AlphaStrike
Mongoose
Are there rules for this sort of thing - the 'HP/AP' of a door, wall, etc...?
Damaging inanimate objects
- Thread starter AlphaStrike
- Start date
If there are such rules, they are very well hidden, I do not remember
to have seen them. The various equipment descriptions also do not
give any defensive values, although they would sometimes be quite
useful, for example in the case of the various types of prefabricated
shelters described in the Central Supply Catalogue.
So, if you need such rules, there is certainly something of that kind in
one of the previous editions of Traveller, and it should not be difficult
to modify it for the use with Mongoose Traveller, but as far as I can
see Mongoose Traveller itself still lacks such rules.
to have seen them. The various equipment descriptions also do not
give any defensive values, although they would sometimes be quite
useful, for example in the case of the various types of prefabricated
shelters described in the Central Supply Catalogue.
So, if you need such rules, there is certainly something of that kind in
one of the previous editions of Traveller, and it should not be difficult
to modify it for the use with Mongoose Traveller, but as far as I can
see Mongoose Traveller itself still lacks such rules.
alex_greene
Guest
Agreed. We need basic Armour, Hull and Structure equivalents for walls, doors, windows, bulkheads, floors, ceilings and various kinds of objects.rust said:
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
Not really sure that we do need rules, or another set of stats, to cover these things, just common sense (possibly used flexibly for dramatic effect, on occasions!).
Egil
Egil
alex_greene
Guest
I refute this argument thus:-Egil Skallagrimsson said:
Ref: "You've got a body pistol, and the enemy is crouching behind a brick wall."
Player: "I shoot through the wall!"
Ref: *sigh* *headdesk*
Of course I could just make up the stats for inanimate objects on the spotEgil Skallagrimsson said:
and as I think the story needs them. However, my problem with this ap-
proach is that Traveller gives precise stats for almost every imaginable
piece of armour, and the players are used to rely on these informations.
As a result their characters know very well the degree of protection pro-
vided by the full plate armour worn by the knight on that TL 2 world, but
have no idea of the protection provided by the wooden palisade he uses
as cover. At least to me this feels rather implausible, and it also tends to
cause unnecessary discussions ("Surely the brick wall is easier to destroy
than a dry stone wall, and in D&D ...").
alex_greene
Guest
Precisely.rust said:
You know the armour value of a Crystalliron starship hull, but not a bulkhead made of the same material.
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
alex_greene said:I refute this argument thus:-Egil Skallagrimsson said:
Ref: "You've got a body pistol, and the enemy is crouching behind a brick wall."
Player: "I shoot through the wall!"
Ref: *sigh* *headdesk*
No, its a needless table,
Ref: "Roll your attack"
Player: "A 12!"
Ref: "The bullet slams into the wall, but as a low velocity weapon is unable to penetrate the bricks. The gangster raises his head above the wall and aims at you with an autopistol. Do you want to dodge?"
Seriously, this is not hard to GM in the course of the game. Please, try to keep this excellant system (MgT) free from being padded out with tables.
Egil
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
rust said:
Ha ha! Are you really arguing for a table that takes into account drystone walls (what type and thickness, I know that to the untrained eye they look the same, however ....), different types of bricks, mortors and ways of bonding (are you going to include iron supports as well?) etc etc. Really?
However, I am sure you are having a festive joke, please submit your suggestions for the amour/hull/structure values of Mrs Skallagrimsson's Xmas puds.
Egil
Just take a look at the Central Supply Catalogue, the system is alreadyEgil Skallagrimsson said:
padded out with tables, although mostly ones with a military content. A
short table with the stats for common materials would hardly unbalance
or otherwise damage a system that survived 25+ different sets of stats
for handguns alone.
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
alex_greene said:
Nonsense, because, firstly, most crystalliron amoured ships will not have cystal iron internal bulkheads, so you just have to account for advanced steel alloys, and secondly even if you have a ship with crystaliron amoured bulkheads, the value is too strong for anything short of a PGMP to scratch (50pts armour).
Merry Xmas
Egil
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
Agree with your take on CSC, over complicating and with some pretty dubious stats (c.f my previous posts on the CSC). Am still awaiting the errata. Frankly, we use the weapon stats from the core book with a few modifications and additions, and that is that.rust said:
The "Building Materials (Resistance to kinetic energy) Catalogue" is one I will not be buying.
Egil
alex_greene
Guest
Then what would be the point of the Explosives skill if the characters can't find an explosive powerful enough to breach the walls?
Tables. Definitely pad out the rules with tables, and values that work.
Tables. Definitely pad out the rules with tables, and values that work.
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
alex_greene said:
Now you're at the Xmas jests.
Just because there is not a table doesn't make the value (of, e.g., a wall) infinite.
As explosives will be used against a wide variety of objectives, you will need a very long (almost infinite) table.
Or, GM on a case by case basis.
Egil
alex_greene
Guest
No, a Xmas jest is something like "What do you call a Traveller with a single skill, FGMP-5, and no FGMP? A frustrated part time sales clerk with a dream."Egil Skallagrimsson said:
The FGMP and PGMP rules in the Core Rulebook describe the effects of those weapons on cover of all kinds - i.e. they cut through them like salts through a short grandmother - and the scaling rules list the damage weapons can do against vessels and vehicles, as well as the damage the weapons mounted on those vessels and vehicles can do against soft bodies - but little else of any consistency.
Even if the rules don't provide tables, sooner or later any Ref worth his sodium chloride is going to write up tables for them anyway, so they might as well publish something to provide a convenient frame of reference for Refs and a consistent reference for, say, Living Traveller, where if a shaped charge of a given yield Y can punch through a 4 cm thick Crystalliron sheet in one part of the universe, the same yield Y can do the exact same amount of damage to a Crystalliron sheet of the same thickness everywhere else in the LTU.
And the tables won't be infinite, for heaven's sake. There are only a finite number of elements in the Periodic Table, and not many people are going to need shaped charges to cut through partitions of cloth, tinfoil, cellophane or toilet paper.
Egil Skallagrimsson
Mongoose
alex_greene said:
By paragraph;
1. Ha ha (and quite right!)
2. There is enough in what you have stated for any decent GM to arrive at a workable solution when these incidents occur.
3. Go on then, put forward your suggested table/rules.
4. That's only if you, arbitarily exclude such materials and assume a shaped charge (what size?), what about material resistance to thrown darts, elastic bands etc? More seriously, TL15 high performance reflec cellophane might be hard to breach, and as for Aslan toilet paper . . .
Egil
I don't imagine you'd need that many categories. As noted, this is just for odss and ends situations.
Assigning an armour value to each of the following shouldn't be hard:
Light civilian construction (plywood, plastic, thin hardwood, glass)
Heavy civilian construction (light stonework, brick, very thick hardwood)
Light industrial construction (light metalwork, packing crates, barrels)
Heavy industrial construction (heavy steelwork, thick pressure vessels, machinery starship non-structural components)
Military construction (exotic metals, fortified stonework, starship structural components)
Assigning an armour value to each of the following shouldn't be hard:
Light civilian construction (plywood, plastic, thin hardwood, glass)
Heavy civilian construction (light stonework, brick, very thick hardwood)
Light industrial construction (light metalwork, packing crates, barrels)
Heavy industrial construction (heavy steelwork, thick pressure vessels, machinery starship non-structural components)
Military construction (exotic metals, fortified stonework, starship structural components)
Rikr Strumpf
Mongoose
Download Signs and Portents number 87 and check out the adventure article Death Station by Mark Miller, Frank Chadwick and John Harshmann. On page 27 under Interior Details you'll find some rules on blasting through doors and walls for a shipboarding. They're quick and dirty, so they are easy to remember and apply and modify as needed.
An energy weapon needs to roll 20 points of damage to burn through an interior door or wall to create a person-sized hole, and a slug weapon 200. Bulkheads require 200 points from an engery weapon for that person-sized hole and it's not possible to shoot through a bulkhead with slug weapons (the article states they areineffective against a bulkhead). Well, that's a basic paraphrase. That's as close to official rules as you're gonna get but I don't own every single Mongoose Traveller product . . . .
An energy weapon needs to roll 20 points of damage to burn through an interior door or wall to create a person-sized hole, and a slug weapon 200. Bulkheads require 200 points from an engery weapon for that person-sized hole and it's not possible to shoot through a bulkhead with slug weapons (the article states they areineffective against a bulkhead). Well, that's a basic paraphrase. That's as close to official rules as you're gonna get but I don't own every single Mongoose Traveller product . . . .
