MGP3403 Babylon 5 A Call To Arms 2e Powers Principalities.pdf

PRINCIPALITIES

Credits

Author

Matthew Sprange

Additional Text

Gareth Hanrahan and Steve Wilson

Editor

Richard Ford

Cover Image

Brandon Bray

Imagery

Nick Robinson & Andrew Dobell

Layout

Will Chapman

Playtesters

Our humble gratitude goes to the members of the

Mongoose A Call to Arms forums who badgered and teased

these rules into shape!

Contents

Introduction

Page 2

Fleet Command

Page 3

New Rules

Page 10

New Ships

Page 14

The Gaim Intellegence

Page 18

Scenarios

Page 24

Deep Space Tournament

Page 30

Campaign of Terror

Page 36

Space Stations

Page 40

Unique Admirals

Page 63

Optional Rules

Page 66

Overview of the Earth-Minbari War

Page 68

Dogfighters: Sunfury Vs Nial

Page 76

Special Thanks

J. Michael Straczynski, Tristan Lomas, Steve Wilson, Greg

Smith, Greg Dryanski, Terrance Lee Nolan, Nick Robinson,

Niall St. John, and Jason Coffey

Building the Narn Fleet

Page 80

The Frazi Heavy Fighter

Page 85

Index

Page 88

without the written permission of the publisher is expressly forbidden. All signiﬁ cant art and text herein are copyrighted

by Mongoose Publishing. No portion of this work may be reproduced in any form without written permission. This

material is copyrighted under the copyright laws of the UK. Printed in the USA.

POWERS AND

INTRODUCTION

W elcome to Powers & Principalities, the ﬁ rst ofﬁ cial

update to Babylon 5: A Call to Arms, Second Edition.

Powers & Principalities gave us that opportunity, and we really

went to town. Standard design space stations? Not us! No, this

time around we went the whole hog and can now present a fully

modular system for stations, allowing you to build anything

from a tiny listening post to a huge honking battle station,

complete with ﬁ ghter bays, massive weaponry and oodles of

smaller modules to give you that vital winning edge!

The book you hold in your hands is the result of thousands of

games and hours of debate among the principle playtesters of

A Call to Arms, and the fans on our Internet forums. Through

this long process, we listened hard to comments made on both

individual ships and entire ﬂ eets, in order to continue the

development of A Call to Arms as a ﬁ rm favourite in the space

combat genre.

My favourite section in this book, however, is Fleet Command.

For me, it is really the core of the whole book, as it is ﬁ rst and

foremost in giving players cool things to do . In second edition,

we added several new ﬂ eet speciﬁ c rules that modiﬁ ed the lists,

making them different in ways that just could not be expressed

in different ship designs alone. In this book, we ramped that

right up, giving ﬂ eets their own special actions or tweaks that

would serve to separate them further from their enemies.

Our initial aims for Powers & Principalities were relatively

simple, in concept if nothing else. We wanted to make a few

adjustments to some of the ships and ﬂ eets in terms of game

balance but, most of all, we wanted to give players cool things

to do .

Which adjustments were to be made was a fairly simple process

(though working out what to do about them was most certainly

not !). But cool things to do? What could be cooler than blasting

a G’Quan apart with a molecular slicer beam, something the

game handles quite well already?

So, Abbai players can now enjoy boosting their shields or laying

mines, while Shadow players can take care of pesky ﬁ ghters or

merge their vessels when in trouble (just like they did in the TV

series!). None of these additions are particularly game-shaking,

but they may prove useful in certain tactical situations, and will

give you a better feel for what your ﬂ eet is all about.

New scenarios and campaign variations would be included, of

course, and on this front, we wanted to test the tactical capabilities

of players, not just in taking advantage of their own ﬂ eet’s

strengths, but also while overcoming their own ﬂ eet’s weaknesses,

as you will see in the Deep Space Tournament section.

We have rounded off Powers & Principalities with a few

‘background’ pieces. In the past, we have left the intricacies of

the Babylon 5 universe to our roleplaying game. So, imagine my

surprise when I began hearing that many A Call to Arms players

have not even seen the Babylon 5 TV series – just think of all

the little twists and turns they have been missing out on! In an

effort to correct that, we have included heavier-weight articles

that get into the heart of a few selected topics that admirals may

have an interest in.

Space stations were also another item that got added to the list

very early on. They were present in the ﬁ rst edition of A Call to

Arms, but we had just paid them lip service in the second edition

books. The reason for this is that we wanted to do them right .

Introduction

INTRODUCTION

Fleet Command

FLEET COMMAND

S ince the release of A Call to Arms Second Edition,

Weapon

Range

Arc

Special

thousands and thousands of games have been played

across the world. Many players have visited our forums

and let us know what they thought of the game – the good, the

bad, and the rules they thought insane!

Abbai

Mine

—

AP, Double

Damage,

Energy Mine

* The number of Attack Dice rolled depends on the Priority

Level of the Abbai ship that deployed the mine.

We have collated all these comments and given them to our

playtest team. Their ﬁ nal thoughts are detailed here, in Fleet

Command, which presents a list of ofﬁ cial changes and additions

to the rulebook and Fleet Lists. Admirals will ﬁ nd their ﬂ eets

have been revised and new options abound!

Priority Level

Attack Dice

Patrol

Skirmish

The Abbai Matriarchy

The following are ofﬁ cial updates to the Abbai ﬂ eet.

Raid

Battle

Wa r

Armageddon

Bimith-class Defender

Upgrades to the main navigation thrusters and control systems

have greatly increased the agility of the Bimith, allowing it to

make strong tactical moves in open battle.

Divert Auxiliary Power to Shields!

This is a new Special Action available only to Abbai ships.

The Bimith now has Turn: 2/45 o , and loses the Lumbering

trait.

Crew Quality Check: Automatic

Effect: By channelling excess power to the main shield arrays

and carefully monitoring the ﬂ uctuations caused by enemy ﬁ re,

Abbai engineers have developed the skill to boost the recharge

rates of their shields. If this Special Action is successful, the ship

will automatically restore half of its total Shields in the next End

Phase. A Lakara-class cruiser, for example, will regain 6 points

of Shields in the End Phase, rather than 2.

Deploy Mines!

This is a new Special Action available only to Abbai ships.

Crew Quality Check: Automatic

Effect: To the paciﬁ st minds of the Abbai, ‘defensive’ weapons

such as mines are usually more preferable to large warships, and

entire regions of Abbai space are seeded with these powerful

explosives, triggered to detonate when passed by predeﬁ ned

enemy vessels.

The Brakiri

Syndicracy

The following are ofﬁ cial updates to the Brakiri Syndicracy

ﬂ eet.

Any Abbai ship may perform this Special Action and deploy a

mine. Leave a marker immediately behind the ship at any point

of its movement. If an enemy ship (not ﬁ ghter ﬂ ight) moves

anywhere within 3” of the centre of this marker, the mine

immediately detonates. Remove the counter, and roll Attack

Dice for every ship (friend and foe) within 3”.

Gravitic Shifters

Brakiri captains have become adept at laying multiple Gravitic

Shifter rays onto a single target, pulling it in one direction and

then another, shaking its bulkheads apart in the process. For

FLEET COMMAND

every Gravitic Shifter used against the same enemy ship in the

same turn beyond the ﬁ rst, roll a dice. Automatically deduct

this from the Damage and Crew of the enemy ship.

The Dilgar Imperium

The following are ofﬁ cial updates to the Dilgar Imperium ﬂ eet.

Adaptive Armour and Gravitic Energy Grids work as normal

against this damage. The Dodge, Stealth and Interceptors traits

do not.

Alpha Strike!

This is a new Special Action available only to Dilgar ships.

Regardless of how many Gravitic Shifters are applied to a single

ship, they may only ever turn it in place once in a turn.

Crew Quality Check: 9

Effect: By taking the principles of the Pentacon formation used

by ﬁ ghters and applying them to warships, the Dilgar are able

to launch punishing attacks. A ship leading a squadron may

take this Special Action. If a successful Crew Quality check is

made, an enemy ship must be speciﬁ ed as a target. Ships in the

squadron may not attack any other target this turn. However,

if a ship scores a critical hit against the same Systems (Engines,

Reactor, Weapons, Crew or Vital Systems) as another ship in

the Alpha Strike squadron against in the same turn, it will

automatically be considered to have rolled a 6 for the effect of

the critical hit.

The Centauri Republic

The following are ofﬁ cial updates to the Centauri ﬂ eet.

Demos-class Warship

The power consumption of the ion cannon in the Demos has

proved impossible to sustain in prolonged conﬂ icts, and so

regulators

have been

installed to

monitor the

weapon’s

effect

on ship

systems.

The Drakh

The following are ofﬁ cial updates to the Drakh ﬂ eet.

Amu Mothership

Continued engagements with the Drakh have highlighted

structural weaknesses in the Amu’s design, allowing other ﬂ eets

to engage them with greater ease.

The Ion

Cannon of

the Demos

now has

6 Attack

Dice.

The Amu Mothership now has Hull: 4.

Hunting Packs

The Centauri ﬂ eet is characterised by big, expensive cruisers

and battleships, surrounded by smaller vessels to form Hunting

Packs. As well as being able to combine their ﬁ repower, these

Hunting Packs are trained to constantly manoeuvre, the smaller

ships hitting an enemy hard and all at once, then spiralling away

out of harm behind the ship they are escorting.

Critical Systems Defence

The Drakh are well skilled in applying Shadow technology to

their own designs, and development of the Gravitic Energy

Grid has continued. In the past, the grid has been used to

provide blanket protection for vessels. However, some Drakh

crews choose to forego wide spectrum defence, in order to

concentrate the grid on just a few, vital systems. While their

ships become far easier to damage, the concentrated energies

provide a near impenetrable barrier for attacks aimed at a ship’s

most vulnerable areas.

A Hunting Pack is a special type of Centauri squadron. It may

contain up to six ships, of which none may be higher than Raid

level. Ships within a Hunting Pack must all attack the same

target in each turn – this will usually be an enemy ship, but may

be several ships within the same enemy squadron if preferred.

Before a battle begins, a Drakh player may specify any number

of his ships to be using Critical Systems Defence. These ships no

longer deduct their Gravitic Energy Grid score from Crew and

Damage they suffer. Instead, they may completely ignore the

effects and the additional Damage/Crew of a number of critical

hits each turn equal to their Gravitic Energy Grid score.

So long as the target remains within range of one ship within

the Hunting Pack, every other ship in the pack may

increase the Range of all of their weapons by half, as

they utilise combined targeting data throughout

the squadron.

Fleet Command

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