Object damage effects and status accumulation?

[Whill]

In R&E we have character/creature damage rules with wound status accumulation. Vehicle and starship damage has accumulation rules. But something that has comes up every so often and I've just had to 'wing it' is dealing with the lack of item damage accumulation rules. Check out R&E p.94-95.

For damaged weapons, it does tell us what happens to a weapon that is damaged, but it doesn't tell us how damage statuses accumulate. Or is each damage result just stacking separately, meaning that a blaster can be lightly and heavily damaged as many times as it takes until the damage gets down 0, and then it is inoperable until repaired? And then when repaired, are you making repair rolls for each damage status separately? There's no net damage status resulting the individual damages? That's what it seems like without accumulation rules, but even that is an assumption made due to lack of information. It seems ridiculous that a heavy blaster's damage code can be nickeled and dimed down, taking five light damages that apply a -1D penalty to the damage each, before the weapon is inoperable.

At the end of the weapon damage rules, it says to use this for items, which droids would fall under without any dedicated rules for them, but the results for each damage status don't apply to droids unless it is a battle droid with built-in weapons. And then, still no damage status accumulation rules. This is crazy since droids can even be PCs according to RAW. Good thing CRM created the damage chart for droids which includes accumulation rules!

We have protection damage rules, but it doesn't even tell us any effects of each damage level beyond that attack's damage reduction on the character. What happens to the door that is heavily damaged? Does it provide less cover/protection going forward? If the door is damaged again, what damage level does it move down too? The protection damage chart damage levels are meaningless without telling us what each level means for the protection in the rules and how multiple damages to the protection affect each other.

Armor is a little different because the damage level of the armor is based on the wound level the character gets. We do have effects for each armor damage level. Say a character with armor gets wounded three times in a battle with three separate wounds (the third one of course incapacitates the character because we have wound accumulation). The character's party finishes off the enemy while he is on the ground unconscious. They apply a medpac and gets the character back up to wounded twice, but they have no time to repair the armor so move on. Is the armor's damage resistance bonus -3 right now because of getting lightly damaged three times (one for each wound)? Or do three lightly damages take the armor down to heavily damaged? Do the damages just just stacks separately so the armor can keep taking damage until the penalties overtake the bonuses and the armor is effectively useless until repaired? But even then, do the penalty pips add up and convert to dice (to offset bonus dice)? Does each separate damage have to be repaired separately?

I know these situations will come up too often but I have had all of them at some point in the past 32 years.

I don't allow Droid PCs and haven't yet had Shard PCs since I allowed them. Historically in my game, droids almost always stay on the ship, so droid damage has been rare, but it has happened a few times and I just winged it and mirrored character wound statuses. A while back I did run an adventure that had B1s in it and just handled it organically with "wounds" giving the droids -1D, and since they were mooks, they had no wounded twice. Once two "wound levels," or "incapacitated" or worse straight, they fell down lifeless (whether they could repaired later didn't matter). Winging it would be unsatisfying for beloved PC-owned droids or Shard PCs.

For protection and I've completely winged it and just tried to dictated what happens to the protection (part of it crumbles away so it is less cover, etc) in the spirit of what was happening, which means the actual damage levels that have that come up from the rolls are meaningless except destroyed. I can wing it but I prefer to have a uniform rule to fall back on. (The rule results can still always be tweaked by me live if I see fit for the story.)

I do always enforce armor damage rules even for mook enemies. Especially for stormtroopers because if they only got wounded and are still in the battle, that is already beyond what happens in the films (where they always go down in one shot). So an armored stormtrooper with energy damage resistance bonus +1D who gets a wound has an energy damage resistance bonus of +1D-1 after that due to the armor damage from the wound. Another hit that scores a damage above stunned and they go down out of the battle, so damage accumulation or repair later doesn't matter. In my game PCs wearing armor on a regular basis is uncommon, but I have just had every damage from the chart stack separately. (I think I have converted three penalty pips to dice.) But with a lot of armors, the armor may be good for physical damage longer than energy damage since there is a bigger physical damage bonus for damage to overcome than energy.

So armor and weapons being damaged in RAW can function as-is with no damage status accumulation, but I think protection damage needs some more rules and droids should definitely have accumulation rules. I would really just like everything to have similar rule. Thoughts?
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Star Wars D6 Damage

[CRMcNeill]

Just a head's up, the link you posted here goes to the Soaking Blaster Bolts topic...

My first thought would be that objects should have a Strength rating (pg. 94), and that the penalties described on the Damaged Weapon rules on pg. 95 would, in turn, degrade the Strength rating of the object against subsequent attacks. I've actually considered replacing the Wound Status Accumulation on the Character and Vehicle Damage charts with this effect, so that a wounded/damaged character/vehicle would suffer a reduction in resistance to future Damage rolls.
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"No set of rules can cover every situation. It's expected that you will make up new rules to suit the needs of your game." - The Star Wars Roleplaying Game, 2R&E, pg. 69, WEG, 1996.

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[Whill]