Buying JAGS Traits

Buying Archetype Traits

JAGS Revised Archetypes is, at its core, a big shopping list of powers divided into sections (Cybernetics, Bio-Powers, etc.) with costs rated in Archetype Points (and sometimes, for a few abilities, Character Points). Once you know what categories are legal to buy from and how many points you have to spend you’re ready to start shopping. Let’s look at what you’ll need to know to figure out how to buy Archetype Traits.

Key Concepts

Here are the key concepts to keep in mind when buying Archetype Traits (Traits can also be referred to as ‘abilities’ or ‘powers’).

v  Powers and characters are often described by “Levels” (usually each 8 AP a character has is a Level but it can be a little more complex in some games). Powers are often sold in “Levels” as well (but sometimes 4 AP represents a Level).

v  For the power, how is cost determined? Is it based on Levels? A Flat cost? Is it based on the Total AP of the character? A combination?

v  For Attacks, there are some concepts like Armed and Unarmed attacks as well as additive attacks. H

Levels in JAGS Revised Archetypes

Let’s talk about “levels.” The term “levels” in JAGS Revised Archetypes can mean a collection of things (although thankfully the concepts are all related). Let’s take a look at what we mean by “levels.”

Term	Meaning	When it’s used
Level (of the character)	Each 8 AP a character is given to buy Archetype abilities with is a level of the character. A character built on 32 AP would be called a “level 4 character” if anyone’s asking.	It’s used, usually, in adventure type games where the PCs are fighting opponents and getting treasure and “going up in level” on a regular basis. Any game that might play like one of the MMO’s is one that might use the concept of character Levels.
Level (of an attack)	Each 8 AP you spend on an attack power is one full “level.” Usually the first level “Level 1” gives more damage than any level (“Level +”) thereafter. If a 32 AP character spent 16 AP on “plasma beam” they have a L2 (Level 2) plasma beam.	This is used when determining whether you are buying the “first level” of an attack or one of the later (L+) levels. It is also used, sometimes, when calculating specific effects of an attack (an Armor-Piercing attack might get +10 PEN Value per Level—so if you spent 12 AP on it you’d get +15 to the PEN score).
Level (of the character class)	When you get to the back-of-the-book section on character classes you’ll find some special rules for characters who are expected to find and use treasure. Some ‘classes’ may be expected to use more found gear than others (a sword fighter expected to find and use magical swords vs. a monk who only uses his bare hands). If you are playing with character classes, each level is still 8 AP but as some of those points are expected to come from gear you’ll look on a table and see how many points a character of your class has to spend discretionarily.	This is used when doing MMO-style adventure gaming and the GM is using our rules for distributing gear and the Wield and Wear rules.
Levels of GATs	In the Generic Archetype Trait (GAT) section there are some GAT’s that are only 4 AP per Level.	Despite the fact that we often list things in 4 or 8 AP chunks you can, if you want, buy them with any number of AP’s. You just need to do the math.

Why 8 AP Chunks? What were we thinking that we decided to price everything in 8 AP chunks? What’s magical about 8 anyway? Why do we recommend that characters be given AP’s in 8 AP chunks? Here’s our thinking: For a variety of technical reasons we didn’t want to price everything “by the point.” For one thing, that would usually involve decimal numbers (you get .80 points of damage per AP!) and, for another, we had to make some decisions about how many APs we wanted people to have (we thought that building a character on, say, 16 or 24 APs felt better than, say, 125 to 190).. When you are dealing with an ability priced by level you’ll usually see a table that gives you the values for 8 AP and 4 AP groups. You can do the math if you want to spend 1, 3, 5, or whatever APs but our experience is that usually that’s a good start for most people.

Buying Attacks

When buying an attack power or a power that includes some attacks (imagine a telepathic character with the ability to both read and attack minds) there are some specific rules to be aware of. These are:

v  Levels. Attacks are sold in “levels” meaning the first 8 AP (or fraction thereof) you invest in an attack always does more damage than each additional AP.

v  Armed vs. Unarmed. Attacks that increase your Base Damage (HTH damage) score such as super strength come in two varieties: Armed and Unarmed. If you will commonly use a bladed weapon or otherwise perform a HTH PEN damage attack you must buy the Armed version of the power. If you will fight barehanded doing Impact damage you may buy the Unarmed version.

v  Stacking Attacks. Some attacks, like a knife or claws add to damage you do with your strength and size. If you have, for example, super strength and claws the two abilities add together (this is also true with ranged attacks: if you have a plasma bolt and a ‘super charger’ for it, they’ll add—but that’s more in the super hero realm).

v  A-Cost. Attacks have an A-Cost listing and that is used to determine whether or not you’ll pay full price for the attack. You only pay full price for your most expensive attack!

Attack Levels

When investing in an attack you will buy “levels” of it. Levels are 8 or 4 AP chunks that do a listed amount of damage. The first level (Level 1 or L1) will do more damage than all the levels (Level + or L+) thereafter. Let’s look at an example:

Damage Type	Level 1	Level +
Unarmed Hand to Hand damage	16 IMP	10 IMP
Sword Damage	12 PEN	9 PEN
Blaster Damage	13 IMP	9 IMP
Gun	11 PEN	9 PEN

Remember that Levels are 8 AP so if I spend 16 AP on Unarmed Punch damage I’ll get 16+10=+26 Punch Damage. If I spend 16 AP on a gun I’ll get 11+9 = 20 PEN damage bullets. I can choose to spend any number of AP’s I want—all I have to do is the math (rounding normally). If I want to spend 19 AP on a magical sword the damage will be 24 PEN (12 PEN Damage for the first 8 AP and then 12 PEN damage for the next 11).

Some Traits Don’t Sell Level 1 Damage

When you are looking at powers some of them will not sell a Level 1 version. This is done for a number of reasons (mainly simplicity) but keep in mind that there is usually some way to buy the initial version (we usually explain it in the specific rules).

Example: Gunslinger

Gunslinger [4 AP per Level]
Description: You deal more damage with your gun (you also get some extra Damage Points). Whether this is because you have a bigger gun, more powerful bullets, or some other reason (precision shooting?) is up to the characters and the nature of the game. This trait will work with any Ranged PEN attack the character uses. It applies to every shot.
Ability	Cost	A-Cost	Damage	DP
Gunslinger	4 AP	+2 AP	+2 PEN	+7 DP

This ability has no L1 or L+ listing (it happens to be L+ but you don’t need to know that). What that means is that the bonus to damage you get won’t change. If you invest 8 AP in Gunslinger you get +4 PEN damage and +14 DP. If you invest 24 AP in it (six levels) you get +12 PEN and +42 DP.

When we started testing JAGS we realized that the damage that was balanced for each AP changed after a starting point. This was because every JAGS character is “born with 10 Damage Points” (our standard test model had 14, in fact) so to overcome this and be balanced the first “level” of an attack had to do more damage for the points than each level after.

Stacking Attacks

Some attacks “work with others.” Our common example is claws and super strength: the super strength amplifies the claw damage. Another example is right above: Gunslinger. The ability adds +2 to the gun the character presumably already has. These are examples of “stacking attacks.”

Stacking attacks are usually identified in one of three ways:

v  The description says they add to another attack (like Gunslinger does)

v  The attack increases the character’s Base Damage (STR, BLD, or other HTH damage increase)

v  The attack’s A-Cost has a (+) in front of it (note that the A-Cost for Gunslinger is +2 AP)

When you buy a Stacking Attack there are a couple of things to be aware of.

1.       The A-Cost of the stacking attack is added to all the other attacks it could stack with when computing the A-Cost of your most expensive attack (which you will want to do if you have more than one attack because you only pay full points for your most expensive attack)

2.       You can only have one Level 1 attack in any stacking group. This means that if you buy Super Strength and get a Level 1 level of it you can’t then go and buy claws and get the Level 1 level of it—if you already bought the super strength you have to buy the Level+ Claws. Let’s see an example:

Super Strength [Levels]
Description: You’re super strong! Well, stronger than normal … stronger than you were before you bought the ability anyway. Super Strength gives the listed bonus to STR and DP.
Level	Cost	A-Cost	STR	DP
L1 Armed	10 AP	+8 AP	+12 PEN	+8
L1 Unarmed	10 AP	+8 AP	+16 IMP	+8
L+ Armed	4 AP	+3 AP	+3 PEN	+4
L+ Unarmed	4 AP	+3 AP	+4 IMP	+4

Slashing Claws
Description: You’ve got claws! Rawrrr! Claws deal PEN damage at Close (punch) range.
Level	Cost	A-Cost	Damage	REA
L1	8 AP	+8 AP	12 PEN	5 REA
L+	8 AP	+8 AP	9 PEN	5 REA

Okay, so the character wants both Claws and Super Strength. Firstly, since the character is going to deal PEN damage you can ignore all the Unarmed Super Strength. Secondly, what can you buy? Let’s see:

16 AP: Level 1 Super Strength, Level+ Claws. This does 12 + 9 = 17 PEN damage and gets +8 DP.

16 AP: Level + Super Strength, +1 Claws. This does 9 + 12 = 17 PEN damage and gets +8 DP.

Hey—it’s equal.

What you can’t do is get Level1 Claws and Level1 Super Strength: that would do 24 PEN damage for the same points.

Power Types

When you start shopping in JAGS Archetypes you’ll see listings that look something like this (these examples are often simplified for clarity):

Basic Ability (Fixed Cost)

A basic ability is simply described and given a cost. It has no levels and you can (generally) only purchase it once.

Night Vision [1 AP]

Description: You have the cat-like ability to see in the dark! Night vision allows you to ignore -4 points of Darkness Modifier and generally see “normally” in anything but pitch blackness.

Compound Ability

A compound ability usually mixes an attack with something else. This example ability does not have a Level 1 version which means that however many levels of it you purchase the effects the effects are constant (+20 Vibratory Field and +5 HTH Damage). If a character invests 24 AP in Vibration Shield they get 24 x 3 =72 Vibratory Field and +15 IMP HTH Damage.

Vibration Shield [Levels]
Description: Vrmmm--You can activate a humming field of vibratory force that surrounds your body! This both protects the character and can be used to deal damage at hand-to-hand range. Turning on the vibration shield takes a 5 REA Medium Action and, if it is knocked down, it can no longer be used to deal damage until it recovers (about 5 Rounds—30 seconds). The Vibratory Field is a Power Field (meaning all damage done to the character comes off the Vibratory Field first and each remaining point of the Vibratory Field counts as 1pt of PEN Defense). NOTE: the damage from the Vibration attack adds to HTH damage.
Level	Cost	A-Cost	Vibratory Field	Damage
Level +	8 AP	+4 AP	24 pts	+5 IMP HTH

Basic Attack

The basic ranged attack has a Level 1 and Level+ rating. The first 8 AP (or fraction thereof) invested buy at the Level 1 cost. After that, each 8 AP invested (or a fraction) buy damage at the Level+ rate. If a character spent 13 AP on Plasma Vision they would deal 13 (L1) + 6 (L+) = 19 Impact Damage (the +6 comes from taking 9 IMP Damage and dividing by 8 = 1.125 damage per AP. The character invested 5 AP at the L+ rate so it’s 5 x 1.125 = 5.625 which rounds up to 6).

Plasma Vision [Levels]
Description: Obliterate your enemies by firing plasma beams out of your eyes! A plasma vision attack is a ranged impact damage blast that can be fired as Explosive or not (it does the same damage). Use the simplified rules for explosive damage given in the attack section if the character is using it in this firing mode. As this is an “optical beam” it gets +1 to hit with any Aim action.
Level	Cost	A-Cost	Damage	Range	ROF
Level 1	8 AP	8 AP	13 IMP	-1/10y	S
Level +	8 AP	8 AP	9 IMP	-1/10y	S

TAP Cost

Evasive Movement has a TAP cost and therefore has a cost based on the Total AP of the character. A character built on 24 AP would pay 5 AP for it. A character built on 40 AP would pay 9. If the character is not built on multiples of 8 AP that’s okay: use whichever value they are closer to (more detailed rules will be described in the TAP cost section).

Evasive Movement [TAP]
Description: You dodge and weave in combat so that no one can get a clean hit! Evasive Movement gives the character -4 Damage Mods so long as they have their AGI Bonus (i.e. not if grabbed).
Ability	8 AP	16 AP	24 AP	32 AP	40 AP
-4 Damage Mod	1 AP	3 AP	5 AP	7 AP	9 AP

Armed vs. Unarmed Cost

Here is an ability that increases Base Damage (armed or unarmed HTH damage). It comes in two flavors: Armed and Unarmed and only one Level type (L+). Note that each 4 AP level (here levels are 4 AP) gives you an extra point of damage if you are buying the Unarmed version (meaning you will not/cannot use a PEN damage attack with it).

Mighty! [Level]
Description: You are extra strong and tough with rippling muscles. A Mighty character gets additional STR, a small amount of BLD, and Ablative Damage Points.
Level	Cost	A-Cost	STR	BLD	ADP
Armed L+	4 AP	+2 AP	+3	+1	12
Unarmed L+	4 AP	+2 AP	+4	+1	12

Combined Ability

Ability groups can combine combinations of these (TAP, A-Cost, and even Armed and Unarmed). When this happens there’s a fixed cost that’s added to the TAP cost. It looks like this:

Cybernetic Enhancements [Combined]
Description: Better! Stronger! Faster. Cybernetic enhancements give you improved strength and durability as well as faster reflexes! The character gets the bonus listed to their STR and DP as well as +3 REA.
Level	Cost	A-Cost	STR	BLD	DP
Level 1 Armed	12 AP	8 AP	+12	+0	+16
Level 1 Unarmed	12 AP	8 AP	+16	+0	+16
Level+ Armed	12 AP	8 AP	+9	+0	+16
Level+ Unarmed	12 AP	8 AP	+10	+0	+16
TAP Cost	8 AP	16 AP	24 AP	32 AP	40 AP
+3 REA	2 AP	4 AP	6 AP	7 AP	8 AP

If a character had 32 AP and wanted 2 Levels of Cybernetic Enhancements they would pay: 12 for L1, 12 for L2 and 7 for the TAP cost (they are based on 32 AP) for a total of 12+12+7=31 AP. They would get, if Armed +19 STR, +32 DP, and +3 REA. If Unarmed +26 STR, +32 DP, and +3 REA.