Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

[Ragitsu]

With the way it's set up, phaser fights are DDeadly (with two capital D's). Logically, if there really were high-tech phasers like that, fights with them would be really deadly.

 

But that doesn't really feel to me like it matches the source material. Am I wrong?

 

Should phaser fights be:

 

1) Hard to hit, but if you hit the guy is DEAD?

 

2) Easy to hit, and if you hit the guy is DEAD?

 

3) Easy to hit, but you don't go down in one hit?

 

4) Hard to hit, and you don't go down in one hit?

 

I feel like it should be Number One. But, in order to make it that way, people would need lots of DCV/Defense/Dodge/etc. Alternatively, there'd need to be a rule change elsewhere.

 

How would you do it?

[megaplayboy]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

With the way it's set up, phaser fights are DDeadly (with two capital D's). Logically, if there really were high-tech phasers like that, fights with them would be really deadly.

 

But that doesn't really feel to me like it matches the source material. Am I wrong?

 

Should phaser fights be:

 

1) Hard to hit, but if you hit the guy is DEAD?

 

2) Easy to hit, and if you hit the guy is DEAD?

 

3) Easy to hit, but you don't go down in one hit?

 

4) Hard to hit, and you don't go down in one hit?

 

I feel like it should be Number One. But, in order to make it that way, people would need lots of DCV/Defense/Dodge/etc. Alternatively, there'd need to be a rule change elsewhere.

 

How would you do it?

 

I don't think there's any kind of auto-targeting on phasers. Generally, even if they're not set on disintegrate, a torso or head shot with a "disrupt" setting should be "mostly fatal"(i.e., 10 or more BODY done). They (the hand phasers, that is) seem to have range/accuracy limitations not that dissimilar from handguns(I don't recall seeing an "effective range" stat for a hand phaser). If a PC has combat luck, they could maybe say they got hit by a "glancing shot" from a phaser. And I'd think you'd have to come up with some rationale for a PC with 20+ BODY not dying instantly from one phaser hit. You should probably go down after one hit, but not necessarily be killed instantly. After all, you're a PC!

[Old Man]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

I don't think I've ever seen someone get injured from a phaser hit in the shows--not when it's set on kill anyway. They really seem to be all-or-nothing.

[Escafarc]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

Are we talking ST:TOS or the later series because I don't remember(and I'm most likely wrong about this) any "total" disintegrations in the later versions.

[Nevelon]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

I'm sure people more versed in the lore of Trek could give you a better answer, but combat in any of the series struck me as a game of rocket tag. Shoot first, hit your target, and win. There wasn't a lot of getting wounded and returning fire. They took cover (after the red shirt went down) I'm not sure if the hit/miss ratio was from a technological or cinematic restriction. Hard to have fight scenes when it's over right after it starts.

 

I know at some points there were phaser rifles, rather then just the sidearms we saw most of the time. With the destructive power of the pistols, one could assume that shoulder arms were designed either for larger ammo or better accuracy at range.

 

From a hero mechanics standpoint, combat characters would be focused on going first and combat values, either to accurately hit your target first, or be nimble enough not to get hit (so you get the chance to shoot back)

 

I am not a Trek nerd, but am geek enough to have watched a broad spectrum of it and absorb enough to posit theories.

[Manic Typist]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

Central characters were wounded commonly enough by phasers. They always managed to get hit on the upper arm.... very convenient (as opposed to center mass).

[Escafarc]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

It's almost like Combat Luck is an Everyman Talent for PCs.

[RexMundi]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

Our Running Joke is something along the lines of "Phasers! The Worlds Slowest Energy Beam...." Most likely why the MACO's showed up with a different energy gun in the Enterprise series, heh. You have enough time to go make a cup of coffee, drink it while reading the paper, and possibly starting a good breakfast while waiting for the average Next Generation Phaser beam to cross a room.

 

TOS though, they had episodes where an over loaded phaser could blow up and take the Enterprise with it, so, one could say they are pretty powerful. Basically All or Nothing. Main Characters get grazed in the Arm, Red Shirt's and anyone Kirk shoots at gets Vaporized, anyone Janeway or Sisko talks to Vaporizes themselves to maintain sanity, Anyone dealing with Archer shoots themself with the Retcon setting, and most folks are Self Stunning if they listen to PIcard tell them to surrender or get Phasered.

 

~Rex

[Escafarc]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

Our Running Joke is something along the lines of "Phasers! The Worlds Slowest Energy Beam...." Most likely why the MACO's showed up with a different energy gun in the Enterprise series, heh. You have enough time to go make a cup of coffee, drink it while reading the paper, and possibly starting a good breakfast while waiting for the average Next Generation Phaser beam to cross a room.

 

TOS though, they had episodes where an over loaded phaser could blow up and take the Enterprise with it, so, one could say they are pretty powerful. Basically All or Nothing. Main Characters get grazed in the Arm, Red Shirt's and anyone Kirk shoots at gets Vaporized, anyone Janeway or Sisko talks to Vaporizes themselves to maintain sanity, Anyone dealing with Archer shoots themself with the Retcon setting, and most folks are Self Stunning if they listen to PIcard tell them to surrender or get Phasered.

 

~Rex

[Tom Carman]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

I don't think I've ever seen someone get injured from a phaser hit in the shows--not when it's set on kill anyway. They really seem to be all-or-nothing.

 

Combat phaser settings in TOS were either stun or disintegrate, at least on screen. In The Omega Glory, Spock mentioned finding depleted phaser powerpacks among the remains of several hundred Yang bodies. So the phaser was being used at a reduced (but still very lethal) setting to extend its use.

[Old Man]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

Are we talking ST:TOS or the later series because I don't remember(and I'm most likely wrong about this) any "total" disintegrations in the later versions.

 

There was one in STII:TWOK and, I think, one in the movie after that. I can't remember the Dustbusters being employed against anything organic in TNG.

[Spence]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

In ST: DS9 there were several instances where personnel received phaser hits as well as disrupter hits. What I took from the series is this.

 

 

Phasers have multiple settings based on type of damage.

 

 

One setting attacks the nervous system with the intensity/damage being everything from Stun to Kill (complete nervous system burnout). In the show there have been being hit by phaser set to Kill that survived.

 

 

The other setting attacks the physical structure resulting from mild disruption to “phaser burns” to complete disintegration.

 

 

The limiter seems to be available charge. The stun/kill type damage uses less energy than the ones that attack the physical structure. Hence the phaser rifle is used to dish out more damage, not because of the size of the weapon element, but rather the size of the power supply.

 

So if I was going to make a phaser I would do this.

 

Two Modes:

 

1) Determine how much body damage will be reqiured to completly disintegrate a normal human. Make that the max damage value and set the END reserve for a hand phaser so that one or two shots will exhaust its END. Make sure the RKA us adjustable so a lower value may be selcted.

 

2) make the second attack a Normal energy RA with the limitation that while STUN is applied normally, BDY damage does not accumulate and is only applied if the BDY inflicted is greater than the targets BDY stat in a single shot to simulate the all or nothing effect from the show.

[Ternaugh]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

Perhaps more detail than anyone really needs: http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Phaser

 

This includes a detailed chart from the TNG technical manual at the end with the various power levels of Type 1, 2 and 3 phasers (hand phasers through rifle, respectively), with related effects for all 16 power levels for Type 3 (up to 8 for Type 1 and 2).

 

JoeG

[megaplayboy]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

Hmm...max effective range of the Type II hand phaser is 90 meters, according to that article. Guess that qualifies for a "limited range" limitation. I assume the phaser rifles are capable of a longer effective range.

[Old Man]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

Egad. I just posted a rant about how SF weapons are less powerful than 20th century ones. What thread was that in?

[austenandrews]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

I remember playing the Star Trek RPG back in the early 80's. It was one of the few systems I ran where if someone held you at gunpoint, you dang well better put your hands up and surrender. Rushing a dude with a phaser pointed at you was a death sentence. Made for a lot of convincingly TOS-like adventures, where the PCs got captured and had to escape. That was surprisingly hard to do in most systems.

[baronspam]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

Well, keep in mind that this is a sub-genre where handguns hit so hard you don't even leave a corpse. I think players would be scared crapless of combat. For the most part you are dealing with weapons that kill you if you get hit. Not take some hit points, not make you feel bad, but flat KILL YOU. Ranged combat with energy weapons would be something to avoid unless you had no other options or were really tired of your character.

 

It is also a reason to work as many other kind of conflicts into the story as possible, be it fistfights, talking your way past trouble, techno-babble skill tests, phasers on stun, etc. Because if some does have a phaser set on "glow and vaporize" you really don't want to leave that nonsense up to the dice. Its just way to easy to die.

[Escafarc]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

You could always use the Spacemaster Critical Charts

[Ragitsu]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

"Variable Power Setting" indeed.

[薔薇語]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

The upper limits on Phasers are quite High. In the Original Series there was a worry about how even one overcharged hand phaser has the capacity to take out a large chunk of the Enterprise if it exploded inside. I remember a scene where Commander Data destroyed an entire aqueduct from quite the distances with his phases and commented on how that wasn't even on its highest setting. Realistically, the combats that occur in Star Trek are completely not keeping with the tech of Star Trek. Why the bad guys don't just put their weapons on "vaporize" and destroy any and all cover the good guys have is beyond me. Likewise, why the good guys (especially ones like Data) don't just use it in the same way so that you can then shoot to stun.

 

All that said, there are stun settings and even on the higher stun settings, it is possible for PCs / NPCs to keep standing after taking a direct hit or two. But they have to be very strong. Likewise, on the lower settings, the PCs could take a hit and possibly treat it as a flesh wound from a modern weapon.

 

La Rose.

[Tasha]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

Phasers are as dangerous as you the GM need them to be. Remember, the more powerful you make them the easier time players will have in combat. Like most iconic SciFi weapons their lethality depended on the Author of the script and the needs of the story. IMHO as GM of an RPG you should have weapons that are balanced around the genre's rather low mortality rate for the Primaries in the story.

 

Ent Phase Pistol, Very accurate (assuming you can hold it for long) prob about as powerful as TOS Phaser I. Kind of heavy and clunky.

TOS "Laser" pistol. Prob not a LASER like we think of them, It seems to be more like a more primitive Phaser.

TOS Phaser 1 fairly accurate, not as powerful or accurate as a Phaser 2 pistol due to the weird ergonomics of the puck

TOS Phaser II Very Accurate, more powerful than Phaser I the traditional pistol shape is very easy to aim and the light weight design is easy to use

TOS Phaser IV (TOS Movie Design)Very Accurate. more powerful than Phaser II, probably also more shots before powerpack in emptied.

TNG Phaser II(AKA RemoteControl, Dustbuster Design). Highly inaccurate, over complicated design. Ergonomics are way off, hard for user to tell what gun is pointing at.* Prob. some idiot at Starfleet wanted a gun that didn't look like a gun and was therefore more friendly.

TNG Phaser V (Golden Hockey puck design) Supposedly 3x more powerful than a phaser IV. About as accurate as a TOS Phaser I

TNG Phaser VI (Battle Phaser, perhaps looking like a Phaser IV) it would be more powerful than a phaser V.

 

It may be that protagonists have 1 - 2 levels of Combat Luck. It could also be argued that next gen uniforms might have some sort of resistant defense vs energy weapons.

 

Phasers in general are a multipower

45 Multipower, 90-point reserve, (90 Active Points); all slots OAF (Phaser Pistol; -1)

3f Blast 8d6, Stun Only, Constant (+1/2) (60 Active Points); OAF (Phaser Pistol; -1)

4f Heavy Stun: Blast 12d6, Constant (+1/2) (90 Active Points); OAF (Phaser Pistol; -1)

4f Kill: RKA 4d6, Constant (+1/2) (90 Active Points); OAF (Phaser Pistol; -1)

With this design one can model the many settings of the Phaser by first using a slot and choosing to use less dice. I would recommend creating alist of the 6 most common settings, and the ones that most Starfleet officers use in the line of duty. Otherwise the PC's will just set the phaser to 4d6 kill and unleash devastation. If you hold a Constant 4d6 RKA on something long enough (provided it doesn't have enough armor) you will end up destroying it. OH and to simulate the Disintegrate function, just hold the phaser on target for one phase after the target dies, the body done will in most cases destroy the corpse.

 

I say to remember that you are translating a TV show/Movie into an RPG format. If you convert to what you think you are seeing you will have lots of player death and combats that end up being about who gets the first accurate shots off first.

 

Tasha

 

* TOS dustbuster style phasers caused many production problems as the actors couldn't tell exactly what the pistol was pointed at and therefore caused problems at ILM when it came time to draw in the beam effects. They couldn't always just draw a straight line down the body of the gun to the target as the actors would be aiming high or low.

 

http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Phaser semi canon sources of Trek info.

http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Phaser Canon sources only, but info not as complete as Memory Beta.

[Escafarc]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

Wasn't there a write up for a "phaser" type weapon in the 5E StarHERO?

[Tasha]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

Wasn't there a write up for a "phaser" type weapon in the 5E StarHERO?

 

Steve does a writeup for each of the Iconic SciFi weapons. (ie Phasers, Light Sabers etc)

[Enlightened]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

With the way it's set up, phaser fights are DDeadly (with two capital D's). Logically, if there really were high-tech phasers like that, fights with them would be really deadly.

 

But that doesn't really feel to me like it matches the source material. Am I wrong?

 

Should phaser fights be:

 

1) Hard to hit, but if you hit the guy is DEAD?

 

2) Easy to hit, and if you hit the guy is DEAD?

 

3) Easy to hit, but you don't go down in one hit?

 

4) Hard to hit, and you don't go down in one hit?

 

I feel like it should be Number One. But, in order to make it that way, people would need lots of DCV/Defense/Dodge/etc. Alternatively, there'd need to be a rule change elsewhere.

 

How would you do it?

 

Wow. This is word for word the post that I made on RPG.net here and the GURPS forum here.

[Ragitsu]

Re: Star Trek: How dangerous are phasers?

 

The trilogy is now complete.