Fria Ligans forum

As for #5 and #6 - I just want to make sure you're using the crit rules right - for most small arms (like an assault rifle), a crit just requires one success more than hitting the target. In all of our internal playtests, crits have been very common. A non-crit hit is pretty much a grazing hit for an assault rifle.

This also means that for the vast majority of weapons (those that have a Critical rating of Damage +1), the extra hits caused by auto-fire can never be criticals.
Normal damage can't kill you by itself (allows for a coup-de-gras), so extra hits will just disable the character quicker.
This can lead to a situation where a full-auto attack with an MP5 (RoF 5) gets an incredible roll of 5 6's for 6 hits (for 6 damage in total) but, because I only rolled a single success, leaves the target (while suppressed) rather surprised that he's not taking the room temperature challenge.
Player: "You telling me that all six bullets just grazed him? Are you serious?!"

The wording makes it unclear whether rolling ammo dice is optional or not. I assume that you must roll at least one ammo die, but I think the wording needs to make it explicit.

This could be clearer of course, but the rule is that you can use ammo dice up to ROF, minimum of one.

It's not clear what the faces on the ammo dice actually show! A table would be nice, for people who are going to just buy the PDF online and use standard dice.

1: Explo; 6: Bullet (2-5 are just numbers). The example shows some error when it comes to the symbols.

The rules for ammo use don't seem to make sense. Again, this might be clearer if we knew what the ammo dice actually showed. But as written it says if you spend more ammo than you have available, you have to remove ammo dice until you are within capacity. But (as I understand it) the symbols faces don't have a numerical value, so removing them from the result doesn't seem to do anything. So you just remove the dice that show a number - which don't actually have any game impact? Perhaps this would make more sense with dice in hand....

The explo symbol has a small 1 on it and the bullet symbol has a small 6 on it. This can be seen on the kickstarter promo pictures.

I also found the calculation for damage too convoluted - the first hit gives you base damage, and then additional hits add +1. That simplifies to damage = base damage + (hits -1). Why not just lower all base damages by 1 and have damage = base damage + hits ?

The first success on the base dice yields weapon damage any other success with the base dice increases this by one. This is how pretty much all YZE games work. The difference with this system is that any success (bullet) with the ammo dice count as an additional hit, doing weapon damage. So if you roll two successes with the base dice and one success with the ammo dice when shooting with an AKM, you get two hits, one (base dice) will do 2+1 damage and then the other (ammo dice) will do 2 damage (to the original target or to another target if you so chooses).

This also means that for the vast majority of weapons (those that have a Critical rating of Damage +1), the extra hits caused by auto-fire can never be criticals.
Normal damage can't kill you by itself (allows for a coup-de-gras), so extra hits will just disable the character quicker.
This can lead to a situation where a full-auto attack with an MP5 (RoF 5) gets an incredible roll of 5 6's for 6 hits (for 6 damage in total) but, because I only rolled a single success, leaves the target (while suppressed) rather surprised that he's not taking the room temperature challenge.
Player: "You telling me that all six bullets just grazed him? Are you serious?!"

Do you mean that you your base dice misses and the ammo dice show successes. In that case, yes you have missed what you aimed for. The other bullets (ammo dice) can't hit any target if your base dice didn't show any success. At least those ammo successes will suppress the enemy as a consolation prize.

If you rolled at least one success with your base dice, then your target is hit and can take damage and then any success on the ammo dice also can hit rather than just suppress.

Good that the base dice is rolled with the step dice, meaning that better you the better dice you roll.

Do you mean that you your base dice misses and the ammo dice show successes. In that case, yes you have missed what you aimed for. The other bullets (ammo dice) can't hit any target if your base dice didn't show any success. At least those ammo successes will suppress the enemy as a consolation prize.

If you rolled at least one success with your base dice, then your target is hit and can take damage and then any success on the ammo dice also can hit rather than just suppress.

Good that the base dice is rolled with the step dice, meaning that better you the better dice you roll.

No, no... I mean that you hit with one success (a normal hit but not enough for a crit), and you also roll 5 sixes with you ammo dice, for a total of 6 hits.
The the result is 6 points of damage which some characters can soak up without consequences (it's not enough to disable them). This just stretches the suspension of disbelief somewhat...

Do you mean that you your base dice misses and the ammo dice show successes. In that case, yes you have missed what you aimed for. The other bullets (ammo dice) can't hit any target if your base dice didn't show any success. At least those ammo successes will suppress the enemy as a consolation prize.

If you rolled at least one success with your base dice, then your target is hit and can take damage and then any success on the ammo dice also can hit rather than just suppress.

Good that the base dice is rolled with the step dice, meaning that better you the better dice you roll.

No, no... I mean that you hit with one success (a normal hit but not enough for a crit), and you also roll 5 sixes with you ammo dice, for a total of 6 hits.
The the result is 6 points of damage which some characters can soak up without consequences (it's not enough to disable them). This just stretches the suspension of disbelief somewhat...

The max hit cap is 6, so the only way to "soak up" that is if they have some sort of armor.

This also means that for the vast majority of weapons (those that have a Critical rating of Damage +1), the extra hits caused by auto-fire can never be criticals.
Normal damage can't kill you by itself (allows for a coup-de-gras), so extra hits will just disable the character quicker.
This can lead to a situation where a full-auto attack with an MP5 (RoF 5) gets an incredible roll of 5 6's for 6 hits (for 6 damage in total) but, because I only rolled a single success, leaves the target (while suppressed) rather surprised that he's not taking the room temperature challenge.
Player: "You telling me that all six bullets just grazed him? Are you serious?!"

I agree - I originally read the paragraph differently, but re-reading it does seem to say that ammo hits are treated as additional hits (only if the base attack dice hit), and that they only do base damage. I thought that they added to the initial attack dice damage, which would have made crits much more likely. It seems like a much simpler approach too - I'm not sure I can be bothered to roll hit location for every ammo dice hit, and calculate armour and damage separately, only to find it's not going to cause a critical anyway. Hmm.

I actually think that the way you understood the rules is better:
1.) It's probably more useful from a mechanics perspective to add to damage base damage (as it increases the chance of a crit) than to have a separate base-damage hit.
2.) It allows the Severe Injuries rule to come in effect more often, which fits the idea of someone getting riddled by bullets rather nicely.
As it stands now there are some weapons that can never cause a Severe Injury... and it's not the weapons you might think!

For example:
A trusty Glock 17 has a damage of 1 and a Crit of 2. To get a Severe Injury you need to cause 4 points of damage. That requires 4 successes (the maximum possible) on your attack roll (1 to hit and the other 3 to add to damage for a total of 4). This only possible if both your dice are at least a D10 or higher.
Now, let's take a M240 GPMG, which has a damage of 3 and a Crit of 4. That means you need 8 points to cause a Severe Injury. Not possible I'm afraid... 3 damage + 3 for rolling 4 successes is only 6 damage.
M2HB 12.7mm HMG? Nope, no Severe Injuries here either (with 4 Damage and a Crit of 4, you can't get to 8 damage).

Now *if* ammo-dice hits counted towards damage instead of causing individual hits things would change dramatically!

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As it stands now there are some weapons that can never cause a Severe Injury... and it's not the weapons you might think!
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I think the concept of "severe injury" isn't that important. It rarely happens. Only with weapons with a low crit and preferable also a high damage. There are not that many of those.

This also means that for the vast majority of weapons (those that have a Critical rating of Damage +1), the extra hits caused by auto-fire can never be criticals.
Normal damage can't kill you by itself (allows for a coup-de-gras), so extra hits will just disable the character quicker.
This can lead to a situation where a full-auto attack with an MP5 (RoF 5) gets an incredible roll of 5 6's for 6 hits (for 6 damage in total) but, because I only rolled a single success, leaves the target (while suppressed) rather surprised that he's not taking the room temperature challenge.
Player: "You telling me that all six bullets just grazed him? Are you serious?!"

Well, no. Since hit capacity 6 is the maximum humanly possible, the target will be incapacitated by this hit, even if not seriously wounded. An average human has hit capacity 4, and will this be put of ouf action by four damage 1 hits.
This is the point of the ammo dice rules - should all successes on ammo dice cause the damage to stack up on a single hit, the effect of automatic fire would be too powerful, especially against vehicles. Also, remember that simplified rules are used against (minor) NPCs - in your example above, the NPC would be put of action, it would not make any difference mechanically if from a crit or just from hitting zero hit points.

Thank you for the clarification, I somehow had it in my mind that 6 was average and 8 was max.

Your last sentence mentions "hitting zero hitpoints", which reminded me of a question I had:
The rules say "When you have suffered damage equal to or in excess of your hit capacity, you become incapacitated."
I'm assuming that means you can accumulate more damage than you hit capacity which would, in turn, mean that recovery will take longer. Or do you stop accumulating damage once you hit you max capacity?