I had an idea for a house rule the other day that I wanted to run by you folks before I tried it in my home game.

Rules as written, damage and armor at planetary scale are 10x higher than damage and soak at personal scale. A common house rule that I've seen is changing this to x5 so that personal scale weapons have a higher chance of being able to do some damage to vehicles while still maintaining their lethality. I felt like that was too great a nerf to vehicles and wanted to try and come up with something different.

What I'm proposing is this:

• When a starship or vehicle attacks a personal scale target, it deals damage in the personal scale equal to its weapon rating representative of splash damage.
• A triumph or critical hit represents a direct hit on the personal scale target, dealing the full weapon damage at planetary scale (x10).

I haven't quite worked out how to handle personal scale targeting something at the planetary scale. Or at least nothing that kept things as simple as I would like. I considered granting Breach 1 for triumphs when attacking from personal scale to planetary scale, but I'm not sure I like that. Another option was to grant the vehicle scale critical hit table at the personal scale on a triumph or critical hit, representative of a hit to a critical ship component, but that doesn't really address how damage should be handled.

Thoughts or suggestions? Or should I just stick with the x5 houserule? I do want to try and maintain the simplicity of the system.

To be honest, I don’t think that there is a “simple solution” to this problem. At least, not one that works well.

I mean, 10x IS a simple solution, but IMO it doesn’t work well. Same for 5x.

A lot of people have suggested the 5x house rule, but I stick with RAW. 10x is much easier to do as math, and I don't think personal scale weapons should be able to do much damage to vehicles anyway. How may times have we seen the Falcon or the Ghost or any given ship of the week take a dozen E-11 bolts to the bottom and/or engine and fly away without slowing down?

If you'd like something that makes disabling a vehicle a bit more possible, just remove the requirement that damage get past the armor on a critical hit with a Triumph. That way there's still a chance to knock a vehicle down with a really well-placed shot.

We tried the 5x at my table and found it was a little too nerfed. I test-played a couple other ideas wherein Silhouette scaled the damage modifier as well, but that turned into Edge of the Math Class.

We eventually went back to 10x but allowed for Advantages and Triumphs to affect the vehicle, including critical hits. For example, a bunch of stormtroopers were blasting my y-wing and while they did no damage, they rolled a crit that affected my control of the craft - we ruled it as "stormtrooper were blasting the canopy and making it very hard to see what was going on" and it played out nicely. There was no damage to the craft, but the effect of the crit was the same and it made sense to the story. I can't say this would work in every instance, but if common sense is the guide, it can lead one to a suitable conclusion. (edit: I'll admit, we liked the challenge of making seemingly gonzo rolls mesh with the story.)

IMHO: part of the problem is that there aren't enough personal scale weapons on a vehicle. Like the guns on a speeder bikes. Those should just be personal scale. There is no reason why duct tapping a gun onto a vehicle magically makes it do x10 damage.

I'm a fan of the houserule that is x5 on anything that isn't a starship or military vehicle. Standard speeder cars and trucks and bikes shouldn't be as tough as a tank or something built for combat or a starship.

IMHO: part of the problem is that there aren't enough personal scale weapons on a vehicle. Like the guns on a speeder bikes. Those should just be personal scale. There is no reason why duct tapping a gun onto a vehicle magically makes it do x10 damage.

I'm a fan of the houserule that is x5 on anything that isn't a starship or military vehicle. Standard speeder cars and trucks and bikes shouldn't be as tough as a tank or something built for combat or a starship.

Actually there is a good reason why a gun strapped to a vehicle does more damage. It is using the vehicle's power plant instead of some weak powercell to power the blast. Vehicle-mounted weapons aren't just a personal gun duct-taped to it. Though, you could easily do that to an Eweb or other large, personal-scale weapon and keep the damage the same as the ground unit.

Consensus so far: the way it works isn't great but there isn't much to be done about it. But I don't like giving up.

Taking some ideas from everyone, how about this:

• When a starship or vehicle attacks a personal scale target, it deals damage in the personal scale equal to its planetary damage rating, representative of splash damage. A triumph or critical hit represents a direct hit on the personal scale target, dealing the full weapon damage at planetary scale (x10).
  
• When someone or something at the personal scale targets something at planetary scale, a critical hit or triumph allows damage to bypass armor and deal normal damage (at 1/10th planetary scale).
  

The immediate problem is that I'm effectively granting breach infinity for a triumph when attacking starships. The trade off is that you still have to do 20 damage to inflict 2 points of hull trauma, and even at that you are burning a triumph or crit to do it. Also, since personal scale is all in the subset of close range at planetary scale, the difficulty to even do this is daunting, possibly with upgrades. Might even limit it to Silhouette 4 and below. The idea of splash damage seems to illustrate how powerful these things are without immediately vaporizing anyone whereas triumphs represent how hard it would be to directly hit such a small target relative to the vehicle. Keeps it from being too mathy as well. Is this moderately balanced? No one is ever going to bring down the Ghost or the Falcon, but it might be distantly possible to bring down a Tie or the like if used strategically (as opposed to literally impossible RAW). I see some potential for some pretty cool narratives with my party if it can be pulled off.

Savage Worlds worked out one way to deal with this kind of issue without having weapons/armor scale. They created a special type for weapons and armor called Heavy. Having even 1 point of armor with the Heavy feature meant that all non-Heavy weapons couldn't do any damage, no matter how amazing the result that was rolled. On the opposite side, non-Heavy armors still acted the same, even against Heavy weapons. So, 10 points of armor was 10 points of armor against Heavy and non-Heavy weapons.

So, simple civilian vehicles don't use Heavy armor (but might have armor for bulletproof glass or armored tires) and so can be damaged even by normal personal weapons, but something like a tank could be given armor with the Heavy descriptor and now tanks can't be taken out by some dude rolling lucky with an AK-47.

Well, actually, a series of tests run by the ISI (Imperial Standards Institution), supposedly (non-canon yet), has shown that the exact factor by which damage will increase with size is e^{(Sil A - Sil D)}, or ca. 7.39 for a Silhouette 3 attacker vs. a Silhouette 1 defender. So, x10 between "personal" and "planetary" scale is a not very scientific simplification.

Well, actually, a series of tests run by the ISI (Imperial Standards Institution), supposedly (non-canon yet), has shown that the exact factor by which damage will increase with size is e^{(Sil A - Sil D)}, or ca. 7.39 for a Silhouette 3 attacker vs. a Silhouette 1 defender. So, x10 between "personal" and "planetary" scale is a not very scientific simplification.

They're going to need to add a scientific calculator to the dice roller app!

IMHO: part of the problem is that there aren't enough personal scale weapons on a vehicle. Like the guns on a speeder bikes. Those should just be personal scale. There is no reason why duct tapping a gun onto a vehicle magically makes it do x10 damage.

I'm a fan of the houserule that is x5 on anything that isn't a starship or military vehicle. Standard speeder cars and trucks and bikes shouldn't be as tough as a tank or something built for combat or a starship.

Actually there is a good reason why a gun strapped to a vehicle does more damage. It is using the vehicle's power plant instead of some weak powercell to power the blast. Vehicle-mounted weapons aren't just a personal gun duct-taped to it. Though, you could easily do that to an Eweb or other large, personal-scale weapon and keep the damage the same as the ground unit.

The guns on speeder bikes are personal scale.

The guns on speeder bikes are personal scale.

Unless someone mounted an Autoblaster or Light Blaster Cannons on them, because those can both be mounted on Silhouette 2 vehicles.

I ran a few simulations with the x5 scale and a missile tube, both with breach ignoring 5 soak and ignoring 10, mostly just to check the damage. Both worked reasonably well, but there's no OHKOing a vehicle, and in a few instances multiple criticals were scored. Compared to RAW, where 3 armor will just eat a rocket except for the most optimized builds. It does make anti-vehicle weapons actually useful for taking on vehicles, as opposed to completely useless. It would at least make a not entirely one-sided exciting encounter/boss fight against something like an AT-ST.

After talking with a few through PM, I've found that maybe a x5/x10 split works? x5 for anything between sil 2 and 4 (with exceptions), while x10 for anything sil 5+. You won't blow up a ISD with a thermal detonator, but you might be able to seriously damage a fighter.

Just a few cents.

After talking with a few through PM, I've found that maybe a x5/x10 split works? x5 for anything between sil 2 and 4 (with exceptions), while x10 for anything sil 5+. You won't blow up a ISD with a thermal detonator, but you might be able to seriously damage a fighter.

Just a few cents.

So, keep in mind that Starfighters are Sil3. As it the HWK-290. And the YT-1300 and the YT-2400 are Sil4.

So, I’m wondering if maybe being space-worthy and Sil3 or up should be the breakover from x5 to x10. That way, a personal scale missile tube is still a threat to a Sil3 landspeeder, but not much to worry about for a Sil3 starfighter.

For terrestrial vehicles (including airspeeders), I would say that Sil4 should be the breakover for non-military vehicles, and Sil3 for military vehicles. So, an AT-ST at Sil3 wouldn’t be at much risk from a personal scale missile tube, but a Sil3 landspeeder would. And a Sil4 AT-AT wouldn’t have to worry about it at all, and a Sil4 Jawa Crawler probably wouldn’t have much to worry about either, even though it’s got less armor than an AT-AT.

But that’s a lot of rules to keep in mind.

I do distinctly remember the Twilight biting it to a Mandalorian jetpack missile, which I assume are personal scale (I know, I know, power of plot and all). With the results I got, though, I'm pretty satisfied with 2-4 being x5 (with only a few exceptions), while 5+ is x10. I find that at least damage is doable, which allows for criticals. I'm not quite sure which version of breach I like yet (will require more analysis), but overall the solution satisfies me. I have to do most the number crunching anyway, so I'm used to it.

I think to solve the problem we need to think about other elements of scale when it comes to vehicles shooting people and visa-versa. Lets think of the classic WWII movies where an enemy pilot strafes the heroes. Maybe not as accurate as reality but we aren't duplicating reality. We are in effect duplicating a movie.

First off a vehicle needs to set up for a strafing run since it is flying at far greater speeds than the people run. Thus it cant attack them every round unless it is somehow stationary which I will cover later on. That gives the people an advantage in that they can shoot at it every round and the vehicle cant return the favor. I'd do some kind of Pilot skill vs. persons agility roll to determine how often the vehicle can make a strafing run on the people. Maybe have the pilot make a Piloting-Planetary check against the peoples average agility or perhaps best agility. In that way if the enemy has Adversary you can upgrade the dice appropriately making big baddies harder to simply blow away with blaster cannons.

Secondly the vehicle weapons and targeting systems are designed to work on other vehicles, not a silhouette 1 or even 0 target made of squishy meat. So I'd say double any penalties for differing sizes. That makes an average difficulty shot from a speeder bike into a daunting difficulty. It makes a space fighter shooting an R unit droid a small miracle.

Thirdly lets discuss the vehicle standing still and shooting. That would give it the ability to shoot every round at the people and it would give the targeting system less to worry about so it would return it to the normal difficulties. However it standing still turns it into the proverbial broad side of a barn. That would give the people better chances of hitting and doing major damage. Even a non breach weapon could target vital systems on such a stationary vehicle. I'd say the people shooting at a stationary vehicle would get their attack dice upgraded once for each difference in silhouette.

Lastly personal weapons mounted on a vehicle, like the ma deuce on a WWII tank. Such weapons on tripod mounts would follow the standard rules for people shooting at people since they are not hooked into the vehicle targeting systems.

A hit equals death IMO. Ran into this problem myself. Zeb in a TIE strafing some imps chasing Ezra Bridger

Yeah, I agree with Brad on this. Introducing a 'middle ground' category of vehicles that use a x5 multiplier would be the better solution. I think it's unfortunate that stock game went with the extreme x1/x10 solution.

I think to solve the problem we need to think about other elements of scale when it comes to vehicles shooting people and visa-versa. Lets think of the classic WWII movies where an enemy pilot strafes the heroes. Maybe not as accurate as reality but we aren't duplicating reality. We are in effect duplicating a movie.

This is actually a very good basis for our little thought experiment, since Lucas based spaceship combat on the old WWII movies.

First off a vehicle needs to set up for a strafing run since it is flying at far greater speeds than the people run. Thus it cant attack them every round unless it is somehow stationary which I will cover later on.

Yup.

That gives the people an advantage in that they can shoot at it every round and the vehicle cant return the favor.

But only within the range of their weapons, and personal-scale weapons are highly unlikely to be able to reach out to vehicle-scale range.

I'd do some kind of Pilot skill vs. persons agility roll to determine how often the vehicle can make a strafing run on the people. Maybe have the pilot make a Piloting-Planetary check against the peoples average agility or perhaps best agility. In that way if the enemy has Adversary you can upgrade the dice appropriately making big baddies harder to simply blow away with blaster cannons.

Piloting skill versus highest agility makes a lot of sense.

Secondly the vehicle weapons and targeting systems are designed to work on other vehicles, not a silhouette 1 or even 0 target made of squishy meat. So I'd say double any penalties for differing sizes. That makes an average difficulty shot from a speeder bike into a daunting difficulty. It makes a space fighter shooting an R unit droid a small miracle.

I like that!

Thirdly lets discuss the vehicle standing still and shooting. That would give it the ability to shoot every round at the people and it would give the targeting system less to worry about so it would return it to the normal difficulties. However it standing still turns it into the proverbial broad side of a barn.

Again, the range of the personal-scale weapons is key. If that barn is ten miles away, then your rifle isn’t likely to be able to hit it, even if you’re using a Barrett M-82 50-caliber ultra-long-range sniper rifle.

That would give the people better chances of hitting and doing major damage. Even a non breach weapon could target vital systems on such a stationary vehicle. I'd say the people shooting at a stationary vehicle would get their attack dice upgraded once for each difference in silhouette.

If they can hit it, yes.

Lastly personal weapons mounted on a vehicle, like the ma deuce on a WWII tank. Such weapons on tripod mounts would follow the standard rules for people shooting at people since they are not hooked into the vehicle targeting systems.

Also good.

Thanks again!