RE: [WW] Weapon reliability mechanics [was some silly argument]

["Peter" <spezbaby@HotPOP.com>]

Well, it isn't D20 Modern or WW2, but Spycraft has a pretty good critical
failure system. It is, as someone already mentioned, the complement to the
critical success system. Average firearms would have a possible critical
failure on a natural 1-2, a reliable weapon would have a 1 and really
unreliable would maybe be 1-3.

Where Spycraft use 'action dice' the system could be changed back to the D20
standard by doing the following: If the attack roll is equal to the critical
threat level you roll again. If the second roll is a failure (not a crit
failure) then there is a jam or some other unfortunate event. However, the
way I play another failure is a jam or misfire, but a second crit failure is
something more sinister.

Just some thoughts.
Peter

: -----Original Message-----
: From: owner-weirdwars@gamerz.net [mailto:owner-weirdwars@gamerz.net]On
: Behalf Of Dirk
: Sent: October 9, 2002 8:58 PM
: To: weirdwars@gamerz.net
: Subject: Re: [WW] Weapon reliability mechanics [was some silly argument]
:
:
: > On Wed, 9 Oct 2002 00:08:57 -0400 deaconblue3@juno.com writes:
: >
: > > Unfortunately, this can be a major burden
: > > mechanically
: > > when engaged in large scale combat (unless you presume a certain
: > > percentage of failure).
: >
: > Unfortunately, *d20* is a major burden for any combat involving
: more than
: > say, 12 combatants.  i won't even mention actual large scale combat.
: > Yikes.
:
: I disagree - although it's time consuming, especially for the first couple
: times you run a large-scale battle, both myself and my 4 players feel that
: it works very well. We started the game with each PC running his own
: character plus 3 NPCs, and there were 5 players at first, so even
: after the
: first player dropped out and the death toll on NPCs got up, it's still at
: about 15 characters total (on the PC side of things). The last
: battle we did
: involved the PCs ambushing a small convoy containing close to 30
: individuals, 2 trucks, 2 cars, 3 motorcycles with sidecars, and a
: Panzer II.
: Although the battle took around 1.5 hours, maybe 2, it flowed
: very smoothly.
: There has yet to be anything I'd consider a "small-scale battle"
: in my game,
: and that wasn't even the largest one, but we haven't had any problems with
: it so far. Sessions tend to run 3 hours (of actual game-play, more if you
: count eating and BSing), with the first hour or so being role-playing, and
: the second half being combat.
: On the other side of things, I've spent a lot of time making up tracker
: sheets for large numbers of opponents, as well as the same for the players
: to quickly run their NPCs, which greatly speeds things up.
: In case I've missunderstood this all and you meant "hundreds of
: combatants"
: rather than "dozens of combatants", then yes, there's no way
: you're going to
: run a effective d20 mass-combat. We tried doing that in a fantasy
: game just
: recently - even with some home-made rules to speed things up (basically,
: grouping creatures into units of 10 and attacking as full units),
: it took 4
: weeks in all to finish the battle, which involved 1500+ undead, monsters,
: mages, psions, and other evil-doers seiging a castle containing about half
: as many "good guys".
: If you're just trying to run a battle involving a platoon or so of
: combatants, however, don't worry - if everyone knows the rules, it'll work
: well.
:
: -Brandon
: http://www.mchome.net/dirk/weirdwars/
:
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