[TL5, Zombies, AtE kinda] Small Marine Expeditionary Force

[Kalzazz]

In my Post Apoc Zombie game (which predates AtE, but AtE may help with inspiration), the heroes recently cleared out an old watch tower that had fallen a few centuries ago during the Fall of the world

The friendly power the party belongs to is the Kingdom of the Coral Coast, which admittedly is a much reduced kingdom consisting of an assortment of towns clustered around an ancient castle (before that the Kingdom consisted of many prosperous cities and other good things)

Pre Fall they were TL 10, now they are TL 5, with the occasional higher tech relics and such still about

Due to the parties urging, the King is going to dispatch a contingent of the Royal Marines to garrison the watch tower to prevent it from falling into enemy hands again, and also if need be to light the beacon to alert the kingdom against future invasions

So, what would our hypothetical Royal Marine minions likely be stats and such wise, and if you are outfitting TL 5 marines to fight undead, how will they be equipped?

The Armies of the Necro Lord primarily field mixes of large masses of unarmed zombie fodder, leavened with stouter forms of undead. The most popular types of 'not quite as fodder' undead are slow, brainless, but durable and regimented modestly armored zombie axemen (if you know Myth the Fallen Lords think Thrall), skeleton archers (or warriors), and rather fractious and irritable, but not entirely brainless possessed zombies armed with caseless 9mm carbines (think Doom 1 zombies, with carbines firing pistol ammo)

Assume TL 5, some higher tech stuff is possible, but would require availability rolls and such

Currently, plans are to equip them with .45-70 single shot carbines, bulletproof vests (the cheap DR 5 front only types), and cutlasses as weapons, and the unit will have a Hale 9lber rocket and a .45-70 gatling gun, with some horses to assist in transporting them

They do have a number of 9mm caseless carbines and ammo for them, thanks to party members looting them off enemies, but I would think they would suffer TL penalties from wielding TL 9 rifles instead of TL 5?

[Kalzazz]

Note, the rough budget for said marines is 125 points or so give or take (they are not supposed to be mighty heroes, but are supposed to not be abject cannon fodder, and 125 pts is the baseline for DF henchmen)

They have roughly 5000 moneys to outfit each marine (TL 5 wealth), the gatling gun, rocket launcher, and some pack horses and such are all freebies supplied by the Coral Coast as not anything specifically issued to any one marine

The goal of the expedition is to get to the watch tower and occupy it, without getting eaten by wandering monsters or destroyed by the Armies of the Necro Lord in the process, and to transport their large, heavy gatling gun and its ammo successfully to the tower in order to fortify it. Also food and other such necessities must make the trip

[johndallman]

It's worth considering bayonets rather than cutlasses. Bayonets on rifles are cheaper and lighter than cutlasses, have better reach and are easier to use in close formations or tight spaces.

[Godogma]

Okay, if we assume that they start with TL5 starting wealth worth of gear...

Armor:
High Tech Low Tech light brigandine for DR6 is $900 or DR3 for $450 and protects both front and back hit locations on the torso. You could of course make this into a jacket style piece of armor that would protect the groin and both arms as well (oriental style, but use rivets instead of sewn pouches).

If they've trained using them there are shield designs that could be used at the same time they're firing the rifles (accurately even; evidently they're designed for swat team use). Of course that would be a fairly heavy metal shield even using High Tech Low Tech rules and wouldn't provide as much armor as the High Tech equivalent (which is designed to stop modern centerfire rifles).

Weapons:
If you want to stick with the .45-70 there are several repeating rifles in both bolt and lever action you could use instead of a single shot and repeated fire is better than non... at roughly the same price point.

The largest capacity seems to be 15+1 rounds in the Whitney Burgess repeating rifle for $864 (when converted from 1877 to 2004 dollars) all other stats are similar to the single shot version.

A bolt action is available with 6+1 rounds if you want to reload more quickly and not go with a lever action at $821 when converted so you save $43 and could probably make stripper clips to reload it with.

Canteens, framed backpacks and gear and such to go with this... The cutlass is a fine weapon choice if it's what's handy...

If you can mass produce them Atlas Amulets would be very handy.

[Godogma]

Originally Posted by johndallman

It's worth considering bayonets rather than cutlasses. Bayonets on rifles are cheaper and lighter than cutlasses, have better reach and are easier to use in close formations or tight spaces.

Cutting has a better damage multiplier vs IT Unliving.

[Kalzazz]

Boarding axes are also an option, though sadly Dwarven ones are not available

[McAllister]

You might want bows/crossbows over guns.

5d pi+ comes out to an average of 9 damage, and it's tricky to find a repeating TL5 rifles that gets up to 5d.

A bowman with ST 13, the Strongbow perk and Bows at DX+2 (quite doable on 125 points) deals 1d+4 damage. Use arrows that deal cutting damage (Low-Tech, p. 73) and you're averaging 11 damage.

The ammo is more plentiful. The 1/2D range is ~300 yards, which is at least competitive with TL5 rifles, but here's the thing: neither an Acc 3 bow nor an Acc 4 rifle are hitting anything reliably with a -13 range penalty. The bow's advantage, then, is that arrows are cheap enough that you can start arcing fire into a zombie horde from very far away. It doesn't have so many moving parts, which isn't to say that it doesn't require maintenance, but it should ease the burden on the soldiers: less chance of a leaky roof ruining hundreds of shots of ammunition.

And that's not all! You said there are some bad mother zombies embedded in with the rest? How do zombies burn in your world? The fire-cage arrow is designed to lodge in a wooden structure and set fire to it, but it should work just as well in a mindless, shambling behemoth.

Crossbows are an option too. I wouldn't want every man to be using one, being as slow to reload as they are, but a siege crossbow could reasonably mount a 32x scope (available at TL5) and shoot a bolt that does serious damage to a high-value target. It's probably worth spending some time Aiming to hit a valuable hit location with this, because using the cranequin to reload it during an engagement won't be worthwhile. That said, as long as one of the marines has ST 16 and can reload all of the squad's crossbows between engagements, you can shoot as many Acc 9 bolts that deal 2d+6 damage each as you have crossbows prepared. I'd want to pick out the zombie gunners with these, personally.

As for melee weapons, swords are good, but so are staves. You lose that 1.5 damage multiplier, but the +2 to parry is very good, and they tend to have flexible reach. Depending on the circumstances, the best barricade might be a wall of zombies whose legs have been crippled, so the ones behind them can't advance efficiently. Alternatively, marines with shields in front of marines with polearms.

And as for armor, I would prioritize getting at least DR 2 on every single biteable location, assuming you can turn into a zombie if bitten by one. And even if not, TL5 medicine isn't the greatest, especially at an isolated lighthouse, so avoiding minor injuries will prevent you from losing marines to infection. And, since guns are in play, the more torso and head DR you can wear, the better.

[Tallor]

Originally Posted by McAllister

You might want bows/crossbows over guns.
...
And as for armor, I would prioritize getting at least DR 2 on every single biteable location, assuming you can turn into a zombie if bitten by one. And even if not, TL5 medicine isn't the greatest, especially at an isolated lighthouse, so avoiding minor injuries will prevent you from losing marines to infection. And, since guns are in play, the more torso and head DR you can wear, the better.

I would houserule that a sturdy layer of canvas (recycled from canvas jackets, for instance) would provide DR 0 but prevent ordinary bites (i.e. zombie humans) from contaminating the victim. It's really, REALLY difficult to punch through canvas with something as blunt as human teeth.*

-----
*Personal experience in trying to put bite marks on a canvas jacket for a costume.

[Godogma]

Originally Posted by McAllister

You might want bows/crossbows over guns.

5d pi+ comes out to an average of 9 damage, and it's tricky to find a repeating TL5 rifles that gets up to 5d.

A bowman with ST 13, the Strongbow perk and Bows at DX+2 (quite doable on 125 points) deals 1d+4 damage. Use arrows that deal cutting damage (Low-Tech, p. 73) and you're averaging 11 damage.

The ammo is more plentiful. The 1/2D range is ~300 yards, which is at least competitive with TL5 rifles, but here's the thing: neither an Acc 3 bow nor an Acc 4 rifle are hitting anything reliably with a -13 range penalty. The bow's advantage, then, is that arrows are cheap enough that you can start arcing fire into a zombie horde from very far away. It doesn't have so many moving parts, which isn't to say that it doesn't require maintenance, but it should ease the burden on the soldiers: less chance of a leaky roof ruining hundreds of shots of ammunition.

And that's not all! You said there are some bad mother zombies embedded in with the rest? How do zombies burn in your world? The fire-cage arrow is designed to lodge in a wooden structure and set fire to it, but it should work just as well in a mindless, shambling behemoth.

Crossbows are an option too. I wouldn't want every man to be using one, being as slow to reload as they are, but a siege crossbow could reasonably mount a 32x scope (available at TL5) and shoot a bolt that does serious damage to a high-value target. It's probably worth spending some time Aiming to hit a valuable hit location with this, because using the cranequin to reload it during an engagement won't be worthwhile. That said, as long as one of the marines has ST 16 and can reload all of the squad's crossbows between engagements, you can shoot as many Acc 9 bolts that deal 2d+6 damage each as you have crossbows prepared. I'd want to pick out the zombie gunners with these, personally.

As for melee weapons, swords are good, but so are staves. You lose that 1.5 damage multiplier, but the +2 to parry is very good, and they tend to have flexible reach. Depending on the circumstances, the best barricade might be a wall of zombies whose legs have been crippled, so the ones behind them can't advance efficiently. Alternatively, marines with shields in front of marines with polearms.

And as for armor, I would prioritize getting at least DR 2 on every single biteable location, assuming you can turn into a zombie if bitten by one. And even if not, TL5 medicine isn't the greatest, especially at an isolated lighthouse, so avoiding minor injuries will prevent you from losing marines to infection. And, since guns are in play, the more torso and head DR you can wear, the better.

The .45-70 rifle (Note rifle not carbine which does 4d+2 pi+) does 5d pi+, I named two repeaters both of which cost less than bows that do anywhere near equivalent damage even with strongbow and 300 points to throw around and imbuements to go with TBAM and LOTS of skill in archery. They also fire much faster.

Not sure how you got an average of 9 damage from 5d; the average damage from a d6 is 3.5 - when multiplied by five that's 17.5... 4d+2 is 14, even at 4d+2 it's 5 points higher than your guess.

Even with cutting arrows you're coming in short. That's not counting the fact you can work the lever or the bolt and fire again the next round... and the round after that and so forth and so on.

It takes two or three actions per shot, or one with Kromm's no nuisance rolls technique if you have high enough archery to make it worthwhile. Rate of Fire for each of the weapons I named (both of which have 4 Accuracy) is 3.

Bows < Rifles (not that it's a big surprise).

TL5 also saw the introduction of explosive ammunition; and water from a leaky roof will not damage cased ammunition.

[Dustin]

Sounds like a fun setting, gets my mental wheels turning.

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

if you are outfitting TL 5 marines to fight undead, how will they be equipped?

With a $5000 budget, these guys can be pretty well equipped.

Armor:

1. For the GURPS High-Tech option, I would go with the Steel Corselet, High Boots, Skullcap, and Stock (all TL5), plus Heavy Leather Sleeves and Leggings from Basic. Armor cost = $870, weight 25.5 lbs.
2. For the GURPS Low-Tech option, a cheap Munitions Plate corselet for the torso (heavier in front than back) with a Heavy Mail skirt for abdomen coverage, cheap Munitions Plate skullcap or bascinet with a nasal and cheekpieces (similar to a late Roman or Byzantine soldier's helmet), a Light Mail banded collar for the neck, plus any of the cloth/leather DR 2 options for limb coverage, or maybe Light Mail. Armor cost ~$2200, weight ~40 lbs.

For guns, I'll agree with godogma that there are faster-firing options available for .45-70 at TL5. If they can get better guns, they should. Additionally, depending on how well-understood the undead threat is and how Injury Tolerant they are (headshots?), a lighter cartridge might be better for carrying more ammo -- lighter cartridges also make it into repeating designs earlier (.30-30 vs .45-70) so that might be a good trade-off.

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

They do have a number of 9mm caseless carbines and ammo for them, thanks to party members looting them off enemies, but I would think they would suffer TL penalties from wielding TL 9 rifles instead of TL 5?

Per B168 they would be at -4. As a GM, with training I would allow this to be bought down as an Average Technique. Even with the -4, Aimed fire could still be very effective, and the difference in RoF might make this preferable to the TL5 guns.