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In the ICON's System, I would like to know how others run the toughness advantage in their games.
I have seen it ran as
Example
Fitness + Vitality +Toughness
2 + 1 + 1 = 4
which translates to
4/4/4/4/4/4/4/0
Resistance 3
or
Fitness + Vitality +Toughness
2 + 1 + 1 = 4
which translates to
4/4/4/4/4/4/4/0
Resistance 4
Also heard of Toughness being a +2 instead of +1
What have you used/recommend
So. Its effectively an additional +2 Vitality. So in your examples it would be;Quote:
The character has a high degree of resistance to injury. For purposes of withstanding damage, he is considered to have +2 Fitness, even if he already has the maximum Fitness for his sepcies. A Character with this advantage cannot have a negative Vitality edge.
...Toughness makes it harder for the character to suffer injury in the first place.
Fitness + Vitality +Toughness
2 + 1 + 2 = 5
which translates to
5/5/5/5/5/5/0
Resistance 5
(corrected for =2 toughness and only 6 levels of damage, rather than 7... As the 7th is dead.)
This would mean that a Klingon with maxed out Fitness, +2 Vitality and Toughness (+2) would have
Fitness + Vitality +Toughness
6+2+2=10
which translates to
10/10/10/10/10/10/0
Resistance=10
That's one tough Klingon. Better break out the Kryptonite!
This is why Klingons partake in recreational headbutting.Quote:
Originally Posted by Owen E Oulton
But even then, thats only a single shot in setting 11 or 12... For the Indiana Jones fight manual.
I'll say. survives a TOS p2 on vaporize. rolled 43 using 5d6+24 ((1,5,6,1,6Quote:
Originally Posted by Owen E Oulton
Here's a rifle on max. rolled 66 using 9d6+30 ((3,4,3,4,3,5,2,6,6 that does it
Nah, with a phaser set on "vapourise", the character is just dead and no body is left. Rolling dice for that sort of damage is just plain stupid.
the phaser damage chart (page 239 DS-9 RPG source book) noted that phaser damage could be dealt with in two ways, either by the 'damage column' or in a 'notes column', if you are going by the notes then yes 'vaporize a humanoid' (phaser setting 8/light disrupt) leaves little left of the target, though if you are going by 'the numbers' then some humanoids COULD potentially survive a hit on setting 8 (on minimum damage roll then that's only 20 points of damage, my favorite Andorian character could survive 20 points of damage easily....or the Klingon example above would also survive such a hit, even the Half-Klingon Rebel page 38 DS-9 source book [fit 3 vit+2,]would not be killed on a minimum hit of a phaser set on 8, though the Ferangi merchant page 37 DS-9 source book would be vaporized). It all depends on the style of the game you are running.Quote:
Originally Posted by Owen E Oulton
Having toughness, will to survive, organ redundancy, maximum Fitness stat (with +2 in vitality) all equates to a character that will survive against some degree of phaser (or disruptor) damage. During play I found (we always played 'by the numbers') if you set a phaser on 12 you had a pretty good chance (even on minimum rolls, which BTW is 72 damage) to kill outright even the toughest humanoids (Jem'Hadar, Klingon's, Hirogen, Andorian's) with one shot.
all my characters tried to maximize Fitness and Vitality, and have toughness, will to survive, organ redundancy advantages and I often saw numbers such as 9 or 10 per wound category. Though with the militant/power gamy style games I participated in this was to be expected I suppose.Quote:
Originally Posted by Owen E Oulton
Were I doing a second edition of ICON one of the things I'd want to do is put more focus on surviving phaser fights through not being hit rather than through squeezing more hit points out of chargen.
personal shields and body armour helps as well. While I agree dodge and avoiding hits is always a good option sometime luck just doesn't go your way and eventually you end up getting hit, hence my focus on a characters ability to survive.
I never use rolled damage when it would be inconsistent with what I laughingly call "realism". If someone gets shot with a setting that has an effect like "vapourise a human-sized object", I do not use the rolls. They just vanish. If someone shoots a larger being (like a space-dragon) on that setting, they take the rolled damage, damage points being a somewhat abstract system. If I shoot an elephant-sized animal, maybe I'll vapourise a limb (or another 80 to 100kg piece of anatomy. Even with a Klingon with a resistance of 10 will only mass about 150kg. Vapourise all but 50kg of his body, he's toast, even if that remaininng 50kg body part still has some biological actvity in it. If I'm feeling particularly quirky, I might have the beam hit his feet, leaving his head and shoulders sort of intact. Get him into a stasis tube in less than, say, three minutes, and you may be able to save his life. Bionic body, anyone? That would be a best-case scenario.
Nah, if you're hit you're dead. You lose a limb or end up in a Pike chair if I'm feeling generous. Seven wound levels is way too much, too.Quote:
Originally Posted by WaveMan
so neither of you use personal shields in your games? The arm shield (deflect upto 30 points of damage and provides situation cover) is straight out of The Players' Handbook (page 109) and allows characters to survive phaser hits somewhat. Then it is easy to extrapolate shield technology from there. Personal armour is similarly easy to integrate (The Hunters that were after Tosk used armour to make phasers less potent for example) and the Hazard Suit (non-canon) is an example of Federation based armour technology.
http://memory-beta.wikia.com/wiki/Hazard_suit
easily achievable though, with the right advantages (organ redundancy and will to survive would give 8, which every character I ever rolled up had)Quote:
Seven wound levels is way too much, too
For me personal shields/body armour is a logical extension. As soon as someone developed man-portable phasers someone else would be trying to develop ways to shield personnel from them.
Yes, I use personal shields, straight out of Star Trek V. In game we call 'em PEWS, for Personal Energy Weapons Shield. There's an illustration in the Players' Guide which shows the modern version. That does protect from weapons fire, but again, I don't roll for damage. It deflects/absorbs the damage, or only a little will leak through, resulting in a reduced effect. If hit by a full-on disintegrate setting, it disintegrates 'em. Likewise with Stun - no damage roll, just a set effect. Toughness will reduce the time one spends stunned, as provided for in the description - noted for Klingons, but I apply it to anyone with Toughness. I also allw characters wearing battledress as seen in DS9's Siege of AR-558 and Nor the Battle to the Strong, but again it reduces the effect of the hit. A Disintegrate shot will usually give a Light Disrupt effect and burn out the battledress circuitry. Armour and shields are not magic.
though by that logic you are making phasers act like magic (equivalent to a rod of disintegration that allowed for no save in D&D)? I would also say, in that case, why bother with roll's altogether...I assume you have a high character death rate, one enemy with a phaser rifle would decimate most groups in short order.
Your way would also make determining Jem'Hadar energy weapons hard to regulate, as they have a damage roll only listed, no 'cinematic' listing.
I would also think that after a few recovered Borg Drones SF R&D would backward engineer Borg Personal Shielding for use on Away Team and Security personnel.
In games I played we developed a suit called BES (Battle Enviro Suit) that had armour built in (15/40 ballistic/energy) and integrated Arm Shield (30 protection/100 charges). We also had a personal shield's called Haven (500 protection/1000 charges) PDS (personal defense shields)[based on Battle Lords of the 23rd century technology], a small device about the size of a deck of cards that could fit in a pocket, available for away teams and security personnel. There was also a table rule that stated "if you leave your phaser on stun then most times the enemy would also likewise have theirs set to stun"
How does this make phasers magic? Armour and shields act by stepping down, whether by deflecting, absorbing or demodulating, the energy delivered to the target, thus reducing the effect. Phaser settings are a range, not discrete different features like Judge Dredd's Lawgiver ammunition options. To use the magic metaphor, that would be like the phaser firing a fireball, and the mgic shield transmuting it to a magic missile. This is more like physics, where if the phaser is firing a "blue" beam, the shield steps down the frequency and you get a "red" beam's damage, with apologies to GalaxyQuest.
It's a paradigm shift in the way things are treated. Just like the game refuses to give a being like Q stats but only effects of his powers, so you don't wind up having a hero with better stats than Thor in AD&D. It better reflects the way the series depicted the effects. One size does not fit all. For instance with phasers against shuttlecraft, you need a crossover between the Personal and Starship scales, so that if you fire a phaser rifle at a shuttle you don't roll a whole handful of dice on the Personal scale, you simply assign a single damage number to a type 3 phaser, so the phaser does 3 Starship-scaled points of Starship damage to the shuttle.
I think you and I have a completely different view concerning phasers and shields, will have to agree to disagree.
That being said in the games I played we always ignored the cinematic effect and went with the numbers as we saw it as fair and set a level playing field. Cinematic effects always seemed too arbitrary for our liking and as I pointed out left little room character survival. We also tried to bring Trek more in line with other RPG's (mainly BattleLords of the 23rd Century) as other systems that dealt with energy weapon types in more depth. Why we chose BattleLords of the 23rd Century is because they had quantified many types of weapons ranging from ballistic to energy based weaponry, as well having a standardized force field (they called them flux shielding) system.
light stun, heavy stun, light thermal, heavy thermal, light disruption, heavy disruption, seems to me to have discrete different settings?Quote:
not discrete different features like Judge Dredd's Lawgiver ammunition options.
as far as the shields go, no they reduced incoming phaser fire for a point for point basis, so the Haven PDS could allow a character to survive at least 1 hit from a phaser on setting 16, something NO character could do normally.
That was the problem I had in Trek they downplayed the lethality of phasers for the most part, and exaggerated them at other times. For example the DS-9 episode with the Jem'Hadar up on a cliff face being attacked by Sisko and crew (most of which had Type 3 phaser rifles). In the first engagement I don't think they killed any one despite several of them firing on the ridge. A couple of hits on setting 16 (disintegrating/exploding 600m cubed, so 6mx10mx10m cube of rock into rubble) by a few phaser rifles would have destroyed a vast area of the ridge, the Jem'Hadar and anything else on that ridge..... Borg Personal shields also didn't work like you describe, they were adaptive and eventually made phaser impotent at any setting, once they adapted to the phaser fire, the incoming fire was completely ineffectual.
I should also add, personal phasers work on the EXACTLY same principles as ship mounted phasers (ship phasers can be set to different levels such as stun, it's just that they rarely are, and are defaulted to maximum effect, as in disintegrate/explode) and should be treated as such, including the way they interact with shields. So a point for point system works perfectly.(though Borg personal shields don't work in this fashion, though it is easy to adapt them to a point for point system) It is also easy to know in a point for point system when a character is disintegrated, when all body points (health or wound levels or what ever) are exceeded in damage, then the character vanishes in a flash of stay atoms and is reduced to a small pile of dust.
I don't give anyone personal forcefields. While I have my own ideas about 'in universe' explanations of why they don't show up, the real reason I wouldn't use them is because this is how it would go:Quote:
Originally Posted by WaveMan
GM: Three Cardassians come down the corridor; each is holding a personal forcefield. Their weapons are aimed directly at you.
Player 1: Okay, I set my phaser to 16 and disintegrate the floor underneath them.
GM: Okay, they fall into the pit created underneath them.
Player 1: I set my phaser to 12 and slice up the ceiling bulkheads.
GM: The Cardassians are crushed to death under falling debris.
Player 2: I never get to use the neck pinch.
The point of a Trek game isn't to just throw escalating threats at the players to defeat by rolling high; you're supposed to be handing them mysteries to solve or intractable social disputes. If firepower actually solved problems in Trek, it would just be episode after episode of the Enterprise nuking things from orbit.
then as a GM you would say, Ok you blast the bulk head, breach the hull and you are vented into space..... (if on a ship) , or OK you blast the ceiling and the debris falls on top of the target and the personal shield deflects it away and the target is unharmed....or OK you disintegrate a hole in the floor, the Cardassian's fall in to the perfectly created 'fox hole', now they are protected from further fire, giving the Cardassian's time to lob a photon grenade at you, you are all dead, roll up new characters.....
While I get what you are saying I still believe that personal shields and armour have a place in any Trek game.
So how often do your players replicate new weapons before missions?
back in the day when I was playing, every mission...LoL
My favorite Andorian character always had a type 1 phaser hidden on his person, openly carried at least one type 2 phaser and 2 Chaka (Andorian daggers) where ever he went, plus he always had access to a type 3 as required. He also liked the idea of the TR-116. Shooting through walls was just insane...While he maintained a high level of skill with all types of energy weapons (5/6 at a minimum) and some ballistic weapons (most notably the TR-116) he tried to master the Chaka (getting weapon mastery [+4] and 5/6 plus special weapon style). It is fun to vaporize the occasional target, but honorable melee combat was always far more satisfying.
Though remember I always participated in OP/power gamy militant style games and Trek was no different. This style worked for me and the players I played with, probably wouldn't work for most though.
My characters are more explorer than fighter types. Sure they can defend themselves if needed, but I don't run a game for combat monsters. That's not very Trek, and I like my Trek games to feel like Trek. The last big battle my characters were in was with Klingons. The captain got hit with a disruptor blast and technically died, but they were able to revive him, as one of the other PCs on the scene was an MD. I don't like killing PCs. On the other tentacle, I don't like to play down the deadliness of the weapons. Most of my sessions don't involve a battle at all - I prefer to run adventures where they have to think their way out of a problem. That's why when I recently ran an adventure where the actual solution was to "blow shit up" it took them several attempts to solve the problem by resorting to brute force before they did and succeeded. This of course wouldn't have worked if they weren't used to having to try peaceful solutions first and just always shot things pre-emptively. Tastes vary, but I like the way things run in my game, and my players obviously do as well, since they've been playing in my campaign for nearly 30 years and still keep coming back.
Well, okay, here's the thing: if you're giving their targets little personal shields like in the player's guide, then your players should be thinking, "Oh, well, direct fire doesn't work, so we need to try indirect fire." So the first thing I'd do is have an artillery unit either back on the ship or somewhere else on the planet with a portable transporter unit to transport a stun grenade into range immediately behind them.Quote:
Originally Posted by WaveMan
I mean, if you really want to turn Trek into a military combat simulation, phasers become almost irrelevant, since you really want to just tag and transport little chunks of everyone's head away. That'll last a week before everyone goes, "Screw it," and it becomes about robots injecting people with nanotech disassemblers.
as I said above, while my games were definitely very militant there was always a cerebral component to each session, it was Trek after all. If you really look at Trek, especially the last few seasons of DS-9 and most of the movies, there was always a strong militant component to each episode, and our Trek RPG'ing followed that trend. Plus I always played very combat orientated character races, Andorian and Klingon's primarily. I was disappointed as far as that went because I stopped playing before I got to try a Klingon/Vulcan mixed species, I think that character would have been the perfect mix of physical and mental abilities.
Quote:
Originally Posted by The Tatterdemalion King
sounds like the swarm gauntlet I wrote up for my Ultra Soldiers
http://future.wikia.com/wiki/Ultra_S..._Weapon_System
See thats an easy one. The Shield needs to be reliant upon nanites and personal processor implant, along with suitable power source. Borg carry such power source with them, and can of course recharge. reverse engineering might not be easilt portable without the use of some of this equavalent technology...Quote:
Originally Posted by WaveMan
Sure there will be those that look upon the scientific or tactical advantages. But in my universe/opinion Starfleet are as adverse to personal borg technology as they are to genetic modification (probably more so as the memory of Wof 359 is still rather fresh.
So, what, they just closed up the nanite factories in Senegal? Did the Federation switch to an alternative method of working on nucleii during cellular surgery?Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Gurden
Rather then building personal shields into people (as in as a cybernetic option) like the Borg I could see SF developing some sort of belt integrating all the technology required for a Borg-like adaptive, regenerative personal shield. I agree most Federation citizens were wary of overt cybernetic devices because of the associations with the Borg, but IMO there are ways around that.Quote:
Originally Posted by Dan Gurden
I was also thinking about this over the week end and doing some research and remembered the episode 'DS-9 Homefront' and found this quote
"LEYTON: Mister President, we can use the Lakota's transporters and communications system to mobilise every Starfleet officer on Earth in less than twelve hours. We've been preparing for something like this for a long time. We have stockpiles of phaser rifles, personal forcefields, photon grenades, enough to equip an entire army. I can start getting men on the streets immediately.
JARESH-INYO: What you're asking me to do is declare martial law.
the reference to 'personal forceshields' is interesting and they were never quantified. So there is definitely canon precedent for the addition of personal forceshields
I also remember the episode 'fist full of data's' were Worf easily developed a personal shield that allowed him to survive being shot with a revolver, now I realize this isn't the same, though if a Security officer could easily jury-rig a makeshift shield I wonder what a dedicated effort by SF R&D personnel could achieve?
Attachment 1848Quote:
Originally Posted by WaveMan
Yeah, like that time Picard ripped out his artificial heart.Quote:
I agree most Federation citizens were wary of overt cybernetic devices because of the associations with the Borg,
Considering they theoretically had a teleporting bullet that we never saw used, or that they could just nuke and pave most planets they encounter, the RoE that prevents them from being deployed on your average away mission must be considered too.Quote:
I also remember the episode 'fist full of data's' were Worf easily developed a personal shield that allowed him to survive being shot with a revolver, now I realize this isn't the same, though if a Security officer could easily jury-rig a makeshift shield I wonder what a dedicated effort by SF R&D personnel could achieve?
I'd generally interpret that phrase as reflecting the human-portable forcefields that are projected into gaps rather than surrounding individuals, though.
as far as the Federation aversion to overt cybernetics, it was well documented and mentioned several times, with the Borg association cited as the underlying reason.
Page 108 The Price of Freedom has a very good side bar about this aversion, I will quote some of it
"Even before first contact with the Borg Collective was made in 2365, Federation citizens have been increasingly uncomfortable with cybernetic implants of all types. Few people object to the use of cybernetic implants to correct otherwise un-treatable medical conditions, but the deliberate implantation of cybernetic technology into an otherwise healthy individual is regarded with great suspicion by many Federation citizens."
while researching Federation personal shields I came upon the Life Support Shield System, interesting piece of kit, something every away team would have access to IMHO.