Original T5 Personal Combat

[Supplement Four]

I know what we did with the re-write of T5 Combat, making it more traditional. But, I'd like to see a version of the original T5 combat system--possibly as an alternate rule or fan-made house rule--with all of the bugs worked out.

What's interesting to me is that the original T5 Combat system is rather unlike any other combat system used in rpgs. It's got a "T5" stamp on it. And, while the revision is quite comfortable and practical, the rules aren't as exciting because we're all familiar with those types of rules.

To be clear: I'm not saying the revision is bad. Far from it. The revision makes T5 combat more like that in CT, MT, T4, and other versions of Traveller.

What I am saying is that the original system that Marc wrote was something new and fresh, combining abstract elements as well as simulationist mechanics.

Still, like a lot of T5, that original system needs work.

If I had the time, I'd work on this system to try to keep its soul but also tweak in the areas where I think it needs some work.

Specifically:

1. It needs a good method for treating brawling combat (hand-to-hand and melee combat).



2. I'd like to see the original abstract movement system used but also have a tactical movement alternative--allowing GMs to default to the abstract system but also the ability to switch to a combat grid if necessary in a game.

One way to merge the abstract and tactical movement systems is to define the size of the battlefield at the start of play. Just base it on Range.

For example, an interior battlefield on the decks of a starship could be considered Short. That's a maximum of 50m. This would be a large room, like an empty cargo deck. The abstract rules say that a character can make the distance in two combat round at Speed 1 (walking) or one combat round at Speed 2 (running).

So, on a grid map, just allow a character to move the same thing. He can move about half the way across the hold, walking, in one round. Or, if he runs, he can make it across the entire hold. No square counting needed.

If talking about a room on a starship, this battlefield would be considered Very Short (about 5m). Allow the character to move anywhere he wants during a combat round, on a grid.

The same type of thinking can be applied to larger battlefields.



3. A simple method for tracking ammo expenditure. It doesn't have to be a system where every bullet fired from a weapon is counted. I think some type of dice roll that represents the percentage chance of an empty magazine, based on the magazine's capacity and the fire rate of the weapon, could be used. And, this doesn't need to be a separate dice roll--maybe this could be incorporated into the Attack Task so that the dice are pulling extra duty, saving time in the game.

Look at the fire rate, the mag capacity, and the combat round number (the more combat rounds, the more likely the weapon uses up the ammo).

And...maybe an alternate rule for those who do want to count ammo, as it was done in CT. A burst from a weapon uses X number of rounds, and so on.

The other idea is to just remove magazines every X number of rounds, based on average ammo use.

The idea is to count ammo magazines, of which a character will have one or a few, instead of counting ammo.



4. I think the Hit-Location System from the revision might be imported for use in the original system, but I still think there's too much dice rolling in the revision's combat round. The combat rounds are too long in the revision--too many things being diced.

But, maybe there's a way to add the Hit-Location system in an easier way to the original combat system.



5. Some of the new rules are pretty neat. Like the Knockdown. Maybe import those? Definitely import the new rules for extra targets and firing modes.



6. In the new revision, we changed the length of the combat round to accommodate the realism of time needed to fire at targets. We also made it possible to fire at more than one target in a combat round. Those things should be brought over to the old system, because it's silly to think a person can use a weapon on only one target over the span of a minute, on average.

 

[David Johansen]

The only thing that bothered me was the damage. I'm still dead convinced that the Hit System 0 / 1 was built around total damage as is shown in Gun Maker and that armor values were set accordingly which results in a couple problems.

The first is that armor is impenetrable to weapons fire much too often. And we're talking about tanks that can't harm each other here. The next is that the role and sequence of damage is confusing as we've got little distinction between most damage types. Personally, it's pretty clear that damage should stack against armor or the various modifiers need to apply to all the damage types produced, not just one. Damage types need differentiation. Even if it's just that burn goes to C1, C2, and then C3 and Bullet is random, and blast hits every characteristic for one dice. It just drives me bananas that there's not really any distinction.

I'd also like non-abstract movement. I hate abstract movement.

The new system is fine but the old system was also fine. Just needed a few tweaks and clarifications as I have always said.

 

[Supplement Four]

The only thing that bothered me was the damage. I'm still dead convinced that the Hit System 0 / 1 was built around total damage as is shown in Gun Maker and that armor values were set accordingly which results in a couple problems.

I think there's problems with damage, as well, and I hope Marc fixes them before releasing the revised version.

First off, blade weapons are too powerful. They are potentially more powerful than any pistol, rifle, shotgun, or laser. Why? Blade weapons keep wounding each round, effectively equaling damage in D6 much, much higher than any gun weapon. A Traveller character doesn't have enough "hit points" to suffer that kind of damage.

Second, the armor values were never worked out so that they worked smoothly, from what I've seen so far. There are cases where the armor is too protective--impossibly protective.

The first is that armor is impenetrable to weapons fire much too often. And we're talking about tanks that can't harm each other here.

Agreed. The same goes for personal armor.

The next is that the role and sequence of damage is confusing as we've got little distinction between most damage types.

Also agreed.

I'd also like non-abstract movement. I hate abstract movement.

Easily fixed, if you go by what I said in the OP. Check page 295. Speed 1 (Walking speed) is 5 kph. If you check Google, you'll see that the average human walking speed is, indeed, 5 kph. Speed 2 (running speed) is 10 kph.

Go to a 15 second combat round, instead of a 1 minute combat round, and the movement speeds work. The revised edition of the combat rules use a 15 second combat round.

Also remember that a 15 second combat round was used in Classic Traveller. So, to get your tactical movement rate, you can figure it out from those baselines above, or you can use the old CT numbers.

5 kph is 20.8 meters per combat round. Go with 20 meters for easy figuring. Running is double that.

If using 1.5 meter squares, then Speed 1 = 14 squares, Speed 2 = 28 squares.

Or, you can use the Range Categories, as T5 has them. This is what I said in the OP. It takes 2 rounds to cover Short Range.



I think the easiest thing to do is just consider your battlefield size.

In a Room? Battlefield is Very Short Range. About 5 meters square. Character can move anywhere he wants to in the room each combat round.

In a large room, like a Hangar Deck, Cargo Deck, or Warehouse? Or Outiside between buildings? Battlefield is Short Range. About 50 meters square. Character can move half the distance in one round if walking Speed 1, or the full distance if running at Speed 2.

In a field or out in the wilderness with long lines of sight? Battlefield is Medium Range. About 150 meters square. It takes 3 rounds to run that length, or 6 rounds to walk it.

Unless using vehicles or riding animals, Combat will typically be conducted at one of those three ranges: Room (Very Short), Large Room or City Block (Short), Outside with Long LOS (Medium).



This is tactical combat without having to count squares.

Example Situation: Character is a Soldier manning a guard post at the border.

Inside the guard post is considered Very Short Range, and the character can move to any point within the building in one round just by using Speed 1.

The border gate is outside, 50 meters away from the guard post. So, anywhere outside the guard post but inside the perimeter is considered Short Range. A character can run to the perimeter in two rounds, or he can walk to it in 1 round.

Imagine a circle around the guard house that is about half way to the perimeter. A character can move anywhere in that circle in one combat round if walking (Speed 1).

The character can move anywhere between the guard post and the perimeter in one round if he runs.

Outside the perimeter is No Man's Land--a Dead Zone that has been leveled for line of sight, with trees cut and no terrain features blocking sight. This is Medium Range. LOS is 150 meters. The forest blocks LOS any further than that.

From the forest edge to the perimeter, it takes 3 rounds to run the distance or 6 round to walk it. You can figure where a character can be placed on the map using those guidelines (one third distant, two thirds distant, or at the perimeter).

 

[mvdwege]

First off, blade weapons are too powerful. They are potentially more powerful than any pistol, rifle, shotgun, or laser. Why? Blade weapons keep wounding each round, effectively equaling damage in D6 much, much higher than any gun weapon. A Traveller character doesn't have enough "hit points" to suffer that kind of damage.

But bladed weapons are powerful. A well-aimed knife thrust will damage vital systems in a way that does make you bleed out. In fact, the shock of the damage might even incapacitate you immediately, or fast enough to take you out in a single round in T5 terms.

"Expect to get cut" is nonsense advice when it comes to knife fights; the only place where you can sustain non-lethal cuts is muscle and fat tissue, and there's not a lot of places on the body where you can sustain a hit on those kind of tissues without suffering damage to a more critical part of your anatomy. About the only place I can think of off the top of my head where this is anywhere near safe is the outside of the lower arms.

You won't be bleeding enough to be accurately modeled by the T5 wound mechanics, but that's easy to handwave by saying that those kind of real-world wounds are misses in T5 terms.

Long bladed weapons like sabers and swords are worse. On an unarmored opponent they're essentially one-hit, one-kill weapons.

The granularity of the damage system is erring on the lethal side, but it is not completely without foundation in reality.

The reason in real life we switched to firearms is not just because their lethality on a single hit, but due to their advantage in range, rate of attacks, and training requirements. At personal ranges a blade is still a very efficient killing tool.

 

[David Johansen]

It's the C1=Pen results for animals that get me, a large critter could have Pen 24 horns! that's way better than anything short of a titan antitank plasma cannon. I think he means the number of dice they would get to generate C1 whereby you're in a range of 1-5 which is still better against armor than it should be, Pen or Cuts maybe.

I don't mind melee weapons causing cuts and bleeding and firearms not. because it's not so much that you can't bleed out from a gunshot wound as it is that you aren't as likely to during the combat round. But if that is the case the actual damage scores of the melee weapons should be way lower.

Personally I'd say 1d for blades, 2d for swords, 3d for polearms, with bonus damage based on the strength based attack roll.

 

[Supplement Four]

So, you two are saying that you think blade weapons should be more lethal than firearms?

Because no firearm in the game, regardless of power, continues to add damage every round.

I think it is going to lead to players taking a thug with a switchblade much more seriously than a robber with a .44 auto mag.

 

[David Johansen]

No, I'm saying that if you reduced the melee weapon damages significantly cuts might be okay as written. Say 1/2d for short blade, 1d for blade, 2d for two-handed. But as it stands cuts and frag should probably bleed two points per round while bullets and pens only bleed one.

It's the complexity of the interactions that screw things up.

They still haven't removed automatic weapon damage bonuses from Gun Maker while having automatic fire damage bonuses in combat. It really has to be one or the other, not both.

I'm wanting to do a T5 pocket empires game but I'm just not sure the functional parts of the rules are to the point where I can. As it is I'll have to write some rules relating to the use of Resource Units. (Technological Development, Ship Building, Infrastructure, Adding Bases)

But I'm not sure there's any reasonable way to use the current combat system. Ship to ship's another matter. It looks okay on paper but I haven't trotted it out in play at all, so I don't really know one way or the other.

 

[Supplement Four]

I'd argue that, if blade weapons did not accrue damage damage each round, then you wouldn't have to change them, AND you wouldn't have to count.

I really dislike bookkeeping that makes me count things from round to round.

 

[mvdwege]

So, you two are saying that you think blade weapons should be more lethal than firearms?

Not speaking for anyone else, but in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with that. Again, the rules may err on the side of lethality, but that's not worth making major changes for.

 

[Supplement Four]

Not speaking for anyone else, but in my opinion, there is nothing wrong with that. Again, the rules may err on the side of lethality, but that's not worth making major changes for.

Can't say that I agree. A person can bleed to death from a gunshot wound, too. A shotgun can take a man's head off. Yet, it is the sabre that a character would fear in this game, not the shotgun.

 

[aramis]

Can't say that I agree. A person can bleed to death from a gunshot wound, too. A shotgun can take a man's head off. Yet, it is the sabre that a character would fear in this game, not the shotgun.

Looking at the numbers (from USDOJ) back in 1993...

One shot stops were lower than one shot kills.
One strike kills were lower than one strike stops.

One stab kills were about on par with one shot stops.

A knife is in fact more likely to kill use than a bullet. Bullets, however, usually don't stop with one, and multiple bullets tend to cumulate the death rate. Multiple stabs don't seem to cumulate as heavily.

Modelling that, however, is a real problem.

(One shot or one strike stop: after a single bullet, hack, slice or stab, the target is unable to remain a credible threat.)
(one shot/strike kill means that the first hit was the fatal wound - either by traumatic death or by bleed out. A one shot kill that isn't a one shot stop is the standard result of a police vs PCP user. A one stab kill that isn't a one shot stop is often the result of a gut wound; death by peritonitis was, per DoJ slightly higher with blades than bullets, and much lower with blunt.)

 

[Epee]

Not going to comment on how the combat rules handle it; however, edged weapons, particularly those that cut and chop, do a great deal more damage than most firearms for the amount they penetrate. But here-in lies the rub, while the damage ability is high, the penetration ability is low. For example, a katana or sharpened sabre can cut a human in half, but 1mm of sheet steel will reduce all but the very strongest most wicked of cuts to little or no damage at all.
Large, gaping cuts will loose a lot of blood quickly but so will heart, lungs, liver and kidneys if pierced by a foil or bullet.

 

[robject]

"the original T5 Combat system is rather unlike any other combat system used in rpgs."

[and is therefore interesting, possibly refreshing]

So I'm going to have to re-read the original. The only thing I remember from it was the very interesting suppression fire rule, which I liked.


Revising the original:

(1) Unarmed combat

I'll have to also re-read T5.09's treatment of unarmed combat.


(2) Tactical combat without having to count squares[FONT=arial,helvetica]

[/FONT]Sounds quite reasonable to me. If it's no more difficult than the non-tactical combat rules, then how about just replacing the existing movement rules with the squareless tactical method?


(3) Ammo Tracking

E.G. extraordinary failure = jam and/or empty clip. I could live with that.

BUT ALSO true load tracking for launchers, says I.[FONT=arial,helvetica]


[/FONT] (4) Port in the Hit-Location System from the revision

...but not as a separate roll. Wrap it into the attack roll somehow? Make one die white and one die red, and the rest black?


(5) Port Knockdown, extra targets (more than one target), firing modes

I like adding to the difficulty for each extra target... of course I like changing the difficulty for just about everything, instead of adding die modifiers.

(6) Don't specify the combat round length

This is my answer to the issue.

(7) Armor is too protective

A bonus to gun damage is the solution here, because it's much easier to change combat than change ArmorMaker. I suggest that automatic fire damage bonuses is part of this solution.

 

[robject]

OK S4, I have to know. How does T5.09 differ from T5.00, except for what appears to be better organization, some new specific situations added, and a situation or two modified?

At their core, they appear to be the same mechanic: difficulty = range, roll under C+S+TSM+situational mods. Tactics Mod appears unchanged. How damage is applied is explained (yeah, that's new). Falling and Ramming are added in. Suppressing fire is demoted in power - certainly not an improvement.

So some stuff gets shuffled, some stuff gets explained (good!), but it's really the same thing, isn't it?

 

[robject]

The more I read BOTH these versions, the more I think that some of this complexity can be pushed down into skills used. For example "Cover Me!" sounds like a skill use of some kind. Bummer that I can't think of what skill could do it. I suppose it's not really. I wish it were.

Anyhow, the Cover rule says that the participant can neither move nor attack. If this were a skill use, then that would go without saying, or rather, it would open up play with the regular penalties of the task system without requiring a special rule in the combat chapter.

Meanwhile, Cover itself is silly as written. T5 has the concept of Sizes; surely Cover is simply the reduction of Target Size (like Crouching), but leaving oneself open to an aimed shot (which is what we use when targetting a Location). And "Concealment" is I think a prime candidate for the Stealth skill.

 

[JFGarber]

suggest that automatic fire damage bonuses is part of this solution.

There needs to be a counterbalance to autofire bonuses, particularly if ammunition is not tracked.

 

[robject]

There needs to be a counterbalance to autofire bonuses, particularly if ammunition is not tracked.

There certainly needs to be an explanation for it, at least. The use case should make sense. I think there is an explanation for it -- in other words, it is there precisely to counterbalance something else, for example, strong armor. However, it might have gone too far, or may be a partial solution that leaves other attack types still too weak. Without trying it out in combat I don't know how far it goes.

 

[robject]

I note that the rewrite doesn't adequately explain that there are at least four tasks available in combat, namely:

Attack!
Aimed Attack.
Fire Suppression / Cover Me!
Concealment. Opposite of attack, if anything.

The first three use the attack task, but the middle two follow an altered process. In this respect they act as different things entirely, and typically cause a mental shift when someone takes one of these stances. Even though they share rules, they mentally are as if they were unique. Therefore, they need to be called out and properly divided in the text.

Concealment, while simply mentioned in the Attack Procedure, is nevertheless a completely different tasklike thing. Rather than a Size Mod, which confuses it with Cover, it should rather be a separate Stealth task -- at least to initially enter Concealment. This would make it a positive action. Yes it sets the bar on Concealment high. I prefer that.

Making Concealment a task also removes it from the long list of attack DMs - an important problem.

It still puzzles me why, with the superfast utility of the task system, one would still elect to use DMs. This may be more a criticism of Marc not following his own solution through to its logical ending. Losing the speed of tasks hardly seems worth the benefit of being able to accumulate little DMs. Presumably the idea is to represent a rich decision-making environment, but to me it removes exactly that by becoming a first grade math exercise.

 

[David Johansen]

I think it's because all combat tasks were originally 2d6. And the cludge they worked out to integrate the task system back in is still, to this day, cludgy.

 

[Ulsyus]

Modelling that, however, is a real problem.

That is the rub to all this, isn't it? How to model the common and the exceptions?

Jovian Chronicles had a nice little combat mechanic that had a Margin of Success built into the skill roll. Weapons had a damage multiple that was used with the MOS (1,2,3, etc) so that a simple task like stabbing an unsuspecting someone in the back (or kidneys from behind) could reasonably produce a MOS that would, when multiplied by the Damage Rating, conceivably kill a N/PC with one stab and very definitely with multiple of them. Same deal with the shotgun - close range against an unmoving target and the difficulty was low so the MOS was likely to be higher esp for skilled N/PCs.

Just sayin'. How well does T5 model damage in the games you've been playing?