Using 3e Vehicles in 4e? Is it a crazy idea?

[Iago_Smith]

There's been a lot of T2K excitement going around the gaming community lately, and I've thinking of GURPing the setting to run at some point.

Vehicles are not an entirely small part of that setting, but there not huge either. It is post-apocalyptic with scarcities in fuel and what not after all.

I was wondering if using 3e vehicles rules in a 4e game would broken? I don't want to reinvent the wheel, but I'd like to know things like how much protection does a M113 offer passengers from small arms fire and the occasional rocket. If it is workable, what pitfalls should I be aware of?

Or should I hand-wave, use what's available in 4e, and reskin, modify, & guestimate my way through things?

[Iago_Smith]

Well, a little Googling and I came across this...

Pyramid 3-120 Alternate GURPS V

Under the article "Describing Vehicles" which is really the level of detail I need.

[Rolando]

I read a few things about it and for me it is not working. The starship building rules are not meant for land vehicles, specially tanks and other denser machines.

Also it have a lots of assumptions and lots of GM fudging the stats and costs to make it work. Still not one person, using some 3 PDFs and probably other rules scattered on other sources was able to recreate a TL9 tank with TL7 armor like the T-72 without some rules fudging in a thread about a month ago.

I think using the 3ed vehicle/robots system is better.

Just remember that some stats needs translating, there is a pdf with all you need to convert from 3e to 4e, GURPS Update I think it is called. Mostly for Accuracy of weapons.

At vehicle level armor and weapons they will work consistently against one another, same with the more complex vehicle damage and combat. Lighter vehicles like civilian cars you may go directly to some Pyramid or GURPS High Tech, those have many vehicles already for 4e, but 3e also made them at DR:5, so they are the same.

GURPS is easy to work with other games rules, using 3e material in 4e is a cake walk.

Again, the Spaceship rules are good, but not for something other than spaceships.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Rolando

I read a few things about it and for me it is not working. The starship building rules are not meant for land vehicles, specially tanks and other denser machines.

Also it have a lots of assumptions and lots of GM fudging the stats and costs to make it work. Still not one person, using some 3 PDFs and probably other rules scattered on other sources was able to recreate a TL9 tank with TL7 armor like the T-72 without some rules fudging in a thread about a month ago.

We actually got reasonably close for such a coarse system designed for something else. However, distinguishing between two tanks of similar mass, TL, and role is almost impossible.

I think using the 3ed vehicle/robots system is better.

Just remember that some stats needs translating, there is a pdf with all you need to convert from 3e to 4e, GURPS Update I think it is called. Mostly for Accuracy of weapons.

For vehicles the other thing is hit points - 3e's vehicles HP scaled with surface area, adjusted for robustness. 4e just scales with the cube root of mass (though if you check Spaceships ships' HP you'll find they've more HP than their mass would suggest, implying that some bonus for construction quality or whatever is built in).

[Rolando]

You got really near to a TL7 tank armor by using TL9 technology... with fudging of the rules by additional multipliers!

The Hit Points may not be relevant if you use the 3e weapons for vehicle vs vehicle combat though.

In fact, using the 3e rules of "reduced hit probability for heavy weapons" (Compendium 2, pg.67) you will get 4e accuracy, mostly.

[weby]

Vehicles 3e works fine with 4e.

The things working differently are hitpoints, explosive damage and weapon accuracy. You can just substitute corresponding 4e values and you are good enough for gaming purposes.

[calmquist]

Mailanka did a partial Vehicles conversion for Psi-Wars. He wrote about it on his blog, Mailanka's Musings.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Rolando

You got really near to a TL7 tank armor by using TL9 technology... with fudging of the rules by additional multipliers!

As the person advocating for the multipliers, the TL9 tech got near the TL7 tank numbers without fudging. The fudge is used to drop to TL7.