Recon Rig Spec (Shackleton Magellan) Draft
A GURPS 4e no-lookup gear-and-skill card, TL11. Built, run, and repaired by Shackleton Magellan. The analogue to Six’s Freefighting and vibro-axe writeups: the one signature system a character is built around, spelled out so it plays fast at the table. This is Shack’s whole edge in one place.
In one line: a nanotech swarm that oozes around the corner and into the dead ship and tells him what is there before he ever sticks his neck out, run by the best pair of sensor-hands at the dead end.
What it is
Six ends fights. Shack ends ambushes, by refusing to walk into the room blind. His Signature Gear is a recon rig of his own invention, the “better idea” he keeps turning over in his hands, and its point is simple: send the machine into the danger first. Nanomist for the spaces a body cannot fit, drop-bugs for the rooms he wants watched, a smart-rope sensor head for physical access the swarm cannot fly, all of it feeding a HUD in his eye. He is not the man who kicks the door. He is the man who already knows what is behind it.
The rig is only half of it. The other half is the cluster of skills that is the invention, mechanically: he designed it (Engineer (Electronics)), builds and fixes it (Electronics Repair (Sensors)), and reads it better than anyone in the room (Electronics Operation (Sensors) at a crown-jewel 18). Back that with Per 16, Eidetic Memory (B51) so he forgets no scan, and Lightning Calculator (B66) for instant ranges and vectors, and the man is a finding engine. The one thing Sable could not strip was the rig, because it was non-standard and his own, which is the whole reason he still has an edge to trade on.
The card — no lookup at the table
Numbers are off Shack’s current sheet, with gear bonuses noted where they apply.
| Do this | Skill | Rolls at | What it does |
|---|---|---|---|
| Read the room before entering it | Electronics Op (Sensors) | 18 (+2 multiscanner = 20) | The crown skill. Run the swarm/scanner, relay A/V/IR from inside the hazard. This is what the whole build is for. |
| Send the mist in | Electronics Op (Sensors) | 18 | Nanomist oozes around corners, into cracks, into wrecks (baseline TL11, not super-science). Feeds his HUD. |
| Drop-and-watch | (deploy) + Sensors | 18 | Nanobugs seeded in a room, hard to spot (about −18 to notice them). Passive overwatch he checks later. |
| Fix it in the field | Electronics Repair (Sensors) | 15 | Keeps the rig alive off a portable kit, no ship workshop. The invention does not go down when it matters. |
| Improve/jury-rig it | Engineer (Electronics) | 14 (+1 Versatile to improvise) | He designed it, so he can bend it to a problem it was not built for. |
| Find the way / never lost | Navigation | 15/14 (+1 Absolute Direction) | Space and Hyperspace, plus he simply cannot be lost (B34). Prospecting 14, Cartography 14, Geology (Rock Worlds) 13. |
| Know he’s the one being watched | (bug detector) + Search | 15 | The counter-surveillance half. Given who is hunting him, knowing when he is the target matters as much as scanning. |
| Pull out the thing he needs | Gizmo ×2 | — | Twice a session, produce a small gadget he “could have been carrying” (B57). The rig’s flexibility as a trait: it cannot be searched, lost, or stolen ahead of time. |
If IQ ever rises to 15, the entire sensor-and-tech cluster climbs at once, which makes IQ his highest-value buy the way DX is Six’s and Ronin’s.
The signature play, spelled out
Scout, then commit. Before the crew moves on a space, Shack seeds it: mist into the gaps, a bug or two for overwatch, scanner reading the structure, all of it on his HUD at Sensors 18-to-20. The crew walks in already knowing the count, the layout, and the traps. That is his Freefighting-equivalent contribution, not a blow he lands but an ambush he deletes. A GM should let a good Sensors roll buy real information, because that is the character’s entire reason to exist and the payoff for building narrow.
The hard limits (so the table plays him honest)
- He is not a fighter. One solid Beam Weapons (Rifle) 13 and cover, that is the whole of it. HP 12, HT 12, lightly armoured. He wins by scouting first and shooting from behind something, never by trading blows.
- The rig is not a weapon. It finds, watches, and maps. It does not shoot, hack a hardened system on its own, or fight. Reconnaissance, not force.
- Gullible, Curious, Overconfident. The same traits that make him chase the find make him walk his rig, and himself, into things a cautious man would leave alone. His Unluckiness means once a session his worst roll can be the one that matters. The edge is real and so is the way it gets him into trouble.
- ST 11, tight encumbrance. Gear-heavy explorer on a thin frame, so the tool kit and survival kit are drop-items before a fast crawl or a fight. He manages loadout on purpose.
Advancement
Current call: bank earned XP toward IQ 14 → 15 [20], which lifts Sensors to 19 (21 with the scanner), the whole tech cluster, Per, and Will together. The single best buy on the sheet.
After IQ 15, in order of how much they change a scout:
- Electronics Op (Sensors) toward 20 base if Tim would rather deepen the crown than raise IQ, though IQ is broader value.
- A point into Vacc Suit / Free Fall (both at 11) so the man can go where his rig goes without fumbling the EVA.
- Signature Gear expansion as the campaign gives him downtime and parts, more mist, better bugs, a hardened relay, all in-fiction upgrades to the one thing that is his.
All post-approval. The rig, its coverage, and the nanotech-as-baseline ruling are open questions for Tim (see the open rulings).
See also
- Shackleton Magellan — the character sheet (Skills, Advantages, Equipment)
- Freefighting (Spacer Kung-Fu) — Six’s equivalent card, the model for this one
- The Anomaly Log (Shackleton Magellan) — what the rig found, the run that ruined him
- Sable Reclamation - Salvage Manifest (Magellan claim) — why the rig is the one thing he kept