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Very newbie Vargr bite attack question

L

leecat

SOC-3
Hi all! Super fun looking forums! I am new to Mongoose Traveller and REALLY apologize if this is a stupid question; I am GMing, and for the first time have a player with a Vargr character. I thought I understood the ruleset quite well, and we've been having a ton of fun - but I can't seem to figure out the Vargr bite attack damage!

"Such weapons ('natural') are usable at Personal range and deal x1 damage" - pp 41, Core book.

What is 'x1' damage? 1d6? What am I multiplying the 'x1' by? Again, VERY sorry if I'm missing something obvious, I've searched the forums for 'Vargr bite damage' and can't find anything relevant. Thanks very much for anyone's time who can help me - I'll name an NPC in my campaign in your honour!! :)
 
Can't help you, but from the thread title I thought you'd just bought a puppy and were wondering what to do after it bit you ;)
 
leecat said:
Hi all! Super fun looking forums! I am new to Mongoose Traveller and REALLY apologize if this is a stupid question; I am GMing, and for the first time have a player with a Vargr character. I thought I understood the ruleset quite well, and we've been having a ton of fun - but I can't seem to figure out the Vargr bite attack damage!

"Such weapons ('natural') are usable at Personal range and deal x1 damage" - pp 41, Core book.

What is 'x1' damage? 1d6? What am I multiplying the 'x1' by? Again, VERY sorry if I'm missing something obvious, I've searched the forums for 'Vargr bite damage' and can't find anything relevant. Thanks very much for anyone's time who can help me - I'll name an NPC in my campaign in your honour!! :)
Click to expand...

An uncaught holdover from playtest... it means damage is 1x the success level... which was, in the playtest, one of the two dice rolled for success... with the other determining how long it took....

generally, the xX numbers do equate to the number of dice in the released system... so...

Two options are viable:
1. Use 1d6 damage
2. use margin of success as damage.
 
Haha! No new puppies here, no - but I'd hate to have to put my player's character down because of this biting issue!! :)
 
Oh! Thanks very much, Aramis!! Glad I wasn't missing something crazy obvious, and in fact we were winging it pretty close! Now all that's left to do is name that next wild-eyed NPC Patron 'Aramis'! :D
 
leecat said:
Oh! Thanks very much, Aramis!! Glad I wasn't missing something crazy obvious, and in fact we were winging it pretty close! Now all that's left to do is name that next wild-eyed NPC Patron 'Aramis'! :D
Click to expand...

I always saw him as more of a piercing stare kinda guy...
 
Oh! I guess first impressions can be kind of misleading... from the super-convenient (for me!) way he was providing instant gaming-tech-support on the boards at 2 a.m., I was going to kind of make him that crazy sort of patron (from the 'Charles-Manson-esque' section of the patron rules) who desperately wants the PC's to smuggle a cargo bay full of leaking, unstable TL16 anti-matter torpedoes (in pink crates marked 'toys for orphans', of course) past an Imperial naval blockade to a Red-zoned world! :)

But he sure helped me out with the bite rules question super quick - you know player characters, unless the rules are firm they're convinced their Vargr can chew through a starship hull, given enough time.

Give a player a bite attack and they're like, "...now I bite the bartender...now I bite the prostitute...now I bite the patron....now I bite our engineer..." Even if you convince the other players to lock him in the ship, he's like, "...now I chew the pilot's chair and the dash to pieces!!"

You simply can't win with players - games would be SO much smoother without them!!
 
I'm not sure what the rules are in traveller, but I'd be inclined to make vargr bites somewhat weak for solid, scientific reasons. Still worse than most human bites, but not as powerful as a large canine.

Canines bark, vargr talk. I'd argue that the ability to talk demands finer muscle control that just barking, and as a trade off for getting the ability to use their mouths to speak the vargr lost a lot of raw power in their jaw muscles.

So you're trading raw power biting muscles in the jaws for finer controlled muscles to enable speech, which I think might make their bites at least a little weaker.


JMHO
 
leecat said:
[...]I was going to kind of make him that crazy sort of patron (from the 'Charles-Manson-esque' section of the patron rules) who desperately wants the PC's to smuggle a cargo bay full of leaking, unstable TL16 anti-matter torpedoes (in pink crates marked 'toys for orphans', of course) past an Imperial naval blockade to a Red-zoned world! :)[...]
Click to expand...

Yeah, that's the fellow.
 
leecat said:
Oh! I guess first impressions can be kind of misleading... from the super-convenient (for me!) way he was providing instant gaming-tech-support on the boards at 2 a.m., I was going to kind of make him that crazy sort of patron (from the 'Charles-Manson-esque' section of the patron rules) who desperately wants the PC's to smuggle a cargo bay full of leaking, unstable TL16 anti-matter torpedoes (in pink crates marked 'toys for orphans', of course) past an Imperial naval blockade to a Red-zoned world! :)
Click to expand...

It was only 2230hrs local when my reply was posted... Time zone Z+9...
 
Thanks for the interesting point, Iron Warrior - I think what I've decided on is to use the 'margin of success' option that Aramis mentioned - but have an '8' success deal no damage - rather having this mean the Vargr gets a solid grip on his enemy's clothes or gear, presumably with lots of growling and ripping-of-cloth sounds.

As the only mod my Vargr player has is Melee (bite) +1 (I'm disallowing Dex for bite damage addition, unlike normal weapon melee rules), he can do a max of 5 points (natural 12, +1 for skill = 13, less 8). I don't think that's unreasonable, seeing as a knife does 1d6+1 (Central Supply Cat.), and a dog bite would be preferable to a deep stab wound in terms of lethality, I think. Few Vargr can reach your heart with their teeth the first round, I hope.

Anyway, I hope my math is correct! I thought this would also add the possibility of some interesting situations, as in having his teeth sunk real good into some mercenary's boot, when suddenly he feels that cold, hard 10.93mm SMG pressed to his temple...followed by a quick, heartless click of the full-auto selector....

"URK?"

Now I'm off to try to find some rules for high-and-low gravity worlds!!! Wish me luck! :)
 
As an addendum, I suspect my Vargr player had dreams of going leaping over everyone's heads, snarling and foaming, and dismembering the opposition like a rabid wolverine.

If he wants that, he can play something out of 'Animal Encounters', with a cybernetic brain. A very, very small cybernetic brain - on the order of a 250 MB USB stick jammed in his fuzzy little ear.
 
leecat said:
Give a player a bite attack and they're like, "...now I bite the bartender...now I bite the prostitute...now I bite the patron....now I bite our engineer..." Even if you convince the other players to lock him in the ship, he's like, "...now I chew the pilot's chair and the dash to pieces!!"
Click to expand...

They fixed that in Silence of the Lambs...
 
Haha Ico! 'Vargr Muzzle' (Cr. 2, TL 1, .1 kg) - don't leave port without it!

I am back to my own tiny post after reading uber pages of scientific discussions of gravity and spacecraft acceleration that made my brane hert, and made me feel like a 3rd grader with ADD and his finger up his nose, staring out the classroom window at two squirrels having sex.

In my sad little campaign, ship go vroom. :\

Edit - having said all that, I just found the gravity rules I was looking for, on page 170 of the Core Book. Reeding - it's not just for skool any more!
 
Last edited:
Than ks, leecat, I think the idea came to me after seeing long ago an article on why huymans were so much weaker than other primates. Humans traded a lot of strength for upright poster and fine manual dexterity during their evolution.

Along this thread, maybe some particular vicious vargr might have their teeth replaced with nasty artificial ones that did more damage. Imagine the vargr version of "Jaws" from james bond.
 
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