New Combat rules proposal

[McPerth]

So, it's not just the bullet, it's how fast the bullet is going.

Hey, that's quite close to my signature since I joined the board ...

----

I'm not an expert (to say the least) in combat, but as I see it. the main problems are in the weapons/armor interaction, aas the exact numbers for anything will always have defenders and detractors.

Weapons/armor interaction has usually been solved in two ways: armor avoids hits (e.g. D&D AC) or armor reduces wounds (e.g. T4/MgT)

CT worked on armor avoids hits, and did the DM tables. Of course, this meant more letal weapons (as PGMP) were made in fact more acurate, something not always true...

The other way (armor reducing damage) means good penetration weapons are always good killing ones, and vice versa, again something not always true...

MT tried to separate the damage form the penetration, but IMHO it leaned more to the second option in his results (except a good hit always damaged, regardless Pen/armor ratio.

Another thing to take into account is some kind of damage is not avoided by armor. I mean, probably a BD can stop a napoleonic 8 lbs round, but I have serious doubts the wearer o the BD would remain standing after enduring the hit, and I'd say he would probably be prone some meters behind his former position, and probably quite shaken and bruised.

Of course, it's not easy to put all of this, and I will not fancy on having any solution, just pointing some of the problems I see for a "realistic" combat rules set (and if we want it playable, difficulty keeps mounting).

 

[Dragoner]

In Conflict I made it 10+. This on the basis that police shootings, they score about 1 in 6 hits against armed guys, and 1 in 3 against unarmed guys - and that's almost all within 6 metres. Well, 10+ is 6/36 of the possibilities, or 1 in 6.

Even cops mostly miss [pdf link, lengthy, below is from pp14-15].

Against a suspect firing back, 18% of 7.6 rounds struck, or 1.37 rounds on average. Against suspect not firing back, 30% of 3.5 rounds struck, or 1.05 rounds on average. So essentially they're firing until they get one hit, maybe two. The suspect at this point either falls over or decides they've had enough and would rather be eating hospital food right now. So in rules I put it as,

• 10+ is 6/36 = 1/6 = 16.67%, or 17% rounded. The base circumstance is the unskilled character firing at someone within 6m who is firing back at them. The US stats had this as 18%, pretty close.
• Not being under fire from the target gives DM+1, which would make it 10/36 or 28%, vs the 30% of the US stats. Close enough for a game. Okay, now the modifiers.
• Having had training with the weapon gives +1, which people can get in a four year term. This would take it to 10/36 or 28% when under fire, or 15/36 or 42% when not under fire. This is competent infantryman, or in the police Authorised Firearms Officer - it's not just time on the range, it's room-clearing drills and all that.
• Full-on expertise with several weapons will bring it to +3, but that'll take at least two terms or eight years. This is your AFO instructor, or the more competent military SF guys.
• Then 6-12m is DM-1, 12-25m is DM-2 and so on.
• And of course other modifiers like a spotter assisting, poor visibility, firing one-handed and so on.

Note that in Conflict there are one minute combat rounds, and the throw "to hit" may represent multiple shots, or lining up a shot then not taking it because you know it'll miss, etc. As in AD&D, we're not really interested in every movement of the character like in GURPS' one-second combat rounds - GURPS even has a possible action "change grip" to change from a normal to a reverse grip on a knife, for example - we're interested in the actions which may have an actual effect on the outcome.

Now as to wounding mechanics and how lethal the game is, you set this as you wish. I only note that to avoid players being annoyed, it should always be quicker to create a character than to kill them. If I rolled up a CT character in 15 minutes and they die in the first combat, that's a pity but oh well I'll just roll up another one. But if it took an entire 3 hour session by itself and looking through multiple books then I'm frustrated.

I agree 100% that it should be quicker to create a character than kill them. I mean, the median for the Police Office involved shooting statistics could be a point or two higher for the one in six, figuring that that average officer has +1 or +2 skill. It doesn't matter however as it probably just will only take longer to get the same result, by raising the to hit number. It also comes back to the first point with the character, and to sort of protect them, I mean as far as realism, we don't do realistic wounding either, my father was wounded in battle, where the physical, and psychic scars lasted him a lifetime, no fun to play those out. IMO it is better for the player to win more, than losing, like 2/3rds or 3/4's to one, and most battles should be won before the pull of a trigger, game-wise at least.

 

[whartung]

I think it should be clear that trying to model firearms and damage is a bit of a folly in an RPG.

Rather, it should more be from the point of view of interesting gameplay. Like was said, "easier to create a character than to kill them", that's a fine heuristic.

Simply, if you have weapons with 2D, 3D or 4D of damage, and someone wants to a new weapon, feel free -- but it's going to be 2D, 3D, or 4D of damage. Because, in the end, that's all that matters.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Well, it is 2D, 3D, 4D and 5D per round or pulse that hits you, not per trigger pull. So it is certainly possible to kill someone with one trigger pull, just not "one bullet" nor "one laser pulse".

As I mentioned an archive or two back, either Challenge, JTAS or Journal had a hit location chart. That might solve a lot of issues with the old CT system. I seem to recall (and maybe I'm not remembering this correctly) that it was proposed for Mega Traveller, but I don't see why it couldn't work for CT. The body was done with very old-school consumer grade Apple graphics, and certainly not done with Autocad or some other professional software. Making it look good by spiffying up the art and reissuing it would, I think, do worlds of wonders.

And, as an optional rule, assign energy values to types of shot / round, and assign a resistance value to body armor. I think that would mitigate a lot of angst about players wanting to ... I don't know ... lug around a 50 Cal Barret as opposed to your standard hunting rifle, or the "AWP" popularized by Counter Strike.

And if you really want to tweak the old CT combat system, then go ahead and employ the 11+ or 12+ on 2D6. I think 8+ was used in the original rules to give the game both a cinematic feel and to let players actually have a chance of hitting something in the game.

Now, having said that, hand to hand might be treated differently, or with the old 8+ on 2d6, but it would follow the same hit location and energy rules.

I like this.

This way you could have people who want to use things like an AK47 or a Winchester or whatever in your game, and you could mimic armor usage and effectiveness as well. Though I'm hard pressed to say what values to assign Ablative (anti-Laser), Reflective, and both Combat and Battledress armor. I also think it opens up the possibility for new armor as well. Something I wanted to try with my groups but never really had a chance was "light combat armor", inspired from speed biker troopers from Jedi and Traveller 2300's French armored French troopers.

 

[Condottiere]

I think we can agree that firearms in general are pretty lethal at effective range.

They were a game changer in terms of using armour on the battefield, pretty much as body armour is a game changer now, requiring upgunning.

It's my belief that most civilians won't have body armour available, so that's likely sudden death; law enforcement are likely to have that, and on the battlefield, most likely even lotech troops would be equipped with a token flak vest.

 

[HanleyTucks]

we don't do realistic wounding either, my father was wounded in battle, where the physical, and psychic scars lasted him a lifetime, no fun to play those out.

Of course. In reality, and as outlined by medicos, there are four basic wound states:

Description	(+0) Hindrance	(+1) Treatment	(+2) Recovery time	(+3) Long-term effects
Unharmed	none	none	n/a	n/a
Minor	a bit	first aid	days/weeks	None
Severe	a lot	professional medical	months	Likely
Mortal	entire	prof med & team	months/years	Certain

We can think of "realism" (for what the term is worth) as a sliding scale from left to right, +0 to +3. Most games consider only the first column, hindrance. Some consider the second, Treatment. Few consider the Recovery time. None consider the last, Long-term effects. I only know of two which cover the psychological long-term effects of suffering or inflicting violent trauma, with Unknown Armies considering it directly, and Call of Cthulhu indirectly with their Sanity mechanic, though it'd be up to the GM how they applied it. For example seeing a corpse may cost you Sanity, but it doesn't really mention whether it makes a difference whether you made the guy a corpse, or the corpse used to be a friend, etc. And those two games don't model the long-term effects of injury.

So this is just to illustrate to the OP and others: you can go a long way down the rabbit hole on this. It may or may not be worth it to you and your players to do so. Remember Breaking Bad when Hank got shot and spent 6 months in bed looking at rocks - "they're minerals, damnit!" - and got depressed and drug-addicted? You could roleplay that, but it'd be a very different game than Hank's player was playing before, playing out the action man and investigator in the DEA. Maybe in that campaign the GM just skipped over those 6 months?
"You are recovering for 6 months, and -"
"Well after a few months I get bored and ask my buddy to bring the case files over, I've got nothing else to do."

Anyway, on the chart, AD&D is +0 in realism - hit points are an "you're completely unhindered until you hit 0," thing, but absent magic it does take time to recover, though magic's not realistic, so... net +0. CT Books 1-3 are basically +1 in realism, maybe +1.2 - rather than wounds affecting your physical stats, your physical stats are just knocked down directly, you can be treated and fixed up though I don't think it really mentions how long it takes apart from the initial recovery stuff. Conflict is +2 because I consciously aimed it there - if you don't die, you eventually get better, there's an optional rule that if you recover from a "mortal" wound your Health stat is permanently dropped by 1, that's it. Abstracted.

I think 8+ was used in the original rules to give the game both a cinematic feel and to let players actually have a chance of hitting something in the game.

It's rarely simply 8+, though. Between weapon type vs that particular armour, range and so on, there are usually some modifiers or other. And remember too PCs are all +0 to hit with all weapons, while your non-military types are -5 if unskilled in the particular weapon.

CT Books 1-3 is actually a pretty reasonable system for modern and scifi man-to-man combat. At most some might want to flesh it out a bit for some flavour, or make it slightly less or more deadly.

 

[Condottiere]

Dungeons and Dragons hit points represent an aggregate of constitution, luck, skill and other esoteric factors.

 

[Blue Ghost]

CT Books 1-3 is actually a pretty reasonable system for modern and scifi man-to-man combat. At most some might want to flesh it out a bit for some flavour, or make it slightly less or more deadly.

Oh, the whole purpose of this thread was to "make it more reasonable" because of all the complaints over the years, particularly on this forum. Part of the whole reason, I suspect, that Mega Traveller came about was to introduce an armor hit / penetration engine combined with a task system that did away with the "make up your own saving throw" deal.

I don't know. I remember complaining about a few things in the combat rules, but I really remember other players complaining to me about X, Y and Z. Whether it was something they saw in the movies ... like the LMG on a steadicam from Aliens or how the pulse rifle was an ACR, or how come a LASER carbine or LASER rifle in Traveller doesn't work like a blaster in Star Wars ... the whole nine yards of realism verse cinematic verse Traveller.

Personally, and this is just me, I've always thought that the combat roll ought to be either 9+ or 10+. No joke. I always thought that 8+ made the assumption that both PCs and NPCs within the game had some training. It's part of the reason you play out your retirement and why Traveller doesn't kick you out into the gaming world at age 18.

So, what I'm thinking is that I may just scour the net for energy values for various weapons, then come up with some energy values for various armor in the today world, then speculate on stuff like Combat Armor, Battledress, Combat Environmental Suits and so forth, and put down those values as an optional rule set.

And like I say, if you're out on the desert at medium or short range, you can hit that Imperial Marine in his TL15 Battledress with your sling and stone or zip gun. And by the rules you therefore do damage. And I had complaints about situations like that.

Traveller, Classic old school 77 to 88 LBB GDW Traveller, is supposed to be a tool kit, so I'm thinking this is going to be my final contribution here. Assuming I don't get lazy about it.

 

[Spinward Flow]

Dungeons and Dragons hit points represent an aggregate of constitution, luck, skill and other esoteric factors.

It also represents a "bucket of hit points" that can be depleted without impairment to fighting fitness (in the original first 2 editions).
You were just as effective a 1 HP as you were at Full HP.
It was only once you reached 0 HP (or lower) that you started having problems (survival being one of them).

It's a decidedly imperfect system ... especially as demonstrated by videogame bosses who are just "punching bags" with MILLIONS of HP to whittle your way through (during which they seem to only get MORE powerful as you hurt them, not increasingly impaired as the wounding factors build up ... because drama/challenge).

I think it should be clear that trying to model firearms and damage is a bit of a folly in an RPG.

Rather, it should more be from the point of view of interesting gameplay.

Honestly, this is the better goal to each for ... interesting gameplay.

This is why I prefer systems that model "damage taken" as a straight up -DM on everything you might be trying to do (such as continue fighting or hack a computer or whatever). With sufficient impairment, your character becomes "ineffective" until they recover, rather than needing to outright "kill" them in order to slow them down at all.

In a HP system, being reduced from 100% to 90% by injuries to HP usually has NO EFFECT on a character's ability to do anything (and especially no reduction in their combat effectiveness! So characters tend to "power through" such losses in HP without much of a care by the Player(s) involved.

In a -DM system, being reduced from 100% to 90% by injuries can mean a -1 DM on ALL dice rolls for anything the character might be actively doing, which is something the Player(s) will NOTICE in relatively short order and actively work to avoid. Even if the wounds are not life threatening, the penalty to effectiveness is often times sufficient to prevent a blase attitude about being injured.

The HP system is well suited to Power Fantasies in which you can keep fighting at full power until you drop (dead).
The -DM system is well suited to more realistic simulations in which questions of "are you wounded?" become actual concerns in terms of degrees of impairment. Stack up enough impairment and you have a "death by a thousand cuts" situation in which the trivial can become an important consideration and "tanking hits" is not always a viable strategy (while avoidance does).

 

[whartung]

This is why I prefer systems that model "damage taken" as a straight up -DM on everything you might be trying to do (such as continue fighting or hack a computer or whatever).

Ostensibly, CT does this.

Mostly through the +/- weapons DM based on characteristics. As the statistic go down, your ability to fight goes down.

Mind, it's incomplete. You can have someone have their DEX "shot out" go "well, I'm switching to my broadsword -- my STR is untouched!" And, yea, that's "gamey".

But I think it's fair, as you suggest, that if you break up the health pool in to 4 zones, essentially add them all up, divide by 4. Let's say you were 777, 21 pts. Divided by 4 (fractions round down, say), 5 pts.

So, first 5 pts (any 5 pts) of damage have no effect. Next 5 put you in to -1, next 5 -2, next 5 -3.

It scales to all characters, obviously weaker characters have smaller pools. A 555 character would have windows of 3.

I would reset the pools after combat. In CT, when you're "healing", many of your stats do not recover fully right away. During that window, I'd recompute the pool value since that's your "long term" condition and you are, indeed, weaker.

It's a little fiddly mathwise, "one more thing" to keep track of, but easy to conceptualize.

 

[Condottiere]

Isn't that fatigue, which is regenerable?

Actual wounds require treatment.

You could invoke the adrenaline caveat.

 

[whartung]

Unconscious characters (with at least one characteristic reduced to zero) recover consciousness after ten minutes (40 combat rounds) with all characteristics temporarily placed at a value half way between full strength and the wounded level. ... A return to full strength for the character requires medical attention (a medical kit and an individual with at least medical-1 skill), or three days of rest.

So, no, I wasn't referring to fatigue.

I consider fatigue to be more the endurance rule when fighting hand to hand.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Quick note; I didn't take any of the disagreements personally. Holy Toledo, I must be cured. It only took what ... forty years? Whatever.

So, I'm thinking I'll post here or in the Home Brew / Rules section;

The Blue Ghost Optional Combat Rules

Roll for initiative
Calculate DMs; they effect the to hit roll only, they are not factored as DM for the armor.
Roll to hit; 10+ on 2d6
Roll for hit location
Apply Armor; compare cartridge energy verse armor value
Apply Damage

Next round

 

[HanleyTucks]

Personally, and this is just me, I've always thought that the combat roll ought to be either 9+ or 10+. No joke. I always thought that 8+ made the assumption that both PCs and NPCs within the game had some training.

All those with a military background, yes. And arguably those with the "Other" career. Per CT rules - and this is often forgotten - the rest are at -5. Effectively it's 8+ in combat for those with military experience, and 13+ for everyone else. Averages out to 10+ or 11+.

It's often forgotten that in CT it's not simply 0 or else +1. And there are modifiers. Put this youtube.com playlist of mine on in the background and have a read through my article skills are a profession (www.thevikinghatgm.com html).

• Let's have the mythical completely average person 777777, make them 18 years old with no skills whatsoever.
• Hands: at Close they can have a go at an unarmoured person with their Hands - non-proficiency -5 + armour-1 + range +2 = DM-3. They need 11+ to hit at Close, or 12+ at Short.
• Blade: Give this same person a Blade and they need 12+ for both, but they do 2d instead of 1d.
• Shotgun: Give them a Shotgun and now at Close it's DM-8, at Short DM+1, and at Medium DM+3. They literally can't hit you at Close range with a shotgun ("roll 16+ on 2d6" hmm), but need to throw 7+ at Short and 5+ at Medium. That's 4 dice of damage. "I close the distance to wrestle the shotgun out of their hands!" You can do that, but... all attacks are simultaneous, so they get to shoot at you as you run up. Maybe duck behind some really solid cover instead.

Skills are a profession. What's listed isn't the thing you are good at among fifty other things - it's something you could make a living doing. A character who's been through terms of military service has +0 in every weapon because they are at least an apprentice in the profession of arms. Other people aren't. And the firearms skill isn't merely time on the range, it's room-clearing drills and knowing how to pull your weapon apart and put it back together and clear a stoppage and all that. You know when you consult the weapons charts and figure out the odds and choose your weapon? That's your character's skill at work, knowing what to choose, what their chances are.

It also represents a "bucket of hit points" that can be depleted without impairment to fighting fitness (in the original first 2 editions).
You were just as effective a 1 HP as you were at Full HP.
It was only once you reached 0 HP (or lower) that you started having problems (survival being one of them).

I've always thought of it as a system where there's impairment and risk, but the player gets to choose. If you're normally running around at 10HP, lose some, and now at 1HP have a chance to remove yourself the dungeon and choose not to - that's like the guy who's had a torniquet put on a heavy bleed on a limb who's offered a chopper out of the combat zone, but decides to keep fighting. If you're sensible it should slow you down and make you more cautious, unless you're desperate and have no choice. Instead of "I roll to ignore my wounds!" you just have the DM saying, "Are you sure?"

If you play your character the same at 1HP as you did at 10HP or 100HP... well, you get what you get. In Conflict I didn't include the modifiers because of realism, really - it's mainly for flavour, and to formalise the decision-making process of players. "Now X has happened, will you do A or B?"

 

[infojunky]

Isn't thirty eight calibre favoured by law enforcement?

And the Navy, at least when I was in. Note it had a lanyard and was often accompanied by a night stick…. Well not to forget the marlin spike as well…

 

[Blue Ghost]

... jogging my memory here ... I seem to recall that way-way-way back when my friends and I first dabbled in the basic combat game, and later on in Snapshot, we actually did use the -5 DM for untrained ... but disgarded it for some reason.

However, it could be that because we ditched that rule early on that I simply forgot about it.

If that's the case, then, the hit roll doesn't need to change, but in my opinion the armor DMs do, as does the addition of a basic armor mechanic.

 

[Blue Ghost]

And you call yourself a movie person.

Quick off topic response

I actually chose film as a secondary career choice, when I actually wanted to go into physics and engineering, while writing some cool scifi on the side. Part of my agenda for film was to expose mainstream America to gaming to defang and defuse the "satanic panic" from way back in the early 80s with D&D. I was enchanted by the artistry of George Lucas's Star Wars, liked the TTA books and other scifi art at the time (novel covers and posters), and thought that I might try to make "my star wars" with stories that were a little more serious like Star Trek, but still kept an Indy-Jones or Luke Skywalker sense of adventure. Traveller seemed like the perfect fit for that exercise, and my self comment as I sat in physics was "If people love Star Wars, then they'll go gah-gah for this!" This = Traveller on the big screen, or Car Wars, Ogre / G.E.V. and a host of other games.
Regrettably I had a lot of behavioral science pumped into me, and I filed a formal complaint at a Federal level some weeks back, and top tier government people are looking into it. A lot of that interference came from family ... even though I told all my friends of what I had planned for my life. So ... there you go.

Now, having said all that, as I gamed with my buds, it became clear to me that the Traveller combat rules, as good as they were for a lot of situations, fell short here and there. The first blood rule was something we tossed almost immediately. Combat on a clear day on clear terrain, with no tech-level modifier, lets that Ewok army (TL-0 or TL-1) beat that (TL-12 to TL-13/14) army of "stormtroopers" in a Nor Cal forest .... near Pelican Point? Locally here in Marin?

It's bugged me ever since I played my first combat round. It really has. And where I understand the need for cinematic gameplay and to keep the whole thing lively and fun (and simple), codifying armor as a DM on the combat matrix, for us, didn't go far enough. Ergo this thread and the exploration of how armor might otherwise be applied.

As per my previous post I may just cobble some homebrew rules and post them in either the file section or in the home rules area of the forum. It depends on how much interest it holds for me, but I'm wondering what other people think, ergo this thread.

I guess part of it has to do with the terrain modifiers. Combat against TL15 Imperial marines is a lot different in the confines of a starship verse ... the desert or on the street, or wherever else. I have absolutely no combat experience, but it strikes me that a bullet from your Derringer ought not to damage someone in full BD irregardless of whether you're in a penthouse, on someone's lawn, ... on a sailing vessel bobbing up and down on the ocean or wherever else.

 

[Ildefonse]

Have you seen the proposal in this "Double Tap" thread? While one might quibble with some of the armor DM's, the method does neatly separate to-hit from damage.

 

[Blue Ghost]

I have not, but I'll take a look.

There's some good ideas here. I may cherry pick the best ones and come up with something.

 

[Blue Ghost]

Post Script; I'm actually not a "film person". I really couldn't stand the industry when I was working in it because a lot of people always wanted to be in on the joke--whatever it was--on the set. They also were pretty condescending thinking themselves as guardians of society because they made feature films and television. I'm glad I never made it more of a career, and hate it with a passion. No joke. I wish I'd never gone into it.

Back on topic, I think I have a handle on what to pick and how to make an "advanced rules" matrix. I'm going to do some speculating on armor values ... maybe increase armor effectiveness by some percentage every tech level above and beyond when ballistic armor first appears. That way people won't have to reference bronze breast plates nor chain mail as a base factor should they want these rules.

To be honest I'm sorry I couldn't play the game more like I wanted. I'm also doubly sorry that Mega Traveller came about because to me the LBB format was just fine. And I saw no reason to drive a steak into the Imperium's heart. Regardless the combat rules are good, but they failed us every now and then.

I'm thinking base energy verse resistance or absorption energy for ballistic weapons. I'm thinking Gauss and my own electromagnetic guns (EMGs) will have their own chart. Rocket weapons might also have their own chart since they're constantly accelerating. And energy weapons will have their own chart. I'm surprised there's no positron nor electron accelerator weapons for the game.