Mandalorian Vambraces

Homebrew & House Rules
#1

From Boba Fett to Din Djarin, Mandos have all sorts of cool gadgets packed into their vambraces. A lot of this equipment is present in the form of armor attachments, but the HP requirements will quickly eliminate any options for additional modification, leaving you far more limited than what we see in the media.

So I’ve come up with a homebrew ruleset for Mandalorian Vambraces.

Disclaimer: This is fine when you’re mostly playing with Mandos, but if you only have one Mandalorian in the party, you may want to consider not using this as it does give the character an advantage over his fellows.

Now, the meat of the issue. Each Vambrace is 1 Encumbrance, takes up 1 HP, and has slots for 3 weapons. If wearing Mandalorian armor, two Vambraces still only takes up 1 HP.
I think this does a good job of reflecting what we see in the media, such as in Sabine’s case, where she had a Plasma Shield, Stunwhip, Repulsor Blast, and a Dart Shooter (I may even be forgetting something), all of which would total 5 HP leaving no space for any other attachments, which she likely had.
Here’s the doc: Mandalorian Vambraces. I’d love feedback and suggestions for tweaks or balancing. I’ve found this works out pretty well for my Mandos, and it’s a very enjoyable system.

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#2

This looks really interesting! I don’t know enough about homebrewing to give any feedback I’m afraid, but I’m in the planning stage of a Mando-only game just now and I’ve been agonising over rules for armor and attachments. The number of options you have here really makes a Mando-only game more viable.

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#3

Welcome to the forum!
I’m glad you like these. Another houserule I’ve used for my Mando-centric games is allowing the characters to spend 2,500 credits at CharGen (comparable to the Weapons of Tradition rules for Jedi) to acquire basic Mandalorian armor.
I usually start my players at Heroic-level, which is +150 XP and +9,000 credits.

#4

Wow, that’s a lot. I was thinking more that they would be a pretty ragged group who still had to prove themselves and the need to acquire good armor would be a driving force in the campaign. But you’ve got me rethinking that now; players who want to be Mando’s probably want to get access to the toys early on. Hmmm.

#5

It all depends on the backstory of the characters, the era, etc. but I prefer to have my Mando PCs start as full-fledged Mandos.
Mandalorian armor was an integral part of their culture and generally acquired when the Mandalorian came of age, as wearing the armor was one of the tenets of the Resol’nare.

Beyond that, “journey to find himself and acquire his armor” is an overdone trope, in my opinion, and often propelled simply by the prohibitive cost of acquiring the armor at the beginning of the game and not actually by a good story idea or by any actual cultural meaning. More often, it’s a way of justifying why the character doesn’t have the armor they are supposed to have, and often involves having lost it in some way.
That doesn’t mean you can’t tell good stories in that vein, but often they are matters of necessity and don’t actually contribute all that much.

One way to handle it would be to start them as starting-level characters, and they can each take on +10 Obligation (of some kind, not necessarily directly related to the armor) for the +2,500 credits needed to acquire the armor in my adaptation of the Weapons of Tradition rule. Then they’ve just got 500 credits with which to purchase weapons. It’s worth noting that the “Armor of Tradition” only saves them 4k. Sure it’s a decent chunk, but it’s not an major obstacle.

From there, the “get good armor” is a matter of upgrades and/or the Cortosis quality, which is also intended to represent beskar.

For my Mando PCs, their armor is narratively beskar as it was handed down through generations, much like Sabine’s armor in Star Wars Rebels. They started with it at the beginning of the campaign, and upgraded it as time went on. If you’d rather have it be durasteel armor that they have to upgrade with the Cortosis Weave to make true Beskar (a la Din Djarin), that’s a perfectly fine alternative as well.

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#6

Admittingly, the only experience I’ve had with Mando players thus far are myself when I was a wee lad to the system, and with one of my players preparing their next character for the sequel campaign, and both of them will have been or will be the sole Mandalorian of the group.

Looking at the base Mando armor, or as I did at first glance of the system, Heavy Battle Armor, 4 to 5 HP is a rather good amount to start with as a base and gives alot of flexibility. Now I see your main concern is that you can’t load up on weapons, else you have no room for utility (or other weapons) and that too was my concern with my character, until I stumbled upon a little beauty called the Model 2 Wrist Mount (found in Dangerous Covenants.) My main concern with giving a character the ability to have another 3 weapons at the cost of 1 HP is that, well, that’s a low risk-high reward venture for them and they’ll become a walking-talking-shooting armory. My math is like this: 5-2=3+6=9, only at the cost of 1,000 credits, and 2 encumbrance.

Now what the wrist mount does is it takes 2 HP on a Ranged light weapon, and then attach hands free to your wrist (or forearm, or where ever, GM willing). For certain weapons, like the Flamecaller (the only ranged light flame thrower, which doesn’t have bad stats for what it is) the encumbrance is gonna be a tad wonky sitting at a good 4, but if the GM is willing to get past encumbrance values, then that was your biggest concern next to certain weapons needing a use of Tinker to reach that 2 HP requirement, which is fine if the Mando is already trying to trick out their armor since you can only use Tinker once per item, so their armor wont be loosing out after its one Tinker use anyway!

I also wanna touch on two examples used: Sabine was often shown to be a great mechanic, and didn’t have contact with other Mandalorian’s for years, so likely modded her armor on her own very often. Din, on the other hand goes to have someone else do it, and before he gets his beskar outfit actually meets the HP requirements if we consider each thing he has 1 HP (2 flamethrowers, 1 whipcord, 1 tracking system) Its only after he has his armor upgraded (by someone else mind you, which could likely make it a special item in game terms). I don’t think Din is mechanically inept, but I don’t think he knows much more than how to repair a couple ship components, much less modify beskar armor.

One last thing I want to bring up in opposition: crafting rules: I’m not totally savvy on it in its entirety, but one golden thing I noticed in it is the armor crafting, in specific the augmentative armor. Without extra results, it grants the wearer an available 6 HPs as a base! That doesn’t include Tinker, or one being able to add, I think a max of, 2 more HP through getting Advantage and Triumph on rolls to craft it. So it is ACTUALLY possible to get 9 HP in the game without homebrew in the first place. It is very min-maxed when explained, but I think could be great for a narrative if your Mando player essentially learned how to straight up forge armor themselves instead of just modding it, or you could always have another forger make them that, and then slap the Mythosaur skull somewhere on it.

But all that said, I agree with your recommendation on it: if your entire group is Mando then let it rip, if it’s one (or Force forbid 2), you should probably pass for balance reasons. And in my experience, if it’s a very light weapon, IE the dart launcher (and not the explosive type, mind you) I won’t even bother with the HP in certain cases. In favor of homebrew, I’ve also been working on a Mandalorian Survivor universal tree, which I think I want to get around to showing off at some point soon, but it in essence deals with the need for Cortosis Weave as an attachment to saber-proof ones armor.

But yea, those are my 3 in the morning thoughts. I’ll probably look back in the morning and ask myself “why did I say that.”

#7

I am aware, but the problem there is encumbrance and limitations on the weapons you can use. It’s also worth mentioning that I list the Wrist Mounted Weapon as being one of the items you can mount on the vambraces, meant to reflect the wrist-mounted blasters we see with the Death Watch.
Another important point is that it actually increases potency to overuse the wrist mounted weapon, because now your weapons are going to (generally) be more powerful naturally AND have HP of their own, meaning they can be further tricked out.

That’s not actually true, but you may not have seen the whole show yet so I’ll put why in the approximation of a spoiler tag.

Summary

You’re forgetting Cortosis Weave, which would be to represent beskar, and the Whistling Birds. That’s 3 HP, bringing it up to a total of 7.

What if I’ve got eight and only two of them have any interest in Mechanics, and only one is crafting-armor-level good at it?
This is supposed to be accessible and easily usable for general groups. Edge cases and min-maxed builds that eke everything they can out of the system aren’t really what I’m dealing with here. Even when I am, see below.

One final point: These weapons are useful, but are generally light, and almost all restricted to Short range, making them situational weapons rather than go-tos. Additionally, it gives no ability to attack more than once in a turn. What it does do is allow the weapon to be prepared without spending a Maneuver and grant some adding versatility.

And you mention 1,000 credits, but that’s before you actually mount any weapons. A pair of vambraces don’t do anything on their own.

#8

I am aware, but the problem there is encumbrance and limitations on the weapons you can use. It’s also worth mentioning that I list the Wrist Mounted Weapon as being one of the items you can mount on the vambraces, meant to reflect the wrist-mounted blasters we see with the Death Watch.
Another important point is that it actually increases potency to overuse the wrist mounted weapon, because now your weapons are going to (generally) be more powerful naturally AND have HP of their own, meaning they can be further tricked out.

Personally, I think limitations are good thing (save for encumbrance in this case).

That’s not actually true, but you may not have seen the whole show yet so I’ll put why in the approximation of a spoiler tag.

I did say before he gets his beskar, and I’m not counting the helmet and shoulder pad as full Cortosis weave. At best I’d consider that Superior or something.

What if I’ve got eight and only two of them have any interest in Mechanics, and only one is crafting-armor-level good at it?
This is supposed to be accessible and easily usable for general groups. Edge cases and min-maxed builds that eke everything they can out of the system aren’t really what I’m dealing with here. Even when I am, see below.

That seems fair, though I would think it would be more rewarding for the mechanically inclined to be able to have higher quality armor, but I could also see it being annoying to have to side spec into mechanics when you wanna focus on combat or something not int based.

One final point: These weapons are useful, but are generally light, and almost all restricted to Short range, making them situational weapons rather than go-tos. Additionally, it gives no ability to attack more than once in a turn. What it does do is allow the weapon to be prepared without spending a Maneuver and grant some adding versatility.

Fair enough, that does seem balanced to me.

And you mention 1,000 credits, but that’s before you actually mount any weapons. A pair of vambraces don’t do anything on their own.

When I referred to this, I meant the cost to get the 9 HP using this method, as opposed to crafting or something. For something like your all Mando game I think it’s fine, but if you were to attempt to put it in a game with 1 or 2 metal-men I would jack up the price.

#9

Yes they are, but the wrong sort of limitations aren’t. The limitations I’m referring to in this case mean weapons that aren’t available, while simultaneously you can add weapons that should be limited. The vambraces add a limitation to what you can add by restricting it to a narrow field of focus, with a particular selection of weapons.

There’s a lot more than that. Where are you in the show?

If someone wants to go heavily into mechanics and really get that 9 HP, then I rule the situation the same way I would for someone who just picks up the base armor. I’m not going to inflate the HP requirement of something because they went all-in on their armor’s HP, and I’m not going to require that the other players go all-in on their armor’s HP in order to mount the weapons they want to mount.
The benefits they get from additional HP come in many shapes in sizes, as they are able to mount more armor stuff. Part of the intent of this was so that they could have both weapons and armor bonuses like Vacuum Sealed, Range Finder, Heating/Cooling Systems, Cortosis Weave, etc. If you get a bunch of extra HP, then you can mount more of them.

Except that it lacks the flexibility of crafting. These “HP” are dedicated to a particular use. If you want to get to 9 HP using crafting etc, you can take off the “vambraces” and add 6 HP of other stuff to your armor. If you are using vambraces, taking them off only frees 1-2 HP.

For my games, narrative is king. The mechanics need to reflect the narrative, and stats should make sense for what they do. If someone’s “vambraces” weigh 9 encumbrance, plus 3 encumbrance for Mandalorian armor is 12, then they need a utility belt and load-bearing gear just to hold their armor and the things they mount on their wrist, which we see tossed around like a plastic mug, it doesn’t match the narrative and they can’t use it like the thing in the movies. That’s just one facet of the issue.

“I hand my vambraces to Kat’ria”
“And she…” *rolls athletics* “collapses under the load.”

#10

I think get what you’re saying, and I wont lie, thinking of the idea to have weapons and utility attachments not affect each other HP wise makes me giddy. Plus I have to agree with you on the encumbrance bit of it, it’s not fun for the player to go “that flame thrower is 4 enc, and that wrist blaster is 3, so your arm weighs 12 pounds more with them” So yea, overall then I gotta say I think it’s fine now, though I still be weary to give this to any party that’s not the Mando A Team, but that’s about it.

There’s a lot more than that. Where are you in the show?

As for the show, I finished it long ago, I’m referring to chapters 1 and 2 before the armorer gave him his current setup. And then after he gets his full suit I don’t think he mods his armor himself, I think we’ve only really seen him patch his ships hull some.

#11

Yeah, I agree. That’s why I had that caveat in there.

Well, yeah, but that doesn’t change his armor’s HP unless he’s got a generous GM who gives an NPC talents to apply to the character’s armor or lets an NPC craft the armor for him, neither of which is normal, and neither of which I would allow.
I think Mando’s armor goes something like this: Mandalorian Armor+Tracking System+Flamethrower(x2)+Whipcord+Cortosis+Whistling Birds=7 HP.

#12

I really like this idea. I have one question, though. When you added in the Whistling Birds, did you intend for the reload to cost 100 per dart or 100 for a full reload?

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#13

Ah, good catch. Yes, I meant for a full reload.

#14

On the subject of typos, it says in the first paragraph that they hold ‘up to three of the weapons’, but not all of the equipment they can hold would be described as weapons. Maybe items?

#15

Fixed. “Weapons or items outlined below.”
I’d originally typed up that description before I’d added the tools, but while I adjusted the description of the Vambraces on my spreadsheet, I forgot to adjust the doc.