It’s Jonathan here with our last weekly blog post for the upcoming event, HELLS OF THE SAN SABA! This is final post in the leadup for our April DR:TX event written by our Overarc STs, Ash Sexton, Ren Lewis and Andrew Harper. Today we will talk about about some Rules You Should Know, including a reminder about Water Rations, the danger of Sinkholes, and some Threat Skills of Note like Psionic Vampire, Fear, and Raider Rage!

Did you hear? We are running a Returning Player Campaign through the end of the season. If you have friends that have been away from DR for a bit, not only can you earn some CAPs for inviting them back, but they can also get a head start with some free items and benefits for coming back home to Bravado.
Blueprints were updated a few weeks ago, and another round of updates hit shortly after. I’ve catalogued most of these changes on my Blueprint Checklist, but I have written a blog post on the topic as well.
- TL;DR: You need to replace the cards for your Murder Inc gear immediately, but you can update the blueprints and other item cards through the Post Office in game when convenient. You probably didn’t have any of the items that were removed from play.
DR National updated their main website with some neat graphics, but more importantly posted about the next stage of the LIT 1.0 to 2.0 Conversion. This won’t have much impact on you if you only attend live events, but if you do online play you should check out the blog post they just released: Dystopia Rising News
- TL;DR: Any herbs, brews, meals, and other single-use consumables without expiration dates will be expired as of July 1st.

Our photos for this post were taken from previous DR:TX events by our talented Photo Team.

Let’s get into the main topic, Rules You Should Know!

Water shortages & YOU!

I covered these full mechanics of our new Illustrated Item Cards, WATER RATIONS, in our first post, Welcome to the Hells of the San Saba. I’ve also added these mechanics to the Temporary Local Mechanics, found on our website. The theme of this even is on RESOURCE SCARCITY, so this is a big part of the challenge of the weekend.

Let’s sum up the basics once more:

New Item Cards: WATER RATIONS

These Illustrated Item Cards will be given out at check in and will be used throughout the event as a resource for clean, potable water. These are Local Plot Cards and may be traded, bought, lost, or stolen.
You can get three Water Rations during check-in or choose to take less if you like a challenge.

New Roleplay Burdens - Parched & Dehydrated

You must drink at least one carded Brew or Water Ration each 12s.
If you don’t stay hydrated, you become PARCHED. While Parched you don’t refresh your Mind points at the 12s. Any Brew or Water Ration fixes this condition but doesn’t restore your lost Mind points.
If you go another 12s without any water, you become DEHYDRATED. Once at this stage, only Water Rations will fix your condition. While Dehydrated you must spend BODY as well as Mind points to activate a Skill. Ouch!
If you stay Dehydrated at the next 12s, you die. Try to drink some water, okay?
You can GAIN the Parched or Dehydrated keyword immediately through certain actions this weekend, but it will be telegraphed in advance if this is possible during a mod or Zone of Mechanics.

How do you get more Water Rations?

NPCs and certain mods will offer Water Rations as rewards throughout the weekend.
Players with Foraging, Trailblazing, and Hunting will be able to gather new Water Ration cards from the Post Office.
You can purchase these from other players, and trade them for Brass, favors, or in exchange for goods and services.

Drought Burdened Crafting

Any use of Agricultural must spend 1 Water Ration per trip to the Post Office for Agricultural (up to 60 minutes/30 mind).
Any use of Culinary recipes require 1 Water Ration in addition to the normal resources.

We will cover this once again during Opening Announcements, but the basic cycle of this mechanic is pretty simple — Drink water rations regularly, or else you take a penalty. If you need to do certain crafting, you’ll need to spend Water Rations to perform the skill.

Remember, you can Opt Out of potential death at any time by consuming at least one Water Ration!

Sinkholes

The drought has caused a bit of instability in the San Saba. The ground is as cracked and parched as your characters, and the environmental stress has aggravated the SINKHOLE problem that was created during the IMPRINT BY DESIGN event.

During this event, you will periodically encounter a SINKHOLE, marked with a yellow Zone of Mechanics instructions. Here’s how it will work:

While within 10 feet of a Red Glowstick (or otherwise marked area) if there are more than 10 Individuals (LC’s, NPC’s, etc.) gathered in this area, the ground beneath begins to crumble underfoot, and all Individuals in the area are affected.

Any Individual may call “SINKHOLE, AOE TAKEDOWN 10 SECONDS” every 30 seconds until the number of Individuals is reduced to 5 Individuals or Less.
- This AoE call may be countered by Balance.
Any Individual may use Basic Enhanced Movement, Proficient Telekinetics, or Master Malicious to traverse through this area unharmed, regardless of the number of Individuals within the space.

Hope you don’t run into anything dangerous while having to deal with a Sinkhole!

Threat Skills of Note - Raider Clans

Most of the threats you will encounter this weekend will be various types of RAIDERS. Raiders are generally former Strains that succumbed to the deadly disease known as BAD BRAIN. Once the disease rewrites their brain, they lose whatever spark of humanity that they had left and become killing machines bent on feeding and killing. Over time, these infected Strains evolve and mutate into something worse, and band together with others like them into loose tribes and clans.

This means that most of the Threat Skills will be pretty basic during THE HELLS OF THE SAN SABA. You might see some variations of player skills like Break, Mangle, Takedown, or Choking Blow used by Raiders, and many can swing for higher amounts of damage with a single swing. But most of their skills are ones that you might have as a player, save for the few we will cover below.

The real danger of Raiders is that they are intelligent foes, if a bit single-minded.

Raiders are clever and cunning, but they are still terrible, deadly foes to all Strains across the Wasteland. They can use equipment, operate doors, set ambushes, and sometimes even perform first aid to keep their prey from bleeding to death. Very few people can hope to talk or reason with a Raider, save for perhaps the Tainted Strain. They are capable of using basic tools and strategy, but are still predatory creatures driven by the basic instinct to hunt, kill, and feed on the flesh of their victims. Raiders tend to not play nice with each other, and often follow the biggest and meanest of their kind on raids into survivor settlements.

Let’s cover some of the unique skills possessed by most Raiders.

RAIDER RAGE (Basic Anger Mutation)

Allows a Raider to call “Raider Rage” to heal their Body to full and fix all limbs instantly. This skill cannot be called while in bleed out, and instead is used mid fight. This berserker rage makes even a common raider into a tough, deadly foe.

RAIDER RUSH (Proficient Anger Mutation)

Allows a Raider to call “Raider Rush” to become immune to all paralysis, knock out, or mangle effects for 5 minutes. When struck with these effects call “No Effect, Raider Rush.” At the end of the 5 minutes these effect calls are dropped as if they had been canceled. Skill cannot be initially used as a counter or during bleed out.

RAIDER FRENZY (Master Anger Mutation)

Allows a Raider to call “Raider Frenzy” to become immune to all Anomaly skills for 5 minutes. When struck with anomaly skills call “No effect, Raider Frenzy.” At the end of the 5 minutes these effect calls are dropped as if they had been canceled. Skill cannot be used as an initial counter or during bleed out.

Infectious (Bad Brain)

All Raiders are infected with the Bad Brain disease (p. 206, DR Corebook). This means if you do something silly like devour a Raider corpse or drink their blood, you’ll probably contract the disease. Even working on some medical procedures on a Raider is ill-advised without the appropriate protection!

Raiders of all types will generally have access to some variation of these abilities. One thing to remember is that ALL of these Raider abilities (Rage, Rush, Frenzy) have to be used while the Raider is still standing. Once they hit Bleed Out, they can’t use these abilities to heal or gain a buff.

An additional Threat Skill worth mentioning is an oldie, but a goldie…

fear (p. 103)

Many Raiders this weekend will use varieties of the FEAR ability from the DR Corebook. (p. 103). When called, they will declare “Fear, Cannot attack me for 5 minutes!”.
The Fear effect is broken if you are attacked by another foe, if a threat uses an ability on you, or you are forced to attack by some other effect. As long as the threat avoids hitting you, you are locked out of combat by this effect.
You don’t have to leave the battlefield, and you can still fight other enemies that did not use Fear on you. There are few resistances to this ability other than some brews and equipment.
Fear can be a surprisingly deadly ability when used well. If you are in a small group and the Raiders prevent you from attacking, you may not be able to save your friend and have to watch while they are eaten and killed!

Lastly, most Raiders carry equipment that can be LOOTED!

Raiders represent a solid source of items as they tend to collect bits and pieces from their victims, and their weapons can be broken down for valuable scrap. Let’s talk a bit about how this works:

Raiders will have SALVAGE CARDS, which can be gathered by any player by searching the corpse over 30 seconds. You do not need to have a particular skill to collect these cards as loot. However, these cards have all the rules to use them printed on the card and are marked with a type of Raider Equipment on the front.
In order to turn these cards into useful resources like Scrap and Herb, you must have the appropriate Salvaging skill listed on the card. You can spend the Mind points listed on the card and turn in the Salvage Card to the Post Office to receive your prize.
Salvage Cards are still an item card, and can be traded, bought, or stolen like any other Scrap but cannot be used in blueprints without first converting them to scrap. If you don’t have Salvaging, this item may not be very useful, and you might need to trade these to another character or find someone to help you convert the salvaging card.

Resonant Raiders and You!

One last enemy is one we talked about during my blog post on The Resonant, remnants of the sin and decadence of the people of Barogue. To wrap this blog post up, let’s talk about a few important Threat Skills you should know about before facing these mysterious psionic Raiders. These skills have been up on our website for some time, on our Local Threat Skills page, but I’ll summarize a bit here.

Resonant can feed on the emotional turmoil and aberrant energies of lineages as they are dying. This potent ability is represented by the skill call of Psionic Cannibalism. For all intents and purposes, this is treated as a use of the Cannibalism skill and has the same effects.

Psionic Cannibalism

This skill is resisted by Basic Mental Endurance but remember — you CAN use this skill to defend while in Bleed Out. In fact, it’s one of very few skills that you can use while bleeding!
If uninterrupted for the full 30 seconds of the roleplay, the Resonant calls “Psionic Cannibalism: Reduce Bleed Out to 1 minute”. Roleplay for this should still be loud and dramatic but the Resonant will roleplay getting close to the target in order to bask and soak in their energies with cries of glee and hunger. The Resonant feasts on the mental energies of the victim instead of physically tearing apart and consuming the target. It is still an agonizing process to the target and they should be encouraged to roleplay appropriately if needed.

Some powerful members of a Resonant Raider clan can even take this emotion leeching ability to the next level and turn it into a potent weapon. Many dangerous creatures can react to the unnatural Anomaly skills of psions with a power called “Anomaly Response”, and the Resonant Raiders are no different.

anomaly response (Basic)

Whenever you use an Anomaly skill within eyesight of most Resonant Raiders, they will leech some power off of these skills and gain a buff.
The Resonant will generally call some variation of “Anomaly Response!” and gain an Upsurge effect. This can range from gaining Body, gaining Armor, or worse. If a Resonant Raider notices you are using an Anomaly skill, they can call these reactions. Watch out!

Psionic Vampire (anomaly Response)

When an Anomaly skill is used within Line of Sight of the Resonant, it can drain the psionic potential from the target. The creature will call “Anomaly Response: Psionic Vampire! Line of Sight, 10 Mind damage, no Anomaly Skill use for 1 Minute!”
This skill cannot be resisted. Luckily, most Resonant can only complete this attack a few times before exhaustion, and they can only make this attack once per minute on the same target.
Mind damage causes you to lose Mind points instead of Body. If you cannot lose Mind because you are at 0, this damage has no effect.
When targeted with this ability, the psion cannot use Anomaly skills for the duration and loses some of their precious Mind points. It might be a good idea to stop using psionic powers near the Resonant so it cannot feed on your psionic energy.

Lastly, some survivors of the Resonant reported that in the presence of some of the raiders, their blood turned to ice and they were frozen in place, fear overwhelming every part of their being. This assault on the senses temporarily blinds and stuns the victims while the Resonant drink in their fear and terror. This ability is represented by the following Threat abilities:

Psionic Assault

Resisted by Basic Mental Endurance. The Resonant will call “Psionic Assault: Line of Sight, Blinding, Stun, 10 body!”.
The victim of this power is overwhelmed and left helpless to the fear inducing powers of the Resonant. The only recourse to survive this attack is to steel your nerves and resist the effect entirely. If you use Mental Endurance, you can resist the entire attack!

The final ability of Resonant Raiders is one that is only experienced by those lucky enough to actually kill one of the creatures. In their dying gasps, the agonizing mental energies of the dying Resonant creates a painful void of emotion and psionic energy.

Last Laugh

Resisted by Basic Mental Endurance. After 10 seconds of maniacal laughter while in Bleed Out, call “Psionic: Last Laugh, Area of Effect 10 Mind damage!”. Instant kill mechanics such as Murder or Double Tap can deny the use of Last Laugh.

wrap up

That’s it for today, Vados! Will your characters have what it takes to survive the calamity of drought, Raiders, sinkholes, and more during THE HELLS OF THE SAN SABA? Are you a survivor that can manage the Water Rations for their crew, or will you rely on force or trickery to obtain the much-needed water you need? Let’s find out together this weekend!

TICKETS ARE STILL AVAILABLE AT THE DOOR! SEE YOU THIS WEEKEND AT CAMP KACHINA!

See you soon, Vados!

Hells of the San Saba: Rules You Should Know