A small bugbear of mine is that the "Immunity" skills aren't very varied, and in one case, misleadingly named. Total Immunity isn't, after all: It's more a Standard Immunity. Now, we know changing the Immunities isn't a thing that'll happen, not even renaming the "Total" Immunity to something more accurate like "Standard" Immunity since it's only immune to standard ammo types, but hey, this is a speculative thread at -6 BS So here's what I'd do first: 1. Make all categories of Immunity on one wiki page rather than have Bioimmunity off on its own. 2. Immunity skills would now include categories called "Resistance", where they're not immune to an ammo type but simply better at surviving it. 3. The list of immunities could then become: Immunity: Possession Immunity: Shock Resistance: AP (Maximum -2 ARM from any AP attack) Immunity: AP Immunity: DA Resistance: Fire (Maximum 1 additional ARM roll if first roll failed versus fire) Immunity: Fire Immunity: Standard Ammos (Previously Immunity:Total) Immunity: Biomunitions (Previously Bioimmunity) Resistance: T2 (Makes T2 have the effect of a DA round) Resistance: EXP (Makes EXP have the effect of a DA round) Resistance: Enhanced BTS (Maximum -2 BTS from any Breaker, E/M or E/M 2 attack) Resistance: Flash and Stun (Special +3 BTS against any Flash/Stun attacks) Resistance: Double Trouble (Only makes one BTS save versus a DT round) I think this could add a little more flavour to the game in some ways, making some things better as counters to certain ammos without ignoring huge swathes of ammo types via Immunity:Total. It can also start making exotic ammos a little less effective on certain targets. Does anyone else have thoughts?
I think resistance is probably a step too far as it gets a bit convoluted at that sort of level, but Immunity: Thing is absolutely a smart move I'd like to see across the board - with the precedent already set in the form of the Avatar, with its Immunity: POS rule. It can allow a bit more nuance in some profiles. Would need to be carefully worded in some cases - in terms of how it treats the damage its immune to. Total immunity currently treats all ammo as normal, but Bio allows your choice of save. Some clever wording around this would be needed so it could handle all cases.
You could also review immunity to specific Status effects - the way Veteran L1 makes troopers immune to Isolation. There aren't too many status effects to consider; Immobilised is the one that keeps springing to mind.
Make a tiered system where you take the immunity level, BTS and ARM to create a simple formula to determine which steps you are immune to or the resistance degree. Shouldn't take more than 2 or 3 minutes to figure it out on the spot even without a cheat sheet.
Solid no from me for several reasons. Firstly, Immunity vs X is a boring paper scissors rock mechanic. Like all the other rules that just negate other rules I don't think it adds much in the way of tactical depth to the game. Secondly, Resistance X is just adding bloated additional levels of immunity, especially where we get into minor changes - a rule giving "+3 BTS against flash and stun ammo only" isn't worth the ink to print it. I don't feel that it is worthwhile to add lots of additional rules text for limited effects. If your going to use immunities, straight up "Negate effect X" is faster and far more impactful for less rules than including subtle shifts that also involve remember what exactly each minor level of defense will do to that ammo type in particular. Much simpler to say "turns ammo type X to normal ammo" and be done with it. In response to the above post, just want to say taking minutes to determine defence against a particular stat is a long time. But more seriously needing to refer to a stat chart in such a fashion is adding a huge degree of bloat for what will largely amount to "+3 BTS against flash and stun ammunition" effects on the game. Far as I know we don't have any such charts at the moment, the closest being MA which at least has a limited degree of player agency involved in it. And there is certainly an argument to say that we already have a pretty fast and simple 'tier system' in the form of the BTS stat.
I would like the Immunity rules consolidated and unified. Make them all work the same way. Standard Immunity means that all standard ammo types (AP, DA, EXP, Fire, Nanotech, Plasma, Shock) count as Normal Ammo, no reduction in ARM or multiple wound rolls. Bio Immunity means that all Bio ammo types (Shock, Viral) count as Normal Ammo and hit ARM, not BTS (If you want Bio Immunity to be able to choose ARM or BTS whichever is higher, then Standard Immunity should also be able to choose!). Total Immunity means Standard+Bio Immunity, and maybe Exotic Immunity if that's a thing (Exotic is Glue, EM, EM2, Flash, K1, Mono, Stun, T2, and Viral, plus all the cloud effects). While the Resistant:Type idea is really cool, I don't think it belongs in N3, adds too many complications (not to mention adds rules that are not identical but for damage type). Would have been awesome in N2, though, where we were aiming for greater realism at the expense of complex gameplay.
Immunity: (Type). The user is immune to the special effects of (Type) Ammunition treating them as Normal ammunition instead. Immunity: (Ammunition Category). The user is immune to the special effects of (Ammunition Category) ammunition types treating them as Normal ammunition instead. Resistance: (Type). The user can choose to roll ARM or BTS when suffering a hit from (Type) Ammunition. Resistance: (Ammunition Category). The user can choose to roll ARM or BTS when suffering a hit from (Ammunition Category) ammunition types. Red Box: The user may opt to apply the effects of Resistances and Immunities to the same hit. For example, a Trooper with both Resistance: Bio-munitions and Immunity: Bio-munitions can opt to roll a Shock hit against their BTS and not suffer the special effects of Shock Ammunition. So: Bio-Immunity becomes "Immunity: Bio-munitions, Resistance: Bio-munitions" Immunity:Total becomes "Immunity: Standard".* * At the moment I think everything with Total Immunity is naturally immune to shock, but if that's not the case just add "Immunity: Shock" to fix that. Immunity: Possession would be renamed "Non-Possessable". This distinguishes it from Immunities and ties it in with Non-Hackable, where it belongs. ----- I wouldn't proliferate Resistances or Immunity's more widely than they are now. The point of a schema like the one I propose is (as @Section9 has it) for consistency in how similar rules work and to make the rules easily extensible without needing bespoke rules: once you know how one Immunity works you know how all Immunities work.
I'd remove the Standard from Shock. It's stupid and only exists because Immunity: Total is badly written. I still can't find anything with T:I that isn't natively immune to Shock.
CSU are only Metachemistry 1. But any Trooper Metachemistry would do it: they're all 1W. Honestly it's not a big deal losing Shock Immunity on Metachemistry 1. And you can always add it in to Meta 2. --- I'd also make Nanotech and Pheroware weapons (including Endgame) Bio-munitions at the same time. Why they're not just confuses me. It's not like Bio-Immunity is OP.
I would also like to see a cleanup of the immunity rules. Especially "total", as this is quite misleading and I always have to lookup 3 pages to finally find out that I'm not immune to that viral round... I don't think that resistances are good idea for the reasons mentioned above.
If you change Resistance (whatever) to mean "can choose to take the hit on BTS or ARM" (which effectively translates to "whichever is higher"), it's as simple as you can get it. Plus, the ability to choose ARM or BTS is currently part of Bio-Immunity, so it's not really a new rules effect. Just new that it's a separate rules effect.
