Rarity

This page is about one of the special rules.

The rarity serves as a rough overview of how commonly a weapon can be found in the Wasteland. In the weapon tables, this often appears as follows:

Encounterable versions:

Standard model: very common With Mounting Rails: quite common With threaded barrel: rare With red dot sight: rare With laser sight: very rare With silencer: very rare

This example is taken from the handgun Colt Government 1911 A1. But what exactly do those details mean?

These entries can either be interpreted directly as they appear in the table and used as an estimate of whether a particular version of the weapon is more or less common. Or they can be used according to the following, clearer but more complex rules.

The complex rule:

First of all, one has to look at the various degrees of rarity there are:

Very rare
Rare
Common
Quite common
Very common


If one wants to have a very rare weapon, how does one test for it?

First of all we assign values to the degrees of rarity:

Very rare 0
Rare 10
Common 30
Quite common 40
very common 50

The most important modifier naturally depends on the location where you're searching for the weapon. A small general store in a tiny settlement deep in the Wasteland, far from major trade routes or large cities, would of course be very unlikely to have, for example, a 1911 A1 Colt with a threaded barrel, suppressor, and red dot sight. Such a store should therefore receive a negative modifier, perhaps up to -50 points.
A store in the hub however, close to the factory of the Gunrunners and in the maybe largest city of the Wasteland, should get a positive modifier, for example +35.
Likewise, the luck stat of the character should be viewed as a positive modifier.

An example would be to buy a weapon in a well stocked store:

That would look like this:

+ 30 (because the weapon is "common")
+ 20 (because the store is well stocked)
+ 5 (typical value of luck of a character)
_____________________________

55 as a final value.

Now we have a final value that can easily be tested with a roll of a D100. If the roll succeeds, is the weapon available to buy in the store. If the roll fails, the weapon is not available.

This way, the complex rule can be used to check if a character can buy the weapon they want.