JD Armour

[Mayhem]

Well, I ran my players through a little introductory scenario of my own, designed to introduce them in turn to various parts of the system.

It went pretty well, until I tried to introduce them to melee combat.

Taking on a Tap Gang in a crowded mall shouldn't be any great challenge for the highly trained judges, I thought.

Until we ran into this little problem with armour.

Gah! It seems to me to be simply too difficult for an average judge to get through common mega-city citizen armour values.

Has anyone else come accross this problem? Are armour values too high? Or do I simply have some exceptionally wimpy judges?

 

[solkan_uk]

I don't recall it being a problem, but then I assumed most perps would be mostly unarmoured...

 

[Mayhem]

The rule-book gave me the impression that Sports armour was pretty common amongst Tap Gangs.

And it seemed quite likely that people involved with in violence for a living would outfit themselves with perfectly socially-acceptable pad armour at the very least.

 

[Matt Sharp]

Well, armour has to be useful for something! It's generally not a use against ranged weapons, after all.

Even though a judge with a Strength score of 10 could only damage a perp in sport armour on a critical hit, he would still have several attack options - don't forget that he can still make disarm, grapple and trip attacks. If you can knock someone down and then point a gun at his head, all but the toughest perp is going to give up.

 

[Mayhem]

Well, this is true, but so far it seems to have only encouraged my players to go for their guns, and not bother with Melee at all. Especially since that for most judges, those tactics give the opponent an AoO.

Halving all Armour values and all weapon AP values might work, though...

An interesting point that came up about grapple, though:

One of my players did, indeed, go for a grapple on an armoured opponent. As per the rules, said opponent got an AoO, which hit.

Strictly speaking, under ordinary armour class rules, if the AoO hits the grapple is cancelled.

In JD the AoO can hit - but then not do any damage. How does this affect the grapple rules? Do non-damaging hits cancel the grapple?

 

[hassanisabbah]

Hmm I have had a similar problem with sports armour. Personally I think that many AV are too high (esp Sports Armour and Shell Armour).

However I brought in a new house rule - Armour Values convert Damage into Subdual Damage, provided the AP value does not exceed the AV value.

The Logic Behind this
Being hit by a baseball bat hurts, regardless of armour, just that a helmet could be the difference between having your skull caved in. Also Flack vests tend to stop penetration but not the actual force of a shot.w

 

[Mayhem]

The problem there is that with the way the D20 system works, this would basically mean that armour did very little at all. A band of judges gunned down by punks would be unconcious, not dead, but I don't rate the chances of their survival subsequently.

Maybe a compromise (similar to something I have seen in a LARP system) so that every blow completely stopped by armour does 1 point of subdual - or perhaps 1 point of subdual per damage dice.

To save paperwork, this could be ignored if even a single point of real damage got through.

 

[Judge Walker]

One word...Intimidate. This is what Arrest, Improved Arrest, Mass Arrest and Improved Mass Arrest Feats are around for, judicious use of the Intimidate skill wouldn't hurt either. If all else fails send in the Riot Squad, their "Breaking Heads" ability will work nicely I think.

 

[Mayhem]

Sometimes perps actually make their resist arrests checks, you know?

And calling on the riot squad every tme you run into a tap-gang in a crowded mall is not going to impress the Sector Chief.

 

[hassanisabbah]

The problem there is that with the way the D20 system works, this would basically mean that armour did very little at all. A band of judges gunned down by punks would be unconcious, not dead, but I don't rate the chances of their survival subsequently.

Maybe a compromise (similar to something I have seen in a LARP system) so that every blow completely stopped by armour does 1 point of subdual - or perhaps 1 point of subdual per damage dice.

To save paperwork, this could be ignored if even a single point of real damage got through.

Any perps that manage to outshoot a gang of Judges is going to be a pretty impressive, Judges are absolutely lethal, especially if on their bikes. Infact the bikes are fairly lethal on their own.... And the Lawgiver does have an AP round - Unlike most perps weapons.

Another rule I am toying with, is called shot vs armour - in which the difficulty to hit (DV) is raised by the armour value - Allowing the Judge or Perp to direct fire towards the weak spots or unarmoured bits. This shifts

Another option is to add the armour value to the DV and ignore armour all togeather and treat it like classic DnD

Or have armour degrade by 1 point each time an attack gets past it.

A final note - Sports Armour comes in Localised Team Colours, so you could decide to have some hardcore hooligans (britcit hoolag Jetball fans prehaps) decide to work over the offender or just rival team fans (all in rivla teams sports armour) do the job - whenever they are outside their block area....

Finally have the JD make the link to the number of perps in sports armour, and have Hersey revoke the law legalising it without permit. The prospect of a few years should deter most hoods....

 

[Judge Walker]

Sometimes perps actually make their resist arrests checks, you know?

And calling on the riot squad every tme you run into a tap-gang in a crowded mall is not going to impress the Sector Chief.

1) True. The Judges should be discouraged from allowing this to happen, however. :wink:

2) My point was, it is the Riot Squad who is specially trained to deal with this type of problem, perhaps one of the characters might like to join the unit as support for the rest of the party. If they try the Daystick over the head approach and it doesn't work, remind the players that the Judge does have a few non-lethal fall backs on the Lawgiver. Rubber bullet and the stun discharge. If not, then a SE Round through the leg (would req. coming up with a house rule) would work as well.

 

[Mayhem]

Its not the lack of non-lethal firearms availability thats the problem, its the practicality of using such methods in a crowded shopping mall.

Besides which, Judges in the Comic Strip, even rookies, are usually more than happy to take on opponents wearing pad armour or sports armour with their daysticks. Its positively encouraged for them to do so when the perps do not have guns.

And yet the attempts by my players to do the same were laughably ineffective. the primary question then, is are the armour values too high, or are my high Dex, medium STR judges simply a disgrace to the uniform?

 

[Judge Walker]

Ok, let me ask this. How did the Perps fair against the Judges armour? The reason I ask is that I do have the first few releases of the game, but have never played. I would, however, think that the Judges Armour would give them a advantage over civilian suits in a melee. Now, if the Perps were hammering the Judges into the ground, while they themselves were doing nothing then I would agree with you that the the armour rules are a little screwy.

You could also look at it from the other end, perhpas the subdual damage on the Daystick needs to be upped a bit.

 

[Mayhem]

The perps where equally ineffectual against the judges.

What should have been an exciting melee turned into a long and pointless series of dice rolls.

I've never seen a judge in a comic say "These punks have too good an armour for my Daystick, I'd better retreat and shoot them."

 

[Judge Walker]

The perps where equally ineffectual against the judges.

What should have been an exciting melee turned into a long and pointless series of dice rolls.

I've never seen a judge in a comic say "These punks have too good an armour for my Daystick, I'd better retreat and shoot them."

With a Daystick doing 1d8 and the standard Pad Armour with a DR of 4, I think either the damage of a Daystick should be raised or Judges should be given Weapon Spec (Daystick) for free. Most of the time a Judge is going to do about 2 or 3 pts damage +str which equals a Judge pounding on a perp for about 5 mins before he goes down.