by Gattolardo
Hi all, here are a few house rules for cars we started to use in my group, they require a little more bookkeeping, but I believe they are worth it. Please keep in mind that they are still in “playtesting”, as they so any comment is appreciated.Why House ruling cars?
Because, as they are, cars are quite powerful, maybe too powerful. While thematically this is quite correct, running over zombies is not that healthy for your car, also, controlling an impacting car is not the easiest task on earth, and cars tends to get damaged quite a lot impacting bodies.
So..
Here are the rules.
CAR DAMAGE
At the end of each car movement, roll a die for each zombie hit by a car
Walker/Runners: 1 die
Fatties: 2 dice
Abomination: 3 dice
For each 1 rolled, add a damage counter to the car. (use any method you like, we use, for instance, noise counters or wooden cubes from another game). Every time a car is activated to move and has at least 2 damage counters on it, roll two dice, if you roll more than the damage counters on the car, no problem, activate the car as normal, if you roll less, the car stalls. The action is lost and car doesn’t move. You can use another action to try again following the same procedure. If at any time you roll double 1, something bad happened to the car. Immediately add another damage counter and add an extra damage counter at the end of any activation, meaning that the car will probably stop working in a short time.
Example:
A car is driving an undamaged car thru a zone containing 3 walkers, a fatty and 2 runners.
The driver rolls 6 dice, rolling a 4, 4, 5, 4, 6, 3.
He then hits the 3 walkers, the fatty and one runner. The walkers and runner are eliminated, the fatty shrug off the impact.
The driver then gains 4 XP and rolls 6 dice for car damage. One for each walker/runner and 2 for the fatty.
He rolls 4, 3, 1, 1, 6, 5. The car thus receive two damage tokens, The next time the car is activated to move the driver will have to roll 3 or more on two dice to be able to move.
While these rules adds quite a lot of bookkeeping I feel they add an element of thrill while using cars, not to say quite e lot of jokes about the various characters driving skills :-)
DRIVE CAREFULLY
The current rules assume a character is driving offensively, trying to kill as many zombies as possible. The damage rules make this practice quite unhealthy if driving an heavily damaged car, so sometimes caution is advised. A character may declare that he is trying to avoid zombies when activating a car to move. In this case you will roll only half the dice he would roll while moving normally. So in the above example he would roll just three dice when entering the zone.
Driving carefully will still give you the chance to kill some zombies, but, in crowded zones, you’ll have less chance to hit fattier targets, but also will give runners an easier time avoiding your chariot of doom…
THE BIGGER THEY ARE
While running over fatties will not kill them, I believe that some affect should be implemented. Every fatty hit by a car will be knocked over. Put the mini on its side. On the next activation the fatty will just stand up.
Abominations will never be knocked over, they are too bad ass to be bothered by normal cars.
IT’S AN ELECTRIC PIMPMOBILE
Unless the car is electrical, they make some noise, so a driven car count as a noise token by itself, just like a character.
Special rules may be implemented to cover bigger cars (Thank God for rednecks!), especially when using Lingster’s customs.
Bigger cars can count half damage tokens when rolling for stall, trucks may do two damage instead of one, and knock over Abominations. I’l come up with something for motorcycles. :-)
Please give your feedback, and ask if something is unclear.
Cheers
Roberto