Hello there,

I know there are many rulings about this out there and this is not intended to be yet another discussion thread about this.

In my campaign Session yesterday we came upon the whole vehicle vs. personal topic for the first time and (in my opinion atleast) came up with a relatively good (if not yet perfect) Houserule for that, so I wanted to share what we came up with and see what your opinions are on this.

So my Players and I came to the conclusion that we wanted to be able to make use of for example the Group-Ship's Weaponry (in part because we have an archaeologist character that has grown to be the dedicated "Ship's Person"), but without having it be as overblown deadly as it is in RAW.
The reasoning being: If the Player characters can use it, the rest of the galaxy will also be able to (as to prevent it becoming the one-shot win option as soon as a vehicle is nearby).
Some might call it at that and accept that if the PC's provoke it they'll just get vaporized, but uh well, not an option for me and my group xD

Long Story short, v1 of the Rule we came up with:
When used against Personal Scale targets Vehicle Weaponry changes its Damage Profile like follows: Damage Value +10 (now in Personal Scale), it gains Breach (or increases its Breach Quality by 1) and it gains Blast equal to its new Damage value.

So for example a Light Blaster Cannon (Damage: 4, Crit: 4) is treated as a (Damage 14, Crit: 4, Special: Breach 1, Blast 14) Personal Scale weapon.

Of Note: We did not touch the "Firing Vehicle Weaponry" Rules at all, so it still is relatively hard to shoot a Silhouette 1 Person from a larger vehicle.

Agreed this is certainly not perfect, as it makes the Vehicle Weaponry a bit weak, especially when compared with Personal Scale Gunnery Weapons, but I believe granting it Blast and Breach makes up for it.
Additional Note: We made this Rule up on the spot talked about in for a minute and used it to good in the ensuing encounter.

I was very happy with how this ruling played out in the Session, it felt pretty balanced without making Vehicle Weaponry lose its scariness and I think we'll be keeping this.

Nonetheless I'd be interested in your opinions 😃

A Heavy Turbolaser does only 7 damage more (21) than a Light Blaster Cannon. Pretty easily tankable by even a non-dedicated build. Granted, it will nearly one-shot them, but they'll still be standing. (and if the target has invested in Cortosis weave, forget it. You aren't ever going to one-shot them with a Turbolaser)

Whenever I or anyone else makes a house rule, I try to take it to its logical conclusion and see where that puts it. In this case, I don't think it works very well past Heavy Blaster Cannons.

A potential fix to this is to lower the crit against personal-scale targets. Probably crit of 2 for Blaster Cannons, crit of 1 for Laser Cannons, and auto-crit (with a 1 Advantage cost to trigger +10s) for Turbolasers.

I like the rules as they are in this case.

Fair point.
We hadn't considered Large Scale Weapons as Turbo Lasers, I'd probably just go with only using the Houserule up to a certain Scale of Vehicle Weaponry.
I mean the heaviest Thing thats bound to be firing at you in most situations is gonna be Heavy Laser Cannons or something of the sort.

If my PC's manage to get an Imperial Cruiser to fire on them, well... then they deserve to get vaporized.

But yeah I see the problem and as Houserules tend to it would either take other house-rules or maybe that Crit adjustment you mentioned.

I'd probably also let Cortosis only reduce Breach by 1 against Ship Weaponry, from my point of view its a whole different thing if your Mandalorian Armor can withstand a Highpowered Sniper Rifle or a a Lightsaber attack vs. a effing Turbolaser Shot.

Meaning Cortosis would still be very powerful even against Vehicle Weapons since all Vehicle Weapons that normally dont have Breach will be greatly reduced in effectiveness, but Mass Drivers or Turbo Lasers will still vaporize you.

Well in any case, thanks alot for the input.
Its something to think about and take to my players.

25 minutes ago, Fl1nt said:

I'd probably also let Cortosis only reduce Breach by 1 against Ship Weaponry, from my point of view its a whole different thing if your Mandalorian Armor can withstand a Highpowered Sniper Rifle or a a Lightsaber attack vs. a effing Turbolaser Shot.

Meaning Cortosis would still be very powerful even against Vehicle Weapons since all Vehicle Weapons that normally dont have Breach will be greatly reduced in effectiveness, but Mass Drivers or Turbo Lasers will still vaporize you.

I've thought for a while that the description for the Cortosis quality should be changed from:

Quote

Armor with the Cortosis quality makes the wearer's soak immune to the Pierce and Breach qualities.

To something along the lines of:

Quote

Armor with the Cortosis quality allows the wearer's soak immune to the Pierce quality and one point of the Breach quality.

Especially because this was written before any weapons (other than starship weaponry that would instantly double-WT any character) had more than 1 point of Breach. Since, they have added at least three weapons that have more than 1 point in Breach: the T-7 Ion Disruptor, the Anti-Vehicle Flechette Launcher, and I think two ways of modding lightsabers (a crystal and the Fusion Shunt).

1st paragraph: not a discussion thread.

2nd paragraph: want to hear your opinions.

So, which is it?

35 minutes ago, HappyDaze said:

1st paragraph: not a discussion thread. About the principles of planetary-scale damage

2nd paragraph: want to hear your opinions. On this house rule

So, which is it?

Fl1nt, I think you're pretty much right on the money with your first post. The damage of ANY vehicle-scale weapons are so ridiculous that it's not even worth bothering with the x10 damage, the target is just down. And that's lame. Obviously being shot by an X-Wing would vaporize you, but it's still lame.

As far as I'm concerned, PCs are immune to direct hits from Vehicle-scale weapons, and turbolasers can't even target individuals. I think your damage scale works pretty well.

On 3/15/2020 at 6:29 PM, HappyDaze said:

1st paragraph: not a discussion thread.

2nd paragraph: want to hear your opinions.

So, which is it?

Yeah its a bit difficult to talk about a Houserule without touching on the RAW Version of the Rule.

But I did not want to make another "How to fix 10x Vehicle Damage" Thread, just my twist on Vehicle Weapon Damage and if you people would see any problems with it (with the intend of hopefully improving upon my houserule).

What about scaling the damage +(10 x Silhouette)? So a Silhouette 3 vehicle is adding +30 damage at personal scale? Or scaling it +(5 x Sil) for +15 damage for Sil 3 vehicle?

A house rule I've had is called "Grazed". It's to be used when attacking personal scale PCs, Nemesis characters, and named Rival characters with planetary scale weapons, at GM's discretion. Unnamed Rival characters and Minions take damage as normal. The Breach Weapon Quality functions as normal. It's not rocket science, by design, and tries to stay pretty simple as to not slow down the flow of play too much. (Although hopefully planetary scale weaponry firing on personal scale characters is not super commonplace.)

You take the base damage of the planetary scale weapon converted into personal scale, divide by 3 (rounded down to the nearest whole number), then add the number of uncancelled successes on the roll as personal scale damage.

This allows personal scale targets to possibly remain standing or survive a hit from planetary weapons on the lower damage end of the spectrum, while still making you want to avoid taking a concussion missile or turbolaser to the face.

Let's assume a planetary weapon roll with 3 uncancelled successes.

RAW Example: An auto-blaster would normally deal 3 (30 personal scale) base damage + 3 (30 personal scale) damage from uncancelled successes for a total of 6 (60 personal scale) damage - soak.

Grazed Example: An auto-blaster would deal 10 (30 personal scale divided by 3 = 10) damage + 3 (personal scale) damage from uncancelled successes for a total of 13 damage - soak.

RAW Example: A light blaster cannon would normally deal 4 (40 personal scale) base damage + 3 (30 personal scale) damage from uncancelled successes for a total of 7 (70 personal scale) damage - soak.

Grazed Example: A light blaster cannon would deal 13 (40 personal scale divided by 3 = 13.3 rounded down to 13) damage + 3 (personal scale) damage from uncancelled successes for a total of 16 damage - soak.

RAW Example: A concussion missile launcher would normally deal 6 (60 personal scale) base damage + 3 (30 personal scale) damage from uncancelled successes for a total of 9 (90 personal scale) damage.

Grazed Example: A concussion missile launcher would deal 20 (60 personal scale divided by 3 = 20) damage + 3 (personal scale) damage from uncancelled successes for a total of 23 damage.

RAW Example: A heavy turbolaser would normally deal 11 (110 personal scale) base damage + 3 (30 personal scale) damage from uncancelled successes for a total of 14 (140 personal scale) damage.

Grazed Example: A heavy turbolaser would deal 36 (110 personal scale divided by 3 = 36.6 rounded down to 36) damage + 3 (personal scale) damage from uncancelled successes for a total of 39 damage.

This does have the side effect of making the auto-blaster a few points weaker in the damage department than weapons such as the light repeating blaster (11 base personal scale damage) or heavy repeating blaster (15 base personal scale damage) but not by much and the auto-blaster still out-ranges them. (Close planetary scale vs Long personal scale)

I'd say possibly add that you can spend a Triumph to get a direct hit, dealing normal damage, otherwise you end up with the lighter planetary-scale weapons being directly inferior to many personal-scale weapons.

9 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

I'd say possibly add that you can spend a Triumph to get a direct hit, dealing normal damage, otherwise you end up with the lighter planetary-scale weapons being directly inferior to many personal-scale weapons.

You could do that, but I think it might too easily defeat the purpose. If you still need planetary weapons to feel nasty, use the official optional rule (pg 236 of Age of Rebellion "Starships, Vehicles, and Scale" sidebar) of adding +50 to the resulting Critical Injury roll from a planetary weapon on a personal scale target.

I've tried various ideas. x5 for smaller weapons, x10 for larger. I've also developed a table of "Vehicle Weapons Used at Personal Scale" and vice-versa. I just plugged in new stats that I liked.

2 hours ago, Demigonis said:

You could do that, but I think it might too easily defeat the purpose. If you still need planetary weapons to feel nasty, use the official optional rule (pg 236 of Age of Rebellion "Starships, Vehicles, and Scale" sidebar) of adding +50 to the resulting Critical Injury roll from a planetary weapon on a personal scale target.

You'd then also need to adjust the critical rating, or they remain directly inferior to heavier personal-scale weapons which often have lower critical ratings.

My view of this subject is pretty much "x10 is the worst system, except for all the others."

Although I feel that it is not ideal, and is prone to abuse, I find it hard to say that it doesn't make sense, and so far, most of the fixes I've seen have had their own issues. The simple solution is to not use planetary-scale weaponry against your players, and to limit (largely through circumstance and narrative) your players' access to planetary-scale weaponry for any given engagement.

If something were to happen like the PCs deciding to just shoot up a building instead of leaving the vehicle and entering to negotiate with the Hutt, you actually have a decent amount of freedom to have the target escape, as it'll be hard for the party to confirm a kill, especially if you as a GM play your cards right.

Bottom line, don't put NPCs you don't want 1-hit KO'ed in a situation where the PCs can use planetary-scale weapons against them.

2 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

My view of this subject is pretty much "x10 is the worst system, except for all the others."

I don't know. "Never use multipliers, especially not for damage" has always struck me as an excellent rule of thumb for game systems. I have never seen this sort of thing work out satisfactory.

Have you considered looking at the weapon hardpoint restriction rules from the CRBs and Fully operational?

They have tables that detail the minimum silhouette that a weapon requires to be mounted. You could use this as an upper limit for your rule.

For instance, your rule applies for all weapons that only require a Sil 4 or less vehicle to be mounted. All other weapons (turbolaser territory) abide by the normal rules.

That means all fighter/light freighter and anti-fighter weaponry, as well as ground/speeder vehicles, which is the most likely weapons that you will use on personnel, will give you the effect your after (i.e a fighting chance for PCs) but still give the big hitters the punch they deserve, if they hit! (as they will be more difficult than a fighter or walker shooting at personnel, being Sil 5+)

18 hours ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

You'd then also need to adjust the critical rating, or they remain directly inferior to heavier personal-scale weapons which often have lower critical ratings.

You could do something like that, but I don't know that you necessarily would have to because going over wound threshold (which will be quite common with planetary weapons on personal targets) is an automatic Critical Injury with a +50 to the Critical Injury roll. (Assuming you're using the official optional/suggested planetary scale weapon vs personal scale target rule)

Personal scale targets are going to be hard pressed to challenge most things that have a planetary scale weapon on it. So if "Grazed" buys them a little time by making the planetary scale weapon take an extra round or two to murder PCs, Nemeses, and important named Rivals, that's by design.