We knew when building Heavy Gear RPG 4e that we wanted to have customization incorporated into the rules set. We also knew we wanted it to be intuitive and simple, but gamified in a way that is fun to play around with. The result is that you can customize almost everything. While Priority Level acts as a gating mechanic, the only real limit is what the director will allow. 

Custom Design Philosophy.

To quote William Gibson, “the future is already here, it just isn’t equally distributed.” We tried to play this idea forward in Heavy Gear. Auto factories do mass assembling in the more wealthy nations while poorer places still make heavy use of human labor. Advanced and well supplied military units might be able to cut and assemble entire weapon systems in a few hours while a Badlands outpost might have to reuse decades old tech to save valuable supplies and wear on essential machinery. To represent the ready availability of equipment, equipment uses the Priority Level (PL) system. If equipment matches your PL, then it is assumed to be available to the team without too much fuss. You can still use anything you find (and convince your sponsor to let you keep), but PL is usually going to be readily available to switch out and easy to replace. 

Spartan II

The Spartan was designed by Peace River Skunkwerks to be an easy to produce heavy trooper gear that could be used in place of Warrior IVs. Simpler, easy to produce components were sourced from other Peace River designs particularly the Crusader. These larger parts made the Spartan quite a bit larger than other gears of its class. Paxton unveiled their new gear to the public as part of its rebuilding campaign with the tagline “Bigger & Badder”. The larger actuators and joint components had an unexpected side effect once the gear hit the market.

T-XM1500/2 GOLD MAMBA

Archetypes are one of the optional rules for Heavy Gear. They represent different specializations a character can pursue, and players will recognize them as similar to the classes or jobs found in other roleplaying games. An Archetype represents a career long – or possibly life long – focus for a character, so they must be chosen during character construction and can’t be changed. A character starts at Rank 1 in their chosen Archetype and gets an ability then, and each time they rank up, up to Rank 6 in total. Ranking up typically happens at major story junctures, and is one of the many ways characters can advance over time. 

HACS-01MG-FU/A BEARHUNTER

Heavy Gear Fourth Edition aims for a combination of open ended rules with well defined game effects. Anything the player imagines can be a Skill, Trait, or equipment and those rules get applied in the same simple ways. Heavy Gear 4e When and how they get applied though is up to a process called Lobbying.  

The Player Lobby

HACS-01MG-FU ARMORED HUNTER

Today we want to talk about some of the basics that guide what a session of Heavy Gear looks and plays like. Before getting into any of that though, we should talk about optional rules. Heavy Gear Fourth Edition contains some rules which are tagged optional. By default these are on but a Director might choose to play without them. These rules add more complexity to the game and cover area’s otherwise entirely left to Director discretion. They can be thought of like mods to a video game – something that is rarely essential but provides a richer experience. The game functions fine without any of them, and may be a more streamlined experience, but we recommend using them. Some examples of optional rules are the wealth system, burden (how much players can carry), and Archetypes (which act like character classes in other systems.)  

F-32 Maru

F-55 Zikru

Like the F-27 and the F-32, the pads on the F-55’s hands and feet utilize “Lacerta-tech,” produced by Lysander Incorporated, which can be engaged to produce Van der Waals force. This Lacerta-tech, combined with additional climbing equipment, makes these frames excellent climbers.

The core units of the City Militia Defense Forces are the Gear cadres which field either older Gears or newer cheaper Asps. These units perform the role of a stop-gap measure until assistance from a regular military unit arrives. Most of the pilots in these Gears are retired veterans or members of the Youth Guard training to be ready for duty in the SRA or MILICIA.

Using Specialist Combat Groups in Heavy Gear Blitz!

Constructing a Specialist Combat Group is a bit different than a normal Blitz! combat group. Instead of picking the role and secondary role for the unit and filling it how you please, you must instead adhere to strict rules for composition, which may even include only running specific variants or upgrades. In exchange for adhering to this rigid formation, you may be able to run some models in a Role they may not normally fit in, or gain access to some unique options.

These groups may not be given secondary roles, and are only able to be used in armies from the force they come from, unless noted otherwise. They may however have any upgrades permitted by army and sublist rules, so long as the composition requirements are still met. Restrictions on the number of a specific variant apply as normal, for example, if a Specialist Combat Group is taken in the SK role, then model variants without SK+ may only be taken twice.

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