Armour Piercing as an Adder

[tinman]

Greetings all,

 

One of the things that I have been struggling with in my campaign is a more realistic representation of guns vs. body armour. Basically I wanted to come up with a way to model how a rifle bullet that penetrates a ballistic vest doesn't seem to be any less deadly than one that just hits unarmoured flesh.

 

I tried using Armour Piercing, but it just wasn't granular enough for me. Either the weapon halved non-hardened armour or it didn't.

 

So I came up with a prototype system for a granular version of Armour Piercing as an adder. For every 5 extra points spent the attack may ignore 2 points of whatever the appropriate defense is. So if you buy a 2d6 physical RKA at 30 points plus 15 points worth of Armour Piercing your attack can ignore 6 of the target's rPD when applying damage. If you buy a 6d6 Energy Blast plus 20 points worth of Armour Piercing your attack can ignore 8 of the target's PD.

 

Essentially for 5 points you get double standard effect in exchange for only being used to breach defenses.

 

So to model a standard rifle round you might buy it as a 2d6 physical RKA with an additional 10 points of Armour Piercing so that it can ignore 4 rPD. To model a true armour-piercing bullet you might buy it as a 1d6+1 physical RKA (to reflect how the bullet doesn't deform) with an additional 25 points of Armour Piercing so that it can ignore 10 rPD.

 

Hardening would reduce the effectiveness of the Armour Piercing Adder. The first level of Hardening halves the benefit of Armour Piercing, while the second level of Hardening renders Armour Piercing completely inneffective.

 

Thoughts?

[sbarron]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

That's a good mathmatical way to approach this, but I think I would just use common sense. A standard kevlar vest doesn't work against rifles, assault rifles, etc. Everyone knows that. Just have that be the case in your game.

 

Maybe you could have someone who has a vest on get 2rPD against rifle rounds vs someone without getting none. Also, if the person has the metal plate inserts in their vest, you could give them the fill defense against everything, including rifles. Maybe those plates could also serve as additional defense against all attacks. I think the plates usually only cover the upper chest area, so maybe have them only cover hit locations 12-13 (or whatever).

 

So if you have an 6rPD vest without inserts, it works against standard handguns, and applies 2rPD vs. anything bigger. A 6rPD vest with plate inserts (covering 12-13 and providing an additional 2rPD for those locations) provides 8rPD vs. all attacks that hit locations 12-13, but acts as the former in all other ways.

 

I don't know if any of this gets addressed in Dark Champions. If I wanted to be more realistic about body armor, I might do something like this.

[Zanthis]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

Aside from an adder, the limitations "Does No STUN" (-1/2) and "BODY only contributes to counter defenses" (-1) on the rifle RKA could work. So I might buy:

 

2d6 RKA [30 Real/Active Points]

+2d6 RKA [30 Active Points] Does No Stun(-1/2), BODY only contributes to counter defenses(-1); [12 Points]

 

That would let me ignore on average 7rPD for the cost of 12 Points. Compare to your method which would cost 17.5 points for the same ability. I personally think the adder might be too expensive at -2rPD/5 Points considering you also are getting no extra STUN from the points. Further, if you apply advantages to your Rifle, it'll become much more expensive than going a limitation route. Conversely, adding limitations to a Rifle with your Adder will make it noticably cheaper than if you used limitations for the Armor Piercing effect.

 

You may also want to check out Dark Champions Piercing advantage. Don't have the book so I can't say for sure if that's what you want.

[tinman]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

I tend to be leery about genre/special effect rulings (armour with the special effect of being a ballistic vest doesn't work well against a RKA with the special effect of being a high-velocity rifle round). It just seems to reduce the generic abstract utility of the system to have to do that.

 

An alternative to making Armour Piercing an adder could be to provide varying levels of it instead (+1/4 reduces armour by 25%, +1/2 by 50% and +3/4 by 75%).

 

Of course, this is all highly YMMV territory. Armour Piercing as it stands is probably a perfect fit for most of the games out there.

[tinman]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

Aside from an adder, the limitations "Does No STUN" (-1/2) and "BODY only contributes to counter defenses" (-1) on the rifle RKA could work. So I might buy:

 

2d6 RKA [30 Real/Active Points]

+2d6 RKA [30 Active Points] Does No Stun(-1/2), BODY only contributes to counter defenses(-1); [12 Points]

 

That would let me ignore on average 7rPD for the cost of 12 Points. Compare to your method which would cost 17.5 points for the same ability. I personally think the adder might be too expensive at -2rPD/5 Points considering you also are getting no extra STUN from the points. Further, if you apply advantages to your Rifle, it'll become much more expensive than going a limitation route. Conversely, adding limitations to a Rifle with your Adder will make it noticably cheaper than if you used limitations for the Armor Piercing effect.

 

You may also want to check out Dark Champions Piercing advantage. Don't have the book so I can't say for sure if that's what you want.

 

That's a good point about STUN. When I came up with -2 DEF per 5 points I was thinking of it along the lines of standard effect from 1 DC "only to penetrate armour" (-1), but I wasn't really thinking in terms of STUN.

[ThothAmon]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

Check out the 'Piercing' Advantage from the old 3rd Edition Champions - IIRC each level of Piercing cost 3 points and reduced the target's resistand defenses by 1 DEF?

[ThothAmon]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

Check out the 'Piercing' Advantage from the old 3rd Edition Champions - IIRC each level of Piercing cost 3 points and reduced the target's resistand defenses by 1 DEF?

[Jhamin]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

For that matter, check out Piercing from the new Dark Champions 5th Ed. It does function as an adder, only to penetrate defences.

[tinman]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

Check out the 'Piercing' Advantage from the old 3rd Edition Champions - IIRC each level of Piercing cost 3 points and reduced the target's resistand defenses by 1 DEF?

 

For that matter' date=' check out Piercing from the new Dark Champions 5th Ed. It does function as an adder, only to penetrate defences.[/quote']

 

All my good ideas turn out to be old ideas, it seems. Was the 3rd ed. Piercing Advantage in the core book or one of the supplements?

[Hugh Neilson]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

Aside from an adder, the limitations "Does No STUN" (-1/2) and "BODY only contributes to counter defenses" (-1) on the rifle RKA could work. So I might buy:

 

2d6 RKA [30 Real/Active Points]

+2d6 RKA [30 Active Points] Does No Stun(-1/2), BODY only contributes to counter defenses(-1); [12 Points]

 

That would let me ignore on average 7rPD for the cost of 12 Points. Compare to your method which would cost 17.5 points for the same ability. I personally think the adder might be too expensive at -2rPD/5 Points considering you also are getting no extra STUN from the points. Further, if you apply advantages to your Rifle, it'll become much more expensive than going a limitation route. Conversely, adding limitations to a Rifle with your Adder will make it noticably cheaper than if you used limitations for the Armor Piercing effect.

 

I like this. By making the 2d6 Standard Effect, it's a flat 6 reduction, so you could simply use 2 points per 1 DEF eliminated.

[Zanthis]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

Just out of curiousity I played with the numbers treating the effect (reducing resistant defenses) as both an adder (-1rPD for 2 points) and at a set of limitations (-1.5 total) bought on additional RKA dice using Standard Effect (thanks Hugh).

 

The adder is always superiour no matter what combination of additional limitations and advantages are applied to the power. This is true in terms of both real cost and active points. In a very few instances if you buy no advantages and and add some additional limitations you can save a single point or so using -1.5 limitations on extra dice versus the adder method.

 

The increased simplicity of the adder makes it the clear winner IMO. Then again, since it appears in Dark Champions I guess someone already went through all the trouble of figuring this out .

[Zeropoint]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

What if you threw the Real Armor limitation on the kevlar vest, and simply ruled that it wasn't fully effective against some types of attacks (like high-velocity rifle bullets)?

 

Zeropoint

[Trebuchet]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

I fail to see how Armor Piercing as an Adder is superior to its being a Limitation with regard to "real" body armor. Real body armor is only going to be worth 4 - 8 rPD anyway, so halving that value with the current method seems to provide the desired result anyway without the need to tinker with game mechanics. But for my taste, the best way to represent "armor piercing" bullets is simply to make the rounds do more dice of damage but reduce the Stun Multiplier. In other words, a standard .308 NATO round does 2d6+1, but the armor piercing version might do 2½d6 or even 3d6 with a -2 Stun Multiplier. (Since real armor piercing rounds tend to zip right through human bodies without dumping much of their kinetic energy they often cause less pain, and in many cases actually do less damage.)

 

Now if you're looking to model certain types of "bleeding edge" body armor (Synthetic spider silk is the current Holy Grail of high-tech body armor manufacturers.) and/or high-tech bullets (such as tungsten or depleted uranium-tipped) then this might have some utility. In that case I suggest looking at the Piercing Advantage from Dark Champions, as has been suggested above.

[TheEmerged]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

This can be handled by improving the attack OR putting a limit on the defense -- or both, for that mattter.

 

Personally I use a -1/2 Limitation on the Armor to reflect this mechanic -- if any BODY gets through the DEF then all the BODY gets through. I consider this to be a more limiting version of "real" (you can't take both limitations).

 

-----------------

 

Having said that, I also wanted to chime in with this point: HERO's mechanic of using advantages on attack powers seems to break down the higher in points you go. Mechanon's (from "Champions") first multipower is a good example of this: he has a straight-up 18d6 energy blast, and a 12d6 Armor Peircing blast. Assuming average damage rolls (63 vs 42), the victim has to have a DEF of 44 before the AP blast will do more damage. Granted that in a campaign where *everyone* throws around 90 pt multipowers and has the DEF scores to match that isn't an issue -- but for a "boss" opponent it doesn't work out as impressively as it sounds...

 

And just for that math wonks, an NND (9d6) would begin to average superior results at 32 DEF.

[Gary]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

I would be very leery of allowing something like this.

 

Consider in a "typical" superheroic campaign where attacks are 12d6 and average defenses are 20-25 or so. Vs most targets that matter, a 12d6 EB and 6d6 EB + 6d6 EB only to counter defenses, are functionally the same thing. Yet the 6d6+6d6 would be vastly cheaper than the 12d6 EB if you allow a -1 or -1.5 limitation on the second 6d6.

 

If you make the cost of the Adder cheap enough, you'll get the same effect. A power that isn't really limited getting a significant cost savings.

[Sean Waters]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

If you want a penetrating bullet to ignore the armoured vest, in effect, don't buy AP, buy a linked armour dispel with the limitation 'only effects armour if the linked RKA rolled enough BODY damage to penetrate through it' - limitation depends on size of RKA and average defences.

[TheEmerged]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

Problem with the "Dispel" above: damage is figured before any powers that adjust defenses are figured in. Quote from FREd pg 234

 

Fifth Edition page 234, column B, 3rd paragraph under Multiple-Power Attacks

Moreover, if one of the attacks will reduce or affect his defenses or CV (for example, a Drain PD or a Flash), the other attack is applied first.

[Eosin]

Re: Armour Piercing as an Adder

 

Piercing Rules (which is what we are basically talking about) work very well in Heroic Genres but less well in Supers. The reverse of this is also true.

 

Our group has always incorporated Piercing, it is a great rule (3rd, 4th or 5th ED) and provides for some fine tuning of armor versus weapons. This is especially true of HTH weapons.