Simon Smith wrote:
> Peter Knutsen <peter@[EMAIL PROTECTED]
> wrote:
> <snip>
>>Well, you need to ask yourself whether you want player characters to
>>ever wear armour, or not.
>>
>>I've needed different answers for Sagatafl and for Modern Action RPG.
>>
>>Sagatafl is intended to model any period, but with particular attention
>>to medieval technology levels, so I've needed armour to be useful, while
>>still involving a mobility tradeoff, so that unarmoured fighting styles
>>are valid choices.
>>
>>Modern Action RPG differs. It can be used for medieval, but it works
>>best for periods with firearms, whether they are primitive one-shot guns
>>or futuristic laser guns, and I'm not particularly interested in seeing
>>PCs wear armour. If they do, or when NPCs wear armour, it'll almost
>>always be torso only, and even though the damage/armour mechanic is
>>primitive, it is well able to model the fact that highly skilled
>>shooters can hit non-torso body parts, while armour gives very good
>>protection against low-skill enemies. Also, modern bullet proof vests
>>are fairly light and so don't slow you down much, leaving little room
>>for tradeoff mechanics. So it's a very different dynamic from Sagatafl
>>(which also hasn't yet got a damage model that even tries to model
>>modern firearms against modern armour).
>>
>>What kind of dynamic do you want for your Star Wars campaigns?
>
> Closer to your Modern Action rules, generally. Armour needs to be - and
> mostly is - just a bit of flavour. Some player characters - e.g. Bounty
> Hunters - have body armour as part of their character schticks. So there
> certianly will be the occasional character in armour. But I *don't* want
an
> entire party of armoured PCs. Players seem to consider the dexterity
penalty
> for armour to be a minor issue; those that are serious about wearing it
> expend the effort to get armour that doesn't reduce dexterity. I'm
hoping a
> more effective deterrent will be that there's a difficulty penalty for
> applying a medpack to an armoured location.
>
> Maybe I could use a rule for degrading armour, but I don't really like
the
> idea of that...
In MA RPG, weapon damage is multiplied by the number of un-countered
successes that the attacker gets, and then the target's armour value
(AV) is subtracted once.
An an example, the attacker rolls his attack skill (Longarms or
Shortarms) and gets 4 successes. The defender decides, based on this
knowledge, to spend some Action Points on a Dodge roll, and gets 2
Successes. The remaining 2 Successes, the un-countered ones, are then
multiplied by the weapon's damage factor - which might be 5 or 6 for a
futuristic beam weapon, or perhaps 4 if going for a more cinematic space
operatic feel.
Assuming a damage factor of 5, that gives 10 points of damage. If the
target is wearing armour, it might have an AV of 4, so the final damage
is 6 points, subtracted from the target's Wound Points (although I'll
probably just change the term to Hit Points, since that's what they are.
There's no need to try to fake being more sophisticated than the system
actually is.)
The drawback of wearing armour is that your movement is slowed down, in
terms of how many hexes you can move per Move Action (and with all
characters being allowed a maximum of 2 Move Actions per combat Round,
no matter how many Action Points they have). 2 basic move Actions are
available, Walk and Run, with Run being more efficient in terms of how
many hexes you get per Action Point. Both can be improved with binary
skils, representing the character having learned faster tactical
movement, or faster running. Running doesn't work, at least not well,
over difficult terrain, so mostly characters should opt to Walk in most
cases during combat. There may also be a penalty to Dodge rolls if your
last Move Action was a Run and not a Walk. I'm not sure about that yet.
Characters may also take any number of 1-hex Steps, each costing 1
Action Points, limited only by how many Action Points they have, so
Walking has to always be more efficient than this (this 1:1 ratio). Note
that a Step is not a Move Action, but a (regular) Action instead, since
characters are limited to 2 Move Actions per Round, but can take many
Steps.
Other Move Actions are Charge and Jump, and moving stealthily (2 speeds)
and crawling when you are Prone - Crawl Steps are 2 APs per hex, and do
not count as Move Actions.
Actions that are not Move Actions are either Reactions (these are always
taken in response to outside stimuli, such as Dodging, and are the only
Actions that can be taken out of Initiative order) or (regular) Actions.
Armour then needs to impair movement somewhat, probably by reducing the
number of hexes covered by each Walk Move Action, although I'm limited
by the fact that Walking always needs to be more efficient than a series
of Steps (1:1). I can't have armour making Steps inefficient, except in
the case of actual medieval plate armour, where perhaps normal plate
armour can make each 1-hex Step cost 2 APs, and where heavier tournament
plate armour can make the first Step each Round cost 3 APs. So it's okay
for very heavy armour to penalize Walk movement allowances severely (in
addition to making Running impossible), but for regular armour such as
chainmail or bulletproof vests, I can't do that.
Oh, and characters can also get 1 or 2 free Steps per Round, via binary
skills. These cost no APs. Sufficiently heavy armour could cause
characters to lose these free Steps too, but of course that isn't
penalizing those characters who have not bought those binary skills in
the first place, and characters with those binary skills would be
disinclined to wear very heary armour in the first place, since they'd
tend to be "swift flavour" character concepts.
Finally, there needs to be binary skills representing acquired
familiarity with armour. For medieval armour I'll just do like Sagatafl
and have Wear Light Armour and Wear Medium Armou, and then Wear Heavy
Armour for later period plate armour (which wasn't invented in the 10th
century, the era of my Sagatafl-driven Ärth historical fantasy setting).
For modern armour, I'll probably go with Wear Vest, Wear Heavy Vest, and
Wear Suit, the later referring to hazmat suits, radiation suits and
similar, with Wear Space Suit for coping with the present day's
relatively primitive and bulky space suits.
If one doesn't have the necessary binary skill, to indicate familiarity
with the armour type worn, the armour penalty is heavier. I've figure I
can just double it in almost all cases, although on second thought (I
haven't actually made a lot of combat rules yet; I'm still doing
character creation), I need to be careful about the balance between
Walking and Stepping (again: I can't drop below 1:1 efficiency).
I think that the fact that Sagatafl and MA RPG both have tactical
movement as an im****tant game factor, in the sense that different
characters can move different amounts of hexes per combat Round, solves
a lot of problems when it comes to armour tradeoffs.
On top of that, MA RPG uses Action Points, with different actions not
necessarily costing the same amount of Action Points for different
characters, whereas Sagatafl goes with a much less sophisticated "one
action per character per Round" model, or maybe "one defensive action
and one offensive action, or one move action" instead, although there
are ways (Martial arts, as well as Enchanted items) for characters to
get more actions, such as being able to attack twice or parry twice, or
dodge twice.
I imagine that Star Wars is much like Sagatafl in this regard, which
again is less mecanically flexible, when it comes to room and
op****tunity for penalties (and bonuses). Also, of course, MA RPG isn't
just something I'd like to do because I'm fascinated with the modern
genre and with action adventure. It is also a huge "testing ground",
when it comes to RPG rules design, playtesting procedures, and how to
actually write down rules. I'm going to test out lots of "strangely
shaped" rules in MA RPG, and so when I resume design of Sagatafl (years
from now), it would surprise me if none of the MA RPG rules ideas make
it into Sagatafl.
A few of them, such as the primitive damage/armour model, and of course
each character being assined a "subtype" (effectively a RoleMaster style
character class), aren't suitable for Sagatafl at all. But a lot of
others, such as the use of Action Points, may very well be. I just need
to see how well they work in actual play.
As for Star Wars, why not do something radical: Move away from the
"dice" system in one specific regard. Don't give armour dice ratings at
all. Instead, give it Damage Thresholds, DTs.
Each attack damage result that is equal to or lower than the target's DT
results in no damage whatsoever, whereas any attack that exceeds the DT
causes full damage - the DT is not subtracted from the damage.
Light armour might give a DT of 2, medium armour a DT of 3, heavy armour
a DT of 4.
Heavy clothing (Hoth suits) might be DT 1, and special armour might have
different DT values against different attack types, such as metal armour
having DT 6 against melee weapons but only DT 2 against beams and
needles, or reflective armour having DT 8 against lasers but only DT 2
agaist blasters, and no DT against any other attack form.
Any damage that a character takes is then resisted with a Strength roll,
as usual.
The effect is somewhat similar to in MA RPG, because armour lets you
ignore low-damage attacks (Stormtroopers will love this), whereas
attacks from highly skilled foes, such as master shooters, as well as
attacks from very heavy weapons such as Heavy Blaste Rifles or Sniper
Blasters, effectively ignore armour, so that in those cases it makes no
difference whether you've worn armour or not.
If you want things a bit more complicated, you can have a rule that if a
character is hit by an attack whose damage is equal to the DT, then the
character suffers some minor effect for a very short period of time,
such as being stunned, or being unable for 1 combat Round to do anything
other than take defensive actions. You could then have an exemption to
this rule, in the form of a species trait (Wookies, or other species
famous for toughness, might have that trait), or an inborn Gift-like
trait.
As for how to penalize armour, so as to make wearing it a no-brainer, I
don't think I can help you, based on the assumption that tactical
movement is not a part of the Star Wars system. One gains so much when
one makes movement speed a vital part of the rules.
--
Peter Knutsen
sagatafl.org
|
