Culture Shock: Slightly less 'cuddly' STAR HERO equipment

[Bismark]

My gaming group (who had either been playing HERO in the form of CHAMPIONS or FANTASY HERO for some time or were total HERO novices) got a bit of a shock when they played in my last scenario having been used to the weapon/armour stats in the rulebooks: I went for something just a little less 'cinematic' by not compressing weapon and armour values as is the norm.

 

See the look of joy ( ) on the player's faces when their Light Combat Armour was 25PD/25ED, hardened against all archaic weapons; see their look of horror ( ) when a bad guy hit one of them with an AP round from an ETC (Electrothermal-Chemical) Assault Rifle and I calmly told the victim that it was 6D6 AP RKA (a normal assault rifle would be between 4-6D6 RKA, depending on type; ETC weapons can develop 50% more muzzle energy for the same breech and barrel strength; this job was 9D6RKA when not using penetrator rounds).

 

The look on their face when they saw my conversion for the Russion 14.5 mm heavy machine gun was priceless - well the round could get through 25mm of face-hardened steel at 50m range and was originally an anti-tank rifle round, so did they REALLY expect their armour to be able to take it? [15D6 AP AP, by the way - bad enough BEFORE the Autofire ].

 

They have since learned that gun combat can be very dangerous (and that 20mm combat shotguns can carry VERY nasty payloads - put angled fins on a projectile to make it spin and fill the round with plastic explosive [HESH - I love it], use HEAP, shotgun grenades, flechette etc.). The players are now really, really good at arranging to ambushes and avoiding direct close-up firefights now (wonder why?).

 

Oh, and BTW, the PC caught that round in the 'Vitals' (OUCH!); AND it failed to get out of the back armour, so it was lodged in one of his very private places - NOT somewhere where you want depleted uranium…

 

Anyone else out there tried anything like this - it gives a lethality nearer to GURPs than anything else.

[Intrope]

Re: Culture Shock: Slightly less 'cuddly' STAR HERO equipment

 

High-lethality HERO? Pretty sweet! I've never done such a thing, though. That would be very good for Cyberpunk, or Bug Hunting Star Hero.

 

BTW, did the big STUN from stun multipliers cause a problem? I'd think with a normal human STUN amount, big defense and huge damage you'd see almost all survivable hits be KOs, which strikes me as unrealistic. Not that I've got any real-world combat experience, but I read a lot of modern combat accounts and people are frequently wounded but functional (as in, shooting people). With KAs and STUN multiples, I'd think you'd see a lot of people who are wounded and at GM's option instead.

[ParitySoul]

Re: Culture Shock: Slightly less 'cuddly' STAR HERO equipment

 

Well, if you go HIGH TECH Gurps then no this is pretty typical. 5d6++ rounds did nasty things to people in chainmail.

 

4E is just as deadly.

 

But I really like your HERO take on the issue.

[gewing]

Re: Culture Shock: Slightly less 'cuddly' STAR HERO equipment

 

You took things even farther than Iwould have!

 

 

I Salute You!

[sinanju]

Re: Culture Shock: Slightly less 'cuddly' STAR HERO equipment

 

Whatever floats your boat and all that, but...

 

If I were going to run a high-tech game again (and I've been toying with a Traveller-esque campaign idea), after years of playing GURPS, I'd make sure the weapons were much LESS lethal. In most of the games I've played, high tech hand weapons (to say nothing of worse weapons!) tend to have two results when they hit you.

 

Either your armor stops it entirely and you're unhurt.

 

Or you're dead.

 

Realistic? Maybe. Probably, even, if people are packing high-energy railguns or energy weapons and whatnot. But not a lot of fun for gaming purposes.*

 

*unless that's what you like, of course.

[austenandrews]

Re: Culture Shock: Slightly less 'cuddly' STAR HERO equipment

 

I've run games in the past with a pretty high risk of injury and death. It's fun for a certain flavor. I found that the bleeding rules were particular interesting, in that the player couldn't just ignore random wounds. Not that light wounds turned lethal or anything, just that the players had to do paperwork on each wound every turn, which was a tangible approximation of the constant annoyance an injured character would feel.

 

Not something I'd recommend for most games, though.

[Bismark]

Re: Culture Shock: Slightly less 'cuddly' STAR HERO equipment

 

As Intrope wrote

 

BTW, did the big STUN from stun multipliers cause a problem? I'd think with a normal human STUN amount, big defense and huge damage you'd see almost all survivable hits be KOs, which strikes me as unrealistic. Not that I've got any real-world combat experience, but I read a lot of modern combat accounts and people are frequently wounded but functional (as in, shooting people). With KAs and STUN multiples, I'd think you'd see a lot of people who are wounded and at GM's option instead.

 

The answer is: not particularly - hits on head or vitals are bad (particularly location 3, which I usually say is the face - 25 point armour might have a 15pt visor if you are lucky) - but others had people Stunned occasionally (until the stim doses built in to the combat suit kicked in) or they went 'ouch, you ##~??~!!!' and proceeded to return the favour (with interest, usually).

 

Additionally, the 25 pt armour was for the non-combat personnel - the grunts wore 35 pt Medium Combat Armour. The fact that the lead combat guy was SPD 5, DEX 23 and had Fast-Draw and Lightning Reflexes, plus some healing nanobots in his bloodstream made him rather durable, although HE was the recipient of that nasty shot to a very embarrassing place and the medic had to extract the bullet from one of his gonads during the whole 5 minutes he was unconscious - this guy was tough [did I mention the 3 pts of subdermal mesh and the CON of 23?].

 

The party were 250 Pt Heroic characters - not exactly cannon-fodder.

 

'Real Weapon' benchmarks I used were:

 

Standard Pistol (9mm Parabellum, 400 Joules muzzle energy): 2D6-1

.44 Magnum (1.4 kJ muzzle energy): 3D6-1

Assault Rifle (AK47, M16; roughly 2.5 kJ muzzle energy): 4.5 to 5D6 RKA

WWII .303, .30-06, 7.62mm, 7.92mm etc. Combat Rifle (3.3-3.9 kJ muzzle energy): 6 to 6.5 D6 RKA

Russian 14.5 AT rifle (31.5 kJ muzzle energy!!!! - a Browning .5 M2 bullet only develops 19kJ…): 15D6 AP (AP AP against non-ultra-tech armour)

 

Combat shotguns were great fun because the loadout options were so entertaining - damage from that took a LOT of 'guestimating' based on what I know about effective payload sizes etc.

 

Some of my ultra-tech gear damages for comparison:

 

ETC Assault Rifle (ultra-tech): 7 to 9D6 RKA dependent on calibre (or a 5 to 6D6 AP Discarding Sabot round for those sick puppies who like them).

 

Cyclops backpack-powered laser (big and bulky): 6D6 RKA AP AP AP in 'pulse' mode (the wave pressure would actually cause a noticeable recoil in Zero-G and there is a spectacular pink/green ball of oxygen/nitrogen plasma formed and a BIG BANG when it is fired in an earth-type atmosphere).

 

'Long Tom' (respect to BTRC's 'More Guns' for this name) railgun (carried by our resident Combat Monster - but not shipboard…): 2m long, semi-auto, with bipod, 6mm calibre, 17D6 AP AP [yes I know it is gross, but it is a long-range sniper rifle and he's only used it twice]. Also burns up power cells quickly.

 

 

Of course, one of the PCs decided to make the battlefield FAR more lethal by spraying nerve gas everywhere (do not get your suit unsealed if you wish to live) - the bad guys were somewhat resilient and reacted to bullet hits like automatons, so he did have a point…

 

Overall, the players adjusted quite quickly (and a latecomer to the campaign decided that his character needed Combat Luck for some reason…).

 

Now to do stats for Metal Storm-style weapons (evil snigger…)

[Grail Quest]

Re: Culture Shock: Slightly less 'cuddly' STAR HERO equipment

 

As Intrope wrote

'Real Weapon' benchmarks I used were:

 

Standard Pistol (9mm Parabellum, 400 Joules muzzle energy): 2D6-1

.44 Magnum (1.4 kJ muzzle energy): 3D6-1

Assault Rifle (AK47, M16; roughly 2.5 kJ muzzle energy): 4.5 to 5D6 RKA

WWII .303, .30-06, 7.62mm, 7.92mm etc. Combat Rifle (3.3-3.9 kJ muzzle energy): 6 to 6.5 D6 RKA

Russian 14.5 AT rifle (31.5 kJ muzzle energy!!!! - a Browning .5 M2 bullet only develops 19kJ…): 15D6 AP (AP AP against non-ultra-tech armour)

 

I'm working on recalculating firearms myself, and am interested in how you converted muzzle energy to DCs of damage.

 

I'm using a combination of projectile weight and muzzle velocity to estimate damage, and all damage is AP, No Knockback.

Muzzle velocity is converted into DCs using the Velocity Damage chart. Projectile weight starts at 1 DC for 1/64th of 100 kg, and can have a negative DC. When the DCs are summed together, I get the final rating BEFORE applying Armor Piercing and No Knockback, which all projectiles have. Armor Piercing is on the BODY damage only.

The numbers turn out like this:

 

Pistols: 5-7 DC

Rifles: 8-11 DC

Heavy Rifles (.40 to .50 caliber) 10-13 DC

152mm cannon, 27kg shell only (excludes warhead damage/effects): 21 DC

[Bismark]

Re: Culture Shock: Slightly less 'cuddly' STAR HERO equipment

 

Calculating damage had to be done using a lot of 'guesstimating', comparisons of every set of rules (RPG and skirmish wargame) I have ever seen (which is a LOT), textbook figures for muzzle energies, muzzle velocities and armour penetration, and finally anecdotal evidence from ex-soldiers (mainly British Army, plus Russian Afghanistan and Chechnya veterans).

 

I would like to do it more scientifically, but it seems to work (and kept my players [many of whom had used firearms in the days before they became verboten over here in the UK] happy - they were originally unhappy with the low damage HERO weaponry did, regarding it as suitable only for superhero-type games).

 

The laser stuff comes from an old Open University TV programme - watching this antique 1970s bench laser blowing a hole in 10mm of sheet steel (and causing extensive fracture damage to it during the blow-through), while creating big plasma balls and sounding like a loud thunderclap was something of an eye-opener when I first saw it.

 

One thing that need to be done is, if using serious gun damage, some kind of 'blow-through' rules are required (like GURPS or even FUZION {no flames please}); I have also to model the really nasty damage that some rounds with odd properties do (5.45mm Soviet would probably do internal damage like a hollowpoint, according to surgeons operating in Chechnya - it's MUCH more unpleasant than 7.62 Soviet).

 

One thing I have shied away from is changing the hit location chart to something more 'realistic' (like the chart in the freebie PDF Atomik Fuzuin' that was done for FUZION a few years back) - it make the head much easier to hit (it becomes location 7 rather than 3-5, and there is only a -5 to hit it rather than -8 ) and even my players are willing to make that concession to cinematic action as they are quite fond of their characters.

 

The changed gun rules have served their purpose - my group stayed with HERO (rather than defecting to GURPS…)

[lloydmperrin]

Re: Culture Shock: Slightly less 'cuddly' STAR HERO equipment

 

Bravo!

I try to use the same techniques in my space campaign. It's fun towatch the players

revel in their near invulnerability only to have a 100 pt. butt-scratching guard leave burn marks on the heroes cape as he is ...regrouping!

No seriously, it lets the players choose which size fishbowl they want to swim in, and to SLOW down a bit in their own backyard

[Fenixcrest]

Re: Culture Shock: Slightly less 'cuddly' STAR HERO equipment

 

I've run games in the past with a pretty high risk of injury and death. It's fun for a certain flavor. I found that the bleeding rules were particular interesting, in that the player couldn't just ignore random wounds. Not that light wounds turned lethal or anything, just that the players had to do paperwork on each wound every turn, which was a tangible approximation of the constant annoyance an injured character would feel.

 

Not something I'd recommend for most games, though.

 

That gets rep. I might use bleeding in my next campaign just for that reason, now.

 

Anyway, I like the idea of less 'cuddly' weaponry, especially in the hands of evil. Like, you'd expect ruthless conquerors to have some really, really, inhumane weapons if they're after genocide.

[JohnTaber]

Re: Culture Shock: Slightly less 'cuddly' STAR HERO equipment

 

BTW' date=' did the big STUN from stun multipliers cause a problem? I'd think with a normal human STUN amount, big defense and huge damage you'd see almost all survivable hits be KOs, which strikes me as unrealistic. Not that I've got any real-world combat experience, but I read a lot of modern combat accounts and people are frequently wounded but functional (as in, shooting people). With KAs and STUN multiples, I'd think you'd see a lot of people who are wounded and at GM's option instead.[/quote']

 

In my Alien Legion based game I just gave all of the weapons -1 Stun Mod and raised the damage. This worked perfectly. Just wanted to throw that out...adds lethality but gets around this issue....