Rationale behind the weapon stats (dice)

[apoc527]

Another question for everyone (specifically the playtesters and/or developers)-

In Spycraft, the guns have a fairly diverse range of damages, and in order to differentiate between weapon power, the game changes the critical range between rounds as well as the dice type and amount.

For example, a good old 5.56mm NATO round does 4d4 with a 19-20 crit range (their crits don't affect damage, which is odd, but the damage goes directly to Wounds, something T20 doesn't have to worry about as ALL damage goes to both Vitality/Wounds|Stamina/Lifeblood.) A 9mm does a d10 with a threat range of 20.

So, my question is why did the designers of T20 choose to use a simple "increase the die size" mechanic to differentiate between weapon damages (that's what D&D does, sure, but guns are usually more diverse than what T20 shows).

I guess my main complaint isn't that you aren't using "interesting" die codes, because I note that an ACR does something like a d12+2 and a gauss rifle does 2d12. My problem lies in average damage. The weapons aren't very reliable in damage potential- sometimes you get an assault rifle doing much less damage than a pistol (which I believe does d8 or d10.) Spycraft weapons use enough dice to create a nice normal distribution (like the 4d4 of an assault rifle). Granted, this can be a pain in the butt to roll, but at least you usually do around 10 points of damage with your AR.

Of course, now I'm just babbling, but I think my point is in there somewhere. Ok, having just opened up my T20 Lite PDF, I see something else that bothers me. Most pistols do a d10...many of the rifles do a d12 and they all have the same crit range. Don't you think that maybe rifles are getting shafted or that pistols are too powerful? I know that some rifles can do bursts and stuff, but a single hit from a 7.62mm NATO rifle is going to suck a lot more than a single hit from a 9mm pistol.

Obviously, d20 isn't a system that is used for it's incredible realism, but c'mon now, something in this isn't right. (BTW: my personal opinion is that most of those handguns should do less damage.)

Heh. Sorry, this post just keeps getting longer and longer, but now I've opened up my TA01, and discovered yet another disturbing trend. There is a "heavy autopistol" that ALSO does a d12 damage with no change in crit range. I don't care what anyone says, there is no autopistol that will match penetration with nearly any serious rifle round.

Comments, flames, answers? Thanks!

 

[Traveller #1]

The way I view it, the damage dice for projectile weapons is intentially (sp?) low, to make up for automatic fire etc.
I think this leaves room for a lot of argument. In fact, this is my main complaint with T20 so far. The rates of fire seem much too low. They seem designed by a game mechanic that didn't imagined 20/40 rounds a second or more and computers of thousands of Mhz a second etc.
I think that a Traveller's Aide with a system of designing gear/weapons/armor/ammunition etc is essential to T20.
That way, you can take the power of Gurps ECT enhancements to weapons (fx) and avoid 6d*34 etc. Which I think would make T20 THE system

Thomas

 

[Traveller #1]

This came through really bad.
What I mean is, that if a supplement released a bit of info on the reasoning behind the weapon damages in T20, the game would be *extremely* more generic (and more 'powerfull' IMHO) and convertible and applicable to other settings.

Thomas

edit: corrected spelling (not the person, I'm sorry)

 

[Vargr Merc]

An interesting point. Was any effort put into codifying known ballistic characteristics with the Traveller damage mechanics? Fire, Fusion & Steel did a decent (but I won't go so far as to declare it gospel) job of setting its damaged base on the physics behind the weapons. Perhaps a grass roots movement could be undertaken to bring the T20 weapons into line. G^3 had formulas for converting weapons designed into the various gaming systems. We have some basis available already to relate weapons in T20 to their CT counterparts, perhaps a Traveller's Aide dedicated to these conversion charts could be produced.

Out.

 

[DrSkull]

If you look at the D&D DMG you'll see that the damages in there, page 164, match the T20 weapon damage ratings exactly for auto-pistols, revolvers, rifles, laser rifles and laser pistols. It's my guess that the designers started with these damage ratings as a base and scaled the other weapons accordingly, looking for d20 Compatability.

 

[tjoneslo]

Let's see if I can answer all of you in one go.

The simpler dice mechanic was chosen partly because of the way Armor Rating works in T20. I don't know how it works in spycraft (enlighten me), but in T20, having fewer larger dice is better because of the way armor works. For example, 4d4 does an average of 10 points, a 1d20 does an average of 10.5. Against AR 4, the 4d4 does an average of 1.5 damage, the 1d20 does an average of 6.5 damage. Which weapon would you rather have.
The Armor mechanic also allows scaing between personal, vehicle and starship weapon scales without requiring the GURPS 6dx2,000,000 mechanic (which has it's own problems).
The main T20 rule book has rules for building Computer, Vehicles, Starships, and planetary systems.

There is no weapon construction system in T20, and I'm not sure any real effort was made to match RL ballistics to T20 weapons. From discussions with serious gearhead/gun nuts, the FF&S1, FF&S2, GURPS and G3G weapon design systems are all flawed in one serious way or another. GURPS doesn't allow you to put long rounds in a short barrel weapon or vice versa. FF&Sn and G3G both produce markedly incorrect results when compared to RL designs if you design outside of their center design range.

That said, at some point it may be interesting to try and create a conversion for G3G and GURPS to T20. I'm sure MJD would be interested in publishing the results in CotI front page.

 

[apoc527]

Excellent, this is the type of discussion I was hoping to start.

I'm familiar with the shortcomings of GURPS, both in terms of gameplay and design of vehicles/weapons (ie, it's physically painful to do both...) However, it does have the "realism" going for it, in that at least weapons are quite different in terms of their capabilities.

Now then, moving onto tjoneslo's post. I understand that reasoning, and I think it's good. If nothing else, it makes T20 easy to run, as you don't have to worry about fistfuls of dice nor require a calculator to play (the much maligned 6dx30 mechanic). However, there must be something we can do to make handguns ever so slightly worse than rifles.

Let's see- obviously we have superior range and accuracy on handguns. Generally speaking rifles also have superior ammo capacity and automatic fire capability. Damage is the only sticking point for me, but I can't see a way around it without assinging ridiculously high die codes to certain weapon classes. I think T20 might be the first game to actually *use* the d20 as a damage die!

To enlighten you on Spycraft, armor has two separate components- its Defense Bonus and it's Damage Reduction. The Defense Bonus is added (or substracted...heavy armor actually makes you easier to hit, but also has a much larger DR), and DR just subtracts directly from rolled damage. Spycraft also uses the Vitality/Wounds system of Star Wars, but unlike Star Wars, armor DR also affects Vitality damage. Basically, a bullet proof vest is never going to completely stop a bullet (abstract damage and all that, plus it has a DR of 2 or something).

I actually like the T20 rules for armor more, simply because it allows for good autofire rules (something that is important, but hard to accomplish). The bad part is that T20 weapons also tend to be a lot more random. If you have a rifle doing a d12 damage, there is an equal chance of rolling a 1 or a 12. There's no normal distribution at all. (Of course, that fits d20 pretty well, since 1d20 also doesn't have a normal distribution).

In the end, I'll have to play with it to see how well it works.

Before I go to bed, I do have one suggestion. Why not make rifles have a 19-20 critical range? This would reflect their deadly nature quite well, without messing with the armor mechanics much. Spycraft also does this, and it works well, because there's a way that a Sniper can get a crit range of 10-20 and then use his special ability to "Take 10" on attack rolls...that's right...automatic threat every time.

Anyway, that's one suggestion. Thanks!

 

[Traveller #1]

That said, at some point it may be interesting to try and create a conversion for G3G and GURPS to T20. I'm sure MJD would be interested in publishing the results in CotI front page.

Oh yes! This is good. Just the thing was talking about. Please, please please...

I also think it would be a good idea to give rifles a greater threat range, that way they are more deadly than handguns, without breaking the damage system of T20. How does T20 handle hollow points, explosive bullets and armor piercing etc.?
A greater threat range? Or x3 (for hollow) and maybe x4 (exploding)?
Thomas

 

[tjoneslo]

If we can take a minute to use the GURPS sytems "Realism" as a baseline, as a generic average from several RL weapons converted to GURPS:

Pistol: 2d, 150yd 1/2D
SMG: 3d, 150yd 1/2D
Carbine: 4d, 400yd 1/2D
Rifle: 5d, 650yd 1/2D

Damage is d6, and 1/2D range is a relative accuracy number. Damage is vs. 10 hp. Pistols will take 2 shots to put down a average person, SMG and Carbines take one shot (with autofire to ensure the hit), and Rifles can still kill in two shots through a reasonable set of body armor (DR10).

Converting this back to T20 (Ignoring the PHB), people have 10 Lifeblood, so two pistol shots should be a d8 or d10. The SMG/Carbines want to be d20, and the rifles want to be a 2d20 (vs a AR4 flack jacket, average is 7.5 damage). Everything needs to be scaled up from here.

As you pointed out, using one die for damage makes the rolls very random, and it may be better to use more dice to get a bell curve for damage. Wounding mechanics is one of those eternal flamewar topics. But I see nothing wrong with using 4d4 (or 3d6) for carbine or SMG, as the average will be the same. The autofire adds little damage, and if the target has any armor, the weapon will do little damage. Perhaps this is a smaller caliber SMG rather than the much larger SMG in the T20 book?
I'd ignore critical hits as a solution to this problem, they are too rare to make a noticable difference in the outcome of most combats.
Just so you know: AP round are rated for +AP, which ignores layers of armor but don't cause more damage: firing a +2AP round at a AR4 armor is treated as AR2. If you have more AP than armor, too bad no additional effect.
HE/hollopoints rounds do +1 die of damage.
Right now I'm up to my eyeballs in other gearheading stuff, so it would be several months before I get back around to it. Other volunteers?

 

[Traveller #1]

Converting this back to T20 (Ignoring the PHB), people have 10 Lifeblood, so two pistol shots should be a d8 or d10. The SMG/Carbines want to be d20, and the rifles want to be a 2d20 (vs a AR4 flack jacket, average is 7.5 damage). Everything needs to be scaled up from here.

I like the reasoning and this is the sort of conversions/comparisons I am looking for. One question: If the SMG wants to be d20 and the rifle wants to be 2d20, then why are they d12 in T20? Because of added auto-fire damage or because of a slightly less lethal approach to projectile weapons?

 

[tjoneslo]

Originally posted by Traveller #1:
I like the reasoning and this is the sort of conversions/comparisons I am looking for. One question: If the SMG wants to be d20 and the rifle wants to be 2d20, then why are they d12 in T20? Because of added auto-fire damage or because of a slightly less lethal approach to projectile weapons?

There are a number of reasons, not all of them consiously discussed, why the weapon damages are set where they are.

The biggest reason would be trying to balance "Fun" with "Realism". It's realistic the rifle can kill in a single shot, even through armor. But D20 players with characters at 8th to 12th level expect combats to last 5 to 10 rounds. When they last half as long, it gets ranked as "Deadly". When the bad guy can kill your character in a single shot through heavy armor and your friends can't retailiate, well that's just no fun.

D20 isn't a realistic system, and trying to impose realism on it would make many D20 player very unhappy.

Traveller is both hard science realistic and space opera heroic, which are not always complimentary. Hunter and the T20 design team decided that where a choice is to be made, T20 would follow the D20 system and choose space opera heroic.

In this case, weapon damages get reduced so armored characters can survive a two or three rounds of combat before being killed. So combat is deadly without be no fun.

If you want gun combat to be more realistic, leave the weapon damages alone, but change the to-hit die from a d20 to a d10. If you can't hit someone, rolling a 10 allows a re-roll, adding 10 to the result (only once). No critical allowed. This creates a situation where untrained people are basically hitting randomly, and well trained people are really deadly with firearms.

 

[Nearside]

I'm not a fan of using d20's (or anything above a d10 really) for weapon damage, as the spread of damage is too wide.

Better is a d6 (or d8) plus a set amount, like d6+6, or 2d4+10 or something like that.

Just my 2 credits.

 

[Traveller #1]

I think I'll leave weapon damage as set by T20. You're right, is no fun being smoked by some goon when you're 12th lvl.
I was just curious about the rationale. And I can always fiddle the numbers when I've seen how combat plays with heavy armor and higher lvl characters.
Thanks for your time

Thomas

 

[justacaveman]

T20 combat is quite deadly to characters.

For example: The Gauss rifle does 2d12 damage, has no recoil, and is capable of burst fire. If you fire a 4-round burst you get an additional 2d12 damage. If you hit an unarmored character with the burst you will usually do about 25 points of damage to Stamina and Lifeblood. If the character has a Constitution of 15 or less they are dead. An armored character will of course fare much better. Few people in real life wear body armor on a regular basis, and I doubt that will change much. If you roll a Critical hit with that burst, Body Armor is irrelavent and the character will take 6d12 damage (about 38 points on average)to Stamina and Lifeblood and will be quite dead. In addition, there are feats such as Improved Critical that can increase the chance of a critical hit. I'd say that is deadly enough for me. I do want "my" characters to survive more than one or two adventures.

 

[tjoneslo]

What I think would be more interesting would be knowing what tweeks are required for making the modern weapons from Spycraft or D20 Modern or any of the many modern weapons guides coming out work with T20.

The idea was to make T20 work seamlessly with all D20 games. Here is a major point of capatibility, how well does T20 do?

 

[Traveller #1]

What I think would be more interesting would be knowing what tweeks are required for making the modern weapons from Spycraft or D20 Modern or any of the many modern weapons guides coming out work with T20.

The idea was to make T20 work seamlessly with all D20 games. Here is a major point of capatibility, how well does T20 do?

Yes, this is very interesting point. From the d20 Modern boards, I can tell that a .50 cal. machinegun deals 2d12 damage, a M72 LAW does 10d6 damage (a TOW II is guessed as 20d6) and a M1A2 Abrams Tank has hardness 20 and 64 hp.
How does this compare with T20? Will a whole set of conversion guidelines be necessary?

 

[justacaveman]

From what I can tell, D20 Modern won't have a Stamina/Lifeblood system or it's equivalent, so weapon damages may not tranlate very well.

The stated reason was so that the system will allow easy inclusion of the standard magic rules.

 

[tjoneslo]

The Traveller Light Machine Gun does 1D12. Fragmentation Grenades do 6d6 damage.

So far I don't see a huge disconnect in damage, or other stats. I suspect the simple conversion process will be to use them as written, and the weapons are more or less effective just like RL weapons.

I've heard rumor that one of the D20 modern arms books will have stats for both HP and WP/VP systems, so that may be an interesting starting point for any indepth conversion.

I suggest we have this converstaion again in November after we both have the T20 and D20 Modern rules, plus one or two of the D20 Modern arms books. We can do a real point for point comparison and run the numbers and come up with a final conversion. My guess is the conversion won't be complex (convert Weight, range to metric, cost to Cr, add TL, perhaps adjust ROF and damage slightly), unless you want to add a level of Realism to D20 which isn't there right now.

 

[justacaveman]

I'd say your probably correct about the conversion from D20 modern.
The standard 3E D&D weapons would seem to convert ok for adventures on primitive planets .
There is a Fantasy/Future D20 game called Dragonstar. While a lot of the equipment can convert ok, many of the weapons are a bit too space opera. Some of the Skills and Feats could be useful also. A conversion of the Soulmech race for Traveller would be possible by using technology instead of magic for the creation of the neural net brain.
I'm getting impatient waiting for my copy of T20 though.

 

[apoc527]

That sounds like a good idea, actually. The sticking point is that I believe d20 Modern uses a different ARMOR system than either Spycraft or T20 (which also differ). I was thinking about it last night, and I'm starting to wonder if maybe some of the d20 games aren't getting a little too "abstraction happy." What I mean by this is that I'm worried that soon there will be NO connection to real life. THis is fine for fantasy, simply because it's fantasy. I'm not really sure how easy it is to swing a sword and kill someone, but I am fairly certain about the effect a gun applied properly will have.

THis post might be long, and might need to be edited to add on later, as I don't have a lot of time right now, but I'll start with this-

So far, we have the following sets of armor rules over a variety of d20 products (T20, Spycraft, and d20 Modern, which uses Armor rules identical to D&D).

1. Spycraft- Armor has a Defense bonus/penalty and a DR. The Defense bonus can be used *instead* of a Class-granted Defense bonus, but is sometimes a negative number. The logic here is pretty clear: a heavy armor like a doorgunner's vest is actually going to make you *easier* to hit, but a lot harder to actually damage. The DR's range from 1-10+, with many armor having optional "inserts" than be added for extra weight, but increased DR. This system has the least amount of abstraction, but does use rather cinematic VP/WP mechanics (ie, unlike T20, no damage is taken to Wounds until all Vitality is gone or you take a critical hit (the other primary difference between Spycraft and T20- guns have variable crit ranges, but damage is not multiplied in anyway, nor is armor bypassed, the only thing a Critical hit earns you is a bypassing of Vitality in the case of major villans, or an instant incapacitation, in the case of a minor villian/thug/goon/minion.)

2. D20 Modern- from what I know, armor in D20 modern is much like armor in D&D. It has an Armor Bonus that adds to AC making you harder to hit. We will have to wait for the final rulebook to make any more comparisons, because I'm not even sure if it uses a straight HP system or the VP/WP one seen in Star Wars/Spycraft.

(Note- obviously, everyone here should understand the notes about T20, I'm just writing them out for my own edification).

3. T20- A unique system, and one that I am worried is suffering from over-abstraction. Right now, we've got "Stamina" which is reduced by every hit, irregardless of personal armor, and "Lifeblood" which is something like Wound Points, but is damaged along with Stamina if the person is unarmored. This is where I get confused. Why have Stamina? In the VP/WP system, Wound damage is *never* taken (excepting Critical hits, at least in Spycraft) until all Vitality is gone. This is supposed to represent the cinematic ability of the action hero to avoid physical harm by dodging bullets, diving behind cover, moving around in a hail of gunfire and not actually getting hit, etc. It's an abstraction, but it's one that I think works pretty well. In T20, I'm not quite sure what Stamina is used for. After all, a "hit" (meaning that an attacker has rolled equal to or better than someone's AC/Defense/whatever it's called now), is always an actual hit, because it causes "Lifeblood" damage right away. In other words, T20 is already more "realistic" because PC's can't dodge bullets (unless they happen to be missed due to a Dodge bonus to AC, but then there hasn't really been a hit in the first place). Since Lifeblood is equal to a character's CON score, chances are they will be cooked pretty quick, even if weapons only do a 1d6 (but in reality, most of them do a d10 or d12). However, then you add in armor and that strange quality known as "Stamina." Armor does TWO things in this game- it both makes you harder to hit (I guess this represents bullets or lasers "bouncing off" the armor, kind of like Passive Defense in GURPS. I wonder though, I don't think a Plasma gun is going to care about your piddly armor...but as far as I know, armor will still make you harder to hit with that plasma cannon...odd, isn't it?) and it reduces your Lifeblood damage every hit.

Wow, I've really managed to confuse myself. Can someone come along and try to explain to me why T20 uses both Lifeblood and Stamina, and one is saved by armor, and the other isn't? If Stamina *doesn't* represent the ability of an action hero to avoid serious injury (since we know they aren't doing that, as they will take Lifeblood damage just the same), then what DOES it represent? If it's supposed to represent actual Stamina, then it really shouldn't mirror the Hit Points of other d20 games, because someone's Stamina is only going to up with an increase in Con or possibly through an Endurance type feat or skill.

Ok, I'm really sorry that I started rambling like that, but that's what happens after playing Halo until 2:00 AM then being unable to fall asleep for a half hour or so. Maybe I've sparked some thoughts or instilled some confusion in someone else, in which case my job is well done.

edit: It's times like these when the much more cumbersome GURPS sytem shows it's relative simplicity. A skill check is made to see if I'm capable of hitting a target at that range, of that size, and moving at this speed. If I can do it, then you make a Defense roll to see if *you* are capable of dodging my aim or getting an angled piece of armor in the way to deflect the shot. If you can't do that, then we just use a real-world data inspired weapon penetration vs armor DR (that actually can be translated into real world statistics), and see if my shot is capable of piercing your armor and causing you harm. There is NO real abstraction here (except when you get to the causing harm part...games can never hope to capture real life when it comes to wounding a living creature.) Anyway, enough thoughts for now. It's starting to hurt.