Phasers in GURPS

[Qoltar]

Originally Posted by ravenfish

Weapons-grade handwavium.

TRUE - but powered by dilithium crystals!! (according to one episode or source)


- Ed Charlton

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by SCHIFTY

Then how could they be used in vehicle/starship combat?

You expect them to be consistant? :D Hand phasers do appear to be safe for use in ship-board combat. They may short out electronics, but they don't blast out bulkheads or windows. So man-portable phasers are definitely terrible for damaging materials.

Personally, if I had to actually run a star trek game, I'd partly ignore cannon and say that the man-portable phasers specifically do something fancy with water, or possibly carbon, but nothing else. The disintegrate setting, obviously, is an exception and can zap anything.

Ship-to-ship phaser cannons are much higher power, and probably set to disintegrate all the time. They were used in the show to stun people on a planet, however, so they can obviously be "dialed back".

[Gavynn]

If I were running a GURPS Star Trek game I would recognize a few varieties of phasers, of course. My favorite being the "assault phasers" they have in Star Trek V - the ones where Shatner wanted the phasers to be like glocks and not squirt guns. This is were the security team is wearing bandoliers of power packs. That was just sweet. Those would be the most lethal ones in my game. Of course, those are also the ones they keep in an unlocked case in the galley in Star Trek VI...

But Bruno is certainly correct. Star Trek canon is far from consistent. I would be pretty heavy handed in adjusting it if I were to run a Star Trek game.

[Tyneras]

Originally Posted by SCHIFTY

Then how could they be used in vehicle/starship combat?

The UFP seems to have no military ground vehicles other than that dune buggy, you know the one, with the rear mounted phaser than can only shoot backwards.

And starships have those great big M/AM reactors, so they can really burn power and phasorize things made of metal.

[pyratejohn]

If I may, I'll quote one of my favorite deranged starship captains, Ronald Tracey.

That'll be sufficient, Mr. Spock.
No messages.
Kirk, the savage in the cell with you ...
did you set him free?
The savage -- you sent him to warn the tribes!
The Yangs must've been warned.
They sacrificed hundreds
Just to draw us out in the open.
And then they came ...
and they came.
We drained four of our phasers,
and they still came.
We killed thousands, and they still came.

There's also dialog in that episode about phaser power packs, and Captain Tracey believing he can hold off the Yang army with 10 phasers, with spare packs.

[Bandii]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

Before I got my hands on GURPS Prime Directive, we made our Phasers have several settings.

Stun 1: HT [1 charge]
Stun 2: HT-2 [2 charges]
Stun 3: HT-4 [3 charges]

Kill 1: 6d (0.1) burn [2 charges]
Kill 2: 6d*2 (0.1) burn [4 charges]
Kill 3: 6d*3 (0.1) burn [6 charges]
Kill 4: 6d*4 (0.1) burn [8 charges]
Kill 5: 6d*5 (0.1) burn [10 charges]

Disintegrate: 6d*10 (0.1) burn [20 charges]

Holdout phasers could only do up to Kill 3 and had 30 charges, the bigger hand and rifle Phasers did everything and had 100 and 200 charges each .

They had horrible accuracy and range, acc 0 for holdout, 1 for hand, and 3 for rifle. The rifle had the built in tricorder. The (0.1) armor divisor represents just how terrible their damage is to metals, so almost any armor at all could stop a phaser cold. Beware the all mighty packing crate!

I'd probably change Disintegrate to Corrosive damage or add Explosive.

-Mike