GURPS Damaging Future

[mapacker]

Been wracking my brain with statistics for future setting weapons and armor and was wondering how people dealt with this? For example, Powered Armor has DR 100 and the weapons capable of bypassing this have an extremely high chance of killing the wearer outright. I've dealt with this by simply making enemy weapons that deal damage equal to 5d+80, but naturally if a critical hit is scored there's also a chance of outright destroying the wearer. The reason this bothers me is, as a GM, I don't want to outright destroy a PC (unless they do something so stupid that death is outright unavoidable, like when a PC randomly decides to detonate 10 bricks of C4 in a bathroom that is right next to a load-bearing beam in a skyscraper with everyone still in the building).

[GodBeastX]

Armor divisors is what helps you keep damage manageable without having a problem with high DR.

I tend to adjust the divisors as needed based on what I expect out of the campaign. A 3d6 (100) pistol is going to make 100 DR like cotton =)

[Mr_Sandman]

Originally Posted by mapacker

Been wracking my brain with statistics for future setting weapons and armor and was wondering how people dealt with this? For example, Powered Armor has DR 100 and the weapons capable of bypassing this have an extremely high chance of killing the wearer outright. I've dealt with this by simply making enemy weapons that deal damage equal to 5d+80, but naturally if a critical hit is scored there's also a chance of outright destroying the wearer. The reason this bothers me is, as a GM, I don't want to outright destroy a PC (unless they do something so stupid that death is outright unavoidable, like when a PC randomly decides to detonate 10 bricks of C4 in a bathroom that is right next to a load-bearing beam in a skyscraper with everyone still in the building).

"Armor as dice" might be a solution that works for you. It makes penetration less random.

[Joseph Paul]

It is part of the territory - big damage needed to pierce the armor raises the chance that anyone inside is going to die. It applies to vehicles too.

What you may want to look at is toughening the soldier himself and have your military invest in top notch trauma treatment and regrowth. Plenty of things in Bio-Tech that can help and look beyond the subdermal armors. Dying in GURPS isn't just running out of HP but failing HT checks. A couple levels of Hard to Kill will help that as well as investing in HT and Fit or Very Fit - all part of a better lifestyle in the future. Or gene tinkering. Take your pick.

[Kale]

I'm running a sci-fi game now, and the characters have blasters. The ship's purser has a little holdout blaster, and it turns out 2d(5) is surprisingly good at penetrating armor. It usually takes him several shots to put a foe down with it, but it's got RoF 3 and he's usually firing it at point-blank range. A single hit from it is most likely to only wound though, but can deal with DR up to 35. Compare this to needing something better than 7.62 NATO round to deal with DR like that without an armor divisor.

[weby]

I use armor divisors as the main way.

Basically in my scifi settings in most cases armor is not expected to stop most threats (though it obviously works against lower threats), but instead it is meant to keep you alive if you are hit by lowering the damage.

Basically with the power available in ETC weapons carrying enough armor to stop an enchanted penetrator/hyperdense bullet is not practical, so what you are trying to do is to A)force the enemy to use AP ammo so you get lower damage multiple after armor B)Reduce the base damage enough to make low number of hit survivable.

The whole thing is originally based on that Pyramid article of modifying rifles to be naturally penetrating but not do more base damage than pistols I have modified all weapons to do damage that is mostly based on the wound size(though with some increase at higher energies) and the real benefit of having higher energy is the higher penetration.

So examples: being hit by the standard imperial infantry rifle in my current scifi setting (TL 10 transitioning to 11) using the combat round:
Standard combat: APEP 3d+2(9) pi or
increasingly the HD round coming to service: new combat: APHD 3d+2(15) pi.
The standard ETC storm, carbine in UT with corresponding armor would be:
10d+2(3) pi and 10d+2(5)

Against likely armors and a soldier/thug type with maybe 12-14 HP
Non military: Nanoweave Tacsuit DR 30 or the new:Monocrys Tacsuit DR 40 the armor has really no effect reducing 2-3 points still leaving 3d-1 or 3d, but both are survivable as single hits with a normal of about 10 points (major wound and likely reeling) to a maximum of 18 points(below 0 points fairly far from death)
If I had used the standard ETC carbine the effect would be reduction of 8-13 points leaving 10d-6 or 10d-11 for and average of maybe 25 points(at the limit of causing a death roll immediately at first hit) to a maximum of 54 points(causing several death rolls)

Against military medium armor a Commando Battlesuit at DR 105 the weapons still penetrate as the armor stops 7 or 11 points, resulting in 3d-5 or 3d-9 points, here the armor reduces the damage considerably for an average of 1 to 6 points though(making it possible to continue fighting after a few hits) and a maximum of 13 points though, that might not even be below 0 hitpoints.
Again in comparison the standard ETC carbine: the armor would reduce 21 or 35 making the effect: 10d-19 or 10d-33 for an average of 2(scrach) to 16 points(below 0 points) to a maximum of 41 likely causing several death rolls.

Of course if you are in the best possible armor available: Dreadnought Battlesuit with DR 200 over the strong areas the suit reduces the damage by 13 or 22 points allowing ignoring the old style ammo, and likely taking no damage from the even the HD ammo, on average roll you take 0 damage and on the worst possible case you take 7 points, that might not even be a major wound.
Again in comparison the standard ETC carbine: the armor would reduce 40 or 66 making the effect: 10d-40 or 10d-66 for an average roll effect again of no damage but to a maximum of: 20 points, where you are well below 0 hitpoints.
(Of course if you are in a Dreadnaught battlesuit you are more likely to be targeted by something heavy military like your own rifle, the 15mm etc rifle)

Basically in my system I see the extra damage from the faster moving rifle rounds be mostly wasted by coming out from the other side) over penetration) unless there is enough armor to stop it.

The same really goes for pistols and civilian type armor too, without armor the enemy can fire 3d pi++ pistol shots at you causing average of 21 points through... and with armor they are forced to use lower multiple after armor rounds even against fairly low armor values due to the 0.5 armor penetration of hollow point and at heavier expected civilian type armor levels you likely force the pi+ to be pi due to AP ammo.

TLDR version; Use higher armor penetrations in your weapons not high base damage when building the universe.

[tshiggins]

Originally Posted by Joseph Paul

It is part of the territory - big damage needed to pierce the armor raises the chance that anyone inside is going to die. It applies to vehicles too.

What you may want to look at is toughening the soldier himself and have your military invest in top notch trauma treatment and regrowth. Plenty of things in Bio-Tech that can help and look beyond the subdermal armors. Dying in GURPS isn't just running out of HP but failing HT checks. A couple levels of Hard to Kill will help that as well as investing in HT and Fit or Very Fit - all part of a better lifestyle in the future. Or gene tinkering. Take your pick.

Add to this an on-board first-aid kit for every soldier that automatically releases anti-trauma/healing nano to provide a HT bonus for saves vs death, the round after the troop gets hit. It also tranks out any sufficiently wounded trooper, and the suit AI drops to the ground and initiates the best camo pattern for the terrain, while sending out an SOS to the nearest medic.

With all those precautions, ultra-tech combat becomes a lot more survivable. That said, sci-fi weapons are even more lethal than modern combat arms (which is saying something), so it's quite possible to one-shot anybody.

For that, the only real remedy is, "Don't get hit." Make sure to already be using the best nano, as well as ECM and ECCM suites, take any cover available, and sneak. It's a lot harder to get hit if the enemy never even knows you're there.

Also, remember, unless you're running a military sci-fi campaign a la David Drake, most people won't have military-grade TL 10+ weaponry. They'll have semi-automatic rifles and pistols that carry caseless or binary-propellant "slug" rounds, or the traditionally useful, always popular (and never out of style) shotguns, purchased as surplus from stockpiles of weaponry that have been replaced with better (or at least, fancier) tech.

For most science fiction campaigns, that's plenty good enough. (And, how would a frontier world have the technical infrastructure to maintain a modern, military-grade battlesuit, anyway? Especially since a planet with only about a million people -- if that -- wouldn't have the satellites needed for any BattleNet software?)

[Ulzgoroth]

Well, my first response is being okay with PCs being outright destroyed if they put themselves in the way of it, but that's not the only place you can go.

All effective armor piercing weapons are focused. A lot of them are piercing or tight-beam burning. Both of those damage types can and probably should be subjected to the Body Hits limits on damage. The other occasional penetrating type is shaped-charge explosions with (5) or (10) divisors. Those are usually technically crushing explosions, or in some cases impaling (!?), but I would not hesitate to forcibly remap them to a piercing damage type and subject them to the same limit.

Of course, if you take a blow-through wound from something doing damage of 10 times your HP, the rule not going to let you naturally stop bleeding until you run out of blood. But letting ultratech medicine knock over those massive penalties should be fine.


If your enemies prefer killing armored PCs by dropping 2000+ pound high explosives on them and just outright blowing them up with unfocused damage...yeah, got to say, at that point you, your team, and everything else anywhere near you is probably very, very dead.

[The Colonel]

I suspect the "man down" cry of the future in this case might well be more likely to be "armourer!" than "medic!" - you could very easily extrapolate current trends into a future where extremely casualty intolerant nations fight more by breaking each others toys than killing each other's people, and a casualty is either annoyed or dead with not much in between.

[David Johnston2]

Originally Posted by mapacker

Been wracking my brain with statistics for future setting weapons and armor and was wondering how people dealt with this? For example, Powered Armor has DR 100 and the weapons capable of bypassing this have an extremely high chance of killing the wearer outright.

Blowthrough damage. Pretty much ensures that the wearer won't be killed outright as long you don't aim for the brain.