Differing between heavy firepower and rapid fire.

[ZzaphodD]

When redoing my 40K Terminator conversion to SW I came across a problem I have encountered before.

How does one differ between a weapon with a powerful attack and a weapon with a high rate of fire.

The same problem exists with the RAW repeating blasters. How do you differ between an E-web and a portable Laser Cannon damage wise?

The question touches on the autofire rules discussed on this board.

My autofire system adds a number of Autofire Dice to either damage or the Skill roll. A light repeating blaster then does 5D in damage with 1D Autofire Die. An Autofire dice can also be used to cover an area of 3m with a singe action. When using area fire the Autofire Dice is not used either to hit or for damage. If hit, anyone suffers the weapons basic damage.

This is a simple system made for fast play. However it suffers from the same problem as the RAW repeating blasters. If you have a weak blaster with a high rate of fire it shouldnt be able to damage heavily armoured targets to the same degree as a singer powerful blaster bolt. The other way around, a fast firing lighter weapon could possibly damage a (non living) target more than a single powerful attack.

I can find no easy way of adressing this without rolling a massive amount of to-hit dice and damage dice for each hit. The armour values (if they exist) are very low, so its hard to use them as a 'barrier'. All known weapons will shoot through a Bounty Hunter armor anyway.
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[ZzaphodD]

Weird! I have looked for a simple solution for this for a while, with no luck. Perhaps writing this topic made something click, because an idea suddenly came to my mind.

When handling autofire weapons like in my rule above one rolls the autofire dice in a separate colour from the basice damage dice.

The result of the basic damage dice are them compared to the damage resistance roll.

If the damage dice result is 6 lower or more than the resistance roll, the Autofire Dice may not be added. The force of the attacking weapon is to weak to penetrate the armour. If the result is 5 lower or more, add the result of the Autofire dice to the damage. Even though a single bolt might not have damaged the target seriusly enough to warrant a wound/light damage, the barrage of shots added up to one.

Example: A Stormtrooper Assault Trooper fires his Assault Blaster (gatling blaster). Damgae is 5D, but with a 3D autofire bonus. The target is a Rebel Military speeder with a Body of 6D*. He rolls 5D in damage with a result of 16. The Speeder commander rolls his Body and comes up with a 23. The Stormtrooper dont get to add his 3D as the blaster bolts are to weak to penetrate the armour sufficiently (or the angle of attack was ineffective, etc). If he would have rolled 18 for damage he would then add 3D autofire damage for a total of 29. Even though each bolt were not powerful enough to damage the target more than superficially, the amount of superficial damages added up to a light damage.

* For this example the speeder is character scale.

This might seem more complicated than it is. Just roll damage as usual with two different colours. Give the GM the result of the basic damage die first. Either you fail to penetrate enough or the GM tells you to add the Autofire dice to the total.
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[CRMcNeill]

[garhkal]

So like, this round i hit i do 5d+1 (weapons listed damage). Next round i add +1 making it 5d+2. next round i add 1 round+1= +2 making it 6d. Next round i add 1+1+2, making 1d+1. for 6+2. Next round i add 1+1+2+3=2d+1, making it 7d+2. Next round it is 1+1+2+3+4 for 3d+2 bonus giving me a total damage of 9d.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[CRMcNeill]

[atgxtg]

[atgxtg]

[Random Numbers]

or let weapons with extreme rate of fire hit several times per success. Then you don't have any problems with writing armor rules.

Example:

'normal' auto blaster ala mp5 gets 4d +1d autofire dice.

gatling version of the same gets 4d +1d autofire dice and every hit counts as two hits.
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Random is who random does...

[ZzaphodD]

[CRMcNeill]

[Random Numbers]

[garhkal]

I could see that if you were using one of the rules of engagement additional damage ways... so the higher you hit by the more damage you did.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[ZzaphodD]

We already have a damage bonus depending on how high over the required target number you roll. This is not specifically for autofire though.

But one thing I have been thinking of is to give autofire a steeper 'damage bonus' than normal weapon, representing hitting with several shots. This would be combined with putting all the autofire dice on the skill roll.

However, I digress, this is a separate issue from the firepower/rate of fire issue.

I would really want to avoid rolling several 'hits' when doing autofire. My aim here is to keep it simple. In 'reality' one would have to work out how many shots hit the target (not that easy) and then do every hit separately. This would be a dice rolling nightmare for a game.
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My Biggest Beard Retard award goes to: The Admiral of course..

[garhkal]

Why not a chart.

To hit over dodge.. 0-4 = 1 hit
To hit over dodge.. 5-8 = 2hits
To hit..9-12 = 3 hits
and so on, inc one hit each 4 over the target adds one more hit.
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[CRMcNeill]