T5 review Part 3: Milk Bottles?

If you get this joke you really are a grognard. Over 600 pages in T5 and no milk bottles listed in equipment?

So I was skimming T5 as usual and came to the section on skills. In an innocuous little paragraph I was informed that fixing ground cars for example worked for all ground car regardless of tech level and other skills were similarly independent of tech level. It quantifies quality of workmanship, reliability, ease of use and several other factors for any piece of gear. So now you could buy that

I really have a problem with that. Flying a biplane will not give you the skill set needed to fly a TL 7 jet. Maybe the author thought it was needless detail and complicated play but this game also went into a couple of pages on perceiving and identifying various scents. Come on. Also breaking down skills into cascade and regular skills worked fine. Now we have at least a three tier cascade system with skills, knowledges and what have you that at least at first is confusing to me.

Then I came to the combat section. I don't get it. A few examples would be really neat. Some of it seemed contradictory. Traveling faster makes you an easier target or a better shot, I'm not sure which. I'm saving the errata for when I finish the rule book. The section on combat was 3-4 pages. It felt shorter than the CT section on combat. Please, tell me more about combat. It's crucial when generating a character takes so long.

QREBS.
I like them. It's exactly the sort of modular, optional chrome I like to include in my posts. Now a piece of gear can have identifying features such as quality, ease of use and reliability. A set of six vaccine suits can each be different. Do you go with the ergonomic but unreliable model (hint: no)? The QREBS rules are something I will probably use in my own games at some point and probably be the subject of a future post.

I'm already pondering how to apply them to my androids and clones!
Obviously ease of use sets up a lot of off color jokes. I'm not doing a post about love droids. Nope.









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