Mek weapons and DR

[Deeman]

I'm gearing up to run a merc campaign for my D&D group and I was thinking of modifying a couple of rules to fit my taste better. There is always the unforseen problems with game balance, so I'm appealing to you experienced A:2089 players for input.

I want to allow personal armor DR to apply always. It doesn't seem to be that much considering damage that is done by weapons, especially rapid fire weapons. In other words, no weapon has an armor penetrating value now.

Instead of soft targets being instantly destroyed by mek weapons, I wanted each structure point of damage to do a d10 to hit point having units. An apc being instantly destroyed by a 1d3 hit of a mek machine gun doesn't set well with me and I'm sure my players would frown the first time this happened.

Any thoughts as to why this would or wouldn't work are appreciated.

 

[Elfman]

I'd suggest a straight-up 10 to 1 conversion factor if you want to model Mek weapon hits on PCs. Have each structure point of damage of a Mek weapon do 10 points of character damage. They can have their armor reduce the modified damage, but there is no way they will survive any large Mek weapon. This way you keep the d20 3.x "1:10 ratio" for structure vs. invidivual hit points, and it doesn't dilute it too much as the d10 would.

Let's look at the numbers....

With 10hp/structure point, a 1d8 hit turns into 10-80HP with an even distrubution, which is survivable if the roll is low. 1 in 4 chance of getting 20 or less HP damage (and most likely surviving) and 1 in 2 chance of getting 50 or more and almost certainly dying. Overall this option is quite deadly, and IMO a close model to "reality".

If you used the 1d10 per structure hit, you'd be at 8-80hp, with a big bell in the middle of your curve at the 36-52 range (mean is 44) and virtually no chance of getting under 20 or over 70. Most of the time a mid- to high-level character will survive a single shot of this type. Some people call this style of play "heroic", where the characters can take shots that would cripple or kill a normal human.

Personally, I'd go with the more deadly version; Mek weapons should be capable of killing a human, armored or otherwise, with one hit.