Because it didn't bother my players nor myself all that much.
Ty: MT's not quite "Elegant"... Nor is TNE, but they feel smoother in play than T4 did.
Just can't agree with you on that one.
Elegant is (Success Margin+Pen-AV)* Damage Rating done to stats... Used this once. It was elegant, fast, and used Striker weapons tables and CT Damages (in dice) as the DR. Worked REALLY well. Haven't done so again simply due to last several campaigns being playtests.
I agree that this could be an elegant mechanic.
But I've generally disliked mechanics that allow you to increase gun penetration (or damage) by having more weapon skill. A projectile's ability to penetrate armor will be highly dependent on factors that the shooter -- no matter how highly skilled -- cannot control. (Or, that in the heat of combat, most shooters won't
try to control, because of the time required).
And as a practical matter, I have little confidence that most designers can sensibly limit the excesses. (This is a problem with CT, by the way. A sufficiently skilled person can fairly easily shoot through battle dress with a pistol. Not likely with the Book 1-3 chargen, but certainly possible with the skills bloat of Book 4+).
In your
Striker example, a person with Combat Rifle-3 (not terribly difficult to get in Book 4 chargen) and DEX-8 (again, not too hard) would get a penetration bonus of +5 with an assault rifle. Added to the weapon's penetration of 3, it would be almost impossible
not to kill an unarmored target (>92% chance) with a single hit. But if you re-scale the damage chart so that it can render a more reasonable chance of killing the target in this case, it will become nearly impossible for an untrained shooter to kill anyone. (And the autofire bonus presents a problem. There's no reasonable basis to include it as part of the damage/penetration mechanic, but if you exclude it, players have to remember 2 different modifier regimes, that are more complex than the original system.)
If you apply the result as damage points, then the average damage would be very high (and there's still the Striker problem of high penetration weapons being unreasonably lethal against unarmored targets).
If you use the suggestion in Striker that light wounds = 3D damage, serious wounds = 6D damage and Dead=Dead, then you still have the problems of awesomely high weapon lethality. I don't think that this is a reasonable approach even if you want a gritty campaign (available data on weapon damage does not support the Hollywood portrayal of mooks being killed instantly when hit). It also adds a third roll to the combat process, which IMHO reduces elegance. I don't necessarily mind three rolls, but I'd implement them in a far cleaner way than Striker does.
So it will take a fair amount of effort to make such an approach behave properly, if it's possible at all.
Of course, I acknowledge the possibility of aiming for weak spots in the armor, or aiming for the head, etc. But I'd prefer for these things to be handled by discrete "aimed shots" rules. And I have no problem with rules that enable snipers to carefully aim at vulnerable points. Such mechanics force the player to make a business decision about such things, rather than automatically giving him the benefit at no real game cost. This also tends not to break many systems as easily as your suggestion.
All these factors argue, in my opinion, for a system that does not so closely link weapon skill and damage/penetration. I'm just not convinced that skill is that much more important in determining damage than the physical factors of the projectile and armor and other factors that the shooter cannot easily affect.
A system that I'm toying with right now shows how I'd break up a complex task into 2-3 fast and simple steps (this is a very rough summary from memory) that plays faster than many systems with fewer rolls but more complex mechanics:
1. Roll to hit -- 1d10, 7+ to hit +skill (maximum of +3) + other mods. "1" always misses. Autofire weapons get extra dice depending on ROF (a 5 shot burst gets 2 rolls, for instance).
2. If you hit, roll to penetrate -- 1d10+penetration; must equal or exceed armor rating. For comparison, an assault rifle has a penetration of +2; a revolver has a penetration of 0; cloth armor has an armor rating of 8. On a natural 10, halve the armor rating (round down). This step can be skipped if the target is unarmored or if the target's armor is seriously overmatched by the weapon's penetration.
3. If you penetrate, roll for wound -- 1d10+damage-target mass. 1-2 is scratch wound. 3-5 is light wound. 6-8 is serious wound. 9+ is mortally wounded (the higher the number, the higher the chance that this turns into "instantly dead". Most small arms have a damage of 0. Shotguns and high calibre weapons have a damage of 2-3. Mass for a man-sized target is 0; +1 per weight band in the animal encounters. (If you prefer hit points, you can translate the total into damage points; in that case, ignore the mass modifier).
Note that each step uses the same kind of dice (and only 1 per shot). This means that the player can pick out and re-roll the successful dice for each additional step. Also, autofire just gets more dice -- and you can resolve 5 shots almost as quickly as 1 shot by rolling all of them together. So while there are up to 3 discrete steps, each step is fast, uses the same dice and similar mechanics. It plays quickly in playtests.
