Salvage Rules Anyone?

So anyone got any rules/suggestions on how to handle characters salvaging something in order to create something else? Like they've just blown up the villain's latest super-weapon and want to make use of the materials for something else, how much could they consider it as a Resource feat? Or they hit a junkyard with a lot of useful stuff what could you consider a reasonable amount of resources one could acquire from one? Or just more generic salvage from any general situation.

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Many times have I come across this very thing in my gaming. Each time I have handled it a little differently depending on the context, but I think the following is important now matter how you decide what works for your game:

For recovering items from a battle you have to determine how much damage the item in question has taken. Most the time this will be easy based on what has transpired in the combat but if it isn't I would assume that the object has taken some kind damage (at least ten percent) and roll a resource feat to clear up what the character can salvage from the source. A white result meaning that the item is useless, a green gives you 30% of the item, Yellow for 60% and red for 90% and maybe if a natural 100 is rolled it can be taken in perfect condition. Allow no Karma on this roll.

Perhaps there should also be some kind of Reason feat for the character to determine if he would know the difference between useful materials and junk similar to how the Weapons Tinkering "Power" uses the power rank for a resource check. Although if the hero has no talents or powers to indicate he is "handy" then it seems he would have to take a -1CS on this die roll result.

Hope that helps. Toward the end there I started to confuse myself. Everything is easier in game play because the situation usually solves these problems for you.

What do you think?

The Last Duskblade
Q-Class Forever!!!

Everything's helpful to some degree, and the suggestions are nice to have. Just trying to set some difficult features to fill in holes in the Nightmares of Futures Past modules, which actually ends up heavily dependent upon salvage and scavenging without any real rules to cover such things. For example the heroes manage to raid and take out a Sentinel base which just in its parts storage has enough parts to build an entire Alpha Sentinel from scratch, not counting the rest of the technology of the base, so just how much could the heroes build before depleting all of that?

Considering how the PCs have to skulk around you can't really consider resources in the conventional way, where they have to steal or recover what they need after potentially lethal battles. So you're left with questions like 'Is that Sentinel base good for one Monstrous resource feat, two Amazing, etc.?' or 'So we got inside that electronics store how much of a resource boost will the loot give us for cleaning it out?'.

You also end up in that kind of situation not having to make an actual Resource feat, since that's covered in the salvage work, as in if you recovered an Amazing amount of material you can clear up to an Amazing Resource feat automatically.

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Fully agree with what your saying about not needing a resource feat if you have already sourced the material.

In the case of the module I would say the only way to decide how much you could build before depleting would be to decide {the judge} how big the warehouse is and just how much junk is probable to have in there.

There could be a partially assembled Sentinel already, and that takes less time to build.

Sometimes in my game we will learn about technology by taking it apart. In other words, steal something to learn how it works. If that is the case then it is way better to have the stuff already put together with some kind of basic operating system intact.

That last part was a little of track.

The Last Duskblade
Q-Class Forever!!!

Offhand, I'd say any homegrown Salvage rules would be dependent on your concept of how damaged or preserved the site to be salvaged was.
For example, is the site could be anything such as --

--> an abandoned warehouse or other storage

--> an intact section of an otherwise damaged site

--> a damaged section of a damaged site

--> a damaged section of a nearly destroyed site

--> a destroyed section with barely recognizable components (although something may have survived under the rubble)

Other factors include --

--> whether the site is now open to the elements and how long it has been thus exposed

--> how long has the site or equipment been abandoned

So----
at the easiest end is a locked, forgotten warehouse. At the hardest end is a millenia-old field of rubble that had once been a Skrull depot before a Kree Nega-bomb dropped on it during the Pleistocene.





Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 07/29/2007 04:18PM by DavidEMartin.

Hmmmm, so would one then start with working out the costs of constructing the item in question (I wonder what the Resource cost is for a Sentinel?), considering that the max resources possible if you could reuse all of it, then do a breakdown from there?

"A shared universe, like any fictional construct, hinges on suspension of disbelief. When continuity is tossed away, it tatters the construct. Undermines it."

-- Peter David

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I would imagine a Sentinel to be a Monstrous to Unearthly Resource FEAT to make, considering only governments have been able to make them in the past (and -very- limited, Shaw's company).

This depends upon the Game Judge. I would like some examples from Marvel Comics or DC Comics where heroes search bodies for treasure/technology or capture something interesting from a villains lair so that they can put it to some use.

Judge: "You have defeated Dr Doom's forces".

Players: "We Greyhawk the bodies"!

Reed Richards has been shown salvaging technology all the time to study later, like Dr. Doom's robots. Highly intelligent characters like Reed Richards, Iron Man, and others have often been shown snatching up interesting tech for study. Ultimo for example was captured for later study although proved too dangerous to leave intact and was later dismantled.

"A shared universe, like any fictional construct, hinges on suspension of disbelief. When continuity is tossed away, it tatters the construct. Undermines it."

-- Peter David

[www.classicmarvel.com] - Nightmask Character Sheet

[www.classicmarvel.com] - Paragon Character Sheet

[www.classicmarvel.com] - Complete list of my characters various forum URLs, over 30 to enjoy!

[www.classicmarvel.com] - Godiva Character Sheet

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[www.furaffinity.net] Art by Marvel Comic's artist Rusty Haller!

[www.furaffinity.net] Artist/writer/Creator of The Extinctioners Independent super-hero comic!

[www.classicmarvel.com] - Sappho Character Sheet

[www.classicmarvel.com] - Cornucopia Character Sheet

[www.classicmarvel.com] - Nightmares of Futures Past Ongoing Story

[www.classicmarvel.com] - There is no such thing as too powerful Forum Thread

Thank you.