CPA: Survival & Travel
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While every game of CPA is different, this page contains an overview of how CPA evokes a sense of gritty, yet simple-to-play survival and travel.
Topics include Status Effects, Hazards, and Travel.
STATUS EFFECTS
Status Effects, also known as conditions or ailments, are states that player characters (PCs) in CPA can acquire and heal from. Each condition or family of conditions is acquired and healed in different ways. The list is as follows:
Condition Name | How to Acquire: | Effects: | How to remove: |
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Healthy | Characters are created healthy, and are healthy when they have full health points and no other conditions. | No disadvantages. | Suffer any of the below conditions. |
Hurt | Characters that are damaged (taken below full health points) by a lethal or nonlethal weapon, or suffer damage from a hazard, are Hurt. | You are low on health points, and if you are untreated for an hour or more, you must roll Resilience to see if you get an infection, tetanus, or similar disease. | |
Bandaged | Characters that previously were Hurt, but received some medical attention, yet are still not at full health points, are Bandaged. | You are low on health points. | Rest in a clean, safe, comfortable place with good food. For each 8 hours of rest, a bandaged character will regenerate health points equal to [1 + Resilience Skill level]. |
Unconscious | Characters that were brought to zero health points by a nonlethal weapon such as a tranquilizer dart, punch, or taser are unconscious. | The character cannot move or act for 1d6 hours. | After 1d6 hours, the character will awaken with 1 health point. At that time, they will be considered freshly Exhausted. |
Dying | Characters that were brought to zero hit points by a lethal but not heavy weapon, such as a sword or pistol, are Dying. Suffocation can also cause this state. | Dying characters's armor is broken, and they will become dead in 1d20 * 10 minutes (rolled secretly by the GM). They cannot heal hp, have a movement speed of 1, are prone, cannot stand, and can take no actions except to crawl 1m, speak a few words or fumble with their hands at heavy disadvantage. | A dying character stabilized by a doctor or arcane healer becomes both Exhausted(+1) and Bandaged at 1 hp. |
Exhausted | Characters who were just brought back from Dying, are now Exhausted. Additionally, other effects such as forced marches, toxic gas, and starvation can increase exhaustion. | Exhaustion has 4 levels:
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An exhausted character who rests in comfortable, nutritious and healthy conditions for a full 24 hours without working cures 1 level of exhaustion. The care of a skilled healer will reduce this by half. |
Dead | Characters can die in various ways:
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Dead characters are out of play. Generally, the player of a dead character must make a new character to keep playing. The GM will introduce the new character in the very next scene (i.e., after the current battle or escape resolves). | Death is usually incurable, but players can try to use the level 6 spell "Resurrection" to attempt to cure it. Resurrection usually leaves permanent side effects however. |
Fear | Characters are assumed to be brave in CPA and normally fear is up to the player's choice of roleplay. However, you may want to create an enemy who can cause psychic fear. If so: | Generally, players will roll Meditation to resist fear. If they fail to resist it, roll a 1d4 to see their fear reaction:
Fear effects generally end after 1 round, when dispelled, or when the source of fear is defeated or removed. |
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Paralysis | Paralysis in this game is generally rare and GMs should avoid applying this to players, because being unable to take actions is not fun. | The GM may ask players to roll Resilience to resist a toxic paralysis, or Meditation to resist a psychic paralysis effect. Paralyzed characters can speak haltingly and take 1 free action per round, but otherwise cannot act. If left unattended they may crawl 1 meter per minute, but otherwise cannot move. They may make a Meditation or Resilience check at the start of each turn to resist the effect. Attackers of paralyzed targets can kill them instantly if out of combat or receive a free critical hit in combat. Paralyzed characters automatically fail dodge rolls. | Removing the person from the hazard, medical care, the spell "cure affliction", or dispelling the spell or disrupting the concentration of the enemy sorceror can all end paralysis. |
Poison/Disease/Infection/Etc. | Characters may become poisoned, diseased, or infected in a variety of ways:
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Each of this type of affliction is unique, but symptoms generally include a loss of hit points over time (linear or rolled) and often also increasing levels of exhaustion. | The first step to curing afflictions is to make a medical check to diagnose the issue. Then, the player can either be fed the proper medicine from a medical supply room or a character skilled in science or medicine could brew the cure themselves in a laboratory. The spell "Cure Affliction" might also help. |
Sleeping | Characters may fall asleep by choice, because of tiredness, or by magic. | The character cannot act while asleep. The character is usually prone. They have severely decreased senses while asleep. They may generally be hit without needing to roll. | Attacks, Loud noises, strong smells, vibrations or firm touches will wake them. If magical sleep, then dispelling will cure them. |
Ignited | Some special attacks and spells might cause a character to become ignited (on fire). | Ignited characters usually take 1d10 fire damage at the start of each turn. | A character can extinguish the flames on themselves by moving into water (or another non-flammable liquid), or dropping prone and rolling on the floor. |
Shocked | Mundane and magical electric and lightning effects might shock targets. | Shocked characters will take double damage form the next attack they receive. | To discharge, they can touch a freestanding metal object (such as a chain link fence) or just wait 1 minute until the charge dissipates. |
Frozen | Some magic spells and high-technology cold attacks can cause the Frozen condition on characters. | Frozen characters drop to 0 initiative and until then receive double damage from physical attacks. | Either wait until the end of the combat round, when the frost will melt, or burn them with fire or another heat source to immediately remove this condition |
Stunned | Some special attacks and spells might cause a character to be stunned. | Stunned characters generally have only 1 action per turn instead of 2. | Characters usually stop being stunned after 1 round of being stunned. The spell "Cure affliction" can also help. |
Traumatized | People subjected to torture or other horrible experiences may become traumatized. This generally does not happen to player characters unless all players agree to it, because it is often too emotionally intense to roleplay in an adventure themed game. | For a traumatized person, when exposed to anything recalling or triggering a recollection of the traumatic experience, the person may react with sudden panic, fear, rage, breakdown or flight. They may find it difficult to maintain a job or social relationships. | Long term therapy or the spell "heal mental trauma" can help. |
Memetic Virus | Memetic Viruses are transmitted by seeing, hearing, or reading information containing the virus, whether a book, physical document, computer file, drawing, or verbal speech. | Memetic viruses are measured in degrees, often on a 1 to 5 scale. At low levels, the infectee will occasionally perceive things that non-infected people cannot. These are often objects at first, but they are completely real to the infected. At mid levels, "un-real" people and dangerous monsters may appear to them--again, only the infected can interact or are vulnerable. At higher levels, the infectee percieves reality as false and fake, and their own perceptions as more real. They will begin to perceive doors leading out of reality and be able to use them. | Infection by a memetic virus is measured in degrees, observance and willful investigation of the virus' signs causes infection level to increase, willful rejection and avoidance of the virus' signs floors it at a minimum level where symptoms will only occur once a week or so. No full cure is known. |
??? | The universe is a dangerous place and stranger things can always happen. | Parasites, demonic ride-along posession, symbiotic slime and more are all quite possible to encounter in CPA. | Focus on seeking solutions by using knowledge skills, consulting with allies, and leveraging in-game abilities and resources. |
HAZARDS
Hazards are a very important part of making an interesting exploration scenario, because dealing with the hazards and spending resources to overcome them will consitute the majority of game play.
With plentiful hazards and limited resources, you can create a fun and challenging multi-session exploration adventure with no combat necessary.
As an example, consider an adventure where the goal is to get to a goal across a magma cavern beneath a deep, dark ocean swept by an eternal hurricane and patrolled by invincible enemies. Overcoming those four hazards can be done in a wide variety of ways depending on player skills, and finding items to help navigate them can also consitute a lot of interesting play.
Weather:
On any planet, and even in space, bad weather can make adventures much more challenging and dramatic.
- Solar Flare: Particularly big explosions or flares from a star will not only raise temperatures suddenly on nearby planets, but also send out an electromagnetic pulse that disables, but does not erase, electronics.
- Storms, Tornados and Hurricanes: Lightning deals direct damage. High winds may push or lift unsecured objects, building parts and vehicles, and cause disadvantage on driving and skill use. Huge waves may form on oceans. Rain may cause flooding and give disadvantage on the use of ranged weapons.
- Blizzards and Snowstorms: Heavy snowfall and high winds causes both intense visual occlusion to within 5 meters and disadvantage on ranged weapons and other utility skills. Large amounts of snow may make it impossible for lower or higher-tech ground vehicles to move properly.
- Fog: Heavy fog may reduce humanoid vision and that of lower-tech robots to 1m or less, meaning that any skill requiring vision becomes a question of guesswork. Sonar and radar can help here.
- Ion Storms: These strange storms occur in interstellar nebulas and on some planets. Strange clouds form, bathing everything in a sickly green light. Charged ions bombard buildings and ships, shutting down electronic devices and corrupting stored data, mutating animals, and randomly destroying things with bolts of bruised plasma. Random sparks may cause fires to break out on flammable liquids or materials.
- Hyperstorms: Travel through the shadowy clouds of hyperspace is sometimes occluded by dangerous storms that can damage ship hulls and shut down subsystems, cut your journey short, change the paths of hyperlanes, or cause weird metadimensional effects.
Water:
Humands and humanoids generally do not feel at home in water and liquids, which can create interesting tension and challenges.
While unprotected in water, the following rules apply:
- For all skills involving the use of hands or talking, roll with 3d8 keep lowest 2 instead of 2d8.
- Swimming speed is half your normal speed, and strong currents may require athletics checks to make any progress at all.
- Player characters can hold their breath for 30 seconds + 6 seconds per Resilience skill rank. Speaking, or losing consciousness counts as loss of breath.
- One full round past losing breath = death by suffocation
- For creatures or vehicles not designed for underwater operation, apply 1d6 pressure damage per round starting at 50m depth, and add more as depth increases.
- Special suits and vehicles will have safe dive ratings that specify a safe maximum depth.
In addition to these challenges, some liquid oceans will be made of a substance other than water such as oil, gelatin, acid, lava, toxic sludge, etc. which provide additional challenges.
Generally speaking, falling into or being doused with hazardous or toxic liquids will cause damage per round and negative conditions.
Radiation:
Radiation can have widely varying intensity and particle types. Some are more dangerous than others. Generally we are speaking of ionizing radiation.
- Special suits and vehicles have specific levels of tolerance for different types of ionizing radiation. These may be measured units of "rems".
- Light amounts of radiation might cause a Resilience check for ill effects after an hour of exposure, and then apply radiation sickness or a level of exhaustion on a fail.
- Significant radiation in an area might demand Resilience rolls every 5 minutes.
- Extreme radiation will likely forgo the Resilience roll and provide continuous direct damage and/or exhaustion levels.
- Some more exotic types of radiation might cause bodily and genetic mutations.
- Other types might specifically damage the brain, causing difficulty with tasks requiring intelligence or focus.
- Special meta-dimensional radiation might permanently change a person's brain, allowing them to see things that, from a "normal" point of view, do not exist--strange messages, creatures and doors. The more that this is investigated, the further the brain damage progresses until the subject appears completely insane or disappears from "reality" entirely.
Other Hazards:
Here is a sample though not an exhaustive list of dangers that might challenge players:
- Falling damage. 1d6 per 3 meters fallen in standard gravity. Falling damage cannot be reduced by armor or any other damage reduction effects.
- Low/high gravity. Low gravity causes sickness and muscle atrophy over time while high gravity causes exhaustion and inability to heal.
- Bacteria, viruses, parasites, cancers: biological, nanite, and psionic
- Extreme temperatures and equipment which protects against certain levels of it
- Pools of acid, magma, toxic waste, paralytic brine, liquid nitrogen, nanite sludge, electric arcs, poison gas
- Oceans of exotic liquids such as fuels, acids, gelatin, etc
TRAVEL
Overland Travel
- For overland travel, generally someone skilled in animals or vehicle piloting will be in charge of the minute-to-minute driving, while another player will be electec as the navigator.
- The pilot skill or animals skill (depending on if a vehicle or animal is used for travel) is used for immediate problems such as chases, bad weather, broken roads, etc., while the result of the navigation roll will determine if the party gets lost.
- On a failed navigation roll, generally this will leave the party in a bad situation such as:
- Realize too late you are in a hazardous and/or hostile area
- The party may be led into an ambush
- Realize that you have not only gone the wrong way, but bad weather has come up
- The party may find themselves in a desolate place, with a key resource drained to 0 such as food, water, fuel, oxygen
Normal Space Travel
- Normal space travel uses something called an impulse engine or ion pulse engine, fueled by power cells. One power cell generally gives 1 day of in-system travel for a small space ship of the size that the party usually uses.
- Similar to overland travel, generally you select one player as the pilot and one as the navigator.
- The pilot skill is used for immediate challenges such as blockade runs, stealth runs, debris field navigation, entering turbulent atmospheres and unstable wormholes, etc
- To travel from the innermost to the outermost planet in a given star system will generally take from 3 to 14 days. It depends on the size (and gravitation) of the star, the size of the system, and the tech level of your impulse engine.
- A smaller trip, for example from a rocky planet to its moon, might take 1-2 hours. A trip from one gas giant moon to another could take up to 8 hours.
- The pilot skill or animals skill (depending on if a vehicle or animal is used for travel) is used for immediate problems such as chases, bad weather, broken roads, etc., while the result of the navigation roll will determine if the party gets lost.
Hyper Space
- Hyper space is a parallel plane or dimension to normal space. It is more compressed and thus used as a shortcut when traveling between star systems, a trip which would otherwise take many thousands of years.
- Hyper drives are a type of technology which allows switching between these parallel dimensions to take advantage of the short cut. Any starship larger than a small tug, miner or interceptor will have these.
- In the default setting, most hyper drives are black-box devices, traded, salvaged and repaired over many centuries, that cannot be understood or reproduced.
- In a galactic golden age setting, hyper drives are exceedingly expensive products manufactured with the careful cooperation of master psychics, scientists and engineers as well as the synthesis of exotic far-sourced materials from many worlds and a closely guarded secret formula.
- Hyper drives take hyperion fuel rods as input, a very rare mineral of which no stable long-term supply has ever been found.
- Generally, 1 hyperion rod is burned per 1 day of hyperspace travel which corresponds to 1 light year of normal space travel. However, some hyperlanes are nonlinear and may cost more fuel.
- The average distance between stars can range from 1 light-year to 20 depending on distance from the galactic center, but is usually around 5.
- Hyper space is a chaotic, dark, violet-greyish, stormy, cloudy dimension of inchoate things. Some theorize that it is another universe in its infancy, hence the compression.
- Experts recommend that everyone keep the windows on the starship closed while traveling in hyperspace. Otherwise, mental health has been known to be permanently lost.
- Hyper space is not empty, but rather quite dense. Generally, only small, shifting, nonlinear tunnel-like routes through the stormy black clouds are safe to travel in. These are called 'hyperlanes'.
- Hyper lanes can be entered or exited at a certain point known as the 'rim' of a star system, usually the orbit of the furthest planet or asteroid belt.
- There are not always hyperlanes between every star system, and sometimes new lanes form or old lanes fade away. Sometimes certain systems or whole clusters of stars may be isolated from the galactic community by lack of viable lanes.
- First, select a pilot and navigator, and backups if available.
- They work together, in shifts, for the trip. Particularly long trips (>5 days) may cause exhaustion from the constant focus. Players who are not assigned to these roles may work on downtime projects or rest and heal.
- The navigator makes a roll first, versus a TN set by the GM based on the turbulence of this area and the stability of the lane. TNs can range from 12 to 24 and higher.
- Navigation roll outcomes:
- Critical Success: Half fuel cost and half travel time, or better. Anomalies on the way can be investigated or bypassed.
- Success: The trip is uneventful. Anomalies on the way can be investigated or bypassed, but there is a risk of unsafe approach or extended detour.
- Failure: A problem occurs. Examples:
- Fuel rods suddenly spark, pilot must choose to jettison fuel or risk fuel explosion.
- Fuel leaks or burns out, you arrive suffering psychic damage and lost fuel.
- Arrived not at the destination but at a nearer or further interstellar object.
- Dropped out of hyperspace in a nebula, position unknown.
- Arrived near target but dangerously close to an object such as a pitch-dark rogue planet.
- Critical Failure: You won't all die immediately, but something very bad happens. A wide variety of things are possible.
- Generally on all critical failures, the first thing to occur is a fuel explosion and ship systems damage.
- After that, any number of dimensional-shifting complications must be dealt with, such as phasing, time travel, size shifting, alternate universes, one-way wormwholes to other galaxies, etc,
- Anomalies: Anomalies are hazards or points of interest encountered along a trip down a given hyperlane. Generally the party will need to decide whether to try to investigate or avoid them. Either way they will likely prompt a piloting check and a drop out of hyperspace. Examples:
- Hyperspace storms. These are a simple question of either making an active piloting check to try to pass through them undamaged at great risk, or take extra time and fuel to go around them (which may lead to more anomalies).
- Hyperspace exclusion zones. Some rare minerals, psionic entities, and strange creatures project a hyperspace exclusion zone as they travel. All hyperdrives fail to function in this zone. Options include negotiating with the projector, requesting permission to travel across, or going around.
- Uncharted black hole or rogue planet. These very dark objects are often hard for navigators to see in the dark between stars. If encountered on your way, you may investigate them or avoid them at the cost of some time.
- Hyperbergs. Solid matter floating through hyperspace. Extremely dangerous hazard given high speed and narrow lanes, but also of great scientific value.
- Hyperbeings. They may migrate across lanes, temporarily blocking them or presenting collision/combat hazards. They may bar passage with important information, offers or demands.
Hyper Space Travel Procedure