 1, except under extremely special circumstances. The effect of having a zero luck score depends on the circumstance under which it was reduced.
“Our
Heroes are Different” For
stronger than average, “Big Damned Hero” type characters, each
character should start with 37 creation points. For weaker
characters, reduce the creation point pool to 32. This might not
seem like a major bump in either direction, but trust us, 2-3
points is a very significant difference in strength for player
characters.
Be
aware that changing starting creation points is completely optional
and may affect perk eligibility for your heroes.
In
the interest of maintaining a balanced party of multiple
characters, we’ve reduced the base character creation point pool
to 35 (28) and provided other means of increasing the number of
points available to bring the total amount of points available into
line with Fallout 3’s character creation rules.
Under
the basic rules, races with two racial attribute bonus points (such
as earth ponies) can have a maximum of 43 effective character
creation points (allowing for two traits), while those with only a
single racial attribute bonus point can get up to 42. Alicorns and
Hellhounds can get up to an effective maximum of 40. If you do
decide to give characters more creation points, be very aware of
just how much more powerful this will make them in relation to the
world around them – for reference, heroes in Fallout 3 and New
Vegas start with a total of forty character creation points,
and they’re powerful enough to take on the wasteland on their
own.
Characters can gain additional creation points by taking Hindrances, or spend creation points to get Traits such as those listed below each race. A full listing for each of these, and the associated rules for them, is further on in this section.
Depending on the party balance, you may want to take more or less hindrances per person, but each character should be taking on about the same number of hindrances or traits at character creation (unless there’s an alicorn or hellhound in the party). For a beginning game, we recommend that characters start with no more than three hindrances and two or fewer traits. For game balance, characters that have more than 4 hindrances should take an extra trait for each additional hindrance, rather than spending the extra points on attributes. (Alicorns and Hellhound characters can take a total of no more than 8 hindrances, period. This promotes game balance.)
Characters that begin with more than 6 hindrances can make scenarios imbalanced due to too-high ability scores and too many additional abilities, and the fact that characters with too many traits and hindrances are simply much more difficult to roleplay. We don’t recommend letting players give characters more than four to five hindrances except under special circumstances. A good way to handle this for players that wish for their characters to take additional hindrances beyond what the GM has set as the maximum limit (and yes, this happens more than you might think) is to allow the character to have the hindrance(s), but not receive the creation point for it (them).
Remember to take into account any attribute bonuses or penalties your character may get from their race or traits. 1 creation point can be used to buy 1 point in any stat at a 1:1 cost. At character creation, you cannot raise a stat by more than 8 points with character creation points. This means that to exceed a score of 9 in any single stat requires that it be raised by your racial attribute bonus, or by traits or hindrances. This applies to all attributes except luck, which you can raise up to 10 at character creation (but I advise against it for characters you want to live longer than 3 weeks of in-game time). Even with perks and racial bonuses, your score in any attribute cannot ever be raised above 12; this is a “hard cap limit” for player character’s attribute scores.
A character’s attributes are very important to determine early on in the process of character creation because they determine the starting rank of that character’s skills. Your base rank in each skill is double the point score of that attribute plus the point score of your luck divided by two (rounded down), plus two. So:
(2*<ATT>) + (LUCK/2) + 2 = Base Skill Rank (at level 1)
Where <ATT> is the governing attribute of the skill, all of which are listed for your convenience to the right of the skill name on the character sheet. Note that for this calculation, as with all other calculations in this system unless explicitly stated otherwise, you must round down. Keeping in line with the Fallout games, you cannot have a skill rank less than 5, even if you have a score of 1 in both Luck and the skill’s governing attribute (which would otherwise give you a score of 4).
As an example, a character with an Endurance of 6 and Luck of 5 would have a base Unarmed Skill rank of 16.
First time player should be wary about calculating your starting skill ranks immediately after choosing your race and attributes. We don’t recommend you bother calculating your MFDs just yet, however, because you still have hindrances and traits to take into account.
Living By Luck (Live by Luck)
Luck is an attribute that does not directly govern any skill, but has a positive influence on the starting ranks of all other skills. This section contains an optional, recommended rule for using luck to influence the outcome of specific actions and events.
Let’s face it: some ponies are just luckier than others. Their luck isn’t always good, but even when its bad, things always tend to turn out for the best for the lucky ponies in the end. Using the Live by Luck rules, all players get a lucky break every once in a while. This is demonstrated by the use of what I call here ‘luck cards’. These items can be represented by any sort of token, not necessarily cards (though that’s what I use), and they function similarly to “bennies” in Savage Worlds, Hero Points in Pathfinder (also an optional rule), Chips in Deadlands, and Drama Dice in Seventh Sea.
At the beginning of each session, players get a number of luck cards equal to half their luck score rounded up plus two, a minimum of 3. This is the only instance in the rules where you round up! These luck cards can be spent in multiple ways to help characters escape from sticky situations during any normal game, but don’t transfer between sessions. Luck can’t just be kept in a tupperware and saved for later, after all. Extra luck cards may be distributed as deemed appropriate by your GM, and there are perks, example quest-perks, and traits listed in the following pages that will increase the amount of luck cards characters receive per session in various ways. Players can give each other luck cards – in essence, spending their luck to help others – by paying down a luck card for each card given.
Oh and GMs – Not only the heroes get luck cards! The GM should get luck cards for themselves at the beginning of every session: one per player, plus one for every Alicorn, Hellhound, Animal Companion or Ghoul in the group, and two extra for every Canterlot Ghoul. You should also get an additional card per player with the Uncontrolled Magic or Narcoleptic Hindrances (see next section). If you have a baddie that is sufficiently important, consider giving them an allotment of luck cards of their own to play with in addition to the GM’s “general NPC stash.” Use the cards right, and this could make for more interesting boss fights, and provide more of a challenge to your players even in role-playing situations.
In addition to all of the abilities below, GM’s can spend their luck cards to edit the flow of reality in some major way. They may do this by spending a luck card and giving one luck card to each of their players, announcing that they’re making an alteration, though they don’t need to tell the players what the alteration is until it comes up. This can be significant – making an NPC a different race, having an enemy’s reinforcements arrive earlier than planned, adding a special ability to an abomination mid combat, or allowing a big-bad to teleport away despite having already acted are good examples – but it doesn’t need to be. Sometimes changing even an insignificant detail can make a huge difference in what happens to a character or how an event unfolds.
Rerolling Failed Rolls:
If at any point in the session a player fails a roll, that player can spend one luck card to reroll the failed roll. This gives them a chance to negate their failure – but be careful! Lady Luck is fickle. Every time you spend a luck card to reroll a failed roll, the chance of critical success or of critical failure increases by 5% on the new roll. That means that if you fail a roll and reroll it using a luck card, you can now critically succeed on a roll of 1-10, and critically fail on a roll of 91-100. This effect stacks; for every time you fail and spend a card to reroll, you simply add another 5% onto the range of critical success or failure.
If a player had enough cards, and continued to fail on successive rerolls without critically failing, then they could theoretically raise the critical chance threshold to 50%. A critical success would then be rolled on a 1-50, and a critical failure would be on any roll 51-100. If this occurs, then there can be no further successive rerolls – If they haven’t been able to succeed by then, there’s simply no amount of luck that can help them.
Negating Critical Failures
Critical failures cannot be directly negated like regular failures, but fret not! If a player DOES critically fail, whether on their first roll or on any successive reroll, then that critical failure can be turned into a normal failure (one which doesn’t have additional consequences for them or their friends) by spending a luck card. After the card is spent, the player must roll against their character’s Luck attribute score (Luck*10).
A success means you’ve turned your critical failure into a regular failure, with no serious backlash. A failure means that your card has been wasted – it’s still a critical failure, but you can try again by spending another card if you’ve got one. A critical failure on this roll means that you’ve not only wasted a card, but you’ve bungled your luck and can no longer spend cards to affect this roll. A critical success means you’ve turned your critical failure completely into a success.
While we’re on the subject, no, you can’t spend additional luck cards to reroll the critical-failure negation roll. Lady Luck can be cruel and she can be kind, but either way she doesn’t want you spending all your precious luck in one place! (Also, dear sweet Celestia would that get complicated!)
This effect can be used in conjunction with another luck card to then reroll the failure. Critical failures can be turned into successes with luck in this fashion, but it can get costly fairly quickly.
Pre-emptively Improving a Roll
What if you’re worried about failing a roll ahead of time? If your pony really needs to do something right the first time, players can spend a luck card before they roll the dice to subtract 5 from the final roll (i.e. give you a +10 bonus). This effect can be stacked up to 5 times by using multiple cards, for a total maximum roll improvement of 50%. If you get a critical success when improving the roll in this manner (1-5 on the die, before subtracting your improvements) then you are refunded any cards you spent. If you get any other outcome, for better or for worse, your cards are gone.
This effect can be applied to any roll made by you, including any of the other luck rolls.
Note that ‘critical successes’ that are achieved by modifying the dice roll in this way only count as normal successes. Critical successes only occur if 1-5 is rolled on the d%. Critical failures (96-100 on the die) are still critical failures, even if the improvement would push them outside this range.
Doing Something Awesome
Do you feel like Rainbow Dash today? Is something outside of the normal range of what your pony would be able to do, but you want them to do it anyway? Feel like adding some panache to your character’s finishing move?
You’re in luck! If you suggest something awesome to your GM that you want your character to do and spend a luck card (or two or three, depending on how ridiculously over the top it may be), then it can happen. You may still need to make some dice rolls depending on what you’re attempting, but if your unicorn pony feels the sudden urge to jump onto a giant, hideous frog-monster’s face and stab it in the eyes with their horn in the midst of combat, then who are we to tell them no?
Improving the Story
Think something just happened that might have been a bit of plot gone wrong? Feeling especially betrayed by the dice? If your GM agrees, then spend a luck card to prevent what just happened, or to change it to make the story a bit more… interesting.
If you can convince your GM that some event – either occurring instead of something else, or simply just happening - might make the story better, you can spend a luck card to make that happen. No rolling necessary for this one. Characters beware -- your GM can pull this trick to improve the story as well! When they use it, though, they must spend a card from their own supply and give one card to each effected character. If the boss ended up being too weak and the GM wanted to improve its stats halfway through combat, for example, then that GM would need to give a card out to every character in combat.
Negating Hits and Wounds
The final general use (and arguably the most useful one) for luck cards is in negating hits or damage.
Let’s imagine a hypothetical situation: Blackjack is being shot at by some crazed raiders (perhaps not so hypothetical). Feeling particularly lucky today, she runs out in the open to try and stab one of them with her dragon’s claw, her shotgun and rifle being indisposed of for whatever hypothetical reason (probably Somber blew them up or something). Leaving cover turns out to have been a poor decision, as a particularly-sane raider sitting back out of EFS (“Eyes Forward Sparkle” – a motion tracker spell that is common to all pipbucks) range takes a shot at her with a hunting rifle.
The raider succeeds on his to hit roll. Blackjack is already worse for wear, but she’s got luck on her side, and after the GM announces that she has been hit and where the bullet struck, (but before announcing the damage dealt and the number of wounds) her player announces that she would like to spend a card to use some of her luck to make the bullet (or bullets, if the raider were instead using a burst-fire weapon) veer off course, be deflected by falling debris, etc. – basically, some method by which the well placed shot would not reach Blackjack’s battered and bruised hide.
If BJ’s player is trying to negate the hit, she needs to roll luck, MFD 1. If she succeeds, the bullet veers off course in the manner suggested. If she critically succeeds, then the bullet may actually work to her advantage – kicking up a cloud of concealing dust, accidentally shooting another raider sneaking up behind her, ricocheting back and hurting the shooter or one of his friends, etc. On the other hoof, if she fails or critically fails, then the bullet(s) continues as planned, and she cannot attempt to send it off course in this manner again. In the case of the critical failure she would not be able to spend further cards on anything related to this bullet, but if she has only failed normally she can still spend luck cards to reduce the number of wounds it deals.
Let’s assume, for the sake of explanation, that she fails the roll to try and make the raider miss. The bullet hits her in the torso, and the GM announces that it penetrates her barding and deals 26 damage after armor - 2 wounds, because she’s not above level 9 yet. Blackjack’s player, who simply has more luck cards than she knows what to do with, says she’d like to try and negate the damage.
She spends a luck card, which immediately removes one wound, and must then roll her lowest attribute, MFD 1. In this example, assuming Blackjack has an INT score of 5 (which is probably a bit on the generous side) as her lowest attribute, she must make a 50. The wounds dealt are reduced by one for every MFD step below one that they succeed by. In other words, if she rolls a 37 (MFD ¾) or below, she has successfully negated all of the damage dealt. For characters with attribute scores that are not well balanced, this can become quite bothersome.
The player doesn’t have to declare how many wounds they’re trying to negate with this roll, and they might not negate all of them at once. If the roll is failed or critically failed, then the bullet damage stays. Additional luck cards can still be spent on this damage unless the failure was a critical failure (Gee, lady luck sure is fickle).
If she succeeds, she may continue to spend luck cards on this damage until she either removes all of her damage or fails. Critical successes remove all wounds immediately, regardless of how many wounds were trying to be removed.
Wounds and damage can only be negated in this way as they are incurred (i.e. right after somepony shoots atcha). To remove an existing wound after combat, employ the use of healing magic or the Medicine skill.
In Summary:
Under the “Live by Luck” rules, luck cards can be used to:
--Reroll Failed Rolls (Usually skill rolls)
--Turn a Critical Failure into a Normal Failure (Luck Roll MFD 1)
--Pre-emptively improve a roll, giving a +10 bonus per card.
--Do Something Awesome
--Improve the Story
--Negate Hits (Luck Roll, MFD 1) or Wounds (Lowest Attribute Roll, MFD 1)
(Depending on when you spend them!)
--Give other characters a luck card (2:1)
Skills
The skill system reflects a character’s knowledge and experience in a wide variety of skills that are necessary for survival in the wasteland. There are a total of thirteen skills that every character has, and three racial skills. These skills are listed below, in S.P.E.C.I.A.L. order by their linked attribute, and then alphabetically. Each skill governs the ability of a character to perform a wide range of specific types of actions.
Dig
(Strength) – Racial – Governs the character’s ability
to perform specific tasks while digging through the ground,
especially those related to combat such as creating pitfalls or
surprising an enemy. Also used for scaling walls (Climbing). A
dig roll MFD 1 is required to move by digging through normal soil
(harder substances may modify the roll MFD). Climbing and digging
rolls made with this skill tend to have difficulty levels that vary
highly from situation to situation.
Melee (Strength) – Governs ability to hit with melee weapons, such as swords, sledgehammers and axes. Also affects damage dealt with those weapons. Melee and Unarmed skills directly affect the STR damage bonus of all Melee and Unarmed-category weapons respectively.
Energy Weapons (Perception) – Governs ability to hit with magical energy weapons, such as laser or plasma pistols and rifles. These weapons receive a bonus to damage equal to your energy weapons skill divided by 10, rounded down.
Explosives (Perception) – Governs your character’s ability to throw, place, set, arm, and disarm explosives of all types. Also governs throwing of non-explosive projectiles – any object less than ½ a character’s STR score in weight can be thrown.
Throwing an object with explosives determines where it will land and/or detonate relative to their target. For explosives specifically, each MFD step a thrown explosive misses a target by is one AoE range increment further away from the explosion’s epicenter, reducing damage dealt substantially and possibly negating it altogether.
Characters with high skill in explosives are more effective with the damage dealt by them. Characters with less than 26 ranks in this skill only deal 25% of the rolled damage value before that damage is applied to all affected locations (those areas of the target or targets that were actually exposed to the blast). Characters with 26-50 ranks in this skill divide damage dealt 50% before applying it across the affected areas of the target, and those with 51-75 ranks deal 75%. With 76 or more ranks in explosives, a character’s explosives deal full damage. At rank 100 they deal an additional +10 to every location affected. A character’s explosive skill does not affect the damage dealt by any big guns that deal damage in an area of effect.
Lockpicking
(Perception) – Governs your character’s ability to pick locks,
such as are found on doors and safes. Highly sophisticated locks
may be inaccessible to characters with a low lockpicking skill. Use
of this skill generally requires appropriate tools. A screwdriver
and bobby pin are the go-to options for most players, but feel free
to break tradition if you so desire.
Big Guns (Endurance) – Governs your characters ability to hit with particularly large weapons of all types, including Miniguns, Gatling Lasers, and Balefire-Egg Launchers. Large weapons that require a vehicle mount, such as the main battle cannon on a tank, the gatling lasers on a Vertibuck, or even the artillery on a battleship are also targeted with this skill. These weapons receive a bonus to damage equal to your rank in this skill divided by ten, rounded down.
In the case of big guns that deal damage in an area of effect, the damage dealt is applied to multiple locations simultaneously similar to explosives. Like explosives, the damage dealt is related directly to rank (25% from 0-25 ranks, 50% from 26-50, 75% from 51-75, 100% from 76-99, 100%+10 at 100).
For explosives specifically, each MFD step a thrown explosive misses a target by is one AoE range increment further away from the explosion’s epicenter, reducing damage dealt substantially and possibly negating it altogether.
Survival (Endurance) – Governs ability to cook and prepare food, and may affect how strong the positive effects of food are. Also governs a character’s ability to navigate, track down targets, and their knowledge of local flora and fauna. A table of the effects of varying levels of the survival skill on the effects of food is provided in the “Food and Drink” section in equipment, and again in the “Hunger and Starvation” section in Gettin’ by in the Wasteland. This skill is important for zebra alchemists, as it is used to gather ingredients needed for potion creation.
Unarmed (Endurance) – Governs ability to hit and deal damage with a character’s natural weapons, be they hooves, horns, wings or claws, or with weapons that augment those natural weapons, such as Power Shoes or Bladed Wings. Melee and Unarmed skills directly affect the STR damage bonus of all Melee and Unarmed-category weapons respectively (See figure 2).
Mercantile
(Charisma) – Governs ability to barter and negotiate for
better prices and deals on items, both buying and selling. Also
allows characters to determine the sell value of an item, or to
successfully find rare or specific merchandise in large marketplaces
(if they can find any).
Speechcraft (Charisma) – Governs a character’s ability to speak or argue persuasively, such as when trying to convince an NPC (Non-Player Character) to do something. This skill cannot be used to interact with player characters! Try talking to them directly instead, or actually convincing them in character that what they’re doing (or trying to do) is a dumb idea. If I had a nickel for every time somepony tried to replace player interaction with dice, I’d have earned enough money to turn this project into a full-time job.
Magic (Charisma or Intelligence) – Racial – Governs a character’s ability to perform magic, either by creating potions or talismans or by casting spells. This skill can be used to cast a spell in a combat scenario (MFD 1 modified by overglow or other effects) or can also be rolled whenever the user wants to examine a magical effect, unless that effect more clearly relates to science or another skill. Magic rolls may also be required to learn new spells or increase the effects of already known ones. To cast a spell, a unicorn or alicorn must roll magic twice – once to actually cast the spell, and once more to target the spell (if the spell is targeted). If the target is willing, the second roll is unnecessary. For more information on this skill, check out Chapter 5 - Magic.
Medicine (Intelligence) – Governs a character’s ability to diagnose and treat injury and remove poisons or contaminations, how many wounds they can heal with the use of medical devices, potions, and spells, and how difficult it is to remove wounds without medical devices. A high skill in medicine may be required to treat certain types of injuries or to operate sophisticated medical equipment.
Repair (Intelligence) – Governs a character’s ability to repair devices and weapons, and to use spare parts to construct new devices and weapons. Also governs a character’s ability to modify armors, clothes, barding, and other items and to create entirely new items out of scrap. High levels of the repair skill may be required to repair or construct complex devices, or devices in particularly bad condition. A good repair pony always knows that a truly useful set of barding must have plenty of pockets!
Science (Intelligence) – Governs a character’s knowledge of the sciences and of arcane technology, affecting their ability to hack into secured terminals and reprogram the spell matrices of robots and automata. Higher levels of science skill may be required to interact with certain terminals or pieces of advanced technology.
Flight (Agility) – Racial – Governs a character’s skill and experience with flying, affecting their ability to perform aerial maneuvers. A list of aerial maneuvers and their related mechanics - how they’re acquired, how difficult they are to perform, their effects, etc. - are all available in Chapter 5.
Small Guns (Agility) –Governs a character’s knowledge of and accuracy while using standard firearms, such as assault rifles, pistols, SMGs and shotguns. These weapons receive a bonus to damage equal to your small guns skill divided by 10, rounded down.
Sneak (Agility) – Governs ability of a character to remain hidden or unnoticed in any situation. Also represents the knowledge a character has about how to remain hidden, and their ability to steal items without being seen. Information on how to use this skill is provided more in depth in figure 4, on the previous page.
Not included in the sidebar are the penalties to sneak imposed by weight. Starting at 50, for every 10 units of weight beyond 50 (rounded down) characters take a -1 penalty to sneak, representing the noise made by the gear being carried.
Also not included are the rules required to use sneak to pickpocket items from other characters. Pickpocketing (or put-pocketing) an item requires that the character roll sneak against a target character’s perception as an opposed roll. See chapter 1 for an explanation of opposed rolls. Success on the pickpocket’s part steals an item; failure still steals or places an item, but you’re caught doing so. In the case of put-pocketing, this gives the victim a chance to react before any unfortunate consequences; if this occurs in combat and the character has already fully acted that round of combat, they may roll AGI MFD ½ to receive an extra action that can be used exclusively to deal with the put-pocketed item . To place an item on a victim without their notice requires that the put-pocket win this opposed roll by at least 1 MFD step. Critical failures steal or place no items. The pickpocket’s sneak roll is affected by the weight of the item – items with weight greater than 1 inflict a penalty on the sneak roll of -5 per unit of weight. Items with weight less than or equal to 1 inflict no penalty. Pickpocketing can also be used to plant explosives on other characters; the explosive goes off the round immediately after it has been planted. Such explosives deal double damage and ignore the DT of whatever armor they’ve been planted into (other sources of DT, including under-armor and underclothes, are applied as normal).
Skills can be improved by either leveling up your character, which grants them a certain amount of points to invest, or by reading books. Books can permanently increase a character’s knowledge of a specific subject, granting them a permanent increase to a skill’s level of a minimum of 1 point; the amount of skill points granted by each book can be increased by perks or traits. A book must be studied and eventually finished by a character for them to gain this effect, but they don’t disappear after use and can be used by other characters to gain this bonus. Depending on the book and the knowledge a character already has of the subject matter, a book may take anywhere from days to weeks to even months for a character to finish reading. Characters do not gain the benefit of the additional skill rank until they have completed the book.
Tag Skills & Cutie Marks
To determine
the number of ranks your character has in a skill at character
creation, follow the formula given below.
Remember: You cannot have a starting rank of less than 5 in a skill (barring Touched by the Sun). Even if you have an attribute score of 1 in both Luck and the governing attribute, your base score for the governed skills is still 5. The rank your character has in a skill is not the same value as their MFD 1 value for that skill. To find their MFD 1 value, add their rank in the skill to the MFD ½ value for the governing attribute.
For example, let’s say Lil Pip has an endurance score of 5 and luck attribute score of 5. Her base unarmed skill thus has a starting rank of 2 + (2*5) + (5/2), which rounds downward to give her a base rank of 14. If you end up with a fraction as your end result while doing this calculation, round down.
In addition to rank bonuses or detractions granted by race, traits and hindrances, all characters may select 3 skills at character creation to which they may apply an immediate 15 ranks each. Characters may not double or triple tag skills, but if they want to select less than three that’s their choice. These three skills are your tag skills, and represent the fields that your character specializes in. They also play a part in creating your character’s cutie mark.
Pay attention here, GMs and players! The three tag skills you select for your future or current wastelander can play a big part in determining what their cutie mark is. They don’t have to be the only influencing factor, but in most characters expect to see their cutie mark correspond to at least one of their tag skills. Lil Pip’s Pipbuck mark, for example, has to do with her science skill, (because it’s a computer), her small guns skill (because of SATS), and her sneak skill (because of the ability of Pipbucks to interface with stealthbucks). These are fairly obviously her tag skills because of how often she relies on them throughout her story. If you have problems selecting your cutie mark based on your desired tag skills for your character, talk with your GM about it and try to come up with ideas. Unless you have the Young hindrance, there’s a slim chance that you’ll be wandering around the Equestrian Wasteland with a blank flank.
Players who don’t want their tag skills to have such a high impact on their cutie mark should talk with their GM about it and work something out, if the GM is alright with it. Remember that no means no, kiddos--especially when it’s told to you by your game master!
Starting Rank Bonuses
When putting together a character and filling out a character sheet for the first time, you should apply skill rank bonuses and penalties in the order below, to ensure consistency:
1. Racial Skill Bonuses and Penalties
2. Trait and Hindrance Bonuses and Penalties
3. Tag Skill bonuses
Remember that not all traits and hindrances give skill rank bonuses! Some of them just give static +/- bonuses to rolls, and should be listed in the “+” column on your character sheet, not in the score column. Be sure to check the traits themselves to make sure. Roll bonuses are actually more helpful in the long run for most characters; while such bonuses are harder to obtain, they have basically the same effect as increasing a character’s skill rank without the bother of an upper limit. Comparatively, skill ranks can never exceed 100.
Rolling Unskilled
Sometimes characters may find themselves in situations where they may have to do something that doesn’t really fit into any of the skill categories listed above. In situations like this, where a skill doesn’t apply directly, your character must roll unskilled. This shouldn’t happen often, but it does happen (we recommend referencing the table included in the Specialization trait to help avoid this sort of thing). GMs should take note of this, because they’ll have to figure out what needs to be rolled!
Depending on the action that the player character is trying to attempt, have the GM pick an attribute that they think most applies. The player must roll for that attribute as if it was their skill level, at an appropriate MFD. They may receive bonuses or penalties as the situation calls for.
To determine the equivalent “skill level” of an attribute, simply multiply the base attribute score by 10. There is space to record these values at varying MFDs on the character sheet.
Helping Out – Assisted Skill Rolls
So let’s say a character needs to perform a specific action, let’s say diffuse a bomb, and they’re the only one that can get access to it. Now, if the players are lucky, that character has all of the skills needed to perform that task. Players aren’t always lucky.
Rather than mess this up and have the bomb go off, however, if the character that needs to do the task can simply ask for help from their friends!
To assist another character on a skill roll, the assisting character or characters must roll their level of the same skill at the same MFD that the assisted pony (i.e. the one diffusing the bomb) must roll. For every assisting pony that succeeds or critically succeeds, the MFD is raised by one step, making the final roll easier. For every assisting character that critically fails, however, the MFD is lowered a step. Assisting characters necessarily must roll BEFORE the character that is receiving the assistance.
To role-play this, it is appropriate for the assisting ponies to talk the recipient of their assistance through whatever task she’s doing. Some GMs might even want to give the players a bonus for doing so, but that’s up to them.
On tasks where multiple ponies can get involved doing the same task, rather than use the assistance rules, we recommend simply taking the best roll of the characters involved. This is optional, however, and the assistance rules will still work – just determine who is doing the assisting and who is doing the actual final roll before you start rolling!
Skill Based and General Character Knowledge
What does your character know? That is a question that is difficult to answer in most cases. So we’ll put it this way – if you, as a player, don’t know if your character knows something, ask your GM if it’s possible they might know it. If your GM says you do or don’t, then that’s that – no further reason to fuss about it. If they say there’s a chance, but it’s not certain, keep reading – that’s what this section is all about.
When it’s uncertain if your character would or would not know something, you as a player can iron this out with either an Intelligence roll (for general knowledge) or a skill roll (if the fact is related to a skill). The MFD for this roll is determined by the obscurity of the fact in question. How do you determine the obscurity of a fact? Ultimately your GM should decide (because their campaign setting is what determines how obscure it is), but to help guide their decision we’ve provided a table of levels of obscurity and associated tidbits about Fallout: Equestria and Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons below. It contains some sizable spoilers for Project Horizons and for Fallout Equestria, so you might not want to look down there if you haven’t finished both fictions just yet. Critical hits give no extra benefit on rolls to determine if a character has knowledge of something, but there are a number of traits that can give bonuses on these rolls.
Once the obscurity MFD is determined, the player has two options. If the knowledge in question is related to a skill in some way, they may roll that skill to determine if their character knows.
The second option, and the only option if the knowledge in question is general knowledge or otherwise isn’t related to a skill, is to roll intelligence at the relevant MFD level. If the character’s background would suggest that the character had the knowledge, then they receive a +10 bonus on the roll. (If their background would suggest that they already know the information or that there’s no chance that they’d know, then don’t bother rolling!) The Formal Education trait gives characters an additional bonus to this roll.
Some GMs may wish to totally ignore this table, particularly if many of their players haven’t read several (or any) of the works this system is based off of, or if their setting is relatively far away from the Hoofington and capital wasteland regions. In that case, treat all knowledge as though it would require a role-playing reason for the character to know this. This works particularly well for games with all stable-dweller characters.
Table III: Obscurity of Knowledge Relative MFDs - CONTAINS SPOILERS, so I’ve intentionally made the text difficult to read.
Fact (DEAR SWEET CELESTIA DOES THIS TABLE EVER CONTAIN SPOILERS!) |
Level of Obscurity (MFD) |
The apocalypse was the logical and inevitable conclusion of the great war, fought between the zebras and the ponies. It was fought over coal and gems. |
2 |
Luna’s wartime government was split up into six ministries, each governed by one of the six mares that wielded the elements of harmony. Equestria only began developing firearms and higher level magical technologies in the decades immediately preceding the war. These technologies created the demand for coal and other natural resources. |
1 ½ |
The ministries were, alphabetically: Arcane Science, Awesome, Image, Morale, Peace, and Wartime Technology. They were headed by Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, Rarity (Belle), Pinkie Pie, and Applejack (Apple), respectively. The great ivory towers that still adorn the landscape were part of the Ministry of Awesome’s SPP. They were designed by Applebloom (Apple). Luna took charge of Equestria when Celestia stepped down from power as a direct consequence of the death of Big Macintosh, whose sacrifice prevented an assassination attempt. She created the ministries to assist her rule. |
1 |
‘Taint’ is actually the result of magical byproducts from the Maripony facility leeching into the water supply. Scootaloo was the head of Stable-Tec, and left a recording detailing the mission of each stable in the hooves of its overmare (or overstallion, as the case may be). All of the stables were designed to model new social ideas in the hope that a new social paradigm would help to prevent future pony societies from succumbing to the problems that led to the great war. The OIA existed to foster cooperation between and work as an intermediary for the six ministries and their subsidiaries. The Grand Pegasus Enclave arose out of a sentiment that pegasi were being called upon more heavily to fight in the war effort than earth ponies and unicorns. Knowledge of what transpired at Crescent Moon Canyon |
¾ |
Watcher is actually Spike, the late Twilight Sparkle’s assistant. Goldenblood was the head of the OIA, and was ultimately responsible for much of the organization of Luna’s new government Rainbow Dash’s ministry outwardly appeared to do very little, but was actually responsible for espionage and subterfuge within the zebra government, including multiple assassinations. The six most powerful factions in Hoofington (Reapers, Collegiate, Society, Rangers, Finders, and EVC) are each connected to members of a group of six ponies that originally came to the region together to try and stabilize it. Knowledge about local gangs. Zebra myths and legends, particularly those pertaining to the stars (for non-zebras) |
½ |
The Ministry of Arcane Science completed research on a spell to purge the body of taint, and the occupants of Tenpony Tower still possess knowledge of it. Stable 1 was actually a death trap, designed to punish the Canterlot nobility for bringing about a war that destroyed Equestria and the world. Gems in Equestria are unusual in that they appear and can be grown in forms that are pre-cut and polished. Gems of the same type that originate in other nations do not possess magical energy. Fluttershy was responsible for giving megaspells to the zebras. She hoped that mutually assured destruction would lead to a diplomatic solution, saving countless lives. The stories of Macintosh’s Marauders |
¼ |
Taint is a byproduct of the magi-chemical process used to create alicorns. It was researched and created by Twilight Sparkle and her ministry. Twilight Sparkle, her two seconds in command of the MAS, and Trixie were all combined into The Great and Powerful Goddess. The names of any of the OIA’s projects. The OIA’s true function was not to unite the ministries, but rather to divide their individual leaders and set them against each other. Any specific knowledge about the Enclave and its organization (for non-enclave characters) Any and all knowledge about Star Blasters. |
1/10 |
Any and all knowledge about the Gardens of Equestria. Homage is DJ PON-3 Fluttershy is not dead – she was transformed into a tree by killing joke. Any and all knowledge about Soul Jars and the Black Book. The 42 statuettes of the ministry mares each contain pieces of Rarity’s soul Any and all knowledge about the OIA’s projects and their individual goals. Taint and flux are both functionally the same thing: distilled chaos, harvested from Discord himself. Enervation is caused by starmetal from the fallen star. |
Critical – requires roleplaying reasons for knowing. |
Hey, down here!
Background knowledge rolls to determine what a character knows should only be made once per topic, either when that character is being created or is initially introduced, or when a topic or subject of interest is being introduced that a character may already know about. Aside from that, a character shouldn’t know anything they haven’t learned through roleplaying. As always, the GM has the final say in what a character can or cannot have known prior to the campaign’s start or that character’s introduction.
Hindrances
Let’s face it: No pony’s perfect. Even if they’re not a pony, your waster probably isn’t either. If they were, that would be boring! Giving your pony hindrances serves two purposes: it makes them more interesting to roleplay (by preventing them from being a complete “Mary Sue,” for those familiar with the term), and it gives them back valuable creation points. Each hindrance from the list below that your pony takes on gives them back one creation point to spend on their attribute scores, or to buy traits. A list of traits (and their requirements and point costs) is in the section immediately after hindrances. Remember – unless your GM gives you the green light (or you’re playing an alicorn or hellhound), you can’t take more than 6 hindrances at character creation!
Oh! Before you go on and read through all the hindrances, note that hindrances are not necessarily permanent. Certain hindrances are much more difficult to get rid of than others (i.e. Elderly is much harder to get rid of than Crippled, a single Addiction is easier to cure than an Addictive Personality, etc.), but all hindrances except virtues can be removed as long as there is a sufficient roleplaying reason for being able to do so. Some of the hindrances list the conditions required for their removal, but most do not – in those cases, the conditions for the hindrance’s removal are highly situational and differ from character to character. Virtues can become corrupted, but once a character has figured out what theirs is it doesn’t ever go away. See the “Removing Hindrances” heading in the Leveling up your Character section for more information on the subject.
Traits and hindrances can give or take away several kinds of bonuses and penalties. For your convenience and increased understanding of the hindrances and traits displayed in the rest of this section, we’ve made a table for you to look through before picking your character’s flaws.
Table IV: Bonuses and Penalties, a System-Wide Type Breakdown
Type: |
What it does for your character: |
Skill or Attribute Bonus/Penalty (AKA “Roll Bonus/Penalty”) |
Direct + or – to be added or subtracted from the indicated dice rolls – We recommend compiling these values into the “+ column.” These bonuses or penalties stack with each other unless explicitly mentioned otherwise, so if you have more than one, add them all together to find your total bonus or penalty. |
Accuracy Bonus/Penalty |
Direct + or – to be added only to rolls made to target enemies during combat. Similarly to roll bonuses and penalties, these stack. |
Permanent Attribute Bonus/Penalty (these will usually be single digit penalties, i.e. +1 or -2) |
These bonuses or penalties can change your attribute scores, permanently. Permanent bonuses or penalties will alter the values you must roll to succeed at each MFD level for both the attribute and all of the dependent skills. Increasing the governing attribute also increases the rank of the governed skills by two. Luck will increase the rank of all skills by one for every two points it is increased. |
Temporary Attribute Bonus/Penalty (these will usually be single digit penalties, i.e. +1 or -2) |
Temporary bonuses or penalties to attributes only require you to recalculate the MFD success ranges for the affected attribute (a table for this is provided on the second page of the character sheet). They also affect calculated values for characters, like wounds to cripple and maim, movement speeds, and SATS and Strain pools. They don’t affect attributes for the purpose of perk requirements. Dependent skills don’t need to be recalculated; they receive a roll bonus or penalty equal to 5x the attribute bonus or penalty. |
Skill Rank Bonus/Penalty |
Your character gains or loses ranks in one or more skills. No skill can start at below rank 5 or exceed rank 100. There is only one exception to this rule, the trait Touched by the Sun, which can lower starting skill ranks to a minimum rank of 0. Even after character creation, a character’s skill rank cannot exceed 100. |
As a general rule, most traits and hindrances will grant your character skill rank bonuses. Most (though not all) normal perks – the sort your character gets from leveling up -- grant bonuses or penalties to rolls.
Table V: Hindrances Summary Table
Hindrance |
Mental/ Physical |
Brief Description |
Abandoned/ All Alone |
P |
Character begins play alone, and with reduced starting funds (200 caps versus 300), but reduces cost of the Animal Companion and Wasteland Weirdo traits. Cannot start with Pipbuck, barring special circumstances. |
Abused |
M |
Situational penalty to Speechcraft and attack accuracy versus the abusing party. Tends to have trust issues. |
Addiction |
P |
Your character is chemically or otherwise physically addicted to a substance, as though they had failed an addiction roll. |
Addictive Personality |
M |
Automatically fail all INT rolls made to resist addiction, dramatically increasing your chance of becoming addicted to substances. |
Allergy |
P |
Your character is violently allergic to some substance and takes penalties on all rolls when exposed to it. -5 in close proximity of it, -25 when in immediate contact with it. |
Amnesiac |
M |
Character has forgotten a long span of time out of their life.
|
Bad Luck |
M |
Expands critical failure range by 5. One less luck card per session.
|
Bad Luck Charm |
M |
Force an ally to reroll a single successful roll per session. Additional effects with Live by Luck. |
Big Ears |
P |
+10 on auditory perception rolls, and such rolls are 1 MFD step easier for you. END roll MFD ½ or be stunned and deafened by loud noises within 10 feet. |
Blind |
P |
Your character suffers a 3 MFD step accuracy penalty to ranged attacks, a 1 step accuracy penalty to Unarmed or Melee attacks, and requires assistance to perform tasks with visual components. |
Cannibal |
M/P |
Character must eat meat daily or make an INT roll MFD ¾ Penalty -10 to avoid cannibalizing a corpse as soon as one becomes available, onlookers be damned. |
Cautious |
M |
-15 penalty to initiative, +3 bonus to the Explosives skill.
|
Clumsy |
P |
-5 penalty on tasks requiring delicate actions or precision. Also increases critical failure range by 5 for such tasks. |
Code of Honor |
M |
Forces characters to handle situations honorably.
|
Color Blind |
P |
Characters can’t tell the difference between two distinct colors on opposite sides of the spectrum. (Hilarity ensues) |
Cowardly |
M |
The MFD on Fear and Horror rolls is always one step higher for you.
|
Crippled |
P |
Your character is permanently crippled in a limb, reducing their movement speed. |
Curious |
M |
Your character can’t resist hitting the big red button.
|
Deaf |
P |
-15 penalty to Mercantile, Speechcraft, and Sneak. Cannot make auditory perception checks. |
Demented |
M |
-2 INT, +1 Luck, permanently. +5 to Explosives or Melee Weapons skills Intelligence penalty may increase with physical trauma. |
Elderly |
P |
-1 to AGI and STR, +1 INT or CHA and -1 to one other attribute of your choice, excluding Luck. +3 rank bonus to every skill, and gain a fourth tag skill. |
Enemy |
P |
Your character pissed off something terrifying, and it’s chasing them across the wasteland. |
Hindrance |
Category |
Brief Description |
Faithless |
M |
-5 speechcraft penalty towards ponies that still dare to hope.
|
Family |
P |
Your character receives roleplaying benefits or impediments when they encounter their family.
|
Fixation |
M |
Your character is highly focused on retrieving a specific item, being near a specific person or achieving a specific goal. |
Flightless |
P |
Your character has the Flight racial skill but has lost the ability to fly.
|
Flight School Dropout |
M |
Your flyer can only learn half as many flight maneuvers at each tier. |
Four-Eyes |
P |
-1 PER, +2PER when wearing prescription glasses.
|
Good Natured |
M |
-10 ranks to all offensive skills, +5 ranks to speechcraft, repair, science, medicine, and mercantile. |
Guilty Conscience |
M |
-10 penalty on all rolls if a subject over which a character feels guilt is broached. |
Gun-Shy |
M |
Character cannot use guns, or suffers a 4 MFD step accuracy penalty.
|
“Half-Decked” |
M |
INT roll MFD 1/2 every session or when put under stress to avoid ‘zoning out’.
|
Half-Heart |
M |
+3 Accuracy roll bonus, +25 Fear roll bonus. -10 speechcraft roll penalty. Much easier to become Suicidal. |
Hallucinations |
M |
INT and PER rolls MFD ¾ every session to determine the nature of your character’s regular hallucinations. |
Hard of Hearing |
P |
-10 on Speechcraft and mercantile in areas where you must talk normally or softly. -50 penalty to sneak while talking. -25 penalty to auditory perception. |
Hot Blooded |
P/M |
+5 Damage, -2 AGI & PER when crippled in the head or torso.
|
Illiterate |
M |
Your wastelander cannot read. This hindrance precludes many traits, primarily having to do with educational background. |
Impatient |
M |
Your character absolutely hates waiting, generally to their detriment.
|
Imprecise Magic |
M |
Targeting all spells is 1 MFD step harder, -10 roll penalty on Repair, Science, Lockpicking and Medicine if using Telekinesis. Telekinetic Force as a free spell. |
Jinxed |
P/M |
Character can be forced to reroll a success or critical success once per session. One less luck card per session. |
Literal Minded |
M |
-10 roll penalty to Speechcraft. You take everything, metaphorical language included, at face value. |
Maimed |
P |
Your character is missing something, and suffers accordingly. They also take a -5 on speechcraft, unless attempting to be intimidating. |
Masochist |
P/M |
Reduced penalties when crippled; Healing items and magic heal one less wound per location, and they take twice as long to recover via bed rest (natural healing). |
Multiple Personality Disorder (MPD) |
M |
Your character has multiple personality disorder; as any good pony psychologist could tell you, this is far too complex to describe here. Go check out the full description. |
Mutation |
P |
You gain some semi-beneficial mutation, frequently of the sort found most commonly on feral Ghouls. -5 on all CHA based rolls if mutation is visible. |
Mute |
P |
Your character cannot talk, and must communicate by other means.
|
Hindrance |
Category |
Brief Description |
Naïve |
M |
Your character does not realize or expect the world to be as bad as it is.
|
Narcoleptic |
M |
Specific triggers cause your character to immediately go to sleep.
|
Nasty Habit |
M/P |
Possible -10 roll penalty on all Sneak rolls; -5 penalties to all CHA based rolls.
|
Obese |
P |
+1 END, -1 AGI. -5 penalty to dodge. Your character eats at least 1.5x as much as most others do. |
Obligation |
P |
Your character is obligated to perform a regular service for another pony or an organization. |
Oblivious |
M |
You take a -15 penalty on all PER rolls.
|
OCD |
M |
Your character exhibits signs of obsessive-compulsive disorder.
|
One Trick Pony |
M |
For unicorns, severely reduced spell availability, but can channel 4 layers of overglow. For zebra, either know only survival stew and receive skill bonuses or only know one spell at each spell level at a time. |
Oops! |
P |
-5’ thrown range increment, but throwing an item costs 5 less AP in SATS.
|
Optimistic |
M |
-5 Speechcraft versus those not living in secure settlements. Your character tends to be a bit grating. |
Overactive Imagination |
M |
Your character tends to speculate on what may be and what could have been, usually unnecessarily creating anxiety for themselves. |
Pacifist |
M |
Your character won’t shoot first. Ever. Preferably they won’t shoot at all, and will try to resolve conflict peaceably. |
Phobia |
M |
Your character is horribly afraid of something, and takes -10 to all skill checks while around it. They also take -20 on fear checks towards their fear or while near it. |
Picky |
M |
You are selective about what you carry, and won’t pick up low value, high weight items without explicit reasoning. Also precludes an omnivorous diet. |
Pipsqueak |
P |
+5 bonus to rolls made to dodge, but Damage/Wound is reduced by 2 due to reduced size. This effect stacks with Young. |
Ponikaze |
M/P |
+10 Max AP for SATS, +5’ movement per action. 10% penalty to dodge and reduces effective DT by 5 for you. |
Prejudiced |
M |
-30 Speechcraft and Mercantile versus a specific group.
|
Prideful |
M |
Your character absolutely hates being treated as less than an equal and has a problem admitting their faults and mistakes. |
Psychosis |
M |
Your wastelander is bucking insane.
|
Sadist |
M |
Your character enjoys causing pain to others.
|
Scarred |
P |
-10 roll penalty on all CHA based rolls, except those made to intimidate enemies. +5 bonus on rolls made to intimidate enemies using speechcraft. |
Scavenger |
M |
Your character has a strong urge to pick up anything and everything of even moderate value at a location. |
Shadow of the Moon |
M |
+5% critical hit chance, but offensive spells cost 2 additional strain and weapons decay twice as fast for you. |
Sickly |
P |
A chronic ailment that causes your character to suffer from temporary -2 penalties to END and one other attribute. An END roll MFD ½ can be made each session to prevent this effect. -10 roll penalty vs. poisons, diseases, etc. |
Hindrance |
Category |
Brief Description |
Skinny as a Rail |
P |
-1 STR and END, +3 bonus to dodge.
|
Slave |
M |
Your character was a slave for so long that they’ve been conditioned to perform certain tasks without thinking. |
Spirit of the Security Mare |
M |
When your luck cards equal 21, you receive roll bonuses. If they don’t, you suffer roll penalties. |
Spray and Pray |
P |
-10 Accuracy penalty with single shot ranged weapons. Burst fire weapons fire twice as many bullets per shot, deal 1 die extra of damage. -5 AP cost for all ranged weapons. |
Stubby Little Horn/Wings |
P |
Unicorns begin play with only Telekinesis (and their Cutie Mark spell if they have one), and their racial Magic skill rank bonus decreases to +0 from +10. Pegasi cannot fly more than a dozen or so feet above the ground. |
Studious |
M |
-5 skill ranks (minimum of 5) to Small Guns, Big Guns, and either three other skills, or -3 skill ranks to five other skills at character creation, but you can learn any spell or recipe you get your hooves on and get +1 skill point from books. Unicorns or zebra also get one extra level 1 spell or recipe. |
Stuttering |
P/M |
-5 skill rank penalty and a -5 roll penalty on Mercantile and Speechcraft.
|
Suicidal |
M |
Your character has a death wish.
|
Thorough |
M |
+3 bonus on rolls made while not in a hurry, -5 penalty on rolls made while rushed, such as when in combat. |
Trigger Discipline |
P/M |
+5 accuracy bonus to small guns, big guns, and energy weapons. Burst fire weapons fire 20% less bullets per shot. Small guns, Big Guns, and Energy weapons cost 5 AP more per shot in SATS, and burst fire weapons deal 1 die less of damage. |
Trusting |
M |
-10 penalty on Mercantile rolls.
|
Uncontrolled Magic |
M |
You have more negative unintended magical side effects than others when practicing magic, and take a -10 penalty to casting/brewing rolls and accuracy rolls for spells. |
Unforgivable |
P |
-50 Karma, equivalent to -5 Speechcraft versus good and neutral karma characters. This hindrance can be taken up to two times. |
Unstable Genetics |
P |
-30% penalty on END rolls to resist taint, and your character takes an additional -5 penalty to skills linked to stats affected by radiation poisoning. 20% more likely to become mutated by radiation or taint. |
Virtue |
M |
Your character knows their virtue, and strives to uphold and embody it through their actions. |
Wall-eyed |
P |
+5 PER on visual perception, -10 accuracy unless you use the sights or scope. -5 Speechcraft when trying to appear intelligent. |
Wartime Stress Disorder (WSD) |
M |
-5 penalty to all INT, AGI and CHA based skills outside of combat situations. Also grants a +5 skill rank bonus to Small Guns, Explosives, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Melee Weapons, Unarmed or Survival (pick one). |
Whiner |
M |
-15 on Speechcraft rolls, +5 on Mercantile rolls.
|
Young |
P |
-3 ranks to all skills except sneak, +1 CHA and Luck, -1 STR. +5 bonus to dodge rolls. Damage/Wound is reduced by 2 - This effect stacks with pipsqueak. Reduces carrying capacity by 50 pounds. |
Hindrances are designated as physical or mental because certain races (Alicorns, some half-breeds) require that a number of one of the two types of hindrances be taken.
Hindrance Full Descriptions:
Abandoned/All Alone (Cannot be taken with Organization or Stable Dweller) – Not all ponies start out their adventures in a stable or as part of an organization or settlement. Quite a few of them have lived the bulk of their days all on their own out in the wastes, scavving to make ends meet and scraping together just enough food from ruins to get by day to day. Characters that take this hindrance start with significantly less starting gear (only 200 caps worth versus the 300 most others get), some rags or otherwise appropriate clothing (i.e. nothing, because ponies don’t usually wear clothes), and a melee or unarmed weapon of 100 caps or less in value. They are not eligible to purchase the Stable Dweller, Formal Education, or Organization traits (though some GMs may want to allow this in order to build more complex character backstories), and cannot choose to forgo their gear for a pipbuck (barring special circumstances, such as might be the result of the Wasteland Weirdo trait). However, if they would like to purchase the Wasteland Weirdo or Animal Companion traits, the creation point cost of one of the two is reduced by 1 for them (minimum cost of 1). Whether they lived alone by choice, were booted out of a settlement, are the last survivor of a larger group, or are just waking up from a very nice 200 year nap, is up to the player and/or the GM.
Abused (Cannot be taken with WSD) – Characters with this hindrance come from a background of physical and/or mental abuse that they suffered on a regular basis. They are reluctant to trust anyone that they might associate with the abusing party, and are generally distrustful of other people. This hindrance should play out differently than the “slave” hindrance, but because of the poor treatment of slaves in the equestrian wasteland, the two might be frequently linked.
Abused characters tend to flinch an awful lot, have nightmares about their past, and respond with violent or emotional outbursts whenever they believe they’re being forced to do something against their will. This is doubly true when they realize that they’ve done something against their will after the fact. In close range combat, especially when engaged in melee or unarmed combat, abused characters take a -5 accuracy penalty towards anyone who might remind them of their abuser(s). When recalling their history of abuse for any reason (for example, when they see someone who looks an awful lot like one of their tormentors), they become distant or emotional, giving them a -10 on Speechcraft checks. They may also react poorly if any character they associate with preventing their abuse comes to harm.
The response to a specific command or type of command without thinking about it that comes as part of the “Slave” hindrance can cause quite a lot of problems for ponies with both hindrances, but makes for characters that are interesting, if depressing, to role-play. Ponies with the Abused hindrance are functionally immune to the effects of WSD (due to their similar and sometimes indistinguishable symptoms), and cannot take both hindrances at character creation – they’ve seen enough horrors at home to believe that any horror or atrocity in the Equestrian wasteland is par for the course.
Addiction – Your pony is hooked on something, and it’s not phonics. Ponies with an addiction cannot go for long without the substance to which they are addicted, or they begin to go into withdrawals. There are numerous places in the wasteland that can cure an addiction, at least the chemical side of it, but whether or not your pony wants to quit is ultimately up to you. For more information on addiction, and a list of substances to which a pony (or any other character) in the equestrian wasteland might be addicted to, see the Medicine and Drugs section, later on. Players considering having a character take this hindrance at creation should be aware that long term addiction can have different effect s than short term addiction. Depending on the drug, not only can the effects of being addicted differ, but those effects may be greatly increased and significantly harder to get rid of than if the character had become addicted during the course of play.
It should also be noted here that while a character can get addicted to essentially any food or drink item, not just substances like Med-X and Mint-als, this hindrance describes only a physical addiction (with a possible secondary mental component). Addictions to food and other substances that don’t have a physical component, such as ham sandwiches, Sparkle Cola, or strawberries don’t really fit. Such addictions are purely psychological, and can’t really be cured except by roleplaying. If your waster becomes addicted to radishes, which have no physically addictive properties, then it’s not really an addiction, it’s a Fixation. For more information on this, see the Fixation hindrance later on in this section.
Addictive Personality (Cannot be taken by Ghouls) – Some ponies are easily hooked on substances. They might come from a genetic background that shows a history of substance abuse, or they might simply be weak willed. With this hindrance, a pony is much more likely to become addicted to a substance after taking it only a small number of times. When resisting addiction, they automatically fail the intelligence roll, and must succeed on the endurance roll with all appropriate penalties to prevent themselves from becoming addicted. For more information on substance addiction see the Medicine and Drugs section in Chapter 4: Equipment of the Wastelands.
Allergy – Your character has an allergy to something that they commonly might encounter in the wasteland. This is a violent allergy; exposure to this substance causes them to break out in a rash, and ingestion of it can lead to extreme discomfort or even death. Allergies to specific drugs or types of food are fairly common, but this hindrance can also be used to describe allergies to more innocuous things like griffin feathers, specific types of animal or insect venom, certain types of chalk, abronco cleaner, wonderglue, toilet paper, etc. Characters should not be allergic to things like glass (which his totally hypoallergenic), bullets, water, radiation, radio waves, or dirt, nor should they be allergic to things they would never encounter; to that end, all allergies should be subjected to GM approval to ensure that they’re reasonable. Your character may be allergic to orcas, but that’s hardly ever going to come up in the equestrian wasteland, now is it?
In the immediate presence of their allergy a character takes a -5 penalty on all rolls. If forced to be in extended contact with it for more than 5 minutes, this penalty increases to -25, coupled with a rash of hives that will remain for 2d20 hours. The penalty will drop to a -5 immediately after the allergen is removed, but will now persist even if the allergen is completely absent until the rash clears up.
Characters forced to ingest or who are intravenously injected with a substance that they’re allergic to must be treated medically within five minutes, or will begin to suffer from a combination of violent convulsions and vomiting followed immediately by the joys of anaphylactic shock, with a very high probability of death. After about two minutes of uncontrollable vomiting, the presence of the allergen (if it isn’t fully removed by the vomiting) will lead to swelling of the throat, tongue and nasal cavities to the point where the character will begin to suffocate (See “Everything else that might kill you” in chapter 11 for suffocation rules) and almost immediately pass out. This can be treated in several ways; drug-savvy and very well prepared characters can immediately reduce the swelling by injecting the suffocating character with a shot of adrenaline. In a pinch (because there aren’t exactly many places capable of producing that sort of adrenaline these days), a mixture of Dash and Med-X will do the trick, though creating such a mixture in ways that will prevent a fatal drug interaction requires at least 5 minutes and a difficult Science or Medicine roll (MFD ½), and the risk of addiction is still present. Alternatively, given a knife and a short hollow tube (such as a segment of surgical tubing), a medic can create an incision in the neck that will allow a pony to continue breathing without reducing the swelling. The allergic pony should return to normal after a day or two of bed rest.
Those considering taking this hindrance should let their GM know what their character is allergic to.
Amnesiac (Cannot be taken with Guilty Conscience or Unforgivable) – Something happened to make your character forget about the past. Amnesia can occur for any number of reasons – having experienced head trauma, magical memory erasure, or psychological trauma are only the most common ones. Either way, your character has forgotten a large span of time out of their life (maybe even all of it), possibly including their name or resulting in temporary illiteracy. Characters that start with this hindrance are created as normal, but depending on what they’ve forgotten they may have no idea what they’re good at. They may have forgotten how they got their cutie mark or what it means, what spells they are capable of casting, what organizations they belong to, or what obligations and debts they might have. Some players may wish for their GM to create parts or all of their character for them, or to hold onto their character sheet during game, to help role-play this.
Bad Luck (Cannot be taken with Lucky) – Your wastelander tends to have the worst luck; first their pack brahmin dies of taint poisoning, then the rifle that they just fixed falls and the barrel gets bent, and then their last grenade blows up in their face in the middle of a firefight. But that’s just how things always tend to go for them, and they get by as best they can.
If you’re playing with the Live by Luck rules, then this hindrance means that your character receives one less luck card per session. Even if you aren’t, this hindrance expands your character’s critical failure range for all rolls by five, meaning that they score a critical failure on any roll that comes up 91-100 (or 90-99). The effects of this hindrance stack with other hindrances that would expand the critical failure range.
Despite this hindrance’s effect on a character’s luck, it does not prevent that same character from taking the Good Luck Charm trait – just because somepony is unlucky personally doesn’t mean that they’re bad luck for those around them.
Bad Luck Charm (Cannot be taken with Good Luck Charm) – You keep finding that those around you tend to have a bad time. It’s not your fault – they just have worse luck than normal when you’re around.
This hindrance is the opposite of the Good Luck Charm Trait; Once per session, you must choose one roll made by a one friendly NPC or player character (not including yourself) to reroll a success or critical success. At the beginning of each session all other group members (including any NPC companions, not including you) draw one less luck card.
Big Ears (Cannot be taken with Deaf or Hard of Hearing) – Your character’s ears are so big, you can probably pick up radio with them! Well, that’s not necessarily true, but they are larger than normal and they’re definitely more sensitive than a normal pony’s ears. This sort of thing often happens as a reaction to taint exposure at a young age. Characters with this hindrance can hear lots of things that others wouldn’t normally be able to, including a small portion of the sonic spectrum normally totally inaccessible to nearly all species other than diamond dog descendants (who have this hindrance by default). All auditory perception checks are 1 MFD step easier for you, and you get a +10 on any perception checks involving sound, including those made to determine the direction of origin.
What’s the downside, you might be wondering? Well for one thing, the hearing isn’t selective. Your character will tend to overhear things they weren’t supposed to, at ranges when most others would be out of earshot. That’s only a minor downside though. The real downside to this hindrance is the flip side of the coin of having such sensitive ears; whenever an explosive or loud noise goes off (such as a gunshot) within 5 feet of your character, they must roll endurance MFD ½, or be deafened for 2 combat rounds (12 seconds). Critical failures will cause them to be stunned for the duration, unable to act. This can be avoided with the use of proper ear protection (if your character can find any). While in this state they cannot make auditory perception checks or communicate normally with others, and they take penalties to actions as though they were crippled in the head.
Conventional firearms, either mouth wielded, levitated, or mounted on a battle saddle, can easily trigger this endurance roll. As far as guns go, silencers and suppressors are a must for anypony with this hindrance.
This hindrance also causes those characters with it to take double damage from any sonic-based attacks, such as Soundburst or Sonic Screech. Endurance rolls made to resist the effects of harmful sound-related spells and magic are 1 MFD step harder.
Blind (Cannot be taken with Wall-eyed, Four-Eyes or Color Blind) – At some point in their past, your character lost their vision. This sort of thing happens a whole lot in the wasteland, be it from taint causing tumors to push their eyes out of their head, or from cruel slave masters who pluck out eyes because the slave bit them the last time he tried to violate them orally. Less severely, characters with this hindrance might have cataracts from old age, or maybe they were just born blind. Regardless of the reason, your waster hasn’t got working eyes any more. This makes things a bit more difficult for them than most, but they get by as best they can. On the bright side, maybe a cyber-doc or a zebra medicine mare might come along and replace them someday, who knows?
Blind characters cannot see, and are thus completely unable to make sight-based perception checks or make use of any sort of visual interface such as those associated with SATS, the EFS, or the pipbuck. This means that they cannot aim most ranged weapons (at least not reliably), giving them a 3 MFD step penalty on all ranged accuracy rolls, and provides a 1 MFD step penalty to accuracy rolls made for unarmed and melee attacks. They cannot use the science skill without assistance (someone reading the screen output to them) or a special interface. If sight is required for a particular application of another skill, such as a visual inspection as part of a repair roll or reading a scroll as part of a magic spell, they cannot do it without assistance and take a 1 MFD step penalty. Additional assistance (as with assisted skill rolls) does not lower the MFD for such a roll. On the upside, blind characters do not have to make fear and horror checks triggers by sight. If the scene is described to them they must still make the check, but it will be at least 1 MFD step easier. Audio, touch, and scent-triggered horror and fear checks proceed as normal. Because blind characters have suffered such an incredibly crippling disability (and to make things a bit more interesting for players looking for a challenge), taking this hindrance at character creation reduces the cost of taking any multiple-point-cost traits by up to two points, minimum cost 1. This applies to as many multiple-point-cost traits as that character takes.
Cannibal (Cannot be taken by Alicorns, Ghouls or Canterlot Ghouls) – Sometime in your pony’s past, they were forced to eat some very strange meat in order to survive, and they discovered that they quite liked it. They liked it so much that now they want to eat it whenever they can. They may or may not have known what it was at the time, but since then they’ve discovered that the taste they enjoyed was in fact the flesh of other ponies. Cannibal ponies are opening themselves up for a number of diseases down the line (some of them not so far down the line as you might think) but in the short term, they can eat the bodies of their fallen enemies – ponies, zebra, griffins, alicorns, hellhounds, you name it –in order to survive. Eating the bodies of the fallen in this fashion will cause cannibal ponies to regain health, but it is considered a disgusting act and will cause them to lose karma. Most ponies will attack on sight if they know you are a cannibal, even if they didn’t see you commit the act; if seen chowing down, they will always attack you unless they are cannibals themselves.
However, unlike those characters with perk of this name, sometimes the cravings get too strong to resist… If your character hasn’t eaten meat of some type within the last 24 hours, they must roll a Willpower check (that’s a roll of both INT and CHA, taking the better of the two as your result), MFD ¾, penalty of -10 to both rolls, to avoid cannibalizing a corpse if one is available. The penalty for this roll will increase by 10 for every additional day (-20, -30, -40, etc., with no hard cap limit) that characters with this hindrance go without eating meat of some type, regardless of its source.
Cautious (Cannot be taken with Curious or Ponikaze) – Caution is good to have, especially in a place where just about anything might end up trying to kill you, but if a character’s got this hindrance than they’re cautious to a fault. They tend to hesitate in nearly all situations, are very indecisive about risks, and are almost never the first pony to enter a room. This hindrance gives characters a -15 penalty on initiative rolls in combat, since they’re not usually the first pony to start shooting, but also gives a +3 rank bonus to Explosives.
Clumsy – While it is certainly difficult to be able to manipulate objects with your hooves, your character is worse at it than most. It’s not that they don’t try to be careful; they just don’t know what went wrong!
Clumsy characters, while not necessarily lacking grace or agility, are very prone to mess up delicate tasks such as lockpicking, mixing chemicals, delivering mail, fixing town halls, reloading weapons, bomb defusal, and carrying delicate glass vials. This hindrance makes such delicate tasks more difficult, incurring a -5 penalty to all rolls made to perform such tasks (for reloading weapons this manifests as taking an additional 5 AP per reload in SATS). Functionally, Lockpicking, Explosives and Repair take a -5 penalty while any other potentially affected skills only take penalties situationally.
Additionally, when clumsy characters do mess up, they tend to mess up more catastrophically than others. To reflect this, all skill and attribute rolls affected by the -5 penalty can now critically fail on a roll of 91-100 instead of the normal 96-100 range. This effect stacks with other effects that expand the critical failure range (such as Jinxed) and is additive rather than multiplicative.
Code of Honor (Cannot be taken with Sadist) - Your wastelander has a set of standards they live by, one which they will try their very hardest not to break. Generally speaking this is a code of honor that upholds one or more virtues, such as always remaining loyal to the client, never leaving a friend behind, or always treating and being kind to the wounded regardless of what side of the battle they were on. This is a role-playing hindrance, but characters with a code of honor that they uphold may find themselves gaining karma slightly faster due to the restrictions it puts on their course of action. A code of honor forces them to handle a situation in a specific way, and it’s very unlikely to change during gameplay unless something extraordinary happens. To nail down your character’s specific code of honor, talk to your GM about it. Codes of honor are subject to GM approval.
Color Blind (Cannot be taken with Blind) – Sometimes colors get the best of you. Colorblindness was present in a significant portion (roughly 5%) of the population of Equestria pre-war, and this rare genetic condition persists still, preserved and carried on by the survivors within the stables. Characters with this hindrance don’t experience colors the same way most ponies do. This normally isn’t a problem for them, and can even help those afflicted spot irregularities and pick out camouflage in some circumstances.
This perk comes in two flavors, red-green colorblindness (where the colorblind character cannot tell the difference between greens and reds), and blue-yellow colorblindness (where the colorblind character cannot distinguish between blue and yellow), the former being much more prevalent than the latter. Just don’t forget to mention this hindrance to your GM when you have to operate any sort of contraption with color-coded controls. Have fun not being able to tell ponies of different colors apart!
Cowardly (Cannot be taken with Brave) – This is the hindrance for ponies that are just generally afraid of things. For ponies that are afraid of specific things, see the Phobia hindrance later on in this section.
For ponies with the Cowardly hindrance, whether or not their belly is yellow, their pants (assuming they wear any) are more often than not brown after something scary pops out at them. They tend to be jumpy, frequently uneasy at the prospect of wandering around ruins, old buildings, or generally anywhere where anything more frightening than other ponies might be lurking (which is almost all of the places in the Equestrian Wasteland). This doesn’t necessarily make them useless in a fight, but if the fight doesn’t appear to be going their way, they’re the first to cut and run. In frightening situations – anything that warrants a fear roll – the situational MFD is one step higher for them than it would be otherwise. For information on exactly how this affects them or how fear rolls work in general, see the Fear and Horror section later on in this document.
Crippled – Your waster caught a bullet to the knee (or wing, if they’ve got Flight as a racial ability) and it never healed quite right, but they kept on adventuring anyway. Their movement speed is reduced by 25%, rounded down to the nearest five foot increment (so a pony with an agility of 5 can now only move five feet per action rather than 10, or a Pegasi with an agility of 5 can now fly 20 feet per action rather than 25 ). Because this injury occurred so long ago, it does not count as crippled for the purpose of skill penalties, though crippled-wing Pegasi will take a -15 penalty to Flight skill rolls. The limb can be crippled again by sustaining new damage, in which case the newest crippled effect penalties override any other penalties the limb might give.
This hindrance can be removed if the limb is given sufficiently advanced medical care and treatment (if the hindrance is bought off or if the medical care is provided as the result of a quest). Otherwise, the penalties to speed can be reduced to 10% if a leg brace is used. Pegasi with crippled wings must find or create a wing-brace to similarly reduce their flight speed penalties, and the wing brace reduces the flight skill penalty to a -5.
Curious (Cannot be taken with Cautious) – Curiosity killed the cat, and it’ll kill ponies with this hindrance too if they’re not careful. Your character is curious, dangerously so. They can’t resist hitting the big red button. They always want to investigate a little more than they should. They might not be able to resist a locked door or an encrypted message within a terminal (willpower rolls are made against CHA and INT, taking the better of the two outcomes). When ponies with this hindrance come upon something that catches their eye, they’re bound to investigate – for better, or for worse.
Deaf (Cannot be taken with Big Ears or Hard of Hearing) - Frequently paired with Dumb (see below), ponies with this hindrance are severely hard of hearing. Commonly triggered by such things as gunshots too close to the ears, Deaf ponies need not necessarily dumb as well. If they are still capable of speech, as most adults struck deaf later in life are, when talking it is usually quite obvious that they cannot hear what they’re saying. If a pony takes this hindrance at character creation, it can be assumed that they are able to read lips, having lived with the disability for some time. However, the loss of the ability to hear tones still negatively influences their Speechcraft and Mercantile skills, giving them a -15 penalty when using those skills against others who are neither Deaf nor Dumb. Additionally, the lack of ability to hear imposes a -15 penalty to sneak rolls. Characters who receive this hindrance due to roleplaying reasons (such as being the victim of certain sound-based spells) after character creation receive double these penalties. Needless to say, auditory perception checks are completely out of the question for any deaf character. Characters with this hindrance tend to be easily ambushed.
Demented – Ponies with this hindrance have Dementia. They may be elderly, or they might just have been on the receiving end of some brain damage, but regardless of reason they’ve been a little… spotty in the think pan lately. In game terms, this hindrance permanently gives a -2 to INT and a +1 to Luck, and gives them a +5 skill rank bonus to either explosives or melee weapons. This might sound a little weak as a hindrance, you might be thinking. You’d be right: it gets better. Every time demented ponies suffer more than two wounds to the head, their brains get rattled around. Instead of the -2, they now take a penalty to INT equal to the number of wounds to the head they have, down a minimum intelligence score of 1. Characters brain damaged in this way should act accordingly. This penalty to intelligence persists until the wounds are healed and the demented character has had a full night’s rest – at least eight hours.
Elderly (Cannot be taken by Alicorns or with Young) – Characters with this hindrance are old, perhaps not in spirit, but in body. Their aged state hinders them in many ways, particularly with regards to physical activities but what they might lack in physical state they often make up for with experience and practiced skill. You don’t live to experience old age in the wasteland unless you’re damn good at not dying.
Elderly ponies take a -1 permanent penalty to AGI and STR, and must choose to take -1 penalty in one other stat, excluding Luck, but also may increase either their INT or Charisma by one point (potentially negating the third attribute point penalty). They also get a +3 rank bonus to all skills and a free fourth tag skill (+15 to one skill) at character creation, reflecting their extra experience overall and their lifetime spent focusing in a single field. Due to the effects of their age, characters with this hindrance are 2d4” shorter and (2d4*10) units of weight lighter than they were as adults.
Enemy - Perhaps following in the footsteps of Blackjack, your pony has pissed off something much more powerful and deadly than they are (or at least deadlier than they were when they pissed it off). They have somepony (possibly many someponies, if they pissed off a group) chasing them around the wasteland, looking to beat the living hell out of them, probably violate a few of their more notable orifices, and then leave them to die. This hindrance can be taken multiple times; each time it is taken, the wastelander gains another large, deadly creature (or exceptionally deadly person or group) tracking them down. The GM should try and incorporate the enemies that this hindrance represents into the storyline as frequently as possible until they are defeated.
Editor’s note: It is usually inappropriate for the “Enemy” tracking down a character with this hindrance to be an organization that is already out for the blood of that character’s entire race. If an alicorn character has “Enemy: Steel Rangers,” then it should be because that character did something to piss them off above and beyond the fact that they happen to be an alicorn, and as a result the organization is willing to invest a significant amount of resources to see that character specifically brought in and/or killed.
Faithless (Ponies only) – Your pony knows of the Goddesses, but believes that they have either died or abandoned their people following the fall of Canterlot. This hindrance is mostly about mindset; faithless ponies have lost what for many is the last ray of hope in the depressing existence forced upon them by the world in which they live. This manifests as a negative, cynical attitude that tends to make others around the faithless a bit sadder with the world, and a -5 on Speechcraft towards those ponies with a little bit of hope left. In addition, faithless ponies cannot gain the benefits provided by having another character with the Faith trait in the party.
Family – Your character’s got a family, whether it is just a spouse or a single sibling, one as big as the Apple Clan (though that’s uncommon in the wasteland), or anywhere in between. Character-family relations might be great or they might be strained, but in the end they’re still family. Your character won’t want to hurt them under most circumstances (but you might if they’re a scourge on the wasteland, or if they beat your character as a child, etc.), and can’t use skill rolls to interact with them. That’s right wasters – you gotta role-play. On the other hoof, your family will probably treat you the same way you treat them, and the GM can’t roll for their checks against you either. They might not be able to officially call off the execution, hypothetically speaking, but if you’re in a jail cell guarded by a family member or someone under their command you might suddenly find a bobby pin and screwdriver in your daily fare the day before you’re due to the chopping block.
Fixation – Your pony is completely fixated on something. It may be something abstract, like a lifelong goal, or something concrete, like a specific item or type of item, or even another pony (which can get pretty damn creepy). Whatever it is, your pony finds it absolutely difficult to stop thinking about that person, item, or goal when they don’t currently have it, or them, with them, or if they’re not working on it in the case of those who fixate on a goal. They’re absolutely obsessed. As a result, they have trouble focusing on anything else. Ponies with a fixation are positively despondent unless they are in possession of the item, with the person, or somehow working towards the goal upon which they are so narrowly focused. If for some reason the goal becomes impossible, or the person dies, or the item (if it’s one of a kind) is destroyed, then it is more common for the pony to fixate on something else than it is for them to snap out of it. The only way to snap most ponies out of this state of mind is to get them what they want, and it’s rarely a permanent fix. You might describe them as having a mental addiction to the person, goal or item. These sorts of ponies tend to do very well in the collegiate, where their single minded-ness is an asset to research.
Oh, and players: don’t think your pony can just fixate on something like survival, eating, or something else necessary out of day to day life in the wastes. A fixation should be a tight focus on an unnatural or unusual thing. A deck of unused playing cards, having an Ice-Cold Sparkle Cola RAD (though not necessarily for the sake of drinking it), seeing the sun without clouds in the way, having a bath (or just becoming clean in general), or finding a long-lost friend or parent are all good examples of fixations. Revenge on those who have wronged your character in some way is a fantastic fixation in terms of its ability to drive an entire story line. Walking in a straight line, dodging to avoid bullets, trading with merchants for supplies, and sleeping occasionally are bad examples. The general rule is that the fixation should not be on anything that your pony would do normally without going out of their way, on any item that they would normally hold on to and care for, on a person that they would normally befriend, or on any goal that would be easy to achieve.
Flightless (Requires Flight racial skill; GM approval required for half-breeds) – Characters with this hindrance once had (or should have had) the ability to fly, but for whatever reason (enervation rot, energy weapons fire, etc.) they’ve lost it. Quite frequently – but not always – they’ve lost a wing, or had a wing permanently deformed . Other times, such as not uncommon for wasteland pegasi, they simply never figured out how. Characters with this hindrance may or may not be extremely depressed about their loss, depending on their attitude towards the ability.
If the character retains one wing or sufficient portions of both wings to provide some lift, they may be able to replace the second one or the missing or damaged wing-portions with magic or cybernetics over the course of their adventures, restoring their flight ability. If that happens, remove this hindrance. Regardless of whether or not they ever regain their wings, characters that have the flight racial ability may continue to walk on clouds and interface with cloud-terminals.
Pegasi and griffins with flight as a tag skill that receive this hindrance through play automatically gain the Suicidal hindrance if they do not have it already. If the suicidal hindrance is gained in this way, it can be removed by restoring the wing or wings lost, either via cybernetics or by magical means, in addition to the normal ways available to remove the hindrance.
Flight School Dropout (Requires Flight racial skill; GM approval required for half-breeds, cannot be taken with Ace Flyer) – You never really paid attention when you were supposed to be learning all those pesky basic flight maneuvers. I mean, really, you already know how to flap your wings and move up and down, why stress about ‘specialized maneuvers’? As a result of your negligence (or whatever reason best suits your character’s lack of knowledge on more sophisticated maneuver technique), you’re just not as good at remembering all of those complex intricacies required to perform more difficult flight maneuvers. This doesn’t make you a bad flyer by any means – you can move around in the air just fine, and with a little work even some of the harder maneuvers aren’t beyond your reach – but it does mean that you’re definitely never going to be able to reach your full potential as a flight jock.
Characters with this hindrance are limited in that they cannot learn as many flight maneuvers as most of their aerial kin. They can learn only half the listed number of flight maneuvers at each of the four tiers, rounded down; Characters with this hindrance have no limit on level 1 maneuvers, but cannot learn more than AGI/2 level 2 maneuvers, or AGI/6 level 3 maneuvers. They cannot learn level 4 flight maneuvers.
Four-Eyes (Requires 1 < PER < 10, cannot be taken with Blind or Wall-eyed) – No, this doesn’t literally give your character four eyes (that would be Mutation). This hindrance just means your wastelander needs glasses. While it may cause people to call them a NEEERD, it legitimately helps them see much better than they otherwise would be able to. This hindrance permanently lowers your base PER attribute score by one, but whenever you’ve got your glasses on (prescription glasses, mind you) your PER score receives a temporary +2 bonus (this bonus stacks with other temporary bonuses granted by things like armor). Don’t forget that this bonus also grants a +10 roll bonus on all PER based skills. Characters taking this hindrance may start with a pair of glasses matching their prescription for 25 caps out of their starting funds. Just hope no one breaks them, because good luck finding a practicing optometrist out in the wasteland!
Good Natured (Cannot be taken with Sadist) – Your character is innately good. This makes things hard for them, particularly things that involve causing harm to others. Characters with this hindrance take a -10 rank penalty to the explosives, energy weapons, small guns, big guns, unarmed, and melee weapons skills at character creation (minimum rank 5), but they receive a +5 rank bonus to the speechcraft, repair, science, medicine, and mercantile skills. Be careful wastelanders, many out there will try to take advantage of your better nature.
Guilty Conscience (Cannot be taken with Half-Heart, Clear Conscience, Prideful, Suicidal or Amnesiac) – Your pony might not know what it is they’re being blamed for yet, but they’ve done so many bad things recently that they just know they’re responsible. Guilty characters have a problem justifying their actions to themselves, often only letting themselves see the undesirable effects of their actions. This inability to justify their own past choices can leave them in a depressed and paranoid state at times, wherein their guilt overwhelms them and they have trouble focusing on anything other than what they did that they now regret.
If a character with this hindrance is interacting with any other character and something comes up related to any past moral decision that they might regret, they take a -10 on all skill rolls until they can get over themselves. To get over their guilt, the player must make a Very Difficult Intelligence roll (MFD ½), which they can attempt once per hour starting one hour after the penalty was triggered (in-game time or real time is up to the GM, but we recommend using in-game time).
The exception to this is if the subject about which the character with this hindrance feels guilt is broached by someone attempting to be consoling – that does not incur a penalty. In fact, they must roll Speechcraft against the hindered character’s Intelligence, MFD ½. Characters attempting to console who are not emotionally close to the guilty pony take a penalty on this roll, and particularly close characters may receive a bonus (the magnitude of the penalty or bonus, if any, is up to the GM). A success on this roll means that the guilty pony will not take a penalty for thinking about that decision for the rest of the session. A critical success on this roll prevents that decision from causing a penalty ever again.
If this roll’s result is a critical failure, however, the character’s depression will escalate, and they will take a -20 penalty in the future whenever and controversial moral decision from their past is broached. A success on future consolation rolls will return this to the original -10, but if the next consolation roll is a critical failure at this point the hindered character gains the “suicidal” hindrance (this hindrance remains at -20 until a critical success on a consolation roll is made to reduce it).
Gun-Shy – Characters with this hindrance don’t like using guns. Now, this might seem like a bad idea in the wasteland to some people --people who don’t know P-21, Xenith or Rampage-- but there are plenty of other ways to accomplish the necessary daily allotment of violence that the Equestrian Wasteland recommends. Gun-shy ponies who are forced to use guns (any weapon that is associated with the Small Guns, Energy Weapons, or Big Guns skills, excepting big-guns that have an AoE effect, such as the Balefire Egg Launcher or any of the Grenade Launchers) take a whopping 4 MFD step penalty to hit. Better find some other way to kill the people shooting at you!
“Half-Decked” -- Ever heard the expression “Not playing with a full deck?” Your character is who it’s talking about. Unlike Demented, your character’s mind is completely intact; they’re simply not completely aware of what’s going on around them. They might act like they’re in a different place, or do things that are seemingly pointless, like water dead flowers, attempt to bake muffins in an oven that isn’t hooked up, or write invitations to a garden party they claim they’re having next week. Ponies with this hindrance tend to be very smart, but because they frequently lose touch with reality they don’t necessarily have a high rate of survival when the bullets start flying. This hindrance, it should be noted, can be very difficult to role-play.
Whenever a character with this hindrance starts play, roll against their Intelligence, MFD ½. If they critically succeed, that character is lucid for the rest of the session, and may act as such. If they only succeed normally, then the next time that character is put under stress (combat being a prime example of what we’re defining as “stress”) then they must roll once per round (six seconds) or once per five minute period outside of combat until they either critically succeed or fail. If they fail, they will revert to acting as if they are in a better place. Note that they may end up there, as the source of stress hasn’t necessarily disappeared; bullets may still be flying. While in their half-present state, they may make remarks and communicate with other players (though usually not coherently or in a way that pertains to the current situation), and will continue to respond in a cooperative fashion to suggestions or physical attempts to move their person. Ghouls with this hindrance tend to forget (or simply have not yet realized) that the world has ended. They continue to relive their days just before the war, endlessly searching for loved ones or trying to make it to jobs, homes or shelters.
Half-Heart (Cannot be taken by Alicorns or with Clear Conscience, Guilty Conscience, Amnesiac, Suicidal, Optimistic, Cowardly or Faith) – You lost someone or something important to you, and you know in your heart-of-hearts that nothing you can do will ever bring that person or thing back to you.
Characters with this hindrance tend to develop a very cynical, fatalistic attitude towards life, even more so than your average wasteland wanderer. This influences almost all of their actions, up to the point that some of the things they do might even seem suicidal. Don’t be fooled though -- half-hearted characters aren’t suicidal (there’s a completely separate hindrance for that), they’re just no longer afraid of death, knowing that they’ll never truly be able to find happiness in this life again anyway. This fact tends to steady their hooves in life and death situations, preventing them from flinching even as bullets fly inches from their heads and explosions tear at their cover. In combat, half-hearted ponies are extremely focused, making excellent snipers and ranged weapon specialists or deadly close combat fighters. They receive a +3 accuracy bonus to all rolls made to hit. Additionally, they receive a +25 bonus on fear rolls and cannot be caused to run by a Horror check – they do not fear death, and have a hard time being scared of anything else.
The downsides are many – half-hearted ponies tend to be, as previously stated, fatalistic. They won’t run from combat under almost any circumstance, more than willing to give up their life so that a goal can be accomplished. Their cold, impersonal demeanor makes them difficult to interact with, giving them a -10 penalty to all speechcraft rolls. On top of both of those things, Half-Hearted characters are much more likely to fall into suicidal tendencies than others. If a half-hearted pony would ever be given cause to feel guilty about something they’ve done, such as a might result from making a difficult moral decision, instead of developing a Guilty Conscience like most other ponies would, they develop suicidal tendencies as per the aptly named hindrance, Suicidal. This is effectively a different type of Guilty Conscience, and as such any given character cannot have both hindrances at the same time.
Hallucinations – Ponies with this hindrance see, hear, and occasionally smell things that aren’t always there, or perceive certain things differently than they are. They might believe that the dust is rainbow-colored, or that rad scorpions all have bright smiling expressions; sometimes, they might even see things as they really are. When affected characters are having them, however, the hallucinations come in two flavors – harmless, or extremely dangerous. Harmless hallucinations might include believing walls can talk to you, or perhaps that someone attacking your friend is a horrible monster (assuming that they’re not actually) that needs to be put down. Dangerous hallucinations might include a belief that the glass windows of a submarine are a horrible monster that needs to be put down, or a belief that monsters can talk to you, and want to be friends. Characters who take this hindrance don’t get to pick which type they’re having, and the hallucinations themselves don’t need to be consistent.
Table VI: Hallucinations Hindrance Explanatory Table
Hallucinations Table |
Perception Success |
Perception Fail |
Intelligence Success |
No Hallucinations This Session |
Harmless Hallucinations |
Intelligence Fail |
Both Harmless and Dangerous Hallucinations (Situational, up to GM) |
Dangerous Hallucinations |
At the beginning of every session, characters with this hindrance must make two rolls (or, if they’d prefer not to know, have the GM make them using their character’s stats), one for intelligence and another for perception, both with an MFD of ¾, no penalties or bonuses. Depending on the results of those rolls, their hallucinations for that session will turn out differently, as shown in the table above. The GM should take time to describe the hallucinations to the affected player accordingly.
Hard of Hearing (Cannot be taken with Deaf or Big Ears) – While not the same as Deaf, your pony still has a difficult time hearing things. Whether your character forgot to put on noise cancellers when they were working in the turbine shafts, or listened to too much loud music as a foal, they have trouble making out what other people are saying. This manifests as a -10 on speechcraft and mercantile skill rolls in any situation where they might have to talk to people at normal volumes or below, and a -25 on all auditory perception checks. Also, if they’re trying to sneak and have to hold a conversation with anyone, forget about subtlety – In order to hold a conversation with characters who are Hard of Hearing, both parties must take a -50 penalty on their sneak rolls to successfully get the point across. Communicating with symbols or by written means is still silent, however.
Hot Blooded (Cannot be taken with Cowardly) – WHO THE HELL DO THEY THINK YOU ARE?! YOURS ARE THE HOOVES THAT WILL REOPEN THE HEAVENS! When the stakes are down, YOU GET BACK UP AND FIGHT! YOU PUSH YOURSELF BEYOND THE IMPOSSIBLE!
Characters with this hindrance are possessed of a unique, powerful-but-reckless energy that gives them an edge up in combat at a price. While crippled in the head or torso, they deal an additional +5 damage on all attacks and are temporarily immune to fear checks, but also take a -2 temporary penalty to agility and perception (and a corresponding -10 penalty to their linked skills).
This hindrance does not, unfortunately, come with a set of cool looking but impractical sunglasses, but it works quite well in tandem with Ponikaze.
Illiterate (Cannot be taken with Astronomer, Ministry Employee, Formal Education, Stable Dweller, Power Armor Training, Specialization, Studious, Trained under a Medicine Mare, or Organization: Steel Rangers, Applejack’s Rangers, EVC or Caesar’s Legion) – Your character may be extraordinarily intelligent, but they’re totally unable to read. They never learned how. This is an absolutely debilitating hindrance for those who rely on the science skill (illiterate ponies cannot have science as a tag skill), and prevents them from quite a lot of options in life. Illiterate characters are totally incapable of using the science skill to unlock terminals, but more importantly are prevented from reading books or any signs they come across in the travels. They may still be fluent in multiple languages, but are unlikely to have received any sort of formal education. Learning to read is a long and arduous process, but if sufficient time and resources (and likely a series of INT rolls at varying difficulties) are applied, it’s not impossible for a character to buy this hindrance off.
Barring extraordinary circumstances, this hindrance can only be taken at character creation. It works well in tandem with the Young and/or Slave hindrances.
Impatient (Cannot be taken with Cautious) – You hate waiting. Let’s get this show on the road, already! Characters with this hindrance won’t wait for instruction – they just do it. This can be great, unless you need them to execute part of the plan at a specific time. These sorts of characters are great at ruining months of planning and hours of waiting in ambush. They tend to get themselves and their accomplices killed, and they refuse to plan (or agree to be part of a plan) any more than is absolutely necessary. This is a roleplaying hindrance. It works well in combination with Hot Blooded or Curious.
Imprecise Magic (Unicorns or Alicorns only; cannot be taken with Magical Savant) – Your grasp of magic isn’t poor, per se, but your aim with it is simply awful! Targeting spells is 1 MFD harder, and the Telekinetic Precision spell and spells requiring it will forever be beyond your ken. It’s also much more difficult for you to aim weapons while using telekinesis and you suffer a -10 roll penalty to repair, medicine, science and lockpicking rolls – especially those made using telekinesis. On the upside, you gain Telekinetic Force as a free additional spell at first level.
Jinxed (Cannot be taken with Lucky or Good Luck Charm) – You’re just an unlucky pony (or hellhound, griffin, zebra, etc.). Bad things always seem to happen around you, or to you. Usually they only affect you, but sometimes your friends aren’t so lucky (unlike bad luck, where they happen exclusively to you – though some characters may be so unlucky that they have both hindrances).
Characters with this hindrance are very unlucky. Once per session, the GM may force characters with this hindrance to reroll any success or critical success. If playing with the Live by Luck rules, the GM may spend their own luck cards to activate this ability more than once per session at a rate of one card per reroll. Characters with this hindrance start each session with one less luck card than they would otherwise receive.
This hindrance’s effects stack with Bad Luck Charm.
Literal Minded – Your pony tends to take things a bit… literally. Companions will quickly realize that the use of euphemisms, sarcasm, and colorful metaphors around you is not the best idea. Your character may understand the idea of a euphemism, but unless explicitly instructed they’ll not recognize one if they see it. -10 to Speechcraft rolls. (This is the shortest hindrance description!)
Maimed (Cannot be taken by Alicorns or with Canterlot Ghoul or Cyberpony) – Your pony is missing something. It might be an ear, it might be an eye, it might even be a leg, but it’s gone. (Horns are fair game for this hindrance as well, but if you’re missing a wing or a tongue go look at the “Flightless” hindrance or the “Dumb” hindrances, respectively). Now, missing a limb negatively affects your wastelander, but they’ve gotten along as best they could since their accident. A table of effects related to what’s missing is below.
If there is visible scarring around the wound, for each wound or removed portion of your pony they take an additional -5 penalty to Speechcraft rolls unless trying to be intimidating. If they’re trying to be intimidating, it becomes a bonus. This is similar to the Scarred hindrance, though that hindrance is specifically intended for disfiguring facial scars; the effects of these hindrances stack.
On the upside, if characters with this hindrance have the caps and the luck to run into a cyberdoc or a sufficiently talented unicorn or zebra, they can get fixed right up. Not always quite as good as new, but enough to remove the penalties listed above (your results may vary, especially when it comes to removing scarring. The exception to that rule is magic – when your horn is removed, even if it is replaced or regrown, your character’s ability to perform magic may be gone until some major even triggers its return. More rules on this can be found in the magic section.
Table VII: Maimed Hindrance Explanatory and Summary Table
What’s Missing |
Effect |
Eye |
-10 Penalty on visual perception, -10 to targeting rolls requiring depth perception |
Nose |
-10 Penalty on scent and taste perception |
Ear |
-10 Penalty on audio perception, and difficulty wearing glasses or goggles. |
Leg (at or above the ankle) |
-25% Land speed, rounded down. (-50% for bipeds) |
Horn |
Unable to use magic (Though far more helmet options are now available). Minotaurs or Buffalo with this are missing both horns and cannot use them as weapons. |
Hoof/Claw (below the ankle) |
Cannot use to attack in melee, reduces land speed by 10% per (Round down to nearest whole number). |
Teeth (more than half) |
-5 Roll Penalty on Survival, -1 Charisma, cannot exceed 9 Charisma |
Genitals |
You’re not having foals any time soon. |
Tail |
No additional effect, but you get an awful draft and other ponies (zebras, griffins, etc.) always get a fine view. Griffins take a -25 penalty to the flight skill. |
Masochist – Your character likes pain, either consciously or subconsciously. They like it on some level, and they embrace it in the name of whatever purpose they serve. They act more reckless than most others, often for reasons that aren’t necessarily the brightest. This isn’t really a good thing for them in the long run, but it keeps them going when many others wouldn’t be able to continue. When crippled, masochist ponies suffer reduced penalties to the affected area: -10 instead of the normal -25 penalty to associated rolls (this does not affect the other hindrances, traits and perks that may give additional upsides or downsides to being crippled in specific locations–the penalties or bonuses stack). This comes at a heavy price for them, however; the lack of care with which they treat their wounds leads them to be much more difficult to heal. Healing items and magic will consistently heal 1d4 less wounds (minimum of zero) for masochist ponies, and when resting to recover from wounds they recover at half the normal rate. If they become crippled in an area, healing magic applied to that area heals 2d4 wounds less (again, minimum of zero).
Incidentally, most doctors hate masochistic patients. If the doctor knows of their patient’s reckless behavior, they can expect a tongue lashing the next time they waltz into the clinic with their leg dangling by a thread.
Multiple Personalities Disorder (MPD) – Your wastelander thinks that they’re multiple people trapped in the same body, or perhaps acts as though they are multiple people within the same body but doesn’t realize it. The Equestrian Wasteland is a weird place; it is completely plausible that they are in fact multiple minds forced to inhabit the same body. This is a recommended mental hindrance for “Original” Alicorns. The editor would like to note that this is a difficult hindrance to role-play, but if done well can be used to create some very interesting characters.
There are two main ways to treat this hindrance as a player; the first method is to create a single “main” personality and then create (or have your GM create) at least 3 “satellite” personalities that only emerge under a specific condition or set of conditions. The main personality and satellite personalities may need their own character sheets, as they should have differing mental stats (INT, CHA, and PER) and skills. The satellite personalities may not take traits, but can take hindrances as desired, and will level up their skills whenever the main character does. Hindrances taken by the satellite personalities only provide half the amount of creation points towards increasing attribute scores, rounded down, and they cannot possess abilities that the main personality’s body is incapable of performing. You can have a Hellhound or a Pegasi as personalities, but they won’t be able to make your pony fly, dig or walk on clouds unless the body of the character is physically capable of those things (although they might think they can and act accordingly). They may also select their own perks as the main personality levels up. The personalities may or may not be capable of interacting with each other, and the level of interaction that they have with each other might vary as the mental state of the pony changes.
The second way of handling this might appeal more to players of Alicorn characters. Your waster has a main personality, but it is comprised of multiple facets of other minds. This over-consciousness is aware of the multiple personalities which comprise it—has access to their experiences, inputs, etc. -- and acts as a sort of representative between them and the outside world. This over-consciousness may be the most powerful mind among the facets, or perhaps a conglomeration of the most powerful emotional states of its facets, or it might even be something else entirely. Either way, it has all of the bad experiences of its component minds as well as the good, and it can become overwhelmed in certain situations as a result. Situations that trigger resurgences of memories or emotions from one or more of the component minds may cause hesitation or complete catatonia for a brief period – the GM briefly would tell the player to pause for a second, perhaps lose a combat action, even in a potentially dangerous situation, until something happens to snap the character out of it (like being on the receiving end of a bullet). Larger shocks may take more than a physical stimulus to snap out of. For an example of this type of mind, see Lacunae of Fallout Equestria: Project Horizons. At least three component minds should be fleshed out as characters, and may require their own character sheets as above, though their stats will not usually ever directly influence the dice rolls of this type of MPD character.
In both cases, this hindrance must be discussed with your GM before being taken. At least two of the hindered character’s personalities and histories must be developed by the GM, though the player should develop the mind that is dominantly in control.
Mutation (Cannot be taken by Alicorns or Ghouls) – Your waster had a run in with a large dose of radiation or taint that left them a little bit different. Perhaps they have some cosmetic alteration that is normally only found on Ghouls or other wasteland mutants, such as glowing eyes or tongue, loss of hair, scaly skin, or a permanently discolored patch of flesh that constantly smells of rot. Taint may have warped a few of their features, making them into horns, fins, or something else unnatural. Maybe their limbs grow back when they’re suffering from radiation poisoning, but look a little… off. Either way, this mutation isn’t usually directly harmful (some mutations, like Blackjack’s eyes, can often be very helpful), but it is always noticeable under some specific normal condition (i.e. being in the dark, being under water, being in an enclosed space). It tends to unsettle those who don’t know your pony very well, giving you a -5 to Speechcraft, Mercantile, or other charisma based checks against ponies who don’t know you (or at least haven’t heard of you) if it isn’t hidden. Individual mutations may give additional penalties or bonuses on top of this penalty, and a vast majority of them will likely be slowly killing your character. For an example, see Project Horizons Chapter 3 (or the “Glowing Eyes” quest perk listed below).
Mute (Cannot be taken by alicorns) – No, ponies with this hindrance aren’t mutants. They just can’t talk. Maybe their tongue was cut out by raiders, maybe they haven’t said a word since that fateful night five years ago, or maybe they were just born that way, but for whatever reason they cannot, or will not, talk. They may communicate via other means, such as Ditzy Doo’s chalkboard, but in-game the player of a pony with this hindrance player should find ways to express their character’s desires that are distinctly non-verbal; their attempts at communication are still governed by speechcraft or whatever other skill may be appropriate. This hindrance is difficult to roleplay, and we recommend that players discuss with their GM before taking it.
Naïve (Stable Dwellers or EVC only) – “Did you just step out of a Stable?” Characters with this hindrance will probably hear this often. Naïve ponies tend to not know or understand a lot of the finer points about how the world works. They’re not stupid – they just don’t know. The world is a big bright hopeful place, and naïve ponies simply haven’t seen the darkest sides of it – yet. At character creation, the naïve hindrance doesn’t cause your waster any problems, save for some roleplaying ramifications. Unfortunately, naïveté doesn’t last forever; ponies with the naïve hindrance must trade it for another hindrance at level 10, or buy it off with a perk. What hindrances are applicable for this trade depends on the experiences of the character, and should be discussed with the GM.
Narcoleptic – Your wastelander has a problem staying awake. This might be due to a chemical condition, or it might be due to some sort of conditioning. Regardless, when exposed to a specific stimulus, such as high amounts of stress, and enveloping warmth, or being veiled in darkness, they fall asleep. What triggers your pony’s narcolepsy should be decided between you and the GM – the three triggers above are merely suggestions. Optionally, or perhaps additionally, the narcoleptic effect could be triggered by the GM spending a luck card as per the Live by Luck rules. Characters with this hindrance can resist the effects, attempting to not fall asleep when presented with their trigger effect, but to do so requires a frustratingly difficult (MFD ¼) INT roll. If not actively resisting the urge before the trigger is presented, the narcoleptic character may not even be presented a chance to resist.
Nasty Habit – Your character regularly does something a little off-putting, but for them it’s a habit they just can’t break. Things like licking the inside of their nostrils (a feat nearly all ponies are quite capable of, I assure you), pulling on their eyebrows (a feat I have yet to see a pony accomplish), winking their eyes individually and out of sync instead of blinking, hocking and spitting phlegm wads mid-sentence, biting their hooves, licking their pipbuck screen, or incessantly picking their teeth with a live-.50 caliber round are all good examples. The habit is not healthy for them, and is more likely than not looked upon as slightly abnormal or even outright disgusting behavior by other ponies.
If this habit makes any sort of noise or requires significant movement, characters with this perk take a -10 penalty on all Sneak rolls unless they can suppress the urge to act out their habit. To do so requires a hard (MFD ½) INT or END roll (player’s choice). Otherwise, this unsightly habit gives them a -5 penalty to all Speechcraft and Mercantile skill rolls and all Charisma rolls.
Obese (Cannot be taken by Alicorns, Ghouls, or with Skinny as a Rail or Pipsqueak) – Characters with this hindrance are overweight. This is a fairly unusual thing, considering that the majority of the Equestrian wasteland is on the verge of starvation, so in addition to the negative effects of actually being morbidly overweight, your character can also expect some astonished or angry looks the next time they’re out and about. They also have a problem losing weight, and tend to eat about one and a half to two times as much as normal ponies. If they can’t get that much food, they are very likely to complain about it.
Obese characters are a bit heartier than their healthy-weight counterparts, giving them a +1 to Endurance at character creation. However, they also take a -1 penalty to AGI for reasons mentioned above, and cannot exceed an AGI score of 8 while they have this hindrance. The large stature of characters with this hindrance gives them a -5 penalty to rolls made to dodge. This hindrance can be bought off, assuming the character does something in game that would actually cause them to lose weight such as exercise regularly and force themselves to eat normal-sized amounts of food for an extended period of time. If an obese pony is attempting (or being forced) to regulate their diet and not consuming and additional meal at least once every two days, they suffer a -1 penalty to END rolls.
Characters with this hindrance weigh (2d8*10) units of weight more than their normal-weight counterparts.
Obligation – Your pony belongs someplace, and has a set of responsibilities that come with it. Whether its membership to a family, tribe or gang, or even citizenship to a larger settlement, they have the responsibilities that come with belonging. Characters with this hindrance have to maintain their place within their organization, or otherwise regularly have to take time during or between sessions to take care of whoever or whatever they are obligated to. Because this is a hindrance, while it may grant the character some benefits from being a part of an organization, the GM should ensure that obligated ponies tend to have to do a lot more for their organizations, and on a more regular basis, than those ponies who take the “Organization” background edge. Those ponies with the Organization background edge tend to be ranked a bit higher than those with the Obligation hindrance when it comes to hierarchy within the same group, but this hindrance is by no means incompatible with that trait. Obligation can also be taken with regard to individuals.
Oblivious – Some ponies want to watch the world burn. Others wouldn’t even notice that the world was burning if it landed on top of them (and even then they still might not realize what was going on). Some ponies are just oblivious. They get by well enough, as long as they aren’t on watch when the raiders attack.
Oblivious characters suffer a -15 roll penalty on all perception checks, and tend not to notice things like land mines, or signs warning that the bridge is out up ahead.
OCD – Commonly referred to as CDO by those under its influence, obsessive compulsive disorder still exists out in the wasteland. In fact, it’s very common among those who leave the stable for the first time to start developing symptoms as a reaction to the abrupt change from sterility to the omnipresent dirt and grime the wasteland offers. While it has no direct numerical impact on a character, it’s a huge roleplaying hindrance, so pay close attention.
There are two parts to this mental disorder: compulsions, and obsessions. For the sake of not driving those with this hindrance mad, I’ll go over compulsions first.
Characters demonstrating OCD frequently have irrational compulsions, most frequently towards cleanliness, that they engage in as a forced distraction from their obsessions. Common overt compulsions include alphabetization (the one referenced most directly in this description), brushing their mane, tail or coat much more frequently than is necessary (or healthy), brushing their teeth even if they haven’t eaten, clearing their throat unnecessarily, counting – either specific things or in specific ways, picking at wounds, making checklists, making checklists of checklists, needlessly reorganizing their gear, touching a certain number of objects in each room before being able to exit, or walking in a certain way (such as only stepping on one color of tile). Many sufferers also engage in more covert compulsions, such as mental math or recitation (particularly entertaining for telepathy-users). Compulsions tend to be subconsciously geared to help the OCD-sufferer overcome or ignore fears or anxieties that result from their obsessions. The GM may suggest compulsions at any time to the character during play; a Willpower roll MFD ¾ (that’s INT and CHA, taking the better of the two rolls) is required for a character to resist performing the suggested action.
Obsessions are recurring thoughts that persist in remaining at the forefront of a character’s mind no matter how much they (the character) confront them. These tend to drive a character through an enormous amount of fear and anxiety related to their obsessions, inspiring the compulsions described previous. Obsessions need not be a single thought or idea, though they commonly are, nor need they be of the conventional “X is going to get me!” variety of OCD most commonly seen on television. The GM may want to suggest thoughts to an OCD character, but this is strictly optional.
Those suffering with this disease understand fully that their compulsions and notions do not correspond with reality, but are compelled regardless to act as though they are correct. If a character fails to resist the notions of their obsessions, OCD can progress into full blown dissociative personality disorder (MPD) or Psychosis. This hindrance works well in tandem with Fixation, particularly if the fixation is on not having something occur.
One Trick Pony (Races with the Magic Racial Skill Only; Cannot be taken with Magical Savant, Stubby Little Horn) – Most Unicorns or Zebras (and many half-breeds with parentage from either of those races) have a selection of spells to choose from, and with sufficient effort can learn any new spells related to their cutie mark that they come across if trained or taught. If your Unicorn or Zebra (or half-breed) has this hindrance, then they aren’t one of those. They only have one spell, and are incapable of learning any others, though not for lack of trying. They might be very good at that one spell, or they might not, but baring extremely powerful supernatural means (such as a Black Book) they will never learn any others. Unicorns with this hindrance may not take spells beyond telekinesis, but the fact that they haven’t had to focus their attentions on broadening their magic has allowed them more time to mature and focus it. They may add an extra layer of overglow beyond what normal unicorns can sustain (x16), without doubling the cost of the spell a fourth time (it still takes an extra action to channel the fourth layer, however).
Unicorn characters that wish to take another spell or recipe aside from telekinesis as their “one trick” may opt to have that spell instead of telekinesis. If characters choose to do this, they may only progress up the spell tree of the additional spell, and may not take more than one spell at each spell-level. They may also not cast any level 0 spells (aside from Telekinesis) unless that spell is their “one trick”. They may still add an extra layer of overglow without doubling the cost.
Zebra with this hindrance have two options similar to unicorns. Their first option is that they may opt to take an extra character creation point and know only the Survival stew recipe (so a total of two points from one hindrance – not too shabby). This means they’ve focused other aspects of zebra culture such as hunting or technology, which manifests as a +5 bonus (this is a roll bonus, not a rank bonus) to three of the following skills of their choice: Small Guns, Melee Weapons, Unarmed, Sneak, Science, Mercantile, Medicine or Repair.
The second option for zebra is to hone their knowledge down into a single school of magic. They start with one level-0 recipe of their choosing within a single school of zebra magic, and may learn one recipe at each spell-level as they progress. While they can learn multiple spells at each level (so long as it stays in the same school), they can only know and be able to use one spell at each level at any given time. Learning another recipe at a level causes them to forget how to perform any other recipes they knew at that level. They must completely relearn the recipe from scratch to be able to perform it again.
Oops! – The title of this hindrance is actually the last word of many characters that have it. Also common were “My Bad!” “I just don’t know what went wrong!” and “OH SH-“. Characters with this hindrance have a problem involving explosives and other thrown items. That is, they’re good at throwing them quickly, but they’re bad at throwing them far enough away. This hindrance reduces the range increment of items thrown by characters from the normal 10 feet to 5, making their maximum thrown range about 15 feet, assuming they can make an MFD ¼ roll with regularity. The tradeoff is that throwing items costs them 5 less AP in SATS.
This hindrance works well with Clumsy.
Optimistic – Your pony is simply incapable of looking on anything but the brightest side of life. This is not a normal characteristic of ponies in the wasteland, considering that there usually isn’t much to look forward to. Nonetheless, while they might not always be grounded in reality, ponies with this hindrance are always looking up. Many ponies in the wasteland tend to give ponies with this positive of an outlook a wide berth; insanity is catching. Ponies with this hindrance tend to mean well, but are frequently misunderstood or taken as foolish. This manifests as a -5 Speechcraft penalty against those not living in secure settlements.
Note that there is no pessimistic hindrance, as that’s just considered normal behavior these days
Overactive Imagination (Requires INT 5 or above) – Quite frankly, you scare the shit out of yourself sometimes, and it’s usually over nothing. Characters with this hindrance have trouble walking into pre-war areas, fearful of what might be around the corner or whose skeleton they might stumble into. A skeleton on a bed might surprise them, driving them into a maddening frenzy of thoughts and speculations on how they died horrifically of radiation poisoning or balefire. A word or a trigger can set their mind off running – Who was this skeleton? How did they die? Sweet Celestia I’ll bet they suffered, and it was awful….
Similarly they tend to speculate horrifically on what might happen to them in dangerous or tense situations. In short, characters with this hindrance get themselves all worked up over things that haven’t happened yet, usually while there’s still a chance to avoid them, and things that have already happened, despite the fact that they’re currently still alive to worry about it. This is a roleplaying hindrance. Depending on how it’s role-played, this hindrance may be incompatible with Sadist or Masochist; if you plan on taking this hindrance in conjunction with either of those hindrances, discuss it ahead of time with your GM.
Pacifist – Ponies with this hindrance don’t think it right to go around shootin’ folk just for looking like raiders. Or even for being raiders. Or, in some cases, even for shooting at you first! Pacifists take “do no harm” to an extreme, and will try to reason with whoever or whatever is attacking them whenever they believe it is possible. Only when all other options are exhausted will a pacifist pony resort to violence, and even then only in self-defense, or in defense of their friends. Hostages, for example, will not be allowed to come to harm if a pacifist pony has any say.
Pacifist ponies aren’t fools; if they’ve had to shoot a member of a specific group in defense of themselves of their friends before, they’ll probably not try to reason with any other members of that group unless they can do so safely. They’ll still try to avoid hurting them if possible, though, and will feel quite badly about it if someone comes to harm in a way that they feel they could have prevented. This may trigger a guilty conscience. This hindrance plays quite nicely with Virtue: Kindness.
Phobia – This is a hindrance for ponies who are terrified of something specific. If they’re terrified of everything, see the cowardly hindrance, located previously in this section. Note that these two hindrances don’t preclude one another, though, so you can have a coward who is particularly afraid of certain things. For this hindrance to work, characters must be afraid of something that isn’t omnipresent in the Equestrian wasteland, but isn’t so rare that they never encounter it. A fear of heights for an earth pony (or certain ground-raised pegasi) would be a reasonable phobia. For stable-dwellers, agoraphobia is likewise logical. For Pegasi, claustrophobia is quite common. If your pony almost drowned at some point, fear of deep water might make sense as well. As long as there is some explanation for how your character came to be afraid of something, there is very little that doesn’t work. Xenophobia and agoraphobia are common phobias for the Fallout Equestria universe.
Ponies with a phobia of something take a -10 penalty on all actions attempted while their phobia is active, i.e. when they’re being afraid, and an additional -20 on top of that for fear checks. This is to prevent agoraphobic ponies from suffering a constant penalty while outside, and claustrophobic ponies from suffering a constant penalty in buildings. Intelligence checks to realize that the condition of the phobia is being met may be required. (Stupid ponies might simply not realize that the thing in front of them is the thing they’re afraid of!)
Picky (Cannot be taken with Omnivore, Tastes Fine to Me!, or Scavenger) – You like to think you have a higher class, more refined attitude towards scavenging, but your companions probably just call you picky. Characters with this hindrance refuse to take items or useful salvage of weight to value ratio less than 1:15, unless they have a specific use in mind for it. They also refuse to take weapons or barding, no matter how useful, that is covered in blood or the remains of characters or creatures (at least, they refuse to take it without cleaning it first). And finally, yes, these ponies tend to be a bit more selective about what they eat, never straying beyond their species’ dietary confines (bacon-be-damned). Many ponies that grew up in The Society or in very secure settlements like Tenpony Tower have this hindrance.
Pipsqueak (Cannot be taken with Obese) – Like the legendary stable dweller, you’re rather small for your age. This is a fairly common hindrance for many in the wasteland as malnutrition runs rampant, but even those equines with sheltered upbringings may be smaller than average due to things like genetics or fetal alcohol syndrome. This hindrance has a few tradeoffs. For one, characters with it have a much easier time fitting into small spaces like ventilation shafts, and their smaller size makes them harder to hit when dodging, granting them a +5 on dodge rolls. The downside is that when taking damage, instead of the normal 10 points of damage required to inflict a wound at first level, they now take one wound per 8 points of damage (which increases to 9 at level 3, and so on). Pipsqueak characters have a carrying capacity that is 10 units of weight less than their normal sized compatriots, and are 2d6” shorter and (2d6*10) units of weight lighter as well. All of the effects of this hindrance stack with the Young hindrance if a character takes both of them at character creation.
Ponikaze (Cannot be taken with Cautious) – Your character is a little bit nuts in terms of how they fight. Running at your enemies with armed grenades in your mouth is not a viable combat strategy! Named for the suicidal charges that the Neighponese guerrilla fighters were known for during the last war, this hindrance grants characters five additional feet of movement per action, and permanently increases their maximum SATS AP pool by 10. This is done by sacrificing defense for speed, however, and lowers their effective DT by 5, as well as conveying a -10 penalty to all dodge rolls. Bonus points if they scream aloud while charging headlong into battle.
Prejudiced (Cannot be Taken with Open Minded) – Some ponies see the world in black and white. We’re good; they’re bad, end of story. They believe that one group or groups is inferior to another group or groups, usually based on bad information or, more often, fear and misunderstanding. Characters with a prejudice against a specific group take a -30 penalty on Speech and Mercantile skills to interact with that group, even if they’re trying to hide their prejudice. If they don’t try to hide it, they may simply be refused service altogether (or be doing the refusing themselves). Some examples of targets for prejudices include: Pegasi, Zebras, Griffins, Earth Ponies, Males, Talon Mercenaries, Alicorns, Hellhounds, Unicorns, Ghouls, Enclave-Members, Members of a specific Gang, Slavers, Steel Rangers, Merchants, Wastelanders, Stable Dwellers, etc. Taking a prejudice against “people with a prejudice” or similar groups with members that are not easily distinguished by a physical characteristic or organization membership is highly discouraged. Prejudice penalties to speechcraft and mercantile over-ride penalties that would normally be associated with race, such as the speechcraft penalties generally associated with zebra or alicorns – the penalties do not stack, you take the higher penalty instead.
Prideful (Cannot be taken with Guilty Conscience) – You may have lost everything else, but you’ve kept your pride and your dignity. Characters with this hindrance can be a little vindictive or grating at times, unwilling to compromise on the things they consider to be most important (whether or not they actually matter), such as keeping their attire clean, never compromising on prices, or altering a “perfectly good” plan that has gone all to hell. Prideful characters hate admitting they’re wrong, that they’ve made a mistake or questionable decision, or that they have personal flaws. Particularly prideful characters absolutely despise being treated as anything less than an equal by anyone else, sometimes to the point that it may cause conflict. This is primarily a roleplaying hindrance.
Some GMs may want to consider this hindrance as a corrupted version of a virtue, in which case those who take it would not be able to take another virtue.
Psychosis – There are any number of different types of mental disorders plaguing the Equestrian wasteland, and we simply can’t fit them all here. To compensate for this fact, we’ve created for your convenience the Psychosis hindrance. If you want your pony to be crazy and none of the other hindrances here are quite fitting the bill, this hindrance is for you. Do they feel that playing cards are a deadly weapon, and regularly try to use them as such? Psychosis covers it. How about if they think that they have the ability to hear the screams of dying plants? That’s also definitely within the realms of this hindrance. Psychoses needn’t be permanent or debilitating, but they should at least have some impact on the way that the character behaves on a regular basis. Dementia-addled characters should act like they have dementia (also, they should probably have the dementia hindrance listed earlier, not this one), characters that believe that brown coated ponies can steal portions of your soul by rubbing against you should not be okay with too much personal contact from ponies of that coloration, etc. If you have an idea for a particular psychosis that might not fit this description, have a chat with your GM and see if you can turn it into something that can be role-played.
Sadist (Cannot be taken with Code of Honor or Virtue: Kindness) – Some ponies just want to watch the world burn, and yours is one of them if they’ve got this hindrance. Your pony takes an enormous amount of pleasure from the suffering of others, particularly when they’ve caused it themselves. Ponies with this hindrance are generally not nice people, but there are exceptions. Some ponies just want to cause specific groups suffering, i.e. all the raiders, all the cannibals, certain members of the Enclave, the majority of Red Eye’s slavers, ponies from a some less reputable settlements, etc. The sadist hindrance is still appropriate for those ponies. Beware of how slippery the slope they’re on is, though – a mass murderer who only kills and takes joy from the deaths of mass murderers still has a lot of blood on their hooves. Don’t expect their karma to stay good for too long.
Scarred (Cannot be taken by Ghouls or Alicorns) – You know that guy whose face looks like it got into a fight with a lawnmower and lost? Yeah, that’s your character. Characters with this hindrance have picked up some sort of horrific (or at least off-putting) looking facial scarring as a result of their past endeavors, possibly as a result of botched medical rolls made to treat facial wounds or of simply not being able to get a wound treated properly in time. These scars can come in almost whatever flavor the player would like; frequent variations are wounds from buckshot or from multiple slashes across the cheeks, eyes and nose.
The exception to this is that this hindrance shouldn’t be taken to represent what I affectionately refer to as “Anime” or “Kenshin Scars” – scars that are so minor or superficial that they only serve to make the character look like someone wrote on their face with a permanent marker, but are actually the result of a horrific loss in a duel. Inigo Montoya’s relatively minor facial scarring isn’t what this perk is meant to represent – that’s a minor enough scar that it should really just be a part of their backstory. This hindrance represents truly disfiguring facial scarring, things that would make even a pony that isn’t obsessed with their appearance deeply depressed, because it’s left them looking at somepony in the mirror that they don’t really recognize any more.
This hindrance conveys a -10 penalty to all charisma based rolls (including speechcraft and mercantile as well as charisma attribute rolls). Speechcraft rolls made to intimidate opponents, however, actually receive a +5 bonus instead. Intimidation rolls still require the Terrifying Presence perk, but attempting to intimidate others without having that perk might get you it as a quest perk.
Scavenger (Cannot be taken with Picky) – Your pony calls themself a scavenger. Others have called them a number of less flattering names – thief, kleptomaniac, crazy person with a sack full of everything you can carry, etc., etc. Ponies with this hindrance have a problematic habit of taking everything that isn’t nailed down. This tends to have a few negative side effects, such as making it harder for them to sneak (because their loot weighs them down and makes noise – see the skills section on sneak for more details), and making it difficult to manage party inventory. However, none of your friends can scoff when it comes time to trade for goods with a merchant. Your pony is compelled to grab everything they can when they go through any location that is either occupied with hostiles or is uninhabited. When the time comes that their saddlebags start to fill, they may then begin prioritizing based on weight to value ratios, but not before. To resist grabbing an item is a willpower roll (that’s INT and CHA, taking the better of the two rolls), MFD ¼, for a pony with this hindrance. This hindrance doesn’t apply to items that are known to belong to a friendly or neutral faction, however – grabbing those would get you in trouble!
Shadow of the Moon (Can only be taken by Alicorns, Half-Alicorns or Zebra Shamans, or with GM permission) - More superstitious ponies may believe that you are cursed to bring destruction to everything you touch, and they might not be entirely wrong. You gain +5% critical hit chance on all attacks (expanding your critical hit range to 1-10; this effect stacks with all other critical hit range expanding perks and hindrances), but all weapons wielded by you decay twice as fast and all offensive spells (any spell that targets and enemy and can possibly deal damage) that you cast cost 2 more magical strain than normal. This extra strain cost is not multiplied when considering overglow.
Sickly (Cannot be taken by Alicorns or Ghouls, or with Zebra Augmented) – Your character is suffering from some sort of chronic ailment that impairs them as they try to go about their day-to-day life. These impairments are usually physical, but may also be mental as well, depending on the disease, poison or sickness in question. The most common cases of this in the wasteland are the end result of prolonged radiation sickness or any one of the many wonderful long-term effects of malnutrition, but these are just examples; the cause of a character’s chronic ailment can be anything from arthritis to and unhealthy dose of zebra poison to just having lived in toxic conditions for an extended period.
Their ailment causes sickly characters to suffer from a temporary -1 penalty to endurance and at least one other attribute, usually strength or agility (it’s up to the GM). At the beginning of every session of play, a character with this hindrance must roll endurance, MFD ½. If they succeed, then their pony does not suffer the temporary attribute penalty inflicted by this hindrance. A critical success on this endurance roll will raise the MFD of future Endurance rolls made to resist this hindrance’s effects by one step, making it easier to succeed. Raising it above MFD 1 will remove the hindrance entirely. If they fail, then they suffer the temporary penalty. Critical failures permanently lower the MFD by a step. If the MFD drops below ¼, the sickly pony finally succumbs to the disease and dies unless they receive immediate medical treatment (Medicine roll requiring a rejuvenation talisman or similar medical technology, MFD ¾), which prevents death but has no effect on the MFD (it stays at ¼). Chronic diseases such as this hindrance represents are not generally curable by medicinal or magical means, and thus this hindrance cannot usually be bought off and removed in the conventional way.
Regardless of whether or not they negate the temporary effects for the remainder of a session, sickly ponies are less resistant to diseases, poisons, and other sicknesses due to their weakened immune system, giving them a 1 MFD step penalty on any endurance rolls made to resist their effects.
While the sickness in question needn’t be specific, a list of contractible diseases and poisons and their effects are outlined in chapter 11. Players with this hindrance who opt to take a disease from the diseases list in the back instead of the penalties listed above must receive GM approval on the disease.
Skinny as a Rail (Cannot be taken by Alicorns or with Obese) – Your wastelander is skinny; in fact, they’re practically emaciated. It might have been years of borderline starvation, or it might simply be that they’ve got a super-fast metabolism, but they have trouble maintaining a healthy weight. As a result, they’re so light and skinny that you can play a tune on their ribs like a xylophone. It’s not a good thing to be this skinny; if a wastelander is skinny as a rail, then they’re weaker than their healthier brethren, equivalent to a -1 penalty to STR and END. They’re also a bit smaller than their healthier brethren, however, granting them a +3 bonus on rolls made to dodge. Depending on the reason why the character has this hindrance (i.e. months of near starvation versus just a freakishly high metabolism), it may be able to be removed after a few weeks of regular eating and buying it off.
Ponies with this hindrance weigh (2d6*10) units of weight less than their normal counterparts. If combined with the Pipsqueak hindrance, the weight reductions stack (add them together) and the height reduction becomes 2d10 inches instead of 2d6.
Slave – Your pony may be physically free from bondage, but their mind remains in chains. Ponies with this hindrance have been slaves for so long that they’ve practically forgotten how to be free. They may have never been free even before they became slaves, as in the case of Xenith, or they might have simply been raised in an environment where they were mentally conditioned to respond to certain things, as in the case of P-21. Either way, in some portion of their mind they are not really in full control of themselves, no matter how much they fight it, and may find themselves unwittingly reverting to their conditioned or expected behaviors. Ponies with this hindrance can recover from this state, but they must fight it every step of the way. Due to the conditions in which most slaves are kept, this perk grants the Internal/Concealed Storage trait at no cost. This hindrance is complimented well by Skinny as a Rail.
Spirit of the Security Mare (Requires the Live by Luck rules) – If you’re playing with the live by luck rules as they’re written above, then you may be wondering, ‘Why use playing cards? Can’t we use something like poker chips, or even paper clips?’ The answer to that question is ‘No,’ and the reason is this hindrance.
This hindrance works against characters differently depending on the luck cards they’re dealt. If at any point any combination of cards in a player’s hand can equal 21 (counting face cards as 10 and aces as either 1 or 11), then characters with this hindrance receive a +5 bonus on all rolls for as long as that is the case. If they cannot make 21, but can make 14 instead, they receive a -5 penalty on all rolls. If they cannot make a combination of cards from their hand equal to either number at any given time, they suffer a -10 penalty to all rolls for as long as that is the case.
Spray and Pray (Cannot be taken with Trigger Discipline) – Conserve ammo? Fuck that shit! This hindrance reflects a lifetime of wasted bullets, either as a result of recklessness or possibly simply as the end result of many, many sessions on the firing range that never helped improve your character’s accuracy in the slightest.
Characters with this hindrance operate their weapons quickly, not taking time to use the sights properly. This results in them taking a -10 accuracy penalty with any ranged single-shot weapon. If using a ranged burst-fire weapon (one that fires multiple bullets per action, such as an assault rifle, minigun or magical RCW), they do not suffer this penalty, but instead deplete its ammunition twice as fast (they have to spend most of the extra ammo leading their target). On the upside, they deal an additional die of damage with all ranged burst fire weapons, and all ranged weapons cost them 5 less AP to operate in SATS.
Stubby Little Horn/Wings (Unicorn/Pegasus Only; cannot be taken with Magical Savant, One Trick Pony, Maimed: Horn, or Flightless) – Your character is not descended from two parents of the same type of pony, or if they are, they got a bad mix of genes – not quite bad enough to make them a full-on Half-Breed pony, but still not so great either.
Unicorn ponies with this hindrance have horns far shorter than average, and their magical ability suffers because of it. Instead of their racial +10 to the Magic skill at character creation, they receive no bonus to the skill. In addition, they only get their cutie mark spell (if they even have one) and telekinesis at character creation. They may still learn spells related to their cutie mark, but find it much harder to do so, equivalent to a -10% penalty on their “New Spell” roll (see the Magic section for more details on gaining new spells).
Pegasus ponies with this hindrance have a wingspan that is only about half the norm for pegasi, preventing them from flying without magical aid. They are still capable of hovering and so do not lose the increased speed granted by flight, but cannot manage more than a dozen or so feet above the ground. If overburdened, they cannot even manage a hover. Their ability to interact with clouds and interface with cloud terminals is unaffected.
Studious (Cannot be taken with Illiterate) – Characters with this hindrance are fixated on learning, though not in the same way as those with the Fixation hindrance. The downsides of being a studious character are that you don’t get out much, and as a result are usually shy and don’t make friends easily: much of the knowledge you have of the world is gained from books, or from overhearing conversations held by more gregarious ponies. This over-reliance on books manifests as -5 skill ranks (minimum of 5) to Small Guns, Big Guns and any three of the following, player’s choice: Unarmed, Melee Weapons, Explosives, Speechcraft, Survival, Mercantile or Sneak. Optionally, they may choose to take a -3 rank penalty to five of those skills instead of the -5 rank penalty to three.
The upsides, on the other hoof, are that Studious characters are very good at learning and teaching – spells, skills, you name it. There’s almost nothing they can’t learn, and they can read books in half the time it would take others. All they need is a book or a teacher; studious characters get an additional skill rank from each skill-book or magazine they read, an effect which stacks with the bookworm perk, and may occasionally be able to increase skills through their interactions with NPCs in ways that other characters can’t. Additionally, studious Unicorns and Zebras begin play with one extra level 1 or 0 spell or recipe, respectively, which they have mastered through their studies. Zony shamans may select their spell from either list.
Note that this hindrance does not affect the possessor’s Energy Weapons skill – they work as advertised and have no recoil, making the instructional diagrams found in relevant literature much more helpful.
Stuttering – Your character has a thing for repeated consonants. That is, they can’t help repeating consonants whenever they try to talk. This is usually to their detriment, and gives them both a -5 skill rank penalty at character creation to both Speechcraft and Mercantile rolls (minimum rank is still 5), as well as a -5 penalty on all rolls made for both skills. Stutters can be removed in many cases by undergoing speech therapy, a long an involved process not generally available to most wasteland wanderers. There are also certain types of implants that may correct whatever physical or mental issue causes the character to stutter in the first place.
Suicidal (Cannot be taken with Clear Conscience, Half-Heart or Guilty Conscience) – For whatever reason (and players really should pick one out ahead of time), characters with this hindrance have a death wish. They might not be forthcoming about it, and they might not even be direct about how they go about trying to accomplish their final act, but in the end they’re trying to get themselves killed. Whenever given the opportunity, characters with this hindrance will go out of their way to put themselves into harm’s way. They may just walk off on their own during a night-watch shift and not come back, or they may simply insist on taking point in every compound their group investigates. Hell, they may even strap dynamite to themselves and run into a group of innocents.
If trying to kill themselves outright, as with a gun, a cliff’s edge, a noose and bucket, or any other device that requires them to off themselves, a character with this hindrance must roll Willpower (INT or CHA taking best), MFD ¾, with possible modifiers depending on the reasons for their suicidal feelings and external interference. If they succeed, the deed is done. If they fail, then something prevented them from committing the act, either internally or externally, such as leaving the safety on accidentally, or the rope breaking. If the character is prevented in this way twice in a row, then they should have a brief period of introspection or some sort of roleplaying event that leads them to re-evaluate their suicidal thoughts, and they can replace this hindrance with Guilty Conscience or Clear Conscience as is appropriate.
This hindrance can be removed by other means, but requires roleplaying reasons and should be discussed with the GM.
Thorough (Cannot be taken with Quick Witted) – Your character is something of a completionist. They absolutely hate leaving a job half finished, or without that extra bit of polish. As such, some tasks take them a little bit longer to do than other ponies. When making any sort of non-combat skill roll and not in a hurry, ponies with this hindrance may apply a +3 bonus to it. The catch is that, when rushed, forcibly interrupted, or otherwise in a hurry, ponies with this hindrance take a -5 to all skill and attribute rolls. This includes combat rolls. A character is considered “rushing” in combat if they attempt to do more than perform a single action during their turn.
Trigger Discipline (Cannot be taken with Spray and Pray) – Your character comes from an area or background where bullets and other munitions are scarce. As a result, they developed a habit of spending a few precious extra seconds to make sure that each and every bullet counts. This hindrance grants characters a +5 on all rolls made to hit with small guns, big guns, and energy weapons – any weapon that requires and expends non-reusable ammunition as a necessary ingredient to its method of dispensing death. The downside to this is that this is their shots obviously take more time to line up, and they tend to hold the trigger down a little shorter than most folks. Burst fire weapons (those that expend multiple units of ammunition per ‘shot,’ such as assault rifles and SMGs) spend 20% less bullets per shot (round down to the nearest whole number), and deal one less die of damage. Additionally, all of the weapon categories that are affected by the accuracy bonus cost 5 more AP per shot to operate in SATS.
Trusting – Your pony might not realize how trusting they really are, but if someone told them gullible wasn’t in the dictionary they might not even try to find one to look it up. Somehow, no matter how many times it comes back to bite them in the flank, they still would be willing to trust in whatever information they’re given, as long as the source isn’t obviously hostile (and sometimes even then). Ponies with this hindrance aren’t necessarily stupid, note – the same trick probably won’t work on them twice. But if you get a new trick, they’re likely to fall for it hook, line, and sinker unless someone else is around to help them see what’s actually going on. They take a -10 penalty to mercantile skill rolls (not to the skill rank score) due to their gullible nature. Ponies like this tend to rely on their friends for guidance, especially if they’ve found some friends that don’t try to take advantage of their trusting nature.
Uncontrolled Magic (Cannot be taken by races without the Magic racial skill) – Your Unicorn, Zebra, Alicorn, or Half-Breed has a problem with their magic. That is, they have trouble getting it to do what they want, when they want it to. It frequently does things that they’d rather not have it do, especially in stressful situations. For Unicorns, this can be manifest in ways such as suddenly playing beautiful music with their horn while they’re trying to sneak, your telekinesis groping someone while you were trying to pick up an object, or even accidentally casting an offensive spell when there’s an ally in front of you. Zebras might experience potions that don’t work, do the wrong thing completely, or have less-desirable effects in addition to those desired. Bat-wing talismans that grow in wings on the wrong place (say, one out of their stomach and one out of the top of their back), or a water-breathing talisman that also causes you to spit fire when you speak the letter P are other fine examples. Alicorns might find themselves teleported incorrectly, arriving upside down or in the wrong place completely. Perhaps they accidentally begin thinking in the royal Canterlot voice when they’re trying to relay a mental message, stunning their intended recipients.
In terms of game mechanics, this hindrance works best with the Live by Luck rules in play. If the GM spends a luck card to activate this hindrance, they pick a character with the hindrance and a spell known by them. That character’s player must make a magic skill roll at a penalty of -10, MFD ½. If the player succeeds, then the spell doesn’t go off. If they fail, however, the spell goes off as the GM would like it to. This can happen as many times per session as the GM has luck cards. If the spell goes off, note that it will still cost the caster strain or ingredients, and possibly actions if during a combat situation.
Without the Live by Luck rules, this hindrance activates whenever the caster or alchemist fails or critically fails their magic roll, in addition to whatever penalties that magical mishap may have already caused. Some GMs may also want to activate it whenever the caster is under extreme physical or mental duress.
Additionally, whenever the character with this hindrance tries to cast a spell on their own, they take a -10 penalty to the casting roll and a -10 penalty to hit, if the spell needs to be targeted. Targeting spells to do things when they’re supposed to do them is less of a problem, but characters with this hindrance have more difficulty than most when it comes to focusing their magic.
Unforgivable (Cannot be taken with Amnesiac or Stable Dweller) – Your character has done something awful in their past. In many cases they are genuinely sorry for what they did, and work hard to prove to themselves and others that they aren’t the same pony from that past incident. On the other hoof, they might not be sorry at all – perhaps they feel no remorse for their actions, and coldly justify them. Either way, nopony has forgotten the things they did, and their reactions towards your character will be affected by it. This hindrance can be taken up to twice at character creation, and allows characters to begin play with negative karma. It gives -50 karma every time it is taken. This is equivalent to a -5 to Speechcraft versus those with good karma.
Characters with negative karma run a high risk of becoming an embodiment of a corrupted virtue. This hindrance works well in conjunction with Guilty Conscience.
Unstable Genetics (Cannot be taken by Ghouls or Alicorns) – Radiation could be a more serious problem than normal for ponies with this hindrance. Genetically unstable ponies have suffered from some effect that has rendered their DNA a little more malleable than others, perhaps from some scientific mishap or perhaps simply because they were born that way. Regardless of how they came to be this way, they’re much more susceptible to the effects of magical radiation and taint than their fellow equines, and suffer from a -30 penalty on endurance rolls to resist taint, and take an additional -5 penalty to any skill linked to an attribute that is currently affected by radiation poisoning. Ponies with this hindrance are also more prone to becoming mutated by radiation or taint, meaning that they must make an endurance roll every 200 rads or at every mark on the taint slider, instead of at the normal progression points (see radiation and taint mutation rules, nestled up right next to the ghoulification rules in the GM section section). Be careful, wasters – most mutations are not beneficial to your pony’s wellbeing! Nopony likes to hear that they’ve got cancer of the everything.
Wall-eyed – We’ll be straight with you: you look a little derpy (not that there’s anything wrong with that!). Wall-eyed characters have a lazy eye, one which tends to focus on things other than what a character is actually trying to focus on. Those with this hindrance tend to be perceived as more foolish or even outright stupid by many of their compatriots, and people generally tend to assume that wall-eyed characters are naturally quite oblivious. This is not actually the case; wall-eyed characters see on average 35% more than characters with more normal ocular motion, granting them a +5 on all visual perception rolls, especially those made to detect sneaking opponents.
The downside is that this hindrance really does make it more difficult to focus. If a wall-eyed character uses a ranged weapon without first taking an action to line up the shot using the sights, they suffer a -10 accuracy penalty. After they’ve moved the weapon to use the sights or scope, they needn’t spend another action to use the sights unless they’re forced to run (spend both actions to move up to three times their movement speed), perform an aerial maneuver, or dodge. SATS negates this accuracy penalty.
Due to others’ negative perception of their disability, they suffer a -5 speechcraft penalty whenever they are trying to appear smart.
Wartime Stress Disorder (WSD) – Before the balefire bombs fell, ponies diagnosed with WSD actually had one of a myriad of stress related disorders, including things like chronic depression and post-traumatic stress disorder. The usual treatment provided was basically a complete removal of the memories that caused the stress or depression --an attempt to remove the source of the mental disturbance. As audio logs will probably reveal to your ponies at some point, this method of treatment does not work worth a damn, and tends to leave ponies with gaps in their memory that more often than not effectively lobotomize them, as well as subconscious reactions to the trauma that they no longer comprehend. For the purposes of simplifying, ponies with WSD as a hindrance actually have extremely severe PTSD (because more minor forms of WSD, including full-fledged ‘normal’ PTSD, are practically indistinguishable from a sane reaction to life in the wastes), and should act accordingly. If they’re lucky, they might run into someone who knows how to treat this particular psychosis without just lobotomizing ’em.
Now, take into account that life in the wasteland is frequently brutal, never comfortable, and always violent (when it isn’t cut short). Your pony has seen things that were far worse than what ponies suffer through on a daily basis in this hellish landscape. She’s seen things that have made her brain attempt to crouch and hide behind her nasal cavities. Things she can never forget, and probably doesn’t ever want to talk about. This manifests in a variety of ways. Some ponies develop a ‘thousand-yard stare’; others scream and twitch in their sleep. All ponies with WSD as a hindrance have trouble sleeping, manifesting as a constantly visible set of dark shadows under the eyes. They occasionally shake uncontrollably when relaxed and tend to think and speak a little more slowly than normal, as if their thoughts were elsewhere. In combat, they are extremely focused and lethal, and may possibly be reliving their previous traumatic experience. This occasionally can result in hurting or almost hurting friends.
In game terms, the WSD hindrance does not directly affect actions taken during combat (unless the GM and the affected character’s player have something else going on in the affected pony’s mind), but gives a -5 penalty to all INT, AGI and CHA based skills outside of combat situations. As a reflection of the experience your pony gained from watching whatever horrific act occurred, this hindrance also grants a +5 skill rank bonus to Small Guns, Explosives, Big Guns, Energy Weapons, Melee Weapons, Unarmed or Survival (pick one) if taken at character creation.
Ponies with the WSD hindrance cannot also take the Abused hindrance at character creation. This is in part due to their similar and sometimes indistinguishable symptoms, and in part because they’ve seen enough horrors out in the Equestrian Wasteland to have lost their faith in equinity.
Whiner – That’s not whining; THIS is whining! Your character is a whiner. They whine incessantly about their general situation, chores, taking watch duties, how much their wounds hurt, how they hate walking – you name it. This is extraordinarily grating. Most whiners find themselves suffering from terminal bullet wounds before they can accomplish too much in the wasteland. Whining about getting shot didn’t prevent them from getting shot again, it seems.
Whiners suffer minus -15 to all speechcraft and charisma rolls, but receive a +5 bonus to all mercantile rolls – sometimes complaining incessantly really does help get you a better price!
Young (Cannot be taken by Alicorns or with Elderly) – Characters with this hindrance are colts or fillies (or hatchlings, pups, etc.) Being young doesn’t mean they’re not capable of fending for themselves, though. It does mean that they’ve got a little less experience with some things, but the reduced size of young ponies means that in combat they’re that much harder to hit!
Young characters take a -3 to their rank in all skills except sneak, including tag skills, at character creation and a permanent -1 penalty to STR. Similarly to characters with the Pipsqueak hindrance, they take one wound per 8 damage dealt to them at character creation, but their smaller size grants them a +5 bonus to dodge rolls. Both bonuses to dodge and penalties provided by the Young and Pipsqueak hindrances stack – if a character has both hindrances they take one wound per 6 damage dealt to them (at least up until level 3, where it increases to 7), and receive a +10 bonus to dodge.
Unicorns with this hindrance do not start with the normal level 1 spell in addition to basic telekinesis. If they have a cutie mark, they may still start with a cutie mark spell.
Young also grants +1 to CHA and Luck, and reduces carrying capacity by 50 pounds. Characters with this hindrance are 2d12” shorter and (2d10*10) units of weight lighter than their adult counterparts.
This hindrance is required to become a member of the Crusaders (see the Organization trait) at character creation. Older characters may join the crusaders at a later point if they have the “Foal at heart” perk, and can gain the organization’s favor.