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Re: (TFT) Doing damasge modernly

Yes. As Eric says, the main difference between most high-tech missile weapons (bullets and lasers) and low-tech weapons (arrows and swords) is that it's harder to stop the low-tech weapons with low-tech armor.
Ignoring or greatly lowering (divide by 3 to 5?) damage reduction from most low-tech armor is a good approach. One exception would be shot gun pellets (lots of low-penetration projectiles).
If being detailed and realistic, then note that while a battleaxe or a mace _to_the_head_ are good examples of weapons that can be as lethal as gunshots, light low-tech weapons like a club, or mace to the shoulder, are not so deadly in single hits to non-vital areas. However, realistically speaking, both bullets and light primitive weapons, but I'd say especially bullets and even more true of light lasers and shotgun bits or grenade fragments, assuming armor penetration, hit location determines the effect of the hit, much more than weapon type.
Giving a bullet a higher or lower damage rating depending on whether it is a .22, a .45, or a shotgun blast, mainly corresponds to shock effect, like a primitive weapon. The difference though is that a low-shock primitive weapon (a light club) won't kill on a hit to the chest over the heart or spine, but a .22 likely will. Similarly, a bullet can graze or hit only flesh and do very little damage, so I would think damage would have several dice but minuses rather than plusses, to allow a chance for low-damage and high damage hits. Or, make it a two-stage process, one for hit location, the next for damage and effect.
Also, there are weapons which will make soup of lightly-armored people (miniguns, bazookas, even light cannon). 

PvK

At 10:51 AM 12/1/04 -0500, Eric Coles wrote:
I'm not sure why modern weapons would need such high damage numbers. Unless it's explosive, a round is not going to do more damage than, say, a battleaxe. When I was doing modern TFT in connection with a superhero campaign (if I can find the notes, I'll post them, this was many years and 5 moves ago) IIRC a .45 did 2d6+1. But it ignored most armor, and with a modicum of skill and DX allowed for multiple shots. That is what made the modern weapons so deadly - not massive (and IMO unrealistic) damage. People get shot every day, and survive. Some of them multiple times. Many of them continue to function, just as they would against the more primitive weapons. After all, a graze from a bullet is no more inherently deadly than a nick from a sword, and a mace upside the (unarmored) head will kill just as neatly as a .38. 

Best,

Eric





At 09:17 AM 12/1/2004, you wrote:

Well I am still plinking away at a sci-fi based TFT game but I run
into the problem of modern weapons versus ancient(standard TFT)
weapons.
So how would you handle these? a slew of dice for each?
AKA
small minigun - ST to use 12, damage 6+3, if DX is 16 or greater
two attacks per round.

or would you come up with something all together new?
Ive been thinking of replacing the D6 with D10 when using these
weapons. Not only to cut down on the dice used but to point out
that they are modern weapons.

Any thoughts?



Robert Morger
Pangaea_TFT Fantasy RPG adventure
http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Pangaea_TFT/
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Eric A. Coles
Finance and Administration Manager
Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science
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