Wanting for Deadlier Combat

By ThenDoctor, in Dark Heresy General Discussion

Okay, I'm thinking the following:

  • Toughness Bonus does not reduce damage.
  • Characters do not have Wounds at all. Wounds are no longer a thing.
  • Damage dealt over one's Toughness bonus causes a Critical Effect equal to the amount it exceeds it by.
  • Armour Penetration completely ignores armour equal to that number or below, but has no effect on Armour Points higher.

Damage and Penetration would need to be changed for many weapons. Getting on that now.

Okay, redoing melee weapons, to reflect how armour works in my idea, and to better reflect the wargame (I like the consistency).

Power Maul

Damage: 1d10+2 I

Penetration: 6

Special: Shocking, Power Field

Power Sword

Damage: 1d10 R

Penetration: 9

Special: Balanced, Power Field

Power Axe

Damage: 1d10+1 R

Penetration: 12

Special: Unbalanced, Power Field

-

Chainsword

Damage: 1d10 R

Penetration: 2

Special: Balanced, Tearing

--

Now, these weapons are deadly in certain situations.

The Power Maul is best against Carapace Armour and less, just like in the wargame. It will mess you up quite easily, unless your Toughness is super high.

The Power Sword is just like a normal sword , like in the wargame, but still hellishly deadly. It's also great for cutting up other guys' weapons, and cutting into armour.

The Axe is dangerous, although the sword is slightly better against most armour you'll come against. Same as the wargame.

The Chainsword is better than a normal sword, and against unarmoured guys, a bit better than the Power Sword. A flak jacket will make the Power Sword better, though, which is fine.

--

All are super deadly. Boltguns will tear you a new one (a boltgun, is the equivalent of a guy with S 50 hitting with a chainsword, and better against armour). This seems to add up.

---

Armour, however, seems too good. If it ignores penetration, like in 40K, it will be tough to inflict an injury.

A Boltgun, shot against a T40 Battle Sister in Power Armour, will have damage reduced by 7. You will need to roll 12 or higher on damage to have any effect.

I need to play with the maths. I don't mind armour being good, but restats of armour might be needed.

Edited by bluntpencil2001

I'm not sure about the exact details, but I'm also very tempted to change armour to work the exact same as in the wargame. It gives a percentage chance to negate all damage (perhaps causing Fatigue instead of Critical Effects due to this), but can be completely ignored by high A

  • Armour Penetration completely ignores armour equal to that number or below, but has no effect on Armour Points higher.

WIthout being rude, that was what I tought was the stupidest on the tabletop game and was happy to not have imported in DH, I must disagree.

But we speak to speak, so go on with it! ;)

Armour Penetration was the biggest change from 2nd Edition, to 3rd, and has always stuck around since. It isn't perfect, but now allows for differences between various guns. Right now, Armour Penetration, in Dark Heresy, is the exact same as damage, but just not as good. It doesn't differentiate between weapons much.

-

I've been toying with the maths, and it generally holds up, but requires ways for damage to stack, so that lasguns can kill Space Marines. Simply allowing Righteous Fury against PCs might just be enough, doing an additional 1d5 damage.

I'm thinking - Fatigue at lower levels, and that Fatigue then causing TB to be lower against damage when Toughness is Fatigued (which it actually does now), and incorporating more Blood Loss.

Interestingly, running the numbers, this doesn't make Dark Heresy much more lethal than usual, but does make characters end up losing fingers and things far more often.

Edited by bluntpencil2001

Armour Penetration was the biggest change from 2nd Edition, to 3rd, and has always stuck around since. It isn't perfect, but now allows for differences between various guns. Right now, Armour Penetration, in Dark Heresy, is the exact same as damage, but just not as good. It doesn't differentiate between weapons much.

But at least, it represents correctly the difference between a laspistol vs a power armour and a bolter vs a powerarmour.

If a weapon has better piercing value than another, it will pierce easier even a great armour.

Not necessarily.

An armour piercing bullet has just as much chance as shotgun buckshot as penetrating a tank's armour.

Outside of our little game - an interesting game mechanic for a future RPG system could be;

No Hit Points rather

All damage "taken" is tallied and applied by the GM/DM as penalties to future player rolls

Say in this fantastic system I take 8-points of damage / the GM notes that - then say maybe in the next encounter I try and pull off some sort of stunt / that stunt what ever it may entail whether it be a called attack, a dodge, a backflip - whatever - the DM is like -5 to your roll (keeping the remaining -3 on reserve against you on another future roll of their deeming)

Then "have" a Critical system like ours (you know -1 to -10) = viola! lol

FIN

Another option - considering the war torn nature of the setting...

Pulp Option: Sunder

OK this idea basically entails letting anyone as a basic in-built game option choose between Injurying a target or Rending said target...

"I attack to Injure or Sunder "

Injury - you hit and damage the target to kill, maim, or just win

Sunder- you aim to whittle down said target's armor

By this each time a "basic" attack is declared whether that be Melee or Ranged - the "attacker" declares what kind of basic attack it is... then - If/when the Sunder option is chosen a hit would then reduce said armor by 1 point.

If righteous fury is rolled - each instance of natural 10 on a d10 reduces said target armor by 1 more

That's pretty much it - its meant to be a simple house rule as not to influence other parts of the game mechanics - per say

Thoughts, wishes, prayers?!

Stay GAMING

Morbid

P.S. not that I want to commit Heresy herein and get my head chewed off - but wasn't Horus defeated due to an flaw in his armor?

Unfortunately, Sanguinius was slain by Horus during his eponymous Heresy , though .... afterwards were it not for the ***** that Sanguinius put in Horus ' armour . ETC ETC ETC

Edited by MorbidDon

Thoughts, wishes, prayers?!

This is actually reminiscent of two different house rules that I'm currently experimenting with...

I didn't like the weapon-ruining nature of power weapons, so I instead have them doing damage to armor: if a hit gets through at least half of the armor value, then the armor value is reduced by 1.

The second was mainly a means to make Space Marines and the like more vulnerable to small arms fire. It's basically an alternate option for a Called Shot and follows all of their rules; but instead of targeting a specific body part, you're targeting a general weakness. If the attack hits, only half of the target's usual damage absorption is applied to the hit.

I've tried armour damage in some of my games and I've kinda had to discard it. While it certainly worked well in making things more dangerous (especially when a space marine copped an autocannon shell that blew off 3 points of power armour DR), I found it made things get a lot slower for calculating damage as it made DR a variable amount. It could just be my players and I but it made calculating damage one step more tedious as we had to take into account that the armour DR had changed before reducing damage and finding if any wounds were lost.

For reference, the armour damage houserule we used was basically comparing total damage and AP dealt by a weapon, even if it didn't actually wound, to 10 + the armour DR. If it exceeded this value, the DR was reduced by 1. For each interval of the armour DR after this point that the damage + AP exceeded, an additional point of DR was lost. The rule was fiddly as hell but it did make high AP weapons far more dangerous considering you'd be losing chunks of your armour to plasma weapons.

I haven't read all the replies here but since we play with localized critical damage in our group, I would just lower the wounds to 3-5; or even make your wounds your TB. Then you have a much deadlier system but still doesn't hurt Toughness characters.

Maybe I am just a mean GM but, I have never thought that this system needs to be more lethal. I used to play quite a bit of DnD, Shadow Run and Vampire and when I came over to this game, it was assumed PC would die. Admittedly 2.0 is a little less mean, but for our group no less lethal. My players often outright kill mooks and even mini bosses or monsters. On the other end, mooks and squad leaders often nearly cripple my PCs with one or at most two hits. I would say the only time I have run into issues trying to threaten my players is when I had a psyker who cast Iron Arm and was wearing full carapace armor effectively was immune to all small arms fire. But I mean, that is what he intended and he and the rest of the group were clever and outfoxed the hertics they were hunting, so it was fine with me. Then again, I never punish players for being clever or surprising me with tactics (I always play, if I didn't think of it, neither did the BBEG).

I should also mention I run my sessions as investigations primarily, and thus both the player and NPCs are often only wearing a hidden combat vest with side arms. All out OW style combat is rare in our games, unless its a dungeon dive/beer and pretzel ark.

Making an average TB of 3 and a AP of 2-3 only mitigate around 5-6 damage. I usually have mooks or bodyguards equipped with compact stub revolvers and mono knives which do 1d10+3 and 1d10+ SBP2 respectively. Two or three rounds of combat usually knocks at least one or two of my PCs down to a couple wounds and makes them sweat or run for cover.


P.S. not that I want to commit Heresy herein and get my head chewed off - but wasn't Horus defeated due to an flaw in his armor?

Unfortunately, Sanguinius was slain by Horus during his eponymous Heresy , though .... afterwards were it not for the ***** that Sanguinius put in Horus ' armour . ETC ETC ETC

According to the Blood Angels' legends, certainly.

An 'open a weakness' ability is nice, but I would argue that's what Righteous Fury generally is - hitting a weak spot, either from a joint or a previous shot impact, which is why a lasbolt has put a wound even past heavy power armour.

So DH 2nd essentially carried over all the clunk of 1st?

It has less of the clunk, but the system as a whole is still super clumsy compared to systems like Mutant: Year Zero.

Outside of our little game - an interesting game mechanic for a future RPG system could be;

No Hit Points rather

All damage "taken" is tallied and applied by the GM/DM as penalties to future player rolls

Say in this fantastic system I take 8-points of damage / the GM notes that - then say maybe in the next encounter I try and pull off some sort of stunt / that stunt what ever it may entail whether it be a called attack, a dodge, a backflip - whatever - the DM is like -5 to your roll (keeping the remaining -3 on reserve against you on another future roll of their deeming)

Then "have" a Critical system like ours (you know -1 to -10) = viola! lol

FIN

Having damage become penalties has been around in a few systems for a while. Mongoose's version of traveller does this most elegantly, I think - damage is applied as temporary reductions to your physical stats - END (endurance), DEX (Dexterity) and STR (take a guess). One reduced to zero is serious injury (requiring hospital treatment or equivalent), two is unconsciousness and three is death.

So as you're wounded, your stats go down and hence your ability to do stuff is impaired. There's no specific 'critical table' but narratively you'd describe a hit which took out most of your DEX as a broken leg, or arm, or whatever.