Ironmongers, unite!

[AmadanNaBriona]

There have been a lot of ideas recently being bounced around in various threads concerning crafting weapons and vehicles, and we're seeing some classic themes revisited again.

I thought it might be nice to throw up a thread where all us tinkerer types can brainstorm various how-to's without totally derailing other threads or losing access to a neat idea because it got buried in a thread that only has a slim connection to the question at hand.

(And yes, a lot of this would be stuff I'd be contributing to GIR if I was able to get off my rear and start working with them)

 

My idea is to see what we can come up with to solve some of these issues while still keeping mostly within legal builds... mayhaps very esoteric ones, and quite possibly involving a lot of custom limitations and/or advantages, but still seeing if there are semi book legal ways of approaching these tasks.

 

This thread has been inspired by the Crimson Skies Conversions thread, Thia's HALO hero stuff, my own frittering away at Sky Galleons of Mars conversions, and in general any situation where the usual HERO character/vehicle/base systems don't quite replicate the feel you might want for your game... LIke say, any game set in circumstances where you might want more compartmentalized damage rules for a vehicle (Firefly, Star Wars, Regency/Pirate Hero, a pulp aviators game... whatever).

 

I hope to see folk air unusual workarounds or unique Idea's here, and also welcome links to posts or threads that address and/or solve a problem in a creative, out of the box fashion.

 

 

To get things started.

 

I've been thinking about Zeppelins.

Now, the Airship in TUV is BIG. Size Class 18. But this causes a few problems... It's REALLY light for its size... makes sense, as its a lighter than air craft. Now, if you look at the text descriptions, it's easy enough to see that the gondola of this airship really weighs in around size 12, both in weight and dimensions. So I began pondering rewriting this airship with an interesting perspective...

First off... buy the SIZE based on the gondola.

Second... Buy the base Str back to 0. Why? Because, without the big gas filled ballon, it just sorta sits there.

Third... Limit the propeller driven Flight so that it can't be used to gain alltitude all by itself (bear with me)

Fourth... Purchase STR in chunks, Focused, to represent the lifting power of the gas cells. Drop a limit similar to the Lifting carrying only limit... but less punative. Call it HtH Damage based on Mass, not STR. A combat Zeppelin might buy the STR in 5 point blocks. A nonrigid Airship (blimp in modern parlance) with a single cell might buy it all in one big hunk. Link in a wee bit of flight, 1" or 2", only to gain altitude, subject to wind (Sailing -1), that only works if there is enough STR to compensate for the gondola and cargo weights. Throw on another limit (I haven't worked all the numbers out on this yet) that increases the "practical SIZ" of the Airship for PER and DCV purposes based on the number of cells.

Drop some Major Side effects on the ballons if you want to fill them with hydrogen (*Boom*)

 

Bam.

 

We now have a rough outline for modeling Airships that can have their balloons targeted seperately from the gondola, with Body damage to the Balloon not reflecting on the overall body of the Airship, but rather having a direct effect of bouyancy and lift. It also reflects the weight of an airship better.

And leads to lots of potential "Run time drama"

Now you have seperate discrete targets for your Pulp pilots to target. For the Airship crews POV, you now have a mechanisim for a number of dramatic options... throwing everything that isn't nailed down overboard to try and retain positive bouyancy after a firefight, the possibility that you coyuld have your props shot out and be left drifting at the mercy of the winds. A mad bugger kitbashing 4 zepplins together to make a super high altitude bombing platform to threaten New York with a scavenged alien biowarfare bomb.

 

 

Just an example of the kind of thinking I'm hoping this thread will inspire.

[Black Rose]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

That's a very cool off-the-top build for zepplins, Amadan. I really wish I had something to contribute beyond Kudos.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

That's a very cool off-the-top build for zepplins' date=' Amadan. I really wish I had something to contribute beyond Kudos.[/quote']

Thanks.

I've been kinda feverishly pondering it for a couple of days now, trying to hammer out some concrete numbers.

 

Overall, one of my meta-projects is linked with these ideas... Right now, TUV dictates that any purchased Vehicle Movement also by default includes lift/bouyancy/carrying capacity. I'm trying to work within the system to divorce the two aspects of movement, as I think that once that goal is accomplished it'll give a better mechanisim for dramatic and still realistic combat with many types of vehicles. Better Sinking rules for ships(tho what we currently have isn't too bad), airships and ballons, magic or pulp tech "Flying ships" that use weird materials for lift, the ability to reflect control surface and wing damage on planes...

As an added bonus It'll probably work well with spaceships too, for modeling decompression effects, tho the current bulkhead mechanisim works pretty well.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

Greetery, peepery. Thanks for the heads-up, Fool. I've been banging my head against the wall with a few things. One of them is mentally coming to terms with the precise granularity of the scale. For example, the difference between a 2d6 and a 2d6+1 weapon is a whole DC. To my way of thinking, it's one dinky hit-point. I've discovered, though, that unlike d20 HERO rewards granularity; a single DC, a single point of armor, and so on. I'm used to thinking in sets, so it's caused me to make some major revisions in my builds.

 

My Rocket Launcher for HALO is still 5d6, but that's much more reasonable than the original 9d6, if I go by how HERO is written. It's nearly impossible to build an insta-glick weapon.

 

We also note that if you're only talking BODY, and not STUN, people may be bleeding but they're still alive after taking, say, 10 points of damage. They may be alive and bleeding out! But they're alive. So death ain't proud, in HERO. In fact, it often looks rather bored.

 

One of the things we've discussed at length in the Fantasy HERO game is that STUN /=/ Killing. I don't get (maybe y'all get it, I don't get it) what doing STUN damage has to do with stabbing a guy in the ribs. Or slicing his hammy wide open. Especially if he's prepared for the shock or in mid-fight. So we did away with the Stun Lotto and replaced it with 1:1. I may replace it again with SER (3:1), but I'm undecided. It's all in pursuit of the right feel.

 

Now on that topic, as the AnB pointed out, I've been feverishly working on a HALO to HERO conversion. There are a few things that are very, very difficult to model in HERO that would simply a hand-wave in d20. Which, honestly, is why I took on the project, to give myself the challenge and the experience. I'll give y'all two of the big things I'm bandying about in my head at the moment.

 

The first, MJOLNIR armor. Let me explain this concept, because it doesn't exist anywhere in the HERO system. You have a suit of armor. Right? Good. Suit of armor with 5 DEF. Kay? Good. And you have a Force Field that self-replenishes once its depleted. So now you've got armor & a personal force-field.

 

The personal force-field is not ablative. In HERO terms that's the first thing everyone thinks of - because you chip it away and you start taking damage afterwards. But that doesn't, in any way, capture the feel of HALO. That adds more dice to the mix (constantly making activation rolls) rather than simply letting the shield get beaten down - say, with BODY.

 

So I built the whole thing a few times, there's a new chap on the board, Lairion I think, and he and I hit it back and forth. It looks vaguely like this now:

 

MJOLNIR Power Armor.

 

MJOLNIR/Covenant Elite Armor (focus):

 

Armor 5/5, Hardened vs. Energy Weapons (+1/4) (19 Active Points); OIF (armored suit, -1/2) Total cost: 13 points.

 

PLUS

 

Force Shield, BODY 15 (extra body, SFX energy field), DEF 3, Hardened vs. Projectiles (+1/4) (49 Active Points); OIF (Integral to MJOLNIR, -1/2), Can be Dispelled (-1/2), Vulnerable to Dispel (-1/2) DEF ceases operation when BODY is depleted (-1/2). Total cost: 17 points.

 

PLUS , Heal BODY (10d6, SER 15 BODY), Trigger (After one turn of taking no damage, not controlled by user, resets automatically, +1/2), Reduced END (0 END, +1/2) (200 Active Points), Only for Force Field (-2), OIF (Integral to MJOLNIR, -1/2), Extra Time (Force field fully recharges in one full phase, -1/2) Total cost: 50 points.

 

Final Cost: 80 points.

 

This is the 'Focus' version of this suit, without the /5 modifier for being a vehicle. It includes the additional limitation "Can be Dispelled" to cover the blast issued by a Covenant plasma pistol, which if you use SER is 36 points, or a total of 72 vs. a Force Field, guaranteeing it comes down every time.

 

I was also seriously considering adding on all of the various Life Support adders it needs to operate in deep-space. My original design costed it out as a vehicle, and considering that vehicles buy BODY at 1:1 instead of 2:1 IIRC, it makes not only the Heal cost 1/2 what it does now, but slices the whole thing into 1/5th of its final adjusted cost, meaning a PC who was going to have this suit forced on him could afford it without handwaving battle armor.

 

I'm also struggling with damage ratios in general. I think I'm going to build the tank with a reasonable DEF (say, 15, that seems reasonable for a tank) with reinforced armor (DR 25%). I cheated with the Sniper Rifle, in that I brought the damage down, but gave it "find weakness" against humanoid targets, to represent its lethal capacity without having slice through engine blocks.

 

Thoughts?

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

And in case anyone is curious:

 

 

This is the thread I hijacked and just started converting everything on. It's current as of this moment, until I revise something again.

 

*shakes fist* I swear one of these days I'll get the drecking hyperlink button to work with Safari.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

Greetery, peepery. Thanks for the heads-up, Fool. I've been banging my head against the wall with a few things. One of them is mentally coming to terms with the precise granularity of the scale. For example, the difference between a 2d6 and a 2d6+1 weapon is a whole DC. To my way of thinking, it's one dinky hit-point. I've discovered, though, that unlike d20 HERO rewards granularity; a single DC, a single point of armor, and so on. I'm used to thinking in sets, so it's caused me to make some major revisions in my builds.

 

My Rocket Launcher for HALO is still 5d6, but that's much more reasonable than the original 9d6, if I go by how HERO is written. It's nearly impossible to build an insta-glick weapon.

 

We also note that if you're only talking BODY, and not STUN, people may be bleeding but they're still alive after taking, say, 10 points of damage. They may be alive and bleeding out! But they're alive. So death ain't proud, in HERO. In fact, it often looks rather bored.

 

One of the things we've discussed at length in the Fantasy HERO game is that STUN /=/ Killing. I don't get (maybe y'all get it, I don't get it) what doing STUN damage has to do with stabbing a guy in the ribs. Or slicing his hammy wide open. Especially if he's prepared for the shock or in mid-fight. So we did away with the Stun Lotto and replaced it with 1:1. I may replace it again with SER (3:1), but I'm undecided. It's all in pursuit of the right feel.

 

Now on that topic, as the AnB pointed out, I've been feverishly working on a HALO to HERO conversion. There are a few things that are very, very difficult to model in HERO that would simply a hand-wave in d20. Which, honestly, is why I took on the project, to give myself the challenge and the experience. I'll give y'all two of the big things I'm bandying about in my head at the moment.

 

The first, MJOLNIR armor. Let me explain this concept, because it doesn't exist anywhere in the HERO system. You have a suit of armor. Right? Good. Suit of armor with 5 DEF. Kay? Good. And you have a Force Field that self-replenishes once its depleted. So now you've got armor & a personal force-field.

 

The personal force-field is not ablative. In HERO terms that's the first thing everyone thinks of - because you chip it away and you start taking damage afterwards. But that doesn't, in any way, capture the feel of HALO. That adds more dice to the mix (constantly making activation rolls) rather than simply letting the shield get beaten down - say, with BODY.

 

So I built the whole thing a few times, there's a new chap on the board, Lairion I think, and he and I hit it back and forth. It looks vaguely like this now:

 

MJOLNIR Power Armor.

 

MJOLNIR/Covenant Elite Armor (focus):

 

Armor 5/5, Hardened vs. Energy Weapons (+1/4) (19 Active Points); OIF (armored suit, -1/2) Total cost: 13 points.

 

PLUS

 

Force Shield, BODY 15 (extra body, SFX energy field), DEF 3, Hardened vs. Projectiles (+1/4) (49 Active Points); OIF (Integral to MJOLNIR, -1/2), Can be Dispelled (-1/2), Vulnerable to Dispel (-1/2) DEF ceases operation when BODY is depleted (-1/2). Total cost: 17 points.

 

PLUS , Heal BODY (10d6, SER 15 BODY), Trigger (After one turn of taking no damage, not controlled by user, resets automatically, +1/2), Reduced END (0 END, +1/2) (200 Active Points), Only for Force Field (-2), OIF (Integral to MJOLNIR, -1/2), Extra Time (Force field fully recharges in one full phase, -1/2) Total cost: 50 points.

 

Final Cost: 80 points.

 

This is the 'Focus' version of this suit, without the /5 modifier for being a vehicle. It includes the additional limitation "Can be Dispelled" to cover the blast issued by a Covenant plasma pistol, which if you use SER is 36 points, or a total of 72 vs. a Force Field, guaranteeing it comes down every time.

 

I was also seriously considering adding on all of the various Life Support adders it needs to operate in deep-space. My original design costed it out as a vehicle, and considering that vehicles buy BODY at 1:1 instead of 2:1 IIRC, it makes not only the Heal cost 1/2 what it does now, but slices the whole thing into 1/5th of its final adjusted cost, meaning a PC who was going to have this suit forced on him could afford it without handwaving battle armor.

 

I'm also struggling with damage ratios in general. I think I'm going to build the tank with a reasonable DEF (say, 15, that seems reasonable for a tank) with reinforced armor (DR 25%). I cheated with the Sniper Rifle, in that I brought the damage down, but gave it "find weakness" against humanoid targets, to represent its lethal capacity without having slice through engine blocks.

 

Thoughts?

I dropped some notes in on the other thread before I saw that you had joined in here. Velkomeinnen!

1st off.... build the whole bloody suit as a vehicle. It works, its elegant, and it solves your cost availability issue and lets you drop in all the little bits you might need, and a few things that might make sense but don't really ever come up in HALO gameplay (I'm at best guessing about that... I've never played it. While it looks WAY cool, I can't really justify an xbox for just one game). As a vehicle you can fold in movement, Life support, Enhanced Senses, Talents(like compasses and an internal clock) and the like without breaking the bank... that stuff adds up quick on a character.

 

Without redoing the notes I just posted, I'll say that I'm still not sure this is the only way to do the regenerative sheild. Tho It works, its still a wee bit clumsy... See the other thread for mybasic concerns. Another that occured to me is weird but not insurmountable.. right now, an attack would hit the hardened 3 DEF, then deduct the 5 from the suit, then take body off the 15, because the system just defaults that way. A custom limit on the Body would take care of that tho.

 

I'm still thinking that some build involving a Force Wall with the optional variation of Ablative (where the defensive power loses 5 ap everytime its hit with an attack that COULD penetrate it, regardless of the actual damage roll) and some sort of Succor (for the sheild rebuilding itself) might work as well

[proditor]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

I'm idly pondering a rewrite for battleships as I should not be able to damage one with a .44.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

I'm idly pondering a rewrite for battleships as I should not be able to damage one with a .44.

Coming up with a way of handling larger vehicles realistically and still more or less 5th edition legal is one of my grail quests for the system. I've had some ideas on the topic, and would love to see what you've come up with.

 

This is precisely the kind of thing I had in mind for this thread

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

 

I'm still thinking that some build involving a Force Wall with the optional variation of Ablative (where the defensive power loses 5 ap everytime its hit with an attack that COULD penetrate it, regardless of the actual damage roll) and some sort of Succor (for the sheild rebuilding itself) might work as well

 

I was just poking through Star Hero and TUV & FrED looking at the rules for Forcewalls and the exisiting models for forcewalls as defensive screens, and I noticed something.

None of the example Starships can fight while their sheilds are raised.

This is, to say the least, lame.

In order for the ships sheilds to work properly they need indirect to be able to shoot thro the screens... +1/4 does it.

 

I suppose you could buy it as a Naked Advantage that applies the +1/4 indirect to any attack of up to the highest AP attack carried by the vehice, built as a "Sheild phase modulator" or somesuch

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

Oh, the big ship thing. AnB, I just said something about this in my PM to you. Okay, everyone ready for this? I have one TREMENDOUS ***** with an otherwise perfect system. It's tremendous. Seriously.

 

If you flip through Spacer's Toolkit (if you have Spacer's Toolkit) and you do some quick math, you realize that your largest gun on that thing is only going to deal, on average, 42 points of damage. That's a 12d6 Killing Weapon, and STUN doesn't matter against a Dreadnought class cruiser. Doesn't. Matter.

 

Problem two (compounding the problem). I had originally built the HALO weaponry so that the baddest thing in the game would be SPNKr rocket launcher - at 9d6 Explosive Killing. BOOM. Right? Evidently not, because if you read through the material the weaponry is scaled much smaller - I compromised and made it 5d6. Significant! In fact, still more powerful than a Tank as listed in TUV. So the tank will have 6d6, and should be able to blow holes in other tanks.

 

I've come up with a couple of possible solutions to this. They aren't terribly elegant, but they get the point across. Oh:

 

Caveat Emptor: I don't like Hardening as its written; I've house-ruled Hardening so that you have to pick something. In other words, if I hit you with an AP long sword, and my companion hits you with a Penetrating cross bow bolt, and you're hardened, you don't get both. You would have selected either AP, or Penetrating. Just sayin'.

 

Okay, building Vehicular weapons, step one. First, as has been said before, determine some sort of baseline for your vehicle. My Warthog is going to have a DEF 7, and about 15 BODY. It should get flipped and shattered by a well-placed rocket blast. Good start. I have to deal 22 points in a shot to neutralize it, and the rocket does 17.5 on average. Since the rocket is an Anti-Tank weapon, I can live with that.

 

As soon as you start scaling up - say a Tank, with a 12 DEF and 30 BODY, your anti-tank weapon either needs to go, your tank (which is totally reasonable this way) needs to come down, or you have to have an impotent anti-tank weapon. It'll take a few hits at this rate to whittle your tank down. But, that's the build I'm going with for the moment.

 

1a: Vehicular Weapon (+2). What is a vehicular weapon? One that already has two levels of AP & two levels of Penetrating. I envision Vehicular Weapons as Hard Points - things that you could not and cannot ever carry manually (all OIF, -1).

 

1b: Vehicular Armor (+1). Exactly - it's four levels of Hardening, two AP, two Penetrating. This is why I broke it out above; because otherwise I can see someone bending the rules for their convenience on this, since as written one more level of hardening yet again makes you invulnerable to any weapon mods. All Vehicular Armor is, of course, (OIF). You may make it Ablative if you like.

 

2: Introduce levels of Absolute Defense as a custom adder. As Steve points out in FH, if you can find the max something can do, match THAT, and build your defense to it. Okay. Well the deadliest small arm out there is a Sniper Rifle (considered a non-vehicular weapon and hence small arms fire) and I made mine... 3d6+1 I think? So 19 * 2 = 38 max damage. We'll say 40. Hold onto your hats, boys and girls, this gets insanely expensive.

 

Okay, so for absolute defense against small arms fire, we build armor, DEF 40 (Vehicular Armor, +1), Absolute Defense vs. Small Arms (+0). I personally would boil that down to 20 and claim it should have the same effect, because we're talking about the common sense of small arms fire. I'm sorry, but my 1d6 1/2 Battle Rifle ain't gettin' through that, not even with AP. But I'm trying to be exact, here.

 

Now. We've STARTED at 40 (as I said, way too expensive, but it's illustrating my point nicely). We can now start building Vehicular Weapons.

 

3: Every weapon we build will do SER. That's right. No die rolling, no discussion, flat SER. This solves a number of problems, not the least of which is "How tough do I have to make this?" Tough enough that weapons that are too small don't get through, and not so tough a fight is meaningless. So we'll say 1/8th to 1/6th of your resources a round.

 

Now our 40 DEF (Vehicular) is placed on something worthy of 40 DEF. Like a TANK. Freakin' TANK. Nice. We then slap a cannon on top of the tank. It's big. And probably Indirect and Armor Piercing. And should do 50 points of damage in a single shot. Period. That's about 16 1/2 d6. I have zero interest in rolling all of those dice.

 

But let's bring it out of the stratosphere a moment. We CAN handwave the DEF down to 20, and anything except an insanely lucky shot - or a very persistent sniper - is going to get through it. So 20 DEF, Absolute Defense against Small Arms (+0), Vehiclular Armor (+1). To dent that I need to be dealing around 25 to 30 damage.

 

Tank Turret: 9d6, Vehicle Class Weapon (+2), Armor Piercing (+1/2), Indirect (+1/2), Increased Range (+1/2), Charges (Increased Reloading Time, 1 Turn, 55 rounds, +0), (608 Active Points); OIF (Tank Cannon, -1 1/2), Real Weapon (-1/2), STR Minimum (40, STR does not add to damage, -1 1/2), Crew Served (3 people needed, one to load, one to target, one to aim & fire, -1/2) Total cost: 121, Vehicle Mount: 121/5 = 24 points.

 

SER: 27 points. Tank armor? 20 points. Blowing a hole in your opponent while on the other side of a concrete wall? Priceless.

 

What matters now? Accuracy and first strike, because if it hits, it'll hurt. I've removed any question in this model of who can wield the weapon; it's huge (OIF) requires three people (crew-served) and, because I was feeling cheeky, I slapped STR Minimum on it. Because we know off the top of our heads that the Tank is going to have a STR of at least 50. In this model, we have a set defense (20, very high) and instead of rolling dice all day, we have a turret that does a guaranteed amount of damage. And will blow the shiny blue hell out of anyone standing in the way - which it SHOULD. It's a TANK.

 

Thoughts?

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

Edited some typos, changed the SER to 27 from 32 (I'd done 3.5, instead of 3). I've also posted my build for the Scorpion M808B MBT on the HALO thread. I have to do the Pelican next I think.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

Greetery, peepery. Thanks for the heads-up, Fool. I've been banging my head against the wall with a few things. One of them is mentally coming to terms with the precise granularity of the scale. For example, the difference between a 2d6 and a 2d6+1 weapon is a whole DC. To my way of thinking, it's one dinky hit-point. I've discovered, though, that unlike d20 HERO rewards granularity; a single DC, a single point of armor, and so on. I'm used to thinking in sets, so it's caused me to make some major revisions in my builds.

 

My Rocket Launcher for HALO is still 5d6, but that's much more reasonable than the original 9d6, if I go by how HERO is written. It's nearly impossible to build an insta-glick weapon.

Granularity is both prominent and important in this system, as you discovered and mentioned. When it comes to designing weapons, there are a few things you can do to make the process easier.

#1) Reasoning from Effect. This staple of the system also applies to weapon design, as you've seen. What is the weapon intended to do... from this data you can work out many of the stats to the weapon.

 

#2) Ignore everything from every published suppliment except Dark Champions when looking for benchmarks. You can find neat ideas from other write ups, but virtually every other source I've seen thus far utterly gimps everything except modern small to medium weaponry. We get good accurate stats for modern weapons because we have tons of hard data. Larger scale weapons get totally gimped for game balance issues. As you noticed, things like antitank rockets are gonna be pricey. Instant glick weapons aren't actually hard to build at all... you just can't be scared of high AP values or expensive builds. Most of the Anti-Armor grade man-portable weapons in my old Star Hero game weighed in at a minimum of 8d6 killing, usually wuith around +1 to +2 worth of advantages as well. If you look at the DC Heavy Wepaons list you'll see that this is just slightly better than most comparable modern weapons.

 

We also note that if you're only talking BODY' date=' and not STUN, people may be bleeding but they're still alive after taking, say, 10 points of damage. They may be alive and bleeding out! But they're alive. So death ain't proud, in HERO. In fact, it often looks rather bored.[/quote']

Actually, that is pretty realistic. It usually takes longer than the average time scale of a hero combat for most of the effects of a wound to really raise their ugly head. The optional bleeding rules do a decent, if not perfect, job of reflecting this.

 

One of the things we've discussed at length in the Fantasy HERO game is that STUN /=/ Killing. I don't get (maybe y'all get it' date=' I don't get it) what doing STUN damage has to do with stabbing a guy in the ribs. Or slicing his hammy wide open. Especially if he's prepared for the shock or in mid-fight. So we did away with the Stun Lotto and replaced it with 1:1. I may replace it again with SER (3:1), but I'm undecided. It's all in pursuit of the right feel.[/quote']

The easiest way to wrap your head around the Stun /=/ body thing...

Stun = pain and shock

Body = structural damage

Stun Lotto (and the reason I LIKE the lotto) = the inconsistant and unreliable way that wound shock works.

I've been knocked cold from a rap to the head that gave me no more than a slight concussion (MAYBE 1 body past my defences), and I've had whole clusters of bones snapped in a single fell swoop that I barely felt at the time (low stun mod roll). The normal combat rules assume that the character is prepared for the shock of a combat wound... thats why out of combat suprise attacks get x2 stun damage.

 

 

This is the 'Focus' version of this suit' date=' without the /5 modifier for being a vehicle. It includes the additional limitation "Can be Dispelled" to cover the blast issued by a Covenant plasma pistol, which if you use SER is 36 points, or a total of 72 vs. a Force Field, guaranteeing it comes down every time.[/quote']

Question...

Does the overcharge blast from the plasma pistol also do damage, or does it simply disrupt energy feilds? because if it's supposed to do damage, then you need to retool your write up. I'll wait for your answer before suggesting some of my ideas, but suffice to say I have a few tricky ideas that might totaly avoid the need for intricate dispel constructs and the matching limitations

 

I was also seriously considering adding on all of the various Life Support adders it needs to operate in deep-space. My original design costed it out as a vehicle' date=' and considering that vehicles buy BODY at 1:1 instead of 2:1 IIRC, it makes not only the Heal cost 1/2 what it does now, but slices the whole thing into 1/5th of its final adjusted cost, meaning a PC who was going to have this suit forced on him could afford it without handwaving battle armor.[/quote']

Like I said before, building the suit as a vehicle is probably a really good idea, IMHO

 

I'm also struggling with damage ratios in general. I think I'm going to build the tank with a reasonable DEF (say, 15, that seems reasonable for a tank) with reinforced armor (DR 25%). I cheated with the Sniper Rifle, in that I brought the damage down, but gave it "find weakness" against humanoid targets, to represent its lethal capacity without having slice through engine blocks.

 

Thoughts?

Well, personally I think your defence and damage levels are incredibly lowballed. I'd be putting a Sci-fi tank at around 30 DEF, hardened (possibly twice). I might make a hunk of that Ablative, because I think that most realistic armors should be at least partially ablative. If HALO is like most sci-fi FPS, the actual amount of damage you can take once your Defences are dropped is pretty minimal, which to me says higher attacks and higher defences. That and in any futuristic setting I compare to older similarequipment and ask "Is my new _______ better than the early 21st century version?" If the answer is no, then I either retool it or try and determine why an inferior technology would become prevelant.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

Oh, the big ship thing. AnB, I just said something about this in my PM to you. Okay, everyone ready for this? I have one TREMENDOUS ***** with an otherwise perfect system. It's tremendous. Seriously.

 

If you flip through Spacer's Toolkit (if you have Spacer's Toolkit) and you do some quick math, you realize that your largest gun on that thing is only going to deal, on average, 42 points of damage. That's a 12d6 Killing Weapon, and STUN doesn't matter against a Dreadnought class cruiser. Doesn't. Matter.

 

Problem two (compounding the problem). I had originally built the HALO weaponry so that the baddest thing in the game would be SPNKr rocket launcher - at 9d6 Explosive Killing. BOOM. Right? Evidently not, because if you read through the material the weaponry is scaled much smaller - I compromised and made it 5d6. Significant! In fact, still more powerful than a Tank as listed in TUV. So the tank will have 6d6, and should be able to blow holes in other tanks.

 

I've come up with a couple of possible solutions to this. They aren't terribly elegant, but they get the point across. Oh:

 

 

 

Okay, building Vehicular weapons, step one. First, as has been said before, determine some sort of baseline for your vehicle. My Warthog is going to have a DEF 7, and about 15 BODY. It should get flipped and shattered by a well-placed rocket blast. Good start. I have to deal 22 points in a shot to neutralize it, and the rocket does 17.5 on average. Since the rocket is an Anti-Tank weapon, I can live with that.

 

As soon as you start scaling up - say a Tank, with a 12 DEF and 30 BODY, your anti-tank weapon either needs to go, your tank (which is totally reasonable this way) needs to come down, or you have to have an impotent anti-tank weapon. It'll take a few hits at this rate to whittle your tank down. But, that's the build I'm going with for the moment.

 

1a: Vehicular Weapon (+2). What is a vehicular weapon? One that already has two levels of AP & two levels of Penetrating. I envision Vehicular Weapons as Hard Points - things that you could not and cannot ever carry manually (all OIF, -1).

 

1b: Vehicular Armor (+1). Exactly - it's four levels of Hardening, two AP, two Penetrating. This is why I broke it out above; because otherwise I can see someone bending the rules for their convenience on this, since as written one more level of hardening yet again makes you invulnerable to any weapon mods. All Vehicular Armor is, of course, (OIF). You may make it Ablative if you like.

 

2: Introduce levels of Absolute Defense as a custom adder. As Steve points out in FH, if you can find the max something can do, match THAT, and build your defense to it. Okay. Well the deadliest small arm out there is a Sniper Rifle (considered a non-vehicular weapon and hence small arms fire) and I made mine... 3d6+1 I think? So 19 * 2 = 38 max damage. We'll say 40. Hold onto your hats, boys and girls, this gets insanely expensive.

 

Okay, so for absolute defense against small arms fire, we build armor, DEF 40 (Vehicular Armor, +1), Absolute Defense vs. Small Arms (+0). I personally would boil that down to 20 and claim it should have the same effect, because we're talking about the common sense of small arms fire. I'm sorry, but my 1d6 1/2 Battle Rifle ain't gettin' through that, not even with AP. But I'm trying to be exact, here.

 

Now. We've STARTED at 40 (as I said, way too expensive, but it's illustrating my point nicely). We can now start building Vehicular Weapons.

 

3: Every weapon we build will do SER. That's right. No die rolling, no discussion, flat SER. This solves a number of problems, not the least of which is "How tough do I have to make this?" Tough enough that weapons that are too small don't get through, and not so tough a fight is meaningless. So we'll say 1/8th to 1/6th of your resources a round.

 

Now our 40 DEF (Vehicular) is placed on something worthy of 40 DEF. Like a TANK. Freakin' TANK. Nice. We then slap a cannon on top of the tank. It's big. And probably Indirect and Armor Piercing. And should do 50 points of damage in a single shot. Period. That's about 16 1/2 d6. I have zero interest in rolling all of those dice.

 

But let's bring it out of the stratosphere a moment. We CAN handwave the DEF down to 20, and anything except an insanely lucky shot - or a very persistent sniper - is going to get through it. So 20 DEF, Absolute Defense against Small Arms (+0), Vehiclular Armor (+1). To dent that I need to be dealing around 25 to 30 damage.

 

Tank Turret: 9d6, Vehicle Class Weapon (+2), Armor Piercing (+1/2), Indirect (+1/2), Increased Range (+1/2), Charges (Increased Reloading Time, 1 Turn, 55 rounds, +0), (608 Active Points); OIF (Tank Cannon, -1 1/2), Real Weapon (-1/2), STR Minimum (40, STR does not add to damage, -1 1/2), Crew Served (3 people needed, one to load, one to target, one to aim & fire, -1/2) Total cost: 121, Vehicle Mount: 121/5 = 24 points.

 

SER: 27 points. Tank armor? 20 points. Blowing a hole in your opponent while on the other side of a concrete wall? Priceless.

 

What matters now? Accuracy and first strike, because if it hits, it'll hurt. I've removed any question in this model of who can wield the weapon; it's huge (OIF) requires three people (crew-served) and, because I was feeling cheeky, I slapped STR Minimum on it. Because we know off the top of our heads that the Tank is going to have a STR of at least 50. In this model, we have a set defense (20, very high) and instead of rolling dice all day, we have a turret that does a guaranteed amount of damage. And will blow the shiny blue hell out of anyone standing in the way - which it SHOULD. It's a TANK.

 

Thoughts?

 

 

Many, but pending you seeing what I was writing while you were writing, I'll say this...

You might want to look up Fox1's profile and follow the link to his HERO house rules. He attacked a lot of these problems head on and came up with some intersting solutions.

An example... HE tended to build his Anti-Armor grade weaponry as a combonation of rolled KA dice with some additional SE Killing damage added, and various Armor penetrating modifiers including Peircing. This allowed him to tailor the damage to have the Penetration he wanted aginst various benchmark classes of armor. Then he added a whopping big linked attack that was triggered if the attack penetrated... This was the actual real "damage" mechanisim. Thus, a APFSDSDU Tank shell (Armor Peircing Fin Stabilized Discarding Sabot Depleted Uranium) that hits a squishy target will blow clean through him, and will probably leave him dead, but won't get the same full effect it'll have against high the high density armor its designed to kill.

Not that I use them, but they certainly are an option, and worth perusing.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

Interestingly, we got into extended discussion about that around here as well. The tank may be low-balled, but I'd rather it were low-balled and properly scaled than mid-ranged and all over the map. Also, how much RKA is too much RKA? It gets confusing quickly when trying to guage power levels. The SER for an anti-tank round is 15 damage in my current model, which matches the DEF on the tank, which is what I was going for.

 

The tank itself is also 4x Hardened (see my notes on how to build vehicles) and the Rocket is only one level of AP, because it's man-portable. I also posted the current tank on the HALO thread, you can review it there if you like. I CAN improve the tank to 20 DEF, that's easy! It's always easy to make something tougher, but then I have to commesurately balance the tougher thing with the more reasonable thing to make sure the whole mess works at once, which HERO does not, by design, guarantee. It leaves that in the hands of the designer.

 

I also posted my *****-list on the 6th Edition thread, but that's another matter entirely.

 

Where was I? OH YES, tank. So if you look over the tank in TUV/FREd you'll see what I'm getting at. The point of HERO weaponry is actually NOT to be drastically improved over modern weaponry at all - it's to create cool guns that deal damage and are fun to shoot. So that's what I did - I created cool guns that deal damage that I would want in my hands in a fire-fight.

 

AF 10 AP assault rifle dealing d6 1/2? GIMME. I'll mow me down some Covenant with some burst fire, BELIEVE IT. That's what I want. I know there are rules in DC to improve your autofire gunbunny fights, and I will likely be using... ALL of them. Yes. I likely won't go with a +Charges RKA build, although it IS reasonable in the design, I'm trying to stay with core mechanics as much as possible, and that means filling the air with lead now and again.

 

I also know that Grunts have about 6 BODY, Jackals & Buggers have 8, Elites have a full 10, and Brutes get up on to 15 and more. Hunters have 10, but they have unarmored, 0 DEF sections where you can drill them. You hit 'em where it hurts, they fall down. But it's a called shot to a hit location, and meant to work that way. I might consider making Hunter armor Ablative to give them more staying power, but the purpose was always to make them hard to tag, not hard to kill once you do it.

 

There are two possible builds for the Covenant Pistol, the original HALO has it as a damaging weapon, the revised model in Halo 2 is a pure Dispel vs. energy shields. Which makes the thing that much cheaper anyway. I'll put a vehicle build together and post it.

[Zeropoint]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

15 BODY seems pretty light for an anti-tank weapon. Given that a .50 BMG round is listed as 3d6k, with a max potential damage of 18, I'd give a modern (i.e. late 20th century) tank AT LEAST 20 rPD, Hardened.

 

A weapon that can pose a threat to a tank SHOULD either turn a human being into a spray of red chunks, or punch through without even slowing down.

 

Or so is my opinion.

 

Zeropoint

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

Which was my first instinct. Okay, tell you what. I'll go with what my gut says and scale according to that, and worry less about being consistent with the pre-fabbed material. That'll put the tank up to 20 DEF, 30 BODY, and the AT Shell will deal 25 points SER, and that's 8d6+1. It will blow straight through just about any HUMAN it hits, and it will certainly get the attention of anyone with a Force Field, even if it is up.

 

Thoughts?

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

Oh' date=' the big ship thing. AnB, I just said something about this in my PM to you. Okay, everyone ready for this? I have one TREMENDOUS ***** with an otherwise perfect system. It's tremendous. Seriously.[/quote']

 

Oh, yeah. Mine too. I have some extensive rants posted about this in the archives. And some possible solutions. I solved all this stuff back in the day for my game, but it involved bringing in quite a lot from many sources, and doing some things in fashions that ain't strictly speaking legal.

 

If you flip through Spacer's Toolkit (if you have Spacer's Toolkit) and you do some quick math' date=' you realize that your largest gun on that thing is only going to deal, on average, 42 points of damage. That's a 12d6 Killing Weapon, and STUN doesn't matter against a Dreadnought class cruiser. Doesn't. Matter.[/quote']

The main gun on the Planet Destroying Robot the The Bestiary doesn't even do that much.

Like I said... I pay no attention to most of the Vehicle level write ups. And little to large critters as well. They don't make sense, because the HERO system defaults to ignore scale, and doesn't have any good official ways to overcome scale problems

Pesky darm superheros, corrupting our "pure" toolkit

 

 

Problem two (compounding the problem). I had originally built the HALO weaponry so that the baddest thing in the game would be SPNKr rocket launcher - at 9d6 Explosive Killing. BOOM. Right? Evidently not' date=' because if you read through the material the weaponry is scaled much smaller - I compromised and made it 5d6. Significant! In fact, still more powerful than a Tank as listed in TUV. So the tank will have 6d6, and should be able to blow holes in other tanks.[/quote']

Well, the DC write up for a M47 Dragon tripod launched man portable guided anti tank missile does 9d6 AP killing. This is not an unreasonable figure.

 

Do remember that the tank in TUV actually has 30 hardened def on the front and 20 elsewhere. And how do you figure 5d6 as more powerful than the (admittedly slighty underpowered) 8D6 RKA the M1 Abrahms is packing?

 

 

Caveat Emptor: I don't like Hardening as its written; I've house-ruled Hardening so that you have to pick something. In other words, if I hit you with an AP long sword, and my companion hits you with a Penetrating cross bow bolt, and you're hardened, you don't get both. You would have selected either AP, or Penetrating. Just sayin'.

You're welcome to play with this, but after a lot of trial and error I discarded this idea as way to punative in games with a lot of different modifiers to attacks and defences.

Just sayin'

 

 

 

Okay, building Vehicular weapons, step one. First, as has been said before, determine some sort of baseline for your vehicle. My Warthog is going to have a DEF 7, and about 15 BODY. It should get flipped and shattered by a well-placed rocket blast. Good start. I have to deal 22 points in a shot to neutralize it, and the rocket does 17.5 on average. Since the rocket is an Anti-Tank weapon, I can live with that.

 

As soon as you start scaling up - say a Tank, with a 12 DEF and 30 BODY, your anti-tank weapon either needs to go, your tank (which is totally reasonable this way) needs to come down, or you have to have an impotent anti-tank weapon. It'll take a few hits at this rate to whittle your tank down. But, that's the build I'm going with for the moment.

 

1a: Vehicular Weapon (+2). What is a vehicular weapon? One that already has two levels of AP & two levels of Penetrating. I envision Vehicular Weapons as Hard Points - things that you could not and cannot ever carry manually (all OIF, -1).

 

1b: Vehicular Armor (+1). Exactly - it's four levels of Hardening, two AP, two Penetrating. This is why I broke it out above; because otherwise I can see someone bending the rules for their convenience on this, since as written one more level of hardening yet again makes you invulnerable to any weapon mods. All Vehicular Armor is, of course, (OIF). You may make it Ablative if you like.

 

I played around with TONS of stuff like this when working out the equipment for my SH campaign, and I reverted to the usual schema of advantages. I found it gave smoother granularity. For the same reason I stuck with straight dice totals instead of a multiplier or adder... tho the system I'm currently bouncing around in my head will involve scale adders most likely.

 

2: Introduce levels of Absolute Defense as a custom adder. As Steve points out in FH, if you can find the max something can do, match THAT, and build your defense to it. Okay. Well the deadliest small arm out there is a Sniper Rifle (considered a non-vehicular weapon and hence small arms fire) and I made mine... 3d6+1 I think? So 19 * 2 = 38 max damage. We'll say 40. Hold onto your hats, boys and girls, this gets insanely expensive.

 

Okay, so for absolute defense against small arms fire, we build armor, DEF 40 (Vehicular Armor, +1), Absolute Defense vs. Small Arms (+0). I personally would boil that down to 20 and claim it should have the same effect, because we're talking about the common sense of small arms fire. I'm sorry, but my 1d6 1/2 Battle Rifle ain't gettin' through that, not even with AP. But I'm trying to be exact, here.

 

Now. We've STARTED at 40 (as I said, way too expensive, but it's illustrating my point nicely). We can now start building Vehicular Weapons.

This is more a matter of style than anything. I don't dig the kinda sloppy absolutes reccomendations from FH... especially when applied liberally.

A better approach might be a simple GM fiat... If your weapons and armor all all built with the (-1/4) Real Weapon/Real Armor/Real whatever limitation, then you can define certain things as common sence.

The logic goes a little like this...

Real Weapon: Small arms aren't intended to inflict damage on large dense targets. The majority of their damaging potnetial is due to their designed purpose to disrupt soft tissue, possibly after penetrating lightweight cover or portable body armor Ergo, they are all considered Reduced Penetration against vehicular grade armor.

 

 

3: Every weapon we build will do SER. That's right. No die rolling, no discussion, flat SER. This solves a number of problems, not the least of which is "How tough do I have to make this?" Tough enough that weapons that are too small don't get through, and not so tough a fight is meaningless. So we'll say 1/8th to 1/6th of your resources a round.

 

Now our 40 DEF (Vehicular) is placed on something worthy of 40 DEF. Like a TANK. Freakin' TANK. Nice. We then slap a cannon on top of the tank. It's big. And probably Indirect and Armor Piercing. And should do 50 points of damage in a single shot. Period. That's about 16 1/2 d6. I have zero interest in rolling all of those dice.

 

But let's bring it out of the stratosphere a moment. We CAN handwave the DEF down to 20, and anything except an insanely lucky shot - or a very persistent sniper - is going to get through it. So 20 DEF, Absolute Defense against Small Arms (+0), Vehiclular Armor (+1). To dent that I need to be dealing around 25 to 30 damage.

I'd STRONGLY recomend against making your heavy weapons all Standard Effect... make at least 1/3 to 1/2 the total DC's actual rolled dice to reflect the differences 'tween a good hit and a bad one, deflection, and the tons of other wee variables that aren't incorporated into the system anywhere except with random damage rolls.

 

Tank Turret: 9d6' date=' Vehicle Class Weapon (+2), Armor Piercing (+1/2), Indirect (+1/2), Increased Range (+1/2), Charges (Increased Reloading Time, 1 Turn, 55 rounds, +0), (608 Active Points); OIF (Tank Cannon, -1 1/2), Real Weapon (-1/2), STR Minimum (40, STR does not add to damage, -1 1/2), Crew Served (3 people needed, one to load, one to target, one to aim & fire, -1/2) Total cost: 121, Vehicle Mount: 121/5 = 24 points.[/quote']

Nota bad write up, but I really think that you're engagling in radical overkill with the Vehicle Weapon & Vehicle Armor Advantages. Part of this is your houserule about what Hardening affects... its gonna force your point levels way up because you're buying more specific Advatages & limits.

 

SER: 27 points. Tank armor? 20 points. Blowing a hole in your opponent while on the other side of a concrete wall? Priceless.

 

What matters now? Accuracy and first strike, because if it hits, it'll hurt. I've removed any question in this model of who can wield the weapon; it's huge (OIF) requires three people (crew-served) and, because I was feeling cheeky, I slapped STR Minimum on it. Because we know off the top of our heads that the Tank is going to have a STR of at least 50. In this model, we have a set defense (20, very high) and instead of rolling dice all day, we have a turret that does a guaranteed amount of damage. And will blow the shiny blue hell out of anyone standing in the way - which it SHOULD. It's a TANK.

 

Thoughts?

Uh... You realize that that Tank gun isn't gonna blow shiney blue hell outta a standard joe in a Mjolnir suit, right? 27 body, minus the 15 for the sheild =12 body penetrating. Drop off a total of 4 points for the combined DEF of the armor and sheild, (halved for AP). its well past the minimum damage that Penetrating will inflict, so no added love there, and multiple levels of AP don't drop defences by more than 1/2, so the 3 levels of AP and 2 levels of penetrating your Tank Gun has do almost exactly frackall.

So, if your Master Cheif wannabe has more than 8 body, he's not even gonna be dying unless you hit a vital spot.

Somehow, I thought it'd be.. well.. bigger.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

Thia, as a quick aside...

You really might want to look at adding some Peircing to various writeups. IT'll be a lot easier to scale than AP.

 

Gotta go now & pack up my car

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

And hence I made revisions.

 

I made the main gun 10d6, and the Rocket Launcher 8d6+1; what you have done is confirm that my initial thoughts were correct. In this case, bigger IS better. An 8d6+1 anti-tank weapon should be dishing out 25 SER, and probably more on a die roll. The tank cannon is going to deal 30 and turn most people into a Fine Red Mist.

 

You've also discovered a separate problem: that someone in a suit of MJOLNIR armor is nigh invulnerable to instant kills. Nice, eh? That's what the extra BODY is there for, to protect you in the middle of a tremendous gun fight. Oh, and I upped my assault rifle & battle rifle to where I want them now. The Battle Rifle (the BR55) is NASTY. 2d6 w/Burst fire.

 

I'm going to need to retool the entire armor (doing that tomorrow). I'm hesitant to improve the tank further beyond 20 armor (although 30 on the front makes sense) because then you'll have Crazyd6 rocket launchers flying around.

 

You also mentioned something I had said earlier: as a plain old 1/2 Advantage, "Vehicle Grade Armor." Could even be a 1/4 advantage, because it only matters if you've also got: "Red. Pen: Vehicle Grade Armor." That's where I was going originally anyway, that general direction. Gonna be a LONG day tomorrow.

[AmadanNaBriona]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

And hence I made revisions.

 

I made the main gun 10d6, and the Rocket Launcher 8d6+1; what you have done is confirm that my initial thoughts were correct. In this case, bigger IS better. An 8d6+1 anti-tank weapon should be dishing out 25 SER, and probably more on a die roll. The tank cannon is going to deal 30 and turn most people into a Fine Red Mist.

 

You've also discovered a separate problem: that someone in a suit of MJOLNIR armor is nigh invulnerable to instant kills. Nice, eh? That's what the extra BODY is there for, to protect you in the middle of a tremendous gun fight. Oh, and I upped my assault rifle & battle rifle to where I want them now. The Battle Rifle (the BR55) is NASTY. 2d6 w/Burst fire.

 

I'm going to need to retool the entire armor (doing that tomorrow). I'm hesitant to improve the tank further beyond 20 armor (although 30 on the front makes sense) because then you'll have Crazyd6 rocket launchers flying around.

 

You also mentioned something I had said earlier: as a plain old 1/2 Advantage, "Vehicle Grade Armor." Could even be a 1/4 advantage, because it only matters if you've also got: "Red. Pen: Vehicle Grade Armor." That's where I was going originally anyway, that general direction. Gonna be a LONG day tomorrow.

 

As I mentioned above, dropping on some Peircing will allow you to have scary DEF levels without scary damage dice. Only making part of the attack have standar effect will help as well.

Take a 10d6 tank gun

SER says this'd do 30 body

So if you only apply the SER to half the dice, you get a 5d6+15 RKA

Giving you a damage range from 20-45 Body

Make it AP, and drop on 10 points of Resistant peircing for an extra 30 points

 

So now, your tank can have a 30 hardened defence and all but completely ignore small arms.

but hit it with this tank round.

Peircing applies before AP, so I'd assume the Hardening removes the Peircing.

the tank takes 20-45 body against 15 modified DEF. anywhere from a 5 body "ouch" to a 30 body *BOOM*.

Fire this round against a grunt is 15 PD body armor

Peircing slaps 10 points off his 15 PD Armor.

AP cuts the 5 reamining DEF in half. We round in his favor (3pd), because these small kindnesses are important to show towards those soon to die.

He takes between 17 and 42 body through defences. If he's REALLY lucky, it just blows clean through him and keeps going and with medical attention he might survive.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

I know why I'm confused.

 

What in the twelve hells is PIERCING?

 

I know what Armor Piercing is, and that cuts armor in 1/2. I'm with that. And I know what Penetrating is, that allows one point per 'die' to get through, k. What's Piercing?

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

I like the SER+Dice rule, by the way, that'll work nicely. I'm down with that. Still need you to tell me where I can find "Resistant piercing."

[Captain Obvious]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

It's in Dark Champions, I believe.

 

I don't recall off the top of my head how it works in DC, but before it came out, and people on the boards here were pining for Piercing (from 3rd Ed), I always suggested using standard effect dice with the limitation "only to negate defenses" -1/2. Possibly also with "only does 1 point" -2, or "only does 2 points" -1/2, if you didn't want a multiple of 3 points of Piercing.

 

Basically, Piercing knocks off defenses but does no damage itself. If you hit a guy with 10 DEF using an attack with 10 points of Piercing, he gets no DEF. If you hit a guy with only 5 DEF with an attack with 10 points of Piercing, he gets no DEF, but doesn't take any additional damage.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

Mjolnir Mark V is a set of battle armor specifically designed for the SPARTAN II program. Each suit has an inner layer of self molding gel surrounded by an outer layer of armor covered by sheilds adapted from Covenant technology. The suits are designed to be compatible with all SPARTAN enhancements, including a neural interface to control the suit and provide increased strength and dexterity. MJOLNIR is also capable of housing an AI in its gel layer, connecting to the soldier via the nueral interface. Only Spartans are capable of wearing the suit. Because of the neural connection between the human and the suit, the user must possess certain attributes, such as enhanced strength, improved reflexes and mental conditioning in order to be in control. If one does not posses these attributes the suit will respond to the user's unconditioned mind and violently spasm, causing much physical damage.

 

MJOLNIR contains one miniature fusion core as its source of power and is the first suit to have integrated rechargable shield system. The shell of the suit is a multilayer alloy of remarkable strength. It has a refractive coating which has a limited ability to disperse energy weapon fire. Each suit also has a gel-filled layer to regulate body temperature. In the first Halo 2 cut scene with the Master Chief the person lecturing you said, "...there's also viscosity throughout the gel layer." The word viscosity means: the resistence to flow. In other words, if somthing has high viscosity it moves slowly, if it has low viscosity then it moves faster. This means that some sort of fluid flows through this layer. It can also reactively change density. Against the skin of the operator, there is a moisture-absorbing cloth suit, biomonitors that constantly adjust the suit's temperature and fit, and automatic Biofoam injectors. There is also an onboard computer that interfaces with a neural implant. The armor's inner structure is composed of reactive metal liquid crystal. It is anomorphous, yet fractally scales and amplifies force, doubling the wearer's strength. It also enhances the reaction speed of a normal human by a factor of five. Featuring a Heads-Up Display in its integrated helmet, the operator can visualize the terrain from a differant perspective or check the amount of ammo left in their clip.

 

Third time is the charm. I'm going to do a full vehicle write up for this armor, and cross post it to the Ironmongers thread for everyone to see and comment on. It'll be "legal" but only in the most literal sense of the word (in other words, I won't be breaking rules to do it.) On second thought. I realized something else: per the rules, all vehicles have BODY. Reducing the BODY to 0 means the suit stops working! Oh, wait, NM. I keep forgetting you'd have to 'attack the suit' to lower its BODY, otherwise you're hitting the user.

 

MJOLNIR Power Armor

 

1 Size 0 DCV, -1 KB (Full Humanoid, 5 points)

20 STR (5 points, Cannot exceed user's STR, +0)

20 DEX (30 points)

4 SPD (10 points, Does not exceed user's SPD, +0)

5 DEF (9 points)

 

Characteristic Cost: 59 points.

 

Abilities & Equipment:

 

7 Running: 12" (+6", Velocity Cannot Exceed twice user's running, +0), Only on appropriate terrain (-1/4), Costs END (user's END, -1/2)

 

3 Leaping: 4" (+4", Height cannot exceed user's max jump, +0), Costs END (user's END, -1/2)

 

10 Sensors & Communications Array; HRRP; OIF (-1), Affected As Hearing And Radio Group (-1/4)

 

19 Self Contained Life-Support: Self Contained Breathing, Safe Environments: High Pressure, Intense Cold, Intense Heat, Radiation, Vacuum

 

10 Crystal Grid AI Slot: Purchased as Follower, AI may have up to 75 CP before disads; OIF (-1), AI Cannot Control Suit without User's Authorization (-1/2)

 

Total cost: 49 points.

 

Tactical Systems

 

48 Force Field: Major Transform: Surrounding Particles into Force Field, BODY 15, DEF 3; Reduced END (0 END, +1/2), Covers User & All Equipment (+1/4), Trigger, Creates New Force Field to replace current Force Field (not controlled by user, must be unharmed for one Turn, requires one Turn to reset trigger, +1/4) (240 Active Points); OIF (-1), No Concious Control (User cannot control activation of Force Field, -1), Does not gain User's DEF (-1), No Range, (Moves as user moves, -1/2), Can be Dispelled (-1/4), Can be Destroyed (DEF no longer applies, -1/4)

 

16 Motion Sensor: Detect Movement, +10 PER Roll of User, Discriminatory (IFF Indicator), Increased Arc of Perception (360o), Reduced END (0 END, +1/2), (45 Active Points); OIF (Bulky, -1), Only Detects Moving Targets (Target must travel >3"/phase to be noticed, -1/2), Limited Range (15" Radius, -1/4)

 

5 Smart Link: +2 OCV (10 Active Points); OIF (-1)

 

 

69 points.

 

Total cost: 177 points.

 

Disadvantges: Distincitve Features (Concealable with difficult, causes extreme reaction (fear) (-15 points).

 

Final cost: 162/5 = 32 points.

 

Okay, this is my current edition of this beast. It covers everything, I modded it so that the user would set the stats, and if necessary can of course have one 'custom fit' to them exclusively.

 

I built the Force Field as a Transform, and as a vehicular transform, which dropped the cost from the 2:1 BODY to a 1:1 BODY and set it as an SER, so it would always create the Force Field. This made it reasonably affordable.

 

The AI slot I built as a Follower, and I gave it it's 1/5th reduction after all the modifiers were tacked onto it. This is for fitting in Cortana or any other appropriate AI. You can even write whole plot lines around PCs and the AIs in their heads, which can add heaven knows what. This is probably the single most abusable element here. I'll have to stat out Cortana, and THEN revisit this, but I assumed she'd be a Heroic character (75/75), so I charged for a 75 CP slot (since we don't count the follower's disads against it) and then divided that by 5, and THEN used all additional limitations. But I'm not sure if the lims apply, that's the tricky bit.

 

The +2 OCV is because there's always a shiny reticle in front of you - it helps. Trust me.

 

Everything else should be self-explanatory.

[Thia Halmades]

Re: Ironmongers, unite!

 

Thanks, Captain. I'll go grab my copy of DC and figure that out right now. That may be what I'd been looking for, especially in this particular campaign with these weapons. I was trying for the LIFE of me to figure out what the Unseely Fool was talking about...