Traveller Hero: Weapon Tech Levels

[AlHazred]

So, one of the difficulties of running a plausible Traveller Hero campaign is the differing technological levels of the various member worlds of the Imperium (to say nothing of worlds outside the Imperium that may be either unimaginably magic-tech or savagely primitive). I've seen various methods proposed on the boards for reflecting the advancement of weapons technology.

Some prefer the idea of just giving higher-tech weapons more dice. So, where my longbow can maybe shoot a 2d6 RKA arrow, the .30-06 shoots a 3d6 round, the Gauss Rifle a 4d6 flechette, and the Laser Pistol a 5d6 beam. Armor of higher tech levels would have a correspondingly higher DEF. There are many proponents of this system but it falls a little flat for me; intuitively, it doesn't feel right. I mean, by these standards a laser can cut through a concrete slab in seconds, but in practice it takes a beam quite a bit longer to do its magic. Then, also, it means the power-armor guys can just ignore the vast swarm of savages attacking them as they wade into battle on the jungle planet; this may be great for Warhammer 40K campaigns, but in Traveller there's a feeling that a savage with a sharp knife can be deadly to even a well-trained soldier, as long as he gets a lucky stab.

Others go for increasing levels of Armor Piercing for weapons and Hardened for defenses. The problem with this method is there's no hard-and-fast rule for it. I've seen people propose one leve of AP for each Tech Level the weapon is higher than the defense, but this can lead to Gauss Rifles that just ignore Plate Armor, no matter how thick. On the other hand, it doesn't have the Warhammer issue.

So, I was thinking of using a modification of the second method. How's this for beginners?

Weapons	Weapons	Superior (+1 AP)
No AP	Swords, Axes, Spears, Bows	Stilettos, Picks
AP x 1	Crossbows, Early Firearms	AP Bolts
AP x 2	Modern Firearms (AK47, H&K MP5)	Teflon Rounds
AP x 4	High-Tech Firearms (Gauss Weapons)	Etc.

Defenses	Armors
No Hardened	Leather, Chainmail, Plate
Hardened x 1	Lamellar, Maximilian Plate
Hardened x 2	Kevlar Vest, Ballistic Cloth
Hardened x 4	Combat Armor, Battle Dress

Laser weapons go against Armor ED, which is generally half of PD, except for specially-designed armors and Reflec. Plasma and Fusion weapons have Penetrating, and maybe Armor Piercing as well. No Armor has Impenetrable, it's a function of robots and inanimate objects.

Comments? Concerns? Constructive criticisms? All welcome.

[Xavier Onassiss]

Actually, a gauss rifle probably should ignore plate armor, since you mentioned it.

I used something like this, but instead of levels of Armor Piercing, I used extra Piercing Points and points of DEF: one per Tech Level. This gave me the results I was looking for without inflating the damage values of weapons v. lower-tech armor.

As an aside, this was for my own campaign, not Traveller Hero. I used a modified decimal Kardashev Scale for Tech Levels (K1 = TL10, K2 = TL20, etc) but Traveller can be considered fairly similar to this scale up to TL15 or so.

[Captain Obvious]

Higher technology doesn't necessarily equate to higher damage potential. A weapon with longer range is more useful without being more damaging. Same goes for higher magazine capacity, faster reload, lighter weight, faster rate of fire, etc.

[AlHazred]

I use a combination of the GURPS Traveller TL scale (which does a much more reasonable job at distinguishing the lower tech levels) and Classic Traveller (for the high end, which GURPS hand-waves as "Beyond"). In my game, a level of AP on an attack means, count the BODY on the dice, and ignore that many points of DEF. Multiple levels of AP stack.

So, a Gauss Rifle round at 2d6+1 that does 8 BODY (3 and 4 rolled on the dice, +1) ignores 6 points of DEF from primitive armors, but only 2 points from Kevlar. And, I've messed up my chart somewhat, since I had already decided that Gauss weapons have two levels of AP over Kevlar, and then four levels over primitives, so that round would ignore 8 DEF of a plate armor, but only 4 DEF from a Kevlar vest. But versus TL 12 Combat Armor, it only gets to ignore 2 DEF, so even though the Combat Armor has a lower PD and ED score than the full plate armor, it's more resistant to the effects of higher-tech weapons.

[Xavier Onassiss]

I use a combination of the GURPS Traveller TL scale (which does a much more reasonable job at distinguishing the lower tech levels) and Classic Traveller (for the high end, which GURPS hand-waves as "Beyond"). In my game, a level of AP on an attack means, count the BODY on the dice, and ignore that many points of DEF. Multiple levels of AP stack.

So, a Gauss Rifle round at 2d6+1 that does 8 BODY (3 and 4 rolled on the dice, +1) ignores 6 points of DEF from primitive armors, but only 2 points from Kevlar. And, I've messed up my chart somewhat, since I had already decided that Gauss weapons have two levels of AP over Kevlar, and then four levels over primitives, so that round would ignore 8 DEF of a plate armor, but only 4 DEF from a Kevlar vest. But versus TL 12 Combat Armor, it only gets to ignore 2 DEF, so even though the Combat Armor has a lower PD and ED score than the full plate armor, it's more resistant to the effects of higher-tech weapons.

I use a similar variant for Armor Piercing: each level of A-P ignores one point of the appropriate defense for each DC of the attack. (No need to count the Body that way.) I made an adjustment when the cost of A-P was halved in 6E; each level of A-P allows an attack to ignore points of defense equal to half of its DCs.

I used a similar variant for Hardening: each level of hardening reduces the A-P value of incoming attacks by half the value of the Defense. (This gets a little complicated once in a while; 9pts of AP vs. 4pts of Hardening = 5 Piercing Points against 8pts of Def = a final Def of 3.)