Item destruction...and mortally wounded stabilization Q...

[garhkal]

Had a nice discussion over on Dragonsfoot.org (an ad&d site, dedicated to basic through 2nd ed AD&D). One of the posters, was on about how he is considered by his players to be a 'hitler' gm, due to his keeping of their character sheets, especially the inventories, to ensure no cheating. One of his statements in regards to it, about one of his players responding to a quesiton of what the characters due when breaking for camp, mentioned about eating rations. When the gm checked the sheet, he replied to the player "what rations."
That got me thinking about similar situations, but most of those related to item descruction (like loosing all the stuff in their backpack) cause of failing saves versus certain things (fireballs!).

So, how do you handle 'item' distruction, in starwars>

EG. Player A is in the radius (8d one) of a thermal detonator, or at ground zero for a concussion/frag grenade... how do you decide what of his equipment survives???

Related question, which is something i have had come up ONCE!... Lets say the party got their last med pack(s) destroyed (how ever), then later on in a battle, several drop to mortally wounded. How would they 'stabilize' said character, since by the rules it requires a med pack to do so??
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Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Akari]

I had a situation like this before. I usually picked a number between one and six, depending on how I reliable or rugged I think the piece of equipment is.

Lets say a knife (or other lowtech stuff) would be a 2, a blaster carbine (described at being quite rugged) a 3, most other tech equipment a 4, fragile or exposed equipment a 5 and really sensitive equipment would be destroyed without a roll. A rolled 1 would always indicate a destruction (or at least major damage) of the item, while a rolled 6 meant it (miraculously?) survived the explosion or fall.

Hope this helps a little...

[Chabit Rane]

For the healing part I would raise the difficulty number by 5 to 15, based on what is available & on conditions.

[Boomer]

For item destruction, I tend to do something similar to what Akari mentioned, but somewhere I had a table of basic strengths of items to go along with it.
Basically, just rolling items strength vs. damage.
For someone caught in the blast of a Thermal Detonator and taking 8d worth of damage... they are losing a lot.

As for doing medical without medpacs... to stabilize a mortally wounded friend... they are basically improvising, as if without skill. It all depends what other equipment they have on hand to do similar work, and the difficulty can be increased, as Chabit said, 5 to 15 more.
By improvised equipment, anything that can be used medically, gauze, sucher, drinks, something.
_________________
My backpack has jets!
I'm Boba the Fett!
And I bounty hunt for Jabba Hutt,
to finance my 'vette!

[garhkal]

So someone on fire (like if they got hit by that flamethrower i posted about... see the link>>!?!) would be closer to the 15 modifier, side of house...

I was asking that for a "what if" based on a thought i have, for using that flamethrower in a module...
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[Robert]

Item destruction
Well, good old AD&D only demands rolling for item destruction if the character wearing them fails their saving throw. Items have saving throws depending on material and damage source. So paper has nearly no chance versus fire but very good ones versus cold damage and autosucces versus falling. GM allocating is quicker and there are much more different materials in SWD6 than in AD&D, but i could transform the AD&D list into SWD6 if someone wants them.

A simple rule transfer would be:
1. Equipment has to resist versus the same damage roll as the bearer.
2. Equipment base strength can range from 1D to 6D.
3. Equipment can get a bonus or a malus versus different damage sources. This bonus can range from -3D to +3D.
4. The damage level to equipment can not be higher than the damage level its bearer suffered .
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"We don't stop playing because we grow old...we grow old because we stop playing." G.B. Shaw

[Robert]

Medical treatment
Well, there is quite a bunch of items listed up Grys Equipment stats which could be used instead of a simple medpack, but they are all sophisticated stuff. Sometimes players think its better to invest their last medpac for wounded characters, so they can fight on instead of reserving it for the worst case scenario. I know you calculate from destroyed medpacks, but for a general rule i would take into account that players shuould think in advance. No clever players go to fight without one medpack in their backpack. And: Just keep in mind that every additional use of a medpack in 24h adds +5 to the difficulty and that you might be mistreated so you cant use any medpack for 24h! No equipment must mean a very bad penalty. Try to stabilise someone whose artery is ruptured or who suffered major burns without proper equipment. Imho only a real professional could handle such a situation. I therefore would

1. Double the DC without proper equipment
2. Substract 1D to 4D from the DC depending on the ideas the players come up with and my medical knowledge.
3. Every treatments within the last 24 hours, even when with proper euqipment adds +5 to the DC.
4. If mistreated within the last 24 hours, the DC is doubled again.
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"We don't stop playing because we grow old...we grow old because we stop playing." G.B. Shaw

[Robert]

Nostalgic Story
I once had a similar situation with a troll in SR. He was stuffed to the upper lip with grenades (around 20 iirc) and we stormed a building. He was in a narrow cellar corridor as a fireball stroke him. The GM was nice and just ruled me to be mortally wounded as some of my grenades exploded and caused the remaining to explode too. And all the damage was reflected from the corridors walls! I survived, but after some thinking through i would have prefered a harsher ruling. So - keep in mind:

If you use equipment destruction rules, what damage can destroyed equipment do?
_________________
"We don't stop playing because we grow old...we grow old because we stop playing." G.B. Shaw

[Boomer]

Robert brought up some good points, but hadn't quite adressed the question of medical simply without the aid of medpacs. No other condition was stated.

As for someone on fire. Well how hard is it to put out the fire? Honestly, that one is pretty easy.
_________________
My backpack has jets!
I'm Boba the Fett!
And I bounty hunt for Jabba Hutt,
to finance my 'vette!

[Robert]

Boomer,
I think i know what you mean, but to find a general houserule you have to think about all conditions where this rule would be used. Of course its hard if you lose all medpacks due to fire and then have several friends burning slowly to death. Imho it is not that difficult to stop someone from burning, you wouldn´t need a medpack for that. As already discussed in the flamethrower thread i would suggest a moderate dexterity check. But stopping the fire doesn´t stabilise him. He might have lost too much of his tissue and a cure to such a problem is something you can´t improvise so easily. Minor Burns (Wounds or Stuns) might be eased with water or urine or whatever the characters come up with. But if someone has lost too much skin, he will die, even with proper medical care. Only good rolling, good equipments and good doctors can help. If one of the things is missing - bad luck. Then the other two have to be really good.

To make it more concrete: I would suggest a hardness of 2D for the medpack. Because the casing is propably inflammable, just because its designed to take some field punishment, i wouldn´t lower the dice versus fire. I would take into account the armor damage rule and substract the appropriate penalty due to damage from all first aid checks with this medpack. If it is destroyed, which should, following my guidelines above, only happen if the bearer is wounded several times or suffers a mortally wounded result, there is no proper equipment left and therefore the DC doubled.
_________________
"We don't stop playing because we grow old...we grow old because we stop playing." G.B. Shaw

[garhkal]

[scott2978]

As for the question about a character's equipment, the first thing I'd say is that "Remember this is Star Wars RPG!" So to keep the flavor of the game, and to keep the pace going, I think I'd just randomly determine, or arbitrarily determine what still works and what doesn't, based on what the cause of damage was. If your PC got hit by a flamethrower, and later you want to know if that medpack survived the inferno, in all truth I'd probly roll a few dice and tell the player "It looks pretty badly scorched and a little melted on one side, but it should still work." But when he gets to that "extra blaster" he's been carrying around for 3 adventures, I'd probly say "At first glance it looks fine, but after turning it over you notice that one side is completely melted. The blaster must have blocked most of the heat from the blast, saving your medpack." The bottom line is I doubt I'd bog the game down by rolling for every item, unless the PC pulled each and every item out of their pack to check them in detail. More likely I'd say "You look around in your pack and some things look more burnt than others, but everything's a complete mess so it's hard to tell. Unless you dump the pack and clean all the melted plastiform and other burnt goop off, you can't really tell how bad the damage is." If they ask about a particular prized item or something, then I'd defer to my better judgement and decide arbitrarily what made it and what didn't, just to keep the game moving. Just don't abuse it.

Now as for the "Stabilizing a character without a medpack" question, it has happened so many times that I made a house rule:

A character with at least 3D in First Aid can attempt to stabilize without a medpack, if they have the basic medical supplies available to do so (like bandages, water to wash a wound, something to make a turnequet with if they are bleeding from a limb, ect) This check is made at DC 10 and can only be tried ONCE per caregiver (ie: more than one PC can try, but each can only try once). If that doesn't save you, then it's "adios amigos".

[Robert]

Thats right, rolling for every item after an area attack can bog the game really down. Area attacks don´t happen that often but i also wouldn´t let roll for every item in the backpack.
Just to decide which item is defunctional and which not is imho unfair to the players. Maybe his second or third blaster is not useful, but not rolling takes out the risk or puts in arbitrariness. Both are things i dont like.
_________________
"We don't stop playing because we grow old...we grow old because we stop playing." G.B. Shaw

[garhkal]

Good point on the arbitrariness....
_________________
Confucious sayeth, don't wash cat while drunk!

[scott2978]

One thing I hear a lot from other GM's of all games is that they don't like to make "arbitrary decisions" that effect the characters. A lot of inexperienced GMs will readily agree with this idea.

But, perhaps you don't realize just the extent of arbitraryness that's already in your game. Every game session GMs have to make decisions that are essentially arbitrary. Ever let a PC live when they should have died? That's you making an arbitrary decision. Ever let the players get away with something they shouldn't because it was more fun than what you had planned? That's you making an arbitrary decision. When you get right down to it, since your word is the law, then EVERY decision you make is essentially arbitrary. When a character gets engulphed in flames, and the player wants to bog the game down by asking me to roll for every single item in his backpack, I won't. You may say that it's not fair for me to arbitrarily decide what survived and what didn't, but it's unfair to a lot more players for me to halt the game for 30 minutes while we figure a strength and make damage rolls for all the items in this one guy's backpack. There's no reason to bog the game down for everyone while you figure out the exact chance of survival of each item, this is not "rules-o-rama" we're playing, just decide what survived and move on. As long as you're being fair about it there's no reason for anyone to complain anyway.