Yet another T20 combat question

[shadowdragon]

In d20, attacks against objects automatically have the damage done reduced by 1/2. Is this still the case in T20? If so, this means all ship and vehicle combat has the damage reduced as well as they are objects, just very large ones at that. Thoughts?

This also means a personal weapon cannot damage any vehicle, which is patently untrue unless armor comes into play. I've seen bullets rip right through a pickup truck from end to end, through the tailgate, front of bed, rear of cab, seat, and the firewall, and still pack enough punch to break parts off the engine block. Personal weapons, reduced by 5 dice, then cut in half, would have even the biggest handguns bouncing off of a yugo. Now i do realize that there is less chance of damaging a vital component in a vehicle rather than a person, but this is a little much.

My thought on this would be any non-combat or non-construction vehicle, i.e. any common personal vehicle like an air-raft, ground car etc.. does not enjoy the automatic 5 dice reduction, and furthermore, has a high likelihood of penetrating the passenger compartment.

 

[Rover]

Hi Shadowdragon
If you look on page 153 you will see that equipment takes SI damage. More information is given on page 158. It does not mention that damage is halved.

Now combat on a personal scale is fairly well explained, combat on vehicle and starship scale is a little more murky.

Things to remember

Round length
Personal scale 6 seconds
Vehicle scale 1 minute
Starship scale 20 minutes

Damage modifier
Personal to vehicle –5D
Personal to starship –10D

Vehicle to personal +5D
Vehicle to Starship –5D

Starship to personal +10D
Starship to Vehicle +5D

Now at first glance it may seem that a personal weapon cannot harm a vehicle, but that is not the case, as I will explain.

First though attacking an object:
Spaceman Spiff is attempting to shoot a padlock off. Now the book doesn’t give the SI or AR rating of a padlock. (Something’s you have to fudge)

Padlock SI 8 AR 3
Spiff shoots once with the Autopistol and rolls 7 damage. (7-3ar=4) The lock takes 4 SI damage. Next shot and Spiff rolls a 2 damage. (2-3AR=-1) lock takes not harmed. On his third shot Spiff rolls an 8 (8-3AR=5) the lock now takes 5 SI points for a total of 9. Since that exceeds the SI rating of lock it is now destroyed. Even if it is not destroyed there is a 5% chance per point (cumulative) the object will malfunction.


Attacking a vehicle.
According to the vehicle description on page 289 a small cargo truck has 60 SI points and an AR of 0
Some weapons are designed for attacking vehicles, like a RAM grenade launcher loaded with HEAP rounds. (considered to have +5Armour penetration)

I suspect that you are looking at personal weapons vs. vehicle. Look on Page 159, Action in basic combat states that when a character is attacking person to vehicle scale he adds 10 rounds, or 10 times the burst of rounds. This action takes 1 minute.

Using his trusty Gauss rifle to shoot up the pickup truck spiff switches to full auto and proceeds to rock and roll. He is considered to be firing a 100 round burst (Normal 10 round Burst x 10 is 100) This also means he uses 2 ½ magazines or ammo.

Base damage of a gauss rifle is 2D12. 100rnd burst adds 10D damage (page 151) Total of 12D12.
Reduce 5 dice for the difference in scale and spiff does 7D12. Average roll is 6.5 or 45.5. If he rolls lucky the pickup is totally destroyed beyond repair. If not in the first round the, vehicle will certainly be destroyed in the next. (If spiff has a BAB of 6 or more he can make a second attack in the vehicle round provided he has enough ammo.)

Now a Gauss rifle is certainly the most effective means of attacking a pickup truck, lesser weapons can have an effect. Lesser weapons can still have an effect. A SMG shoots 40 rounds in a vehicle round giving a net of 1D10 damage. It would take a little longer to get to destroy the pickup, but it is doable.

But you don’t have to destroy the Pickup to render it useless.
On page 165 it talks about critical hits. Basically you ignore any AR, apply the damage to the chassis and double the damage and do an internal hit as on page 164. A hit on this table can effectively neutralize the vehicle or even an occupant. (Depending on how you play only the base is doubled i.e. the gauss rifle above would do 14D12-5D+9D12.)

Attacking a vehicle occupant, say the driver, is treated as a called shot see page 154.

Lastly, although it does not say so directly in the rules, I would permit attacking any of the vehicle systems listed in the chart on 164 as a called shot.

I hope that helps.

Jim

 

[shadowdragon]

Right, that all makes sense when you add AR and SI to the mix. What made me wonder, was that page 144 states all of the standard d20 rules for combat apply unless modified. That tells me objects, from padlocks to starships, automatically take 1/2 damage from attacks along with damage dice reduction. Granted, the example on page 149 between two grav tanks does not do this, so maybe only melee weapons are reduced by half when attacking objects?

My concern here is that with unarmored vehicles, mainly civilian vehicles, materials are used that are light and shaped into forms to enhance strength. Sheetmetal for body panels is very thin, so the cargo area, passenger compartment, engine compartment, and fuel tank are very vulnerable to weapon fire. Any windows will also be vulnerable as the stronger materials are reserved for hardened vehicles. And again we fall into a grey area. one spot says those rules apply, but no examples use them. I did forget about the scaling of time, but i would be inclined to reduce the time for vehicles and leave the pc time frame alone.

thank you rover.

 

[Rover]

I was unsure that the half damage rule would apply as damaging an object is not combat per say, but that is where the art of being a referee comes in. An example from another D20 game I read recently on this topic was that trying to damage a steel cable with a wooden club. No matter how hard and long the character beats cable with the club, the cable will never break. Some things are possible and some are not.

Remember just cus it is in the rulebook doesn't mean you have to use it. I gloss over a lot of rules when running a game to keep things moving. If you want to keep things on a personal scale I would suggest rather than deducting 5 dice, assign vehicles an AR rating of 5 (for metal skinned) and then use the above rules. That way, even an autopistol can take down your pickup truck in just a few rounds, or with just 1 shot if a critical is rolled.

R

 

[princelian]

My hat's off to you, Rover - your post explained the vehicle-personal combat scaling better than I've ever seen it and crystallized a few things for me that were fuzzy, if I may mix my metaphors a bit. The example of the 10 rounds of 10-round-burst gauss rifle fire adding up to 100-round burst is excellent.

(I had assumed such high bursts applied to things like VRF Gauss Guns, and not to personal weapons...)

Does that mean that a laser rifle (3d10) used in vehicular scale can be considered a 10-round burst (+3d) in that scale? (That's still only 1d10 against its armor, but it's something.)

 

[Rover]

Originally posted by princelian:
My hat's off to you, Rover - your post explained the vehicle-personal combat scaling better than I've ever seen it and crystallized a few things for me that were fuzzy, if I may mix my metaphors a bit. The example of the 10 rounds of 10-round-burst gauss rifle fire adding up to 100-round burst is excellent.

(I had assumed such high bursts applied to things like VRF Gauss Guns, and not to personal weapons...)

Does that mean that a laser rifle (3d10) used in vehicular scale can be considered a 10-round burst (+3d) in that scale? (That's still only 1d10 against its armor, but it's something.)

Thanks for the kudos.

Yes a Laser Rifle would have the effect of a 10 Rnd burst, but keep in mind that it also used 10 charges out battery pack. And this is all spread out over a minute cbt rnd.

R

 

[BetterThanLife]

An additional point. The 5 dice reduction for vehicle class is not armor so is not ignored on a critical hit.

I would prefer to have it as 10 individual bursts because the reason for the damage increase is a concentrated burst, in fact I have just been running it on the personnel scale. You can't fire a concentrated burst of that size from a handheld weapon. But the rules do call it that way. So firing an FGMP-15 at a Tank is a 10 round burst? And a PGMP-12 is a 5 round burst? That definitely doesn't feel right.

How would a 1000 round burst work?

 

[Rover]

Originally posted by BetterThanLife:
An additional point. The 5 dice reduction for vehicle class is not armor so is not ignored on a critical hit.

I would prefer to have it as 10 individual bursts because the reason for the damage increase is a concentrated burst, in fact I have just been running it on the personnel scale. You can't fire a concentrated burst of that size from a handheld weapon. But the rules do call it that way. So firing an FGMP-15 at a Tank is a 10 round burst? And a PGMP-12 is a 5 round burst? That definitely doesn't feel right.

How would a 1000 round burst work?

You are correct about the damage reduction. That is an important distinction.

As far as resolving issues on a personal scale, hey it's your game and you can run it how you wish, but if you do, I would give vehicles an AR rating above what is listed for it in the rulebook. They are a little tougher than us meatbags after all. I run my game a little differently from the rules, I am just trying to interpret them as written here.

I think you are misconstruing the burst rules as they apply to vehicles. It is not really a burst, but is supposed to represent the sum total of damage accumulated over a minute. In the gauss rifle example I gave earlier it is not a 100 round burst, but is really 10 individual 10 round bursts. The character would have to reload twice BTW.

As for PGMP’s and FGMP’s, strictly speaking the rules would apply as well. And they would benefit as if they did a 10 round burst. +3D. Maybe the rule brakes down on this level, but think of it this way, vehicles engaged in combat are likely not parked across the street from one another. They are moving, swerving, breaking, and trying to evade one another.

Also keep on mind that the example above uses a vehicle with an AR of 0. Things change if using the PGMP14 vs. an armored vehicle. Look at an AFV with an AR of 6. On a personal scale the attack would yield 8d12-5D for scale and –6d for AR. Meaning 1D8-3 or an average of 2.5 SI points per attach. But since the rules are written to take scaled combat into account you would either have to compensate the vehicle be either bumping up its AR (as I recommend) or adding SI points. If you add 5 to the AR you end up with a net result of 8D12 –16D or 1d8-8. That means no damage unless you roll a critical. Unlike us meatbags vehicles have no lifeblood to worry about. If you use the scaled combat rules as written the AFV would take 11D8-11D or 1D8-1 or an average of 3.5. 3.5 is not much, but it is better than nothing. But considering the AFV’s 75 SI points. It won’t matter much either way.

As for a 1000 round burst I would say +15D. Given that the progression is not linear, and the law of diminishing returns that seams reasonable. I just don’t want to be on the relieving end.

R

 

[BetterThanLife]

I think you misunderstood. I meant on a personal time frame not the vehicular time frame. I am not advocating reducing the armor protection of the vehicles I am in favor of enhancing it. And the Treat it as a big burst is a bad fudge to use the vehicle timeframe. (What happens if you shoot at a starship? A 2000 round burst?

But if you give it the +3 dice for the full turn burst it is doing 1D8 against that vehicle. Or looking at the FGMP15, 12D20 -5 dice for size, Leaving 7 Dice, -6 dice for armor and 1D20-9 (the highest die) against the meanest tank on the block. Yet the Tank is moving and not presenting a stationary target for the gunner to take a concentrated 10 shots like that. Firing 10x10 round bursts at an armored vehicle that is moving isn't the same as firing a concentrated high rate of fire, 100 round burst.

Yet that Gauss Rifle is now doing damage (Well a reasonable chance of damage.), 1D12-8 again using the high die out of that stack.) against a real tank that is 5 tech levels above the rifle. That is even more effective than firing 10 RAM HEAP grenades at the tank (1D6-8) and the HEAP grenade is anti-armor!

As far as I am concerned that is a problem. IRL, the biggest baddest WWII machinegun is going to, at best, chip the paint or star a piece of periscope glass on an M1 tank and that is only 2-2.5 tech levels different. (And certainly isn't something you fire while walking.) At least a WWII Bazooka has a chance to damage a roadwheel or make the M-1 throw a track.

 

[shadowdragon]

I am less concerned with armored vehicles than civilian. Even an AR of 1 is going to stop most light weapons from penetrating. Virtually all weapons available to civilians will not do more than dent an armored vehicle. However the grav speeder that Dr. Evil is escaping in has no armor, so what will that .357 magnum do to the grav modules? Will it punch thru the body to hit someone in the passenger seat? Not with an automatic 5 die reduction in damge it wont, and that is what i don't agree with, and what i am looking for ideas on.

Thanks for all the other input too, it will help when i get to that point.

 

[BetterThanLife]

A vehicle, by its very nature has more non-essential space, structural members, etc. than a person. A typical handgun, contrary to the movies, is unlikely to do real damage to a car. Cosmetic damage? Sure. Actual structural damage? Unlikely.

As cars advance it is likely that the materials will be both stronger and lighter. Therefore increase resistance bullets as a side effect. For example the body panels on the Ferrari F40 were designed to be lighter weight than previous cars, they were designed for maximum performance and still maintain a margin of safety in a crash. The fact that they will stop light bullets better than conventional steel panels was a side effect. (Kevlar body panels.)

Is the 5 die reduction perfect? No, but it does make for a good generalization. If a car can't survive a handful of light bullets hitting it it certainly won't survive an accident.

 

[shadowdragon]

Having been in the position of shooting at cars i can say:
1- true, the STRUCTURE of the VEHICLE will likely take little to no essential damage from light hand weapons (for at least 500 rounds but most of that is still cosmetic). you will not be shooting the wheel off the car by shooting the tie-rod with a 9mm handgun, even a 10mm (sorry fans of "Mr. & Mrs. Smith). but i CAN put a hole in the engine block. lengthwise, from the far end of the car. ive DONE it. (yes i know not all vehicles are the same) see my post about that above.

2- CONTENTS of the vehicle are another matter. i am not talking about a ferrari with kevlar body panels. i am talking about standard production run, for the average, joe cars.

my question of the game mechanic is it gives an attribute to all vehicles that IMHO makes no sense, even within the generalizations of A GAME. so what i was looking for was ideas to alleviate such silliness while preserving game balance. any ideas?