Mass Effect Sourcebook

[KLGChaos]

Originally Posted by RogerBW

B111 seems to me fairly clearly to indicate full cost every second.

That's what I thought, but considering it doesn't say you have to pay the full cost and it comes after explaining that you only need 1/2 the cost to maintain it for the minute-long version, I wasn't sure. I planned on doing full cost anyway.

And is it just me, or does the armor vs weapon levels seem a bit off?

I was originally going to use Electromagnetic Weapons (with a armor divisor of 3), but then realized that even with a standard Tech 10 Combat Hardsuit, which gives a DR of 75, it's going to be touch to penetrate anything without a crit, especially when combined with force screens. Several of the weapons, outside of the sniper rifles, the assault rifle and shotguns become useless. The pistols and smgs have no chance to penetrate as they just don't do enough damage.

So, I decided to look at grav guns, which jump up to a divisor of 10 vs. the armor of that tech level which provide 100. The weaker guns become usable again (3d (10) lets them actually do some damage against a DR of 10 after the divisor), but anything bigger tears people apart like tissue paper.

Doesn't seem to be much of a middle ground. I might end up modifying the Electomagnetic Guns to give an Armor Divisor of 5 or bring the divisor on the grav guns down. That way, the armor of 75 becomes 15 and the guns, which mostly do 2-3d damage, can actually be somewhat useful again, without overpowering the other guns.

Or I can just use Grav Guns, tech 11 armor and hope my players are actually smart about combat (though I doubt that).

[SuedodeuS]

A Combat Hardsuit is something you anticipate on frontline troops in particularly nasty areas. Of course it's proof against handguns and SMG's. Note that the closest TL8 equivalent, the Advanced Body Armor (HT66) has DR 35 against everything but crushing. It is similarly proof against handguns and SMG's, and it also gives rifles a serious run (you generally need AP ammo to get through with any reliability). In fact, the hardsuit actually performs more poorly against equal TL threats, as a gauss rifle will penetrate only a little less than 50% of the time.

As for grav guns, they are superscience weapons geared explicitly toward penetrating armor. Fortunately, they don't red-mist their targets too badly - a grav rifle does injury on par with a moderately high-powered TL8 rifle against unarmored targets. Against armored it's better - against the TL11 Combat Hardsuit, it's going to average 4 damage (8 injury) past DR.


So, if you want military-style engagements (with rifles), I'd probably go with gauss and TL10 armor, where you have about an even chance of the round failing to penetrate. If you want your characters going up against more civilian targets (using pistols and SMGs) while wearing military hardware and actually running the risk of a torso shot (note that even a gauss pistol can penetrate on a limb shot, albeit somewhat-unlikely) actually hurting them, grav guns and TL11 armor might do the trick.

[KLGChaos]

Originally Posted by SuedodeuS

A Combat Hardsuit is something you anticipate on frontline troops in particularly nasty areas. Of course it's proof against handguns and SMG's. Note that the closest TL8 equivalent, the Advanced Body Armor (HT66) has DR 35 against everything but crushing. It is similarly proof against handguns and SMG's, and it also gives rifles a serious run (you generally need AP ammo to get through with any reliability). In fact, the hardsuit actually performs more poorly against equal TL threats, as a gauss rifle will penetrate only a little less than 50% of the time.

As for grav guns, they are superscience weapons geared explicitly toward penetrating armor. Fortunately, they don't red-mist their targets too badly - a grav rifle does injury on par with a moderately high-powered TL8 rifle against unarmored targets. Against armored it's better - against the TL11 Combat Hardsuit, it's going to average 4 damage (8 injury) past DR.


So, if you want military-style engagements (with rifles), I'd probably go with gauss and TL10 armor, where you have about an even chance of the round failing to penetrate. If you want your characters going up against more civilian targets (using pistols and SMGs) while wearing military hardware and actually running the risk of a torso shot (note that even a gauss pistol can penetrate on a limb shot, albeit somewhat-unlikely) actually hurting them, grav guns and TL11 armor might do the trick.

Yeah, it's pretty hard to get the ME2 feel with the lower powered weapons. In the game, even the Pistols and SMGs can take down a target in heavier armor pretty handily, just not as well as snipers and assault rifles can, of course.

I might either just go with Grav Guns or force my players who want to use SMGs (I have one who wants to dual-wield machine pistols) to take AP ammo with them if they actually want to deal damage through the heavier armored foes. You figure going against someone in Commando Battlesuit (DR 105), the Grav Gun armor divisor brings that down to 11. The Grav Rifle does 4d damage, averages 3 damage afterward (6 injury), which isn't too bad. Even the SMG does 3d damage, so its useful against Medium DR armor.

Electromag guns do piercing damage. So, the tech 10 gauss rifle, vs the even the Combat Hardsuit at 75 DR brings the DR down to 25. The gun does 6d+2 damage, averaging 23 damage a shot, which isn't even enough to penetrate DR. Against the Commando Battlesuit, with a DR of 35, it's even worse. Plus, the damage is only piercing, so even if you get through, it only does normal injury. If you use a SMG and manage to get through, it's 1/2 damage.

In the end, it's going to be a hard call. I'll probably discuss it with one of my friends who has a lot of GURPs experience so we can figure out what will fit best. I'm just trying to find a happy medium between characters being juggernauts and drawing the fights out for hours and them being slaughtered in seconds because the armor can't keep up with the guns. Though, with Force Screens in the game being hardened and ablative, it might just give the protection needed to keep them from being destroyed by the Grav Guns. And now that I think about it, in ME2, once your shields are down, you really need to find cover or you get torn to shreds.

I think that's exactly what I'll do then. Just use Grav Guns (slightly tweaked for more recoil) and have the players rely on cover and shields more, just like the way the firefights seem to work in the game.

[SuedodeuS]

There's also an oft-overlooked (I forgot it myself) aspect of gauss - you have a high-velocity mode. This adds +1/die to damage, multiplies range by 1.3, and burns 1.5x as much energy (meaning you get 2/3 as many shots out of a given power cell). This would boost the rifle up to 8d+1 (3), for an average damage of 29 (average of 4 gets past armor on Hardsuit, and it is possible to penetrate Commando Battlesuit). The pistol (4d-1) and PDW (5d) are still in no position to penetrate the torso of the Hardsuit, although they can get through the limbs. You need to decide exactly what paradigm you are going for. If you want weak weapons, like the pistol, to be serious threats against extremely heavily-armored foes, grav guns are probably the way to go.

Also bear in mind that GURPS and Mass Effect have differing assumptions and goals. GURPS tries to be generic and universal, and thus leans a bit more toward realism. Mass Effect wants to allow players to be able to build their characters however they'd like (including choice of weapon type) without being screwed. In GURPS, going against a walking tank with a pistol means you are going to do nothing beyond annoy it. In Mass Effect, going against a walking tank with a pistol means you can wear it down and eventually kill it (unless I'm mistaken; I've never played ME). As a result, ME armor is probably (once you get past the fully-hardened, fully-ablative forcefields) more like Injury Tolerance: Damage Reduction (IT:DR) than Damage Resistance (DR).