An Experienced GM Who is Always Willing to Learn
Interesting Rules I’ve Learned About Savage Worlds
While working on Wild Card Creator, I’ve gotten to know the Savage Worlds rules much better than I ever had before. Having looked at the text for Edges, Hindrance, Races, and Powers, as well as the rules themselves in great detail has resulted in me getting a very detailed understanding of how the system works.
In fact, there have been a few times that looking at the rules in such detail has resulted in me asking some pretty interesting questions about the rules. Sometimes I can figure it out myself by reading the text more carefully, but sometimes the book just doesn’t say. One of the great things about Pinnacle is that Clint, one of their staffers, has a section on the Pinnacle forums where you can ask him a rules question about Savage Worlds and get an answer back from him, usually in about a day. Between all that, I’ve made some pretty interesting discoveries:
When Edges and Hindrances Collide
- There is nothing preventing you from taking the Rich Edge and Poverty Hindrance at the same time. Although it seems contradictory at first, it actually works out. The Rich Edge triples your starting funds and the Poverty Edge halves your starting funds, so you start with 1.5x the starting funds. The Rich Edge gives you a yearly salary and the Poverty Hindrance makes you lose half your total funds every week. So you’ve got a spoiled brat who blows his money every time his parents give him some, which may be an interesting character.
- The Fleet-Footed Edge says the character’s normal d6 running die becomes a d10. The Lame Hindrance says the character’s normal d6 running die becomes a d4. What happens if you have both? The official answer is that you turn them into die steps (i.e. Fleet-Footed gives you +2 die steps, Lame gives you –1 die step). My group already played this way anyway, but at least it’s official (and the way Wild Card Creator handles it).
Putting the Arcane in Arcane Background
- The Power Surge Edge requires the character to have “arcane skill d10+”. Even though Arcane Background (Super Powers) and Deadlands‘ Arcane Background (Chi Mastery) don’t have a typical Arcane Skill, having any of their “power skills” at d10 qualifies for this.
- You can have an Arcane Skill without having the corresponding Arcane Background. This is most obvious in Hell on Earth Reloaded and Deadlands Noir where they actually require you to have a d6 in your Arcane Skill before you can take the Arcane Background. This is actually specifically noted in the Deadlands Noir adventure “The Old Absinthe Blues” where they encourage them to make use of a character that has the Arcane Skill, but not the Arcane Background by having them use Cooperative Rolls to help out other spellcasters. And if you have the Weird Science skill, you can use it to operate a gadget that was made by someone with Arcane Background (Weird Science).
Game Rules You Didn’t Know About
- There are actually rules for covering yourself over a grenade. Basically, the person takes double damage, but everybody else in the blast template takes damage minus the Toughness of the person who covered the grenade.
- You can Crouch to make ranged attacks against you suffer a –1 penalty, in exchange for only moving half your Pace each round. It’s the only system I know of that makes use of this, despite the fact that any good soldier knows to do this.
- You can dive for cover to avoid an Area of Effect weapon (like a grenade or the Blast power), which moves you to the edge of the blast template.
I’ve also discovered a bunch of inconsistencies that I’m having to deal with. For instance, some gear tables have Weight before Cost and others have Cost before Weight. Overall though, I’ve come to appreciate the Savage Worlds rules a bit more because of my work on it with Wild Card Creator.
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#2 written by GL_stocky 4 months ago
I have a huge problem with Taking both the Lame and Fleet footed hindrance. As far as Lame goes it is only a -1 die step because a d4 is the lowest die type the rules allow. If someone was fleet-footed and became Lame due to an illness/injury later in the game it would become a d4 according to how the rules read. For a real life example Joe Schmo olympic runner has a d10 since he is fleet-footed, he then contracts polio and becomes Lame. He would roll a d4 for running but his pace would be 6 like your average person. (according to the rules anyway. I think taking both with the +2 -1 die step is a cheating way to boost your running die even though your pace would still be normal!!
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#3 written by JourneymanGM 4 months ago
It’s true that a person with polio who becomes lame would be expected to be slower than the average person, olympic runner or not. However, The most common reason for these two Hindrances to collide is for a Fleet-Footed character to roll the “Leg” result on the Injury table, which is certainly not the same as contracting polio. Especially if their injury is temporary and they are recovering, it may be possible for them to still outpace a normal human (they’re just “working through the pain” or they have a bit of a limp).
Ultimately though, it may just be one of the quirks of the rules system. Perhaps in the future Pinnacle might change the wording to “Reduce your Running Die by two die steps, to a minimum of d4″, thus counteracting the Fleet-Footed Edge.
Tying this to the real world, there’s an interesting article here about a person who had been unable to move their legs for five years running a marathon, thanks to developments in neurotechnology.
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I have had to look up the grenade rule before. The person in question did not survive…
I love Savage worlds – although I still prefer deadlands classic when running that particular game – and the quick combat summary of actions is the page my rule books all fall open to. Well written and concise, in a way that makes sense to players and GMs.