Armor Up!

 I love Classic Traveller. That should be apparent. Now I usually prefer to say 2d6 when I'm offering generic advice or at least advice that can be implemented in various editions. But this post deals with a specific aspect of CT. I'm diving right in. If you don't like it check out my other posts. 

One of the things people do not seem overly taken with in Book 1 is the combat matrix approach. You take your weapon, cross reference the range to your victim tagged and get a DM. You then do the same with another table and cross reference your weapon with the armor your victim target is wearing. You total the mods, include mods for skill and characteristics and apply it to the usual 8+ to hit.

By which time your target may have found cover. 

One solution to this is Chris Kubasik's weapon cards. I heartily endorse his blog Tales to Astound. He's a fine gamer and everyone can learn from him. Anyway the cards make great handouts. They have the DMs for a single weapon combined. So you can look for Cloth armor at medium range on your Body Pistol card and learn you need an 18 to plug your opponent (do not engage a person in Cloth armor with a body pistol.)

I was thinking of streamlining the process though. Keep the range mods for a weapon. A stat block for a Body Pistol would look like this:

Body Pistol    Close    Short    Medium    Long       Very Long 

                        +2        +1            -6            No            No

Nothing weird about that. But I break the armor DMs down as follows:

Armor 

Nothing- normal clothing or skin. No modifiers.

Jack thick leather jacket or coat. -1 vs. melee.

Mesh flexible metal or plastic mail. -2 vs. melee. -1 vs. bullet s

Cloth -3 vs. melee and slugs.

Combat Environment-4.

Reflec  -6 vs. lasers.

Ablative -6 vs lasers. -1 vs. bullets or melee.

Combat -5 vs. all.


One mod (maybe two) per armor type. So our pistol firing at a target in Cloth at Short range is (-3 - +2) -1 to hit.


Wait there's more! Weapons have another characteristic: penetration. Our AnemicTek Body Pistol would be Penetration -2. Any armor that reduces the chance of bullets to hit gets a further -2 vs a BP. Cloth would be -5, add the Short range modifier of +1 for a total of -4 DM. Again why are you firing at a person in Cloth armor with that Body Pistol. Fully statted our Body Pistol looks like this:


Body Pistol    Close    Short    Medium    Long       Very Long 

                        +2        +1            -6            No            No            Pen-2

A Body Pistol would be 6+ to hit som e goober in Jack at Close, 7+ at Short. Jack has no DM vs. bullets (why is he picking on a guy with a gun?) Against a person in Mesh the numbers become Close 7+ and Short 8+. What about Medium range? You figure it out, and get a rifle! 

This is a little more streamlined. A weapons card can hold several weapons. We have a small number of armor DMs, 


Next: Eyeballing Weapon Design.


                   

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