Battletech: Planet's Fall

~ Props to GM Comstar for this Battletech based conversion of L5R 4th edition ~

This ruleset is based upon the Legend of the Five Rings 4e core rulebook, and utilizes many of those rules - the roll and keep system, actions, traits and rings, etc. Some have been renamed and a few have had their functions changed, and will be listed where appropriate. This conversion is a work of love from a single individual (Comstar! <3), so some things may slip through - if you find them, please reach out for a GM ruling so the conversion can continue to be improved.

Please note that I'm UK based, so I've often switched to UK spelling ('honour' instead of 'honor') for many rulings and posts. This will impact your forum searches!

Traits and Rings:

The first and most obvious change is the alteration to traits and rings, renaming them as follows below. You will note that some there are some new and some old - move speed is now determined by Fitness, rather than Water ring, but the calculation is the same as before, for instance.

(Move Speed) Fitness Attribute
Strength (Physical)
Dexterity (Physical)

(Hit Points) Durability Attribute
Stamina (Physical)
Willpower (Mental)

(Initiative) Readiness Attribute
Reflexes (Physical)
Perception (Mental)

Smarts Attribute
Awareness (Mental)
Intelligence (Mental)

Edge (Void)

Insight Rank and Improving Your Character:

Insight Ranks may now also be called your Expertise Rating. All characters receive a technique at Expertise Rating/Insight Rank 1. I will likely allow an additional technique or benefit at higher Insight Ranks. Please contact me to determine what your options are, should you hit Insight Rank 2+. As a reminder, this requires 150 insight.

Honour, Glory, Status:

There are some concepts which carry over well, such as glory and infamy, but Honour is not a relevant stat, and status does not function in the same way in each successor state, so these stats have been replaced with Fame, Infamy and Rank. The primary values are Fame/Infamy which will determine how you are viewed by potential employers, the local populace, and enemies. Accruing infamy may leave you unemployable, or even cause hostile forces to finish you off, rather than take you prisoner. Become universally hated at your own peril.

The Rank value represents your position in your organization - as rank values vary from organization to organization, it is an abstracted representation for an internal promotion - it grants little outside authority - even the head of the Capellan state cannot command citizens of the Federated Commonwealth, but it may represent some degree of respect and responsibility within your own organization. This does not give you the right to command other players unless they are directly in your chain of command, but should at least be considered when interacting - being excessively rude to someone important inside another department won't make your boss happy, after all.

Combat Manoeuvres and Actions:

The combat manoeuvres and actions in the L5R core book are altered to instead include those listed here.

Feint (2 raises, Melee): A Feint is an attack that contains, as its first component, a deceptive movement intended to make a target believe that the attack will come from one direction, and then the actual
attack comes from another direction, exploiting a hole in the target’s defences opened by their attempt to defend against the initial attack. If the Feint Manoeuvre is successful, half the amount by which the character’s attack roll exceeded the target’s Armour TN (taking the 2 Raises for his Manoeuvre into account) is added to the damage roll for that attack, to a maximum amount equal to five times the character’s Expertise Rank.

Disarm/Knockdown (1-3 raises, Melee): You may attempt to disable a target using less lethal means using this manoeuvre. If you successfully hit after calling this manoeuvre, you may force the opponent to perform an opposed strength check. If you are victorious, you may do the following, depending on the number of raises: 1) convert the damage to stun damage 2) knock the target prone 3) force the target to drop their currently held equipment.

Extra Attack (5 raises, Melee): An unusually skilled combatant may weave multiple attacks into a combination, striking with staggering speed. If you succeed with an attack utilizing this manoeuvre, you may make one additional attack with the same weapon this round. There is no penalty to the second attack made as a result of this manoeuvre.

Precision Strike (1 raise): A character who is making a precision strike is carefully aiming to try to increase damage. For each raise called, they may increase their damage roll by +1k0, and if they call at least 4 raises, may designate a body part for the blow to hit – if the attack inflicts an amount of damage equal to 2x the healthy wound rank of the target, it will inflict a temporary disadvantage of the GM's choosing appropriate to that area. If the disadvantage is not treated by a medicine roll with TN equal to the damage total within 8 hours, the disadvantage becomes permanent.

Automatic Fire (0, 2, 4, 6... raises, Ranged): If you are attacking with a weapon that has the Automatic trait, you may attempt to control the recoil during sustained fire, striking repeatedly in a single volley. Each consecutive attack requires you to call the previous number of raises plus two. Thus the second shot requires two, the third four, and so forth. Attempting this manoeuvre doubles your ammunition expenditure, meaning a weapon which normally expends one burst per attack would instead expend two in each attack. If you attempt this manoeuvre without enough ammunition to fully execute the attack, it automatically fails, but still depletes your ammunition.

Suppression (Action, Ranged): During a skirmish, while utilizing a weapon with the Automatic trait, it is possible to lay down suppression fire in order to discourage the enemy from taking action. As a complex action, the character may target an enemy to suppress and spend up to three bursts of ammo. For each burst spent, inflict a -1k0 penalty to the target's actions for the round.

Guard (Action, Melee): During a skirmish, you may choose to take a simple action to guard another character from melee attack. When you do, you lower your own melee armour TN by 5, while raising that of your target by 10. This lasts until your next turn. The effect is ended as soon as you move outside 5' of your target.

Body Cover (Action, raises): During a skirmish, you may choose to take a simple action to begin covering another character with your own body. While you do so, you utilize your body to shield them from attacks. All attacks which pass through your character have their TN increased by 15, but if they fail by a margin of 15 or less, they instead strike you. You must perform a free action every round to continue covering another character, and the effect is ended as soon as you are no longer within 5' of your target.

Reload Gun (Action, complex): It's usually a complex action to reload a gun. This applies to pistols, light infantry weapons and heavy infantry weapons. Some support weapons take longer.

Cover

One aspect of combat in a world with guns (and very large ones, at that) is the uses of cover. In this conversion, the armour TN value has been split into two values, a melee TN and a ranged TN.

Ranged TN modifiers for cover:

Light Cover
When in combat, a character can claim light cover by standing near an object able to obscure them from view, or shield at least half their body. Examples would be standing behind a bush or a desk. No action is required for this, other than being physically behind an obscuring or shielding object. This grants +3 ranged TN against attacks. You can also gain this bonus by being prone.

Medium Cover
As a simple action, a character can take cover, which involves pressing themselves into the nearest solid object and minimizing their target profile. Suitable objects would be a small stone wall, a tree or a vehicle. When doing so, they gain +6 ranged TN, but lose that benefit if they are flanked or move out of that position. Note that this action only needs to be performed once. It'll be assumed you retain the bonus until you move or it becomes no longer relevant due to a situation change.

Hard Cover
This cover is only available from within a fortified, prepared position. This will usually take the form of a bunker, but could include things like a fox hole or firing from out of an immobilised tank. When in such a location, characters gain a +9 ranged TN.

As a general rule of thumb, cover is assumed to apply against an attack so long as the character is not caught in a crossfire or ambushed. If an opponent is moving, the character would naturally be attempting to keep the solid object between themselves and danger. Also, please note that only the highest ranged cover bonus will apply to a character, and that you can only be shot at directly if you are visible. In other words, hiding completely behind a wall should also keep you safe. Just watch out for indirect fire or explosive weapons!

A Game of Armoured Combat
Battletech is a game about mechs. While many other things are included, there remains the need to perform mech combat. There will be additional information about this in another post, but it is important to note that you will need to transform your 4e stats into the piloting and gunnery stats when involved in mech vs mech combat, using the following rules.

A Game of Armoured Combat Skill Conversion:

Player character skills translate to mass combat by lowering the TN from a starting value of 8. It is decreased by half your relevant trait, rounded up, and half the relevant skill, rounded down. You cannot decrease using either value by more than 1 point more than the other. So, a character with 8 gunnery but only 3 Dexterity would subtract 3 and 2, for a final gunnery skill of 3+.

Note that a green Mechwarrior is 5 piloting, 6 gunnery (written 5/6), a normal Mechwarrior is 4/5, a veteran is 3/4 and elite is 2/3. You can have one no more than 2 different from the other, so a 3/5 would be fine but a 3/6 would not be. Matching numbers is fine too, such as 4/4.

Many special rules, such as 'Mech vs Infantry, Anti-Mech, and Blast' are utilized only during mixed force skirmishes based on the RnK system. Mech vs Mech combat will be handled utilizing the Game of Armored Combat system as detailed in the 'PbP and Mech Combat' post. This will all be done in a program called Megamek.

It is also important to note that some techniques or abilities refer to rolls made in Mech combat - and thus might utilize modifiers appropriate to that system - in any cases where they are used in the 4e system instead, they provide a free raise for each point of skill bonus granted.

Healing and Wounds

Unlike in the L5R 4e CRB, daily healing upon 8 hours of rest is instead only equal to your Stamina (rather than twice your Stamina plus your Insight Rank). Healing is slow. A plastiflesh patch can temporarily treat an injury, but a Medtech skill roll should follow to more permanently treat the wound. A major source of wound recovery is surgery. Do note that a plastiflesh patch and surgery can each only be used once per source of damage/injury. E.g. If you are shot, you could apply a plastiflesh patch and later be treated by a general Medtech roll to try making some of the 3k3 wounds temporarily recovered permanent. Any additional damage could be treated once by surgery. After that you can only heal naturally, which will be a slow process.

In Megamek, pilots will die if they take 6 hits in combat. In L5R terms, after combat, hits are translated into damage by wound ranks as follows:

One hit - Put into 'Nicked'
Two hits - Put into 'Grazed'
Three hits - Put into 'Hurt'
Four hits - Put into 'Injured'
Five hits - Put into 'Down'
Six hits - Killed

House Rules

Please note that these may be added to over time.

1) Exceptional Rolls

If you ever exceed a roll by 10 or more, for every increment of 10, you gain a free raise AFTER the roll to be used as you see fit. You may only gain this bonus up to your Edge attribute. So, for example, if a TN is 25 and you rolled a 55, and have an Edge of 2, you would gain 2 free raises to utilize after the roll. If you called a raise on a TN 15 roll and then rolled 30 you would gain the effect of 2 raises. If you rolled 40 and your Edge is only 2, then you'd max out at 1 called raise and 1 free raise due to the exceptional roll. These raises could be spent on maneuverers, to enhance the roll as normal (ask the GM, but things like doing it in a more flashy way or fast) or used for an event mechanic.

NOTE 1: You may NOT gain these free raises if you are unskilled in the skill the roll required unless an event says otherwise.
NOTE 2: Contested rolls do not have TNs initially, so this rule has no effect on Contested Rolls.
NOTE 3: You only count the dice roll, not bonuses from free raises or other straight modifiers (Such as the +Void [Edge] from centre stance).
NOTE 4: You only gain free raises up to your Edge and they max out along with called raises up to your Edge.

Free Raises from other sources

If you gain a free raise from equipment or an advantage it is separate to the maximum permitted by your edge. In other words it can be added to your maximum potential. E.g. A free raise from a technique and 2 raises called for an Edge 3 character, for a combined total of 3 raises, is acceptable.