New Ability and House Rules - Derek Holland

I am taking some of the rules of the 4th edition of Gamma World on converting them to the 5th edition. Some of this material can also be used in other Alternity campaigns.

The first is the new ability of senses. It has only one broad skill, Awareness. To increase the number of ability points to allow for this addition, just take the current amount and divide by the number of current abilities (you should get 10 or 11) and then add that number to the total. That is, if you used 60 points you should get 70 (60/6 = 10, 10+60 = 70). The ability score limits for each of the official races are as follows:

With this new ability, all species have Awareness as a free broad skill.

The second rule is that of species "mutations" as outlined in his Gamma Squirrels and Mutant Moose in Dragon 272. In that, he reduces the number of mutation points due to the natural abilities of the different species. In the 4th edition, animals kept those "mutations" and defects and still got 5 mutations. So I suggest that all animals get 7 point above what they already have. And that mutation rolls that give a better version of the mutation are used, without mutation points lost or gained.

The third has to do with a few mutations and defects and has nothing to do with the 4th edition. The defect of physical change is blown way out of proportion. The minor version should be a slight defect and the major version should be a moderate defect. The personality skill penalties only apply when the mutant encounters bigoted PSHs. The mutation of poison attack should have differences between mutant plants and animals. Most plants already have some sort of chemical defense, as they can not run from herbivores. So I use 3 versions of poison attack for them.

Poison Attack, Improved/Enhanced/Hyper Ordinary/Good/Amazing, Activated, CON
Plants with the improved version can only produce an irritant. Those with the enhanced version can produce irritants, paralytic toxins and caustic agents. And those with the hyper version can produce any toxin. Otherwise this is identical to the animal mutation of the same name.

And last is the renaming and moving of several of the broad and specialty skills. The first is Life Science is renamed Biology and Biology renamed Microbiology/Biochemistry. Resolve is left in the will based skills, but the physical resolve skill is based on constitution for skill checks (how individual GMs want deal with this oddity is left to them). Investigate is moved to senses and Street Smarts is moved to intelligence.