Total Noobie TL7-8 Combat Help

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

. For example, I think (going off memory here) a typical laser rifle is somewhere around 4d(2) burn, has Acc 12, and has RoF 10. .

5D for a carbine or 6D for a Rifle with an oddly light backpack power pack. There's also a 4D "Survival Laser" that's even lighter than a carbine but still ACC12 though only ROF6.

The "survival" part means it can be quickly sassembled from separate modules making it concealable for cyberpunks in long coats. The ACC12 would make it an ideal sniper weapon exccept that it only has a 1/2D of 300 yards.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

5D for a carbine or 6D for a Rifle with an oddly light backpack power pack. There's also a 4D "Survival Laser" that's even lighter than a carbine but still ACC12 though only ROF6.

The "survival" part means it can be quickly sassembled from separate modules making it concealable for cyberpunks in long coats. The ACC12 would make it an ideal sniper weapon exccept that it only has a 1/2D of 300 yards.

Ah, thank you. I was thinking it was 1d(2) for a holdout pistol, 2d(2) for a pistol, 3d(2) for a heavy pistol or carbine, 4d(2) for a rifle, and 5d(2) for a heavy rifle.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Ah, thank you. I was thinking it was 1d(2) for a holdout pistol, 2d(2) for a pistol, 3d(2) for a heavy pistol or carbine, 4d(2) for a rifle, and 5d(2) for a heavy rifle.

Nope, those are ll 1D short. 1D laser pistols were a 3e thing when not only was damage cumulative but it was Impaling too.

These days energy weapon damage is frequently lower than slugthrower in absolute terms even before you throw in modifers like ETC but "P" class and ammo type too.

This can change iif in the design article in Pyramid 3/37 if you flick the "superscience" switch (includign ^ power cells to power things). This might be necessary to match energy weapon performance in some settings but modifying ROF can be necessary too but is easily done.

[Colonel__Klink]

Originally Posted by Varyon

[250] is a solid starting point for a cinematic character - it's what Dungeon Fantasy and I believe Action! use. But if you want vampires and heavily-augmented cyborgs, you may well find that you only have [50] or [100] - or less! - for the actual character, the rest eaten up by their "powers."



As FrackingBiscuit notes, at least in 4e lasers are Rcl 1 weapons, and each hit is treated separately. Because of their high Acc, however, this Rcl 1 can mean that, at close ranges, you may have a situation where either armor protects completely or the target is turned into burnt swiss cheese, with not a lot of room in between. For example, I think (going off memory here) a typical laser rifle is somewhere around 4d(2) burn, has Acc 12, and has RoF 10. So, let's take someone with a modest skill of 12, up against someone at 20 yards (-6 to hit). If the character has time to Aim for 1 round, they can then attack at RoF 10 and effective skill 20. On a roll of 12 (74% chance of rolling that or lower), they hit with 9 shots. If the target fails to Dodge (and note a Dodge reduces the number of hits by 1+MoS, so they'd need to roll 8 under their target number to actually avoid all hits), they get hit 9 times, each time for an average of 14 damage. An unarmored target (or one with DR 1, which gets dropped to 0 by the laser's armor divisor) therefore would take an average of 126 HP Injury - well into Instant Death for a character with HP 21 or lower. Every +2 to DR is +1 to effective DR when taking into account the laser's armor divisor, and every +1 to effective DR is roughly -9 to total Injury ("roughly" because once effective DR gets above 4, each additional +1 to effective DR isn't quite -1 to the average damage of each hit, because damage can't go below 0), which means you need around DR 42 or 43 (effective DR 21) to be able to avoid taking Injury from an average hit - and every -2 to DR is +9 to Injury. So DR 42 is immune (-ish; if using Armor as Dice, the character will suffer no or very little damage from each hit, but if using the standard rules any above-average roll will cause damage, and potentially a decent amount of it), but DR 32 will mean the character will suffer around 45 HP Injury from such an attack.

To avoid this, you'll probably either need to not have lasers (or have lasers that have different stats - restricting them to RoF 3 could be an option), or have engagements occur from much further away - if above the foe were at 200 yards rather than 20, the character's effective skill would be 14, and a roll of 12 would land 3 hits instead of 9. Or use something like "Conditional Injury" (Pyramid #3/120), which largely gets rid of the cumulative nature of GURPS Injury - rather than someone with DR 10 (effective DR 5) taking around 81 HP Injury and winding up unavoidably dead, they would instead take something like 9 Major Wounds... which is serious and potentially-fatal, but not unavoidably-fatal.

The range issue is something I'm not sure if there's anything that we can do about. Dense urban is the definition of cyberpunk and this campaign is no different. 75 yards is "long range" in such a setting. TBH for rifles that's a point blank easy shot. Think about most video games you see, I laugh when someone thinks they are "sniping" in call of duty and really it's a mere 30 yards...

I was planning on using legality class as a means of essentially level scaling access to stuff. The best gear is available but the illegality of it means that those who have those pieces will only sell it to those who they trust. Or craftsmen will only make things for people they deem worthy, people with real flash. So that's a good option to limit them.

The lasers are a rather extreme example of the problem. We are constructing a setting where for the most part it's 75 yards or less, heavy cover opportunities though. Gunfights in diners. The quickdraw at the fuel station ect. Hits are going to happen unless I only put in the game the absolute most incompetent boobs as enemies and THAT is not fun either! I mean in your description above one turn spent aiming meant a nigh guaranteed chance to hit.... so I'd have to make a world where nobody but the players ever aim. I really really really don't like the idea that in the core concept of the game is the idea that most attacks are just going to be instant death. That's not really fun at all.

I'm glad people brought up characters can keep going until -5 times hitpoints. That's something that's going to really effect my decision making but after my battle experiments tonight I'm going to have to just start looking at completely changing the damage model if it pans out like eveyrone is describing it. Nobody actually likes insta death in a game as a general rule. If you roll in and the boss just.... smashes you and the fight is over the feeling is not excitement. Its outrage.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

The range issue is something I'm not sure if there's anything that we can do about. Dense urban is the definition of cyberpunk and this campaign is no different. 75 yards is "long range" in such a setting.

Yeah, I figured that was probably the case. You've got some options to make lasers not so powerful, however. As I mentioned earlier, maybe only RoF 3 - or RoF 1, as another poster suggested - lasers are available. Another option is to have there be cheap, ubiquitous personal shield generators that grant some ablative (or semi-ablative) DR against lasers, so you often have to hit a foe with several bursts before the shielding fails and you can carve them up. Consider a Personal Force Screen from UT191. That gives you semi-ablative DR 60, which recovers DR at a rate of 6 DR each second. If you get hit 10 times (the maximum, thanks to RoF 10) from a 6d(2) burn laser rifle, each hit will deal (on average) 21 damage, reducing DR by 2 with each hit. That DR 60 functions as DR 30 against the rifle, so you end up with:
Hit 1: 21 vs DR 30; no penetration
Hit 2: 21 vs DR 29; no penetration
Hit 3: 21 vs DR 28; no penetration
Hit 4: 21 vs DR 27; no penetration
Hit 5: 21 vs DR 26; no penetration
Hit 6: 21 vs DR 25; no penetration
Hit 7: 21 vs DR 24; no penetration
Hit 8: 21 vs DR 23; no penetration
Hit 9: 21 vs DR 22; no penetration
Hit 10: 21 vs DR 21; no penetration

So, even with the maximum number of hits, you're avoiding any injury from the first burst*. You'll want to duck behind some cover to let your shield recharge, of course - if you stay out in the open, your foes can start carving through your shield and causing you some serious injury. Use the Velocity option (which makes it only protect against beams and things moving faster than 100 mph) if you want melee attacks to bypass the shield.

*Note I'm assuming an average damage roll here, which skews things a bit away from how things will actually work at the table when rolling damage - you'd probably end up suffering at least some wounds from the above burst, complements of some of the rolls being above-average, but you won't be reduced to ash like you would without that shield.

[Anaraxes]

Originally Posted by Varyon

[250] is a solid starting point for a cinematic character - it's what Dungeon Fantasy and I believe Action! use.

Monster Hunters is 400, for another touchpoint that involves characters that might be vampires (or dhampirs), among all sorts of other things. 200 points for any of those inhuman race templates, just to make the character templates all come out the same. Might be worth a peek to compare to the templates for this game's setting.

MH does have pretty high-powered enemy monsters as well, so it's amped up all around. If Klink's setting has relatively weak vampires, they might not need those 400 points to have something left over. Or he could do the usual point-buy justifications for high-powered races, like "you're just a half-vampire so not as powerful", or "a weakling vamp that wasn't allowed to join their vampire games so you left to go hang out with the humans who think you're special judging by their puny scale".

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by FrackingBiscuit

Enforcing Legality Class restrictions is also a good way to control what weapons and defenses are most commonly encountered. LC4 (Open) and LC3 (Licensed) equipment will be common, while LC2 (Restricted) equipment is rare for civilians, and LC1 (Military) are military-only. Cyberpunk means criminals and black markets, so everything is still on the table, but you can use LC as a sort of rarity and adjust prices and availability to represent the difficulty of finding certain hardware on the black market. In this case, lasers capable of automatic fire are at least LC2, and the Semi-Portable Laser is LC1.

This is something that you will likely need to hit hard on. Police hassles, Criminal Prosecutions, etc, etc, etc probably all need to be a thing if LC 2 (let alone LC 1) weapons are attempting to be carried/used anywhere near 'civilization'.

After all if you are using Military Grade Weapons, expect Military Grade (30%+ casualty rate up to 90%+) Casualties.

Edit: Course if I were thinking of this campaign I don't know if I would bother to aim...an Engineer: Combat/Demolitions skill and a backpack full of Claymores and all your problems just...go away. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Claymore_mine

[FrackingBiscuit]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

The lasers are a rather extreme example of the problem. We are constructing a setting where for the most part it's 75 yards or less, heavy cover opportunities though. Gunfights in diners. The quickdraw at the fuel station ect. Hits are going to happen unless I only put in the game the absolute most incompetent boobs as enemies and THAT is not fun either! I mean in your description above one turn spent aiming meant a nigh guaranteed chance to hit.... so I'd have to make a world where nobody but the players ever aim. I really really really don't like the idea that in the core concept of the game is the idea that most attacks are just going to be instant death. That's not really fun at all.

If this is the case, low Bulk scores for concealability is going to be a major consideration for weapons. Especially with what Witchking pointed out about police harassment and the like, if anybody wants to have an LC2 gun it's going to have to be small enough to hide on their body. Thus pistols, SMGs (likely semi-auto only), short-barreled shotguns, etc. are going to be the most common weapons. Which is convenient, because these are likely to be both LC3 and a lot less lethal than the LC2 tactical carbines and assault lasers that players might otherwise go for. They're also going to have lower Acc scores, making hits much less likely. Holdout and Fast-Draw are likely to be common skills. It also might be common to Move and Attack in close-quarters combat, which means lighter weapons with lower Bulk scores are going to have further advantages.

Enemy skill levels are also another way to calibrate lethality. Especially for a more cinematic game, it's not unreasonable for most enemies to shoot without taking an Aim maneuver. Actually, even for a more realistic campaign that's probably still true - Tactical Shooting suggests most enemy fire will realistically be Suppression Fire or even Shooting Blind. It's also true that most shooters are inexperienced - the average street thug would likely be rolling at default DX-4 to hit. For a stock DX 10 character, that's a base skill level of 6. Tactical Shooting has a handy table for typical skill levels that helps put things in perspective. Notably, it shows that beat cops, conscripts, and trained terrorists usually have no better than Guns-11. Professional soldiers, part-time SWAT officers, and federal agents might have Guns up to 13, while special operations soldiers are up to Guns-15. So while for a player Guns-12 might be modest, for an enemy in a cyberpunk campaign that might easily be above average.

And since this is sci-fi we're talking about, there are all sorts of other ways to make yourself harder to hit. Optical camouflage, infrared cloaking, or just flooding the diner with smoke and switching on your hyperspectral visor so you can see clearly while your enemies are totally blind. Cover and concealment are always the best way to survive a firefight, and there are lots of ways to build on that at TL9+.

[Witchking]

Originally Posted by FrackingBiscuit

If this is the case, low Bulk scores for concealability is going to be a major consideration for weapons. Especially with what Witchking pointed out about police harassment and the like, if anybody wants to have an LC2 gun it's going to have to be small enough to hide on their body. Thus pistols, SMGs (likely semi-auto only), short-barreled shotguns, etc. are going to be the most common weapons. Which is convenient, because these are likely to be both LC3 and a lot less lethal than the LC2 tactical carbines and assault lasers that players might otherwise go for. They're also going to have lower Acc scores, making hits much less likely. Holdout and Fast-Draw are likely to be common skills. It also might be common to Move and Attack in close-quarters combat, which means lighter weapons with lower Bulk scores are going to have further advantages.

Enemy skill levels are also another way to calibrate lethality. Especially for a more cinematic game, it's not unreasonable for most enemies to shoot without taking an Aim maneuver. Actually, even for a more realistic campaign that's probably still true - Tactical Shooting suggests most enemy fire will realistically be Suppression Fire or even Shooting Blind. It's also true that most shooters are inexperienced - the average street thug would likely be rolling at default DX-4 to hit. For a stock DX 10 character, that's a base skill level of 6. Tactical Shooting has a handy table for typical skill levels that helps put things in perspective. Notably, it shows that beat cops, conscripts, and trained terrorists usually have no better than Guns-11. Professional soldiers, part-time SWAT officers, and federal agents might have Guns up to 13, while special operations soldiers are up to Guns-15. So while for a player Guns-12 might be modest, for an enemy in a cyberpunk campaign that might easily be above average.

And since this is sci-fi we're talking about, there are all sorts of other ways to make yourself harder to hit. Optical camouflage, infrared cloaking, or just flooding the diner with smoke and switching on your hyperspectral visor so you can see clearly while your enemies are totally blind. Cover and concealment are always the best way to survive a firefight, and there are lots of ways to build on that at TL9+.

Also using LC and the police to 'control' weapons can be done on a curve.

If you have an LC 3 pistol but do not have a liscence and get caught you might get a fine and/or a light sentance.

If you have an LC 0 LAWS anti-armor weapon that there is no legal way to carry you are more likely to be noticed and you WILL get serious time if caught.

A couple of NPC busts and trials (even mentioned as backround events) will make the players aware of the rules of the road.

'What happened to Fat Tony?' 'He is doing 20 upstate for strolling through the neighborhood with a 40mm pump action Grenade Launcher!'

Looking at the point budget (250) my first thought was 'Buy Gunslinger'. So nice to eliminate all (or most of) those niggling penalties for 'shooting while doing a cartwheel' and 'fast reloading in the dark and in free fall'. Also Aiming is for peasants!

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Witchking

Looking at the point budget (250) my first thought was 'Buy Gunslinger'.

It's worth pointing out to the OP that while the original 4e Gunslinger was underwhelming, it got improved in High-Tech and Gun-Fu, and those changes have been added to the latest edition of the Basic Set.