The TTRPG Gear Upgrade System That Replaced Four Tables With One

“Reinforced” on an armor is extra plates bolted over the joints. On a rifle, it’s a hardened barrel. On a rover, it’s supplemental hull plating. Same rule, three different images. That’s the whole idea and it took dismantling four separate tables to get there.

At some point in Sol Fracta‘s development, I had four separate upgrade tables. One for armor, one for weapons, one for general gear, one for vehicles. Each with its own wording, its own exceptions, its own edge cases. Updating a single design decision meant touching all four, hoping I hadn’t introduced an inconsistency somewhere in the middle.

There’s a principle in software called DRY — Don’t Repeat Yourself. The idea is simple: if the same logic lives in three places, you’ll fix a bug in two of them and forget the third. Game design has the same problem. When “Renforcé” means “+2 durability threshold” on armor and “+2 structural integrity” on a rover and “+2 barrel resistance” on a rifle, those aren’t three different mechanics. They’re one mechanic with three names, three locations in the rulebook, and three opportunities for drift.

So I burned the four tables and wrote one.

The table

Sixteen modules. They apply to armor, weapons, gear, and vehicles. Slots are determined by die rating: D4 gets one, D8 gets two, D12 gets three.

Reinforced on a combat suit is additional plates over the joints. On a rifle, a hardened barrel. On a multi-tool, a hardened casing. On a rover, supplemental hull plating. fullproof on armor means hermetic seals; on a weapon, a pressurized chamber; on a scanner, a vacuum-certified housing; on a vehicle, a sealed cockpit.

Stealthy on armor is sound-absorbing coating and a reduced signature. On a rifle, advanced silencing and a matte finish. On a thruster, thermal dissipation that masks the heat trail. Overcharged on a weapon means dumping extra charge into a single shot. On a scanner, one capacitive burst for extended range. On armor, reactive plates that spike absorption for one hit.

The mechanic doesn’t change, the fiction does. That’s the whole point.

The stacking rules

Reinforced is cumulable. Stack it as many times as you have slots. Lourd and Léger are mutually exclusive. Everything else: one instance maximum.

I almost introduced compound modules — “Ultra-Reinforced +6” to avoid writing the same word three times on a character sheet. It felt cleaner. It wasn’t. It added a lookup, a new tier, a new word to learn. Three instances of Renforcé is self-explanatory: you added more of the same thing, it cost three slots, done.

The modules with built-in trade-offs (Overcharged degrades after use, Exo costs RE per activation, Light lowers your degradation threshold while it improves your mobility) create interesting decisions without a separate rule set. They live in the same table, follow the same slot logic, and play by the same stacking rules.

What actually changed

One table to update when a balance decision shifts. One vocabulary for players to learn before they can work confidently with any piece of equipment in the game. Sol Fracta already asks you to track resources across six categories, manage colony infrastructure, navigate faction politics. The gear system shouldn’t add cognitive load, it should be modular, fun and simply stupid.

Write once. Use everywhere.

The tension I’m still sitting with: modules like Robuste and Renforcé are purely additive, no downside. Modules like Surchargé and Exo have explicit costs baked in. Too many of the first and upgrades feel like shopping. Too many of the second and every choice becomes a calculation.

What does your JDR gear upgrade system look like, and how do you keep equipment progression from becoming a separate game inside the game?