Vehicle hit points

[the-red-scare]

Originally Posted by Anthony

In the end, 4e is dependent on DR to keep things balanced, so if you're not going to do something more radical like Conditional Injury, the easiest way to make sure large objects are appropriately tough is to give things a special type of DR that works against all attacks (even ones that normally reduce or bypass DR) of around HP/20.

This is indeed one of the best of the house-rule mitigators, but I don’t think I would design the system from scratch that way.

[Anthony]

The other option is some variant on expanded wound side modifiers (my version, other people have come up with similar systems).

[johndallman]

There's a workable rule for this in issue 2 of The Path of Cunning, on p. 42 in the article on aircraft combat.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Some vehicles have a central portion of their structure whose loss leaves all the rest severed, but others don't particularly. A (seagoing) ship, for instance, can continue to be at least one ship if you up and chop it into two pieces somewhere along its length. Provided it's compartmentalized successfully so at least one piece doesn't sink. (Probably at most one piece will have functional propulsion in that case.)

I mean, a car tire can still serve as a wheel if the car's frame is completely wrecked, but that doesn't change that the car is completely wrecked. From what I understand about ships, they typically have keels that essentially serve as the Frame ("structural backbone" is what I often see it referred to as). Some ships don't (and I think a lot of boats don't), but for gaming purposes I think giving everything a Frame would work out better than only applying that to some vehicles.

Of course, I'm also not certain exactly how such a game system would work. It's more something I'd like to see than something I'd like to come up with myself, if you take my meaning.

Originally Posted by Anthony

In the end, 4e is dependent on DR to keep things balanced, so if you're not going to do something more radical like Conditional Injury, the easiest way to make sure large objects are appropriately tough is to give things a special type of DR that works against all attacks (even ones that normally reduce or bypass DR) of around HP/20.

Somewhere between the two (in terms of ease of use, at least) is what I think of as Slow-Accumulating Injury, which I've seen suggested on the boards before (albeit not by any name). Basically, assess things like Shock, Major Wounds, etc normally, but divide Injury by 3 to see how much accumulates. So, if an HP 10 character gets hit for 20 HP of Injury, he/she has to make a Death Check (dropped to -1xHP), make a Consciousness Check (dropped to/below 0 HP), check for Knockdown/Stunning (suffered a Major Wound), and is at -4 for Shock (took 40% or more of HP in Injury) next round. However, provided the character survives, he/she only loses 6 HP from the attack, and still has 4 HP left before getting stuck at/below 0. This essentially triples HP for purposes of accumulation, but you're just as susceptible to being knocked out, crippled, or even outright killed by single attacks. When I saw it suggested, it was more for living characters, but it would certainly help with issues like archers sinking oceangoing ships.

[the-red-scare]

Originally Posted by johndallman

There's a workable rule for this in issue 2 of The Path of Cunning, on p. 42 in the article on aircraft combat.

That’s really a neat idea. I’ve read those and somehow forgot or missed that. A more radical version of the idea is in Pulver’s post here.

[Rolando]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

For the original question, I don't think you can really make one number solve the overall problem. 200 HP and 60 HP are both wrong if you're destroying a car by shooting small arms through its passenger compartment...

'destroyed'.

3ed vehicles used to model/simulate this by making damage to structure only 1/10th of damage and the components of the vehicle where normally damaged, so you may shoot a lot of bullets to a car but unless you hit the engine, fuel tank or other important parts the car will still be mostly fine.

I like that, and many other details of 3ed Vehicles, but it is a lot more complicated and I can understand why most people don't want that to return.

[Rupert]

I'm tending towards the rule from The Path of Cunning, combined with the reduction in damage for attacks vs very large targets from Keeping Large Vehicles Alive (Pyramid 3-34, Eidetic Memory) which I would also consider applying to Tight-Beam Burning attacks, treating them as if they are impaling.

Also, Spaceships gives ships about 50% more dHP than you'd expect from their mass (i.e. it moves them one step larger on the Range/Speed table, which is the progression it uses for dHP). I take that as being a reflection of compartmentalisation, etc. and am considering a similar bonus to any vehicle that has features such as good compartmentalisation, trained damage control crews, vehicle-wide automatic fire suppression, and so on.

It's possible all three of these measures together swings too far the other way, and the second measure won't stop giant mecha with swords carving each other up very quickly.

[Anthony]

You should avoid things that boost vehicle hit points that don't similarly boost the damage output of large weapons. The problem isn't that vehicles are too easy to kill in general, it's that they're too easy to kill with small weapons.

[Balor Patch]

Originally Posted by Varyon

*On that topic, revamping of how HP interacts with collisions would be in order. As it stands, a catapulted cow does half as much damage as it would if you killed it first (Unliving objects have twice as much HP as living ones), or only 1/4th as much damage as if you butchered the cow and wrapped up the remains in a burlap sac (Homogenous objects have 4x as much HP as living ones).

Rather than having more HP, a Homogeneous thing should have Unkillable. None of the pieces are important so death checks don't make sense while completely destroying it (and collision damage) would be sensibly consistent.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

. The problem isn't that vehicles are too easy to kill in general, it's that they're too easy to kill with small weapons.

That's a matter of TL and game style. For TL4 wooden ships and blackpowder cannons vehicles are too easily destroyed and the same is true for anyone doing futuristic ship combat that they want to emulate that.