Aug 04, 14:00 1998

To: Froccer

From: Lindharin

Hi Froccer,

> My reference was to a common infantry weapon (such as the Coalition
> C-14 Firebreather) that does 3d6 MDC on a single shot. If you empty
> the entire clip as a wild burst, you can increase the damage by a
> factor of x7 (as indicated in the RIFTS Conversion Book; revised damage
> code rules about bursts). While I do realize that there are many
> drawbacks to doing this, the many that I have heard do not settle my
> uneasiness about the shear amount of damage that can be done by the
> common infantryman.
>
> >From my GMing experience, I have seen a party of characters frag a
> Coalition APC in short order with a couple of wild bursts. I then ask
> myself, "Why don't they put weapons such as the ones that the characters
> have on these vehicles to do more damage then they are doing with big,
> huge rail guns?".

I get it now. I think there are possibly two answers to this.

First, you are concerned about the relative fire power of infantry vs heavy
weapons. Although the only place I think I have written it is in the Rifts
Equipment page, under my rules any weapons that have to fire bursts list the
damage from a short burst, but they can use proportionately more ammo to do
more damage. So a rail gun that does 1d6x10 and has enough ammo for 10 of
those bursts, could fire longer bursts and do more damage. Since a short
bursts normally count a x3 single shots and extended bursts as x30 single
shots, an extended rail gun burst uses x10 more ammo than the listed short
burst. Since a short burst normally counts as x2 single shot damage and
extended bursts are x10 single shot damage, an extended rail gun burst would
do x5 the listed short burst damage. Of course, under the modified rule in
the Conversion book (which I wasn't aware of) it would actually only be x7 /
x2 = x3.5 damage from an extended burst. Similarly, heavy energy weapons
which do not have the ability to do full auto could still fire short bursts,
allowing x2 damage for x3 ammo.

Second, I get the impression that you aren't just concerned about the ratio
of damages, but think the infantry might have just too much damage
capability. That started me thinking, and I think there is some merit to
that. I think the damage ratings on weapons is okay, and the damage
multipliers from bursts are at least in the ball park (I need to pull out my
Conversion Book and maybe I'll reduce it to x7 too). However, what I
noticed while going over things was how "inexpensive" it is to do a burst.
For something that uses up 30 times the ammo, it only takes 2 actions to
fire an extended burst? I don't think so. I just modified my burst rules
so that, while a short burst still only takes 1 action, a long burst now
takes 2 actions and an extended burst takes 4. I think it may help make
bursts a little more balanced. What do you think?

> Ah, I see. With the new rules, 4d4 x 10 SDC makes a lot more sense then
> 1d4 x 100 SDC.
>
> This still means that the average Juicer will have more SDC than a
> set of average body armor. A Juicer will now be able to survive a couple
> of bursts, even from an energy rifle (6d6 SDC for a common energy rifle,
> x2 for a short burst, equals 72 SDC max. damage). This means that you
> need to hit with at least three short bursts, doing max. damage, to kill
> a common Juicer with body armor. I am unsure of this type of implication
> to the game. It may result in fearless characters who have no problems
> about facing down a squad of troops because they know they will not die.
> Considering the dodge bonus of some Juicers I have seen, I can actually
> see this happening (bummer for the rest of the party who might get
> killed just by colateral damage!).

I agree that the Juicer is a difficult problem under my rules, but in my
opinion they were also problems under the original Rifts rules. While MD
weapons could blow through a Juicer anyway, just because of being MD,
anytime a Juicer got into a bar room brawl or a non-MD melee weapon fight,
he was vastly superior to a score of well-trained normal humans. Although
I don't really think they justified that type of physical toughness in their
description of the process that makes a Juicer, the authors apparently think
that a Juicer has super human resilience. When considered on those terms,
when I made my MDC conversion it made sense to me to treat the Juicer as
having super human resilience, which is why I used the SDC bonus from the
Heroes Unlimited minor power of Extraordinary Endurance. It requires you to
shift your mental perception of a Juicer to someone who really is super
tough, almost a minor comic book super hero, but he still is no where near
as tough as true supernatural critters like dragons. Alternatively, if you
don't like that flavor it is easy enough to further reduce the SDC bonus. I
don't have any Juicer characters at the moment, so I haven't play tested it
at all.

Keep in mind, though, that even normal humans are "tougher" under my SDC
rules than in MD Rifts. A human with decent PE, maybe a few physical skills
that add to SDC, etc, could easily have 20 plus hit points and at least 20
or 30 plus SDC. A single shot laser rifle will on average do 21 damage, or
42 from a short burst, so it will severly hurt, or maybe even mortally
wound, a normal human, but it will not automatically blow him away. I
personally think this is a much better system because you could NOT survive
in Rifts outside your armor, and I never liked that flavor. Obviously, you
still want armor whenever you go into battle since an unarmored person will
be quickly wiped out, but you no longer have to worry about needing armor
just to survive being bumped into by a supernatural PS being like an Undead
Slayer while walking down the street in town. :)

As an aside, this type of damage also makes some logical sense to me. A
high tech laser will burn through armor pretty well (hence it counts as a
supernatural damage category for penetration purposes) but it is still a
narrow beam. It shouldn't completely disintegrate a human sized target just
because it does 10 MD = 1000 SDC. It should punch a hole right through the
human, but if there were no vital organs along that line (ie, a low damage
roll of 10 or 15) the human would survive and could maybe even keep
fighting. A better shot (an average to high damage roll of 20 to 30) is
much more likely to put a normal human down for the count, though heroic
and/or higher level characters with more SDC and HP would still be on their
feet, presumably because they were able to jerk aside or angle their body to
keep it from hitting anything vital. Even so, the heroic character will be
slowed by the wound (since he now has fewer, if any, SDC or HP) and will be
an "easier" target for the next shot. That is how I envision the combat
proceeding under my SDC rules. Your mileage may vary... :)

> >I haven't planned on the helmet having a separate amount at all. As per
> >Rifts, a suit of standard body armor has a total amount of SDC, not each
> >limb separately. However, if someone removes the helmet that will reduce
> >the AR and also mean it is not environmentally sealed and any strike over
> >the AR will do full damage to the victim. Remember that even in full,
> >environmentally sealed armor, strike rolls over the AR will still do 1/2
> >damage to the wearer.

> My problem is with the reality of this. The SAMAS helmet, for example,
> does not seem to be significantly larger than a normal Coalition grunt's
> helmet. Yet you can aim for that specific part of the power armour. Why
> would the same not be true for normal armor? Why would you
> not be able to aim at anything? I think that you would be able to aim
> at anything, even something as small as a dime, except that you would
> get significant penalties to strike and it would have to be a called
> shot.

Well, I do use called shot rules, but haven't planned on using them against
normal body armor. For example, if you were not wearing any helmet I say
that you can do a called shot to the head (-3 strike, total of more than 12)
and it would bypass the armor to do full damage to the person, even if the
strike total wasn't over the AR.

But if someone is wearing a full suit of armor, then for speed of play I
don't think it is needed to list the SDC of each part of standard body
armor. Keep in mind that under the SDC rules, even full environmental suits
still have an AR and if you beat it than some of the damage will get through
to the wearer even if the armor still has SDC left. So, that kind of makes
up for it. Instead of explicitly requiring your characters to specify what
they are shooting at and keeping separate SDC totals for each body part, you
just assume that they are always aiming for the vulnerable places between
the armor plates, the joints, the eyes, etc, and if the strike roll is good
enough to beat the AR then they managed to hit the vulnerable area and do
some damage to the guy inside.

If you would prefer to have the explicit called shots, it would be easy
enough to add it, though. I'd be happy to work it out with you and bounce
ideas off each other, if you'd like.

> In general, these are excellant adaptations to a game system that is,

Thank you! :)

> in my opinion, totally screwed. Don't get me wrong; I love the Palladium
> multiverse, but I feel that the rules could have been more
> thoroughly thought out than they currently are.
>
> As for changing everything to SDC, I think it has great potential.
> However, neither I, nor my players have started out with conventional
> Palladium games (RIFTS is our first), so changing from MDC will seem
> like a radical idea.
>
> I will indicate your system to my players as a good system to switch
> over to. The people I play with are all experienced gamers, and I am
> sure they will have valuable insight. I will consider your suggestions
> with my players, and will be sure to contact you with our decisions.

Please do! I would love to have any and all feedback about it. Keep in
mind that the idea came from 2nd edition Heroes Unlimited, which I only got
a few months ago. We've done some testing of it in our games since, but I
don't consider it a final product yet. I expect to continue tweaking it for
some time based upon further play testing. I'd really, really appreciate it
if you could keep me up to date with how it goes, if you are all willing to
help me fine tune it. And if you'd like, I'd be happy to email you to
discuss any new changes I make. Let me know if you are interested.

> I just had an idea! Weapons like energy rifles should have less
> power than rail guns, and armor like vehicle armor should have more
> protection than body armor. This would mean that an energy rifle would
> not be as effective against an APC (which is supposed to protect the
> people inside against small arms fire anyways), as a 1 ton rail gun
> would be. This would totally nulify my concerns about infantry weapons
> doing more damage than heavy mount vehicle weapons.
>
> I don't know what implications it would have to your current damage
> scheme, but let me know what you think about this and the other
> ponderings that I have commented on.

That is my intention for using the damage category scheme, but it doesn't
quite fit as-is. Take a look at my definition of what weapons count as each
of the damage categories. One of the key "balance points" was that bullets
pretty much needed to be in the 3rd category, superhuman, so that they are
sufficently better than melee weapons and bows in a medieval setting. That
meant that any ex-MD weapons needed to be in the fourth category, because
they are better able to penetrate than bullets. As it stands, though, since
there is no 5th category, the ex-MD hand weapons are just as effective
against tanks as against any high tech (ie MD) body armor, but the tank just
has more SDC. Is it worth adding a 5th damage category? If so, we need to
think through some of the implications. What weapons would do damage in the
5th category? Would standard body armor protect against them normally, or
would those weapons always do damage to someone in ex-MD body armor?

What do you think?

And thanks again for the feedback!
Lindharin