Burst Fire, Criticals, Life Blood and Stamina

[davidence]

I have a couple of questions. I'm new to this Life Blood-Stamina thing, being mostly a CT player and ref. So go easy on me.

1) If you get a confirmed critical while using Burst Fire Rule with Extra Damage (THB p. 151), do you multiply the damage of the extra dice of damage along with the regular damage?

2) Let's say the answer to 1 is Yes. Do you then apply the critical damage against target's Life Blood after subtracting damage dice to accout for the AR of the target? Or do you just apply the damage to Life Blood without the damage dice being multiplied?

3) Do these questions make any sense, or should I make some examples?

Thanks for the help!

-dence

 

[Savar]

do not know about the multiplyer question, but Critical Hits Ignore armor.

in most d20 games I have seen bonus damage dice are not multiplied ( so that is what I would do in MY universe.

 

[Chaos]

I´d agree with Savar. I think it is enough to assume that ONE bullet has scored a critical hit - this is usually more than enough to kill the target.

Another solution would be to confirm each of the additional damage dice from burst fire separately.

 

[RickA]

1. Yes.
2. Remember, Armor is ignored on crits. All of the damage to Stamina is also going to Lifeblood.

Crits kill.

 

[veltyen]

To add yet another answer:

1: I don't beleive this is addressed anywhere explicitly (please correct me if I'm wrong though). I play it as multifire damage is -not- multiplied, just the base damage.

2: Any critical is generally an absolute kill except with extremely small weapons (daggers and holdout pistols for example). Multiplied damage is applied to stamina and lifeblood.

Examples:

Autofire (+2 damage dice) gauss rifle(2d12), being fired at someone in cloth armor (AR6)

Laser Rifle (3d10) being fired at the same person wearing cloth armor (AR6)

Gauss Rifle "normal" does 4d12 stamina, and ((best of 4d12) -3) lifeblood.

Gauss Rifle "critical" does 6d12 stamina and the same 6d12 lifeblood

Laser Rifle "normal" does 3d10 stamina and ((best of 3d10) -4) lifeblood.

Laser Rifle "critical" does 6d10 stamina and the same 6d10 lifeblood

Combat not in armor tends to go for a round. Combat in armor might go for 2 or 3 rounds.

 

[davidence]

Wow! Crits are bad news. I like the balance they (the authors of the THB) have cut with Stamina and Life Blood. It does make the damage accounting a bit more complicated though.

Thanks for all the help. I think I understand now...

Now to figure out the ship combat rules...

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by dence:
Wow! Crits are bad news. I like the balance they (the authors of the THB) have cut with Stamina and Life Blood. It does make the damage accounting a bit more complicated though.

Thanks for all the help. I think I understand now...

Now to figure out the ship combat rules...

Now see I will give you the crit mult on the whole bit. (2D12 for single shot Gauss Rifle, 4D12 for 4 round burst.) Multiply the whole mess by 2 and ignore armor (or roll it twice and add, statistcially the same as long as you are consistent, but the official way is to roll it twice.)

For starship combat you might want to decide if large ships are going to play any part in your Traveller Universe. If not then the ship combat rules, while a little whacky are serviceable. As soon as you get to big ships though the rules fall apart badly.

Try these Sane Starship Combat for T20.

 

[veltyen]

I handle gun combat that way to differentiate heavier weapons from higher RoF weapons.

For example a heavy gauss rifle does 1 extra dice of damage which is multiplied on a crit, but requires special ammo.

A double barreled gauss rifle also does 1 extra dice of damage which is not multiplied on a crit. It uses the same ammo, just twice as much. You also can conserve ammo this way.

This models medium and heavy versions of basic weapons quite nicely. Each level is doubled (1,2,4,8...) rather then linear to apply diminishing returns. A multibarrel variant does not nessersarily have X barrels, for example the double barreled variant above would much more likely only have a heavier single barrel, extra barrel cooling and a more complex ammo feed. The 4 and 8 multiplier tend to be tribarrel and 6 barrel miniguns instead.

Anyway, wandered far to far off topic.

 

[Gundiwolf]

Crits seem pretty harsh. Perhaps for me, I might tone them down - keep the extra (x2 or x3) damage, but drop the lifeblood = stamina damage. And perhaps halve the AR instead of ignoring it.

Otherwise, a crit with a small handgun has a good chance of killing someone with average CON in fully enclosed combat armor with a single bullet, something I just don't see happening.

The doubled stamina damage will still produce a large number of knockouts, so I don't think it will make combat take too long. And lest you think crits don't happen often enough for this to be a problem, I have certainly seen plenty of crits in our d20 D&D games.

 

[RickA]

Originally posted by Gundiwolf:
[QB] Otherwise, a crit with a small handgun has a good chance of killing someone with average CON in fully enclosed combat armor with a single bullet, something I just don't see happening.

If a small handgun hits in such a way as to ignore any armor the person is wearing, it's like being shot with a handgun with no armor.

This usually kills people.

Also, always remember what is good for the goose is good for the gander. If you take away deadly crits from the PC's you're taking them away from their foes also. So... it doesn't make any difference.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Originally posted by Gundiwolf:
Crits seem pretty harsh. Perhaps for me, I might tone them down - keep the extra (x2 or x3) damage, but drop the lifeblood = stamina damage. And perhaps halve the AR instead of ignoring it.

Otherwise, a crit with a small handgun has a good chance of killing someone with average CON in fully enclosed combat armor with a single bullet, something I just don't see happening.

The doubled stamina damage will still produce a large number of knockouts, so I don't think it will make combat take too long. And lest you think crits don't happen often enough for this to be a problem, I have certainly seen plenty of crits in our d20 D&D games.

Granted my D&D days are a bit dated. (We played AD&D, back when EGG ran the company, before his divorce.) But the biggest problem with D&D was always you could hack at someone all day long before you killed them. In the real world you stick a dagger in someone's chest and they tend to expire rather rapidly. Historically, in the age of Swords and Chivalary, more people were killed with daggers than any other weapon. (I have heard some quotes state then all other weapons commbined.) Yet even with 18(00) Strength it took a minimum of two hits to kill a level 1 fighter.

Now from the charts I have seen for D&D especially for magic weapons, you will get more crits than with the Traveller weapons. All the handguns crit threat on a 20. Not a 19, or an 18, a 20. Of the firearms, only the PGMP and FGMP crit on less than a 20 (they crit threat on an 18). These weapons are likely to simply melt away any armor you are wearing anyway. But lets look at the autopistol shooting at a Combat Armored opponent. A 12th level Marine firing an autopistol at a person with a 14 dex wearing TL12 plain vanilla Combat armor at close range needs a 7 to hit. That hit will normally do, no lifeblood damage, but 30% of the time do 1-3 points of lifeblood damage, however it will average 5.5 points of Stamina damage per hit. Now 5% of the time the Marine will roll a Critical threat. Once they roll that 1 chance in 20 the still need to roll a 7+ (70% chance) For a total Statistical chance of 3.5% for a Crit. Now we ignore armor and roll twice for damage causing (statistically) 11 points of lifeblood damage and 11 points of Stamina damage. You might kill an average character with that hit. However getting to that hit you fired about 30 shots. (2 magazines worth) and you during that 30 shots, scored 21 hits and on average did 9.45 points of lifeblood damage without the golden BB. And this is a 12th level Marine, who is supposed to shoot straight. Where is the excessive Crits? (It is with Spinal Meson weapons, which is a whole different matter.)

Leave the Crits as is, the system works. Traveller is supposed to be deadly. (In CT if you got hit, by any weapon, you went down, regardless of your armor.)

 

[RickA]

I tend to agree, Bhoins. I think the system shocks a lot of D20 players (it did me, at first) due to the fact that combat lasts 2 or 3 rounds quite often, instead of the D20 standard of 10 to 20, lol.

I play D20, and have been a DnD player on and off since '81, but am not blind to its flaws. The fact that a 10th level fighter can let folks hit him with a battle axe for tip money at the local tavern and laugh off each hit... well, that's just silly. T20 pretty effectively reduces that happening.

 

[veltyen]

The Assasin and Sniper feats can unbalance things (automatic criticals). I like the concept of extremely deadly sniper fire though.

The only other feat is improved critical, but considering that very few weapons have a 19 let alone an 18 threat range it is less then stunningly useful. Those weapons with an enhanced threat range are somewhat less effective then rifles, as they are limited to crossbows and melee weapons.

A marine with improved critical(sabre) is still very scary toe to toe. Threat range of 15+.

 

[RickA]

Biggest unbalance feat I've seen is Opportunist. That damned feat is making our ex-marine mercenary guy an ungodly terror in combat, to the point of overshadowing the rest of the members.

 

[far-trader]

Rick, um, I've gotta ask, where'd the player/character pick up that Opportunist feat?

Could be the trouble is that as stated in whatever other rules it doesn't balance well with the differences in T20 combat. As an import it's vital that it be adjusted as needed to not unbalance things.

 

[RickA]

Opportunist is a Mercenary feat. As it turns out we were using it incorrectly. Opportunist allows an "attack of opportunity" on anyone in range who has just taken damage.

Well, "attack of opportunity" is defined in the core rules as a MELEE attack, not just any attack (such as an extra 4 round burst from an ACR). So, our bad.

Marine/Mercenary guy isn't very happy today, fyi.

 

[veltyen]

If you wanted to be soft you could suggest pistols at minimum range only. This is something I've been tempted by for use as an alternative for a future/modern based attacks of oppurtunity.

That said opportunist already allows AoO's against people that are shot. This allows the tactical opportunity of having the merc stand near people keeping them pinned down while the rest of the party pepper the opponents with gunfire.

For greatest effect make it a mustered out marine with a cutlas. That or a larger range melee weapon (spiked chain, halberd for example).

But yeah. By the vanilla rules it is only with melee weapons.

 

[RickA]

I can tell you from playtesting that it's a good idea to stick to the letter of the law on this one.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Opportunist is a Mercenary Specific Feat. On the Mercenary page (pg. 47) of the THB. As written it isn't that nasty. It allows one attack of opportunity per combat round against someone that has taken a minimum of one point of Lifeblood damage. The Feat specifically states that it is only once per turn regardless of other feats the Mercenary may have. So I don't see it as unbalancing.

<Edit took out a pair of lines that actually come from not fully reading the core rules., teaches me to respond before reading the whole thread.

/Edit>

But you have to actually use the feat as stated in the THB for it to not get unbalancing.

And Rick, Someone that is extremely deadly in combat is going to draw fire. And I don't just mean a pistol round or two. You fire your Ram launcher at him, your PGMP/FGMP and Machineguns open up on him. Vehicle Weapons, Artillery, etc. Someone just slaughtering your side in droves gets all the weapons being fired to the exclusion of everyone else. It is a fact of real world combat.

Just like in D&D you target the mage first. In the real world you suppress or destroy the enemy tank or machinegun first. In Traveller you kill the thing that is killing all your buddies first. I don't care what level he is or what armor he is wearing a RAM HEAP Grenade that connects will likely kill him, and three or more definitely will. As will an PGMP or FGMP.

 

[far-trader]

OK, clears up my question nicely. I thought maybe it was an import from D20 Modern or something that read differently than the T20 one and that was causing the problems

AoA with an automatic weapon

Nice.

Of course even if it were allowed, as Bhoins points out, that makes you target numero uno. And what works for PCs has to work for NPCs so they should have run up against at least one (or more likely a team of) like dealing Mercs at some point.