Reliability & Maintenance Rules

Typically, a well-kept Weapon 🔪 with tight tolerances will not jam or malfunction. However, that is not always possible. Being mechanical devices, firearms tend to fail under hardship at least a few occasions. If that occasion coincides with grave circumstances, the life of its user might be put in danger. It is important for weapon users to be aware of potential sources of UNREL, a measure of how much difficulty their weapon has in functioning without failure. UNREL always starts at 0 and begins either increasing or decreasing, depending on the circumstances. Do note that these rules do not apply for Wargame Mode.

Two things can happen due to unchecked UNREL:

• A Minor Malfunction, which can be cleared using the Reload (1 APS) Regular Action.
• A Serious Malfunction, which can be cleared using the Clear Malfunction (2 APS) Regular Action.

It is apparent that malfunctions are nothing to scoff at. While a Minor Malfunction might be annoying in an Engagement that is going well, a Serious Malfunction during a life-or-death moment could mean certain death. It is advisable to use high-quality gear, give it regular maintenance, and avoid fighting in harsh terrain when possible. However, one thing to keep track of is that this also affects NPCs, which could grant the player party an unexpected advantage when fighting poorly trained bushrangers which don't tend to their guns often.

At the start of an Engagement, all weapons are assigned a Condition depending on their UNREL, which is not only decided by the weapon itself, but also by certain adverse factors, as follows:

Some sources of UNREL are the players' fault, others derive from a weapon's OIC Quality Grading ✅, while most arise from uncontrollable circumstances, such as terrain. They are the following:

• Melee 🪓 
• Bow 🏹 

Weapons with the Musket ⚡ tag and muzzle-loaded Field Artillery 💥 cannot suffer from a Serious Malfunction, but they can suffer from a Minor Malfunction.