Weapons And Armor, Crafting And Design

[Steve]

What about using Piercing points from the Advanced Player's Guide #1? Has anyone playtested using them in fantasy weapon builds?

[L. Marcus]

That's where it was! Thanks, Steve.

 

No, have never tried it in play.

[L. Marcus]

I think we've discussed this before, but ... Heavier armor and fatigue: I thought of making it a part of the Real Armor Limitation to reduce REC by one or two, alternately to increase the END Cost of all muscular activity by one (but that seems kind of harsh). Has anyone tried this, or something like? 

[mhd]

I thought about applying the higher END cost to people wearing armor on their legs, as there's been a large amount of people waltzing around in pretty heavy armor all day, but not the legs. Higher END cost for movement, which might affect LTE, too.

 

Other than that, I'm a bit reluctant to antagonize really buff people in armor.

[L. Marcus]

The rationale would be that heavier armor gets in the way of proper perspiration and can cause one to overheat. I've never been at peak condition myself, but I've found that just the chest plate of Kendo armour can get one really hot. Possibly also bothered.

[Markdoc]

I don't worry about it in combat situations - as you have noticed, real armour makes you heat up and sweat, it tires you, etc. - but these are all longer-term effects, not something that's going to wear you out in the 12-48 seconds of intense adrenaline-fuelled combat that is a Hero system fight. In addition, wearing armour longer-term chafed (by definition it's heavy and relatively inflexible), leading to sores and infection. There are documented examples of the military orders (who were real hard-asses about almost everything) retiring knights from combat duties because of armour-sores, so it's nothing to laugh about.

 

I handle the armour thing by simply noting LTE and by enforcing the armour penalties listed in the document. If the players are reasonable about it, I don't bother with more. If they insist on waltzing around in armour all the time, I start to track the LTE effects, which may mean that they start to lose LTE over time - meaning they start a fight with a lower END total (i.e.: they are tired). If they are totally abusive (hasn't happened in a long time) and want to sleep in their armour, wear it to dinner, etc then they start to develop armour sores which will give them a minor STUN drain in combat or vigorous exercise (riding, for example) and start checking for infection, etc. 

 

cheers, Mark

[mhd]

That reminds me of my first game where we had a lot of fun* rolling for saves against gangrene.

 

 

*) i.e. doing it a few times, than swearing to never enter that page of the rules again, because it's a silly place.

[Markdoc]

That reminds me of my first game where we had a lot of fun* rolling for saves against gangrene.

 

 

*) i.e. doing it a few times, than swearing to never enter that page of the rules again, because it's a silly place.

 

In general, I don't like to worry too much about minutiae, but I do recall forcing disease checks for the injured after the players got in a fight in the sewers. In general, PCs show a disregard for anything that isn't instantly or obviously lethal, and really, in-use sewers are not pleasant places. Threatening disease checks is a good way to get players to say "Uh, I really don't want to crawl into that!"

 

cheers, Mark

[SteveS]

Looking at period armor vs period bows it is evident that the best of the best armor was incredibly effective. Nearly the only examples of serious arrow wounds result from shots to the face with the visor having been up. This was accomplished through better metallurgy and better designs. Plate armor was not flat, it was often curved all over, this would have served quite well at deflecting arrows.

 

So modeling plate armor might involve deflection built with a trigger with the benefit of bodkins being increased OCV only vs armor deflection. Thus an archer would have to get past the deflection of his enemy, roll a successful hit, than try to overcome negation and resistant protection. Bleeding rules would be appropriate to simulate the lethality of slowly bleeding to death over the course of a battle/day. Just because a hit is not lethal in and of itself does not mean the plate armor guy is out of the woods.

[mhd]

Isn't that a wee bit complicated? I mean, even the GURPS guys got rid of their "PD" and that was comparatively simple.

 

Never mind that solid mail was pretty much impervious to arrows, too, and bodkins weren't armor piercers.

 

HERO's bows are just too damn good. As with other weaponry problems, this is partially based on the fact that certain weapons apparently have to be better than others at damaging people and there's only so many DCs we've got in the muscle-powered range.

[Narf the Mouse]

Why not just give bows Reduced Penetration?

[Markdoc]

Eh. Better to just tone down the damage. We've gone over this before (most recently, here: http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/91443-are-tanks-really-that-tough/page-23?do=findComment&comment=2451309) but the short version is that most ranged weapons in Hero do unrealistically high amounts of damage.

 

Cheers, Mark

[mhd]

And/or increase the value of armor. A bigger gap between proper armor and dungeon protective gear doesn't really hurt.  Unless, of course, you really want bows to be that deadly, then just roll with your 2d6+ weapons and give out special arrows that really are Armor Piercing. Perfectly valid and fun -- as long as one doesn't sell it as a close enough simulation of the English longbow and its broadheads vs. contemporary armor.

[Markdoc]

I've played around with increasing the values of armour (in fact, I've posted the updated values here), but experience shows that simply shifts the problems elsewhere.

 

I think it makes sense simply to address the problem at root.

 

Cheers, Mark

[Psillias]

So...really like Markdoc's ideas on page 3.  Your solution #4 certainly makes sense for medieval weapons and I think I'm going to incorporate it. 

 

My question is: how do you change the armor to reflect basic firearms and beyond?  I'm still fleshing out a Gamma World campaign where blackpowder weapons are uncommon and other, more powerful items exist.  Does the armor count for nothing?  Does it scale down based on the technology level of the weapon?

 

Appreciate any advice.

[mhd]

In a Gamma World setting, I'd be careful to not overrate scrounged metal armor. There's an incredibly huge difference between custom (post-)medieval plate vs. bent signs. On the other hand, you're going to find a few people who'll do the Clint Eastwood/Marty Mc Fly thing and just strap solid hunks of metal to their various body parts. If you're doing hit locations and decent encumbrance rules, that should be no problem, though.

 

There's nothing inherently magical about firearms. They co-existed with armor for long periods of time. Now, granted, mail vs. bullets is just a pretty creative way of self-inflicted shrapnel. But it doesn't really matter whether you're hit with a warhammer, a quarrel or a blackpowder bullet if you're wearing plate. They had "proofed" plate where marks of the bullet tests were actually signs of quality. If I remember correctly, the hussars wore incredibly thick breastplates, and there have been records of them surviving cannonballs.

 

Now in HERO terms, I guess that at some threshold you'll call certain bullets "armor piercing" and certain armor "hardened". There are probably arguments for making any firearm AP and shot-proof plate hardened, or you could wait 'til FMJ rounds to call them AP and make modern armor hardened. Even more superior weaponry would be even better at penetrating armor, but sadly HERO as written only has a fixed divisor.

 

Although for Gamma World and it's wide variety of weapons, I'd try to simplify and disregard actual tech/science/physics and just go with "tech level" as the sole determining factor of both PD and DC.

[Markdoc]

As far as firearms go, the very earliest medieval firearms probably don’t warrant armour-piercing. They were low velocity, and some fired arrows instead of bullets, others fired stone bullets that disintegrated on hitting good armour, etc. But by the time you get to the late 1400’s they should definitely have AP: they were after all, specifically deployed to meet the threat of heavily armoured infantry that bows and longbows could no longer defeat. And we know from contemporary texts that they were capable of making lethal holes in even good quality armour out to medium range.

 

Of course in the renaissance era, people started making shotproof armour, but that was a ) expensive and b ) thicker and heavier than regular armour. It’s one reason why as firearms became widespread, leg and arm armour disappeared: it was simply impractical to make those pieces heavy enough to be shotproof, and if they weren’t shotproof, they weren’t much use. Better to save the extra weight to compensate for the increasing weight of breastplate and helm.

 

For a game where you have different tech levels in play, a simple house rule would be that weapons gain 1 level of AP against armour for each tech level, they are higher than the armour they attack, and armour gains one level of hardened for each tech level  it is higher than the attacking weapon. I wouldn’ charge for this: it’s just part of the campaign ground rules.

 

This might sound like it short-changes high tech weapons, but if we are just talking kinetic energy, a musket ball that passes through you will do pretty much the same damage as a modern round that passes through you and presumably the same  damage as a Gauss needle that passes through you. It’s the hole that’s the lethal part – improvements in firearms haven’t changed the damage much over the last couple of centuries: what they have done is reduced the weight, increased accuracy, durability, rate of fire and ability to penetrate armour/cover.

 

Cheers, Mark

[mhd]

As far as firearms go, the very earliest medieval firearms probably don’t warrant armour-piercing. They were low velocity, and some fired arrows instead of bullets, others fired stone bullets that disintegrated on hitting good armour, etc. But by the time you get to the late 1400’s they should definitely have AP: they were after all, specifically deployed to meet the threat of heavily armoured infantry that bows and longbows could no longer defeat. And we know from contemporary texts that they were capable of making lethal holes in even good quality armour out to medium range.

Although you don't really need to be AP to PA. Lump damage alone will serve you well, and firearms were no slouch in that department. HERO tends to exaggerate here already (great base damage, very easy to add to that), so I'm always a bit wary here.

 

Of course this also depends on how the weapons are modeled. What's the difference between a musket and an assault rifle, besides RoF, especially given HERO's narrow DC range here.

(I think I've seen tables (equipment guide?) where it's all about caliber, which really favors the muskets a bit too much. On the other hand, "Guns, Guns, Guns" might be a bit overkill for a beers & pretzels GW game.)

[Markdoc]

Although you don't really need to be AP to PA. Lump damage alone will serve you well, and firearms were no slouch in that department. HERO tends to exaggerate here already (great base damage, very easy to add to that), so I'm always a bit wary here.

 

Of course this also depends on how the weapons are modeled. What's the difference between a musket and an assault rifle, besides RoF, especially given HERO's narrow DC range here.

(I think I've seen tables (equipment guide?) where it's all about caliber, which really favors the muskets a bit too much. On the other hand, "Guns, Guns, Guns" might be a bit overkill for a beers & pretzels GW game.)

 

Exactly - pumping up the damage for ranged weapons like guns to allow them to punch through arnour gives you the problem that they then become ridiculously lethal against unarmoured targets. What tends to happen in-game* is that everybody then up-armours as much as they can ... meaning that light weapons become completely ineffectual, so everybody carries the heaviest weapon they can ... It also causes a problem for the GM, in a fantasy game, because to make nonhuman monsters a credible combat threat, you have to pump defences and attacks ... which is how we ended up in the thread about the  stat.s for the Abrams tank, which to make it proof against small arms fire got sufficient defences that it can be airdropped from a couple of Km altitude and still be battle ready after impact.

 

It drives the gun nuts crazy, but the real-life answer to your question about the difference between a musket and an assault rifle, in terms of lethality appears to be ... not very much. Calibre, by itself, is a lousy measure of lethality. Looking at real-life figures, smaller calibre, high velocity rounds are consistently more lethal than larger calibre lower velocity rounds - and large calibre, high velocity rounds are the most effective. How to measure that, though, is not clear. People have looked at muzzle-exit energy (which turns out to be a crappy predictor of lethality), how much kinetic energy is deposited in the target (has absolutely nothing to do with lethality), etc. If we take lethality as a measure of raw damage (ie: how likely is a hit from this weapon/round to kill a target, on average) it has changed remarkably little in the last couple of hundred years. What has changed, as you note, is the rate of fire, and also the degree of accuracy. In the 1700's musket shot was reckoned at about 280 metres (ie: the range at which a musket ball could be expected to kill or maim on a hit, what today is called the lethal range). On the other hand, the range at which an ordinary soldier could be expected to hit a man-sized target was only about 60 metres. The M16 has a lethal range of around 900 metres (and I'd take that number with a grain of salt, given real-life results), or about 3x that of the old muskets, but an effective range of about 450 metres - about 9x that of the musket - plus of course a rate of fire about 100x as great. In addition, it's lighter, more reliable, more robust under field conditions, and less likely to reveal your position and obscure your vision with a cloud of smoke. It's a superior weapon in every way ... but not because it does a lot more damage with each hit. In fact, at the ranges where most combat actually happens, both weapons are well within their lethal zones.

 

cheers, Mark

 

*we've been through this exercise in our games (sigh).

[Psillias]

Good exchange and good data.  Thanks much gentlemen!

[NuSoardGraphite]

Exactly - pumping up the damage for ranged weapons like guns to allow them to punch through arnour gives you the problem that they then become ridiculously lethal against unarmoured targets. What tends to happen in-game* is that everybody then up-armours as much as they can ... meaning that light weapons become completely ineffectual, so everybody carries the heaviest weapon they can ... It also causes a problem for the GM, in a fantasy game, because to make nonhuman monsters a credible combat threat, you have to pump defences and attacks ... which is how we ended up in the thread about the stat.s for the Abrams tank, which to make it proof against small arms fire got sufficient defences that it can be airdropped from a couple of Km altitude and still be battle ready after impact.

 

It drives the gun nuts crazy, but the real-life answer to your question about the difference between a musket and an assault rifle, in terms of lethality appears to be ... not very much. Calibre, by itself, is a lousy measure of lethality. Looking at real-life figures, smaller calibre, high velocity rounds are consistently more lethal than larger calibre lower velocity rounds - and large calibre, high velocity rounds are the most effective. How to measure that, though, is not clear. People have looked at muzzle-exit energy (which turns out to be a crappy predictor of lethality), how much kinetic energy is deposited in the target (has absolutely nothing to do with lethality), etc. If we take lethality as a measure of raw damage (ie: how likely is a hit from this weapon/round to kill a target, on average) it has changed remarkably little in the last couple of hundred years. What has changed, as you note, is the rate of fire, and also the degree of accuracy. In the 1700's musket shot was reckoned at about 280 metres (ie: the range at which a musket ball could be expected to kill or maim on a hit, what today is called the lethal range). On the other hand, the range at which an ordinary soldier could be expected to hit a man-sized target was only about 60 metres. The M16 has a lethal range of around 900 metres (and I'd take that number with a grain of salt, given real-life results), or about 3x that of the old muskets, but an effective range of about 450 metres - about 9x that of the musket - plus of course a rate of fire about 100x as great. In addition, it's lighter, more reliable, more robust under field conditions, and less likely to reveal your position and obscure your vision with a cloud of smoke. It's a superior weapon in every way ... but not because it does a lot more damage with each hit. In fact, at the ranges where most combat actually happens, both weapons are well within their lethal zones.

 

cheers, Mark

 

*we've been through this exercise in our games (sigh).

The easiest way to solve the issue is to put a limitation on low tech armor that they only count half their defense against firearms.

 

As far as how to determine damage of firearms is concerned, I think muzzle energy is the best waynto determine what a firearms damage is because it is measurable, mostly consistent and easily formulated into an abstract formula from which damage dice can be derived. All the other factors (bullet trajectory, KE at impact, bullet tumble or fracture etc) are far too nebulous to model in an rpg with any reasonable degree of playability.

 

So I feel you model damage based on KE so it has a fair amount of realism when interacting with armor and materials and then model damage to flesh with hit location multipliers and apply impairing/disabling wounds.

[Old Man]

Although you don't really need to be AP to PA. Lump damage alone will serve you well, and firearms were no slouch in that department. HERO tends to exaggerate here already (great base damage, very easy to add to that), so I'm always a bit wary here.

Yes, but then you have the problem where a bullet that can pierce armor will vaporize an unarmored victim. Piercing damage tends to be more all-or-nothing; if armor penetration is achieved, the resulting damage will be pretty similar to what would have been inflicted if no armor was worn. For firearms I'd actually consider increased AP and reduced damage.

 

Of course this also depends on how the weapons are modeled. What's the difference between a musket and an assault rifle, besides RoF, especially given HERO's narrow DC range here.

(I think I've seen tables (equipment guide?) where it's all about caliber, which really favors the muskets a bit too much. On the other hand, "Guns, Guns, Guns" might be a bit overkill for a beers & pretzels GW game.)

Caliber and damage are only loosely correlated in an age of tumbling and hollow point bullets. The assault rifle will be far more accurate, of course, with greater ROF and ammunition capacity.

[Lucius]

 

Instead of basing armor on Resistant Protection, base it on Damage Negation.

 

Higher tech weapons have Reduced Negation.

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary gets Negated Reduction

[mhd]

Exactly - pumping up the damage for ranged weapons like guns to allow them to punch through arnour gives you the problem that they then become ridiculously lethal against unarmoured targets.

 

Which seems to be the as-is case right now in HERO. I'm just saying, if you put more value into AP, the DCs need to go down accordingly.

 

It drives the gun nuts crazy, but the real-life answer to your question about the difference between a musket and an assault rifle, in terms of lethality appears to be ... not very much.

 

Yeah, weapons need to be "lethal enough", and once that's reached you tend to go for other criteria instead of going for the overkill (although that would probably be not as true in a GW campaign -- or the US hobbyist market). But I'm not just talking about realism here, but about different game models. GW might be closer to superheroics, where you might not really want to go into detail about the OCV/RMod/reliability parts of the design but instead provide a more or less linear TL -> DC curve, with added AP/Penetration/whatevs once that plateaus out (higher DCs then are reserved for e.g. energy weapons).

 

Depends on whether you want the players to immediately go for the most advanced weapons available (the equivalent of the +3 sword) or cherry-pick according to various statistics ("well, the fish-headed gibbon mutants are mostly unarmored and tend to swarm attack, so I'll use my blunderbuss instead of my sniper mazer").

[Markdoc]

As far as how to determine damage of firearms is concerned, I think muzzle energy is the best waynto determine what a firearms damage is because it is measurable, mostly consistent and easily formulated into an abstract formula from which damage dice can be derived.

 

This is true. There'a catch though - we now have a vast trove of data on injury and death from firearms that shows very clearly that in real life, muzzle energy has very little correlation with the ability of a weapon to kill or maim. And damage dice, inasmuch as they measure anything, measure the ability to kill or maim.

 

It's pretty easy to see why - the same model of gun, firing the same ammo, can have dramatically difference muzzle energy outputs, depending on the length of the barrel, even though that has no effect on the lethality of the weapon. Depending on the ammo used a .45 can have a higher - or lower - muzzle energy output than a .357 magnum. The KE delivered by a slug varies hugely depending on the distance from the muzzle, etc etc.

 

So it's a measure which is easy to quantify, just one which is largely irrelevant to calculating damage. The fact that all of these similar weapons - in real life - seem to have similar effects and that there are so many contributing factors which can't easily be modeled, to me says that we should ignore the unimportant details (and that seems to include the vast bulk of the minutae about weapons) and focus on the important ones. All that seems to be important in real life is penetration and placement. Slugs with more KE (as long as they don't fragment too easily) penetrate better, so there's no question that a weapon with more energetic projectile should do more damage (on average). But the difference seems to be pretty coarse. 5.56 or 7.62? Real life data says "same, same". .45, .44, .357, .5? Again, real life data says "no measurable difference, even averaged out over hundreds or thousands of hits". But there is a difference between a .22 and a .45. So there are differences, just not between basically comparable weapons - so the differences are pretty coarse.

 

But I've already found out that gamers, who have grown up with the idea of finely differentiated weapons tables, apparently find this very hard to accept.

 

cheers, Mark