Weapon stats

[Lupus]

My apologies if this has been asked before. I've only just managed to get a copy of Star HERO, and look through it thoroughly. I also can't see any other similar threads currently in existence on the board. One question sticks out:

 

Given that a 20th-century assault rifle can do 2d6K damage, autofire, +1 STUN mod, with a 30-round clip, while giving +2 OCV and +1 RMod... why would anyone ever choose to use most of the weapons in this book? The experimental, high-power gauss cannon meant for Cyberpunk games has horrible side-effects, but it only does 2d6K AP, autofire. It's AP weapon, which is neat, but it's not that hard to make bullets AP, too, for only a minor reduction in damage. And the aforementioned 2d6K rifles are not the biggest around.

 

Lasers, meanwhile, do 2d6 AP autofire. But they don't work in smoke or steam, which makes then not nearly as useful on the battlefield.

 

The electron gun does 6d6EB... this is the same number of damage classes as a rifle, but in energy blast form - it's a lot easier to defend against. It does have the funky stun setting, but still.

 

The plasma guns, fortunately, do seem to be actually worth carrying. Even if the single-shot plasma gun isn't significantly more powerful than an actual rocket launcher for its price.

 

To get back to the point: these weapons are, largely, not much more powerful than weapons we've had for 30 years. They are less accurate (as they lack OCV and RMod bonuses), they are much more expensive, and they don't carry any more shots.

 

Now, I do realise that I may be missing a design aesthetic such as a scaling issue here. In a Star HERO game, would an M16 do less damage? That would answer this question, although then I'd have a problem with that concept. On the other hand, that'd be a personal opinion rather than an actual mechanical objection.

 

So, anyone else have any thoughts on the matter?

[Monolith]

Start reading this thread:

http://www.herogames.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=1328

 

The basic concept overall though is that weapons do not necessarily do more damage in the future. Someone getting shot in the head by an M16 (2d6 RKA) is going to die basically the same way as someone who is shot with a laser (2d6RKA). And there are other weapons listed in Star Hero which do some impressive damage and have far more bells and whistles then the few examples you choose to give.

[Lupus]

Okay, I can see how that works. And sorry for missing the earlier thread.

 

And yah, there are some very spiffy weapons in there, and I did acknowledge that. Was only talking about the ones that I took issue with.

 

For my own games, I'm gonna have to tinker with the stats. The ones in the book are too simple for my tastes. Lot more can be made of minor advantages, such as increased STUN (especially in the case of lasers). And, of course, OCV/RMod enhancements.

 

Note, I'm not complaining about that. I've long railed against the movie critic's favorite pasttime of attacking a film for not being what they wanted it to be. The stats in the book aren't what I want them to be, but that just means I have to do some work.

 

Then again, I've had to do that already, in cases where I didn't feel the stats were appropriate for even a heroic representation of 'reality'. Tank main gun, for instance.

 

No system is perfect.

[Al_Beddow]

Remember that there is NO LIMIT to how powerful you make a weapon. You can add to a laser weapon the advantage "not affected by smoke/fog" and get what you want. Just because one of the "official" books states lasers (or anything) works a certain way doesn't mean you can't change it.

[Toadmaster]

Also keep in mind the examples you gave are all basically infantry weapons, once you reach the most efficient level of damage for seriously wounding a human anything more is inefficient, if you look at 19th to 20th century weapons they are actually getting less powerful, during the Civil war you had .50 caliber rifles (2d6 - 2d6+1, +1 or +2 stn), by the early 20th century most nations were using a 6.5-8mm bullet (roughly 2d6+1, +1 stn), by the beginnig of the 21st century (now) most militaries are using 5.5mm weapon (2d6-1 or 2d6, Stn +0 or +1), the benefit to going smaller is the much larger ammo loads individuals can carry.

 

So the weapons in StarHero are not neccessarily the most powerful possible just what is powerful enough to do the job. Considering that each +1 is twice the power energy weapons would likely rapidly increase in size and weight or have severely limited ammo. Of course body armor advances could completely screw this theory up and you could get into the common GURPS complaint in which high tech weapons either vaporize the target or do nothing based on the armor worn.

[Wyrm Ouroboros]

Also remember that most of these go against rED instead of rPD. Most armor (real armor, at least) is built to defend against a PD killing attack; a bulletproof vest will stop a moderately heavy round (say, 1½d6?), while of course it would do little to nothing against a flamethrower or plasma round. With a bit of whiz-bang sense, you'll have agents and street cops/security enforcers in light to medium PD armor with a bit of ED defense thrown in, but still with a lot of physically-damaging weapons out there. Case in point: stormtroopers.

 

'Stormtroopers', despite their use in the movies, have always been considered an elite strike force, way back to the Roman Empire and before. Hey, the Nazis had 'em, even. The way the Imperial Stormtrooper armor is designed is to give the guy in the white shell a good defense against lower-tech societies -- you know, 20th Century humanity, Ewoks, and the like. (Don't get me started on Ewoks vs. Stormtroopers.) While the IST armor DOES give a bonus against blasters and the like (vs. killing energy, iow), it isn't as big a bonus as its PD. In short, it's much much better against the primitives than it is against those of approximately equal capabilities.

 

The thugs/security/cops in any Star Hero game should be pretty much similarly equipped; the Personal Defense Shield is virtually nonexistant in on-screen SF, Dune notwithstanding. (Dune's shields, after all, mirrored a thermonuclear explosion when they were hit with a lasgun -- a laser. Not recommended for after-dinner firefights.)

 

And, as Toadmaster says, anything more than a kill is, well, overkill. Who cares how big a hole you blow in them, so long as you blow a hole in them, right? Anything more is probably an anti-vehicular/anti-armor weapon. On the other hand, if you WANT to have anti-vehicular/anti-armor weapons in the hands of every grunt ... it'd certainly alter the way battles were fought. Vehicles would be there to get the troops near the front; too much danger for one shot to blow apart the 3 crew and 12 troopers inside. Tanks would be ... pretty much a thing of the past.

[Lisa Nadazdy]

I think you guys are missing out on one other factor: that of fictional conveniance. You COULD make weapons more powerful, but then the players would get awfully annoyed when you tell them every couple of sessions to write up new characters.

[Monolith]

Originally posted by Lupus

For my own games, I'm gonna have to tinker with the stats. The ones in the book are too simple for my tastes. Lot more can be made of minor advantages, such as increased STUN (especially in the case of lasers). And, of course, OCV/RMod enhancements.

The only other thing to take into consideration is that Star Hero was written to be generic (usable for any scifi genre). So you are supposed to use that information as a baseline to build upon your own campaign. The specific campaign worlds (such as Terran Empire) have different weapon statistics. For example, in TE a standard Mark V laser rifle is 3d6 AP, AF, IMR. That is quite a bit more powerful than the Laser Rifle in Star Hero.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Originally posted by Monolith

The only other thing to take into consideration is that Star Hero was written to be generic (usable for any scifi genre). So you are supposed to use that information as a baseline to build upon your own campaign. The specific campaign worlds (such as Terran Empire) have different weapon statistics. For example, in TE a standard Mark V laser rifle is 3d6 AP, AF, IMR. That is quite a bit more powerful than the Laser Rifle in Star Hero.

 

Exactly

 

Star Hero was a generic sourcebook. The examples in there were exactly that, examples. The author(s) provided enough example weapons to get prospective playing groups started, but I'm assuming they fully expect most Hero GM's to design a boatload of their own weapons, or wait for supplements like Terran Empire or Spacer's Toolkit.

 

Long ago, I designed my own weapons for my Star Hero game (over a hundred weapon designs borrowed from many sources) and they ran the gamut from holdout weapons that did little more than 2DC to hand-held anti-ship cannons that could produce blasts of 18DC. (the PC-6000 aka the B.F.G!)

 

What it ultimately boils down to is that you have to decide for yourself how each weapon type performs for purposes of your games. Once you do that, the rest is easy.

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: Weapon stats

 

I checked my Star Hero book last night and I have some answers for you...

 

Originally posted by Lupus

 

Given that a 20th-century assault rifle can do 2d6K damage, autofire, +1 STUN mod, with a 30-round clip, while giving +2 OCV and +1 RMod... why would anyone ever choose to use most of the weapons in this book? The experimental, high-power gauss cannon meant for Cyberpunk games has horrible side-effects, but it only does 2d6K AP, autofire. It's AP weapon, which is neat, but it's not that hard to make bullets AP, too, for only a minor reduction in damage. And the aforementioned 2d6K rifles are not the biggest around.

 

The reason that they only do 2D6 is because the round is significantly smaller than that of standard Assault rifles, but because of the increase in velocity, its damage matches that of weapons with a much larger calibur. A smaller round would make the weapon lighter which would in turn increase accuracy and reduce the Strength Minimum. You are correct about AP, but these weapons are AP without any reduction in damage, so they have an advantage in that aspect.

 

Lasers, meanwhile, do 2d6 AP autofire. But they don't work in smoke or steam, which makes then not nearly as useful on the battlefield.

 

This is based on real world applications of Laser weaponry. I also run my laser weapons this way, so I have no problem with this. If your Star Hero game is sufficiently advanced, your lasers are probably X-ray versions which are not affected by smoke or steam at all. Of course you can always drop that particular limitation if you feel they limit lasers too much. Personaly, I think it equalizes lasers out quite a bit, because in my Star Hero games, my lasers are VERY accurate (many of them have +2 and +3 OCV bonuses and +4 to +8 Rmods!) and oftentimes have high rates of fire as well (Autofire-10 is not uncommon).

Though, I tend to run my X-ray lasers as APx2 instead of AP/Pen used in Star Hero.

 

 

To get back to the point: these weapons are, largely, not much more powerful than weapons we've had for 30 years. They are less accurate (as they lack OCV and RMod bonuses), they are much more expensive, and they don't carry any more shots.

 

I agree with you about the Ammo capacity. The Ammo Capacity for the Gauss guns they have listed should probably be somewhere in the 50 to 60 round capacity. Since the rounds being fired are in the 2mm to 3mm range, a whole lof of them could be held inside a standard sized clip. An extended clip could likely hold 80 to 100 rounds of this size! Considering the fact that there is no longer a need for Cased ammo with Gauss guns, that increases round capacity while decreasing weight considerably.

 

Now, I do realise that I may be missing a design aesthetic such as a scaling issue here. In a Star HERO game, would an M16 do less damage? That would answer this question, although then I'd have a problem with that concept. On the other hand, that'd be a personal opinion rather than an actual mechanical objection.

 

 

No, an M16 would not do less damage. However, in Star Hero, armor is much more effective...the 8 to 12 Def range with at least 1 level of hardened in many cases. That would make an M16 pretty obselete.

 

Assuming the average Space Marine runs around in a suit of Battle Armor that has a Defense of 8 (not hardened) an M16 does an average of 7 body. That means, on average, no body damage is going to get through to damage the soldier. However, the above mentioned Gauss weapons automatically have a level of AP, which means, on average, at least 3 body is going to bypass the armor. The same with the IR Laser (2D6K damage with 1 level of AP).

 

Give the M16 some AP ammo (but reduce the damage by 1DC to 1 1/2D6K) and you are still only going to do 1 Body damage on average to the armored soldier.

 

So, as you can see, simply adding something like AP or PEN to a weapon can make it seem technologically superior. You don't need to add lots of DC (doing so will make your game unnecesarily deadly, and then you will have to increase the average Defense just so your players can survive...and that creates a whole new set of problems) a combination of the right advantages used in creative ways is sufficient.