Freelance Traveller

by Ken Murphy

This article originally appeared in Issue #012, December 2010, of the downloadable PDF magazine.

For several years I had wanted to include Superdense weapons as something of a “magic weapon” analog in my Traveller game.

If the character had done something remarkable during character generation, like receiving the SEH, or retiring after 7 or more terms of exemplary service, I’d usually decide that one of the things received when a weapon benefit reared its head, would be a Superdense melee weapon; most often in the form of a cutlass for the marines, or a hanger (essentially a cutlass under a different name) for the other military services. In addition, both veterans and non-military types that managed to have their SOC increased to 11+ during character generation would also be eligible for one of these.

So SD weapons were in. I just needed to decide on their differences from the book-standard melee weapons, so I broke out Striker and checked the values for assorted materials.

Looking at the table, I was reminded that there were other high tech materials besides Superdense, and I suddenly remembered reading where the Body Pistol was usually constructed of ceramics and the like to act as a sort of “stealth” gun to escape standard detection. Hmmm, constructing weapons out of ceramics and other composites to avoid detection makes a lot of sense to me—certainly one that could easily be applied to melee weapons. Okay, so now it seemed both SD and Composites would be included along with the book-standard stuff.

But if you’re including those, I can hear someone ask,what about Crystaliron then? Okay, I guess Crystaliron would logically be another option, unless of course, you’re working under the assumption that the TL 10 material is already the book standard.

So looking at the Striker table, using hard steel as a reference point, things seemed to break down like so:

Out of curiosity, I decided to look at the MegaTraveller armor material table to see what that yielded. Serves me right for looking in the first place, as, aside from me being able to reliably set values of 1 for both the weight and price of Hard Steel, it held nothing in common with Striker’s table.

I was in a pickle, I’ll tell you, but then I remembered having a copy of Fire, Fusion, and Steel on disc, so I decided to check that to see if its information would lean one way or another toward either of the above-listed tables (or whether I’d have yet another set of conclusions).

It seemed FF&S matched Striker pretty closely, so I dumped the MegaTraveller info as the most unlike of the three (even though it would have given lighter weights for things), and ended up going with the Striker values, as the TL 9 and 10 materials actually had different prices according to Striker.

Working from the assumption that book-standard gear is essentially some form of unremarkable, though durable TL 9 (or below) Hard Steel, I figured, along with the weight and price adjustments for the different materials, there ought to be some cool, rulesy stuff attached to the use of each, so here goes:

Light Weight Composites are durable and can keep an edge.

Besides weight and price differences, Composite weapons have the same performance as standard weapons in most cases, however, because of their lack of weight when used in bludgeoning weapons, they have 1 less Pen and do 1pt less Damage than standard.

Besides weight and price differences, Crystaliron weapons have 1 better Pen than standard. Some of the better-quality Crystaliron weapons also have 1 better Block than standard.

Besides weight and price differences, Super Dense weapons have 1 1/2x Pen, have 1 better Block, and deliver 1 better Damage than standard. Some of the better quality SD weapons have 2 better Block than standard.

Of course, better quality means higher prices, with real quality items being out of the ball park.