Hi,

Finding the rules for normal vehicles to complicated or at least not fast enough I tried to create a new system, all it needs is a Critical Table and more Vehicles but I think it should work.

I used the Apocrypha for basic stats but changed a few thing which were inspired by Rogue Trader and the Sentinal from tattered fates.

So as an example I used a basic civilian street car.

Spyralis Pattern Civilian Transport

Move: 10/50/100/150/200
Narrative Speed: 50 kmph/140 kmph
Size: Hulking
Armour: Front 8 AP, Hull 8 AP
Hull Integrity: 25
Weapons: None
Crew: 1 Driver, 5 Passengers (4 comfortable)
Handling (Drive (Ground Vehicle)): +10

Hull Integrity equals wounds and instead of different stats for weapon I use the normal weapon stats.
Armour is deducted by penetration and anything that by passes armour is deducted directly from wounds.

The Sentinal from Tattered Fates had a Machine Trait and a TB but to keep it simple I deceided Armour Points would suffice.

Any ideas???

If you have a copy of Warhammer 40K sitting around you could always make use of the weapon strength +1D6 vs. vehicle armour rule and consult the appropriate glancing or penetrating hits charts for what happens. Melta weapons really come into their own at short range against vehicles and bunkers in the tabletop rules, as they use strength +2D6 for penetration at that range.

Some examples:

Lasgun S3, Boltgun S4, Broken-ass Tau guns S5, Heavy Stubber S4, Heavy Bolter S5, Eldar Shuriken Cannon S6, Frag missile S4, Krak missile S8, Plasmagun S7, Meltagun S8, Lascannon S9, Autocannon S7, Imperial Guardsman with a Powerfist S6, Space Marine with a Powerfist S8, Multilaser S6, Shotgun (slug ammo assumed) S4.

Leman Russ battle tank (front 14, side 13, rear 10), Chimera APC (front 12, side/rear 10), Sentinel Scout walker (front/side/rear 10 "open topped"), Armoured Sentinel (front 12, side/rear 10), Valkyrie Assault Carrier (front/side 12, rear 10), SM Land Raider (front/side/rear 14), SM Predator tank (front 13, side 11, rear 10), Rhino APC (front/side 11, rear 10), SM Dreadnought (front/side 12, rear 10... Can't hit rear in melee unless Dread is immobilized.)

Rolling equal to the armour rating indicates a "glancing hit" and tends to stun the crew, shear a weapon mount off, scare the crap out of mounted infantry and so on. Rolling higher than the armour rating indicates a "penetrating hit" and tends to do "bad things" like disable the vehicle (destroyed engine, broken axles, shredded treads etc.), kill people inside, cause ammo explosions, set everyone inside on fire or in some extreme examples the vehicle tears itself apart in a massive explosion, sending shrapnel in all directions.

The two drawbacks to using this for your DH/RT games are that they require you to use D6 in a game that rolls D10 and that it is harder to adjudicate possible harm to player characters and important NPCs that are crew/passengers in damaged vehicles. For mooks "crew killed" is usually sufficient.

Santiago said:

Stick with armour AND have it at least 12 (you'll need to reduce the hull integrity to compensate), other high pen weapons will waste penetration which doesn't make sense against vehicles.

ZillaPrime said:

That's the major issue, it's also going to envolve converting things back to table top stats (especially for melee attacks) and there's certain amount of simplification (read a lot more) in the TT rules.

The crew thing is easily sorted, have the crew take a hit from the attacking weapon with assuming the vehicle provides certain amount of cover(again you'll need to convert but there are litterally only 5 armour values).

Face Eater said:

S.

I'm having a peak at the Apocrypha right now, and here are my thoughts and suggestions for simplification and bringing it in line with Rogue Trader. I realise I might be in the wrong forum, but the goal here is universal vehicle rules that work for both games and do not take too much book-keeping.

1) Rather than Out of Control and Structural Damage charts a system use DoF for the earlier and a "damage points buy" systems for the latter. i.e.

For Out of Control: Three Degrees of Failure indicates that the vehicle has spun around and lost of a speed band or two. Four degrees indicates that it has crashed . The vehicles spins once per speed band over cruising inflicting 1D10 DMG per flip. Five degrees indicates crash and burn and fate points to survive - NPC:s die.

For Structural Damage: Any damage in excess of armour can be used to purchase structural damage results. The exact effect is up to the GM, but as a rough estimate:

5 points of damage: Loss of trivial function, force drive roll to avoid out of control, hit a random crew member

10 point of damage: Loss of non-vital function (i.e. weapon mount etc), start fire on board, hit 1d5 of the crew, spins out of control (DoF 4)

15 point of damage: Loss of vital function (i.e steering or engines. sensors), damage all crew members, kill the driver

20 point of damage: Just like Massive Impact. Alternatively the original 2 x Armour rules might apply, and the 20 point treshold is removed.

2) Do we need hull integrity? In my mind the reason why Voidships have hull integrity is because they're in space. If the hull starts breaking up people will be sucked into the void. The structural integrity of a vessel designed for travel within the atmosphere is reflected in the structural damage rules. For Aquila landers etc we still do need Hull Integrity I suppose. The question is whether to put it on a vehicle of voidship scale. I'm inclined to the latter: give it a Hull Integrity of 1 or 2, which can be lowered through reaching the 10 or 15 point damage treshhold. I.e. you can stop a lander or similar shuttle from taking off by blasting holes in its hull.

3) Speed. The question here is whether to employ an abstract speed score like the voidships do, or whether to retain speed as a measure of kmph and metres per round. I'm inclined to the latter since that will retain compatability with regular combat rules, and probably involve less book-keeping.

4) Space: maybe some land crawlers, cargo landers etc should have a Space score (of 1-3, realistically) for loading and unloading purposes. If nothing else, it might be an indicator as to how many of these are normally involved in a loading or unloading operation. The flip side of this is: how many rhinos or land crawlers fits into 1 space in the hold of a voidship.

These are the issues and I ideas I can think of off the top of my head. Looking forward to your feedback!

Etepete said:

I like Hull Integrity because it's "Wound Points for vehicles" which means vehicles use the same basic combat rules as people. As a GM, I like that because it means I don't have to have two different rules sets in my head if I want to include vehicle combat. Combat rules are complex enough as they are, IMO, and adding more complexity isn't helpful. Keeping everything using the same basic rule-set is a good thing.

LuciusT said:

I couldn't agree more with the sentiment. I suppose what I should do is set down and create a general critical-structural hits system that is based on buying critical effects rather than rolling for them. Lacking that, I could definintely settle for keeping the hull integrity and dropping the structural damage charts.

Santiago said:

The Vehicle Apocrypha are the official rules for vehicles for now. They were written and released by BI as a web supplement because of constraints on page count in the book. They aren't perfect, but they do work well enough for small engagements. But, like all rules, change or discard as fits your needs. You actually have a halfway decent idea, Santiago. It bears merit.

-=Brother Praetus=-