srogerscat
Mongoose
I love armor. When I played D&D I was never one of those namby-pamby sneaky-pete types, skulking around for a backstab. I suited up, geared up, and waded in to the midst of the enemy to Smite them while taking all they could dish out. I was an armor plated meatshield for the Mages/Clerics/Rogues and proud of it!
This post is inspired by the debate about the effects of concussion on heavily armored small fighters in the Small fighters thread.
Armor in the Traveller core rules works by subtracting from individual damage rolls inflicted by weapon strikes. However, in High Guard, armor works to reduce overall damage from a whole tactical turns sustained bombardment. I think this is more accurate.
What follows are my house rules for armor which I developed for CT. I have playtested them with the MGT space combat system and am satisfied with the result. However, they have quite an impact on space combat - fights between lightly armored ships are Nasty, Brutish and Short. Even ships with the maximum TL allowed armor are going to get a lot more than their paint scratched.
Sandblasting versus Hammer blow:
It is clear from the rules for integrating ship level weaponry into personal combat that these big guns are firing more than once every six minutes. So in my view the 1D6 inflicted by a laser is not done in one hit, but is the result of accumulated damage.
As a result of this I use armor not as a subtractor, but as a divisor. I total up all the damage a ship receives in a turn and divide it by the armor value treating an AV of one as a divisor of 1.5. I also do not use the damage point/hit chart on page 150, every damage point that remains after division is a damage roll. Whether to use the chart progression of merging single hits in double or triple hits is something I am still up iin the air about.
THis is an idea I came up with pretty soon after CT High Guard came out - I hated the High Guard combat system, but my players demanded armor for their ship, so I had to come up with something. So obviously, I like the result. But it will have a huge impact on play so if you don't like it, no skin off my nose. I am not demanding a change in the core rules which are a magnificent common base.
Besides, no REAL gamemaster runs a Rules As Written campaign anyway.
This post is inspired by the debate about the effects of concussion on heavily armored small fighters in the Small fighters thread.
Armor in the Traveller core rules works by subtracting from individual damage rolls inflicted by weapon strikes. However, in High Guard, armor works to reduce overall damage from a whole tactical turns sustained bombardment. I think this is more accurate.
What follows are my house rules for armor which I developed for CT. I have playtested them with the MGT space combat system and am satisfied with the result. However, they have quite an impact on space combat - fights between lightly armored ships are Nasty, Brutish and Short. Even ships with the maximum TL allowed armor are going to get a lot more than their paint scratched.
Sandblasting versus Hammer blow:
It is clear from the rules for integrating ship level weaponry into personal combat that these big guns are firing more than once every six minutes. So in my view the 1D6 inflicted by a laser is not done in one hit, but is the result of accumulated damage.
As a result of this I use armor not as a subtractor, but as a divisor. I total up all the damage a ship receives in a turn and divide it by the armor value treating an AV of one as a divisor of 1.5. I also do not use the damage point/hit chart on page 150, every damage point that remains after division is a damage roll. Whether to use the chart progression of merging single hits in double or triple hits is something I am still up iin the air about.
THis is an idea I came up with pretty soon after CT High Guard came out - I hated the High Guard combat system, but my players demanded armor for their ship, so I had to come up with something. So obviously, I like the result. But it will have a huge impact on play so if you don't like it, no skin off my nose. I am not demanding a change in the core rules which are a magnificent common base.
Besides, no REAL gamemaster runs a Rules As Written campaign anyway.
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