Hit System V1, V2 and V0

[whulorigan]

Has anyone actually tried running a test-combat situation, one using the 1st theory, and then a 2nd using the other, and seeing how the combat results turn out?

Set up a combat with two sides, each of which have some individuals with no armor, some with light (ballistic cloth) armor, and some with Combat/Battledress, and a variety of weapons from light slug-throwers thru heavy plasma weapons. Run the combat using each system and see what happens.

If one of the two gives ludicrous results, you can fairly well eliminate that one as viable possibility.

 

[arentol]

Has anyone actually tried running a test-combat situation, one using the 1st theory, and then a 2nd using the other, and seeing how the combat results turn out?

Set up a combat with two sides, each of which have some individuals with no armor, some with light (ballistic cloth) armor, and some with Combat/Battledress, and a variety of weapons from light slug-throwers thru heavy plasma weapons. Run the combat using each system and see what happens.

If one of the two gives ludicrous results, you can fairly well eliminate that one as viable possibility.

The 2nd theory (Lichekings) jives entirely with the rules as written, right up to the point where the actual affect of damage is included only under the "Optional" V0 rules. Then it all falls apart.....

Player A has a gun that does Bullet-4 and Player B (97A6A8) has Armor-8. Player A fires at B and hits him. He rolls 4D for damage and gets a total of 16. That destroys B's armor for this encounter and passes 8 hits on to B.
If we follow the rule on page 222 then 8 hits are applied to B. We roll for location and get 7 = Torso. We go to the table below and determine B has taken Total Hits/2 = Severity 4 injury to his torso. Now what? The rules don't SAY what to do next. We could turn to page 183 and look at the Injury column ("Wound" in the book, but "Injury" now as per Errata). But that actually doesn't tell us any more than -4 = "4D Heavy", and technically we are just guessing at that because nowhere does it actually SAY that a severity 4 = 4D Heavy. Also on page 183 is a Severity chart, but that chart has -4 = Critical 4D, but it has the same general issues as the Injury chart has. Then there is page 182 which also has a "Severity" chart, and this chart actually has a 4 on it, which equates to Very Severe, which doesn't exist on the Injury chart. Fortunately we can rule this last one out though, as it actually is the same chart as on page 47, implying it is meant primarily for Risk, not injury.
The way I think it works is that you write down on the character record Severity4-Torso (needed for healing of this wound with medic rules post-encounter). Then skip to page 225, which says "Hits to Characteristics are applied randomly and in Dice amounts." Okay, we can do that. We have a Severity 4 injury, so we assume that means 4D. The chart on page 225 says HITS apply to C1, C2, and C3. So we roll dice... 1-2 = C1, 3-4 = C2, 5-6 = C3. We roll 4 dice total and get 1, 3, 4, and 5. So 1D to C1, 2D to C2, and 1D to C3. We roll the dice and get 1, 2, 6, and 3 respectively. B's characteristics are temporarily reduced from 97A6A8 to 8076A8.
Wow. This actually isn't too bad. The process is actually covered in the rules, a little under-documented, but it is all there. YEAH!!!!
But wait.... What happens next? B now has one characteristic at 0. What is the actual EFFECT of this injury on the character? It is stated Under V0 he would be unconscious, but because V0 is optional we aren't using it. So what happens? Detailed search of the book and.... No other rule covers what happens as a result of a characteristic being reduced to 0, so nothing happens.

So lets continue our scenario.... Player B starts to run away to his ship, which isn't too far away. Player A fires again and hits B. Player A rolls 14 for the injury, and with no armor player B takes a severity 7 injury to the torso. The 7 hits are spread over his 3 characteristics and do so much damage he is now at 0006A8. So now what?
Well, there are no task checks to fail in this game for walking or even running on flat ground. So even though B's physical stats are all 0's he just keeps on running. Soon he is on his ship and under the care of the ships doctor. But wait! The "Doctor" is a hack and makes both wounds worse. Over and over and over he does this. Soon B has a Wound 12 and Wound 15 on his Torso. But it's okay, because there are no rules for dying without V0. He just keeps on going, wandering around the ship, unable to do anything useful and now beyond the reasonable care of any doctor in the galaxy, but still able to move around and interact with people. WTF?

I do have an easy Errata style fix though. Move the last three paragraphs from HIT SYSTEM V0 on page 215 to the top of the page so they fall under the Detailed Effects section. Also add "-V1" to the "NPC Effects" section title, and "-V2" to the "Detailed Effects" section title. This should fix the combat system, though technically there should be a tad more added to Detailed Effects to ensure the transition from Hits to Severity to applying damage to characteristics is clear.

 

[Supplement Four]

Sorry man but I think you are not correct.

I'm willing to hear you out.

How do you think wound severity is used in the game?

 

[Licheking]

The rules don't SAY what to do next. We could turn to page 183 and look at the Injury column ("Wound" in the book, but "Injury" now as per Errata). But that actually doesn't tell us any more than -4 = "4D Heavy"

A 4 Severity injury is 4 Dice applied to the characters C1, C2, or C3 as is mentioned in the BTSD section when Eneri took a light (1D) wound. I agree its not spelled out in big glowing letters and i would like to see more examples but that is my interpretation of the wounding rules and combat mechanics.

I would like to say that i have been running combat this way for a few weeks now and it is working fine very similar to the old MT combat system. The damage effects from weapons being the penetration part and the severity bit the damage part. In MT most weapons did 3 damage (the exceptions being plasma/fusion and explosive weapons) with the writer saying that all the rest of the damage is lost through blow through, but then you could modify this through the degree of success on your hit roll versus the level of the armour getting results of 1 hit up to 24 damage if you hit by more than 8. So Severity 6 becomes the blow through point with all damage over this being lost (or in my games possible going on to hit something/one else).

This also means that you don't have to try and remember what injury(s) people got during the fight for the medic to heal later, since its done right there and then, and the medic and can go straight to trying to diagnose the injury and then treating it.

Sorry i'm at work so don't have a copy of my book with me for the page references.

 

[Licheking]

Your Bullet-1 weapons now can put an NPC down if you choose to use the mook rules (10+ = out).

And has a better chance of putting down an average person (777777), average roll on !D is 3.5 call it 4 this gives severity 2 and an average roll on 2D is 7, first hit in a combat is all applied to a randomly determined stat but since they are all 7 doesn't matter and the average Joe goes down.

 

[cuTTer]

Your Bullet-1 weapons now can put an NPC down if you choose to use the mook rules (10+ = out).

And has a better chance of putting down an average person (777777), average roll on !D is 3.5 call it 4 this gives severity 2 and an average roll on 2D is 7, first hit in a combat is all applied to a randomly determined stat but since they are all 7 doesn't matter and the average Joe goes down.

So, if I'm understanding you correctly (and I'm not sure that I am), I roll a bunch of dice for a wound, arrive at a number, halve that number on most cases, roll THAT number of dice, and apply those die rolls to C1, C2 or C3...

It's an intriguing idea, and quite a clever one, it addresses the 1D pistols, which is nice.

But I'd rather just roll 5D for a Gauss Rifle and apply the D directly to the Cs rather than add them all up, get a total which is regularly going to involve rolling another 8 or 9 D and THEN apply those die to the Cs.

Giving a measure of lethality to 1D pistols at the cost of making multiple D weapons almost twice as lethal as they currently are seems to high a price to pay, for me.

 

[Licheking]

Yes i can see what your getting at and as i said before its my interpretation of the rules at this time, but it does work and my players just see it as rolling for penetration and then for damage which we have done with MT before although there isn't the roll to penetrate as such but the concept is similar.

Giving a measure of lethality to 1D pistols at the cost of making multiple D weapons almost twice as lethal as they currently are seems to high a price to pay, for me.

It doesn't necessarily make multiple dice weapon more lethal in fact it caps them at the Severity 6 (12 damage) mark with the rest of the damage being lost. Bullet-5 rolls 17 on average to get severity you divide by 2 and get 8 the severity chart goes up to 6 so the last 2 severity gets lost. Now roll the 6 dice for damage to attributes or use the Mook rules and your done, next shot please.

6D against stats could potentially reduce them all to 0 killing someone outright and would certainly give above average characters pause for thought.

 

[cuTTer]

Yes i can see what your getting at and as i said before its my interpretation of the rules at this time, but it does work and my players just see it as rolling for penetration and then for damage which we have done with MT before although there isn't the roll to penetrate as such but the concept is similar.



It doesn't necessarily make multiple dice weapon more lethal in fact it caps them at the Severity 6 (12 damage) mark with the rest of the damage being lost. Bullet-5 rolls 17 on average to get severity you divide by 2 and get 8 the severity chart goes up to 6 so the last 2 severity gets lost. Now roll the 6 dice for damage to attributes or use the Mook rules and your done, next shot please.

6D against stats could potentially reduce them all to 0 killing someone outright and would certainly give above average characters pause for thought.

There's a chart? I must have missed that bit, can you through me a page reference when you get a chance?

 

[whulorigan]

Yes i can see what your getting at and as i said before its my interpretation of the rules at this time, but it does work and my players just see it as rolling for penetration and then for damage which we have done with MT before although there isn't the roll to penetrate as such but the concept is similar.

It is also quite similar to the T4 Rules (the immediate evolutionary predecessor of T5, from which it derived). In T4, each point of armor negated 1D of damage (reducing the entire die to "0" or "1" points depending on whether or not it was hard or soft/flexible armor. The rest of the dice went thru in whole-die amounts applied to each stat, but only to a maximum of 3D damage (the rest being discounted as over-penetration, except in certain particular contexts).

Having looked over several of the injury sections again last night, to be honest I believe S4's interpretation is the correct one for the rules as written (see the top of p. 220, center column, where there is a brief example of combat given in the Penetration/Injury Section):

AGAINST ARMOR
1D per Weapon Effect= Injury
If Injury exceeds Armor Value, reduce:

Armor Value
RadProof
SoundProof
Insulated
Sealed

all = Zero
​

Apply Injury Exceeding Armor to
Target. For example, Bullet-2 inflicts 2D
against Armor-6. Roll 2D (=7): the Armor
and listed Protections are Destroyed.
The Target receives 1 Hit.
​

Having said that, I believe I like your way of doing it better than the published rule, as it nicely separates penetration from injury and maintains a continuity with earlier versions (I liked MT; and I confess, though I have never actually played T4, I have always rather liked the T4 armor/penetration rule).

If I had a wishlist that could be fulfilled, one of the things I think T5 could ultimately benefit from would be something like some of the companion rules-compendia that were developed for D&D 3rd / D20 [MgT also had sidebars/text-boxes that did this in some of its margins as well]. A book containing OFFICIAL OPTIONAL RULES that have been vetted by the game designers and/or play-testers, with notes that explain what effect (both pro and con) that any given optional rule will have on the game mechanic. Perhaps it could be a simple PDF document available on the FFE website.

 

[Licheking]

That was my thinking too, i know that the combat system has been designed to be quick and gloss over a lot of the minutiae but i like a gritty detailed combat system like MT had.

What is 1 hit? It is one of things that unless you know the Traveller universe you wouldn't be sure off, 1 Hit could mean 1 die of damage or literally 1 point of damage I'm fairly sure that it is the latter but only because i have played MT.

 

[whulorigan]

That was my thinking too, i know that the combat system has been designed to be quick and gloss over a lot of the minutiae but i like a gritty detailed combat system like MT had.

That is how I lean as well.

What is 1 hit? It is one of things that unless you know the Traveller universe you wouldn't be sure off, 1 Hit could mean 1 die of damage or literally 1 point of damage I'm fairly sure that it is the latter but only because i have played MT.

I debated this for a while as well, but I am fairly sure the author intended 1 hit = 1 point. But as I said, I think the House Rule die-mechanic that we have been discussing may very well be a superior way to proceed.

I made an earlier post in which I suggested that two mock combats be carried out (one using each system), which Arentol already responded to. Have you discovered any serious problems or anomalies using the system that you are using?

 

[Licheking]

Not as yet, but so far my players have only come up against unarmoured opponents and they have been using some serious weaponry. The Characters have been armoured so haven't been hurt yet either but one of them is a doctor and did try to save the life of someone with a hopeless Severity injury (6D) had reduced 2 stats to 0 and the last one to 1. He managed it but when they got overwhelmed again by the natives they had to leave them behind only to see the saved patient being eaten by his cannibalistic friends.

The main issue with my way of doing combat will be that if both sides are armoured a combat may well take a while each side picking shots and hoping to reduce the armour enough to get a fatal shot through but on saying that, that was the way combat went in MT as well so i don't see it as a problem as yet.

I do use a armour degradation system based on a weapons effects so that makes combat a little more tense. In MT you could kill someone without ever penetrating their armour by sheer dint of good success on rolls to hit. I was never completely happy with that but lived with it now with the T5 system and my armour degradation you still stand tall with battledress but if your facing multiple opponents or are in the field for a long time then you start to have to worry about your armour and its condition. And now players start to think about field repairs to kit and how useful their engineer is for those same repairs bringing everyone back into the game as useful. Not just onbard ship but in the field as well.

 

[whulorigan]

On suggestion I might make (if it hasn't already been dealt with) is the "CUTS" damage type doing continuing damage:

If you are using your variant system, and someone receives a CUT attack that does 2D (Wound Severity = 2) that continues to bleed out, I would say that the bleeding would be 2 points per turn, NOT 2D per turn.

(And I might rule something similar for bullets).


Thoughts?

 

[Licheking]

Yeah that was my take on it too. I use a 6 second combat round so i was doing cut damage as 1 per round and all other types except Burn as an endurance roll on 3D with failure resulting in the loss of 1 more hit.

But I'm tempted to make Bloodloss a separate damage based of Endurance and recorded separately from the main damage from weapons and the environment. When Bloodloss = Endurance/Stamina/Vigor the character passes out. If they get to negative Endurance/Stamina/Vigor then they die.

Treatment for Bloodloss would by 1 Severity easier to treat and take half the time to heal. With transfusions replacing the Medics Skill in points per treatment.

 

[whulorigan]

Yeah that was my take on it too. I use a 6 second combat round so i was doing cut damage as 1 per round and all other types except Burn as an endurance roll on 3D with failure resulting in the loss of 1 more hit.

But I'm tempted to make Bloodloss a separate damage based of Endurance and recorded separately from the main damage from weapons and the environment. When Bloodloss = Endurance/Stamina/Vigor the character passes out. If they get to negative Endurance/Stamina/Vigor then they die.

Treatment for Bloodloss would by 1 Severity easier to treat and take half the time to heal. With transfusions replacing the Medics Skill in points per treatment.

That seems like a fairly good system. Do you use TOTAL C3/End (etc), or CURRENT C3/End (etc) [i.e. assuming C3/End damage has been sustained] for the unconsciousness level ?

 

[Licheking]

I would use unmodified End but i suppose thats up to how lethal you want to make it. Also i was thinking of making the roll based on the activity in the round +1D, so if the victim has Walked Speed 1 then they would roll on 2D and if they ran 3D, therefore if someone wanted to prolong their life they would stay still for as long as possible. I will have to try it out and see which works better.

 

[Licheking]

There's a chart? I must have missed that bit, can you through me a page reference when you get a chance?

The Severity chart is on page 232, centre bottom

 

[arentol]

A 4 Severity injury is 4 Dice applied to the characters C1, C2, or C3 as is mentioned in the BTSD section when Eneri took a light (1D) wound. I agree its not spelled out in big glowing letters and i would like to see more examples but that is my interpretation of the wounding rules and combat mechanics.

Personally I don't see how that section helps. It is based on the Referee rolling on the BTSD table, which doesn't have any method for equating to Hits or Severity X injuries. Also, Eneri takes a WOUND, not an injury, and other parts of the rules indicate there is a distinction between the two, though still others seem to imply the are the same thing... Confusing!!!

However, page 232 does help a lot.... That gives a transition from Hits/2 = Severity to Severity 4 = 4D.... I still am not happy with how this overall process is documented, but now at least believe that all the rules are in the book... But man, the documentation, explanation, and sequence of rules and charts is horrid.

 

[Licheking]

Look at the chart on page 232 it clearly states each severity level from 1-6 and how many dice are indicated as well. Those dice are then rolled and applied against C1, C2 and C3 as indicated by the chart you were mentioning.

And i agree its a little confusing and took me a couple of reads to get the interpretation that i have been using. I am also aware that the table is used for the healing/Medical tasks as mentioned in another section, i think the skills area, but i still like the way it works the way i have doing it.

 

[whulorigan]

Also, Eneri takes a WOUND, not an injury, and other parts of the rules indicate there is a distinction between the two, though still others seem to imply the are the same thing... Confusing!!!

IIRC, this is an official Errata; WOUND should be replaced by the word INJURY.