Miscellaneous Equipment

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by Bill Logan

Explorer Vest

Characters in the Star Frontiers games spend a lot of time adventuring. When they adventure, they often find themselves burdened down with travel gear: toxy-rad guages, toolkits, solvaway canisters, first-aid packs, spare ammunition, survival rations, etc. They often find themselves encumbered and their movement rates suffer.

The Explorer Vest (by UniHo) is designed to help the intrepid adventurer tote about his various pieces of gear. It is built of rugged material (though offers no damage protection) and is water resistant.

A character wearing an Explorer Vest can treat his Strength score as if it were 5 points higher when determining encumbrance effects. This effectively allows 5 more kilograms of gear to be worn without affecting movement.

An Explorer Vest itself has a negligible weight (its mass is quite evenly distributed, though when stored it is considered to weigh 0.5kg). It costs a mere 50Cr, and can be ordered in white, black, khaki, and grey. It can be adjusted to accommodate any of the four core Frontier races (even the Yazirian’s wings).

Tactical Vest

Sometimes it’s not adventure on a character’s mind; sometimes they’re out for payback. Other times they’re deployed on a purely militant mission: bounty hunting, big game hunting, assassination (surely your characters aren’t into contract killing?), or mercenary special missions. When this is the case, the Tactical Vest is a decent option.

The Tactical Vest is designed to hold:

  • eight ammunition magazines
  • four grenades
  • two variable timers
  • one kilogram of Tornadium D-19

And look dangerous while doing it. All of these items, when properly placed in the vest compartments, weigh nothing to the character wearing carrying them. It also has several straps designed to hang off the bottom of the vest, to act as rigging onto which pistol-sized weapon holsters can be attached.

The back of the vest includes five SEU PowerClips in a network of heavy-duty canvas rigging, all wired together with integrated power routing and buffering to form the equivalent of a standard 100-SEU Power Backpack. 1.5m power cords can be pulled and locked in place (festooned) and will retract when pulled and released. Up to four devices can be powered in this manner. Unlike a standard Power Backpack, these five 20-SEU PowerClips can be replaced independently (though not by the vest’s wearer while being worn, and quickly enough to be done effectively during combat).

The Tactical Vest is built of an extremely durable ballistic material. If worn alone, treat it as a 25 point skeinsuit. Skeinsuits cannot be layered, so if worn over another skeinsuit, both of the protective layers will take the same damage. For example: a character is shot for 34 points of damage. He takes only 17 points, and both his skeinsuit and his tactical vest take 17. If worn over an albedo suit, it nullifies the protective nature of that suit.

The Tactical Vest is not inexpensive. It is not often worn by large armies because of this. Mercenaries and adventurers comprise the bulk of the vest’s sales. The vest can be adjusted to fit any of the four core Frontier races (even accommodates a Yazirian’s wings), and can be purchased in black, white, khaki, hunter green, and in several types of camouflage. It weighs 2kg and costs 750Cr.