Modified Starship Damage Chart

[Gry Sarth]

My group and I have just been through a very starfighter-battle-centered campaign, in which we revamped the whole dogfighting system, incorporating many elements from the Star Warriors game. Well, these extreme changes aside, we still tried to use as many official rules as possible. We were using the standard Starship Damage Chart, but that often proved a little frustrating in combat, so we devised a modified version of it.

These were our main objectives with this modified chart:
- A ship shouldn't start taking physical damage until its shield was disabled.
- The chance of just destroying a weapon should be much smaller.
- Usually frustrating effects like just disabling a ships's hyperdrive shouldn't be the sole result of a great shot.
- There should be a chance of inflicting structural damage, which weakens the ship's Hull.

If the shields are disabled, you roll 1D, and what you roll determines which part of the ship was hit (stabilizers, weapons, engine, generator or hull). And this is what I came up with, still using the same target numbers as the official rules:

Shields hit. -1D from shields for rest of round and next round. If no dice in shields, Controls ionized.

Controls ionized. -1D penalty to Piloting and Gunnery rolls and from shields for rest of round and next round.

Lightly damaged. -1D from shields. If no dice in shields, roll 1D:
1. Stabilizers hit. -1D penalty to Piloting and Gunnery rolls.
2. One on-board weapon rendered inoperative for 3 rounds.
3. Engine hit. Top Speed reduced by 1/3 (rounded down).
4. Generator fluctuation. -1D to weapon damage and sensors. Doubled time and +10 to difficulty to calculate astrogation courses.
5-6. Structural damage. -1D to Hull (if Hull reaches 0, disintegrates in 1D rounds).

Heavily damaged. -2D from shields (if ship had up to 1D of shields, roll Lightly damaged). If no dice in shields, roll 1D:
1. Stabilizers hit. -2D penalty to Piloting and Gunnery rolls.
2. One on-board weapon destroyed.
3. Engine hit, Top Speed reduced by 2/3 (rounded down).
4. Generator failure. -2D to weapon damage and sensors. Life support and hyperdrive disabled.
5-6. Structural damage. -2D to Hull (if Hull reaches 0, disintegrates in 1D rounds).

Severely damaged. -3D from shields (if ship had up to 1D of shields, roll Heavily damaged, if up to 2D of shields, roll Lightly damaged). If no dice in shields, roll 1D:
1. Stabilizers hit. -3D penalty to Piloting and Gunnery rolls.
2. All on-board weapons destroyed.
3. Engine disabled.
4. Generator overloaded. Explodes in 1D rounds (unless deactivated), destroying ship.
5-6. Structural damage. -3D to Hull (if Hull reaches 0, disintegrates in 1D rounds).

Destroyed. -4D from shields (if ship had up to 1D of shields, roll Severely damaged, if up to 2D of shields, roll Heavily damaged, if up to 3D of shields, roll Lightly damaged). If no dice in shields or if damage is 21+, ship instantly destroyed.


So, what do you think of it?
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[vong]

looks cool. i like tha tyou cant damage hull untill shields are down, but onyl to a point.

I still think there should be a chance to damage hull if there still shields up. You know, a fluctuation, or something.

I quote the X-Wing series books as precedent. They would fire a group of torpodes at a ship to overwhelm the shields for a second, enough for one or 2 to get through the sields to do some damage ot the hull.

So i think that there shoould be a chance that you fire the second shot fast enough to meet a fluctuation or something (something like roll 2d, if you get two 1s then you do damage to the hull)
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[Gry Sarth]

Well, you could replicate this effect my hammering at the shield to bring it down to zero, and then firing at the unprotected hull. The shield reaching zero doesn't mean the shield generators are destroyed. The technicians can work at it to bring the shields back up as soon as possible, and if it's a MonCal ship, they can bring up those backup shields.

I think this whole "shield fluctuation" thing is too unorthodox to influence the basic damage rules. It's better left to GM's call.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[Esoomian]

Also in the books it was always a capital ship that they used the torpedo trick for so all they ever ended up doing was taking down one facing of the shields.

Perhaps if you have 3D shields total and you've got 1D on the rear and 2D on the front and you loose 1D to your shields then it's a question of who has the faster initiative the guy working the shields or the guy shooting the weapons.

[Gry Sarth]

Exactly. That's a great explanation. The ship still has remaining shield dice, but he can't equalize the power fast enough to block the next wave of torps.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[vong]

ahh, touche mon ami. That does seem like a good explination.

i conceed to your points
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[Phalanks Balas]

In the exemple of torpedo salvo, energy shields are not affected. So yes hull can be damaged directly even if energy shields are still up. Of course this situation can only occurs if energy shields are not effective against weapon used.
I like the idea of energy shield going down without been destroyed.

Thanks Gry for this chart.

I propose also a "reduced" damage rule. Sometime, a luky roll breaks the cynematic of a scene. A result of "destroyed" can ruin all GM or players expectations...
The rule is simple : it is possible to reduce a level of damage sustained at the cost of two damages of the level just bellow.
For exemple, if a ship sustain a "severe damage", GM can decide to convert it in two heavy damages. It keep the same loose of shield dice and role twice for systems damaged.
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Phalanks

A day you will be facing the guns of the Black Pearl. You will know what means damned pirates !

[Gry Sarth]

That's a sensible "house rule of a house rule", Balas, if you want to help your players a bit. But you should also notice that if you have even a little bit of shielding left in your ship, it's terribly unliquely that you can be "Destroyed" in a single shot, since the shields have to be disabled first.
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"He's Gry Sarth, of course he has the stats for them."

[Phalanks Balas]

sometime missiles or torpedoes hit with incredible effect... And I dislike to not finish my scenarii especially if player didn't do stupid things
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Phalanks

A day you will be facing the guns of the Black Pearl. You will know what means damned pirates !