[HOE] Some new stuff for your consideration...

[Machiavelli132@aol.com]

Here's some ideas that passed through my head for Hell On Earth- your advice 
is welcome. None of these have been playtested.

New Stuff for Hell on Earth

Equipment: 

US Military NBC Warfare Suit  $2,000 Very Rare
    This is a combat suit designed to provide full protection against 
radioactive, chemical, and biological hazards on the battlefield. The suit is 
designed to be fully sealed from the atmosphere, armored, and fairly 
comfortable. It has a self-contained air supply that lasts approx. 8 hours 
with a full tank. Tanks can be recharged from uncontaminated air in about one 
hour. A sensor built into the tank alerts the user if the area he is 
recharging in is contaminated.  The suit provides an AV of 2 to the torso and 
head, and AV 1 everywhere else. It has a helmet with a built in 
communications and sensor suit. The radio is identical to the portable 
military kind, and the sensors act as a Geiger counter and biological \ 
chemical agent detector. 
The suit can not be fitted with an infantry battlesuit, but contains all the 
necessary webbing and gear to hold magazines and other equipment.  The suit 
is made of an extremely tough fabric that is difficult to cut with a blade, 
but anything that gets past the armor will breach the suit and expose the 
wearer to anything that can affect him through the skin, though it will not 
affect the helmet's air supply.  The suit is capable of acting as full 
protection in most of the Wasted West's dangerous weather conditions, but 
extended contact with acids will gradually ruin it. Most of these suits were 
lost well before judgement day, but they can still be found mostly intact in 
many areas. The CSA version is equivalent. Both can accept Land Warrior II 
systems. Due to it's efficient design, the system is comfortable but can not 
be worn for more than a day or so before most wearers get very interested in 
taking it off. For those of whom are wondering, it did have a function for 
eliminating wastes without having to compromise the suit's protection. The 
suit has a built in water tank that could be sipped through a straw and was 
refillable through the field. There was no way for the wearer to eat with the 
suit on, however.

Latin American Alliance NBC Full Protection Armor System  $7,000 Very Very 
Rare
    The LatAM forces used a much heavier suit that was more like power armor 
than standard NBC gear. It contained a fully sealed helmet that allowed the 
wearer contact with the outside world with a complex sensor array providing 
low-light, thermal, ultraviolet, electromagnetic, and 16x functions in 
addition to it's NBC sensors. The suit had a servo system in the arms and 
legs providing +1 strength to the wearer-, which came in handy. Instead of 
sealed fabric and regular combat armor, the FPAS was fitted with a series of 
interlocking armor plates interwoven with heavy sealed fabric. It provides AV 
2 on the arms, legs, and helmet, and AV 3 on the torso. It contains a built 
in, armored air tank (AV 4 to shots to the tank) with 16 hours of compressed 
air and the same recharge functions as the US and CSA versions. (Only it 
takes 2 hours) It has all of the same basic functions of the US and CSA 
versions, but it had far better protection in exchange for the suit's high 
price tag. It will provide full protection against almost all weather 
conditions, and has the same basic features of its northern counterparts. The 
suit's servo system needed constant repairs to work properly and given the 
apocalypse most of them have developed glitches- wearers take -2 step 
Nimbleness penalties and -1 step deftness penalties. The vast majority of 
these were lost in Phoenix, so it is somewhat easier to find them there than 
anywhere else LatAM forces fought.

No suit was designed with supernatural radiation in mind, so the ghost rock 
storms still killed the wearer. Rumors abound about Agency or Texas Ranger 
specialty NBC suits that provided protection against supernatural agents, but 
those rumors have not been confirmed. 

Edges: 

Hippocratic Order +2:
A relatively unknown sub-group of the Convoy, the Hippocratic Order is a 
librarian style alliance of surviving medical personnel. Combat medics, 
military surgeons, family doctors, ER doctors, and a host of others have 
banded together and pooled medical supplies to keep people healthy and happy. 
They usually travel with the convoy, dispensing medical aid to settlements as 
they visit. There are two kinds of Hippocratic Order hero- the travelling 
sawbones and the ones assigned to stay at a settlement for extended periods. 
The ones that stay are usually the only real doctors in a settlement, 
provided with 1-2 orderlies for assistance. They are given basic supplies and 
instructed to teach as many as are willing their healing art. This, the 
Hippocratic order hopes, will preserve the extensive medical knowledge of 
mankind. The travelling ones move around with the convoy, providing needed 
care and dispensing antibiotics and cures. They usually stay in town long 
enough to teach the local sawbones a thing or two and gather information on 
how the survivor settlements are doing. They've been passing death rate 
statistics onto the Librarians. They've got themselves a few mobile military 
hospitals that survived the war, a large number of upgraded ambulances, a 
small number of Junkers who deal with old hospital spirits, and even one or 
two Blessed. Investigators from the order have travelled with Doomsayers and 
Templars to learn about their mysterious healing abilities, and quite a few 
of them have left to become Templars. (One or two became Doomsayers, but most 
distrust the occasional side effects of Doomsayer healing.) This edge usually 
means he can count on help from the convoy, Librarians, and other Hippocratic 
doctors, as well as the love of survivor settlements.  He gets Medicine: 
General at 2 and Surgery at 1, as well as 3 levels of Dinero. In exchange, he 
has to take the Hippocratic Oath -5 to heal the sick and treat the wounded. 
They all carry Red Cross armbands- in fact, Red Cross personnel sent to aid 
people caught in the thick of fighting make up the majority of Hippocratic 
Order doctors. (Many local doctors are eventually informed of the Order's 
existence, but many more don't even know it exists.) They're numbers are 
small enough so that they can't travel with every convoy detachment, but they 
can usually reach epidemic sites using the same channels that the convoy uses 
to figure out which settlements need what supplies. 

Servant of Light +5:
"Good" has not been pleased with this radical turn of events. Still unable to 
come down and directly intervene, God, Allah, and all the rest have decided 
that they can get servitors too. While a servitor might be connected to 
Death, Famine, Pestilence, or War, a servant of Light can be marked by Life, 
Plenty, Health, and Peace. These do not represent any actual entities- there 
are no "anti-Reckoners.' Rather, just the good guys cheating for a change- 
they cannot come down and open up a can of omnipotent whup-butt, but they can 
often break the same rules the Reckoners did. Especially after they pulled 
that "Go Back In Time" trick.  A waster can become a Servant of Life by 
either taking one of the edges at character creation, or serving them in game 
and buying it with bounty points. When a player is deemed worthy of becoming 
a Servant of Light and has the bounty points, he'll get a vision that 
provides instinctive knowledge of what's being offered. To even be 
considered, the character has had to consistently put the health, safety and 
lives of others above himself.  Once he's a Servant of Light, going against 
the goals of his benefactor will strip this power from him until the Marshal 
deems the player has done sufficient penance.  See the "Acts of Good" table.
        
Acts of Good:

Life: Saving lives whenever possible. Preventing someone from almost certain 
death. Encourage growth- plant crops, protect children. Your players should 
already be doing this, so only if they go above-and-beyond the call of duty 
and save life when the odds were very much against it should the Powers of 
Light take notice.  That's your call, Marshal. 
Plenty: Encourage trade, commerce, and communication between settlements. 
Bring food, power, medical supplies, equipment, etc, to those who need it. A 
few of the more dedicated members of the Convoy have become Servants of 
Plenty.
Health: This one's easy- heals the sick and wounded, protect them, nurture 
them, at the expense of your own safety.  A few of the travelling doctors of 
the Hippocratic Order have started down this road. Mental and spiritual 
health counts.
Peace: This one is somewhat tough for most posses to pull off- to become a 
Servant of Peace you have to broker treaties and adjudicate disputes. Get the 
muties and norms to live together in peace in more than one survivor 
settlement. Bring too competing settlements to an alliance. One of the 
Librarians that was instrumental in getting the Iron Alliance formed and a 
few Law Dogs have started down this road. 

What You Get: 

Sadly, the Powers of Light can't really give the power most Servitors get. 
They just can't intervene that much. What they can do is provide something 
very similar to a knack or Anti-Templar fate chip ability. (In fact, what's 
below is just reversed Anti-Templar stuff. I'm just not that creative.) 



Life: 

A servant of Life gains the ability to use her fate chips to heal the wounds 
of others- a white chip heals 1 wound, a red 2, a blue 3, and a Legend will 
heal all wounds and even bring a person back from the dead if the Servant can 
get there before 24 hours have gone by. Because the Powers of Light are kind, 
any chip will heal all wind in addition to the wounds. (This includes wind 
taken by supernatural powers, radiation, etc.) 

Plenty: 

White: A character can permanently purify X pound of food or X gallon of 
water, X being the Servant's Spirit die type, removing any diseases, 
radiation, or poisons present within. It does nothing for taste and it cannot 
make the inedible edible. 
Red: The Hero can use the miracle The Lord Provides for every chip spent, 
with an effective Faith of 6d12. 
Blue: The Hero gains the Bless Crops ability for each chip spent,  as in Fire 
and Brimstone, with an effective Faith of 6d12. 
Legend: The Hero can forever remove any settlement's food problems- 
essentially causing "manna from heaven" to sustain any who live and are 
accepted as members of the community in a set settlement. 

Health: 

White: A hero can grant a +2 bonus to all trait and aptitude rolls to any 
living target within his spirit die type for the next 24 hours.
Red: The hero effectively has one use of the Panacea miracle from Fire and 
Brimstone for every red chip spent, with an effective faith of 6d12. 
Alternatively, the player could get one use of the Peace of Mind Syker power, 
if they need to cure a mental illness. 
Blue: The hero can remove any permanent ailments or disabilities- such as 
mutations, missing limbs, blindness, insanity, and chronic diseases. This 
doesn't come without a price- this can only be used once, on anyone, ever, 
and causes the Servant to take 4d6 wind per use as he absorbs the pain of the 
target. It requires physical contact, loud "do you believe in the power of 
Light!' style evangelist yelling, and both the Servant and Target glow with a 
brilliant white light.
Legend: The servant can bestow long life and health on any one deserving 
person. By "deserving", they have to be one of the really, really good guys. 
They get the Omega Man edge, 5d12+4 in Vigor, an equivalent to 3 levels in 
the Harrowed power Stichin', and are immune to any diseases and mental health 
problems. 

Peace: 

White: The Servant of Light can give anyone- friend or foe, in his line of 
sight, to fail any one attack roll. 
Red: The servant may temporarily halt any conflict between two individuals. 
If two gunmen are going at it, he can spend a red chip, shout a "There will 
Be PEACE here" or equivalent, and prevent them from trying to harm each other 
in any way for an hour. After this one use, it can't be used again.
Blue: The Servant can cause anyone hurting another to be harmed themselves. 
Wounds caused in anger in a 20-foot radius around the Servant immediately 
cause a corresponding amount of wind to whoever caused the damage. For 
example, if a ganger shoots a posse member and causes 3 wounds near the 
Servant, that ganger immediately takes 3d6 wind.  This power can only be used 
once a week. 
Legend: The Servant has to bring two opposing sides together in the same room 
for this to even have a shot. Once negotiations have begun, the Servant can 
spend the Legend chip and become a kind of supernatural peacemaker. Unless 
outside forces (i.e., the Reckoners), intervene, it's almost certain the 
Servant can broker a peace. The Reckoner clause is there as a last-ditch 
method for a marshal to prevent something he doesn't want to happen. 




Hindrances:

Supplicant -5:
You were one of the unlucky few who saw a Reckoner and lived to tell the 
tale. Unlike most of those who survived by running like hell, you gripped by 
some kind of instinct, bowed in supplication to the personification of evil. 
The Reckoners servants ignored you, but the sheer taint of this act- giving 
up on one's humanity, has tainted you forever since. You've lost a crucial 
part of your humanity- you are corrupted to your very soul. The Powers of 
Good are very, very displeased with you, and have revoked any Fate you might 
have gained. Naturally, unlike most Supplicants, who quickly join the ranks 
of Evil, you want your humanity back.  You can spend fate chips- it's just 
that whenever you do, you gain corruption points equal to the value of the 
chip. (This doesn't include spending chips for bounty) Your hero is unluckier 
than most in that the instant his corruption points exceed his Spirit die 
type, he becomes the basic servant of whatever Reckoner it was. (Faminite for 
Famine, Veteran Walkin' Dead for War, a Plague Zombie for Pestilence, and a 
Walkin' Dead for Death.) Note, for those heroes that bowed to Death, they 
didn't actually see him, as glimpsing his pale visage would have killed them. 
A legend chip, as usual, can buy off one point of corruption. There are 
theoretical means of penance, but it'd take an awful lot of effort before you 
can buy this sucker off. 

(Authors Note: The original draft of this hindrance allowed the hero to buy 
off corruption points with normal fate chips, so if the Hero spent a white 
chip to aid a roll and got 1 corruption, he could later spend another white 
chip to get rid of that point. The hindrance was still pretty nasty, but the 
current version is even worse.)