12 Homebrew Rules For Cyberpunk Red
ฝัง
- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 9 ก.ค. 2024
- www.patreon.com/jonjonthewise
Join our community discord!
/ discord
Follow me on Social Media
@jonjonthewise
Timestamps:
00:00 Intro
01:23 My Thoughts On Homebrew and RAW
02:40 Luck Check
04:54 Cool Check
07:18 Homebrew Weapon Damage
09:21 "Local Expert" Changes
10:52 Rest Healing
11:40 Stun Saves
12:34 No NPC Death Saves
13:07 Critical Success/Failure
15:31 Lore: Vehicle Availability
17:26 The 3 Goon Method
18:31 Police Response Time
20:56 My Economy Rules
23:06 Outro - เกม
He said my NAME :D
It's really interesting how DMs mind work alike, I've been watching your videos lately because I was getting ready to run my first CPR campaign, but It's my first time watching this one video, last week I ran the first session of said campaign, and my first ever CPR session, the party had to infiltrate a Corpo night club and rescue a Doll, naturally the party's Netrunner scanned for an access point, and they found one near one of the bar's table, the club was pretty crowded so the players wanted to sit near the access point so the Netrunner could invade the system, and the Netrunner asked me "Is the table near the point taken?" I didn't wanted to just give It to them like that, but I also didn't want to just block their advance arbitrarily so, stumbling with the rules I just pull It out of nowhere: Roll a d10 and check against your luck! Lo and behold, he had a 2 on luck and passed, the table was free and they were able to access the point. It was an amazing simple moment of tension and cheering, and then I come here a week later to check on some homebrews and the first thing you say is your luck roll rule haha.
I really like the idea of a Cool roll being used as basically a Renegade/Paragon Interrupt. Awesome video choom!
19:00 JonJon raises an interesting point here that I had not considered. The response time of Backup works neither in game mechanics nor realism. It's trying to serve two masters and arguably failing at both. Dividing the time in half is a very good solution for the mechanical side. Maybe we should have two response times: one short response time to use during combat and one longer response time to use outside of combat.
Me and my players had trouble wrapping our heads around this too when we first started playing. I eventually told my players that the short response time is because the Lawman has ALREADY called in his Backup (in the abstract) and they are only waiting for his signal (i.e., when he actually uses the ability).
@@theeffete3396 I know I'm late to this conversation, but just wanted to say I really like your explanation for how calling in backup works. The fact the lawman has *already* called for his backup before the situation happened and they are just waiting for his signal makes it far more feasible that they could arrive in literally seconds after being called. Kudos to you, choomba! I'm going to use this explanation too for my players.
For weapon damage, if you want to keep the same average damage as the type, drop the damage dice down by 1, and give it a +3 or +4. Reduces your critical chance, but increases your damage floor. Example: Assault rifle goes from 5d6 to 4d6+3 damage. I am experimenting with a weapon list that has lots of variants of each weapon with little changes like this, all while keeping cost, rarity, etc the same.
Great idea. I always like homebrew that gives and takes.
I add +1 to + 5 depending the brand and quality of the gun.
AND... i added the 3 Shoots again... adding one more dice to the damage.
SMG 3d6 if you shoot burst of 3... its 4d6.
Simple.
@@pablojuega2089 Very cool! I added a similar burst mechanic that I am experimenting with for handguns. Might use it for SMGs too! As for adding damage on top of the base damage, I do that for exotics and specialty weapons. I do find that increasing that number too can lead to player power creep.
My favorite homebrew rule I've implemented is a change to cover:
When you enter cover, you let the GM know if you're completely hunkered down or if you're peeking out/blind firing, and that lasts until your next turn. If you're hiding completely, then you're effectively blind and will have to move at least a little before you take a shot (I also instituted a -2 penalty if you move before taking a shot). If you're peeking out or propping your weapon on the cover, then it requires an aimed shot to hit you in whatever part of the body is exposed. The downside is that if an explosion goes off nearby and you had your head poking out of cover, then that damage goes straight to your head. If any Critical Injuries show up that apply to the wrong body part, we just re-roll until we get one that makes more sense.
What is the purpose of the -2 penalty to shooting after moving?
I just didn't get into it in the first comment, but I add a -2 penalty for a number of things. For example shooting after moving (but also anyone shooting at you after you move suffers -2 as well), that's meant to make movement sort of a defensive thing. You get the same penalty if you draw your weapon on the same round that you attack with it, and also if you're fully in cover before popping out to shoot. I also add a bunch of other situational bonuses and penalties to encourage a more dynamic style of combat, like a John Woo movie. TBH I mostly just copied the penalties and bonuses from CP2020 and adjusted the numbers a little.
I also add a new action, "Catch Your Breath" where if you succeed on a DV13 Concentration check you can reroll your initiative. I run with a bunch of homebrew rules.
Sounds cool, thanks for sharing
I have a whole document of CPR houserules /alternate Role abilities. A couple of the more accessible ones are:
* Greater Luck: a skill check can be modified AFTER the roll, but it costs 2 Lucks points per +1 bonus.
* Crawling: By RAW, a character cannot move while Prone, meaning technically they cannot crawl. I fixed this by making Get Up use 2 "squares" of Move (or 4 yds) instead of requiring an Action. Crawling is then factored the same as swimming, climbing, or jumping.
* Friendlier Cyberware: The minimum Humanity Loss of any piece of chrome is equal to number of dice used to roll for HL in the first place. So if HL is 1d6, Therapy can reduce it 1 ; 3d6 can be reduced to 3 ; etc. If the chrome has an HL of "1d6÷2", then HL can be reduced to 0 with Therapy.
Rolling under luck would be hilarious for my party
We all have luck stat of 3
😅
I will almost always go with rules as written. But i've played D&D 3.5 and 5e, Pathfinder 1 & 2, mutants and Masterminds, Invulnerable RPG, Starfinder, cyberpunk RED, Shadowrun 6e, Shadow of the Beanstalk, VeloCITY, and a few others i can't remember the names of.
I think i have a good understanding of how the strings of balance are put together, and how to pull those strings. It has led to using quite a lot of homebrew, despite hating it in the past do to many bad experiences.
I grew an understanding of what was a "game rule" and what was a "meta rule" if that makes sense. "Game rules" make the system fun. "Meta rules" exist so that some players don't ruin that fun.
It's a gross oversimplification.
Happy New Year to all you Edgerunners! Here is to the probably approaching release of BlackChrome. 🥂
Great video, choom! Recently came across your videos after getting interested in Cyberpunk Red once again, and they've all been extremely helpful. Thanks for doing what you do, and all the nova content!
Since we're playing a Scifi-Spacetravel Campaign in Red, we just adjusted the general size of Local Expert to a Planet (Urban) or (Wilderness). The skill must somehow fit the size and type of campaign you're dealing with.
thanks a lot for sharing! I found most of them very helpful actually. Especially the Cool and Luck Check, this is always were i find trouble finding the right stat for my players to use
I changed the rules for autofire to be a little bit more rewarding.
You roll both your weapon skill and your autofire skill against the standard range table:
- If the weapon skill roll doesn't succed, you miss.
- If only the weapon skill roll succeds, you hit the target but you are not able to control the recoil. Roll the normal weapon damage (still loosing the 10 pieces of ammo)
- If both rolls succed, you can roll damage with the double amount of dice. Before you roll, you can decide if you concentrate the dice on a single target - dramatically increasing the likeliness of a critical hit - or distribute the d6's on up to three close standing targets.
I ref 2020, but our house rules for faster combat are to throw 1d10, 1d20, and 1d6 at the same time.
All weapons 4d6 and under are 1d10 to hit, 1d20 for damage, 1d6 for location. Weapons 5d6 and up, add your d10 roll to your d20 roll for damage.
I use Luck for pushed rolls (burn 1 luck per push.)
Fail a roll? Accept the fail, or push; roll at or under luck, you get lucky and succeed despite yourself (optional cool check to save face.)
Failed the luck roll? Fumble table. Failing from a nat 1 is +1 on your fumble roll.
That said, YMMV; my table is basically Metal Gear Solid x Totally Spies, and their NPC friends, a full borg Brock Samson playing Han Solo, and a bootleg Mary from No Guns Life.
Our GM already does the Luck check, but the Cool check is certainly something I'll bring up with him. I love how it can be used for awesome narrative moments to make it smooth and less bogged down from all the intricate rolls, to one success/fail roll. The homebrew weapon damage is a fantastic concept, especially as someone whose character uses handguns that rarely get past the armor in damage, doing more base damage is *chefs kiss*.
So much of this video was interesting and gave me many ideas as a player and things to pass on to my GM. Thanks for the video JonJon. Keep doing what you do
Great video as always!
Thank you for your videos! It helps a lot!
Im coming in late to your series of videos by about a year. Ive been designing my own game system and Ive found that it seems to be a more streamlined version of this system. Ive enjoyed all your content on it and alot of these homebrew rules are core in my game. Its kind of validating i guess. Great work! Sorry Im so late to the party.
I would do critical and fumbles similar to Pathfinder 2E. If you don't know about it, it is a DnD game based off 3rd edition, so a D20 system. In that game if you succeed at a check and roll more than 10 you need that is a critical success, so for example lets say you needed a 25 to hit a NPC, you roll and your total comes up to be 36. That would be more than 10 over your target so critical success. Same for failure, same example above if you rolled a 14 or lower you would critical fail.
For cyberpunk being a d10 system you could do something similar but make it by 5. So roll more than 5 over your target critical success, or 5 under a critical failure.
What I like about that is it is easy to remember and rewards people that are very skilled at something, as they are far more likely roll over that, but on the flip side takes into account something that should be very hard. So if you give them a target of 25 to accomplish a really hard task they would need a 31 to critical, but if it is a easy task and they only need a 12 to accomplish it, a really skilled player would critical succeed at that a lot more. Which I personally like better.
Anyways just thought i would share this info with you and see what you think.
Some great ideas! Good video.
The cool and luck rolls are very good ideas. As a DnD player most part of my life, the combat rounds and time in Cyberpunk are quite fast, basically, compared to DnD is half the time. The cost of things I use something similar, but the different prices are changed according to the NPC that the players meet, for example, my current group met a weapons traficker quite important, so he charges a lil bit more for the stuff. The most home brew that I like is the goon levels, that can make the combat prep and dynamics way better💪
My personal take on the "roll cool to do this cool thing" homebrew rule is that if a PC wants to do some cool stuff, that check shouldn't just be limited to cool, but the other stats depending on what they are trying to do. The reason I say this is because of how cool is treated in RED compared to how it works in 2020.
In 2020, cool is a measure of a character's ability to keep a cool head. It was the stat which influenced resist torture/drugs, staying cool in a gunfight or interrogation. Actual social skills (seduction, persuade, etc.) were mostly covered by appearance, so cool was for situations which require keeping your cool, which aids in doing cool stuff.
Since RED changed how the stats work, keeping your cool is now covered by concentration which is rolled with will. Both appearance and cool have been merged together and act as a character's "people-skills". The cool roll to do cool stuff makes sense on paper, but that also implies that a character will be better at doing cool things depending on how attractive and good with people they are. That's not always the case - not every PC is James Bond!
I'd argue that a borged-up solo with 2 cool and more muscle mass than King Kong would be just as able to kick a guy under the table than a corporate with 8 in cool and 3 in dex. You don't need to be a stylish cool guy to do cool guy stuff, but since we're all about style over substance in the dark future, It would certainly help!
i only use a few homebrews: a mechanic for each 3 you beat an attack TN by giving a reroll of one of the damage dice, no extra damage but higher chance for good rolls, it does slow combat down a little though
a few others are going prone giving malus to hit someone, but it's balanced out by a bonus from not moving that turn (i have added an aim action that takes your move action for a small attack bonus to synergize with this, though it gets little use)
finally there is partial cover, when cover can be bypassed with precision shots, but you can also fire from it, this is also fairly uncommon to come across
Cyberpunk RED released before Cyberpunk 2077 right? I didn't play 2077 but I know initially the police would spawn right behind you within seconds of a crime (outside of your field of vision) so maybe RED predicted this! In the future Night City just 3D prints police men behind crooks for the fastest possible response time.
I've been playing RED since Edgerunners came out and I really love it, but it sorely needs homebrew rules. Just a few things I had to make rules for were silencers and red-dot sights since they seem totally absent in the game.
Neat video! Many of these things make so much sense, though I can still understand why the game was designed the way it was. Your Night City Council videos are an awesome helping tool to understand the game and get us to the point where we can learn what rules to break. Keep up the good work! Lastly, what’s the coolest thing you’ve printed for your Cyberpunk game?! I’ve done vend-its and similar scenery stuff, concrete barriers, etc, but nothing else really.
I’m just getting into printing so I don’t have a lot printed yet. Thanks for the support choom
@@JonJonTheWise soon enough you'll have a print farm like me, multiple machines, FDM and Resin, printing minis and terrain and vehicles!! Such a fun hobby! Glad to see more people getting into it!
Hey Jonjon! Great video as usual! Would you ever consider putting these points/ rules into a pdf or document to easier access? I would love to have a document I could refer to for the rules you come up with/ add to keep the game fresh? Keep up the great vids, man!
Ya maybe in the new future! Thank you choom
Jonjon actually got featured in March's DLC for Cyberpunk RED for his homebrew rules, and a lot of this video got in there. Congrats Jonjon! TH-cam hates linking but if you google 'cyberpunk RED dlc' it will take you to R. Talsorian's page where they give out free RED rules and ideas every month!
Intriguing, this is pretty much how I treat my dnd rules. I can’t wait to get my group of punks playing lmao
Ok couple of homebrew rules that I'm toying with - 1 - burst fire - if you have an autofire capable weapon it can fire a burst - 3 bullets = 1d6 extra damage - 2 to use burst or autofire you need to have both hands on your gun unless you have a cyberarm or body over 10 - 3 - partial cover/concealment - increase dv to hit by 2. Would these be OK at your table?
Police in Cyberpunk respond to crimes faster than real life cops. Maybe it's cause it's a fellow cop calling in
about crit I wanna try a mix between pathfinder and cyberpunk... basicly if you roll 1 or 10 you need to confirm it so you'll have to roll cool vs stat. you can guess how it would work:
nat 1, if you roll over stat you suffer a critical failure if you roll under you keep your dignity
nat 10, if you roll over your cool stat no one noticed, if you roll under you get to ask the player how he wants to pose/flavor his roll
That’s nice!
I found the oposite problem with lawmen: easy access to backup 1/2 of the time makes combats trivial to the rest of the party and makes it a mini game between the gm and the lawnen while everyone else wauts for their turn. No player enjoys being saved by npc's... this is the worst feature of cyberpunk.
Hi there! These are some great homebrew rules that address balance issues and introduce interesting mechanics. I actually missed this video when I commented on your latest one the other day. It's a bit disheartening to see that you and your players have also noticed some glaring flaws, such as the car scarcity paradox in a place like Night City and the problematic police response times in deadly combat situations, considering the role of the Lawmaker ability. In a setting characterized by severe scarcity, it should resemble something more akin to Mad Max, with improvised weapons, intense competition for gasoline, and scarcity of cars, among other things. These are the aspects that should have been addressed better or revamped for this modern Red Edition.
The entire idea is weird, right? I sports, we don't see a team visiting the Yankees and beging told, "In our ballpark, the designated hitter gets four strikes instead of three." Homebrew rules are something we find only in this hobby, almost exclusively. Yet, people feel entitled, even pressured, into modifying the games in ways AND NONE OF THAT IS BAD. A lot of games do genuinely feel more fun when modified to the tastes of each group.
My own stance on house rules in this game is very skeptical. There are two reasons for this. One is entirely practical, and I mentioned it earlier: I want to not create an inaccurate impression of the game for new players who are participating (and there are always new players at my table) or may be watching.
My second reason is mostly personal: When the game came out, I found way, way too many people declaring their own home rules to fix the game without trying the rules as written. Clearly, none of this was getting playtesters before sharing and thus had dubious usefulness. It was just jerks posting with the expectation that other gamers would fawn and respond , "You're so much smarter and cooler than that the professional who spent years developing and playtesting this product "
All of that said, I have no problem with any of the specific rules in this this video. I recently called for a Luck Roll in a game I ran after hearing JonJon previously explain it. (I ultimately settled on a similar rule with the same narrative effects but different mechanics.)
Since I analyzed (and maybe over-analyzed) some home rules of others, I will stick out my own digital neck.
My Luck Rule: To make Luck more viable and interesting, I allow two other usages. For one, I allow players to spend Luck Points after they roll their dice, like in the old D6 games by West End. Yes, this makes Luck very powerful, and I don't have a problem with that since Luck is a scare commodity anyway. Also, I call on players to spend their luck points when they want narrative favors. In JonJon's example of the gas can, instead of having a die roll, I would say, "Yeah, there can be a gas can in the trunk -- if you spend a Luck Point." This gives the players a sense of narrative control over the game that might run a little counter to R Talsorian 's design philosophies but feels very satisfying to you get players familiar with more narrative games.
Armor Depletion: I'm still playtesting this twist, but I inverted the RAW rule about armor depletion. In RAW, armor depletes only when it's penetrated. I find that this means heavily armored characters can pretty much ignore incoming damage and walk around with no cost to their hot points nor their armor until somebody gets lucky and scores a critical hit. Instead, I deplete armor when a roll does Not beat the Stopping Power. When the armor is doing its job, it gets used up. When it gets bypassed, the damage is to the character instead of the armor. This means characters with low damage weapons can contribute in a meaningful way even if they cannot take down bosses by themselves.
The Rando-Matrix: Hacking cyberware will always be controversial In Red. My compromise was to make a chart. Some targets have hackable cybernetic parts or hackable gear. Some do not. Some have to be hacked in certain ways like how Sasquatch had to use a data cable and direct connection to hack V in 2077. The chart probably needs more balancing and tweaking, but I uploaded it to JonJon's Discord server a while back.
Great video ! How much do you reduce the price of the vehicles? yes 35k is really a lot for a basic car but 125k seems fine to me for an elite corporate AV-9.
Thank you! I have vehicles priced from 1k to 200k depending on its condition, manufactured year, brand, etc
Just had a thought--- Death Saves could be against BODY or WILL, whichever is HIGHER as they both contribute to HP...
what do you do with brand or quality of cybernetics is that a thing or am i just making it more complicated
Hey Jonjon, I've always been curious about if there's any parts of Cyberpunk RED that you don't like because of personal knowledge. As someone who is learning IT and Cybersecurity the Netrunning as a whole just feels so much like just a video game or something because it's so different from how it actually works. has that ever happened to anyone at your groups? Like an actual technician or someone who understands a mechanic in the game in a deeper level in reality been displeased with how it works in RED? Awesome video as always.
There are plenty of elements in the game that are not realistic. But that’s fine by me because I am not trying to simulate reality. I’m just trying to have fun playing a game. There has to be an element of realism though and I think the game covers those bases well enough
many of these elements indeed only offer abstractions of how these things actually work. Netrunning as a whole never represented how information is transmited digitally even back in the dark future 2020s.
This mosly happens because these mechanics are made by, and for people without foreknowledge of the field of expertise, and the design decision leading to a specific vibe during play. I find the way Red words things is very clever, since this abstraction is intrinsic to most mechanics, and the "reality" of how things are happening is left up for the player's imagination, description, or up for the referee to narrate.
This has setbacks and advantages, but the alternative would be even more bookeping during game sessions, which isnt ideal for fast and loose games like Red. There are systems out there for it though.
I did once see a game which had a more realistic concept of digital security based on real world concepts, and it did not look fun to play at all, at least not to me. Cyberpunk has its roots firmly growing in the early cyberpunk literature, like the Nueromancer. The authors of those stories knew basically nothing about computers, even back then in the early 1980s when cybersecurity was not yet a real thing.
None of this means that any changes you would make are bad. We're just talking about deviations from the design intentions.
What changes did you have in mind?
That's because the early architects of the Net purposely designed it to have a visual aspect. When your avatar reaches out and grabs a sprite representing a file, it's essentially no different than right-clicking your mouse and selecting 'download.'
All the code is already written and installed on your cyberdeck, then represented through the GUI of the Net.
Your awesome
I'm gonna look into homebrewing something for dual/quadruple wielding, it doesn't feel satisfying to be able to wield multiple weapons but only shoot one of them per round, but it would also break the combat balance to just allow you to fire all your weapons every round as long as you have the hands for it. Gotta find the right way to do that though.
My DM does a -4 to hit while attacking with two weapons
Well you can shoot more than one in a round if both weapons have a ROF of 2. Including other attacks with ROF 2 like melee, brawling, (excluding grabs and throw ect.) and basic Martial Arts (excluding special moves with ROF 1).
@@rolandkushm.d.710 That sounds good enough for most instances (most 1 handed guns are 2rof), but if you get the 4 armed borgware it gets tricky, and i intend on making an npc to showcase the allure for players of going 4 arms
@@WillKazeOh ok. The phrasing used above confused me. But yes quadruple wield is not covered.
That's going to take a while lot of playtesting to find the balance you want. Good luck with ot
Call of Cthulhu uses luck the same way
Any good homebrews for autofire? Its really lackluster.
I’m working on something but need to do further testing
Do you roll under Luck or current Luck? Both would make sense somehow
I do under your luck, not current luck.
@@JonJonTheWise Ah cool! Current Luck could be used to simulate you running out of Luck a bit, but then it becomes a one and done deal I guess...
I do this with the 2020 rules. I roll under current luck. If you used your luck you're SOL -- litterally.
Crap i thought i was big shit being Jon the Weise, 🤕 second fiddle
I do a variation of the Luck roll, but using current Luck over max. Lower is better, sure, but if you land exactly on your current luck, you'll get what you're looking for, plus a little extra.
I've also done a quick and dirty quickhack system for Netrunners. Basically quickhacks = to your number of NET actions. 1 meat action, Interface roll, target does Resist Torture/Drugs. On failure, the quickhack goes off, mostly small damage and/or status effects on target.
Quickhanks. Man. If you want to start a flame war on Reddit, just mention that you allow hacking of cyberware in Red. I understand the desire for it, but frankly I have never seen a mechanic for it that I did not hate.
Edit: That said, I kind of did the same thing myself. There was such a demand for it at my table that I created a compromise. Every potential targets has a chance of being hackable. I made a chart. Some are not hackable at all. Some are hackable only by direct access like when Sasquatch hacked V in 2077 using a data cable. Others have their own portable NET Architectures that can be netdived. Lastly, there are the idiots walking around broadcasting wireless signals with nothing to protect them from random Netrunner's on the street but a password. Because it's a compromise, everybody hates it. The gamers who want cybernetics to be hackable want to hack everyone, and the gamers who think that's stupid or unbalanced want no one to be hackable ever. In playtesting, I've had mixed results. The main problem seems to me that it adds an extra die roll because the Netrunner will absolutely scan every NPC in the game before even speaking to them, but I guess that's better than digital combat against every NPC in the game which is what would happen if I simply opened the gates and made cyberware hackable.
Your take on the Luck roll seems like fun though.