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Re: (TFT) Weapons and damage



----- Original Message ----- From: "George Dew"
Subject: RE: (TFT) Weapons and damage


OK,

I hope I'm understanding this correctly...

I VERY MUCH agree that damage is to an enormous extent, "hit placement."

If most soldiers are taught to shoot "center mass," then there is a market
advantage to combatents who are instead taught to make "head shots." Center
mass may or may not put the target down, but a "head shot" certainly will.


I agree with this whole heartedly, although I would like to point out that the shot at center mass is certianly an easier one. I use populations a lot and the ratios of farmers to anybody else in pre-industrial socities is huge. over 90% of the population were empolied in agrairian labour under Rome when her population in the capatial toped a million souls. Also worth noting is that Pyramids and sha-ken factories don't build themselves. I simpply may not have enough people to spare to form a Unit that devotes the time needed to train to make head shots consistantly. "Alright, I want the 20 biggest guys in the village to go shoot their longbows at haybale targets for 2 hours every other evening." I figure that about 5 times the Talent cost in hours for practice/study per week to maintain the Talent but that's just a rule of thumb. High IQ Figures study really fast compaired to Joe Average for example. My point here is that adding Missle Weapons @ 3points is another 15 hours of practice tacked on to the 10 hours needed to keep Bow up... 25 hours is over half a week of work, and these guys havent spent any hours on parade and drill, so they don't move in formation... they don't respond to much of any commands... half a weeks work and these guys arn't much of a unit yet and they arn't getting much farming done either.
Professional Units (listed on Jobs table) are expensive to maintain.



Perhaps another way to handle this would be the "Option Critical Hit."

That is, for each additional die that you put into your "to hit" roll, you
do an additional die of damage?



2d6 Talent check. I often use these for "half-speed" Actions. These are situations where the player is willing to sacrafice resulting effort for the best chance at a successful roll. A Figure throwing a baseball at half-speed only rolls 2 dice to see if it gets across the plate, a good thing if your adj DX is 8 say. In general I half the speed or force of the Action but I don't charge fST for half-speed Actions either.

3d6 Talent check. These are full speed Actions. I consider the effort involved in these Actions to be similar to what a Figure would apply in serious practice. A Figure spends 1 fST to check with 3d and can generally expect to generate from two thirds up to the Figures maximum force, speed etc (critical). when successful.

4d6 Talent check. This is maximum effort Actions. 2 fST assures a player that their Figure will Action at their Figures maximum speed, force, etc. if successful.

I allow Figures to attempt to exceed their maximum force, speed, etc. at a 5% increase over maximum per dice spent up to an 11 die check that will do about a third more force, speed, etc. that the Figures maximum. A Figure that has a Talent suffers a fumble if they fail a dice check by more than twice the Stat that governs the check. The basic idea I use is that a Figure gets about a die worth of damage as accident, injury, etc. for each multipul of the fail. A Figure w/DX 9 fumbles on an 18 (about a 3 or 4 pt injury, or a ding. a football player would probably keep playing if the game was important) a 27 is a critical fumble for DX 9 and results in an injury of about 7 points, which is bad enough, but 11 or 12 pts dam kills Joe Average.
The average roll on 8 dice is 28.
A failure of 36 for a 9 DX Figure on a check is a 3d6, Joe Thiesman kindda oops.
38.5 is average on 11 dice.
It dosen't have to be an injury to the Figure itself, they could hit another Figure, or even have something happen that dosen't injure the Figure but instead messes with the Figure. I've been known to use a tripple fumble to drop the players Figures pants around their ankles, hobbling movement plus the entertainment factor.



Here's something from a thing msnbc did on MMA fighting.



Bone is extraordinarily strong - ounce for ounce, bone is stronger than steel, since a bar of steel of comparable size would weigh four or five times as much. A cubic inch of bone can in principle bear a load of 19,000 lbs. (8,626 kg) or more - roughly the weight of five standard pickup trucks - making it about four times as strong as concrete.

Still, whether or not bone actually withstands such loads depends heavily on how quickly force is delivered.

Taking a beating
"When you perform CPR, you can give chest compressions and not break any ribs, but if you apply the same amount of force quickly instead of slowly, and you can end up having rib fractures," Bir explained.

When it comes to unleashing force quickly, Bir and her colleagues investigated boxers and found they could generate up to 5,000 newtons of force with a punch, more than that exerted down by a half-ton on Earth's surface.

When it comes to kicks, "they can obviously generate more force, since there's more body mass behind it," Bir said. After looking at kicks from several different fighting styles, they found that experts could generate up to 9,000 newtons with them, equal to roughly a ton of force.

A quick, sharp blow that delivers some 3,300 newtons of force has a 25 percent chance of cracking an average person's rib, she said. It takes more force to fracture the femur, Bir noted - maybe some 4,000 newtons - since that long thighbone is meant to support the body.

"That doesn't means that below those values you won't have a fracture or above them you will," Bir said. The amount of damage a blow inflicts also varies due to factors such as the amount of muscle or fat covering a bone and the angle at which the blow lands, as well as the age and health of a person, which can affect bone strength.

Although it makes sense that a massive fighter can unleash more powerful blows than a lightweight, "it's also about how much of the mass of your body you can recruit," Bir said. "You see some little guys hit with a lot of force because they know how to recruit their mass."

When it comes to knocking someone out with a punch, "it's less about the force of the blow than it is getting the head to whip around, to move in a rotational kind of way," Bir said.

The shear forces from a strike that whips the head back stress out neurons, and the brain shuts down as a protective response. A blow that gives the head enough spin to go from 0 to 43,000 rpm in just one second has a 25 percent chance of knocking a person unconscious.

Rolling with the punches
"That's why you see boxers build up neck muscles - the thinking is that you can prevent that kind of motion then," Bir explained. "It's also about anticipating the blow - the ones that catch you off guard can be more of an issue."

Knocking the wind out of someone is also less about force "than the impact occurring just right for it to happen," Bir said. When it happens, the air isn't literally squeezed from the lungs, but instead it is a matter of getting the diaphragm - the sheet of muscle under the lungs - to spasm.



Me again...
I've been useing a figure of 1 point of ST = 5.5 pounds moved 1 foot in one second to generate a Figures basic maximum force/speed for basic Actions/Movements. Talents provide modifiers/multipliers to the force/speed to get me up to something like a Chuck Lydell punch of 2500psi force. How many Joe Averages does it take to demolish a 10 by 15 hex house with Unarmed Combat I in 1, 8 hour day? Apply that answer to the Hobbit's sha-ken factory... though I doubt they'll ever generate enough force to take out the smelter and whatnot...

Oh, and I'm bothering with the silly 5.5 pound thing because it ties directly to horsepower and encumbrance, letting me use the same ST figure for motors and engines that I use for Figures, and also letting me plug "real-world" data on engines and such quickly.

I always bear in mind that this stuffs whole purpose is to provide entertainment to players. I don't really care so much about making a totally accurate model of reality.
I'd have stuck with Physics in that case.
I do however find in a really nifity game tool to allow my players to show up with their copy of Guns and Ammo Compleate Book of Cartriges and tell me "I want this gun with these rounds" and be able to actually show the basic differences. I can even show where you need an extra square here or there to silloute a HK as opposed to an SK say. Throw items on index cards that store the data needed to draw the thing if needed, stack a Figures equipment "rig" like a game of solitare, and hand a couple of rules on it like, Dropping a item/card on the ground is a quicker Action, but the card goes in the Place folder and leaves the players control until the player Actions "Pick Up" for the item. Stowing an item/card is a longer Action (a player can drop several cards/items for every item/card stowed) but the card never leaves the players hand, or control.

If there are 100 villagers that have the Bow Talent but only 20 Long Bow index-cards...

Crafting a longbow is a Job on the Job Tables... as is Fletcher. It took a few years to reliably find a goose within 3 days of London just after Henery went to Cercy... and that was a grand total of 30 volleys.

Describe your cities like a city in Civilization (AH or Sid Meyers) and being a King is a lot more intresting for a player, not to mention has a POINT!

Have building in Civ work on a SimCity scale and being Mayor of the city becomes interesting.

Have the political/legal system described in such a way that each possistion/vote in the system is represented by a Figure, and players can write laws and other legization that can come up for vote or etc. (see NOMIC) again making politics interesting in game terms.

Limit the resources available, (I put my campagins on momma Tera and use encylopedias and such to find what happens if somebody starts digging, so to speak) and you find how hard it is to pull together a whole group of well fed, sha-ken weilding Hobbits throwing stars at my head effectivly.

I'm gonna watch the old 70's The Three Musketeers and The Four Musketeers w/Oliver Reed and Michael York. That's pretty close to TFT (early renaissance tech, didn't Rouchford slap down an arqubusser in the encounter on the frozen river?) and En Gaurde! had a great social climbing system.
Maybe the Talent "Courtly Graces" gets to play En Gaurde! in 'Downtime'?

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