Waspkeeper/In Depth In Play Example

In Play Example

This section can give you some ideas of what Wasp can do to get the job done and help her team.

Legwork

The runners are hired to break into an old Ares research facility, and given Wasp's familiarity with such facilities, this should be simple. Good pay, good intel, couldn't be better.

Wasp takes a minute to think about anything specific to this building. She rolls "Corporation: Ares Macrotechnology" with 15 dice [Limited to 11+1 hits due to the Mental Limit and her nanite boost]. With 6 hits, she recalls that the on site management tends to take a long time to get issues fixed, and rumor has it that the staff entrance, while looking functional, actually has no working security measures beyond metahuman eyes due to the security funding priorities at this site.

Wasp takes another minute to anticipate some challenges they'll face when trying to infiltrate the place. (Roll Security Procedures (Ares) 17(+2) dice [Limited to 12 again]). With 3 hits, she can tell that security looks stronger than it actually is, until you hit the more critical areas of the facility, which rely on high end maglocks (Rating 4+) and cameras (Also rating 4+).

She then takes a moment to consider the astral (Magical Threats, 16 dice [12]) surrounding the place. With an unlucky 1 hit, she only knows that Ares facilities often use barriers to keep out threats on the astral plane, although it is unknown if this is the case for this particular building. A good tip to keep an eye out for in the field, and still a solid reminder to pass to the team's awakened characters.

Using her skilljack and skillsoft subscription, she could also roll 13 dice on any logic-based knowledge skills she can find in the databases, or 8 for intuition-based ones. That does not seem neccessary for this job.

Pre-Alarm

Waspkeeper is packing her gear together as she mulls over her plan of attack to get her team inside. She knows they will have at least three minutes between guard patrols, but only 30 seconds between camera sweeps at the security door and decides to use a Maglock Passkey (see SR5 359 and 448) to open the door quickly. The passkey is a modern-day skeleton key that slips into the cardreader and fools the maglock into thinking that you have the legit credentials to open the door. They’re expensive and illegal as all hell, but the bigger issue is that Waspkeeper only has a Rating 4 one, and she already knows that Ares likes to use high end maglocks from her legwork.

But Waspkeeper is just getting started with her own brand of mojo. For a start, she can connect the passkey to her PAN to add more processing power and a +1 wireless bonus.

With her Juryrigger quality Waspkeeper can get more out of a piece of equipment than it was designed for, if only for a short period of time. She intends to gut a credstick for spare parts and increase the processing power of the Passkey. The Gamemaster agrees that the Juryrigger quality allows for such a modification, and decides that it is of Very Hard difficulty and can be done in Average time. This sets an Extended Test with a Threshold of 24 and an Time Interval of 30 minutes (see SR5 48). Waspkeeper would roll Hardware (Security Devices) with 16+2 dice and add an extra bonus of 2 dice from the Juryrigger quality and accumulate successes up to her her Limit of 12 every thirty minutes of game time until she generates enough successes to reach the threshold of 23 (because the Juryrigger quality also reduces her target threshold by one). Since the team is still getting ready for the run, she has the time to do this. To speed it up, she also commands her two EVO Proletarian drones help her with part holding, tool calibration and other supportive tasks, acting as teamwork tests with 6 Dice (Pilot rating 2 + Hardware Autosoft 4). The GM decides that the drones can buy hits (1 hit for 4 dice) to save on time spent rolling, so they each get 1 success, adding +1 dice and +1 to the limit each.

Waspkeeper rolls her pool of 22 dice for her first thirty minute interval of work, as she cracks open the credstick to pull out the necessary pieces and achieves 7 successes, well within her adjusted Limit of 14, but she still needs 16 more successes to make her modification. She rolls her pool again for her second interval but she loses one die because it’s her second attempt and only has 21 dice. She has trouble handling the small pieces and she has her eye on the clock, generating only 4 more successes for a total of 11 successes. It’s been an hour and she can see Meatwad trying to call her repeatedly, but she dismisses the AR notification and keeps soldering, rolling her pool of 20 for the third interval netting 6 more successes for her and bringing her total to 17. She smiles wickedly as she realizes her modifications are almost complete. Waspkeeper again rolls as she starts the fourth interval and excitedly watches her fingers fly and snap all the components together as if they had a mind of their own. With her pool of 19 dice, she generates 8 more successes which is more than enough to reach the Very Hard difficulty set by the GM. After two hours of sweat and mechanical ingenuity, she has a passkey with a damn good chance to breach the security door. That boost won’t even last a minute once she powers it up, but that’s all she needs. She finally answers Meatwad’s repeated calls and tells them to pick her up.

Later that night, the team skulks their way across the grounds of the Ares facility. With the meatier and stealthier members of the team flanking her, Waspkeeper quickly scuttles over to the security door and pulls her modified passkey out of her B&E kit, powers it up and slots it inside the Ares maglock. Her modified passkey is basically a Rating 6 and it turns out Ares put a Rating 5 maglock on this security door, setting up an Opposed Test between the two devices. Both devices roll pools of twice their rating in dice with the modified passkey generating six successes over the maglock’s three. With a net of three successes by her passkey, Waspkeeper opens the security door for her team quickly and quietly. She smiles at the wondering murmurs from the team and winks at Meatwad as they whisk her inside. They never seem to comprehend all the prep time that goes with her little feats of magic.

Post-Alarm/Combat

The run was going smoothly, but, unknown to the team, an Aztechnology spy was in the facility as well and noted that the team stole the prototype. It being free of Ares hands would be the perfect time for the big A to swoop in and grab it. As the team carefully loads the prototype into their car, they notice Halloweeners round a nearby corner. Tension builds, combat begins. Waspkeeper's player rolls 7+1d6 to get 11 initiative. They also Reaction + Intuition, 7 dice, with a threshold of 3 to check for surprise. Luckily, they aren't. On Wasp's first pass, they take a hit of Jazz. The Jazz will kick in on their next combat turn, but they instantly make a Body+Willpower+(11 - Jazz's Effective Addiction Rating of 8), 10 dice, threshold 3 test to avoid getting addicted. Luckily, she avoids addiction, this time.

On her next pass, with 1 initiative remaining, she takes a simple action to grab and ready her Thunderstruck from the car's smuggling compartment. She then simple action fires her weapon at a Halloweener ganger, she rolls her 12[10] dice and the ganger attempts to dodge with his reaction+intution but only gets 2 hits. With 2 net hits, Waspkeeper applies a flesh-rending 18P AP-8 to the ganger. The ganger attempts to soak the damage with their body+armor minus AP, but with only 7 dice getting 4 hits, they go down.

This combat turns ends and Waspkeeper's player reroll initiative as 8+3d6 and gets 21 initiative. Sadly, her teammate mage is about to get roasted by a Halloweener "cook" with a flamethrower. She stops this by taking the interrupt action I Am the Firewall (KC, 38) (See Houserules). Their player rolls computer+intuition with the limit of data processing for 11 dice and gets 6 hits but these are limited to 5. This grants her teammates 5 bonus defense dice which quickly turns the tide of battle. Leaving behind the Halloweener bodies, they finish loading the prototype and take off into the night.