Combat system from Ahzanti High Lightning

[daryen]

I would like to discuss a few things about the combat system from the AHL game. It is intended to be a streamlined update of the Basic Traveller/Snapshot combat rules. Overall it seems to work well, but before asking any other questions, I need to ask one first:

How many Light Wounds does it take to convert to a Serious Wound? Two Serious Wounds are equal to Dead. But I didn't see where it said how many Light Wounds it would take to equal a Serious Would. I probably just missed it, but I didn't see it. So, is there an equivalency defined, or can you get an arbitrary number of Light Wounds?

Thanks!

 

[McPerth]

According the rules ,there's no such conversion. A character may receive lots of light wounds and still be just so (but with a cummulative DMs to combat)

 

[whartung]

Correct, using Monty Python as a benchmark, a light wound is the loss of a leg or arm. Just a scratch. A serious wound is something actually life threatening.

 

[daryen]

Cool! Thanks! I'm glad I didn't miss anything, then.

 

[Spinward Flow]

According the rules ,there's no such conversion. A character may receive lots of light wounds and still be just so (but with a cummulative DMs to combat)

Death by a thousand cuts ...

The cumulative -DMs to your combat rolls will be what incapacitates you, rather than outright killing you.
You'll (probably) live, but for right "now" you're wrecked and not all that useful (except as stretcher bait).

 

[daryen]

In the AHL rules they explain how to ignore the preset modifiers on the counters and use the skills and ability modifiers of Traveller characters to get character-specific modifiers. So, that all works if trying to use the AHL system with Traveller directly. (They even give range adjustments for converting "squares" to distance.)

But, for damage, it doesn't matter whether someone has physical characteristics of 111 or FFF, it still takes two serious wounds (or one death wound) to kill. So, is that good enough? Is it OK that characteristics no longer matter in anyway to a character's ability to take damage? Or is there an easy way to take such into account?

To modify the damage, I see two ways to do it:
- The simple, brute force method of allowing a particularly strong character to take three serious wounds (and a particular frail character to die on one serious wound).
- Using a character's ability scores to influence the Damage Table on page 24.

Thinking about it, I kinda like the latter idea, but I am not sure on how to implement it. I would think that a 777 character would take damage as given on the Damage Table unmodified, but using some thresholds, frailer characters would get a bad DM (which would be a positive number) and stronger characters would get a good DM (which would be a negative number). For example, for every characteristic that is 10+ they get a -1 modifier and for every characteristic that is 4- they get a +1 modifier. So, a character with 444 would have a +3 DM, a character with AAA would have a -3 DM, and a character with 47A would have no DM. Maybe use 5 and 9 instead of 4 and A. Obviously, those numbers would need to be determined, but it would be a way to get a character's characteristics involved in the system, at least a little bit.

(And then use the above DM for strength and endurance to influence the Melee Table on page 25.)

 

[Spinward Flow]

it still takes two serious wounds (or one death wound) to kill.

Serious Wound = 1/2 Dead
2x Serious Wounds = Dead
Death Wound = Death

I'm not seeing the problem here.
The Serious Wounds are functioning like "critical hits" to tell you you're halfway dead. Take another Serious Wound and you're all the way dead.

 

[McPerth]

Trying to convert what is in fact a tableboard wargame to RPG is alwaqys problematic...

IIRC, I was told in Strike (I don't own it, so I may e wrong), whose combat system is close to AHL (if not outright the same), it was specified, when wanting to use with Traveller characters, that a light wound equalled 3d wound, a heavy one equalled a 6d wound and Death a 9d wound.

Personally I find it a little harsh, as on average 3d are quite more likely to incapacite a character than the 1 in 6 in AHL, and 6d would kill a character,

 

[whartung]

Serious Wound = 1/2 Dead
2x Serious Wounds = Dead
Death Wound = Death

Well, with CT, lose one characteristic, and you're unconscious. Essentially out of the fight. Obviously in AHL, 1 Serious wound is sorta kinda maybe almost like losing one characteristic in CT, save for the unconsciousness part.

The deal with losing consciousness is the big differentiator between the two systems.

 

[McPerth]

When I used the AHL system to play RPG (mostly MT), my take on light wounds were, on receiving one:

• roll 2d against END. If failed: unconscius
• -1 to STR, DEX and END .

If any of them reached 0, it became a serious wound. Should two of them reach 0, it was a critical wound and the third one was lowered by 1 every 1d rounds. If all three reached 0 ,the character was dead.

This gives more importance to END, but as STR and DEX have other effects in combat, I found it OK.

 

[Grav_Moped]

Trying to convert what is in fact a tableboard wargame to RPG is alwaqys problematic...

IIRC, I was told in Strike (I don't own it, so I may e wrong), whose combat system is close to AHL (if not outright the same), it was specified, when wanting to use with Traveller characters, that a light wound equalled 3d wound, a heavy one equalled a 6d wound and Death a 9d wound.

Personally I find it a little harsh, as on average 3d are quite more likely to incapacite a character than the 1 in 6 in AHL, and 6d would kill a character,

"D. Wounds: For purposes of determining recovery time and actual damage sustained by characters, a light wound is assumed to do 3D damage and a serious wound does 6D damage." (Striker Rule Book 2, p. 46)

There is nothing about a "Death" result, but I suppose it's a moot point in that context.

 

[McPerth]

Thanks for the clarification (as I said, I was talking on memory from decades ago).

 

[infojunky]

A bit late to the game Here. I use a progressive damage track with 1d3 increment replacing light and serious wounds.

 

[aramis]

I'm seriously contemplating the following process:
Roll to hit a la striker, damage marked on hits ala MT, but the base "DV" being the CT-'81 dice...
HP total = sum (Str Dex Con)/3 (round up) min 2
HP to down HPT/3 round down, minimum 1
HP from down to out = HPT - HPD

1d6 + (margin of to hit) + pen - armor and the damage done.
<0 none
0 DV/5
1 DV/3
2-3 DV/2
4-6 DV×1
7-10 DV×2
11-15 DV×3


Reasoning:
median hit skilled is going to be 10/21 up, so 6+5 = nat 8, assuming skill 1 no att mod, and so is by 1
median penetration die is 3,4 so a median hit is by 4-5, 2-3 points lower than AHL/Striker's 2d6.
Striker's 4-7 is light, 8-11 is heavy, 12+ is dead (look at the AHL data card.) Shifting down a couple points, we get light at 1, heavy at 6, dead at 10.
Typical CT-'81 Bk1 weapons are 3d
When the HPD are lost, convert those to att damage and continue the fight (if one can)
When all HP are lost, convert the rest.
Minor NPCs are KO at HPD hitpoints taken.
Minor NPCs are dead at HPT hitpoints taken.

This preserves the MT combat speedups and ability to use conglomerate units... That is, I can fight battles like I would in MT, but is a better math fit to the Striker pen, and preserves the high pen low damage for small arms AP rounds, and the low pen but high damage of shotguns. For autofire, roll the penetration die separately for each, but only apply the margin to the first shot.
But it also allows a 3d6 to hit/topen roll by using two colors.

I'm also considering making the range to hits 7+/10+/13+