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Kaybe
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Early Access Feedback - Personal/Vehicles Armor is Useless

Fri 17 Jun 2022, 14:19

Another pretty significant concern is how critical hits and armor are handled in this game.

Twilight 2000 managed to handle critical hits and armor perfectly. Being the older game and the first to use the two multisided Att+Skill approach, I figured Blade Runner would take a lot of inspiration from it for it's combat rules. But curiously, they're choosing to depart from it significantly.

In T2K, all weapons had a damage after armor reduction threshold that needed to be crossed before a critical hit could land. Most of the time, that damage was one over the base damage of the weapon, so just like in Blade Runner, rolling two successes would crit an unarmored target. Unlike Blade Runner, though, if armor reduced the damage below that threshhold, it would negate the critical hit.

In Blade Runner, armor needs to reduce the damage to zero to negate the critical hit. This effectively makes armor useless. Most firearms in BR have a damage rating of 2. Larger melee weapons have damage ratings of 2. Two successes makes this 3 damage and a crit. To prevent the crit, it means the personal/vehicle armor needs to negate 3 damage. This is effectively impossible with C armor (max reduction on 2D8 is 2), and still very challenging with B armor. This means that standard issue undershirt armor will never stop a critical hit. This also means the armor on a police spinner will never negate a critical hit from a firearm or baseball bat. In fact, according to the rules, a lucky punch from a very strong character can one shot a vehicle. Yes, you read right.

Also, why roll for armor? If the goal of Blade Runner is to streamline the rules, why not just use static armor values like in T2K?

Please just use the T2K approach to armor and critical hits. It's simpler and it works. No need to reinvent the wheel here. Thanks.
 
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Fenhorn
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Re: Early Access Feedback - Personal/Vehicles Armor is Useless

Fri 17 Jun 2022, 15:24

You roll for armor in all FL games, except for T2K, so they are not re-inventing anything, they are re-using or possible re-adapting things from all the other YZE-games.

They (rarely) stops a critical hit, yes, but critical hits represent really good shots. They stop you from taking damage though and with that helps you avoid being broken. Also remember here that this is a two dice system. An attack is most often done with just two dice. This means that getting multiple 'successes' will be uncommon (unless you are really good at it).
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Tomas
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Re: Early Access Feedback - Personal/Vehicles Armor is Useless

Fri 17 Jun 2022, 15:29

Basically, this boils down to the fact that Blade Runner, as opposed to Twilight: 2000, is not a "gear game". While individual pieces of gear can be important, the game is simply not about hoarding guns and armor.
Fria Ligan
 
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Grimmshade
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Re: Early Access Feedback - Personal/Vehicles Armor is Useless

Fri 17 Jun 2022, 15:39

The main problem comes in for characters with A-rated Strength punching a vehicle. If they score a crit there is a 1 in 12 chance the vehicle just blows up from a punch. It breaks the otherwise pretty cool Crit system in the game.
Easy fix would be to say that humans only roll a d6 crit die against vehicles for blunt attacks.
 
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Fenhorn
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Re: Early Access Feedback - Personal/Vehicles Armor is Useless

Fri 17 Jun 2022, 15:49

The main problem comes in for characters with A-rated Strength punching a vehicle. If they score a crit there is a 1 in 12 chance the vehicle just blows up from a punch. It breaks the otherwise pretty cool Crit system in the game.
Easy fix would be to say that humans only roll a d6 crit die against vehicles for blunt attacks.
Are you talking about attacking a vehicle in close combat?
(edit: I mean, how often will that happen)
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Grimmshade
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Re: Early Access Feedback - Personal/Vehicles Armor is Useless

Fri 17 Jun 2022, 15:53

Yup. If it remains the same it doesn't really bother me. It's an easy fix if I want to change it. (I don't have a problem with the armor rules overall, and the Crit charts/die are great.)
BUT... as it stands a strong human can literally punch a vehicle into explosion.
 
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Fenhorn
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Re: Early Access Feedback - Personal/Vehicles Armor is Useless

Fri 17 Jun 2022, 15:59

You could give any person that tries to melee hit a vehicle a disadvantage.

edit: and of course the vehicle technically would just have to be there, standing still, otherwise I don't see how you could melee attacking it at all.
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Grimmshade
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Re: Early Access Feedback - Personal/Vehicles Armor is Useless

Fri 17 Jun 2022, 16:03

I'll just go with the houserule that humans can only roll a d6 crit die against a vehicle with a blunt weapon.
(I kind of like the idea that a really strong replicant might punch through a vehicle.)
 
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Kaybe
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Re: Early Access Feedback - Personal/Vehicles Armor is Useless

Fri 17 Jun 2022, 16:22

Basically, this boils down to the fact that Blade Runner, as opposed to Twilight: 2000, is not a "gear game". While individual pieces of gear can be important, the game is simply not about hoarding guns and armor.
I agree, but this is why personal armor in BR has big penalties to many skills. Even personal armor makes you suck at MOBILITY and STEALTH, two of the most important skills in this game. And heavy duty riot gear is so crippling to everything you do, there's pretty much no reason to ever wear it unless you're expecting the mother of all gun fights from a small army of really angry replicants ;)

The issue is that despite all these disadvantages, literally, armor actually doesn't do anything because it's impossible to negate a critical hit. So at this point, you may as well remove armor from the game entirely and replace those sections with more art.

Note: one possible idea for armor is that it negates crits that hit parts of your body that the armor covers. So for example, your standard issue vest might negate crit results 5, 9, and 12. Full combat dress might additionally negate results 8, 10, and 11. Of course, this adds additional bookkeeping which you probably don't want.
 
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Kaybe
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Re: Early Access Feedback - Personal/Vehicles Armor is Useless

Fri 17 Jun 2022, 16:24

I'll just go with the houserule that humans can only roll a d6 crit die against a vehicle with a blunt weapon.
(I kind of like the idea that a really strong replicant might punch through a vehicle.)
Or just give unarmed and melee weapons crit dice like ranged weapons. You're already doing more damage and have a higher chance of landing crits by rolling better dice on your attack.

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