Post-Apocalyptic Cars Are Unique- OSR Vehicle Rules

I'm working on a post-apocalyptic cyborgs and sorcery RPG- imagine if the world of Fafhrd and the Grey Mouser advanced to 22nd century level technology, then there was an apocalypse and they went all Mad Max.  

Obviously, it needs vehicles.

Every set of vehicle rules I've ever seen has tried to categorize vehicles into either general categories, or specific makes and models. Here are the stats for a buggy, here are the stats for a sedan, etc.  I'm taking a different route.

In the post-apocalyptic world, every vehicle is unique.  A labor of love, formed (usually) from some mixture of a core pre-apocalypse vehicle, salvaged replacement parts, hand-made replacement parts, and improvised add-ons like scrap armor and gun turrets.  There are no "standard" models.

Instead, vehicles get rolled up in a manner similar to characters.    

Step 1: Size

Listed vehicle types are intended as examples, not an exhaustive list

Roll a d3, d4 or d6 depending on the largest vehicle you could plausibly have found

1- Motorcycle, small ATV

2- Car or buggy

3- Van, oversized buggy, small wasteland fighting vehicle

4- Minibus, APC, cargo van, large wasteland fighting vehicle

5- Light tank, infantry fighting vehicle, small bus, wasteland command vehicle

6- Large bus, main battle tank, semi or mobile fortress

Air vehicles can be bigger, and sea vehicles can be a lot bigger, but that’s as big as land vehicles get.  

Step 2: Quality Level

Roll d4-1

0- Rustbucket

1- Fixer-upper

2- Good as new

3- Pimpmobile

Add quality level to every ability score and number of hit dice.  

Step 3: Ability Scores:

There are six, but vehicles might only have four as the last two are absent on most vehicles.  Roll 3d6 for each, modifiers as normal for your system.  When driving, use the vehicle’s speed or handling modifier rather than your own attributes.  When repairing, use the vehicle’s reliability mod in addition to your intelligence mod.  

Speed:  Both raw speed and acceleration.  Different vehicle types work on different scales, so a 10 speed helicopter is faster than a 10 speed car.  Modifier applies to speed-based actions during chases.  Doesn’t affect travel speed which is more about terrain type.  

Handling: Turning speed and stability.  Modifier applies to maneuverability tests.  

Body: Measure of durability.  Affects ramming damage, along with size.  After hit points are depleted, body gets depleted.  When it reaches zero, the car is totaled.  

Reliability: Measures how likely it is to break down and easy to repair.  Modifier applies to all such tests.  

Sensor: Measures sensor systems.  Most post-apocalyptic vehicles won’t have it, but high-tech vehicles usually will and drones always will.

Pilot: Quality of the autopilot.  Most vehicles won’t have this.  Any vehicle that has Pilot must also have Sensor.  

Step 4: Fuel type 

roll 2d6

2-4 Petroleum (gas and diesel bi-fuel engine)

5-9 Plug-in bi-fuel hybrid

10-12 Electric

From what I read, plug-in hybrids aren't expected to catch on in real life because of the added cost and complexity of the engines and fuel sources.  But the calculus is different in the wasteland; most vehicles are plug-in hybrids with bi-fuel engines because fuel is scare and you want to be able to use multiple types of it since you never know what type you'll be able to get.  

Step 5: Other Values

Number of seats: size squared, plus or minus 50%.  This is approximate; in post-apocalyptic movies it's perfectly normal for people to hang onto the outsides of vehicles, or modify them to have platforms to stand on.  

Hit dice: A d8 per size level, plus bonus dice for quality level.  First die maxed.  Again, hit points represent fairly superficial damage that's easy to repair (but it is damage and not just avoiding getting hit).  Once they're gone, Body starts getting depleted.  

Fuel: Enough for 3d6+size hours of driving.  One hour is size x half a gallon, or size x 10 kWh.  

Again, unrealistically high but post-apocalyptic vehicles have bigger gas tanks because who knows when you'll find gas.  Water vehicles should probably have like ten times as much fuel storage and air vehicles should maybe scale differently; I haven't thought it out yet.  

Armor class: By system, but in most systems where an unarmored human has AC 10, it’s 12 - size +  handling modifier (treat as one lower than the lowest possible modifier if the car isn’t moving) 

Step 6: Add-ons

Roll one if size 1-3, two if size 4-6

1-8: This many points of armor.  Reduce speed by one for every two full points.

9- Nuclear electric generator.  Generates one hour of electric charge per day.  

10- Nitrous oxide injectors.  Activate to add +2 to speed modifier for 3 rounds.  3 uses before it needs to be refilled.  While it's active, you can't slow down, and any handling test that fails by 10 or more is an automatic crit fail.  

11- HAM radio set.  Doesn’t use much electricity but if you use it all day, maybe one unit of fuel a day.  

12- Tank treads instead of wheels.  -1 to speed modifier but ignore most critical failure effects on handling tests.  -20% travel speed, but treat each terrain type other than road as one better.  

13- Multifuel engine.  Can use motor oil, jet fuel, natural gas, etc.  Can’t mix two wildly different fuel types at once, but fuel capacity is split into two smaller tanks so you can carry two kinds of fuel.  

14- Covered in spikes.  Does extra ramming damage to both cars and people in them.  Anyone jumping onto the vehicle must DEX save/save vs traps or get skewered as if by a spear.  

15- Portable solar recharger.  Not a component so much as carried in the trunk; these solar panels take a turn to set up and break down and cover size x 40 square feet.  On a sunny day they recharge 1 hour of juice per 4 hours; half that on overcast days.  

16- Rooftop solar panels- recharge at half the rate of a portable charger, but they’re always active.  

17- Loudspeakers- not like a boom box.  Think those civil defense vehicles meant for warning the whole city of an air raid.  At max volume can be heard from 3 miles away.  

18- Lowrider- looks super pimpin, can be adjusted to keep a low profile or protect the undercarriage from rocks.

19- Gun turret.  Need a gun, can hold something like a machine gun or harpoon launcher.  

20- Amphibious.  Floats on the water, goes about 5 MPH.  

Travel Speed- Based on terrain and weather

Terrain: Road, Open, Bumpy, Tight

Weather: Clear, high winds or light rain, storm

48 miles per hour on a road (presumably dirt, gravel or covered in potholes)

30 miles per hour in open terrain like plains, etc

18 miles per hour on rough or bumpy terrain like hills, sandy desert, low-density forest

6 miles per hour in close terrain like rubble, jungle, etc

Multiply travel speeds by 2/3 for light rain, high winds, etc and 1/3 for storm conditions.  

Note that what constitutes different terrain types will vary by vehicle.  A forest may be bumpy for a motorcycle, tight for a buggy, and impassible for anything bigger.  A road might not be a road if it’s narrower than your vehicle.  

The road speed may seem low, but bear in mind that all vehicles are assumed to be off-road optimized, as well as optimized for fuel efficiency at the expense of some speed.  Plus you're watching for enemies and presumably having to navigate an unfamiliar area, so bump that up a bit if conditions are even more favorable.  

There should probably be something about vehicles making a reliability test every so often to see if the break down, but I haven't worked that out yet.  

You'll note that between the high speeds and ability to quickly burn through all your fuel, vehicular travel looks very different from traveling by foot or on animals.  You'll generally move in short bursts, followed by long periods staying in one area adventuring or scavenging for fuel.  

Roll for random encounters every hex or every hour, whichever is more often.  High-speed travel means you can potentially have quite a few encounters in one day, however you can also blow past a lot of them.  Some you might not even notice; you just get spotted by a hidden bandit or something but they can't do much besides watch you drive on. 

Still working on vehicle combat rules; I'll get them written up sometime in the next few weeks if it seems like there's interest.

Obviously this whole process could also get way more interesting if you add more and weirded options to the add-ons table.   Might do that too sometime.