New to GMing T20: Dupser damages hard to deal with?

[archhealer]

Ok. I have not been GMing T20 very long, and we're well into our first really long-term campaign. I'm discovering a few rather nasty little problems. Specifically, providing worthy challenges to my players. The RP challenges and ethical dillemmas havn't been a problem,, I've thrown them some doozies. The problem is combat.

Not only combat, but any action that uses the combat rules. One of my players is a level 8 mercenary, no multiclass. Just merc all the way. And, he's super badass. And, he has a Gauss Rifle. Now, the problem I'm having is that a 10 round burst from the gauss rifle will pretty much just demolish ANYTHING I put in their way. Doors, locks, bulletproof glass, alien monsters, etc. It's disgusting. 2d12 damage is bad enough, but with a ten round burst they get a couple of extra dice of damage, it just gets insane. I'm aware he's blasting through ammo like there's no tomorrow, but the party is aware of the usefulness of this gun and is pooling most of their funds to keep him rolling in bullets. Now, I assume this isn't the only weapon with this kind of damage potential, as I looked things over and there were a few others... Should a character be able to blast holes in armored vault doors with a personal firearm? Are they meant to be THAT powerful?

The second problem is stun weapons: Stun batons and the Stunfist from TA1. These things will drop damn near anybody, most of the time. I had them facing off against veteran high-tech guards... and they managed to drop nearly all of them in only a few rounds of combat. Granted it was (Almost) without actually killing any of them, to the PCs credit, but still, not much of a challenge. And, the charges running out didn't matter so much because the guards had batons too (But were mostly just shooting at the PCs, hoping not to get that close) so the PCs would just use one till it fizzled and grab one off the nearest downed guard... Again... Are stun weapons MEANT to be that effective? The fortitude save doesn't seem all that tough, but the guards rarely made it, or maybe I was just rolling badly.

Any suggestions on how to make combat a little more interesting? The PCs so far are enjoying just leaving a blazing trail of destruction in their wake, but I'd like them to have to think things over a little better before just blasting doors open.

 

[jasper]

And the bulldozer, cat, kkree, and two human males walked away passively. On a planet with 100% humans.
You could give the opforce similiar weapons. What law level are they on? Where is the cops back ups, higher ups, and fu#k ups(aka npc Bruce Willis in Die Hard 993)? Combat including simple bar room fights can be deadly. And over quickly.

 

[BetterThanLife]

Personal firearms are not that powerful. Though watch out for the RAM launcher on the Gauss Rifle, that is that powerful!

OK first thing, the Gauss Rifle isn't going to blast through walls and safes. Walls, doors, bullet proof glass should be treated as a vehicle and have an armor rating. A 10 round burst from a Gauss Rifle is going to do 5D12 of damage. If the door has an armor rating of 6 then it is going to do 1D12-2 points of damage to the door. If it is a vehicle it is going to do 1D12-7 per burst to the door. (Barring a crit. With a Crit against a vehicle class door you ignore armor but not vehicle reduction, so it is 1D12-1.) Now that we have increased the amount of bursts that it will take to open the door, take the following into consideration, those bullets that don't penetrate have to go somewhere. From a controlled burst, into a wooden door, only a small danger of richochette, firing a 10 round burst or two into a metal door in a closed room? Lets see how the characters like receiving damage from the gauss rifle. In an enclosed room, have anyone in the area make a reflex save, if they fail, hit them with 1D6 rounds doing 1D12 each. Or as an alternative, treat the point of impact as a frag grenade and attack everyone in the room.

Oh and about the Ram Grenades, I would make sure they have a minimum range, and do take into account the burst radius of them, and attack everyone in the room with appropiate effects. (The -5AP only applies to the primary target.)

Remember that locked doors and other obstacles aren't designed to stand alone. There should be someone monitoring it, or guarding it. Firing repeatedly into a door is going to alert someone.
Remember Guards can carry Gauss Rifles too. And since anyone can kill with a Gauss Rifle on Auto, not just the Players....


Armor up your elite guards. It is amazing how much damage a guard can absorb with even Jack armor. Against High Tech Guards wearing CES or Combat Armor, your stun weapons will have little effect. (They are insulated after all.) They will do the standard damage but no more. (Page 8 TA1.) An 7-9th level guard will shoot half the party with his sidearm before succumbing to a stun baton. (With the resulting noise and alarms going off as well and yelling into his integrated comms system while he is gleefully shooting the party.)

 

[Rover]

Don't forget to add consider numbers when attacking your party with creatures.

A swarm of Velocoraptors with AR 2 or 3 will take a lot of punishment. There is also no rule aginst adding Lifeblood to a particularly hearty beast. 5 or six extra points could mean one or more attacks are needed to kill it.

Your 8th level merc will have a tough time with 6 or 7 creatures like that. At 8th level he get 2 attacks/Rnd. (3 with rapid shot) with 10 round bursts he'll be out of ammo in 2 rounds. Reloading while lions are chewing on your liver will cause an attach of opportunity, so will firing the gausse rifle at that range while we are at it.

Or mix it up. A swarm of 20 or 30 creatures (wolf or equivellent) with only 9 or 10 LB and an AR of 2 can cause a lot of damage before dropping.

You can also give creatures sneak attacks or grapple feats. Your 8th Lvl merc might not fare so well againt a 30 foot crocodile with an AR of 6 and a Lifeblood of 25 that ambushed him and draged him under the water. Ever seen Lake Placid?

Sure the system takes some getting used to. Try running some out-of-character tatical simulations with your players so that you both get a better feel of things.

 

[archhealer]

OOC tactical combats... that's actually an amazing suggestion and I can't believe I didn't think of it. I'll put that one right in.

As for the other suggestions... all good. There are IC reasons why there weren't more gaurds in the facility in question, but they were armored, just in jack but still.

Question about Stun weapons: If the fort save is failed, the target jsut drops, regardless of damage, am I wrong? Not permanently, sure, but long enough to get away/grab the loot/lock the door etc.

Recollecting the combats that gave me problems, I did just remember that the PCs rolled an unusual number of criticals, so maybe it only seemed unbalanced.

Oh, scaling damage to buildings as vehicle damage... doh. Didn' think of that. Should have, makes complete sense.

 

[shadowdragon]

shadowrun has an interesting rule i absolutely love.
it is refered to in the rule books as "the chunky salsa effect" and refers to grenades. grenades out in the field are wonderful. grenades into the room you are assaulting are wonderful (as long as there is a wall between you and it). grenades in the same room as you? BAD IDEA.
sure you may be out of the area for shrapnel, ram grenades have a 1.5m radius effect. okee dokee..

repeat after me: SHOCKWAVE

the concussion is going to blow their eardrums. period. if they are close enough, it may knock em down. plugging the ears helps, and turning your back helps, but it is a full body hit. plus, IRW shrapnel doesn't have a magic radius of effect, you can hit something preety far away with it, even from small blasts. its a small chance but still can happen. i play this in my games. basically the chunky salsa effect means that any obsticle the blast doesn't blow through will bounce the shockwave right back, affecting the area again. and again, and again, until the full range is reached. it is reduced as normal, and the calculations can be time consuming, but it is a valuable lesson in why we don't lob grenades in closed spaces. or do as long as WE aren't in that closed space.

 

[aramis]

Just as an aside: T20 was playtested with LOWER levels of XP in CG. It balanced well that way, but the high end was too slow...

In my playtest campaign, players hit no higher than 7th in CG, 13th in play.

And yes, stun weapons ARE supposed to be quite effective, but don't forget that people wake up from them, too...

 

[Qstor2]

I haven't run a game yet but the man portbable plasma rife looks like it would blow anything apart? Even powered armor

Mike

 

[veltyen]

You'd be surprised.

A PGMP-12 almost bounces off TL15 Battledress under the vanilla rules. Anyone not walking arround in a tank has problems though.

It's also an anti-tank weapon, so can only be out walkies on very low law level planets.

 

[jasper]

You have to remember sooner or later, the law is going to take notice. And if they kill all the law men, they will get talked about.
If they off marshall dillion on Vulcan, I know Ms. Kitty will be writing her friends on Mars, B5, Earth, and maybe talking nice to blue coat who is pass thru on his yearly patrol.
Yeah weapons are neat in traveller if you are the only one carrying.
So let have their fun and then impound their space ship at their next port.

 

[archhealer]

Heh heh heh. The law already caught up with them, don't you worry. They're "Working" for the government now in an attempt to meet a deal that'll clear the slate for that little debacle. Of course, they're not being paid, beyond their ship being let out of impound and them not being tossed in jail for thirty or fourty years.

 

[Qstor2]

Originally posted by veltyen:
You'd be surprised.

A PGMP-12 almost bounces off TL15 Battledress under the vanilla rules. Anyone not walking arround in a tank has problems though.

Hmmm...I guess I read the rules wrong

It looked like even with armor as DR battledress could only take one shot from a PGMP..IIRC they do around 8d12 of damage. I don't have book here at work

Mike

 

[veltyen]

PGMP-12 is 6d12. Take away 20 dice (5 from vehicle scaling, 15 from armor) leaves 1d12-15.

The "almost" comes from criticals

A lot of people think that battledress is a little more tough then it should be so use houserules to make them a little weaker (myself included).

 

[princelian]

I knew that you "treated battle dress as a vehicle [refers you to a page number]" was in the rules, but I hadn't thought that through... but... if BD is a vehicle, that means an PGMP-12 (which must be BD-mounted) should do +5D damage to non-vehicular targets? Or is it only if you mount actual vehicular weapons on the BD that they do vehicular damage?

The Y-rack missile launcher on the powered armor in Starship Troopers [the wonderful book, not the terrible movie], and probably the flamer and other weapons, was most definately vehicular weaponry. Not to mention Mobile Infantry firing nuclear missiles from the Y-rack....

Anyhow, is there a clarification on BD interacting with people, damage and armor-wise, somewhere? If they're truly vehicles (with the +5D/-5D modifiers), that makes them pretty ungodlily tough....

Oh, look, my SOC isn't gutter-trash anymore

 

[veltyen]

Or is it only if you mount actual vehicular weapons on the BD that they do vehicular damage?

Bingo. Person scale weapons can be mounted on vehicles. They still do person scale damage.

Ditto with starship scale weapons.

If you wanted to build the mobile infantry from the book you'd probably start with 500 vl battledress with a couple of starship scale missiles (50kg/vl) attached to the unit and a smallish grav drive.

12d6 (conventional TL13 starship scale missile) with a 20m radius of maximum effect (80m diametre total effect) sounds about right for the little missiles they tossed arround.

No clarification that I know of. Hence houserules.

IMTU I modified scaling to be more linear. Battledress that way only has a +2 scaling reduction rather then +5, and superdreadnaughts have a +16 scaling factor instead of +10. Whatever fits for the game you are running is the important factor.

 

[aramis]

BD was built by Dr Skull using the Vehicle design sequences.