How much do you let players upgrade equipment?

[Wade L]

The system seems a bit too granular for a gunsmith or armorer character to be improving folks heavy pistols so they do 5L, or kitting folks up with Kevlar vests that provide 4/7 armor or the like.

My instinct is to say that the values for equipment bought with Resources represent the more or less *peak* of what the armor or damage values can be - you're probably not going to upgrade a shotgun in your garage gunsmithing workshop to be better than something Remington can produce, y'know? But is that being too restrictive?

[Neos01]

I think that a good rule could be that every +1 modification raises the availability by 1, and that a crafter cannot create or modify items with more availability than his skill levels (+ specialization when available)

[Heavy Arms]

While rather biased from some of the suggestions in the Armory 1e series, I don't let (non-magical) upgrading improve the primary use of equipment.

That said, there's lots of secondary aspects to equipment (esp, combat equipment) that someone that knows what they're doing can then improve. Armor can have add-ons to cover more parts of the body to either increase targeted shot penalties or just to protect vital bits that aren't normally so. A gun with a mounted reflex sight might reduce initiative penalties when firing unaimed as they can get on target faster, or optical sights that accumulate aiming bonus dice faster. Anything could have it's Durability increased in case an enemy tries to attack the item directly. Etc.

If you have a player that wants to get some mileage out of custom modding, let them have their fun. They can leverage some significant advantages with this sort of thing. But the system isn't really designed well to handle players adding big boosts to things like Damage or Armor (esp. if supernaturals can stack their own stuff with equipment).

[Tessie]

I think that a good rule could be that every +1 modification raises the availability by 1, and that a crafter cannot create or modify items with more availability than his skill levels (+ specialization when available)

I believe this (or something similar) was the rule in 1e, which lead to it being quite possible to upgrade cheap cars to be better than the most expensive cars you could afford but not modify. At least, this is what my more experienced group has told me. Just a warning for this potential pitfall.


I think it's just up to the group to decide how much you could reasonably upgrade any given piece of equipment. It'd be nice to have some sort of general cap, but I don't think you could come up with anything that would fit most types of equipment. Like, capping the modifier on a computer by modified Availability makes sense, but no matter how rich you are you couldn't really do anything to a flashlight to make it better except switching the bulb. While you could probably buy a better flashlight (up to +2), there's simply not much potential left in an already commercially produced flashlight. (Technically you could change its function by narrowing the light cone to make blinding opponents more potent, but that would not increase its general dice bonus.)

Body armour is something that definitely has "peaked". While there should be better armour available at higher Availability, you couldn't actually upgrade existing armour because you'd have to switch out the protective elements (which means you'd start from 0 rather than work off of existing armour rating). (You could, however, extend which zones the armour covers, but, just like with the flashlight, it would not increase the actual rating.)

Firearms can definitely be modified, but again not to grant straight up bonuses. Rather, by modifying or switching out parts of a firearm you could change characteristics, but these would have drawbacks in other areas. Shortening the barrel of a shotgun should decrease the Initiative penalty, but also decrease its range. Unfortunately the system doesn't handle such modifications well, leaving any such details up to the players to come up with and agree on.
Instead, consider any accessories (listed in Hurt Locker) to be modifications. You can't just slap them on and expect them to work if you don't know how to install them properly, so I think it makes sense to apply the Build Equipment->Modifications rules to accessorising firearms.

[Neos01]

I believe this (or something similar) was the rule in 1e, which lead to it being quite possible to upgrade cheap cars to be better than the most expensive cars you could afford but not modify. At least, this is what my more experienced group has told me. Just a warning for this potential pitfall.


I think it's just up to the group to decide how much you could reasonably upgrade any given piece of equipment. It'd be nice to have some sort of general cap, but I don't think you could come up with anything that would fit most types of equipment. Like, capping the modifier on a computer by modified Availability makes sense, but no matter how rich you are you couldn't really do anything to a flashlight to make it better except switching the bulb. While you could probably buy a better flashlight (up to +2), there's simply not much potential left in an already commercially produced flashlight. (Technically you could change its function by narrowing the light cone to make blinding opponents more potent, but that would not increase its general dice bonus.)

Body armour is something that definitely has "peaked". While there should be better armour available at higher Availability, you couldn't actually upgrade existing armour because you'd have to switch out the protective elements (which means you'd start from 0 rather than work off of existing armour rating). (You could, however, extend which zones the armour covers, but, just like with the flashlight, it would not increase the actual rating.)

Firearms can definitely be modified, but again not to grant straight up bonuses. Rather, by modifying or switching out parts of a firearm you could change characteristics, but these would have drawbacks in other areas. Shortening the barrel of a shotgun should decrease the Initiative penalty, but also decrease its range. Unfortunately the system doesn't handle such modifications well, leaving any such details up to the players to come up with and agree on.
Instead, consider any accessories (listed in Hurt Locker) to be modifications. You can't just slap them on and expect them to work if you don't know how to install them properly, so I think it makes sense to apply the Build Equipment->Modifications rules to accessorising firearms.

Mostly agree, but an available modification for every item could be to make it more fitting to a certain user, raising slightly bonuses but mostly reducing penaltyes.
For body armor you could make it more custom made for a person, reducing defence and speed penalty.
I totally see modification on a vehicle controls to give a dice bonus only to its owner, ecc...