Wednesday, September 5, 2012

Head, Shoulder, Knees and Toes.

Right in the servo!
What you see above is the Called Shots diagram that we used the last time we played Exodus.

I wanted my players to have that authentic Fallout 3 V.A.T.S (Vault-Tec Assisted Targetting System) feeling, even if none of their characters were wearing a pip-boy device, and felt that this did a pretty fair job of balancing the hindrance of making the shot with the benefits of disabling/confusing the target.

Derived from page 206 of the Exodus mainbook, I'm pretty sure this little gem isn't O.G.L. licensed material, and therefore, all rights reserved Glutton Creeper Games.

The trick to such a table is the limitations:
- The shooter must have Intelligence 6 or higher.
- This is a full round action.


But, here's the rub with this table.
The Game Master can use it too.

This means that your party of 4 to 6 wasteland adventurers with AC 14 coming up against a group of a dozen level 1 human raiders armed with everything from AtlAtls to Zipguns can roll a d20, add a +1 base attack bonus, and hit our heroes 25% of the time.

That's 3 hits every round on average dice if there's no cover to take advantage of.

What if my dozen raiders decide to aim at the eyes?
They're at -10... there's just no way they'll be hitting, because they need a 14, and the best they can generate is d20 +1 -9 = 11.
Oh, wait... a natural 20 auto hits... so each of them has a 5% chance to hit. Granted, with a dozen rolls of the dice, if there's a perfect distribution, you'll end up with 1 natural 20 in a little less than 2 rounds.

How bad can it get?

If the raider with a slingshot wails you in the eye with a rock... he rolls 1d2, doubles that because of the table above, and maxes out at 4 damage. If he manages to confirm that crit with another perfect 20 on the dice (odds of 2.5 out of 100) then he'll give you a 50% miss chance, and do some stat damage that makes you a non factor for the rest of the combat.

If the raider with the hand cannon that plants 2d8 gets an average damage roll of 9, that's doubled to 18. If you have 18 hit points to spare, that's great, you don't sweat that bullet that is lodged in your head. If he rolls max damage, that's 16x2 = 32 damage.

Yeouch... Hope you're a few levels higher than these guys, because 32 damage is no joke.  A level 3 aggressive hero gets d8 hit points per level. that means you're likely to be at least  level 5 before you can survive a single 32 point hit. There are ways to get over 32 HP, by that level, but it involves having a high CON score.

Speaking of Con scores... if yours is 16 or under, that means this raider has forced you to take a massive damage threshold test on average damage dice. So you roll a d20, add your fortitude bonus, and try to get 15 or higher. If you fail, your hit points immediately drop to -1. That's classified as "Dying", and means you'll be taking no actions, and losing 1 more hit point each round until you hit -10 (and die completely) or someone passes a treat injury check to stop the bleeding.

This effectively takes you out of the fight.
Keep in mind that once every 2 rounds this group of raiders will, probably, do this to one of the 4 party members. Even if you're killing 4 of them a round, they're likely to hurt the heros really badly.


So, how do we keep this sort of rule out of the hands of dastardly game masters?

I guess I could get all Wheaton about it and use his rule:
-Don't be a dick.

Or I could link it to an attribute that only heroes have
-Karma points?

Or I could try to limit it the way that the Fallout Games do
-the AP(not to be confused with D20 action points, which are renamed Karma Points in this game) stat.

Of these three, I can always use good judgement, but I'd like a little better way of handling the whole situation.

Karma points are built into the character classes, with every character getting  3 + (current level/2) each time they add a level.
  • This means that if I build Level 1 raiders, they each have 2 karma points to spend. Since they're likely to level up by pulling off this raid against the heroes, they're very likely to maximize their chances by burning through 36 of them in 3 rounds. 
Of course, I could just declare that raiders don't have Karma points because they're NPCs... But what happens when the players want to make a called shot?
  • Characters at first level get 3 Karma Points as well... so that means until you get to second level, you've got 3 called shots to make if you don't use your points on anything else (like boosting dice, or burning them up using special talents that take them away).
  • Then at second level you could get 4 more called shots...
  • By the time you reach 10th level, you've got 8 called shots before you reach 11th level, and suddenly you're wondering why you can't just make called shots all day long. 
This is pretty clearly the wrong thing to tie called shots to. VATS AP seems to be a function of the Agility skill in Fallout, which most closely matches to the Dexterity stat in the D20 system. It's also used up at varying rates by different weapons.

Back in ye olden D&D days, weapons were listed with a speed stat, which was ignored by most of my dungeon masters, but apparently had to do with when you went in the initiative order, or maybe rate of fire... or... something. Such a thing doesn't exist in d20 modern or exodus.

So, do I tie the number of called shots you can make to the dexterity? Something like
"If your total VATS FATIGUE exceeds your DEX score, you may not make a called shot this round.

When you take a called shot against a target, you add a number of VATS FATIGUE equal to the d# on the weapon you are shooting with to your VATS FATIGUE total.  (example: a pistol with a damage of 2d8 imparts 8 VATS FATIGUE when it is used to make a called shot, whereas a slingshot with a damage of 1d2 imparts 2 VATS FATIGUE.)  Reloading a weapon imparts VATS FATIGUE equal to the number of damage dice equal to the number of damage dice. (example: Reloading a pistol with a damage of 2d8 imparts 2 VATS Fatigue. Reloading a slingshot with a damage of 1d2 imparts 1 VATS FATIGUE.)

 VATS FATIGUE is diminished over time at the rate of 1 point at the end of every combat round (6 seconds). "

Kinda wordy, but not entirely awful.
Someone with a Dex of 16 (not uncommon for it to be this high in characters who specialize in gunplay) could fire a 2d8 pistol with a called shot like so:
round 1) Full Round Action +8 VATSFatigue, -1 at the end of the round. VF7
round 2) Full Round Action +8 VATS Fatigue -1 at the end of the round VF14
round 3) Full Round Action +8 VF -1 at the end of the round VF21
round 4) VF too high, can't make a called shot VF 20
round 5) VF too high, can't make a called shot VF 19
~blahblahblah~
round 9) Full Round Action +8 VATS Fatigue -1 at the end of the round VF23
round 10) VF too high, can't make a called shot VF22
~blahblahblah~
round 17)Full Round Action +8 VATS Fatigue -1 at the end of the round VF23

I was worried for a minute about "rapid fire" and "burst fire", but those are full round actions on their own, and wouldn't happen inside of VATS anyway because you can't take a full round action Burst Fire and a full round action Called Shot in the same round.

I also wonder about my reloading scheme.
Why would you bother making a called shot action to reload? You'd just not take a full round action, move to a better position, and reload without incurring any VF, then allow it to decrease by 1.
It's doubly useless to reload in my pseudo-VATS thing, because most weapons only have 1 or 2 dice worth of damage, so at best you break even, and at worst, your VF goes up by one. If you reload the venerable ROCKWELL LAUNCHER, you take 10 VF reloading it, and 6 firing it.

You'd have to be a dumbass to use this system to reload... so I may as well take it out. I'm trying to add a reasonable limit, not build a pit trap into the rules to catch the unwitting.

So, you get 3 rounds of called shots in a row with a 2d8 handgun before you're forced to do something else. Less if your DEX is lower. Someone with a slingshot and an 18 DEX could whip 18 called shot rocks in a row, and from there on out, one ever other round. That is, if you want to use a slingshot. They could target arms and legs all day at flat dice, or dice +2, and just hope they cripple something on a critical hit. Granted... the whole time they're whipping 1d2 rocks, the enemy is probably closing in with a baseball bat.

So, what was the point of this whole exercise? Is all this faffing about likely to make a change in my own game?

~IF~ every single player in my group started out by playing without the called shots table... and then I introduced it... I would introduce it with the VF rules. Seeing as half of my prospective players have used it without limit, and half not at all, I'm going to see if Whedon's Law gets broken before I leap to new legislation.

~OR~ maybe I'll give it a shot in a mock combat and see how it goes. With combat rounds being 6 seconds long, and battles being fought in close quarters where the guy you try to shoot could be standing on your chest inside of 3 rounds, this kind of limitation might not matter so much.

Thanks for sticking with this ramble until the end.




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