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Played a long combat with a fairly large group with a mix of weapons from pistols and SMGs up to a few grenades, and mostly AKs and RPKs. 5 PCs (two with strong combat builds, one with incredible skill/luck at persuasion, and two mostly non-combat builds). They were able with only a small amount of GM fiat to fight off two groups, separated by a thick treeline, totalling about 8 low-tier Soviet soldiers. Killing 2 outright, significantly wounding 2 others who managed to withdraw. PCs suffered a variety of light wounds (1 almost incap'd) and 1 non-fatal critical wound. And a slightly damaged vehicle.

Mostly it went pretty smoothly and nobody pointed out anything too insane. A few things that did come up:

1) the armor value even for a house wall (2) is very high. A character inside a flimsy house was able to shrug off several rounds of sustained RPK fire with only a couple incidental wounds. They were also wearing a flak jacket. I know the rule that layering armor is not a thing... but I figured that shouldn't apply to shots through totally separate cover. So effectively he had 3 armor and was therefore only rarely at risk of taking a point of damage, and never ever at risk of a crit. He did get suppressed twice. I think in the future I may just rule that the cover is the armor and you don't ALSO get your body armor. I also am not sure if cover armor is supposed to degrade if penetrated, now that I think about it. I didn't play it that way but might do it on like a coin flip in the future... that might be the best solution as it would eventually convince people to relocate in a fairly realistic fashion.

2) I misplayed the rule on moving through terrain types like foliage (btw, I think this is poor word choice. I definitely don't think of "foliage" being denser than "forest"). In the moment I couldn't find the rule and forgot the modifier was applied to the mobility roll, and was quite confused and just had to rule it on the spot as reducing base movement in a way that didn't make full sense. Making it more clear on the chart itself what the minuses to mobility actually mean would be good!

3) I figured avoiding counting ammo for NPCs, as the book advises, was probably wise. But having them reload only on an ammo die 1 result didn't come up very often either... I think the net result is they got to shoot more than they should have otherwise. The bigger problem was that when the fight was over and my players inevitably went to scrounge up whatever they could, I NOW still had to come up with individual bullet totals anyway. Not a huge deal but there was a lot to deal with at that time and it took more time than I'd like. Not sure what to do instead though.

On the whole though, worked pretty well, no enormous issues. Only one weapon mishap occurred and I played it by my house rules. All the other mishaps that occurred were awesome and made for hilarious/horrifying moments. One character tried to sprint across a long road but rolled straight snake eyes -- so I ruled he tripped over the road itself and ended up prone right in the middle of it. Not great for him. This was immediately after he mishap'd another mobility roll. But then that same guy persuasion'd so hard, and the guy he was facing down mishap'd so hard, that the poor Soviet kid threw his rifle down on the ground and ran away as hard as he could. Loved all that stuff and it made for great flavor even in the middle of a fight.

Interesting and thanks for sharing.

On point 1 - if you think of these armour values as a threshold - then perhaps anything that has gotten through the wall = 2 just slices through the flak no issue - hence the stacking doesn’t apply as per rules and as per your thoughts. Just a thought.

Sounds like a good little fight

Q - how did it flow and did you find the adjustments for difficulty etc fairly easy or did it slow things down?

The dice modifiers are easy. Maybe easier because we're playing on a VTT... although at the time the modifier code was bugged so we were having to manually adjust die types. Either way, that's not the part that bogs anything down... just learning a new combat system in general does. The answer is it took easily 2-3 times as long as I'd wanted it to. But with familiarity can probably get that down by about half in the future.

Armor IS combined with cover in the rules, by the way. So someone in a vest in a house is RAW fairly invulnerable for the most part as long as the hit location chart works in their favor. I will certainly keep doing a house rule on cover eventually degrading. Far more interesting and dynamic that way.

Interesting - I must have misread this. Is cover degraded by attacks that get through it?

The dice modifiers are easy. Maybe easier because we're playing on a VTT... although at the time the modifier code was bugged so we were having to manually adjust die types. Either way, that's not the part that bogs anything down... just learning a new combat system in general does. The answer is it took easily 2-3 times as long as I'd wanted it to. But with familiarity can probably get that down by about half in the future.

Armor IS combined with cover in the rules, by the way. So someone in a vest in a house is RAW fairly invulnerable for the most part as long as the hit location chart works in their favor. I will certainly keep doing a house rule on cover eventually degrading. Far more interesting and dynamic that way.

I don't think it explicitly says so one way or another in the rules. It does say so explicitly under body armor -- although as I've mentioned here or elsewhere, that seems excessive as in almost all cases it makes body armor a one-trick pony. I've house ruled that a bit.

Hard cover is always a tricky subject.

A house wall can be anything from lightweight wood and stud and chipboard, single or double brick, concrete block, log or even rammed earth. Hence in the USA where a lot of housing is made of thin lightweight materials bullets routinely pass through multiple walls. Place a layer of bricks and most pistol rounds will be stopped. Have double brick and rifle rounds will be stopped.

Also passing through things flattens and deforms bullets - Hollow points far more than FMJs - or can cause tumbling, so a bullet that passes through a wall may have far less effect against body armour than a direct hit.

.50 Cal and higher can dismantle walls and pass through sandbags, but some of the force of that round will be absorbed.

So, a brick or concrete wall will give a good degree of protection, while hiding behind a stud and chipboard wall will give no protection at all.

And also bare in mind that concealment and cover are different things.

The nature of Twilight combat always made getting shot a lottery. In first addition a Character was killed firing from a window when a burst of fire had a single round that missed the hardcover on the hit location die roll, hit the head and then missed the Kevlar helmet. It happens.

it makes body armor a one-trick pony.

It basically is <shrug>

a Character was killed firing from a window when a burst of fire had a single round that missed the hardcover on the hit location die roll, hit the head and then missed the Kevlar helmet. It happens.

Yes, it does.....

It's difficult to model things like this in a game because the effects of small arms on cover such as walls takes an exponential leap when you go to something like 12.7 mm. This is brought home in this video, which shows the effects of various British army and insurgent small arms on a variety of cover including car doors, mud brick walls, and sandbags.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j31Crn-y6tM

On the other hand the damage points inflicted by a .50 don't take a similar exponential leap. And then you get funny paradoxes, like if you hit my wood-frame, aluminum siding house with a round from a .50 it will do less damage because the walls are thinner and less energy is actually absorbed by the wall, vs. hitting a brick wall where so much more energy goes into the wall. Of course the round that punches a little hole through my wall will have that much more energy left for me....

I think it was exactly the same in tw2(2.2). A brick wall is about armour value 3 or 4 I think. 50 cal will get through 3 but stop on a flak vest - so basically the same.

[edit] - I checked it out - a 10cm brick wall AP = 3. A M16, FAL would not go through. A .50 would go through with 2 damage (2d6) damage left to go - this would be the equivalent to Dam 2 in this game - so basically the same. Then an Flak or Helmet hit would soak 2d6 for the .50 and therefore would be reduced to zero (except you’d get 2 blunt damage from impact through the body armour). Though if your head was exposed then it’s only hit the helmet anyway - in which case with a .50 in tw2k2.2 you are totally dead, there’s basically very little chance you can survive.

It still means that hits to the arms or head would cause damage - not enough to be immediately serious - but still bad if you were hit a couple of times. The difference is the “instant death” rules to the head or chest in tw2kv2.2 - damage inflicted is the d20 damage you die instantly - so 2d6 to the head is a serious threat that you’ll die (e.g. a roll of 8 is a 8 in 20 chance you’re dead regardless of hitpoints left). Head hits also knock you out.

I haven’t seen any instant death rules for head hits yet - that to me is a big difference too the lethality of “non grazing” hits to the head. Even hits through a helmet for a M16/FAL etc leave 2d6 damage - that’s a 30-50% chance of dying outright, more or less.

(2.2 borked damage to begin with by raising 5.56 to 3 so they could have DAM 2 pistols. 2 armor stops all versions of 7.62 but 5.56 still hurts and damages vehicles.)