Texhnophille's Hack

Supplement ideas, house rules, homemade stat cards, homebrew weapon types, and other cool variations

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Texhnophille
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Texhnophille's Hack

Post by Texhnophille » Thu Oct 19, 2017 7:10 am

First and foremost: I apparently have a dice fetish. If you think that original BrikWars has way too much dice rolls, you ain’t seen nothin yet: here they are cranked up to eleven. The second thing is that due to added level up mechanics and a shit ton of perks as a result, it is highly recommended to play it like an RPG, where each player controls one unit. Lastly, I’m not entirely sure if this ruleset stands true to BrikWars philosophy, where fun and fudge have the top priority. Having not playtested the ruleset, it is yet to be discovered if the gameplay can be called “fun” by BrikWarriors’ standards, of which I think highly.
With that out of the way, I present to you my BrikWars hack. Huge credits to Sir Sporktimus and his Mission Card system, IVHorseman and his Plastik Armory, Rev. Sylvanus, BrickSyd, and Vason. Your houserules inspired me to do something of my own, and I hope that this hack will be at least half as good.
Main Gameplay Changes
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- I brought back the Tek Levels mechanic from BW2001 ruleset, albeit in a lighter form. There are four Tek Levels overall: Modern, Space, Star, and Hyper. “Home” players may field Post-Apoc or Medieval Age factions. The faction’s Tek Level is reflected in their respective SN dice.
Speaking of which…

- The SN dice are now used as utility items. Here’s how it works:
Minifigs have utility slots depending on their equipment. Body Armor can be equipped with one consumable SN die as personal shield generator or ablative armor, or anything that makes sense being there. Heavy Armor has capacity for two to four of such dice. Backpack can be stuffed with two SN dice that are not limited to armor boosters. It can be grenades, targeting programs, or a ridiculously powerful ammo pack stolen from Paul Verhoeven's movie sets. Such SN dice are called Utility Dice. Their size depends directly on the player's Tek Level. Utility dice are sized from d4 to d10 respectively. Once used, these dice are gone and the only way to get them back is to find an ammo crate or a power supply port, depending on what your Utility Dice initially stood for.
All minifig specialists have to state what their Utility Dice represent (e.g.: one shield cell and one grenade) before a game starts. A minifig with two grenades in utility slots won't be able to go to power supply port and charge their non-existent personal shield generator. The size of a die still reflects its damage types. Thus, in terms of damage, d4 is Fire/Acid/Poison; d6 is regular/shooting,crushing/slashing etc.; d8 is blast/regular-ish; and d10 is explosive. Still, there is a couple of nuances.

- Weapons like shotguns or bazookas don’t have to have higher Tek Levels to be available.
- 2” ranged weapons can still change their damage dice no problem.
- Utility dice for Armor, Move, Skill, Weapon Range and Weapon Damage may be of ANY size, just remember that if you boost your weapon damage with d4, the target should be considered poisoned or on fire (if the d4 damage roll is successful). Following the same logic, d10 always knocks the target back and disrupts them. d6s and d8s as damage boosters don’t have any additional effects.
- Grenades (with standard explosives’ stats and 1d10 damage) are available to all Tek Levels from Modern to Hyper.
- Examples: 1d4 molotov cocktail, 1d4 flashbang, 1d4 incendiary ammo, 1d4 kevlar vest, 1d6 high-powered ammo, 1d6 ceramic plating, 1d8 higher-powered ammo, 1d8 thruster pack, 1d10 underslung grenade launcher, 1d10 personal shield generator.
- SN Utility Dice boost your stats until the remainder of your current turn. Thus, if you hit the armor boost and your armor turns 4+5, at the beginning of your next turn your armor is 4.
- Minifigs with no armor or backpack have 1 Utility Die of any type.
- Medieval factions can’t have SN dice as utility slots. Instead, they may field Magik cliched characters and add SN dice of any size. There are some exceptions, like if you field star-age farce-users faction.
- Post-Apoc factions have same armor stats as Modern and Medieval Factions. They don't have any SN utility dice but instead have a chance to find some piece of advanced Tek. Each time a Home Post-Apoc faction spawns a Pod, roll 1d6 for each unit in that Pod. On the roll of 5+, this unit can have a piece of more advanced armor or weaponry. In terms of VP, Post-Apoc Tek Level is the same as Space.
- Also, cannons and launchers now have a limited ammo supply tied directly to the amount of dedicated SN dice.
- Spending Utility Dice is always a part of your Action.
- If I try to cover everything in great detail, chances are that this post will be even larger than it already is, so if you encounter some inconsistencies, just roll What I Say Goes or, even better, Fudge it.

- 1d4 damage dice now have Stun damage in addition to Fire, Poison and Acid. Unlike those other types of damage, Stun damage cannot kill a minifig. Instead, it disorients or stuns (duh). Each number on the d4 relates to different effects. 1 has no effect, 2 grants -1 Skill penalty, 3 increases it by one and also cuts victim down to half-speed, and 4 just stuns the victim outright. If stunned, the victim then makes a d4 roll on their next turn to see if the stun effect is gone. On critfail they stand up all right, on critsuccess they’re still asleep, anything in between makes them wake up with skill penalty matching the number rolled and Half Speed until their next turn. The minifig has to be organic in order to be stunned. For larger creations, the Stun roll is handled with (Creature’s_Size”-1) penalty.

- Having added another class to Visitors' roster, I've also implemented 1d4 Bleed damage that works mostly as you would expect, safe for new stat penalties. Unlike any other 1d4 damage die, Bleed die only affects Armor and Mobility, with no Skill penalty. The idea for this die is so that certain mifigs with hand weapons that are not that scary on their own have an ability to deal damage over time, along with Armor and Mobility debuffs. This way, even a minifig with hand weapon can contribute to overall squad-dealt damage.

- Some equipment and perks now may have a Critical Bonus. This one is simple: with the Critical Bonus of +1, Overskill occurs on the roll of 5+ instead of 6+. This thing is obviously overpowered, so there are no Critical Bonuses of +2 or more.

- Auto-guns are now divided into two sub-categories: auto-rifles and machine guns.
Auto-rifles are limited to Bastard size and have the stats of long-ranged weapon and the ability to shoot in either Firing Arcs, Burst Fire, or Single Fire.
Machine Guns may be of any size. They deal 1d6+2 damage when compared to their rifle counterpart, but cannot make Single Fire shots. Instead, they are forced to shoot in Bursts or Arcs. Bastard Machine Gun has the range of 8”, but is otherwise identical to auto-rifle.

- Sniper Rifles now also have their own weapon category, with 1d6+2 damage and UR of 3. Regular Minifigs without Squadsight perk may either add +1d8 to weapon's range of 10", or increase their skill die size by one while Stationary and Aiming. Sniper Rifles also gain +1 Critical Bonus against enemies that are out of cover, so that Overskill occurs on 5+ roll. This type of weapon is only usable with Full Action, meaning a minifig already moved this turn won't be able to fire SR.

- The Skill dice are now divided into two sub-categories:

-Quickness is rolled whenever two or more non-friendly minifigs are within each other’s weapon range and attempt to kill each other simultaneously. It is essentially a dice roll off. You still don’t need Quickness for things like Bailing or armor boosting with SN dice. It’s been added primarily because of the Patrol mechanic which I’ll cover in detail further down the line. Most units have standard Quickness of d6. Quickness’ die size gets lowered when a regular unit uses Size 2 weapon or bigger. Same goes for units that are slowed down by Heavy Armor or Disruption. Pointmen have Quickness of d8.

-Tek Proficiency is rolled whenever a minifig interacts with some piece of teknology that requires a skill roll. Standard minifig has Tek Proficiency of d6. Tek Experts have Tek Proficiency of d8.
Gameplay Overwatch
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The game can be played by two or more players, but for a standard game, there are two sides of conflict called Home and Visitors for the sake of convenience. The “Visitors” side consists of a squad of minifig operatives, each with certain specialty. You may check out the specialties in this thread. Due to the enormous amount of perks you’re gonna be gaining as campaign goes by, it is highly advised each of the players controls one operative at a time. The “Visitors’” objective is to invade the map and complete objectives. They are the ones who play the overarching campaign, completing missions and gaining VP points.

You may balance things out via CP system if you want to. The balance is supposed to be fair, since it’s “small squad of elites vs army of more regular troops” thing. Before the game starts, Visitors draw cards from the Objectives deck. Each objective has its own VP cost and number of stages required to complete the objective. Overall Objectives’ VP cost goes like this: [objective_cost]=[tek_level+1]X[the_amount_of_stages]. So, if you are playing against Home team with the Tek Level of 3, and the objective itself is four-stage, the cost of this Objective is going to be 16.

Objectives may vary, and players are encouraged to come up with their own ideas. Examples include: repair some sort of mechanism that would benefit your faction; capture some local animal and bring it with you; find some prisoners and either get them to safety or kill them; get a black box out of fallen aircraft’s wreckage. Once all objectives are complete, (or if you cannot complete them for some reason), Visitors’ Team Leader uses his portable radio and calls for extraction with UR of 5. If successful, roll 1d4 to determine in how many turns the extraction vehicle will arrive. If Team Leader's Radio roll is failed, his next Radio roll gets one reroll. If the roll is higher than 5, subtract the difference from 1d4 roll. If Visitors’ Team Leader is dead, another squad member should pick up his radio and call for evac. The evac transport may be anything from aircraft to ground vehicle.

The “Home” side consists of one player by default. More players may join the side provided they have their own faction. The main Home player places objectives on the game map and assigns a single Patrol to each of them. At the start of the game, these patrols cannot go further than 6” away from their objective. In addition to that, Home player places a single patrol that is not tied to any objective, free to go wherever Home player wishes them to. Initial Patrol size is 2 regular minifigs. Home player is free to equip them with anything available to a minifig. Patrols are small and sort of squishy, their goal is to find Visitors’ squad and set off the alarm. At least one patrol member has to see at least one enemy squad member within his 8” line of sight. The Alarm Action has UR of 2. For situations where patrols are setting alarm simultaneously with Visitors squad trying to kill them, the Quickness skill die was created. Both home patrol and visitors’ squad roll off their Quickness to decide who acts first. The higher the number rolled, the faster you are.

If Home patrol is destroyed without setting alarm, a new patrol will show up in 4 turns. Should patrol be destroyed with at least one minifig having hit the alarm, a new patrol will spawn in 2 turns instead. New patrol consists of 3 minifigs and cannot be placed closer than in 15” from Visitors’ squad. The more subsequent patrols Visitors destroy, the larger the next patrol will be. There should be some patrol size cap, but defining it is up to the players themselves.

Patrols have to be destroyed in order for a new patrol to show up. Patrols with Stunned members in it are not considered destroyed.

If Home patrol manages to set off the alarm before they are killed, for each “alarmed” patrol member Home player places a Pod near the alarmed patrol’s location on the next Home player’s turn. Each Pod consists of [patrol_sizeX1.5 rounded up] minifigs. Initial Home Pods may consist of specialist minifigs from BW2010 ruleset (feel free to add your homebrew specialists), with a single size 1 creation (it's not mandatory). For each subsequent Alarm, the Pod spawned may field units that cost up to 10 CP, the following alarm increases it up to 15 CP, 20 CP units are the maximum. Home player’s objective is to completely destroy Visitors’ squad.
If Home player’s Tek Level is higher than Modern, they may also field Bounty Hunters in addition to patrols.

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These guys may travel the map the same way patrols do. They are single minifigs that cannot use Alarm Action, but are instead armed to the teeth. Each Bounty Hunter has a Jetpack with +5 to move, one re-usable Utility SN die according to Home player’s Tek Level, twin pistols(plus any Bastard or size 2 weapon if you want to switch jetpack for backpack), and “Jack-of-all-trades” ability that allows them to use any single minifig specialty for one round. Home player may only field one Bounty Hunter at a time. They are subject to respawns, just like patrols.

Each time Visitors’ squad member is killed, Home player acquires an Almighty Benny. Initially, the Home player has the amount of ABs according to their Tek Level (1 for Modern, 2 for Space, and so on). Players may also give Almighty Bennies to each other for making Ossum things as usual. The difference is that Home player may also use his ABs to create additional field hazards on the map. At any time during the game, the Home player may roll his Almighty d6 to determine the size of the new field hazard. The nature of that hazard can be anything that fits 2010 ruleset.

Victory Points are calculated at the end of a battle. Home players gain victory points via killing Visitors’ squad members or preventing them from completing their objectives. Each of the Visitors’ squad member cost is determined by their CP cost, with all their specialties and perks. The player with the highest amount of VP wins. For the campaign, these victory points then transfer into Experience Points which Visitors may spend to buy or upgrade their equipment or gain a Level Up. Visitors also gain 1 XP for each enemy minifig killed, aside from completing Objectives. It is possible for Visitor minifigs to Levep Up during a mission, should the amount of gained XP be enough for it. For a skirmish battle, if you want things to be balanced out, Home player may calculate the sum of his objectives’ VP and divide it equally into the number of Visitors’ squad members, rounded up.
Upgrades and Tek
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As mentioned before, Tek level influences your utility dice size. Each Tek Level also has its own weapon tiers.

- Ballistic Tier doesn’t have any advantages, providing standard-issue guns and CC weapons. The armor for that tier is 1d6 or 4.

- Magnetic Tier provides its ranged weapons with 1 armor piercing for Bastard and 1” guns and 2 armor piercing for size 2+ guns. For shotguns, however, there is no AP bonus. Instead, their damage falloff is decreased by one inch. This means that magnetic shotgun now decreases its damage output for every 2” to the target instead of 1”. CC weapons now have the ability to Stun enemies on Overskill. The armor is 1d8.

- Laser Tier increases range of firearms by 50%, while limiting your Over(s)kill dice to Fire d4s. CC weapons now have Beamsabers with the UR of 3 and the Damage of 1 Skill Die + 3. Beamsabers cannot be parried with Ballistic Tier CC weapons. The armor is 1d10.

- Plasma Tier provides its ranged weapons with 3d4 Fire damage. These weapons, however, all have 6" Range (except Plasma Sniper Rifles) and explode on Critical Failure for 1d10 Explosive damage. Since plasma is highly unstable, there can only be Plasma Guns, and Sniper Rifles, having only 1" or 1,5" in Size. CC weapons now have OTCs that have the UR of 5, the damage of 3 Skill Dice and cannot be parried, and Nova Swords with the UR of 5, the damage of 3 Skill Dice and may parry any attack. The armor is 2d6.

There are also some upgrades available for certain weapon types:

- Machine Guns of Bastard size or larger may be upgraded into Miniguns. Miniguns have the ability to Spin Up for one turn. A weapon that is Spinned Up may either deal twice the amount of damage on the next turn in a single burst with -1 Skill Penalty or make standard Burst or Arc shots with +1 Skill bonus (meaning 1 Firing Arc has no penalty and 2-shot Burst only has -1 penalty). This is not applicable to Magnetic and Plasma weapons. A minigun cannot make Reaction Shots.

- Ballistic and Laser Shotguns may be upgraded with a second barrel. The shooter may fire both barrels and deal 2d8+1-range damage, but will have to reload his weapon on the next turn.

- Long barrels double the range for weapon’s effective damage with no penalties. Thus, a long-ranged gun with 10” radius may damage target with no penalties up to 20”.

- Scopes work just like in IVHorseman’s Plastik Armory. When Stationary, increase your weapon’s range by 1d6”. Crit Successes apply.

- Attachments are considered underslung size 1 weapons with a limited amount of ammo that equals the amount of utility dice you are willing to dedicate (CC attachments are exception). Ranged attachments may only fire once, require an ammo crate to be re-used and an Action to be reloaded. Examples include grenade launchers, shotguns, bayonets, etc.

- Failsafe Mechanisms and Recoil Compensators allow your weapon to once per turn re-roll one skill-based critical failure and regular failure respectively.

- Twin-Linked upgrades are extremely expensive and apply only to Laser Weapons. Twin-Linked ranged weapons are considered blessed both for skill and damage rolls.

There is also a new armor type called Hazard Armor. It provides 1d4 Deflection, prevents you from jumping/flying/swimming but doesn't hamper your mobility.

These are just what I managed to come up with. Be creative. If you can physically attach something to your weapon, you can also stat it. Most of IVHorseman’s weapon mods apply to this hack.
Faction Traits and Home Units
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Aside from Tek Levels, Home factions can also have a single Faction Trait. Faction Traits are characterized by adding more variables into the gameplay. This may include unique Objectives, units or perks available to a given Faction. Some of those Faction Traits are:

- Beastmaster Faction. This Faction's Pods may field a single Master minifig that controls one or more Beast creations. Beast units don't cost any CP, but will attempt to kill or flee from combating minifigs once their Master is dead. Whenever Visitors complete all Objectives and try to Evac, your next Pod spawned may include a Subjugated Creature worth up to 100 CP.
Here's an example:
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- Authoritarian or Fascist Faction has similar rules to a Beastmaster Faction, the only difference is that instead of beasts its Pods may field up to three regular enslaved (peach) minifigs armed with CC weapons.

- Cybernetik Faction may field Programmed units like robots and droids that are immune to Stun, Poison, Bleed and Fire but are restricted to following one specific program, be it "close in and attack" or "fall back and shoot". Available to Tek Levels from Space to Hyper.

- Custodian Faction has its specialist Pod units carrying armor and weapons one Tek level higher, whereas regular minifigs' equipment is one Tek level lower.

- Savage Faction adds +2 to Mobility to each of its Pod units and gives +1 unit to each Pod spawned. However, this Faction's units are limited to having CC weapons only and will have to roll 1d6 with UR of 5 to have any kind of ranged weapon.

- Road Warrior Faction adds one free Steel Horse type of transport into each Pod deployed. All Home minifigs have Rider specialty for these Steel Horses. This Faction Trait is not available to Medieval Factions.

- Feel free to add custom Traits into the mix. I may or may not upload more Traits as time goes by.

- Some units are tied to Faction's Tek level and Trait. Here are some of them:

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Player Progression And Other Things Worth Mentioning
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- Visitor Minifigs will gain experience according to the amount of objectives completed. For each Objective completed, every Visitor gains the amount of XP equal to VP cost of said Objective. Visitors then may either spend their XP to gain Promotion (or Level Up) or contribute some of their points in one of the Tek pools to upgrade either weaponry or armor. They may also buy scopes and other upgrades.

During level up the character may upgrade one of their base stats or gain one of three perks according to their Specialty. These base stats are HP, Mobility, the Utility SN dice max cap, and Skill. The amount of XP needed to level up is calculated the same way as in BrickSyd's RPG system.
For Tek progression the numbers are: 10X[current_tek_level]+[tek's_utility_die]

- All Home players Pod members without any specialty have See You In Hell perk that allows them to make a free attack at the enemy with -2 Skill Penalty before they die.

- This wasn’t playtested yet, but I will post some sort of battle report in this thread once I stock up some more baseplates to make a proper battle map.

- The patrols and objectives concept was borrowed from the game called Helldivers. I will also post objective cards some time later. Feel free to suggest your own ideas. I’d like to know if there’s some sort of mission cards generator on the internets, since my hand drawing skills are crap.

- If this is going to be used in any Forum Battle, I advise you create a private Discord chat for Visitors Players so that they could coordinate their actions and occasionally roleplay their characters.
Last edited by Texhnophille on Sun Feb 18, 2018 1:40 pm, edited 25 times in total.
Natalya wrote:Warhammer doesn't sell well because the models are good; it sells because of the awesome universe created around the models.

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Texhnophille
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Location: St. Petersburg

Re: Texhnophille's Hack

Post by Texhnophille » Fri Jan 19, 2018 4:05 am

Added Player Progression rules, Sniper Rifles, and 1d4 Bleed damage into the mix.

Update: Added Faction Traits and Home Units category. You'll see some stat cards and special rules for Factions with certain Traits. Also added Post-Apoc Tek level that got standard armor and weapon stats but also has a slight chance for its units to have a piece of more advanced Teknology.
Last edited by Texhnophille on Mon Feb 12, 2018 6:30 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Natalya wrote:Warhammer doesn't sell well because the models are good; it sells because of the awesome universe created around the models.

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Texhnophille
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Posts: 260
Joined: Fri Sep 22, 2017 6:17 am
Location: St. Petersburg

Re: Texhnophille's Hack

Post by Texhnophille » Mon Feb 12, 2018 7:26 pm

So I just playtested the ruleset, and overall I am happy with this first draft, but it's not a perfect system by any stretch. We had a map with three objectives and three Level 4 Visitor minifigs: the Heavy Flamer(Charlie), the Battle Instructor Team Leader (Alpha), and the Gunslinger Brawler (Bravo). I played a Post-Apoc Beastmaster Faction. The Objectives were: retrieve a black box, crack open an ore slab to get a special mineral, and rescue three prisoners.
Things that I discovered while playtesting:
- Team Leader's Radio should allow one re-roll if Leader's last Action was trying to call for evac. The 5+ roll requirements, even on a d8, seem to cripple the fun factor;
- There should be an HP bonus when using a Visitors squad of three or less minifigs. For now the numbers are: +2 HP for three-minifig squad, +3 HP for two minifigs, +5 HP for a solo minifig;
- Heavy Flamethrowers are pretty great;
- We decided to go without respawning patrols, and it worked pretty well in terms of balance. Maybe there should be no respawning patrols at all, considering that we had all the high-level Home minifigs near the end of our playtest battle. I also think that patrol size of 2 minifigs each of whom may spawn a 3-minifig Pod is pretty good in terms of difficulty balance;
- Fudge and What I Say Goes are the best.

Related pics (shitty photo quality and generic unaltered Lego sets warning):

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While it looks like an attempt at Redshirt, it was actually a failed Bullet Time ability. Bravo bailed in front of enemies trying to waste their Actions but one gunner ended up being a badass and critically rolled for damage twice, Overkilling a three-HP unit in one shot.

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This here is the Green Transparent Fiend - it's a Beastmasters' Boss unit that appears on the next Home player's turn right after the Visitors complete all their Objectives. I think it was a good call to make its Skill a d6.

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This is Charlie the Heavy realising that shit just got real, taking over one of the disrupted prisoners, and finally getting to use his Utility d8 thrusters.

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Here's the evac. Only one casualty, that being an unfortunate Brawler.
Natalya wrote:Warhammer doesn't sell well because the models are good; it sells because of the awesome universe created around the models.

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sahasrahla
that is a fantastic question to which no satisfactory answer will be forthcoming
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Re: Texhnophille's Hack

Post by sahasrahla » Tue Feb 13, 2018 12:17 pm

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>tfw you're already having a bad day and then some asshole decides to explode your head

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