Upgrade Slots

All items have upgrade slots.

• Weapons: 1 slot
• Light armor: 1 slot
• Medium armor: 2 slots
• Heavy armor: 3 slots
• Powered armor: 2 slots
• Other items: 1 slot

Adding Upgrade Slots

Stripping Equipment

You can add an upgrade slot to an item by reducing its capacity or utility in a significant way.

• Strip Equipment: At-will, 8 hours; you strip an item to add an upgrade slot.
  • Roll: Mechanics, DC 20
  • Failure: Item ceases to work, doesn't gain upgrade slot.
  • Retry: Can retry on failure; action takes 1 hour instead of 8. On eventual success, item returns to normal function, and upgrade slot is gained.
  • Success: Item gains an upgrade slot, functionality is reduced in some way (see below).

Stripping Weapons

You can strip a weapon in one of five ways.

Damage

Reduce the damage dice dealt by one step. The number of dice does not change,just their size. Change d12s to d10s, dlOs to d8s, d8s to d6s, d6s to d4s, d4s to d3s, and d3s to d2s. For example, a blaster cannon stripped of damage deals only 3dlO damage rather than 3d12 damage.

Range

Reduce a ranged weapon's range by one step. Change heavy weapon to rifle, rifle to pistol, pistol or simple weapon to thrown weapon, thrown weapon to melee weapon (see Weapon Ranges). Melee weapons can't have their range stripped.

Design

The standardized design of a weapon can be stripped, making it an exotic weapon. (Weapons already in the exotic weapon category can't use this option). By moving things around extensively, more room for modifications is created at the cost of making the weapon difficult to learn to use properly; for example, some gunfighters modify their blaster pistols so extensively that no one else can use them comfortably.

Stun Setting

A weapon with a stun setting can have that function stripped to gain one upgrade slot.

Autofire

Weapons with both a single-shot and autofire setting can be stripped to just having a single-shot firing mode.

Stripping Armor

Armor normally has one to three upgrade slots available as stock gear. It can add more by becoming thicker and bulkier (see Increasing Equipment Size, below) or by either of the two methods described below.

Defensive Material

Armor can also have sections of defensive material stripped, lowering its armor bonus to Reflex Defense and equipment bonus to Fortitude Defense by 1 point (to a minimum of 0).

Joint Protection

Armor normally uses more fragile, more expensive material to cover its joints, frequently with extensive bracing to transfer the impact of an attack to stronger sections of the armor. Armor can be rebuilt to use standard, heavy materials everywhere and remove the bracing to make room for another upgrade slot. This doubles the weight and decreases the maximum Dexterity bonus by 1 (which can even reach negative numbers).

Increasing Equipment Size

Any piece of equipment can gain an upgrade point by increasing its size by one step and doubling its cost. This has no effect on the equipment's effectiveness.

For example, an enlarged blaster pistol has the same range and

damage despite now being a Medium-sized weapon.

This represents both physically making more room within the equipment for an upgrade, and using sturdier, larger components to prevent the stress of the new modification from damaging the equipment. If armor undergoes this process, it doesn't change size but instead becomes one step heavier (light armor becomes medium, medium armor becomes heavy). Heavy armor can't benefit from this option.

No gear can gain more than one upgrade slot by increasing its size.

See Equipment Size for details on sizes.

Installing Upgrades

Installing an upgrade can take anywhere from a few minutes of work to week of frustrating machining and retooling in an overheated workshop. The amount of time and Mechanics check DC required depends on the number of upgrade points required and the quality of the upgrade (commercially bought or scratch-built).

A scratch-built upgrade costs twice as much as a commercially bought upgrade. After the time listed above, make a Mechanics check against the appropriate DC. On a success, the upgrade is installed and functioning properly. On a failure, the upgrade doesn't work properly; you may attempt the Mechanics check again, but each retry requires the same amount of time and costs half as much as the original attempt.

Removing an upgrade requires the same amount of time, but reduce the Mechanics DC by 5. On a failure, the upgrade has been deactivated but not removed; you may attempt the Mechanics check again (which requires the same amount of time). If you don't care about removing the upgrade intact, reduce the time required to the next lowest increment (for example, from 1 day to 1 hour, or 1 hour to 10 minutes), but the upgrade is automatically destroyed on a failed check. Once the upgrade is successfully removed (or destroyed), the upgrade slot that was occupied becomes available again.

List of Upgrades

Universal Upgrades

Can be applied to any type of equipment.

Armor Upgrades

Weapon Upgrades