Weapon Damage Output Balance?

[DeHammer]

This is really more of a question, as I'm new to the Traveller system and our group is just starting into our second adventure. Are weapons damage output and armor / defense balanced enough straight out of the rules?

The reason I ask is that if someone manages an armor value of say 15-20 pts, that seems to really take a lot of the bite of the weapons damage. Example... if someone is wearing light cloth armor, a cloth trench coat, and uses a shield. Suddenly a laser pistol is useless against them. That doesn't seem quite right. Even if you get a nice high roll with DMs and an effect of 4pts to add to damage.... it doesn't quite seem enough.

Then there's the physics behind shooting bullet proof cloth armor with an energy weapon. Just because cloth is bullet proof / resistant, doesn't mean an energy bolt would actually react against it the same way as a bullet would.

What am I missing? Do people house rule weapons damage or armor rules etc?

EDIT: Adding this comment...

The other aspect of this is that weapons seem simply not to do enough damage overall. The rules basically make it so a person with zero armor can be stabbed with a dagger and they will never be killed with a single stab. You'd need to roll very high on each roll and stab two times (with high effect) to knock off the average person with 20-ish HP. Or three times without high effect.

Part of me is thinking of tweaking the core rules slightly to address both of these things. Perhaps adding 1D6 to every weapon across the board. Would love some advice if anyone else has done such tweaks.

 

[Vormaerin]

The short answer is "No'. The longer answer is "it depends on what you mean."

Civilian Weapons do 1 to 3 d6 dmg. Civilian Armor is generally 3-8 range.
Military Weapons generally do 3 to 5 d6 dmg with a small amount of AP. Military Armors tend to be 10 to 25 range.

If you keep groups in those bands where civilian weapons are used against civilian armors and military weapons are used on military armored targets, you can have reasonable combats that will not automatically hospitalize or kill the participants if they they actually have a fight and not just an ambush.

That said, 95% of the structure of Traveller assumes that the GM is maintaining some sort of sanity. The *players* don't have to deal with the bullcrap that comes from wearing cloth armor + cloth trenchcoat + carrying a shield. All the stuff that causes real world people not to do that unless absolutely forced to. Hot, awkward, hard to drink your coffee and hold your weapon and your shield, look like a storm trooper to any one looking at you, etc.

So, sure, there are situations where the PCs will do that. But it's probably not a very normal situation. Just like most characters' best armor is their vacc suit, but wearing that around town isn't gonna fly in most places.

But, in the end, it comes down to the table deciding what they want. Because Traveller is capable of being played as a basically no weapons Stainless Steel Rat style game or as a full scale military game like a Hammer's Slammers novel. Or the players could primarily be worried about starship destroying weapons because they are playing Honor Harrington or the like. And, obviously, if the Stainless Steel Rat comes up against a unit of Hammer's Slammers, it's not going to be balanced.

So decide what you are playing and figure out what's reasonable for that playstyle.


Oh, and as an aside, like 90% of games out there, stacking different armors breaks the system more than anything else does.

 

[Condottiere]

Stacking armour wouldn't actually be linear.

What they could do, is mitigate different effects, like composite or layered protection.

 

[DeHammer]

The short answer is "No'. The longer answer is "it depends on what you mean."

Civilian Weapons do 1 to 3 d6 dmg. Civilian Armor is generally 3-8 range.
Military Weapons generally do 3 to 5 d6 dmg with a small amount of AP. Military Armors tend to be 10 to 25 range.

If you keep groups in those bands where civilian weapons are used against civilian armors and military weapons are used on military armored targets, you can have reasonable combats that will not automatically hospitalize or kill the participants if they they actually have a fight and not just an ambush.

That said, 95% of the structure of Traveller assumes that the GM is maintaining some sort of sanity. The *players* don't have to deal with the bullcrap that comes from wearing cloth armor + cloth trenchcoat + carrying a shield. All the stuff that causes real world people not to do that unless absolutely forced to. Hot, awkward, hard to drink your coffee and hold your weapon and your shield, look like a storm trooper to any one looking at you, etc.

So, sure, there are situations where the PCs will do that. But it's probably not a very normal situation. Just like most characters' best armor is their vacc suit, but wearing that around town isn't gonna fly in most places.

But, in the end, it comes down to the table deciding what they want. Because Traveller is capable of being played as a basically no weapons Stainless Steel Rat style game or as a full scale military game like a Hammer's Slammers novel. Or the players could primarily be worried about starship destroying weapons because they are playing Honor Harrington or the like. And, obviously, if the Stainless Steel Rat comes up against a unit of Hammer's Slammers, it's not going to be balanced.

So decide what you are playing and figure out what's reasonable for that playstyle.


Oh, and as an aside, like 90% of games out there, stacking different armors breaks the system more than anything else does.

Here's the thing though... the core rules explicitly state that (civilian) cloth armor can be worn under regular clothing even, and that a cloth trench coat (also civilian) can be worn over armor. So that's already armor 14. Way beyond the 3-8 range. Then there's the shields. Also, equipment that provides armor with environmental regulation, so over-heating isn't an issue. Based on your comment, which I largely agree with, I think it's really up to me then to 'tweak' things to ensure armor and weapons generally match. But I'm not sure I can trust the core rules to do that as simply as keeping players to civilian armor & weapons. With rules based civilian armor 14 I'm already thinking that a civilian 2D6 weapon is already mostly useless.

One thing I'm thinking of doing is ruling that the trench coat are largely inflexible when buttoned up and give players a -DM for actions if they wear both armors close up like that. But if worn open they only protect back and sides. Meaning that the addition of a shield really only protects their front facing, and thus only stacks on the cloth armor and not the trench coat.

The other aspect of this is that weapons seem simply not to do enough damage overall. The rules basically make it so a person with zero armor can be stabbed with a dagger and they will never be killed with a single stab. You'd need to roll very high on each roll and stab two times (with high effect) to knock off the average person with 20-ish HP. Or three times without high effect.

Part of me is thinking of tweaking the core rules slightly to address both of these things. Perhaps adding 1D6 to every weapon across the board. Would love some advice if anyone else has done such tweaks.

 

[DeHammer]

Stacking armour wouldn't actually be linear.

What they could do, is mitigate different effects, like composite or layered protection.

I like that idea... and I have tried to think that way, but stacking cloth armor with cloth trench coat as per the rules just doesn't seem to allow me to do that and have it make sense. Clearly I do have to do something, but I'd prefer not to suddenly retcon equipment the players already have. I'm considering adding 1D6 to all weapons just to make things a bit more deadly.

I have tried to play conservatively so far with armor... I've already told the players not to expect any kind of battle dress or power armor to show up in our games for the foreseeable future. So I am aware of the power in my hands to restrict availability. With cloth armor and cloth trench coat that just didn't seem plausible. If one's available, there no sensible reason the other isn't.

 

[Endie]

I like that idea... and I have tried to think that way, but stacking cloth armor with cloth trench coat as per the rules just doesn't seem to allow me to do that and have it make sense. Clearly I do have to do something, but I'd prefer not to suddenly retcon equipment the players already have. I'm considering adding 1D6 to all weapons just to make things a bit more deadly.

I have tried to play conservatively so far with armor... I've already told the players not to expect any kind of battle dress or power armor to show up in our games for the foreseeable future. So I am aware of the power in my hands to restrict availability. With cloth armor and cloth trench coat that just didn't seem plausible. If one's available, there no sensible reason the other isn't.

If you want, in Traveller, to shoot at your players with laser weapons and firearms or have them face molecular blades etc then either

- chill out and let them wear armour
- find a way to streamline character generation

 

[agentwigggles]

Laser Weapons got nerfed to heck because Mongoose doesnt have really damage type. It kinda does. It mostly doesnt.
Overall I am very happy with that, because looking up a damage type armor matrix, is always, always, always shit thing to do at the table.

Damage and armor is fine. Traveller is a combat as war game. And not a game as sport game. And combat is dangerous enough where most games tend to avoid it almost all games tend to avoid fair fights.

Ive had advanced combat rifles do triple digits amount of damage in single round with just 4 players. Full Auto is nuts.

Lets look at the dagger situation in particular.

Avg of 5pts of damage. So a victim will need around 4 attacks to become unconscious. If any two Stats each Zero, they become unconscious. After 2 hts, the Victim END on avg will be reduce to zero, which means if they make a Melee attack, they are fatigue and suffer a DM-2 on all their actions.

So a bar knife fight, last probably at most 4 rounds but closer to 3, when both parties fatigued unable to hit anything. Less than 30 seconds.

It is possible to prolong the fight, by spreading out the 4th landed attack to a different stat. This has the consequence of needing surgery.

That seems fine. Its dangerous, almost impossible to walk away unscathed unless you're armed or way more skilled. As no one is gonna be to be using the Parry reaction at Melee SKill Rank 0.

I neve felt compelled to adjust damage up.
I've felt compelled to adjust damage down.

 

[swordtart]

Here's the thing though... the core rules explicitly state that (civilian) cloth armor can be worn under regular clothing even, and that a cloth trench coat (also civilian) can be worn over armor. So that's already armor 14. Way beyond the 3-8 range. Then there's the shields. Also, equipment that provides armor with environmental regulation, so over-heating isn't an issue. Based on your comment, which I largely agree with, I think it's really up to me then to 'tweak' things to ensure armor and weapons generally match. But I'm not sure I can trust the core rules to do that as simply as keeping players to civilian armor & weapons. With rules based civilian armor 14 I'm already thinking that a civilian 2D6 weapon is already mostly useless.

One thing I'm thinking of doing is ruling that the trench coat are largely inflexible when buttoned up and give players a -DM for actions if they wear both armors close up like that. But if worn open they only protect back and sides. Meaning that the addition of a shield really only protects their front facing, and thus only stacks on the cloth armor and not the trench coat.

The other aspect of this is that weapons seem simply not to do enough damage overall. The rules basically make it so a person with zero armor can be stabbed with a dagger and they will never be killed with a single stab. You'd need to roll very high on each roll and stab two times (with high effect) to knock off the average person with 20-ish HP. Or three times without high effect.

Part of me is thinking of tweaking the core rules slightly to address both of these things. Perhaps adding 1D6 to every weapon across the board. Would love some advice if anyone else has done such tweaks.

I made a ruling that flexible armours (like cloth) converts ballistic damage to stun damage rather than eliminates it entirely. Only rigid armour (like combat armour or the shield) actually stops it dead. It is simple and doesn't require any new rules, other than deciding which armours are rigid and which are flexible (and that is generally obvious).

That means you can walk around with less intimidating armour and reduce the risk of dying, but even with 14 points you are still going to take a thumping if you end up in a gun fight. If the opponent is feeling particularly nasty they may even kill you off after subduing you, but that will be a deliberate decision. Most polities make a distinction between reasonable self-defence, planned violence and murderous intent. Sensible criminals will err on the side of underkill so that a 2 year sentence for theft might become a 5 year sentence for armed robbery rather than a life sentence for attempted murder.

Armour piercing ammunition is available as well and if your players are clearly wearing armour that would protect against normal rounds then a prepared enemy who actually intends to try to kill them will likely bring that as a countermeasure.

In short if they start wearing powerful armour then people who mean them harm will tool up accordingly.

As for knife wounds, many people who die of knife wounds are stabbed repeatedly. Often the stabbed individual will simply stop fighting but they won't immediately die. Many who get hospital treatment or even competent first aid will survive with little ongoing physical impact (psychological impact is a different matter). Some people who are stabbed or cut don't even realise it at the time. You can certainly kill with a dagger with the right training, but that is covered by getting a raft of positive DMs on the roll e.g. a surprise attack from behind with a skilled individual could be adding 6+ to the damage and a "deadly" dagger will be doing 5-8 points on it's own. Normal people only have 14 useful hit points before they fall unconscious. The extra 7 to kill them then and there is usually irrelevant.

If the victim is surprised then you can attack unarmoured locations. Even multilayer cloth and trench-coat doesn't cover all areas equally. A shot to the head (or at least the face) could bypass normal civilian armour.

 

[shirgall]

Keep in mind that attack rolls and damage resolve opposed exchanges over the combat round of six seconds, not individual hits.

 

[Sigtrygg]

One attack with a semi automatic handgun uses how many rounds of ammunition?

 

[DeHammer]

I made a ruling that flexible armours (like cloth) converts ballistic damage to stun damage rather than eliminates it entirely. Only rigid armour (like combat armour or the shield) actually stops it dead. It is simple and doesn't require any new rules, other than deciding which armours are rigid and which are flexible (and that is generally obvious).

That means you can walk around with less intimidating armour and reduce the risk of dying, but even with 14 points you are still going to take a thumping if you end up in a gun fight. If the opponent is feeling particularly nasty they may even kill you off after subduing you, but that will be a deliberate decision. Most polities make a distinction between reasonable self-defence, planned violence and murderous intent. Sensible criminals will err on the side of underkill so that a 2 year sentence for theft might become a 5 year sentence for armed robbery rather than a life sentence for attempted murder.

Armour piercing ammunition is available as well and if your players are clearly wearing armour that would protect against normal rounds then a prepared enemy who actually intends to try to kill them will likely bring that as a countermeasure.

In short if they start wearing powerful armour then people who mean them harm will tool up accordingly.

As for knife wounds, many people who die of knife wounds are stabbed repeatedly. Often the stabbed individual will simply stop fighting but they won't immediately die. Many who get hospital treatment or even competent first aid will survive with little ongoing physical impact (psychological impact is a different matter). Some people who are stabbed or cut don't even realise it at the time. You can certainly kill with a dagger with the right training, but that is covered by getting a raft of positive DMs on the roll e.g. a surprise attack from behind with a skilled individual could be adding 6+ to the damage and a "deadly" dagger will be doing 5-8 points on it's own. Normal people only have 14 useful hit points before they fall unconscious. The extra 7 to kill them then and there is usually irrelevant.

If the victim is surprised then you can attack unarmoured locations. Even multilayer cloth and trench-coat doesn't cover all areas equally. A shot to the head (or at least the face) could bypass normal civilian armour.

Love it! Awesome ideas there. Since the core rules to mention cloth armor leaving bruising, I think the idea of stun damage seems quite good. I also decided that in some cases, I could also add a bit of fall damage (which ignores armor) if they are hit with something extremely forceful.... such as being swatted by a giant creature. Great info. Thanks!

 

[WHULorigan]

I made a ruling that flexible armours (like cloth) converts ballistic damage to stun damage rather than eliminates it entirely. Only rigid armour (like combat armour or the shield) actually stops it dead. It is simple and doesn't require any new rules, other than deciding which armours are rigid and which are flexible (and that is generally obvious).

That means you can walk around with less intimidating armour and reduce the risk of dying, but even with 14 points you are still going to take a thumping if you end up in a gun fight. If the opponent is feeling particularly nasty they may even kill you off after subduing you, but that will be a deliberate decision. Most polities make a distinction between reasonable self-defence, planned violence and murderous intent. Sensible criminals will err on the side of underkill so that a 2 year sentence for theft might become a 5 year sentence for armed robbery rather than a life sentence for attempted murder.

Armour piercing ammunition is available as well and if your players are clearly wearing armour that would protect against normal rounds then a prepared enemy who actually intends to try to kill them will likely bring that as a countermeasure.

In short if they start wearing powerful armour then people who mean them harm will tool up accordingly.

As for knife wounds, many people who die of knife wounds are stabbed repeatedly. Often the stabbed individual will simply stop fighting but they won't immediately die. Many who get hospital treatment or even competent first aid will survive with little ongoing physical impact (psychological impact is a different matter). Some people who are stabbed or cut don't even realise it at the time. You can certainly kill with a dagger with the right training, but that is covered by getting a raft of positive DMs on the roll e.g. a surprise attack from behind with a skilled individual could be adding 6+ to the damage and a "deadly" dagger will be doing 5-8 points on it's own. Normal people only have 14 useful hit points before they fall unconscious. The extra 7 to kill them then and there is usually irrelevant.

If the victim is surprised then you can attack unarmoured locations. Even multilayer cloth and trench-coat doesn't cover all areas equally. A shot to the head (or at least the face) could bypass normal civilian armour.

In the T4 ruleset:

• All weapons did a combination of multiple whole-dice (1D6) and "half"-dice (i.e 1D3) damage (with no "±" die modifiers).
• All armor-reduction point values reduced damage by subtracting a "die" per armor point (half-dice counted as a die for this purpose).
  • Each point of Rigid Armor eliminated 1 damage die completely
  • Each point of Flexible Armor reduced 1 damage die to exactly 1 point of damage (bruising, et al)
• Under normal circumstances, no weapon did more than 3D6 damage to a person after penetration, (the rest was wasted kinetic energy that passed thru the exit wound on the other side).
• AP Ammo ignored armor up to its AP-value.

Some specific weapons in their descriptions would break these rules as necessary (e.g. Shotguns were generally higher damage dice, but low penetration, meaning that armor was doubly-effective - each armor point eliminated two dice; grenades could do more than 3D6 damage, etc.).


Perhaps you can cannibalize some ideas from the above.

 

[shirgall]

One attack with a semi automatic handgun uses how many rounds of ammunition?

The ammo tracker counts attack rolls, not individual rounds. There's no need to bog down combat with too much detail when it is not necessary.

 

[Sigtrygg]

So how many rounds do you fire during a combat round for one attack, this is rather important in scenarios where ammo is limited and the enemies are numerous (a certain very popular adventure springs to mind...)
My reading of the rules is that one shot is one round and one attack, unless you have auto fire of some sort in which case one shot is a number of rounds equal to the auto rating, on full auto you fire 3x the autorating of rounds.

So one attack in 6 seconds is one shot from a handgun, not multiple rounds.

 

[shirgall]

So how many rounds do you fire during a combat round for one attack, this is rather important in scenarios where ammo is limited and the enemies are numerous (a certain very popular adventure springs to mind...)
My reading of the rules is that one shot is one round and one attack, unless you have auto fire of some sort in which case one shot is a number of rounds equal to the auto rating, on full auto you fire 3x the autorating of rounds.

So one attack in 6 seconds is one shot from a handgun, not multiple rounds.

It is important, yes. But if you keep it as 1 point of ammo is per attack roll and not per round fired it does not fall apart. You could *reduce* damage because you literally only have one charge or one bullet, but that's the exception you need. Otherwise you go through mental gymnastics saying a semi-automatic firearm even when opposed can only take one shot every six seconds.

"Auto X" is an indicator of attack rolls per round, and using those rolls consumes ammo the same way:

• "Single" -> uses one attack roll and one ammo
• "Burst" -> uses one attack roll to resolve the attack, but consumes up to X ammo and duplicates up to X times the damage on one target
• "Full Auto" -> up X attack rolls on targets within 6m of each other, consuming one ammo per attack roll

 

[hopsnbaer]

Here's the thing though... the core rules explicitly state that (civilian) cloth armor can be worn under regular clothing even, and that a cloth trench coat (also civilian) can be worn over armor. So that's already armor 14. Way beyond the 3-8 range. Then there's the shields. Also, equipment that provides armor with environmental regulation, so over-heating isn't an issue. Based on your comment, which I largely agree with, I think it's really up to me then to 'tweak' things to ensure armor and weapons generally match. But I'm not sure I can trust the core rules to do that as simply as keeping players to civilian armor & weapons. With rules based civilian armor 14 I'm already thinking that a civilian 2D6 weapon is already mostly useless.

One thing I'm thinking of doing is ruling that the trench coat are largely inflexible when buttoned up and give players a -DM for actions if they wear both armors close up like that. But if worn open they only protect back and sides. Meaning that the addition of a shield really only protects their front facing, and thus only stacks on the cloth armor and not the trench coat.

The other aspect of this is that weapons seem simply not to do enough damage overall. The rules basically make it so a person with zero armor can be stabbed with a dagger and they will never be killed with a single stab. You'd need to roll very high on each roll and stab two times (with high effect) to knock off the average person with 20-ish HP. Or three times without high effect.

Part of me is thinking of tweaking the core rules slightly to address both of these things. Perhaps adding 1D6 to every weapon across the board. Would love some advice if anyone else has done such tweaks.

The TL12 Cloth armor was removed from the game. The TL10 Cloth armor can look like clothing under normal circumstances, or if you want to allow them to wear it under normal clothing, I don't see an issue. The cloth trench always looks like armor, and a collapsable boarding shield or a carried shield is going to stand out even more.

The social aspects of wearing armor should keep the armor level down on most planets. If the social aspect is not there then the carried weapons will most likely reflect that with additional AP or higher damage.

The players may want to bulk up because that's how games have traditionally been played, and it may be hard to break them of that habit. Wearing a ton of armor should not necessarily be the norm in Traveller unless that is what you are going for.

An issue that I have is that if the PC's get attacked by local animals, if they are often given a base 2d6 damage. They will never get through the armor. I don't like coming up with weird ways that the critter can get through armor, except trying and twist off limbs with a grapple when they can't get through with teeth and claws.

 

[hopsnbaer]

So how many rounds do you fire during a combat round for one attack, this is rather important in scenarios where ammo is limited and the enemies are numerous (a certain very popular adventure springs to mind...)
My reading of the rules is that one shot is one round and one attack, unless you have auto fire of some sort in which case one shot is a number of rounds equal to the auto rating, on full auto you fire 3x the autorating of rounds.

So one attack in 6 seconds is one shot from a handgun, not multiple rounds.

I use the RAW Rules, however there is an Ammo Expenditure optional rule in the Companion. where there is a reload threshold that randomizes when you need to reload a bit. Taking into account that shooting at someone is not necessarily just one shot per attack.

 

[Sigtrygg]

The core rule book 2024 has one attack is one shot, one round of ammunition, does it not? What am I missing?

 

[swordtart]

It is important, yes. But if you keep it as 1 point of ammo is per attack roll and not per round fired it does not fall apart. You could *reduce* damage because you literally only have one charge or one bullet, but that's the exception you need. Otherwise you go through mental gymnastics saying a semi-automatic firearm even when opposed can only take one shot every six seconds.

"Auto X" is an indicator of attack rolls per round, and using those rolls consumes ammo the same way:

• "Single" -> uses one attack roll and one ammo
• "Burst" -> uses one attack roll to resolve the attack, but consumes up to X ammo and duplicates up to X times the damage on one target
• "Full Auto" -> up X attack rolls on targets within 6m of each other, consuming one ammo per attack roll

For full auto it is 3 ammo per attack.

Also the ammunition capacity of the various guns is more aligned with 1 attack = 1 round of ammunition not multiple rounds. Auto pistol 15 rounds is not an unreasonable quantity but a multiple of that would be implausible.

Revolvers have 6 rounds. Assault rifles have 30 rounds. All these align with typical real world ammunition capacities on a one to one basis. Whilst you could go a few rounds either way depending on the model, in no case would ammo 1 representing 2 rounds of ammunition be credible.

 

[swordtart]

The TL12 Cloth armor was removed from the game. The TL10 Cloth armor can look like clothing under normal circumstances, or if you want to allow them to wear it under normal clothing, I don't see an issue. The cloth trench always looks like armor, and a collapsable boarding shield or a carried shield is going to stand out even more.

As diplo vest is specifically stated as being wearable under normal clothing I wouldn't allow TL cloth to be. It ight be mistaken for normal clothes but not by anyone who has seen cloth armour. One of the JTAS had rules for adding a little extra armour to regular clothing without it being obvious.

The social aspects of wearing armor should keep the armor level down on most planets. If the social aspect is not there then the carried weapons will most likely reflect that with additional AP or higher damage.

The players may want to bulk up because that's how games have traditionally been played, and it may be hard to break them of that habit. Wearing a ton of armor should not necessarily be the norm in Traveller unless that is what you are going for.

An issue that I have is that if the PC's get attacked by local animals, if they are often given a base 2d6 damage. They will never get through the armor. I don't like coming up with weird ways that the critter can get through armor, except trying and twist off limbs with a grapple when they can't get through with teeth and claws.

Field catalogue had extra rules for things like knockdown. A straight slash might be stopped by armour, but a powerful blow might still knock you to the ground. Once you are down the to hit roll becomes easier and the extra damage for effect will increase.

But do you actually want the players eaten by some random beastie if they have taken the precaution of tooling up. That sounds like prep that should be rewarded. Where they should be threatened is on those occasions where they didn't (or couldn't) prepare.