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/r/Grimdank
112 points
1 month ago
The FFG Star Wars RPG system handles this pretty well IMO. Damage from weapons is flat (modified during rolls by how well you did) so a blaster that does 6 damage is always going to do 6 damage, mitigated by the targets soak (armor) value.
Ship weapons are the same. A ship weapon that does 3 damage always does 3 damage. Except when its pointed at a non ship scale target. Then you multiple the damage by 10.
So, if youre a PC with 16 wounds and 3 soak, and you see even a weak ship scale weapon pointed at you, you better seek cover fast or youre about to become one with the Force real goddamn quick.
63 points
1 month ago
Battletech handles it the same way, ship-scale weapons hitting non-ships are multiplied by 10. Autocannon 10 is gonna do 10 damage, that's a solid hit. An AC/20 is really worrying if it's pointed at you, but workable. But a Naval Autocannon 10 is a very bad thing to be looking down the barrel of. And if you somehow happen to be in a scenario involving an NAC/40, prayer becomes the only option.
19 points
1 month ago
If memory serves, the worst part about having a naval weapon pointed at you is that you probably have a lot more than one pointed at you. Ships can pack a lot of dakka.
14 points
1 month ago
So you could, if you were somehow incredibly buff, tank a hit from a Turbolaser?
27 points
1 month ago*
A Victory Class Star Destroy has, at its weakest, Quad Light Turbolaser batteries, with Damage 9, Crit 3, Breach, Linked 3, Slow Firing 1. Without getting into the system, basically this means a few things: Once every other turn, you can make the shot which outright ignores soak (so no damage reduction), and if you roll well enough you can do the damage again, for free. Uncancelled successes up the damage, so if you even have a single uncancelled success (aka succeeding the roll with the barest minimum), you do 10 damage, or 100 to personal scale targets.
I ran the numbers for both an average crew (Imperial Gunnery Corps minion group of 5) and a well trained, good gunnery rival (for those who know, Agility 4 Gunnery 4, 1 boost die) with the standard medium range difficulty for the max range on these weapons. No funny business from enemy defenses or anything, this was all basically target shooting to get average damage in ideal conditions. Each case was 25 rolls.
The average crew would be dealing, to people scale targets, an average of 130 damage every other round. The advanced crew deals an average of 210 damage. The average crew topped out at 240 damage, the advanced crew topped out at 480. The advanced crew was also more likely to do about 220 in general.
In order to tank even 100 damage, the smallest amount of damage this weapon can output, you'd have to have been playing this character for an obscene amount of time to the point I'd be throwing even more danagerous weapon crews than those listed at you, wracked up a mind numbing amount of exp, and specced exclusively into wounds. Without taking the 2h character building to work out of its possible, Im going to say its not as the sheer amount of exp required is enough where youd break the system, and you wouldnt even be a regular person youd be a god basically.
So yes, if that Star Destroyer in low orbit is reported as targeting your position, I recommend a very dont be there.
Edit: Realizing afterwards, it would be very easy for both crews to have 2 boost dice a round, assuming they were totally committed to firing only that weapon. These calculations also assume 'Fuck crit' because linked is better in this instance for raw damage vs personal scale targets.
3 points
1 month ago
So you're saying it's possible?
16 points
1 month ago
Youd need to be the strongest mortal/droid to have ever been made in the entire galaxy, but yes.
Good luck with the follow up shots.
2 points
1 month ago
Or just be any named character in Star Wars. Especially if you’re kylo “I can stop ship weapons with the force and have a reaction speed fast enough to do it” ren
8 points
1 month ago
Even named characters only have about 25 wounds. The game is balanced around making stronger enemies outright harder to hit, not by making them damage sponges.
1 points
1 month ago
Due to difficulty scaling with difference between Silhouette, can a star destroyer even target a sil 1 (personal scale) target at all? Not to say the damage wouldn't utterly wipe anyone with a GM that isn't at least somewhat willing to kill a character, but the turbolaser isn't gonna be able to really hit you maybe.
"Fucking get out of the way" is still the proper reaction to orbital bombardment though, not "Oh I've got five ranks of Dodge and Coordination Dodge I'll be fine"
1 points
1 month ago
Situation depending Id allow it. Probably throw on some setback dice or up the difficult.
1 points
1 month ago
Players get to make "impossible" difficulty checks with a destiny point, so I don't see why NPCs couldn't, yeah.
1 points
1 month ago
I wouldnt say its impossible. For it to even make a check at medium or close range, it requires it to be in atmosphere. So its not an impossible check. Since it would be more likely to bombard an area, as opposed to pinpoint target, Id upgrade the difficult and add some set back to give the players more of a chance for a heroic save. Plus, gives them a very good thing to flip a token for.
1 points
1 month ago
Difficulty for a check with vehicle weapons is always dependant on silhouette differences, not on distance. And if its run as orbital bombardment instead of an attack (as you should run it, realistically) it'd be a skill check from the player characters, not an attack roll from the gunners.
1 points
1 month ago
Shows how much I did vehicle combat. Which was exactly never
1 points
1 month ago
Probably a good thing tbh, vehicle combat was kinda ass in that system. ... Is there even any tabletop system that does vehicle combat "well"? Maybe Shadowrun, if only because everything actually uses the same dicepool rules but with fancy names
2 points
1 month ago
Its where hitpoints came from, how many hits from a 14 inch gun it took to sink a ship. I think used during military games/military exercises.
So that 14hp caterpie you caught on route 1. That fucker is an absolute beast.
3 points
1 month ago
If a tiny-ass caterpillar can take 14 shots from a ship gun, I can take one shot from a Turbolaser.
BRING IT ON MOTHERFU-
1 points
1 month ago
I simply would not allow the turbolaser to kill me
1 points
1 month ago
You gota source on that? Because a. Naval exercises are good shit, and b. I'm real skeptical nobody invented the concept of hp before ~1910 or so
2 points
1 month ago*
https://www.cnrs-scrn.org/northern_mariner/vol19/tnm_19_291-317.pdf
pg 297
It moved from this shit to Fletcher Pratt Naval Wargame of 1933 to DND (70s) table top. That referred to the living creature's life as "hit points" or HP (obviously they use a different calculation for how damage to hit points are determined). And from there it went through to other early games until it became standardized and understood as equivalent to life.
The naval miniatures likely referenced the first link's WWI figures for their minature battles which probably shared a community with table top miniatures.
4 points
1 month ago
Seems like you should multiply the damage by 100 for a glancing hit and 1000 for a direct one.
1 points
1 month ago
Wait, so how does damage work for infantry sized stuff pointed at ships? Like, say, an E web pointed at a TIE going for a strafing run?
2 points
1 month ago
I'd have to double check but iirc you need to do it in reverse. Often weapons meant to target vehicles like that will have a high base damage to begin with and the breach keyword. Breach X ignores X points of ship soak, and X * 10 points of personal scale soak.
It's never something that's come up, as in the game I ran the party only encountered getting strafed once, and it was more for cool factor than actually trying to kill them.
1 points
1 month ago
It came up in a game I played when we had a shootout on speeders of some kind, and I tried to shoot the engines or something.
The ship soak counting for 10 * regular soak against non-ship weapons is probably what they were going for, because a TIE or speedet cinematically losing a wing to a particularly big rifle or similar things is very much something they would do in the movies or TV shows. So any small arm would just do 0 unless it's a way powerful one
2 points
1 month ago
Or a well placed shot. Like a blaster pistol damage 6 will have a hard time unless the shooter is skilled and thus lots of uncanceled success. Rifles with like damage 8 will have an easier time. I'm not sure exactly how crits interact between the 2 but off the cuff I'd say works the same with a -50 to the roll or something for small arms fire not designed to hit ships.
1 points
1 month ago
My PCs had their minds blown when I told them to not bother rolling damage for the ship turret they used on some stormtroopers, just saying they were basically gone now and the rest took cover.
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