Omega Box

Got to thinking about Johathan Tweet’s Omega World, published in issue 153 of Polyhedron magazine (available here for anyone who’s interested) and how well it would work using the new Pathfinder Beginner Box rules.

For those who may not know, Omega World is a quick-and-dirty conversion of Gamma World for 3E.  Omega World is intended to be a beer-and-pretzels sort of game, with random character generation so players can get into (or back into) the action as quickly as possible.  Little effort is made at balancing everything, which works fine for a Gamma World style game, imo.  A Deathbot will ruin your day no matter how bad-ass your mutant is.

Converting to BB style rules should be fairly straight forward.  OW has only one class (Explorer) and a couple of races (pure humans and mutants of various types).  It also adds a few skills, which I’ll have to think about (it would be nice if Omega Box could be played using the BB character sheet).  Most of the monsters can be used “as-is”…a dire rat becomes a giant mutant rat, serpentfolk become mutant snakemen, goblins are mutant humanoids, etc.

However, an Omega Box game should be wild-and-wooly, so I think a few more rule trimmings are in order.  For one, I’ll dispose of the critical hit confirmation roll.  In core PF it exists to balance against the
increased chance of scoring a critical hit, but in Omega Box increased lethality is a design feature. 🙂  Besides, inflicting more critical hits tends to benefit PCs more than it does NPCs.

Another rule I’d get rid of is the d% cover roll for invisible targets or those in cover.  It’s just another die roll slowing things down.  I’d convert it to a straight penalty to the attack roll, probably -1 to-hit per 5% cover.

More to come.  Any suggestions or thoughts?

Tags: Beginner Box, Omega Box, Omega World, Pathfinder