Damaging a structure

By SpaceWuss, in Deathwatch Rules Questions

Greetings Brothers!

I have been looking up through the core rule book, Rites of Battle and First Founding but coulnd't find any rules regarding damaging a building or some kind of structures aside from vehicules. I tried searching this forum but couldn't come up with any answers.

I'm not talking about a pure demolition here but rather a few stray grenades or missiles. I feel the rule about damaging cover doesn't do it in this case because the rating goes down per hit, so it would take as much hits from a laspistol or krak missiles to destroy flakboard.

There also the psychc power "Hammer of the Emperor" that specifies it does 3D10 x PR to buildings...

Did I miss some small table or side notes? Have you been going to house rules to solve this?

Thanks

The "Hammer of the Emperor" psychic power is a bit ridiculous in that it gives rules for this, because no such rules exists. There is no inherent reflection between the 3d10*PR and how damaged a building becomes.

I doubt anyone have any house rules concerning this either, except perhaps the most dedicated players of FATAL that feel that they need rules for absolutely everything (inevitably ending up with peasant railguns). Handle it narratively. There's such a wide field of buildings and constructions that there is no way I could see any rules for the games that wouldn't either be overly complicated or exceedingly wonky in some regard.

I think a combination of the rules for damaging vehicles in Only War, where the vehicle have an armour-rating and structural integrity (wounds), and common sense, i.e. where is the building damaged; load-barring walls, foundation etc.

Maybe make so that the building has an overall structural integrity, as well as individual walls and other parts of the building.

You may want to use the cover types in Table 8-5, Core Rule P247 (bottom corner) showing how much armour each type of material will provide. Might help?

Calgor Grim has a good point. Just realize a building, or even a section of cover, does not have 1 amount of damage for the whole thing. A good rule of thumb is to assign a square area for the damage, say 1 or 2 meters square. Outside of this area the structure remains undamaged. Of course large AOEs or massive attacks (vulcan mega bolter, turbolasers, etc.) will make much bigger holes (and damage larger areas, possibly even entire sides of a buildign). Its all up to the GM, but try to keep it fast and don't get too bogged down.

On the other hand, sometimes a weapon will just blast a big ole hole in whatever it is shot at (not melta bombs, they make little holes and melt stuff behind it). Obviously this is different by weapon to material. Small arms fire (stubbers, las, and even bolt ammo) will slowly shred a plywood wall by poking holes into it, a krak grenade would blast a small-ish (2-3ft.) hole in the wall, but a frag grenade would obliterate a good portion ( 10-15 more like a 5-10 foot section) of the wall.

Then again, small arms would take a long time to wittle down concrete (bolters being the exception now since they won't just pass through like the plywood but gouge out larger chunks), the frag would do little to nothing, but the krak missile would take some decent chunks (6-18") of it. Thicker stuff being more resistant to such "instant" damage. (Obviously things like plasma blasts or turbolasers would simply vaporize most anything less than rockcrete, and rockcrete would have to be pretty thick to resist these for long.)

Buildings may have walls of rockcrete, but its frame may be made of plasteel so even blowing away all the rockcrete exterior the frame and internal structure would probably still be there. All this is really up to the GM, figure out what works for you, using the common sense rule, and go with it. The information I gave is just a crash course to get your brain thinking. You don't have to teach it to your players, or even follow it religiously, just apply your affects and as long as you keep them consistent (which you should always do) they will figure it out quickly.

Consistency is important, If shooting the plywood wall with a frag missile one day blows a large section of plywood out, then it should always do so. That is unless something is different, such as a brick wall behind the plywood which strengthens it, but if its just free standing plywood, whatever you choose to allow happen should always happen.

Also, as a side note, combining cover types is a great way to improve survivability. Sand bags laid out in front of a rockcrete bunker makes for one tough pillbox.

Edited by herichimo