Teeny problem with T20 damage dice vs AR: The LAG

[Klaus]

Something that impressed me straight away with T20 was the way damage was calculated. The relationship between AC, AR, Lifeblood, Stamina and damage dice was a simple solution to a problem I'd always had with the Ad&D, later D20 rules. The T20 system elegantly found a way to differentiate between lethal and non-lethal, and made armour both something that makes you harder to hit as well as reducing the damge done.

It works well with virtually everything. Except the LAG (and the Hvy ACR from the Guidebook playtest).

If you compare an LAG to an assault rifle against any kind of armour the assault rifle comes off just as good if not better. As an LAG is basically an anti-vehicle weapon this don't seem right.

Against JACK(AR2), an AR(1D12) does 1D12-2, or -1 to 10, with a 16.7% chance of doing no damge.
An LAG(2D10) does 1D10-1, or 0-9, with a 10% chance of no damge.
So against light armour there's very little between them. The LAG has a longer range but the AR carries more ammo and can fire bursts.

Against vehicles, the primary target of an LAG, it gets a bit worse.
The AR on the vehicle scale (or vs AR5) does 1D12-5, or -4 to 7, with a 41% of doing no damage.
The LAG does 1D10-4 (as stated on the Vehicle Weapons chart in the THB), or -3 to 6, with a 40% chance of doing no damage.

Only against unarmoured opponents is the LAG superior.

How to solve this? One way would be to make the LAG a vehicle scale weapon, but this would mean it would do 7D10 against the unarmoured. The damge dice could be made 1D20, but this seems to go against the general design philosophy. The best way I can think of is giving it a built in Armour Piercing rating of 4 or 5. Then it would slice through flak vests and do 1D10 damage or so to vehicles and better armour. What does anyone else think?

However, this wouldn't work with the heavy ACR (2D8). Maybe have to change that to 1D12+5?

What do you think?

 

[veltyen]

Hmmm. Isn't it the best d10 of 2d10 minus 1?
This is slightly better then the d12 -2.
Only slightly though.

Better of 2d10 averages 7.15
Average of d12 is 6.5
6.5 - 2 =4.5 average
7.15 -1 =6.15 average

Of course this becomes moot when you fire a 10 round burst from the assault rifle as 2 best d12 from 4d12 is much better then d10(2d10) -1.

 

[BetterThanLife]

If you are comparing the LAG to the ATR, remember the ATR (Anti-Tank Rifle of early WWII fame) was never very effective against vehicles, especially against armored vehicles. However the LAG is a TL8 weapon where the ATR would be a late TL5 early TL6 weapon.

Instead of changing the damage dice I recommend the Sabot round of the LAG having an armor piercing modifier of +2 to +6, (Base being +2, purchase up to +6 instead of the max of +4, (half TL) because of the +2 base.) instead of changing the damage values. That would clean up the lack of Armor penetration for the LAG nicely without making it everyone's weapon of choice.

Remember the damage in CT, the Assault Rifle was 3D, the ACR was 3-4D, the LAG was 4D and the Gauss Rifle was 4D. (Since this was typically going against a 2D stat, all of them were likely to incapacitate you with one hit.) But making the LAG much better than a Gauss Rifle or even an ACR would lose the flavour of the CT LAG. It also keeps it about right in personal combat from a CT weapon vs. armor sense.