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So I plan to take my group through a short campaign in which stealth and sabotage will be the primary objective.

A colossal size ship will be approaching a target in near space, the PCs are given some one-time use experimental invisibility generators that grant invisibility for 4 hours. Their objective is to slow or disable the ship long enough so that their employers can evacuate the target.

The house rules I am implementing for this portion of the campaign are:

Sabotage: Different ship systems can be hacked (Computers skill) Disabled (Engineering skill) or Destroyed (using detonators and explosives with the Engineering skill). Hacking the security system would give the PCs bonuses to not being detected while on board, disabling would make the system useless for finding them, but would be discovered relatively quickly and could be repaired, destroying the system would make it useless to find them, but would immediately be discovered though it cannot be repaired.

The systems that can be targeted are Sensors (external/navigation), Engine, Power Core, Drift Engine, Thrusters, and Security Systems.

Different combinations of systems sabotaged will yield different results. For example, hacking the Sensors to give false information and the Thrusters to make minor adjustments to the ships course will place the ship at a Drift exit point much further away than the intended target.

Stealth Execution/Knockout: Any form of combat would be very bad for the PCs as the crew compliment on this ship is 300ish, all of which are mercenaries. If they are in a situation where they must remove someone they can attempt a stealth execution.

The PC will make a melee attack against an unaware opponent and add 10 to their damage after strength mod and this is the DC that the enemy must make a fortitude save against or suffer instant death/knockout. As the target is also unaware, they do not receive their dex bonus to AC.

I may have to adjust the numbers a bit by giving a +2 bonus to the DC of the fortitude save, but will have to see how it plays out.

Thoughts? Questions?

Wondering if someone has run into this before. I’m playing and Android Mechanic who uses drones. On page 69 it says “Your custom rig can be configured to take an upgrade slot on your Armor...” and since he is an Android I installed the upgrade on him. Since the custom rig can operate as a Mk I comm unit which includes a flashlight, does this mean he can use a flashlight without requiring a hand to hold it?

It’s not really an issue for him due to racial vision, but we have a couple humans in the party who do not have that benefit.

So my group and I are very interested in boarding action in our campaign and have seen a few ways to go about it posted somewhere online, we tooled around with them a little bit.

Hacking: Making an appropriate DC Computer skill check to hack the ships computer, a PC can open the door without alerting the crew if all countermeasure are successfully bypassed.

Engineering: With an Engineering tool kit and appropriate DC skill check, a PC can manually open the airlock. If it is alarmed the crew will be notified, if there is a Science Officer active on the ship, they will become aware of the breach. DC can be based off of the hardness of the airlock (standard is 35) and some multiplication factor to make a cumulative check target.

I know there are basic DC checks ranging from 20-40 for opening a lock with engineering, but that is assuming the airlock actually has a physical lock on it.

Breaching Charge: With an Engineering skill check an explosive with detonator can be placed on the airlock, if successful the objects hardness is reduced by 1/2 for the purposes of damage. Explosives cost and have the same properties of grenades. This would always alert the crew.

Being the door kicking soldier I am very interested in using breaching charges though our operative has the hacking covered. The only problem with the rules in game for explosives vs airlocks is that the standard airlock has a hardness of 35 and has 160 HP so a single breaching charge, even properly set, must do 177 damage to breach the airlock. The maximum damage of 2 level 18 Frag Grenades worth 96,900c+100c for detonator a piece still fall short by 2 damage!

Is that math right? If so we need to do something about it. Maybe a feat that grants a multiplier to explosive damage when used against objects for demolition? Perhaps using an explosive focus as they do in real life for breaching charges could cause greater damage? Since the damage range for a Frag Grenade is 15 feet and we are reducing it to a focused point of say 1 foot, we could multiply it by 15 (I know not really how energy works but let’s look at the math).

A level 4 Frag Grenade at 700+100c for det does 2d6 or an average of 7 damage. Properly set with an Engineering skill check the 35 hardness is reduced to 17. So with average damage x 15 for being focused = 105 and after removing the 17 damage reduced from hardness, that leaves 88 damage on average per level 4 charge.

If that is too powerful we can factor in the tier of the ship to reduce the effectiveness of lower level explosives. For every tier above the level of the explosive subtract 1 from the multiplier? Add 1 for every tier the ship is below?

What do you guys think?