Universal Miniatures Rules [PDF]

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UNIVERSAL MINIATURES RULES

“Everything you need, and nothing you don’t” A Rulebook by Franz Braatz

Welcome to the universal miniatures rules system. There are several reasons why I wanted to create this rule set. I am always looking for a set of rules that I can use to play teams of soldiers with. There is always this reason, or that reason why most of the ones you find, don’t quite fit the bill for what I’m looking for. Let me go over some of the difficulties and frustrations I have with existing rule sets that are out there. First and most importantly is that most rules are too complicated. It takes forever to learn the rules, and then once you do, you fight and argue over the subtle nuances forever. Next, many rules require you to have lots of special items in order for you to play. Many rules are designed to make money or be commercially viable. Therefore, you need to have special dice, or miniatures, and extra books for you to play a special army and so on. I wanted a rule set that anyone can use and customize with very little effort. Character creation should be quick and easy to set up. The characters profiles are very simple, and yet, can be customized to an infinite degree. No two soldiers or armies need to be the same. The next thing I wanted was for the game to be virtually free to start and set up. All you need are some six sided dice, pen and paper, a ruler, a play surface area, and some figures of your choice. With this being a universal rule set, it should be flexible enough to fit any scenario or time frame. If you don’t have a sniper in your fantasy setting, just change the name to “fire mage” and you are done. All actions in this game are resolved by one six sided dice roll. If you attack, roll a D6. If you need to defend against said attack, roll a D6. If you want to move over there, roll a D6 to see how many inches you can move. That is almost all there is to the rules of combat. Don’t let the simplicity fool you. There will be plenty of strategy involved. We just need to expand off of that premise and establish some parameters.

CHARACTER CREATION Once you get the hang of it, creating your own characters will become second nature. I like to refer to the build system as an A La Carte style system. First, you start with a basic profile, then, you can go through the menu to pick and choose different options to make each character unique and valuable to the team in different ways. Creating a new character consists of three easy steps described below.

STEP 1: Start with a basic character template. Every character in the universal rules set starts out exactly the same, with a basic framework with which to build off of and give balance to the game. All characters in the game need to have the same initial stats so they can interact properly with the world they are in and other characters they are playing with. Let’s go over all the stats that they will need to play. These stats are Action Dice, Movement, Melee Attack, Ballistic Attack, Damage, Defense, and Health. All stats start at zero and can be modified with personality points later in the creation phase to increase their effectiveness.

ACTION DICE: Each character gets two action dice to use on their turn to perform different actions of their choosing. You can choose to use your dice to move, shoot, or melee attack in any combination you want. Certain special abilities give you additional action dice that can only be used for certain types of actions. Use these wisely in combination with your normal action dice. MOVEMENT: All characters need to move. Movement is accomplished by rolling one or more six sided dice and moving the rolled result in inches. You may roll as many dice as you have allotted and add the results in order to perform special actions such as jumps and climbing. You also have the option of rolling movement dice one at a time if you are not making a special action and want to try to save action dice for other actions. Certain types of terrain may hinder your movement speed and abilities. Here are the movement related parameters. CLEAR TERRAIN: No movement penalties. ROUGH TERRAIN: Examples of rough terrain would include broken ground, rubble, and heavily wooded areas. Rough terrain gives you a minus one to your speed rolls. That means that when you roll your action dice for moving, subtract one inch from the result. SWIMMING: If you are trying to cross a body of water that is too wide to jump over, you may have to swim across. Swimming is done at half speed. This means that you would divide your speed result in half, and move that many inches across the water. It is assumed that you will not drown if you end your movement in the water. Swimming units cannot perform any attack actions until they clear the water. CLIMBING: Climbing is similar to swimming. You may add all of your action dice that you are using to climb and divide by half to see how many inches you can climb vertically. As with swimming, you cannot perform other actions until you have completed your climb up or down. FALLING: If, for some reason your character falls, he may need to check to see if he is hurt. Anyone falling from one floor or lower receives no penalties or injuries. For every floor above two flights, you will have to take a damage test of one attack dice per floor with no bonuses to defense allowed. MELEE ATTACK: This is your characters ability to fight in hand to hand combat. Everyone starts with a D6 ability to attack and can be modified with personality points and special abilities described later. Whenever a character moves into base to base contact with an enemy, he may perform a melee attack as long as he has the actions available to do so. Characters in melee combat may not perform ballistic attacks until they are no longer in base to base contact with enemy combatants. If there are only two characters involved in the melee, both have to option to break away from that combat on their turn by using a movement action to move away from the other character. If there are more than two characters involved in the fight, then the player with the least amount of fighters involved cannot break away from combat. The player with the superior numbers can move people away at will until the numbers are even. Melee attack dice are rolled one at a time. Whenever a melee attack dice is rolled, the defender always rolls a defense dice to counter the attack. Defenders always win on ties. An attack roll of one can still be successful if it has enough modifiers to beat the defense roll. If your melee attack roll is higher

than the defender’s defense roll result, then the attack is successful. If your attack succeeds, roll a damage dice and add any bonuses. Subtract the result from the defenders health line. BALLISTIC ATTACK: Ranged combat is very similar to melee combat as for as mechanics are concerned. The difference is that you are attacking from far away. In order to perform a ballistic attack you must first choose a target. Next you want to determine if your character has a clear shot at the target. We use a method known as the ¼ to ¾ method. If a model can see its intended target and is not obstructed from view by more than ¼ of the area, it considered to have a clear shot with no cover penalties. If a model is obstructed from view by more than ¼ but not more than ¾ it is considered in cover. A cover bonus gives the attacker a minus one penalty to their attack roll. If the target is obstructed from view by more than ¾, it is considered to be blocked from view and cannot be shot at. Characters in melee combat cannot be targeted for a ballistic attack as it is considered too dangerous to shoot into melee combat for friendly team members. Next, the attacker needs to check the range to the target. Use a tape measure to measure the distance form base to base of the two models involved. If the range is less than 12 inches, then no penalty is applied. At a range between 12 and 24 inches, the attacker subtracts one from their dice roll. Anything farther than 24 inches is considered too far away to shoot at. After factoring in all of your bonuses and penalties, make your ballistic attack roll and compare it to the defenders roll. If your attack is a success, then roll for damage as with melee combat. DAMAGE: Whenever you make a successful attack, you may roll to see how much damage you have inflicted on your target. For each successful attack, roll one damage dice. You may modify damage results using personality points and special abilities. Action Dice CANNOT be used for extra damage. DEFENSE: Every time your character is attacked with either melee or ballistic attacks, you will roll a defense dice to counter the attackers attempt to inflict damage upon your character. Defenders always win ties after modifiers have been applied. Defense dice are not the same as action dice, and must be rolled against any and all attacks. HEALTH: All characters start off with 15 health points. You can increase your total health by 5 points for every personality point you add to your health stat. When your character is reduced to zero health points from being attacked, they are removed from the game.

STEP 2: Add three personality points to your character. Personality points are bonus points that you can add to your characters profile statistics to add extra points to their dice rolls and other nice bonuses. You can add personality points to the following stats: movement, melee attack, ballistic attack, damage, health, and defense. For example, if you added a personality point to your characters melee attack stat, every time you roll a melee attack roll, you would add one to the result. You can add up to a maximum of two personality points to any one given stat. And no stat may be modified by more than three points of combined bonuses. In order to add a point to your character, write in a +1 next to the stat you wish to boost. The only exception to this rule is your health stat. For every personality point you put into your

health stat, you would add five additional points of health to your stat line. The two point maximum still applies to the health stat.

STEP 3: Select one special ability you wish your character to have. Special abilities are unique actions that your character can perform in a particular area of expertise. Some special abilities allow characters to roll extra dice for a particular action or give bonuses in others. A characters special ability represents his or her role in the group. Groups of soldiers should have special abilities that complement each other in order to maximize your groups’ effectiveness. Below is a list of some basic special abilities to choose from. You can make up new ones as long as everyone playing agrees that they are balanced and fair compared to the other options. Name: Leader Limit: 1 per Army Effect: Once per game round, a leader may give any character on your team an additional dice roll of any kind of your choosing.

Name: Infantry Limit: None Effect: In exchange for a special ability, you may give this unit three additional personality point in their profile. You must still follow the rules concerning point limitations.

Name: Drone operator Limit: 2 per Army Effect: The drone operator gets 2 drones that he can control remotely in the game. Each drone has one action dice and ten health points. Drones do not benefit from the operator’s personality points. You may place your drones anywhere on the board at the beginning of the game.

Name: Mounted Cavalry Limit: 3 per Army

Effect: Cavalry units get one additional movement dice roll per game round. Name: Sniper Limit: 2 per Army This unit does not suffer any penalties on ranged attacks. Snipers do not have range restrictions.( blocked lines of fire rules still apply)

Name: Name: Assassin Limit: 3 per Army Effect: This unit gets one additional ranged attack dice once per game round.

Name: Grenadier Limit: None Effect: When this unit makes a successful ranged attack, it rolls an additional damage dice once per game round.

Name: Commando Limit: None Effect: When this unit is targeted for a ranged attack, it may roll an additional defense dice once per round.

Name: Guardian Limit: None Effect: When this unit is targeted for a melee attack, it may reroll a defense dice once per game round.

Name: Tank Limit: 2 per Army

Effect: When this unit is successfully attacked, it may roll a counter dice to negate some or all of the damage received once per game round.

Name: Skirmisher Limit: 3 per Army Effect: This unit gets one bonus melee attack dice once per game round.

Name: Brawler Limit: None Effect: On a successful melee attack, this unit rolls an additional damage dice once per game round. (The second damage dice is rolled separately and not added together with the first damage roll.)

Game Round Order The game is broken up into rounds of combat. At the begging of each round, each player rolls a dice to see who goes first. Each player activates one unit per turn and alternates moves until all units have been activated. When all units have been activated, the game round ends and a new one begins. Players must activate a unit on their turn, but may choose to have that unit not perform any actions. Action dice may be rolled in any order the player chooses. If an action dice rolls more points than are needed for a certain action, they are lost and cannot be saved for later. If a unit loses all of its health points before it is activated, it is still immediately removed from play. The game ends when one side has no more units on the board or one player concedes.

Rolling Six’s Rolling a natural six in the game is always exciting and adds intensity to the game. A natural six is a six rolled on the dice with no bonuses added. Depending on what type of roll you are making will determine the effect of the six rolled, but it is always good for the roller. Action dice roll: If you roll a six on an action roll, that unit gains one additional action dice. It must be used immediately or it will be lost and can only be used by the character that rolled it.

Special Ability dice roll: If a character rolls a six on a special ability dice, the bonus dice is treated as a normal action dice and may be used for any standard action of the player’s choice. Defensive roll: If a character is rolling a defense dice and rolls a six, he instantly wins the combat and the attacker immediately ends his turn regardless of whether they have action dice left or not. The defending character does not receive any damage from this attack. Damage Roll: If a unit rolls a six on a damage roll, they can keep rolling for damage until they run out of sixes. Add up the result and remove that amount of damage from the target. Damage does not carry over to the next attack.

Scenarios This rule set was designed to be able to be adapted to the setting that you have already selected. It should be flexible enough for you to use to recreate scenes from movies, TV shows and books. I have not included any scenarios in the assumption that you have come here with narratives already in place. There are many recourses available to make up great scenarios and battle plans in the general media.

Optional RPG Rules I have included a role playing option in the event that an evenly matched fight is not desired and a story narrative is more desired. In order to adapt your characters to be compatible with the role playing aspect, they simply need to be adjusted slightly. There are just a few extra steps involved that mirror what you have already done in the initial Character creation. NPC’s can be dumbed down or beefed up in any way you need them to in order to reflect an accurate depiction of them in your campaign. Step One: Add three additional stats to your character profile. They are listed as follows. Diplomacy: This stat represents how your character interacts with people and other characters. Any time you need to talk to another character or convince them of something, you can roll a diplomacy test. Perception: This stat represents how your character interacts with the world around them. When a character needs to find a secret door or relies there is danger around, you should roll a perception test. Mechanics: This stat represents your character‘s skill with thing and equipment. Whenever you need to operate a piece of machinery or repair something, you should roll a mechanical test.

The difficulty of these tests should be determined by the person running the story.

Step Two: Add one additional personality point to your character. It may only be added to one of the new stats added for the RPG rules.

Step Three: Players may choose one of the following special RPG special abilities instead of the normal ones. Name: Charismatic Limit: none Effect: You may add one extra dice roll for diplomacy rolls.

Name: Investigator Limit: None Effect: You may roll one extra dice toward a perception roll.

Name: Engineer Limit: None Effect: You may roll one addition dice roll toward any mechanical roll.

Conclusion I hope that these rules will help you bring your characters to life in a dynamic and easy way that can be used over and over again in any situation that you can think of. Once you get the hang of how the mechanics work, it should be no problem to add your own special abilities and options to suit your needs. Thank you for reading and your support. Franzyland

Name Leader

1

Infantry

None

Effect Once per game round, a leader may give any character on your team an additional dice roll of any kind of your choosing. In exchange for a special ability, you may give this unit three additional personality points in their profile. You must still follow the rules concerning point limitations.

2 3

The drone operator gets 2 drones that he can control remotely in the game. Each drone has one action dice and ten health points. Drones do not benefit from the operator’s personality points. Cavalry units get one additional movement roll per game round.

Drone operator Mounted Cavalry Sniper Assassin Grenadier Commando Guardian Tank Skirmisher Brawler Charismatic Investigator Engineer

Limit

2 3 None None None

This unit does not suffer any penalties on ranged attacks. (out of range and blocked lines of fire rules still apply) This unit gets one additional ranged attack dice once per game round. When this unit makes a successful ranged attack, it rolls an additional damage dice. When this unit is targeted for a ranged attack, it may roll an additional defense dice. When this unit is targeted for a melee attack, it may roll an additional defense dice.

2 3 None None None None

When this unit is successfully attacked, it may roll a counter dice to negate some or all of the damage received once per game round. This unit gets one bonus melee attack dice once per game round. On a successful melee attack, this unit rolls an additional damage dice. You may add one extra dice roll for diplomacy rolls. You may roll one extra dice toward a perception roll. You may roll one addition dice roll toward any mechanical roll.