Star Trek Phasers for GURPS?

[Johnny1A.2]

Originally Posted by Captain-Captain

TOS phasers were hit and 5arget drops or disintegrates. In later shows they got nerfed to the point a character could be hit multiple times and while dying, still get a heroic last action.

It's worse than that. In TOS, the ship's phaser banks were much more realistically powerful, compared to the movies and the other series.

By 'realistically', I mean given the known power of those ships, the kind of power you'd need to do star flight. It was said more than once in the days of TOS that Enterprise had sufficient fire power to wreck inhabited worlds.

When Enterprise fired on the unshielded Klingon ship in Day of the Dove, that ship was vaporied almost immediately. That is perfectly plausible given those energies (actually, it would have been more plausible for it to take a few moments, but the outcome would be the same). That's the kind of power you would expect such machines to have.

Compare that to the movies, where we start seeing phaser battles between ships at point-blank range that do nothing but chew holes in the armor.

[Gold & Appel Inc]

Originally Posted by Qoltar

Forum member Gold & Appel posted a good suggestion in one of my STAR TREK-related threads. He said go with the Omni-blaster from Ultra Tech.

Thanks for the credit, Q, but a slight correction: I rec the Omni Blaster for Abramsverse, but I'm with everybody who uses the Disintegrator plus a stun setting for TOS and anywhere else you actually want people one-shot disintegrated (and don't forget your TL 10^ Field-Jacketing for both). :)

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Yeah, this is one of my prime issues with Prime Directive.

The Stun setting frequently fails to to do more than annoy. The "Kill" setting usually doesn't kill and the Disntegrate setting doesn't disintegrate either.

Add in the armored uniforms (yes, they have Starfleet wearing armored uniforms) and it's no wonder people resort to fisticuffs so often.

This was initially frustrating for my players as well. It's very important to, up front, let them know how your Star Trek (or any other campaign based on a known fictional setting) differs from the TV (or movie or book, etc.) Star Trek.

In my case, I wanted the combats to have more give and take than merely being a contest of who landed the first hit. Also, in my Star Trek campaign, body armor does not protect against the stun setting (unless it's sealed). This makes the stun setting a nice thing to have against foes wearing body armor. I also enjoy playing the quartermaster who must be convinced, every time, why OUR HEROES need type-2 phasers when everybody else makes do with type-1. :)

[umbros]

Thanks for all the great comments everyone.
For my group,

• kill setting kills, disintegrate setting disintegrates, stun setting stuns is tooo simple. I want a gun with proper weapon stats.
  
• Prime Directive style phasers just don't do it for me (or what they are supposed to do.)
  
• Disintegrators from UT feel a bit much but might be fun. It is just so vastly more powerful than anything else.
  
• A "realistic" treatment with more than a dozen settings is probably a distraction, my players wouldn't take the time to learn it all.
  
• My players will want a phaser that disintegrates a target, but it must have drawbacks (power consumption or whatever) or that is all they will use.

How about something like the following;

Each type of phaser has 4 damage settings
Type 1: 1d, 3d, 6d, and 6dx3.
Type 2: 3d, 6d, 6dx3, and 6dx6.
Type 3: 6d, 6dx3, 6dx6, and 6dx18.

Each can be set to one of: stun (Max -10), burn, or corrosive.

Each can set there ROF from 1 to 10.

Each die of damage consumes 1 "shot" with the following capacities:
Type 1:~50
Type 2:~100
Type 3:~200

Overload setting would be dice of damage remaining in the weapon in burn, explosive.

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by umbros

Each type of phaser has 4 damage settings
Type 1: 1d, 3d, 6d, and 6dx3.
Type 2: 3d, 6d, 6dx3, and 6dx6.
Type 3: 6d, 6dx3, 6dx6, and 6dx18.

Each can be set to one of: stun (Max -10), burn, or corrosive.

First, I'm not sure what the "Max -10" in "stun (Max -10)" means.

Second, I'm not sure if body armor is going to be a factor in your games, but setting things up so that body armor is effective against Type 1 but not Type 3 can make things interesting. Your phasers are almost 10x as powerful as the ones I use in my Star Trek campaign--which pretty much makes use of TL11 personal defense weapons.

The reason I encourage you to make your phasers offensively as capable as Ultra Tech TL11 weapons is that you can then borrow from Ultra Tech for body armor and other weapons with confidence that things will be consistent and balanced.

[Diomedes]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

First, I'm not sure what the "Max -10" in "stun (Max -10)" means.

I think he means stun is an Affliction, with up to a -10 penalty to the HT roll.

[umbros]

Originally Posted by Diomedes

I think he means stun is an Affliction, with up to a -10 penalty to the HT roll.

That is correct.