I just do not agree. Background experience plays a huge difference. Someone who was trained and experienced in combat tactics and to keep their head "on a swivel" will 9 out of 10 times react to a threat quicker than someone that has never been in a combat scenario. As someone with 20 years in this area, I can tell you I am constantly watching people around me, no matter where I am or who I am with. Not only watch, though. I will also listen. Not with the intention to eavesdrop, but with the intent to ensure the person near me is not a threat, or if there is something in the distance that I may need to be react to. At this point in my life, it's instinctual. My wife on the other hand wouldn't notice a green alien standing right in front of her even if it said hello. Two entirely different backgrounds and response conditioning.
[Traveller Battlefield Dev] New Combat Rules to Try!
- Thread starter MongooseMatt
- Start date
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
To Me this should be a function of the Recon skill. If you can't notice things, you can't react. The faster you notice things, the faster you can react. So it seems you Me, that maybe Initiative should just be a Recon Check. DEX or INT depending how the character would do it. Is it just fast reactions or is it that the PC noticed the threat before others and that helps him react quicker. DEX or INT
laughdad
Banded Mongoose
We're saying the same thing. I've got 30+ years in "this area" and I agree completely that background experience is a huge determinant. But that's not how initiative is set-up under the current rules and, as you'll see in my original post, Chadwick's take on initiative parsed it down to who was a combat arms MOS vice a service and support MOS in Twilight 2000: "To determine initiative, regulars roll 1D6, reservists roll 1D6/2 (round down, but reroll results of zero). Add one to this roll for rangers, airborne, SF, force recon, snipers, and equivalents. Subtract one from this roll for support, air force enlisted, aviation enlisted, and military intelligence (but never reduce Initiative below 1)." That's just an example, not a recommendation for what a Traveller initiative rating would look like.
BTW, "Perfect paranoia is perfect awareness." -- Stephen King. ;-)
laughdad
Banded Mongoose
But how do you resolve initiative when neither side achieves surprise or both blow a recon roll--what's typically called a "meeting engagement"? An example is the "Wall Battle" in Saving Private Ryan where both sides are surprised. Another good example is this one from "Tears of the Sun"--the SEALs are surprised but they seize the initiative due to individual experience and training, and experience working as a team. The tactics ability of Bruce Willis' character isn't a factor because reacting to an ambush is a standard battle drill for the team.
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
I resolve it through accurate roleplay. Regardless of the Initiative number, a player should play their character. A combat vet and a person who have never seen violence in real life will react very differently. In a case where initiative is unclear, I always default to roleplay. If I am playing the non-combatant and I win Initiative, I am likely spending My first round panicking. Maybe My second round running for cover or some such. By round 3 someone might have reminded Me that I have a weapon and to shoot back. I play like this no matter the Initiative roll, so maybe this won't help you mechanically. Initiative is only reaction time, nothing else. If you freeze in combat, that isn't usually a function of initiative, unless you rolled really, really badly, it is a function of lack of experience. Both parties may react at the same time, but their actions will be vastly different. This is something that isn't covered by the rules and I am not sure that determining player actions should be covered by the rules. Trained combatants will engage the enemy or fall back to cover or both or a number of other smart, effective things. The non-combatants, well, they won't. This is less of a mechanical thing than a roleplay thing in My games. That is why in My games, using the Recon skill as an Initiative roll works well for Us. Recon tells you how quickly you notice the problem, then it is up to the player to roleplay if their character takes effective action or ineffective "panic" actions. Granted this requires you to have gamers at your table that will act against their character's best interests in the interest of roleplay instead of roll play.
For example, I tend to "power game" My stats and skills, but I use them in ways that often counterbalance them. He will take actions that make sense for the character but do not use his abilities in a smart way from an OOC perspective. For example. Perhaps a combat vet with PTSD. Great stats. Great abilities. The choices I make for the character are not always great from a succeeding or surviving point of view. When it is needed to save the party from multiple character deaths, sure, I may use My stats and abilities intelligently, but mostly I just play the character.
Or an amusing example is Fizban from Weis and Hickman's books. Very powerful, but not very useful, or of limited use anyhow.
Apologies for misunderstanding. I read it to be you were wanting it to be everyone had a flat stat regardless of background. It's been a while since I've watched SPR and I don't remember that scene. As far as Tears of the Sun, I think this is where there is an important distinction between what happens to a highly trained combat unit versus what happens to a rag-tag bunch of Travellers. As they travel together, they may learn that level of teamwork, but without running drills and practicing regularly, they're just a group of like-minded individuals. As such, an ambush is going to hurt even if the group leader is Sun Tzu.
Some skills such as Recon and Tactics are prevalent in the warrior backgrounds. Using those as a bonus to the INIT roll is a good way to give them that "trained" edge over the others in the group. I'm not in favor of the idea of a single roll for the whole group, as that implies one side will always have the advantage which just isn't how combat devolves. Once surprise is lost (if it existed to begin with), it usually devolves into a free-for-all unless it is a highly trained tactical unit. Travellers are not and wouldn't be even if every one of them served in the military. Roleplaying that is what Mercenary is for
laughdad
Banded Mongoose
That works for you and your group. But what about the group of 15-year olds (or group of adults) with no experience in anything resembling a firefight, bar fight, or a dog fight (the fighter v fighter aircraft/spacecraft kind). Or in other words, as a Ranger Captain put it to me when I was walking slack for our point man: "When the bullets are flyin' and the blood's a-flowin." Accurate play of characters is hard because many people cannot empathize with their character in that type of situation. So, while you've got the experience to work around that, others (I'll venture on out and say "many others") do not. So, that means we need a system to guide them or that they can discard--as you seem to do (and that's fine). Which gets back to the need for something that rewards the right kind of experience and works consistently--as opposed to the crap shoot we currently have.
R/JCL
MasterGwydion
Emperor Mongoose
We do still use the initiative rules. Our non-combatants just usually make their first action or so something not smart. It was hilarious the first time a non-combatant panic fired at the enemy and actually killed several of them. The look of shock on the player's face was priceless. He totally meant to be ineffective. lol
The Recon Skill implies some kind of training, so could be used as a modifier to Initiative if need be.
laughdad
Banded Mongoose
This is probably the best work on reactions under fire
Hey, I’ve been very lax in my trying to get my post up for this but here it is.
To begin, we didn’t test these new rule vigorously, but we did enough to see what effects there would be in play. There are a number of issues and concerns with some of the changes that presented, but starting with the new initiative test, we liked it, it made combat fast and punchy, with the potential of being more reactive and engaging in table turning tactics, chief among them is head hunting to directly effect the initiative order which was cool, there was small issues but the benefits were outweighed, the allowance to communicate and coordinate more effectively was the most prevalent benefit and the punchy aspect can give a more effective simulation of the fast paced violent action that combat often is.
Next the AP change, it worked well, but without variant ammo rules to pair with them, it wasn’t a full test, we could see a snowballing effect happen if they remained unchanged and there was no rebalancing for them as currently energy weapons are horrible in play, they and slow, heavy, underperforming clubs, and slug weapons outperform them across the board before we even reach gauss weapons. The all or nothing aspect of armour is horrendously effected by this especially when you consider the average level of play and account for the most used and common armours for both players and boxed npcs, we didn’t have any real fixes for this other than perhaps providing variant ammo with a fixed increase of AP or reducing the multiple that is given from it.
Further to this for energy weapons in general now, no matter how you run the numbers they will always underperform and the very specific time that they are useful you are far better off discarding the laser weapon and engaging in a grapple as it more often than not it equals the playing field for combat characters, or if you have the skill to do so, using the slug weapon and rolling the DEX check, this however doesn’t even take into account the number of ways energy weapons are still gimped and countered, e.g. aerosol, and energy specific weapons. However the sole caveat of these changes is that it balances arguably the best weapon in the game, the stunner, without gimping it and making it useless.
Now the big one the DEX meta. The changes to combat for melee are all mostly good, the sole thing that is concerning is the increased presence of DEX and the side sweeping of strength, this is in my opinion a mistake and creates a very strong characteristic that will create a definite meta rather than the loose one that currently presides, making DEX the “to hit” stat increases it’s importance and sidling strength to a pure damage is a bad idea. The characteristics should remain as they are, hitting is always better than more damage what with how damage is calculated in traveller as any excess above the target number is added to damage, dex terrify is not speed as many so like to attribute it as such, dexterity is control and fine motion, strength is pure muscle which depending on how you use it can be power or speed or both. Making the DEX change will create essentially a DEX, INT meta which is already kind of present with how these characteristics are applied in play but, not as much should the change take place. Highly recommend that this dex change does not get implemented or, becomes a companion variant rule instead, ease of play and modularity should remain at the forefront of traveller gameplay in regard to rules sets.
Thanks, I love the game and universe, and I’m not one for forum ranting, but these changes got to me and I don’t want the game to change too much as while it has its shortcomings it’s still very accessible and easy to learn and play.
P.S. I may have forgot another initiative change where in dex become the sole modifier, also a mistake, allow int, quick of mind is not to be under estimated.
To begin, we didn’t test these new rule vigorously, but we did enough to see what effects there would be in play. There are a number of issues and concerns with some of the changes that presented, but starting with the new initiative test, we liked it, it made combat fast and punchy, with the potential of being more reactive and engaging in table turning tactics, chief among them is head hunting to directly effect the initiative order which was cool, there was small issues but the benefits were outweighed, the allowance to communicate and coordinate more effectively was the most prevalent benefit and the punchy aspect can give a more effective simulation of the fast paced violent action that combat often is.
Next the AP change, it worked well, but without variant ammo rules to pair with them, it wasn’t a full test, we could see a snowballing effect happen if they remained unchanged and there was no rebalancing for them as currently energy weapons are horrible in play, they and slow, heavy, underperforming clubs, and slug weapons outperform them across the board before we even reach gauss weapons. The all or nothing aspect of armour is horrendously effected by this especially when you consider the average level of play and account for the most used and common armours for both players and boxed npcs, we didn’t have any real fixes for this other than perhaps providing variant ammo with a fixed increase of AP or reducing the multiple that is given from it.
Further to this for energy weapons in general now, no matter how you run the numbers they will always underperform and the very specific time that they are useful you are far better off discarding the laser weapon and engaging in a grapple as it more often than not it equals the playing field for combat characters, or if you have the skill to do so, using the slug weapon and rolling the DEX check, this however doesn’t even take into account the number of ways energy weapons are still gimped and countered, e.g. aerosol, and energy specific weapons. However the sole caveat of these changes is that it balances arguably the best weapon in the game, the stunner, without gimping it and making it useless.
Now the big one the DEX meta. The changes to combat for melee are all mostly good, the sole thing that is concerning is the increased presence of DEX and the side sweeping of strength, this is in my opinion a mistake and creates a very strong characteristic that will create a definite meta rather than the loose one that currently presides, making DEX the “to hit” stat increases it’s importance and sidling strength to a pure damage is a bad idea. The characteristics should remain as they are, hitting is always better than more damage what with how damage is calculated in traveller as any excess above the target number is added to damage, dex terrify is not speed as many so like to attribute it as such, dexterity is control and fine motion, strength is pure muscle which depending on how you use it can be power or speed or both. Making the DEX change will create essentially a DEX, INT meta which is already kind of present with how these characteristics are applied in play but, not as much should the change take place. Highly recommend that this dex change does not get implemented or, becomes a companion variant rule instead, ease of play and modularity should remain at the forefront of traveller gameplay in regard to rules sets.
Thanks, I love the game and universe, and I’m not one for forum ranting, but these changes got to me and I don’t want the game to change too much as while it has its shortcomings it’s still very accessible and easy to learn and play.
P.S. I may have forgot another initiative change where in dex become the sole modifier, also a mistake, allow int, quick of mind is not to be under estimated.
do your players have access to Gauss rifles with AP ammo going up against hostiles in a battledress? A TL 11 las carbine max damage is 27
A Gauss rifle with APDS is doing max 20 AP 17 x3
basic TL 13 battle dress is 22 armour if the wear has 7 in all physical cartsrtics
so you would need 3 max damage shots to take him down. the average damage of a lass carbine does not even hurt him
with the Gauss rifle, you need only 2 shots and you get 3 a turn, and you can all so damage him with your average damage rolls.
If you only do low-level to mid-level games you're fine but as soon as you scale combat up lass weapons become useless. The Gauss rifle is just the best weapon useful from when you get it till the campaign ends.
the only 2 advantages lass weapons have are not worth it. High ammo is not an issue since you need so much more to get a kill and zero-g can be overcome with an average difficulty 8 athlete dex roll (my POD character has plus 4 to that roll)
both as a player and reff I have seen the guy with the energy weapon just give up shooting because his weapon just does nothing
make it a sub1mm needle of course.I know there's no rules against it, but I have a conceptual problem with 3mm gauss needles being APDS.What is the sabot even doing in that case?
You’re not doing anything wrong, this is a purely numerical thing, the object truth is every game is up to the gm to balance and at a certain level of play laser weapons are nothing to shy away from, however, at almost every level play they will be out performed by slug weapons that have auto and ap ammo, I don’t want to get into this argument in the forum, and more specifically in this thread as it spirals each time, but suffice it to say, though there are laser weapons that have auto, they are all expensive, and heavy, magazine capacity is a disregarded value cause most combats never run longer than 6 or so rounds, further energy weapons all have specific armours to counter, why? I don’t know
I’m not here to make an argument for or against thier use, just showing that there is a rabbit hole and a red herring if you want to invest valuable skill points in a skill that covers a niche and it’s not fun being the guy that has an awesome laser weapon that’s more effective as a club than as a gun. A rebalance is needed, and energy weapon modifications should probably be a thing
But you could just accelerate a 1mm needle if that's what you wanted. Sabots exist to allow smaller slugs to be accelerated by the propellant gasses in a larger bore weapon.
Here are my rambly thoughts
Group initiative: Anything that reduces rolling I'm down for.
Initiative and Tactics: When adding tactics to roll, what is the function of tactics 0? Would a better integration of existing systems just be having the leader just make a normal tactics check (modifed by dex or int as appropriate), complete with the -3 untrained penalty if they don't have it?
Flat Score: You mentioned you "are now thinking that characters should use DEX or INT as a flat score to determine initiative order. Athletics (dexterity) gets added to either." I like that this reduces rolling, but if you do this maybe still keep the 2022 way tactics interacts with initiative?
Disarm: I like the idea of 'something good happens on a very high roll' but I feel like you can do better than just a disarm. Maybe when you get such a hit you get to apply from a list of effects like the grapple? You can still attempt a grapple to manually force it, but if you roll high enough you run into a free opportunity for it. I also think that this should apply to ranged attacks too, not just melee, like you can shoot a guy in such a way as to send him stumbling back. It might be tough balancing tonally though, since it creates a more action movie kind of vibe.
Multi-attack: I actually really like this, but don't quite see how it works with Dual Weapons, which currently lets you do two attacks at -2. Perhaps the penalty should be twice the number of /extra/ attacks. So two attacks is -2, which is consistant with Dual Weapons, then three attacks is -4? Or maybe you adjust the penalty on dual weapons to bring it in line with this new rule? I'd also like to see this as something you can do with ranged weapons, but that would probably involve fiddling with the semi/auto rules.
AP: If you're after a greater stratification of armor and gear, the AP changes would do the trick, though I think - as you say - it's probably better in a spin off than Traveller directly. Players starting with those rules will be more amicable to them.
Would the changes to armor and AP apply up on the spacecraft vs spacecraft level?
Group initiative: Anything that reduces rolling I'm down for.
Initiative and Tactics: When adding tactics to roll, what is the function of tactics 0? Would a better integration of existing systems just be having the leader just make a normal tactics check (modifed by dex or int as appropriate), complete with the -3 untrained penalty if they don't have it?
Flat Score: You mentioned you "are now thinking that characters should use DEX or INT as a flat score to determine initiative order. Athletics (dexterity) gets added to either." I like that this reduces rolling, but if you do this maybe still keep the 2022 way tactics interacts with initiative?
Disarm: I like the idea of 'something good happens on a very high roll' but I feel like you can do better than just a disarm. Maybe when you get such a hit you get to apply from a list of effects like the grapple? You can still attempt a grapple to manually force it, but if you roll high enough you run into a free opportunity for it. I also think that this should apply to ranged attacks too, not just melee, like you can shoot a guy in such a way as to send him stumbling back. It might be tough balancing tonally though, since it creates a more action movie kind of vibe.
Multi-attack: I actually really like this, but don't quite see how it works with Dual Weapons, which currently lets you do two attacks at -2. Perhaps the penalty should be twice the number of /extra/ attacks. So two attacks is -2, which is consistant with Dual Weapons, then three attacks is -4? Or maybe you adjust the penalty on dual weapons to bring it in line with this new rule? I'd also like to see this as something you can do with ranged weapons, but that would probably involve fiddling with the semi/auto rules.
AP: If you're after a greater stratification of armor and gear, the AP changes would do the trick, though I think - as you say - it's probably better in a spin off than Traveller directly. Players starting with those rules will be more amicable to them.
Would the changes to armor and AP apply up on the spacecraft vs spacecraft level?
