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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Libertad" data-source="post: 9005804" data-attributes="member: 6750502"><img src="https://i.imgur.com/xU7JNyg.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />In what would seem like an odd out-of-order place, the Chapter after Finishing Touches* is Equipment, with Feats being the next part. I suppose that makes sense, as Feats only come into play at 2nd level whereas everyone needs and uses Equipment.*This chapter covers basic stuff like determining Passive Perception, how to calculate weapon attack and damage rolls, and suggested character-building material from motivations to virtues and flaws.Equipment in Everyday Heroes focuses primarily on the types of items that are likely to pop up in cinematic action franchises, given that a comprehensive list of modern technology would be next-to-impossible. However, there are three broad categories of Everyday Stuff which your character can presumably have provided they have access to the appropriate container: bag stuff (books, tissues, medication, things you keep in a purse or backpack), car stuff (spare tire, toolkit, road flares, that kind of stuff), and pocket stuff (wallet, smartphone, cash, ID cards, etc). Equipment Packs are themed sets of items common to certain archetypes and professions, which come with a Price Level requirement to buy all the goods. For example, a Hunter Pack has camouflaged clothing, survival and camping kits, a pickup truck or ATV, and a hunting rifle and large knife as weapons. They make for good “grab and go” gear for players that are prone to option paralysis. Furthermore, Specialized Kits are specific items required for certain tasks or jobs. They’re often used to negate disadvantage on ability checks, or to roll for them in the first place. There’s a good list of kits, ranging from a forensic Evidence Kit, First Aid Kit for all your non-emergency room healing needs, a Police Kit to show what stuff cops carry on their persons beyond handy-dandy handcuffs, and even a Welder’s Kit for those times you can’t rely on the party Brawler or explosives expert to cut through metal objects (or need to make repairs to your tank armor or something).Okay, so how does this RPG deal with carrying capacity? Well, by default it doesn’t and leaves it up to the GM to determine what makes plausible sense. But there’s an optional ruleset known as Bulk. Items have a Bulk rating between 0 to 4, with examples given for each value. A PC’s Bulk Limit is 5 plus their Strength modifier, and they become Encumbered* beyond this and Restrained if they end up double their limit. Bulk Limit can be increased with certain items, such as backpacks and combat harnesses, and there’s also a Pack Rat feat that can increase it further along with letting you pull items from such containers faster as a bonus action.*Condition where speed halved, cannot Dash, and disadvantage on Dexterity saves.In regards to weapons and armor, Everyday Heroes follows most of the core 5e rules, albeit with some changes. The first is that armor does not provide a bonus to one’s AC/Defense score. All armor has an Armor Value (AV), and all weapons have a Penetration Value (PV). If a character would be at 0 hit points from a weapon attack (GM discretion for other sources), they can make an armor saving throw at DC 10 or half the damage from the attack, whichever is higher, if the AV is equal to or greater than the PV. This save is an unmodified d20, but one can add proficiency bonus if wearing armor in which they are proficient. If the save succeeds, the character takes no damage at all but the armor is damaged instead and the armor provides disadvantage on further armor saving throws. If the character fails, they take full damage. As for shields, they instead only consider very tall riot shields and the like, which instead provide half cover vs melee attacks and three-quarters cover against ranged attacks. Or total cover if the wielder doesn’t move and crouches behind the shield. They too have Armor Values, and weapons that can penetrate it ignore the cover. Cover in Everyday Heroes does not add a static value to an existing Defense score. Half Cover provides 16 Defense, Three-Quarters provides 20 Defense, and Total Cover prevents a target from being attacked directly (although AoE effects can still hit them). A PC uses their Defense score if it would be higher; nobody loses Defense by going into cover!What this does is make armor a rather valuable piece of gear few PCs will regret wearing when it matters. Ironically it’s most beneficial to fragile PC types rather than high-HP bruisers, given that they’re more at risk of getting taken out of the fight from a dire hit. The major penalty is that most armor isn’t all-encompassing. Stab Proof Armor only defends against piercing and slashing damage, while Ballistic only defends against ranged attacks, and if you want to get armor with AV that can protect against firearms you’ll need either Advanced, Improvised, or Military Equipment proficiency (Basic and Historical only have AV 1 armors). Even then, some common firearms that pack a punch with a PV of 3 include shotguns, hunting and sniper rifles, and the majority of military equipment is going to bypass pretty much everything save a heavy ballistic vest (the best in the game) at AV 4. So the idea of avoiding death by a sniper’s bullet due to your bulletproof vest isn’t something you can rely on via RAW.There’s also the fact that since NPCs can wear armor, it can feel frustrating for PCs who would otherwise deal a killing blow to have that foe still standing, and if they get lucky enough on their armor saves may be able to keep fighting a few rounds after that. But on the other hand it does encourage PCs to rely on alternative means of damage, which helps prevent things from getting too monotonous.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/WKHGLqg.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Armor and weapon categories are split into 5 types: Basic Equipment (almost every archetype has this, includes easy to use items such as knives, stun guns, and double-barrel shotguns), Advanced Equipment (more specialized gear such as hatchets and sledgehammers, sniper rifles, and pump-action shotguns), Military Equipment (heavy-duty ordinance such as rocket launchers, machine guns, etc), Historical Equipment (pre-gunpowder era stuff such as swords and crossbows), and Improvised Equipment (includes both impractical objects as well as a broad variety of harmful terrain to push enemies into such as brick walls and industrial fans). Equipment proficiencies have a pseudo-skill tree progression: in order to become proficient with Advanced Equipment you must be proficient with Basic Equipment first, and for Military Equipment you must be proficient with both Basic and Advanced. Historical and Improvised Equipment only require Basic Equipment, and they have a handy Equipment Tree graphic in a later chapter to showcase this.One interesting decision change in comparison to D20 Modern is that for firearms, their default damage dice aren’t leagues and bounds better than non-firearm weapons. In D20 Modern most pistols did 2d6 damage, equivalent to a greatsword, while shotguns, rifles, and machine guns could vary from 2d8 to 2d12. In Everyday Heroes, most non-military firearms can be counted on doing 1d6 to 1d12 damage, with ones that depart from this being notably dangerous. Shotguns do 2d6, a sniper rifle is a punishing 2d8 (but is slow-firing meaning you can only attack once per round unless you have a Sharpshooter class feature to ignore it), and the most damaging military weapons are heavy machine guns and anti-material rifles at 2d10 each. Grenade and rocket launchers can do more (4d8 for frag grenades and 8d8 for missiles respectively) but they tend to have much bulkier ammunition and thus likely to be more limited-use. Guns are still an extremely useful category, but the advantage of using something like a crossbow or melee weapon is that they don’t have the Loud category, which basically makes the shot heard by everyone within a 2 mile radius. There are of course suppressors that get rid of this property, <s>but they tend to be Restricted, a property that prevents sale of the item save to PCs who have proper occupations or clearance to obtain them.</s>Edit: Suppressors don't have the Restricted property, at least not explicitly in the text. The only firearm that doesn't have the loud property is the Spec Ops SMG, which is Restricted (as is the regular SMG) much like the majority of other Military weapons.As for non-firearms, you still got a good selection. Unarmed strikes deal 1d4 bludgeoning and have the finesse and light properties, unlike in basic 5e. Basic melee weapons include clubs and knives of various sizes along with a stun gun, advanced gives you fire axes, hatchets, and a sledgehammer, and historical has the largest amount by far ranging from nunchucks to shurikens, sword canes, and whips. Additionally, a dedicated unarmed build can really crank up that damage die. It’s possible to deal 2d10 damage with an unarmed strike by level 9 with the right archetype and multiclass feats, and getting even a 1d6 or 1d8 is pretty simple if rather feat-intensive by middle levels. We also have weapons that can impose negative conditions, such as a stun gun (stunned), pepper spray (blinded), or tranquilizer rifle (Intoxication levels* by default, or possibly other poison types depending on what the PCs have access to). There are of course different explosive device types, which thankfully are spread out between equipment categories rather than all being loaded into Military. They include your typical damaging fragmentation grenade but also includes your harmless obscuring smoke grenades, C4 which can be set to detonate remotely, and your improvised molotov cocktails which deal fire damage and also impose the Burning condition on flammable materials.*New condition, similar to Exhaustion with mounting penalties.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/v9bPWj9.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />There are some weapons as well as features or stats that stand out or bear special mention: as mentioned under Scoundrel earlier, shotguns have advantage on targets within 30 feet and are the only weapons in the game with this quality; if slugs are used instead they lose this property but increase their PV by 2.* Only spears and whips, which are Historical weapons, have the reach property to hit targets up to 10 or 15 feet away respectively. Sniper Rifles, and a decent amount of Military Weapons, have very high ranges, measured in the high hundreds or even thousands of feet (for the rifles), whereas most other ranged weapons tend to range from 50-400. There’s still a noticeable range bump even for close-range firearms such as shotguns, so unlike traditional 5e it’s easier for battles to take place over a wider range of territory.*This gives shotguns a PV value of 5, which puts them on the same level as anti-material rifles and heavy machine guns!Automatic fire is represented via 2 properties: Burst where you expend some ammunition for a concentrated burst, and Full-Auto which is for machine guns and military equipment. Burst is aimed at one target, where you suffer disadvantage on the attack roll but deal one additional die of weapon damage if you hit. It’s not just for rifle and machine-gun style weapons, for a double-barrel shotgun can also Burst by firing both bullets. Full-Auto creates a wider AoE when using Suppressive Fire, a new action where you expend a lot of ammunition to create a cone-shaped AoE that automatically deals damage to anyone within the area that passes through or isn’t behind cover (you can Dive for Cover to avoid the damage).I’d like to shine some praise on one category in particular: Improvised Equipment. Improvised weapons are different in that you suffer disadvantage on attack rolls if you’re not proficient with them, meaning they’re typically used in desperation by the non-practiced. Although there are some specific weapons such as a salon flamer or chainsaw, the bulk of improvised weapons are grouped into general categories instead. Objects are weapons which you push, maneuver, or slam a target into and let it do most of the damage, like pushing over a library shelf or slamming someone into a brick wall. Things are more typical weapons, stuff you pick up and swing/stab/slash at a person. The damage types are variable based on what makes sense for the weapon, but a neat little feature is that all Things have the Thrown category, including Large Agonizing Things that deal 1d12 damage. The range peters off the heavier and thus more damaging the weapon is, but PCs who want to be throwing weapons specialists in Everyday Heroes would do well to focus on Improvised Weapons…and being a Brawler can’t hurt, either.Improvised Weapons is another neat feature of game design: by providing a quick and dirty table of Objects and Things, the GM has a handy reference for PCs who end up thinking outside the box in using the surrounding environment to damage enemies. Want to defenestrate someone? That’d be a Breakable Object for the glass window, plus the damage from falling! Want to slam a car door on someone’s head? That’s closer to an Unbreakable Object. What’s the damage and type for a concrete block? Most likely Medium Hurtful Thing (a printer is also Medium, an exercise bicycle is Large Agonizing).And before someone asks, using vehicles to damage people is part of the Vehicles section later on in the book.There is one thing I find strange with some categories. Revolvers are Basic Equipment, but 9mm pistols are Advanced. A double-barrel shotgun is Basic, but a pump-action is Advanced. Advanced Equipment includes sniper rifles and semiautomatic assault rifles (named tactical rifles in the game), but submachine guns and automatic rifles are military. While one could argue that handling automatic fire is more difficult, such weapons can still be used in a semiautomatic mode, meaning you have weird situations where you apply your proficiency bonus to a Smith & Wesson (revolver) but not a Beretta pistol (9mm), or where you can be more accurate with an AR-15 (a tactical rifle) but not an AK-47 (assault rifle) that is set to semi.I understand that these divisions are likely due to game balance as opposed to strict realism: in many cases the Advanced and Military Equipment have some pretty nice properties and/or damage upgrades in comparable weapons. Another strange thing is that there’s one weapon property I don’t see on any of the weapons: Unreliable. Unreliable weapons jam on a natural 1, requiring an action to clear the jam. I did a CTRL + F search through the book, and couldn’t find any other mention of this property in weapons or how it could be triggered. I presume it’s something that can be expanded on in other sourcebooks or for the GM to put on old and outdated gear. But by RAW, you don’t have to worry about gun jams at all in Everyday Heroes.Everything Else covers equipment that isn’t weapons, armor, or kits. They include a variety of neat gadgets and doo-dads, such as alternate ammunition (armor-piercing decreases damage die by 1 but Penetration Value by 2; weapons with AV 3 or higher have armor-piercing rounds incorporated into the stats by default), suppressors/silencers (eliminates the Loud property on firearms), various carrying cases to increase one’s Bulk limit, a diverse assortment of tools and electronics from hidden earpiece-microphones to zip ties, night vision goggles, and so on. In several cases the equipment has no special game rules, but some provide DC and advantage on rolls for likely uses, such as the DC for Athletics, Sleight of Hand, or Security checks to break out of handcuffs or duct tape. One oddity I spotted is that some protective gear provides damage reduction, while others you think would, don’t. For example, Winter Clothing provides DR 10 vs cold damage, while Gas Masks and HAZMAT suits don’t have any in-game benefit beyond what is inferred from the text. I presume they grant full immunity, but it does bring into question the likely scenario of a player attempting to argue that a gas mask should protect against some damage from the mad scientist’s flesh-eating toxic fumes.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/WxT8SDN.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Vehicles are an important part of daily life in the modern world as well as exciting chases in action films. And Everyday Heroes doesn’t disappoint, with a wide variety of vehicles separated into broad categories of Land, Boats, and Aircraft. Just about any common vehicle you can think of is written up here, from commercial cars and trucks, boats of all types, jet skis, helicopters, wingsuits, tractors, tanks, and even fighter jets along with vehicle-specific weapons and explosives for the military-grade stuff.Suffice to say for this last part, the Air to Ground Missile combined with a missile launcher is the most overpowered weapon in the game. It has a range of 50 miles and deals 20d6 damage in a 50 foot radius. Chances are most PCs aren’t going to have regular use of this in a typical campaign, but I’m pleasantly surprised that the designers felt the need to include it. Tank cannons aren’t as impressive but still have a respectable 8d6 damage with a range of 4k/8k.Vehicles use slightly different rules from other objects. Notably, they all have their own physical ability scores, listed solely as modifiers. Strength represents acceleration and top speed, Dexterity represents how well it handles, and Constitution represents its durability upon taking damage. Vehicles do not have hit point values, and their Armor Values let them ignore damage from all weapons with an equal or lower Penetration Value. If they would be damaged, they make a Constitution save with a DC equal to half the attack’s damage rounded down. A successful save damages a random vehicle part which imposes negative conditions on the vehicle’s performance, while a failed save imposes the Totaled condition which is basically the “death” status for a vehicle. While rules for vehicles in chases and combat are detailed in a later chapter, just looking at these values allows me to make some interesting thought experiments.The Armor Value of most civilian vehicles is 2 or less, with 3 being for a bulldozer or armored car. A prison bus is 2, a SWAT van is 3, and an APC is 4. Interestingly a fighter jet’s AV is 2, and only an airliner has a value of 3. The only vehicles that have AVs less than 2 are fragile ones such as motocross bikes, motorboats, and hot air balloons. In some cases the Constitution bonus can make up for an otherwise low AV. The Constitution bonus of the common car is +2, but an RV is +5 yet they both have the same AV of 2. SWAT vans have +6 to their Constitution, but a bus or bulldozer has an amazing +8. The Tank has the best AV as well as Constitution bonus in the game at 5 and +10 respectively. For some aircraft, airliners have 3 AV and +7 Constitution, fighter jets have 2 AV and +4 Constitution, with helicopters a mere 2 AV and +1 Constitution. As for military-style helicopters such as the Apache or Blackhawk, they merely have machine guns equipped, which is…an odd choice. You’d think they’d recommend a higher AV or something!What this means is that vehicles can end up surprisingly fragile for attacks that do manage to penetrate their AV. However, they’re going to be immune to most melee attacks, as the PV values of melee weapons range from 0 to 2. So if you were hoping to do something like swinging a sledgehammer to total a car, you’re out of luck. Unless, of course, you’re a Brawler.A 5th-level Brawler using a Sledgehammer (1d12 damage, PV 2) gives it +1 PV, and with an 18 Strength <a href="https://anydice.com/program/9a9b" target="_blank">they can deal on average 40 damage at least 52% of the time if they Smash with a Power Attack.</a> Or 45 damage at least 26.43% of the time, and 32 damage 88.62% of the time. Even with 32 damage that is still a DC 16 save, so if they hammer your average Sedan it has a 65% chance of being Totaled just from that result.But for some less superheroic maneuvers, a 16 Dexterity PC who Bursts with a double-barreled shotgun has a 90% chance of doing at least 10 damage, 74% to do at least 12, and 50% to do at least 14. That’s a much easier DC range from 5 to 7, but the Penetration Value is at a respectable 3. The fragile helicopter has a 30% chance of being totaled from a 14 damage shotgun blast, but a SWAT van cannot fail even on a natural 1.But what if the shotgunner had a damage-scaling ability, such as Vital Strike or Weak Spot? <a href="https://anydice.com/program/3708" target="_blank">Let’s presume they’re 5th level to give them an additional 3d6.</a> Now they have about a 90% chance of doing at least 19 damage, 72% to do 22, and 45% to do 25. This boosts our DC range to 9, 11, and 12. The helicopter’s chances are looking a bit slimmer at being Totaled at 50% from the most damaging option, but the SWAT van has a possible but uncommon 25% chance.So this has some implications for game design. On the one hand, it can make PCs feel like big friggin’ action heroes. A well-placed bullet shot to wreck a car’s engine (or ignite its gas tank) is definitely in-genre, and you can have a sniper assassin headshot a guy sitting next to an airliner’s window seat with the rules for targeting vehicle passengers and Armor Values. However, it is swingier than using hit points as a gauge for monitoring vehicle health, and also has the side effect of making many characters able to take more punishment than an armored car. I’m aware that hit points aren’t solely “blood and meat,” and it does reinforce the types of stories Everyday Heroes emphasizes, but it’s an odd side effect of the rules for gamers who expect an airplane to take much more gunfire than a high-level Tough Hero.<img src="https://i.imgur.com/C04hgEw.png" alt="" class="fr-fic fr-dii fr-draggable " data-size="" style="" />Our equipment chapter rounds out with Useful Places, basically being private headquarters and safe houses for PCs to chill at or work on projects. There are 7 different types which have their own Place Level and corresponding Price Level. Generally speaking, the higher the Place Level the better-quality it is. For instance, an Armory has easy access to weapons whose Price Level increases with Place Level, a Safe House/Room’s DC to locate increases with Place Level, while a Home’s Place Level indicates its overall size and quality of living ranging from small apartments to mansions.Thoughts So Far: The equipment in Everyday Heroes is wide-ranging with a lot of variety. While there are still weapons and armor that are no-brainer options or clearly better than others, the amount on display as well as their diversity really makes them feel different in tactics and fighting styles so you don’t end up with something like “a rifle is a pistol that deals more damage.” I am a fan of giving unarmed strikes the finesse and light qualities as well as a decent starting damage die, things which in hindsight feel unintuitive to not have in default 5th Edition. Some individual peculiarities aside, I don’t have much in the way of complaints.Join us next time as we wrap up character creation with Feats!</blockquote>

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