Vehicle Rarities and Updated Extended Document
Vehicle Rarity
Night Hunter
The world of Heavy Gear is full of various factions and powers but what can often be forgotten is that many of those are themselves coalitions of smaller entities. The “North” is a full confederation of 3 leagues of city states for example. Each of those leagues has their own military as well as the Northern Guard and smaller independent reserve or militia units. Within that web of members, different companies produce combat vehicles and sell to those members. However not all members have equal access to all vehicles produced by all companies. Each member would have an easier time buying from local companies for example. This disparity has not truly been modeled in either the RPG or Blitz previously until now.
The links below will take you to google drive where you can download a full vehicle rarity list as well as rules to use it in your 4th edition RPG games. Each faction has its own tab which is further broken down into each of the various military forces that faction has. Each vehicle entry is listed, and a rarity assigned to it for each faction. A key to the right is provided to interpret the meaning of the rarity descriptions while the numbers are used for the RPG. We intend to update this document as new units come out, we find something we missed, or we made a mistake.
For Blitz players this will answer the age-old question of “what units are most appropriate for X faction?” Simply consult the chart to get an idea for how many, if any of a unit would reasonably be available to your average military force in your faction.
For RPG players, a second document will provide rules for using rarity in your games. If you use this system, players will roll to determine if a vehicle they want is available (assuming they meet the PL requirements). A set of modifiers on the tables covers if you are getting the vehicle from a base or unit and the condition of that base or unit. A major supply hub will have an easier time finding you the vehicles you want while a unit that just got mauled in combat likely won’t have anything to spare.
Rarity Chart
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1l9MbzRVqMX3f5m20wsWD-YtUQ18ck77R/edit?usp=sharing&ouid=108487912777152715393&rtpof=true&sd=true
Rarity Rules
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AN2sWtSfGsYQlzOHDK-oASACYFUB9t3s/view?usp=sharing
Authors Note
Quick 4th wall break! As part of this, we do want to call attention to something in Heavy Gear 4th edition that relates to this.
Priority Level is not a measure of Rarity
Vehicles in Heavy Gear now have 3 “numbers” associated with them, Threat Value, Priority Level and now Rarity (if you use it).
Threat Value (TV) is a measure of the combat potential. This is intended as the sole balance check of combat encounters. There is some correlation between TV and PL but it’s far from a perfect match. There are high TV but low PL units and vice versa.
Priority Level (PL) is a measure of access. You can think of it as “trust” and a faction won’t let you have something if they don’t trust you enough. Additionally, it is not intended to be used as a balance lever. A director is not breaking the rules or creating an inherently unfair encounter if they throw a high PL enemy at a low PL team.
Rarity is a measure of availability. It is totally possible for things to be rare and low PL. The Southern Republic for example tends to not use older machines. These older units are generally lower PL but are harder to find (higher rarity) in the Republic compared to the MILICIA for example. Alternatively, the Republic may have more Fer De Lance gears around, but that doesn’t mean that less trustworthy teams can all of the sudden requisition them (stealing is still fair game though!).
Update to RPG Extended Content
To coincide with this, we have updated the RPG extended document as well and that link can be found here. It is mostly bug fixes and typo corrections but we did drop some more art in there (nothing new, sorry).
https://drive.google.com/file/d/10kfVKL1MsaALkW9VHj757YXEShYdZZ7i/view?usp=sharing
