I’m going to start running a clone wars campaign. While capital ships will not be the main focus of the game, they will come up, and it’s possible that capital ship combat will come into play.

With that in mind, there an interesting rules interaction that allows the Lucrehulk to dish out upwards of 400 damage with one attack, I think.

Concentrated barrage allows a ship to fire all weapons of the same type (in this case twin heavy laser cannons) as one attack if they are all in the same arc. The Lucrehulk as 100 port, 100 starboard, 100 dorsal, and 100 ventral of these twin heavy laser cannons. All 400 of these guns can fire out of the front arc. When firing in this way, concentrated barrage allows one advantage to be spent to add damage equal to the number of weapons being fired. In this case, 400. So the damage becomes 6+the number of successes+400.

If I’ve interpreted the rule incorrectly and the weapons must exist in one firing arc to be combined in this way, the Lucrehulk still nets 106+successes damage from one attack, which is insane.

My questions are:
1) Does concentrated barrage add damage from all of the guns of the same type firing from one arc or originating in one arc? The first one makes sense to me with the way star destroyers operate, but it’s insane in this ship.

2) What house rule (if any) do you use to limit this? I was thinking limiting the bonus damage to silhouette x2 or 3, which would keep the attack potent but not ludicrous.

Oh. Ouch. That rule was clearly not written with the Lucrehulk in mind.

28 minutes ago, yoink101 said:

My questions are:
1) Does concentrated barrage add damage from all of the guns of the same type firing from one arc or originating in one arc? The first one makes sense to me with the way star destroyers operate, but it’s insane in this ship.

2) What house rule (if any) do you use to limit this? I was thinking limiting the bonus damage to silhouette x2 or 3, which would keep the attack potent but not ludicrous.

I believe you have interpreted it correctly.

That proposed houserule seems decent. Honestly, that rule is pretty broken if you're using anything bigger than a Neb-B, and limiting it like that nerfs bigger ships (though it mechanically makes some sense, if not narratively).

I'd suggest an alternative option: Take Overwhelming Barrage and change it so that the additional hits are dedicated to the same target rather than different targets

I don’t think it’s explicitly written that the extra damage hits the same target, but I do think that it is implied.

I guess the other option would be to treat it like a linked weapon that only requires 1 advantage to activate. Which could be done a number of times equal to the number of guns being utilized.

10 minutes ago, yoink101 said:

I don’t think it’s explicitly written that the extra damage hits the same target, but I do think that it is implied.

It is stated explicitly: "If the attack succeeds, the character may spend [Advantage] once to add damage equal to the number of weapons involved in the attack to one hit of the attack."

1 hour ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

It is stated explicitly: "If the attack succeeds, the character may spend [Advantage] once to add damage equal to the number of weapons involved in the attack to one hit of the attack."

To one hit of the attack?! Does that mean that linked weapons can trigger this multiple times with enough advantage? That seems monstrous.

37 minutes ago, SufficientlyAdvancedMoronics said:

To one hit of the attack?! Does that mean that linked weapons can trigger this multiple times with enough advantage? That seems monstrous.

No, because it says "to one hit of the attack."

I guess I'm not sure what the issue is. It's an obscenely big ship, packed with weapons, executing a "concentrated barrage" focused attack. I think it's functioning as intended.

25 minutes ago, kenngp said:

I guess I'm not sure what the issue is. It's an obscenely big ship, packed with weapons, executing a "concentrated barrage" focused attack. I think it's functioning as intended.

It can destroy an ISD with a single Average Gunnery check.

29 minutes ago, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

It can destroy an ISD with a single Average Gunnery check.

This is the most broken thing I've seen posted on this forum! Haha

1 hour ago, SufficientlyAdvancedMoronics said:

This is the most broken thing I've seen posted on this forum! Haha

You wanna hear something more broken?

It can one-shot an Assertor-class Command Dreadnought.

A huge problem with the rule is that it has no accounting for weapons too light to pass armor. An Assertor has 13 armor, almost double the minimum damage of a Heavy Laser Cannon.
It also doesn't scale for heavier damage. This means that 400 HLCs do only about 9 less damage than 400 Heavy Turbolaser Cannons (407 compared to 416).

So what about changing it to multiply? The damage is calculated by:
(Base damage + uncancelled successes - armor ) * number of weapons used.

This way you need to bypass the armor to deal damage, in the example of Assertor, you can fire with all your 400 turrets, but needs 8 successes and an advantage to do 400 damage. This considers the armament used, the enemy armor, and the number of weapons.

8 hours ago, Rimsen said:

So what about changing it to multiply? The damage is calculated by:
(Base damage + uncancelled successes - armor ) * number of weapons used.

This way you need to bypass the armor to deal damage, in the example of Assertor, you can fire with all your 400 turrets, but needs 8 successes and an advantage to do 400 damage. This considers the armament used, the enemy armor, and the number of weapons.

Although it would work in this case, that actually increases the damage dealt by the ability in most circumstances. The RAW ability adds 1 damage per weapon, so if you multiply by the number of weapons used you deal significantly more damage with something that deals even so little as two HT to the target.

Simply saying you have to get past the armor would help, but it's still way overpowered and broken with certain ships.

There's probably a curve for this.

Honestly I don't understand the point of this action at all, since grouping the weapons as minions would already let ships shoot with "all guns at once"

This can be fixed very easily by adding "...up to a maxmum of 10 weapons" [or however many the GM feels reasonable] to the talent description.

This came up in my campaign recently and I just ruled it this way:

Successful hit with Concentrated Barrage was rolled, but not with any excess Successes which meant the Weapon that was used (Medium Laser Cannons) was not able to penetrate; so the target Ship was plastered with mostly harmless hits from 20 Guns which resulted in a few setbacks for said ship and an Difficulty Upgrade for the Fighters it was trying to launch.

In my opinion it's simple: If a weapon hit cannot penetrate on it's own, why should 30 individual weapon hits do?
To be honest I didn't even have to explicitly "Rule" this at the table, everyone was just "aw ****, not enough successes to get past the armor".

We brought it up after the session but all were of the opinion that this is how it should be handled.

It should also be considered that heavy laser cannons are limited to short range, and a Lucrehulk isn't exactly the best option for chasing anybody down, even a Star Destroyer. At long range, they're fairly even, but at medium Star Destroyer has a definitive advantage due to it's light turbolasers and ion cannons, despite being a smaller ship.

But yeah, the best option is probably to simply tell who ever tries this to stop being an idiot as heavy laser can at best cause superficial damage to an ISD. If they insist, have the ISD commander have his 9,700 stormtroopers line up on the hull and open fire, counting as ship weapons, for a point of damage for every blaster rifle.

That's right...

Even at personal scale damage, that should take care of business.

I think my plan at this point is to limit the extra damage to 3x the silhouette of the ship using the barrage. That means the extra guns are still potent, but not quite so stupidly so. I do like the idea of concentrated fire from weapons building up enough heat and energy to punch through armor they wouldn’t otherwise be able to get past.

On 6/2/2020 at 12:00 PM, P-47 Thunderbolt said:

You wanna hear something more broken?

It can one-shot an Assertor-class Command Dreadnought.

A huge problem with the rule is that it has no accounting for weapons too light to pass armor. An Assertor has 13 armor, almost double the minimum damage of a Heavy Laser Cannon.
It also doesn't scale for heavier damage. This means that 400 HLCs do only about 9 less damage than 400 Heavy Turbolaser Cannons (407 compared to 416).

This is why the Separatist Holdouts were still around even in Return of the Jedi. Their ships were powerful.

20 minutes ago, Mattheau said:

This is why the Separatist Holdouts were still around even in Return of the Jedi. Their ships were powerful.

Not that powerful.

On 6/27/2020 at 11:10 PM, Fl1nt said:

This came up in my campaign recently and I just ruled it this way:

Successful hit with Concentrated Barrage was rolled, but not with any excess Successes which meant the Weapon that was used (Medium Laser Cannons) was not able to penetrate; so the target Ship was plastered with mostly harmless hits from 20 Guns which resulted in a few setbacks for said ship and an Difficulty Upgrade for the Fighters it was trying to launch.

In my opinion it's simple: If a weapon hit cannot penetrate on it's own, why should 30 individual weapon hits do?
To be honest I didn't even have to explicitly "Rule" this at the table, everyone was just "aw ****, not enough successes to get past the armor".

We brought it up after the session but all were of the opinion that this is how it should be handled.

Why can several hits in one spot do damage if a single shot from that type of weapon wouldn’t? Simple, because each successive hit in that spot heats up the target a little more and eventually burns through. It’s called cumulative damage. You hit the same spot over and over, eventually you erode, or burn through it as a result of friction.

30 minutes ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Why can several hits in one spot do damage if a single shot from that type of weapon wouldn’t? Simple, because each successive hit in that spot heats up the target a little more and eventually burns through. It’s called cumulative damage. You hit the same spot over and over, eventually you erode, or burn through it as a result of friction.

Fair point, but I guess it comes down to narrative.

I find it hard to believe that a full broadside from a large warship will be able to hit an enemy ship in exactly 1 spot (or even close to 1 spot), that's just not the accuracy we get to see in either books or movies.
(And comparing to Real-World Battleship Accuracy it feels even less likely).

I feel the Concentrated Barrage simulated perfectly how a Ship can get alot of Hits on-Target, but I dont really see it describing that outstanding accuracy required for cumulative hits on the same part of the target vessel.

In the end it depends on the situation and the narrative, for exampe if there's a triumph (or alot of successes) involved, maybe all these shots do impact close together to deal cumulative damage, doing horrific damage.
Just the way I see it.

28 minutes ago, Fl1nt said:

Fair point, but I guess it comes down to narrative.

I find it hard to believe that a full broadside from a large warship will be able to hit an enemy ship in exactly 1 spot (or even close to 1 spot), that's just not the accuracy we get to see in either books or movies.
(And comparing to Real-World Battleship Accuracy it feels even less likely).

I feel the Concentrated Barrage simulated perfectly how a Ship can get alot of Hits on-Target, but I dont really see it describing that outstanding accuracy required for cumulative hits on the same part of the target vessel.

In the end it depends on the situation and the narrative, for exampe if there's a triumph (or alot of successes) involved, maybe all these shots do impact close together to deal cumulative damage, doing horrific damage.
Just the way I see it.

Well, the area of the “spot” is dependent upon the size of the projectile. Even if we’re not talking absolute pinpoint precision, measured in millimeters, or even inches, you hit the same side, over and over, repeatedly, eventually, you will penetrate. This is how a battering ram, or siege engine, such as a catapult, takes out a fortified wall or portcullis. Repeated hits weaken the structure, and eventually penetrate. These weapons are not exactly “pinpoint” accurate.

Yes it would certainly depend on which kind of Weapon is used and how large the target is (especially in comparison to the firing vessel).

7 hours ago, Fl1nt said:

Yes it would certainly depend on which kind of Weapon is used and how large the target is (especially in comparison to the firing vessel).

A Lucrehulk-class battleship is ~3 kilometers square (okay, round).

An Assertor-class Dreadnought is 15 kilometers long.

8 hours ago, Tramp Graphics said:

Why can several hits in one spot do damage if a single shot from that type of weapon wouldn’t? Simple, because each successive hit in that spot heats up the target a little more and eventually burns through. It’s called cumulative damage. You hit the same spot over and over, eventually you erode, or burn through it as a result of friction.

While the principle of concentrating fire is sound, the implementation is extraordinarily broken with just about anything bigger than a Neb-B that also lacks a diverse armament (ISD isn't unreasonable for this ability).

Even if it is a decent representation of reality (which I find dubious), it breaks the game. You can take out a dreadnought with a single Average Gunnery check.

Hand waving it with multiple hits in the same place makes a certain amount of sense, but then starts to break down when you think about it further. Heavy laser cannons are smallish things in the grand scheme of things, something like the main gun on a heavy fighter (B-wing). Sure, hundreds of them could collectively blast a hole through a star destroyer's armor and everything behind it.

Then what?

Capital ships are big, and the hole is small. Even if it burns all the way through and out the other side, that's a pinprick hole that doesn't warrant catastrophic amounts of hull trauma. I can see it as a justification for causing a crit with weapons that are otherwise incapable of breaching the hull, but for massive hull trauma damage, you'd have to argue that the weapons cause focused damage when penetrating the armor, and the widespread damage beyond it.

Simply put, you make a pinprick sized hole in the armor, there's only so much ship you can wreck through it. Sure, if there's a critical system behind it, that get's wrecked with potentially disastrous effects, but that's a crit , not massive hull trauma that cripples the entire craft.