Weapon Damage Output Balance?

[shirgall]

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

It says "An attack is an attempt to damage or injure an enemy..." and is a Significant Action.

Under Magazine it does make the mistake of calling Magazine capacity shots instead of attacks. This is an error. This is also the only place this equivocation appears. It is properly the number of attacks that can be attempted before reloading is required.

Under damage it does not say the damage dice are per shot but are rather damage score per [successful] attack and the effect of the attack roll is added to damage and the any protection is subtracted.

 

[agentwigggles]

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.

you're going to invent facing rules for a game that doesnt care about facing?

 

[swordtart]

It says "An attack is an attempt to damage or injure an enemy..." and is a Significant Action.

Under Magazine it does make the mistake of calling Magazine capacity shots instead of attacks. This is an error. This is also the only place this equivocation appears. It is properly the number of attacks that can be attempted before reloading is required.

Under damage it does not say the damage dice are per shot but are rather damage score per [successful] attack and the effect of the attack roll is added to damage and the any protection is subtracted.

None of that would be untrue if 1 shot = 1 round = 1 attack either. However under the auto rules it mentions rounds expended not attacks expended. Specifically a full auto attack uses 3 x the auto value in rounds of ammunition, not 3 attacks worth of ammunition (which would be 3 shots by your logic).

The Field Catalogue uses the same default numbers for magazine capacity but explicitly refers to rounds per magazine. I think the intention is clear and aligns with common sense. Using your interpretation adds nothing to conventional weapons but causes inconsistency in automatic weapons and with other rulebooks that are otherwise entirely compatible.

CSC has the bandolier which also mentions rounds of ammunition. It would be impossible to determine how many shots this would equate to if your interpretation was intended.

 

[hopsnbaer]

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.

That's fair. It is not something I see as very impacting, but yeah, I would not let Cloth be worn under in my game.

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.

I don't need them to be killed, but when a Thebun Lion does 2d6 base damage in the book. It is not the feared creature it is supposed to be.

 

[swordtart]

I don't need them to be killed, but when a Thebun Lion does 2d6 base damage in the book. It is not the feared creature it is supposed to be.

Agreed and equally things like mesh are fairly pointless. There could have been less variation between armour values across the board (and most normal armours top out in the 4-6 range, TL10 cloth is the outlier, but I think that ship has sailed.

 

[shirgall]

None of that would be untrue if 1 shot = 1 round = 1 attack either. However under the auto rules it mentions rounds expended not attacks expended. Specifically a full auto attack uses 3 x the auto value in rounds of ammunition, not 3 attacks worth of ammunition (which would be 3 shots by your logic).

The Field Catalogue uses the same default numbers for magazine capacity but explicitly refers to rounds per magazine. I think the intention is clear and aligns with common sense. Using your interpretation adds nothing to conventional weapons but causes inconsistency in automatic weapons and with other rulebooks that are otherwise entirely compatible.

CSC has the bandolier which also mentions rounds of ammunition. It would be impossible to determine how many shots this would equate to if your interpretation was intended.

I took the auto rules to mean rounds of attack and not rounds of ammo. This has been the Traveller tradition for a long time, so maybe I am biased.

I’m not saying Traveller models one attack as one bullet, I’m saying the rules shouldn't say that now and it did not used to. Damage is clearly modelled per successful attack with Effect added once. The Magazine table’s use of “shots” is inconsistent terminology — functionally it behaves as “number of attacks before reload,” unless a weapon trait explicitly changes ammo usage.

 

[DeHammer]

you're going to invent facing rules for a game that doesnt care about facing?

Nope. That would not be required. First of all... facing is already a part of the game when you ask PCs to specify where they are or they use a mini to show you where they are. Or do you not let your PCs sneak up on someone 'from behind'?

 

[DeHammer]

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

Pretty sure most Traveller Refs let enemies shoot at their PCs with firearms. I don't think character generation is relevant to the problem I'm seeing.

 

[DeHammer]

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.

I appreciate your input from your experience. Thanks. I guess in my way of thinking a one-shot kill should always be possible especially where no armor is being used. That's more like our reality where people can actually be killed with a single punch even. I do like the 'Effect' system Traveller uses adding damage based on 'Effect', and maybe that's the key to getting those one-shot kills. A skilled fighter with a dagger and +4 to hit can do some better damage (1D+2+4).

 

[Sigtrygg]

I took the auto rules to mean rounds of attack and not rounds of ammo. This has been the Traveller tradition for a long time, so maybe I am biased.

I get the feeling you are thinking about MgT1e.
Classic, Mega, TNE, one round per pull of the trigger is one attack. Same with T4 and T5, GT and HT. Only MgT 1e tried to get away with abstract ammo, and thankfully they dropped that for 2nd edition.

I’m not saying Traveller models one attack as one bullet, I’m saying the rules shouldn't say that now and it did not used to.

Yes it did, don't make me quote every single edition of the game, but I can do so...

Damage is clearly modelled per successful attack with Effect added once. The Magazine table’s use of “shots” is inconsistent terminology — functionally it behaves as “number of attacks before reload,” unless a weapon trait explicitly changes ammo usage.

MgT1e was the outlier, it makes a lot more sense now in 2nd edition with magazine capacities listed in the stat blocks for one attack to be one round to be one pull of the trigger.

 

[Fweeba]

The balance between weapons and armor is definitely a problem. It was one of the main reasons I stopped GMing Traveller, and I've seen several GMs struggle with it pretty severely.

Only a few weeks ago, a GM had us facing an ambush of dozens of biting alien critters, none of whom could deal any damage to the party, because we all happened to be wearing vacc suits with high enough innate armor to render us totally impervious (Which were actually required to survive on the planet in question.)

The bar fight issue is also hilarious. You're wearing cloth armor which doesn't cover your face, yet nobody can hurt you with a punch, so everybody has to resort to grappling and strangling.

Laser weapons are in a particularly bad spot. Cloth armor + a dispersion suit gets you an easy 18 armor vs. energy, rendering you nearly invulnerable to laser pistols and highly resilient to laser rifles, without looking like anything more threatening than a sci-fi bodysuit (And any setting which forces people to not wear sci-fi bodysuits because they're too tough is obviously mad.)

 

[DeHammer]

The balance between weapons and armor is definitely a problem. It was one of the main reasons I stopped GMing Traveller, and I've seen several GMs struggle with is pretty severely.

Only a few weeks ago, a GM had us facing an ambush of dozens of biting alien critters, none of whom could deal any damage to the party, because we all happened to be wearing vacc suits with high enough innate armor to render us totally impervious (Which were actually required to survive on the planet in question.)

The bar fight issue is also hilarious. You're wearing cloth armor which doesn't cover your face, yet nobody can hurt you with a punch, so everybody has to resort to grappling and strangling.

Laser weapons are in a particularly bad spot. Cloth armor + a dispersion suit gets you an easy 18 armor vs. energy, rendering you nearly invulnerable to laser pistols and highly resilient to laser rifles, without looking like anything more threatening than a sci-fi bodysuit (And any setting which forces people to not wear sci-fi bodysuits because they're too tough is obviously mad.)

Looking online, I found reference to one Ref who simply ruled that energy weapons ignored all armor. Not something I would do, but it does suggest to me that I'm not alone in seeing an issue.

One idea I am playing with is simply increasing 'effect' damage. Instead of 1 point of extra damage per 1 point of effect... I wonder what doubling that might do. So effect of 4 would mean +8 damage. I like this idea because it ties additional damage to the roll... basically just increasing the result of a more 'critical' hit.

 

[swordtart]

The balance between weapons and armor is definitely a problem. It was one of the main reasons I stopped GMing Traveller, and I've seen several GMs struggle with is pretty severely.

Only a few weeks ago, a GM had us facing an ambush of dozens of biting alien critters, none of whom could deal any damage to the party, because we all happened to be wearing vacc suits with high enough innate armor to render us totally impervious (Which were actually required to survive on the planet in question.)

The bar fight issue is also hilarious. You're wearing cloth armor which doesn't cover your face, yet nobody can hurt you with a punch, so everybody has to resort to grappling and strangling.

Laser weapons are in a particularly bad spot. Cloth armor + a dispersion suit gets you an easy 18 armor vs. energy, rendering you nearly invulnerable to laser pistols and highly resilient to laser rifles, without looking like anything more threatening than a sci-fi bodysuit (And any setting which forces people to not wear sci-fi bodysuits because they're too tough is obviously mad.)

Personally I would have made cloth useless vs lasers (anything capable of producing a damaging burn on flesh should have no issue with ballistic cloth). Arguably it could also be fairly ineffective against blades and low velocity impacts. If Reflec (and reflec coatings) were the only effective counter to lasers...

Cloth (and it's variants) are the major issue across the board. To be effective against bullets, cuts and crushing any flexible armour also needs some decent padding and should be reasonably bulky. The cloth jacket seems the most credible cloth armour item.

The issue with higher TLs getting better and better is you only need to shop there once. TL10 cloth is superior to everything bar combat armour and at a bargain price point.

And don't get me started on archaic armour. Full plate can barely stop a dagger and arrows will go straight through.

 

[Fweeba]

Looking online, I found reference to one Ref who simply ruled that energy weapons ignored all armor. Not something I would do, but it does suggest to me that I'm not alone in seeing an issue.

One idea I am playing with is simply increasing 'effect' damage. Instead of 1 point of extra damage per 1 point of effect... I wonder what doubling that might do. So effect of 4 would mean +8 damage.

Definitely not alone. I looked into fixing it a while ago, but determined that a satisfactory fix would require basically a rebalance of damage/armor across the board, with maybe some kind of "Always deal a minimum of (damage dice) damage to targets not wearing powered armor" rule (Though that has some not-fun interactions with full-auto weapons). Decided it wasn't worth the effort in the end though.

 

[Fweeba]

Personally I would have made cloth useless vs lasers (anything capable of producing a damaging burn on flesh should have no issue with ballistic cloth). Arguably it could also be fairly ineffective against blades and low velocity impacts. If Reflec (and reflec coatings) were the only effective counter to lasers...

Cloth (and it's variants) are the major issue across the board. To be effective against bullets, cuts and crushing any flexible armour also needs some decent padding and should be reasonably bulky. The cloth jacket seems the most credible cloth armour item.

The issue with higher TLs getting better and better is you only need to shop there once. TL10 cloth is superior to everything bar combat armour and at a bargain price point.

And don't get me started on archaic armour. Full plate can barely stop a dagger and arrows will go straight through.

Yeah, part of the problem is that the setting acts like low tech weapons are actually an option, when in reality they aren't for anything that actually matters, because high tech armor turns them into airsoft guns. Even the Imperial Army falls for this, because their standard issue advanced combat rifle is almost worthless versus Zhodani light combat armor, and honestly struggles to be effective even versus targets wearing TL10 cloth.

In my experience, it's a rare GM that can resist the urge to give most NPCs cloth armor when all the players are walking around with it and making it seem like the status quo; which happens to have the side effect of rendering stunners nearly useless, unless the person wearing the armor happens to have super low END.

 

[DeHammer]

Personally I would have made cloth useless vs lasers (anything capable of producing a damaging burn on flesh should have no issue with ballistic cloth). Arguably it could also be fairly ineffective against blades and low velocity impacts. If Reflec (and reflec coatings) were the only effective counter to lasers...

I've thought about assigning a conditional AP to all energy weapons. For instance AP5 vs non-reflec protection points.

 

[hopsnbaer]

Yeah, part of the problem is that the setting acts like low tech weapons are actually an option, when in reality they aren't for anything that actually matters, because high tech armor turns them into airsoft guns. Even the Imperial Army falls for this, because their standard issue advanced combat rifle is almost worthless versus Zhodani light combat armor, and honestly struggles to be effective even versus targets wearing TL10 cloth.

In my experience, it's a rare GM that can resist the urge to give most NPCs cloth armor when all the players are walking around with it and making it seem like the status quo; which happens to have the side effect of rendering stunners nearly useless, unless the person wearing the armor happens to have super low END.

I allow the military to have AP Rounds for the ACM

 

[shirgall]

I get the feeling you are thinking about MgT1e.
Classic, Mega, TNE, one round per pull of the trigger is one attack. Same with T4 and T5, GT and HT. Only MgT 1e tried to get away with abstract ammo, and thankfully they dropped that for 2nd edition.

Yes it did, don't make me quote every single edition of the game, but I can do so...

MgT1e was the outlier, it makes a lot more sense now in 2nd edition with magazine capacities listed in the stat blocks for one attack to be one round to be one pull of the trigger.

At the table for decades, rounds, shots, and ammo have been used interchangeably as logistics terms, while combat resolution has consistently abstracted a six-second round as one opposed exchange. That abstraction is why Traveller has always resolved combat as one attack roll and one damage roll per round.

The rules never say damage is "for one bullet," and they don’t need to. Damage is clearly resolved per successful attack, with Effect applied once. Tracking individual projectiles was deliberately avoided because it slows play without improving outcomes.

Magazine capacity terminology has always been a bit fuzzy, and that’s not surprising given the abstraction. What matters at the table is keeping combat moving: one roll to see how the exchange went, one roll for harm, and one decrement of a tracked resource unless a weapon trait explicitly says otherwise.

Fundamentally, Traveller works because it tracks what matters to decision-making under pressure, not because it simulates every cartridge or joule. I wouldn’t recommend changing damage numbers. They already do a reasonable job of modelling the harm that accumulates over six seconds.

 

[Fweeba]

I allow the military to have AP Rounds for the ACM

Definitely helps a bit, but it's still effectively 3D vs 12 protection when accounting for armor piercing vs Zhodani light combat armor, which turns them from almost impervious to only very tough, with regards to Imperial small arms. They'd need APDS to start evening the odds; though gauss rifles with AP rounds would be better (Which are actually the same tech level as their ACRs!)

 

[Endie]

Pretty sure most Traveller Refs let enemies shoot at their PCs with firearms. I don't think character generation is relevant to the problem I'm seeing.

Someone else can explain it to him, he whooshed pretty hard, here.