Track Perp
New Skills and Special Techniques
The Judge immediately keys onto pertinent facts about a perp: height, colouring, hairstyle, gait and so forth. When tracking a perp through a crowd or into an area where sight can be easily lost, the Judge still manages to follow his quarry without needing to make a skill roll. A perp can try to shake the Judge off his tail but must successfully roll Dex 10+, with the Judge’s Dex characteristic DM acting as a penalty to the evasion roll.
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I Am The Law!
Whenever a Judge attempts to call on a perp to surrender, the Judge rolls Influence 8+. Applied to this roll as a negative DM is the perp’s Desperation DM (see below). If the Judge succeeds, the perp will immediately cease what he is doing, drop his weapons and submit himself for arrest. If the Judge fails his Inf 8+ roll, the perp carries on fighting, committing his crime or evading the Judge – the Judge will then have to subdue the perp physically if he is to be brought to justice. Once a Judge has failed an Influence roll to arrest a perp (or perps) called to surrender then the perp can automatically ignore all subsequent challenges to surrender made by the Judge.
DM to Judge’s Influence Roll +1 +2 +3 –4 –1 –2 –4 +1 +2
Holding Posts
Perp Desperation Every perp has a Desperation level, rated from –6 to +6. This is a measure of how desperate a perp is to avoid arrest and thus how willing he is prepared to take extreme measures in avoiding it. Perps with high Desperation levels (–4 and higher) will stop at nothing to escape justice – be that taking hostages, endangering the innocent, risking shoot-outs and so forth. Perps with lower Desperations (–1 or –2, for example) are more likely to simply run and hide or perhaps risk a half-hearted shoot-out before surrendering. If a perp has a positive Desperation – and this will be rare – then he is actively seeking to be arrested; perhaps as a call for help or because he genuinely enjoys the thrill of being caught lawbreaking, being reprimanded by a Judge and then being sentenced. Mega-City One has many such oddballs, such as Edwin the Confessor, who readily confesses to crimes he has not committed in the hope of being arrested and punished.
Additional DMs for Making an Arrest
In addition to the perp’s Desperation level, various other DMs are applied to the Judge’s Influence roll when attempting an arrest, as the table overleaf details:
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Circumstances Every additional Judge in perp’s sight Every pat-wagon or H-wagon in perp’s sight Every Manta Prowl Tank in perp’s sight Perp in cover Every ally of perp within sight and not dead or arrested Judge is Injured Judge is Seriously Injured Perp is Injured Perp is Seriously Injured
Once a perp has been successfully arrested (whether he surrendered or was subdued), it is standard procedure for a Judge to handcuff him to one of the (literally) millions of holding posts scattered far and wide throughout Mega-City One and then call his Sector House to send a Catch Wagon to pick the perp up for transport to the iso-cubes. Holding posts are made of the finest plastisteel and are nearly impossible to destroy or escape from. A holding post is considered be able to withstand 100 points of damage and has integral armour protection of 12 points. They may be found on practically every street in Mega-City One and a Judge never has to travel further than 2d6x10 metres to find one. A Judge may, optionally, choose to wait with the perp until the Catch Wagon arrives. This can be time consuming and is not standard procedure but may prove prudent in the event of apprehending a particularly dangerous perp. There are also those rare occasions, usually involving incredibly remorseful perps (and those with positive Desperation levels) where a Judge can simply order the perp to find the nearest holding post and wait for the Catch Wagon. This can be successfully attempted if a perp has a positive Desperation level and if the Judge succeeds in an Influence 6+ roll. Usually, though, no Judge takes the chance and ensures that his perp is cuffed securely before filing the sentence via his hand or bike computer.
Sentencing Before a Judge continues his patrol or current investigation, he must sentence the perp to a period of time in the isocubes. The arresting Judge’s word is final for sentencing (subject to further evidence being uncovered at a later date and many crimes have variable sentences permitted, allowing a Judge to use his own discretion and still remain within the law); however, a Judge who is consistently too
Code 21: Genetic Purity
The war that led to the Cursed Earth created extensive and hideous mutations in many Americans. It also created fear, suspicion and loathing, rather than pity, amongst those not afflicted. Legislation early in Mega-City One’s history led to the Mutant Act banning mutants from the Mega-City One environs, condemning them to life in the Cursed Earth. The act enforced regulations surrounding genetic purity, the reasoning being that all kinds of devastating diseases might infect non-mutants, giving rise to uncontrollable and exotic plagues that would destroy the remaining populace. Thus, any sign of mutation in the gene pool was considered illegal, with sufferers being automatically exiled to the Cursed Earth. Similarly, the law applied to genetic manipulation and testing that might give rise to further mutation, such as cloning (even though the Justice Department has, itself, used cloning successfully to create Judge Dredd). Code 21 offences have recently been repealed, but are included here for completeness. Offence Mutant DNA Concealing/harbouring a mutant
Sentence Cursed Earth Exile 1-5 years or Cursed Earth Exile
I Am The Law!
Section 1 2
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Psykers Psykers use their psionic powers for criminal ends and the term psyker refers most commonly to a psion employed by one of the many criminal gangs to further their interests: generally extortion, blackmail, intimidation and so forth.
Psykers cannot obtain training to develop Advanced Talents – those dealt with in this chapter – although legitimate training in Basic Talents (those found in the Traveller Core Rulebook) are available through licensed psionic development clinics (or Psyk-Skools). Therefore, it is rare to find Mega-City One psykers who have a reasonable degree of competence in the Advanced Talents in Judge Dredd; therefore it is very rare to find a psyker with anything higher than, say, Level 1 in a Talent such as Psionic Combat.
Psykers and Psi Division
Thought Crimes
All psions in Mega-City One need to register their Talents and, generally, this happens at the point where psionic powers demonstrate themselves or if psionic capabilities are noticed at school or during routine medical check-ups. Psionic potential results in a battery of tests to discover the range and extent of powers; these form part of a civilian psion’s personal ID records and are available to Justice Department and Psi Division in particular. It is thus relatively easy for Justice Department to discover the registered range of a psyker’s capabilities once he has been identified as an active perp.
That said, there are illegal Psyk-Skools that specialise in training psykers in these areas, usually Mob bank-rolled, and so psykers specialising in the Advanced Talents available in Judge Dredd will be found – although the degree of training will vary widely. How a psyker employs his Talents to criminal ends depends on the nature and range of his Talents and the focus of his employers. The Mob knows that psykers who have too much power pose a risk of using their Talents against them and so either employ psykers who have only Basic Talents or ensure that they have a high level of insurance against an advanced psyker potentially abusing his position. Such insurance usually involves threats of violence against family members or anything else that guarantees the psyker tows the Mob line. Those psykers who do abuse their position and believe they can get away with it, rarely do so for long.
Psi Division does not have the resources to continually monitor psykers under psychic surveillance; instead, the most active psykers are monitored when there is evidence of a crime or as part of a wider surveillance operation directed by Street Judges. Psi Division does know who the key psykers are and the official registers mean that Psi Division is aware of the Talents they possess. Over and above that, engagement between Psi Judges and psykers is limited to as-and-when – in other words, when a psyker can be tied to a particular crime. Where the use of psionics is suspected in a crime, Psi Division is usually called in. Most Sector Houses have at least one duty Psi Judge, and if not central Psi Division, at the Hall of Justice, will assign one. This is usually the case where specialised psionic powers are required. Psi Judges assigned to a case or incident tend to use only those Talents
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