Chapter 12 — Scale
A pistol does not threaten a tank, and a tank's gun does not leave a person wounded — it leaves a crater. Scale is how Wanderstar handles that gap. It sorts everything that can be hit — people, drones, cars, walkers, tanks, starships — into a short ladder of size bands, and gives a handful of simple rules for what happens when something on one rung attacks something on another.
Scale is the subsystem the weapon traits lean on (Chapter 24) when they speak of "a larger scale," "a significantly smaller scale," or targets like "vehicles, bulkheads, structures." It is also, deliberately, light: it does not turn a firefight into arithmetic. The combat handling of vehicles and ships is in Chapter 25; what follows is the size ladder itself and what happens when fire crosses it.
Index§
- The one principle
- The scale bands
- Crossing scales
- Hitting big and small things
- Vehicles and crew on the ladder
- Starships
The one principle§
Compare armor only within a scale band. When attacker and target share a scale, resolve the hit exactly as Combat (Chapter 11) and Trauma (Chapter 10) describe — roll damage, compare to armor, mark trauma. When they don't share a scale, you do not compare the numbers at all. The flat values were never meant to be weighed against each other across a size gap; the crossing-scales rules below take over instead.
This is what keeps the maths honest. A groundcar's armor and a suit of power armor's armor are numbers on the same ladder, but they are never rolled against each other directly — the scale gap decides the outcome first.
The scale bands§
| Band | Scale | What sits here |
|---|---|---|
| S0 | Personal | People, Companions, riding beasts, drones, powered armor. The default scale — every rule written so far assumes it. |
| S1 | Vehicle | Groundcars, flyers, cycles, walkers and combat frames, small craft, light mechs. Person-portable anti-vehicle weapons are built to bite here. |
| S2 | Heavy | Tanks, APCs, dropships, gun emplacements, fighters, and sections of building or bulkhead. |
| S3 | Colossal | Starships, stations, and megastructures. See Starships, below, and Chapter 25. |
A weapon has a scale too: the scale it is built to threaten. Most weapons are Personal (S0). The trait Destructive marks a weapon built one band up (an anti-vehicle launcher carried by a person is a Personal weapon with Destructive). Vehicle- and Heavy-mounted guns are S1 and S2 weapons in their own right.
Crossing scales§
Work out the gap = the target's band minus the attacking weapon's band, counted in rungs.
| Gap | Meaning | What happens |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | Same scale | Normal rules. Roll damage vs armor; ≥ armor is 1 trauma, ≥ 2× armor is 2. Person-vs-person and tank-vs-tank both just play out at their own scale. |
| −1 | Outscales target by one band (punching down) | Your hit is overwhelming: treat the attack as Destructive — any hit that meets armor inflicts 2 trauma, and any area trait it carries has its radius doubled. A car gun shreds a person. |
| −2 or more | Outscales by two+ bands | The smaller target is simply destroyed (or a person killed) on any hit that lands. No roll of the trauma dice survives a tank shell finding a single trooper. |
| +1 or more | Smaller than the target by a band or more (punching up) | Your weapon can't meaningfully hurt it. You inflict no trauma, and AP gives no benefit — exactly as the AP trait says of a "significantly smaller scale." Your only purchase is a scale-capable weapon or a narrative angle (below). |
Punching up — how the small fights the large§
A rifle will never kill a tank by rolling damage against it. To threaten something a band or more above you, you need one of:
- A scale-capable weapon. The Destructive trait lets a Personal weapon punch one band up — an anti-vehicle launcher damages an S1 vehicle at gap 0, by the normal rules. (Against S2 Heavy it is still a band short; you need a Heavy weapon for that.) Wrecker treats an inanimate target's armor as 0, which makes it brutal against a parked vehicle, a door, or a structure, though useless against a crewed machine that's fighting back.
- A system, not the hull. Disruptive doesn't destroy a larger target but disables it — a vehicle stalls, a drive goes dark — regardless of scale. Corrosive and Entangle chip at it. These are how a lone Wanderer stops a vehicle without an anti-tank weapon.
- A narrative angle, at the GM's call. Called shots at exposed crew, sensors, or treads; a grenade through an open hatch (which strikes the crew at Personal scale, not the hull); sabotage; luring it off a ledge. Scale closes the brute-force door so the clever door stays interesting.
Scale-interacting traits, at a glance§
These weapon traits (Chapter 24) are the ones that care about scale; read their full text there.
- Destructive — the bridge trait; a weapon built one band up. 2 trauma against smaller targets; normal damage against its design scale; doubled areas.
- AP X — armor-piercing, but negated entirely when punching up across a band.
- Wrecker — armor-as-0 against inanimate targets of any scale; nothing against living ones.
- Disruptive — disables machines and vehicles regardless of scale; no trauma to flesh.
- Radiation — compares to a target's Radiation rating, not armor; a larger-scale radiation weapon also contaminates everything within ten metres of the target.
Hitting big and small things§
Scale changes what a hit does, but it can also change how easily one lands. As a situational edge (the usual 1-Momentum Advantage / GM-imposed Disadvantage, Chapter 7):
- A large, slow target — a parked vehicle, a lumbering walker — may grant the attacker Advantage to hit.
- A small, nimble target — a buzzing drone, a person dodging among cover — may impose Disadvantage on attacks against it. (For operating those drones, see Chapter 25.)
Use this sparingly; most of the time the band table above is all you need.
Vehicles and crew on the ladder§
A vehicle does not need a character sheet — only a place on the scale ladder. How a crewed vehicle or ship fights, takes harm, and is repaired lives in Chapter 25; what matters here is where each sits on the size bands and how cross-scale fire resolves. Every vehicle and ship shares the Armor 24 / 8D baseline (until customized in Chapter 26) and takes harm on a two-track, four-node damage track.
Crew and passengers. While the vehicle is intact, its hull shields the people inside — they are behind it as Solid cover (Chapter 11) and out of reach of fire that can't crack the vehicle's scale. Fire that gets inside (a hatch grenade, a Blast centred on the cabin) strikes them at Personal scale as normal. When a vehicle is Wrecked, its occupants are exposed — the GM may inflict personal trauma from the crash, fire, or sudden vacuum (Chapter 13), scaled to how violent the end was.
Example profiles§
Types and their scale, for placing craft on the ladder — every one currently uses the flat Armor 24 / 8D baseline (Chapter 25); distinct numbers come from craft design (Chapter 26).
| Vehicle | Scale | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| Civilian groundcar / flyer | S1 | Unarmed; fast. |
| Armored transport (APC) | S1 | Pintle autogun (S1, Auto 3). Carries a squad. |
| Walker / combat frame | S1 | Pilot-scale legs and an S1 weapon mount. |
| Main battle tank | S2 | Main gun (S2, Destructive, Blast 4). Flattens anything S0. |
| Dropship | S2 | Armed varies; mostly a way down to the surface. |
Starships§
Starships and stations sit at S3 Colossal and beyond. Under the crossing-scales rules that makes them effectively immune to anything below Heavy, and makes their weapons apocalyptic against anything smaller. Ship-to-ship combat, crew stations, and damage control are in Chapter 25 — they run on the same rules as any vehicle, scaled up. Per-ship customization is in Chapter 26, and crossing between systems in Chapter 27.