Planning a fallout game, need help

[Phantasm]

You may want to mess with the Blaster and Laser Design Pyramid article (by David Pulver) in Pyramid #3/37 for oddball weapons like the F1 Alien Blaster (a super-powerful holdout disintegrator), and the multitude of laser and plasma weapons in the setting.

For a "laser musket", going by the name alone (I never played anything after F2, and never finished that game), I can see a 2d to 8d laser rifle with a Medium or Large focal array (though if it's primitive and short-ranged you could justify a Small or Very Small focal array) and RoF 1, and with a power drain that needs to be reloaded after every shot when using TL9 energy cells. Damage would depend on how it rates compared to other weapons.




My biggest complaint is that we never saw a Gun Design article for custom slug-throwers.

[Juca]

Originally Posted by midnight77

cool! that helps. And mods change the stats. i'll have to use the wiki or reinstall f4 to do some more work. i'm not too up on how to stat stuff without it being overpowered.

I think that the first thing you have to do is to limit the focus of your project - do you want to have a "realistic" take on fallout? Do you want to full emulate the games? Or, maybe, something half-way?
If you're gonna use the standard GURPS rules on laser and plasma weapons, you will get a really deadly game, where those weapons simply rule over ballistic weapons.
What I can suggest you is to define some stats:
* What is the most damaging laser weapon that you want? And the least?
* The same question, but for energy and plasma weapons;
* What should those weapons do to a normal human? And to a supermutant? One hit kill? "ten" hit kill?
* Should a human be able to walk away with just medium or light injuries from a shot from the most common weapons?

After setting those ideas, I think that is easier to actually begin to draw the stats on weapons, armors, critters, and the like.

[midnight77]

right, right, i didn't think of that. so, i guess energy weapons should primarily be rare or used by powerful factions like the institute. the laser musket should be essentially a bolt action rifle that does incendiary damage and doesn't need ammunition. the most powerful weapons that don't require power armor or obscene strength scores should be plasma rifles. Plasma rifles should three hit kill a standard human, but be less effective against super mutants due to their weird ass biology.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by midnight77

. Plasma rifles should three hit kill a standard human, but be less effective against super mutants due to their weird ass biology.

A hit from a longbow in the hands of a ST11 person (1D+1 Imp) against an unarmored target will average 9 pts of wounding. 3 of those will produce 50% immediate deaths with more incapacitations and targets lost to bleeding.

If you don't want your plasma rifles to be any more lethal than longbows you probably need to assume that those "humans" who need 3 hits to go down are wearing some pretty significant armor.

[midnight77]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

A hit from a longbow in the hands of a ST11 person (1D+1 Imp) against an unarmored target will average 9 pts of wounding. 3 of those will produce 50% immediate deaths with more incapacitations and targets lost to bleeding.

If you don't want your plasma rifles to be any more lethal than longbows you probably need to assume that those "humans" who need 3 hits to go down are wearing some pretty significant armor.

oh, sorry i'm used to other systems where you can tank hits better. I guess that i'll need to look over gun stats a bunch before i make a decision.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by midnight77

oh, sorry i'm used to other systems where you can tank hits better. I guess that i'll need to look over gun stats a bunch before i make a decision.

It's basic thing about Gurps. It just doesn't work like D&D or other systems based on ablative hit pts.

In Gurps you want Damage Resistance (which subtracts directly from weapon's damage) or Active Defenses which let you avoid hits altogether. It's pretty common to face modern weapons that will send a normal human down (at least unconscious) with only one hit.

[MWnRNC]

This is the laser musket that I made for my Fallout campaign. I built it using the Blaster Design rules and some tweaks from GURB.

BEAM WEAPONS (RIFLE) (DX-4, other Beam Weapons-4, or Guns (Rifle)-4)

Weapon | Damage | Acc | Range | Weight | RoF | Shots | ST | Bulk | Rcl | Cost | Malf | TL
Laser Musket | 6d(3) burn | 8 | 640/1900 | 11/MFC | 1/3 | 4(3) | 7† | -5 | 1 | 4600 | 16 | 8

The weapon cannot fire unless its crank is turned enough to achieve maximum charge. This requires taking a Ready maneuver for 3 rounds within 1 minute before firing. I used the Survivable Guns rules for my game, so I built the gun on 8d damage, multiplied by 0.75, and upped the armor divisor to (3).

[midnight77]

cool, thanks. where can i find those rules?

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by midnight77

cool, thanks. where can i find those rules?

Pyramid #3/37. I've never used them myself (I lack that issue of Pyramid, and generally design firearms and energy weapons using an unholy fusion of Spaceships and the old 3e's Vehicles), so can't really comment on how good they are. In your shoes, I'd be tempted to just take the stats of a typical laser rifle from the unofficial Fallout supplement(s) you already have and downgrade the damage (and possibly range) and change RoF to require a Ready for every shot.

As an aside, if they had actually made the laser musket not use ammunition, I would have actually used it when I played Fallout 4. While I would occasionally try to use it for sneak attacks once I was able to upgrade it to be wound up multiple times*, it typically performed poorly enough I just left it back in town.

*Multi-winding doesn't seem quite as useful in GURPS as in Fallout 4, at least if you're having a nod toward realism. 3x energy is 1.5x damage, and 10x energy is 2x damage. So, you'd typically only make use of it if up against a foe who's armor you couldn't quite penetrate with a normal shot.

EDIT: As for Survivable Guns, that's Pyramid #3/44, which I do have. It basically works out to reducing the damage of firearms (or lasers, although I don't think that's mentioned in the article) but giving them an armor divisor to compensate, so they'll still penetrate armor just as readily as by default, but won't give as horrible of wounds. This may actually be more realistic than default GURPS, but I think the jury's still out on that.

[midnight77]

Sorry to necro, but I have a new question. How do I represent stimpacks? Should they regen over time or provide immediate health restoration