By Evie Moriarty
Painting by Callum France
Photography by Fatima Martín Pérez
Welcome back to Factions Focus. This time we’re going to look at an iconic part of the Fallout setting: power armor.
While the Brotherhood of Steel and the Enclave are the first groups that spring to mind when you think of power armor, in truth these enhanced protective suits can be found all over the wasteland. Even raiders can hammer together their own, albeit slightly clunkier, versions, and so it was essential from day one that Fallout: Factions be able to support its inclusion.
Power armor is one of those things that seems hugely variable in how effective it is depending on exactly what the story needs it to do at the time. One thing we can say though, is that power armor wearers aren’t invulnerable. Sustained fire seems to take them down well enough, and in game mechanics terms power armor is great to pick up as a player, but doesn’t just turn off enemy threats. That means that Factions wanted a set of power armor rules that were relatively easy and quick to use, and made models feel tougher and stronger without being overwhelming. You need a group of scrappy raiders to be able to take a Knight out, because otherwise it’s going to be a bad experience as a game.
Power armor on the tabletop isn’t a discrete mechanical thing in Factions, and instead is represented through improvements to the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. ratings of a model, and a number of Perks they might possess. A higher than normal Strength, Endurance and Health rating combined with three key perks (Burly, Hardy and Rad Resistant) make up the “package” that is how we denote Power Armor in the system. We can see this when we compare and contrast some of the different models available.
Here’s the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (plus Health) loadout of an Operators Boss:
And as a comparison point here’s the S.P.E.C.I.A.L. (plus Health) ratings of a Brotherhood of Steel Paladin from the new Fallout: Factions Rulebook:
Some of these changes are to do with the training and expertise of the two models. Operators are Perception specialists - that’s their unique selling point - and so the Boss has a higher Perception rating. They’re also a raider, used to running around the Wasteland and getting into difficult spots, so they have a slightly better Agility. The Brotherhood of Steel, to represent their methodical approach and to help balance them out a little, have a lower than usual Luck on their Leader (trust us, a Paladin with 3 Luck is a monster, it’s better this way). They are however a more proficient leader, being more charismatic, but are perhaps less canny than the wily raiders, leading to a lower Intelligence score.
That leaves us with Strength, Endurance, and Health, and these are all statistics that are strongly influenced by being in Power Armor. These should all be increased for a model in Power Armor. Exactly how much can flex and bend a little, and we don’t keep to completely strict rules about it (because otherwise we wouldn’t have as much leeway when we come to balance models), but they should all go up. As a rule of thumb, a model in power armor has +2 Strength, +2 Endurance, +1 Health over the same model not in power armor.
All models in power armor have three perks to represent this: Hardy (which stops you Suffering Fatigue, like from Suppression), Burly (which increases your Harm Limit to 4), and Rad Resistant (that lets you ignore Radiation Tokens). In fact, in the new Rulebook we provide a combined Perk called Power Armor, that rolls all of these together into an easy package (that doesn’t stack with any of the individual Perks, to be clear).
Here’s our first Wild Wasteland rule for this article then:
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Wild Wasteland Optional Rule: Purchasable Power Armor When you recruit a Champion model (either at crew creation, or with the Recruit Story Action) that does not have the Hardy, Burly or Rad Resistant Perks, you may choose to recruit them in Power Armor. If you do, then increase the model’s Strength by 2, Endurance by 2, and Health by 1. It gains the Hardy, Burly and Rad Resistant Perks. Increase its rating by 35. |
In this way you can, if you and your opponent (or all the players in your campaign, if you’re adding it in to that), buy up any of the standard Champions but suited up in power armor. This is definitely going to cause chaos, to be clear, it’s a massive change to things, but you might find that it’s still worth it to you!
One concern we’ve seen people express is the idea that Burly in particular is a downside not a benefit. The thinking goes that having 4 harm sitting on a model is such a penalty (four bonus dice to your opponent when they attack that model) that it doesn’t make up for the fact that you’d have been injured at harm 4 normally anyway. Here in the studio we’re not convinced of this - we’ve played a lot of games with a lot of power armor in different configurations, and a lot of implementations of the power armor “package” and its components, and we think it still comes out as an advantage. But we could be wrong - we’re only human (or near enough) after all. So here are some Wild Wasteland alternatives to address this concern:
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Wild Wasteland Optional Rule: Capped Harm No matter how many Harm a model may have, unless they have the Every Minimum Acceptable Safety Standard Met Perk, the maximum number of bonus dice gained from Harm when attacking them is three. |
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Wild Wasteland Alternative Rule: Better Burly Add the following line to the end of the Burly Perk rules text: “Attacks against this model gain no bonus dice for Harm on the Target.” Add the following line after the text “This model’s Harm Limit is 4 instead of 3” to the Power Armor Perk: “Attacks against this model gain no bonus dice for Harm on the Target.” Increase the Rating of all models with either of these Perks by 5. |
Capped Harm is a quick and dirty “fix” for this - your Burly models aren’t going to suffer any downside for going beyond a Harm Limit of 3. This is one of the Wild Wasteland rules we’re confident won’t ever make it into an official publication, just because it kills the natural logic of each Harm being an extra dice. Having to remember a cap doesn’t seem like much mental effort, but in the midst of a game it’s one more thing to bring to mind, and it’ll slow things down a bit, especially for newer players.
Better Burly makes models with the Perk substantially tougher, and it’s going to turn Super Mutants into absolute terrors. It definitely ramps up the power differential between models with and without it, and you may find that the rating increase suggested is not high enough.
As a peek behind the curtain, let’s talk about why a rule like Better Burly wouldn’t necessarily be good for the game as a product. It’s one of those things that often gets overlooked in discussions around why rules are one way or another. Also when people do think about it, it’s often in the form of “well they’re trying to sell us things” and, yes, correct, this is a company and it does indeed have to make money. But having a relatively mild differential between the power of most models and those in power armor is actually about making sure you as a player get the most out of your products.
Factions models mostly come in the form of hard plastic injection molded kits of 8-10 models. One of the things that was decided early on was that we didn’t want the game to be something where you were tricked by a starter into thinking the buy in was less than it actually was. A firm part of the planning was always that the crews you played in the starter should be a full crew playing the full game, and you shouldn’t have to buy more models to play. Obviously we’d like you to, but it was essential to us that if you buy, say, the Brotherhood of Steel set, then you get a full crew you can build and put on the table and play with at least for the first stretch of your campaign.
There’s also a flipside here which is that we also want you to be able to use all of the models in that box as quickly as possible. It’s very frustrating to buy a box of beautiful new minis and then discover that you can only use half of them on the table when you begin to play. So part of the brief we design around is to let people make the most of the kits that we produce. We want a starting crew to be no more than comes in a box, but also as much of that box as possible. There’s some flexibility here, and some boxes are going to come with a little room to grow in them, but that’s the goal we’re working towards.
If we made power armor into an unstoppable juggernaut, and then we put three power armor models in the Brotherhood of Steel box, then you’re just not going to be able to use all of them, or indeed much of the box. That would be a real shame, because every single one of those models is absolutely fantastic and deserves a place on the table. This isn’t about us wanting to sell you more things - it’s about us wanting you to get the most out of the products you do buy. And that’s a contributing factor to how powerful any one individual piece is.
As ever, if you use any of the Wild Wasteland rules featured in this article, let us know on our Discord or via email. If you’ve got topics you’d like to see address in future, tell us, and we’ll see what we can do. Until next time, traveller.