Mass Effect: From the Ashes House Rules

Mass Effect: From the Ashes
GM
Mark
Game Time
Pre-production
Characters
TBD
Setting
The Citadel and Galactic Governance Council Races Factbook Rise of Corporations · Rise of Dragons The Matrix · Technological Advancements
Resources
House Rules · Character Gen Rules

General Notes

• The general setting of Shadowrun has carried over
• All Magic-related references, Qualities, equipment, spells, lore, and other rules are removed
• All gear is subject to GM veto for failing to be appropriate to the Mass Effect setting

Character Generation

Character Generation will deviate some from the main SR5 rules. Click the title link above for a step-through.

New Game Mechanics

Lucky Break

Lucky Break is a single-use equivalent to using Edge. A player may receive this due to background, story, or in-game play. A player may have no more than one Lucky Break at a time. If another Lucky Break is awarded while one is unspent, it goes away.

Lucky Break may be spent in the same way Edge is spent. Unlike Edge, Lucky Break goes away and does not refresh in the same way Edge does. A player may not use both Lucky Break and Edge at the same time.

New Skills

Active Combat Skills

These Omni-Weapon skills cover the new omni-weapons rules.

• Omni-Blade
• Omni-Bow (Light, Medium, and Heavy)
• Omni-Flamer
• Omni-Grenades (All minigrenades produced by omni-tool)

Species Change

TBA

New Gear

Omni-Tool

The venerable omni-tool is still around and in wide use. The standard omnitool combines numerous pieces of equipment from the Gear section in SR5. All characters have an omnitool and its cost is the cost of the commlink purchased with it. (See p. 439)

• Commlink (integrated into omni-tool; you still must pay for this)
• Credit account access (all transactions are wireless and digital)
• Your idenitification (SIN numbers)
• Camera
• Image-link
• Directional microphone
• Omni-directional microphone
• Flashlight
• Minifacturing fabricator
  • This can make small hand-held tools if the blueprints are licensed

Common upgrades:

• Medigel applicator (trauma and stim patches in SR5)
• Many gear items (sensors, small hand-held items, security, breaking and entering) can be used to 'upgrade' the omni-tool. There are too many items for a complete list; ask the GM.

Omni-tools have an omni-gel reserve of 100 units. This can be upgraded:

Device	Availability	Cost	Notes
Omni-gel (per unit)	--	1	Widely available in most settled areas
Omni-gel reservoir (Rating 1-6)	Rating x 4	Rating x 5,000	Each rating adds +50 units to the reservoir

Weaponized Omni-Tools

• Omnitools may also be upgraded with various weaponry. However, due to the larger use of omni-gel used, as well as built-in limitations, an omnitool may only support a certain number of weapons. An omnitool can support two (2) weapon "slots", though some weapons take up both slots.
• Omnitool weaponry require special skills to use. (See new skills on this page)
• Omnitool ammunition is created from the omnigel reservoir using a licensed blueprint and the minifacture fabricator. This is the 'Omni-gel per use' column. The blueprint license for the ammo comes with the purchase of the omni-weapon license (License Cost column).
• With the exception of the omniblade, all omni-tool weaponry comes with a cooldown before being triggered again. The 'Cooldown' column refers to how often per round it can be used. Slashes indicate skipped rounds. For example, 1/2 means one use every two rounds.

Device	Omni-tool slots	Omni-gel per use	Availability	License Cost	Cooldown	Notes
Omni-blade	1	1	7R	200	(unlimited)	Acts as combat knife (p. 423).
Omni-bow (light)	1	5	2	300	1	Acts as light crossbow firing a bolt (p. 424)
Omni-bow (medium)	2	5	4R	500	1	Acts as medium crossbow firing a bolt (p. 424)
Omni-bow (heavy)	2	5	8R	1000	1	Acts as heavy crossbow firing a bolt (p. 424)
Fragmentation minigrenade	2	100	11F	2000	1/2	Acts as fragmentation grenade (p. 435)
High explosive minigrenade	2	100	11F	2000	1/2	Acts as high explosive grenade (p. 435)
Smoke minigrenade	2	40	4R	800	1/2	Acts as smoke grenade (p. 435)
Thermal smoke minigrenade	2	60	6R	1200	1/3	Acts as thermal grenade (p. 435)
Flamer	2	40	16F	2300	1/2	Acts as Shiawase Blazer (Run & Gun pp. 49-50)

Muses

See Technological Advancements article for a description of muses.

Muses have the following attributes all at 3: Reaction, Willpower, Logic, Intuition, Charisma

Muses have the following derived attributes:

• Intiative 6 + 3d6 (muses are assumed to always be in cold-sim)
• Mental Limit 4
• Social Limit 3
• Physical Limit N/A
• Matrix Damage Limit 10

Muses have the following skills:

• Academic Knowledge: Psychology (specialization: user's species) 3
• Professional Knowledge: Accounting 3
• Hardware 1
• Software 1
• Computer 2
• Perception 2
• Plus 3 other Knowledge skills at 2

For all other unlisted attributes (e.g. Firewall, Data Processing) assume a value of 3.

Ghostrider Module

See Technological Advancements article for a description of ghostrider modules.

A ghostriding muse or AI's attributes and skills are capped by the Rating of the module. For instance, you have a Rating 3 Ghostrider Module with a Geth hitchhiker who has attributes of 4 and skills at 4. If the Geth wishes to make a perception check, normally this would be 8, but in thise case it will be 6: both the attribute and the skill are capped at 3 prior to creating the dice pool.

A biologic Ghostrider Modules have the following profile:

Device	Essence	Availability	Cost
Ghostrider Module (Rating 1-6)	Rating x 0.1	Rating x 3R	Rating x 15,000 credits

A non-biologic Ghostrider Module can be attached to many devices with computing power for relatively small costs, or can allow a digital intelligence to occupy space at the cost of storage capacity and computing power.