Mad Scientists, like the official versions of hucksters, increase their chance of suffering a Mishap effect as they increase their skill. However in their case, I approve. It's very much genre for the most 'touched' inventors to produce the most amazing gadgets. So I'll be leaving this sections of the rules alone.
That doesn't mean there are not problems however. The current Reliability rules are completely untenable. Let's consider a couple of examples.
Example 1:
John Smith has just happily purchased a Gatling Pistol for $800 (the one in the player's guide) with its Reliability of 18 which gives an 90% chance of the weapon working when fired. Assuming his typical fight lasts three rounds and that he on average draws two action cards each round, what's his chance of making it through a battle with a functioning weapon? After some quick math (1-.9*.9*.9*.9*.9*9) we find out that it's less then 47%.
More then half the time, his pistol will malfunction in combat. Around 4% of the time, it will blow up in his hand before the battle is finished. John wants a refund, and likely some compensation for his medical bills in addition.
Example 2:
Giving up gunfighting as too dangerous, John Smith now wants to take a trip to town to pick up some tobacco. He'll use his new Velocipede with its Reliability of 18 in the hopes of making it back home before dark.
According the rules, he must check Reliability on starting, mid-point, and stopping parts of the trip; a total of three checks, one-way. John wants to come home too, so he's got to make 6 checks in all.
John now finds out that his tobacco habit has again placed him in the position of suffering a malfunction half the time not to mention the 4% chance of a life-threatening event occurring.
Instead of tobacco, John needs to buy a horse..
Only complete fools would trust equipment like that in the examples above. Yet the background given in the books would have us assume that people commonly make use of these devices; examples include the Agency which gives a Gatling Pistol to all their men or the velocipede which is used by small military and paramilitary units. Given the above chances, the devices would likely kill their owners before a few months passed. One way to avoid paying pensions I suppose.
In order to match the established background, gadgets must be rational (if expensive) to use. Thus the risk/reward has to be reasonable. If however the gadgets become more reliable, what about the little question of game balance? After all, in general we still want a Western setting and not a steam punk one.
Towards these ends, use the following rule:
Sounds too good to be true doesn't it? Yep, it is.
You see, these devices are partially the work of Manitous in the first place and as such are likely to cause you problems when you most need them. And when do you most need them? Why when you're in an area where corruption and unpredictability are at their highest of course.
Now the Reckoners would like to have their cake and eat it too. In this case that would mean having the fear level only reduce the Reliability of gadgets belonging to the Heroes. Unfortunately for them, they don't have that fine of control (not that they care all that much about their pawns in any case) and as such they are subject to the same rules.
The rules for generating device Reliability can easily result in values that greatly overshadow what is given in the rules (Smith & Robards, The Agency, etc). This in turn unbalances the game with respect to Mad Science.
Go ahead and determine Reliability as the rules describe, but use the following constraints.
While the devices of Mad Science are impressive and often powerful, they are just as often clumsy, over-sized and/or complex to operate. This is represented in a number of ways depending upon the type of device, most of which are already covered in the rules such as requiring special Aptitudes or Concentrations.
The following are additional modifiers and/or rulings for certain types of gizmos:
| Armor Modifiers | |||
| Armor Level | Coverage | Trait | Modifier |
| Light Armor | guts, gizzards, arms | Quickness | -1 |
| 1 | guts, gizzards | Quickness | -1 |
| 2 | guts, gizzards | Quickness | -1 die type |
| 3 | guts, gizzards | Quickness | -2 die type |
| 1 | legs | Nimbleness | -1 |
| 2 | legs | Nimbleness | -1 die type |
| 3 | legs | Nimbleness | -2 die type |
| 1 | arms | Deftness | -1 |
| 2 | arms | deftness | -1 die type |
| 3 | arms | Deftness | -2 die type |