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Coolness Under Fire House Rule?

C

canucksaram

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Does anyone have some house rules to simulate Coolness Under Fire, or a similar fight/flight mechanic? I vaguely recall that 2300AD had CUF but I don't remember how it worked.

The old Cyberpunk supplement Friday Night Firefight had a similar mechanic, which was a penalty to firearms attack rolls (but never to your defense) to simulate jittery nerves and the societal conditioning not to take life/inflict grievous bodily harm.
 
We were having just this discussion in the CT forum, with another poster's presentation on basing to/hit on the morale/experience levels from Striker/Mercenary- the idea being that the more experienced you were the more battles you have been in, seen the elephant and therefore have more CUF. You might look that one over.

FNFF really is an underappreciated minor masterwork.

Personally I don't feel a deep need to model it, to the extent I would I would make the to-hit A+ and skill levels are equivalent to dealing with CUF either via training or combat experience.

This would make getting high to-hit DM weapons like shotguns or SMGs even more desirable for the inexperienced.

This is the thread in question.

http://www.travellerrpg.com/CotI/Discuss/showthread.php?t=36869
 
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CUF tweak...not complete

I've been futzing with my own ideas.

I have not read the combat rules for MegaTraveller in a long while. I knew 2300AD before I ever heard of MegaTraveller and the older Classic Traveller. That being said, the rules for CUF and initiative I've come up with here might not work with CT/MT...I have to do more reading.



Coolness Under Fire
(Note: Combat rounds are thirty seconds long, as in 2300AD. Unlike the official 2300AD rules, however, you are not limited to just two actions in a round. In this system you can have up to five actions, depending on your initiative roll. Skills are also limited to a rating of 5. For now the skill improvement system I’m using is from MT, i.e. ATs.)

The trait Coolness Under Fire (CUF) is rated like a skill, i.e. from 0 to 5. It starts at 0 for everyone, and for every career term where lethal violence presents a risk, it increases by one, and can be improved with ATs, just as skills are, with this exception: you are not limited to two ATs/year for CUF.

Your CUF limits your attack skill, and it replaces your DEX for combat initiative purposes. If your CUF is lower than your attack skill, use the lower of the two values. CUF never limits your defense. CUF applies to firefights as well as fistfights; it’s a general indicator of how you perform under combat stress.

Your initiative governs how many actions you can take in a combat round. To determine your initiative, roll 2d6 + Relevant Skill + CUF (note that your skill rating is limited to CUF for initiative purposes, too).You get your first action on the initiative count that matches your initiative roll, and then one more action for each half-count thereafter (round down). Example: With an initiative of 4 you act first on initiative count 4, then 2, then 1. With an initiative of 7 you act first on initiative count 7, then 3, then 1. An initiative of 8 or higher sees you acting four times in a combat round.

If you are surprised, your initiative roll is halved. Someone with a high enough initiative roll that gets surprised could still act before an ambusher/attacker with a lower initiative, however (a model for combat reflexes). In cases of surprise and/or ambush, initiative ties go to the attacker.
 
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The problem with that method is that by the time a character hits 4 or 5 they're into PTSD and serious problems with what might be called "twitchiness."
That is, they're more likely to lose it because they've been shot at, shelled, or whatever so much they can't take any more.

The whole concept of "Coolness under fire" really would come down to two different, but related indicators.

The first is a long term one. This one is how much and how often you've seen combat. It slowly builds up to a point where you begin to have issues with taking any more of it. In past actual history, this generally wasn't a problem as those who say lots of combat were either invalided out for wounds or killed long before they reached their breaking point.
It becomes a problem when you have sufficient armor and such that you're likely not to suffer the above fate being in combat.

The second is an immediate response. This is harder to measure. This one takes into account the circumstances at the moment. Now there are a number of factors to consider:

How much fire are you taking? If there's tons of incoming and not much outgoing you probably are going to react differently than to sporadic fire.

Surprise. This is a big one. The more, the worse it is for you... Exponentially worse.

Casualties. If everyone around you is getting hit, there are lots of dead friendly guys laying around you can see, you probably have a lot more issues than if nobody's been hit.

What kind of fire are you taking. If the incoming fire is from some armored vehicle you can't touch with your weapons you're probably more likely to want to get the hell out of Dodge than if you have fire superiority in weapons types.

Situational awareness. If the fire has caused you to lose sight of your buddies, and you haven't got much, if any, clue what's going on you are probably a lot less likely to be comfortable with things than if you know your buddies are there, and have figured out where the bad guys are.

Your proximity to others. You are there with several friendly guys watching you are less likely to freak out or run than if you are all alone or can't see any friendly people.

That's a short list. Thus, you are more likely to be ineffective firing back the more of the above and related stuff you are dealing with.
 
Enoki, you're talking about the sort of PTSD that manifests because modern forces are in constant combat, sometimes for years, and less likely to die of bad food, disease and medical care.

I don't know that adventurers have that sort of experience except in merc/army duty. I would think the usual traveller experience would be a few stressors a year, more in line with explorers and treacherous weather/terrain/fauna, piracy in the Caribbean or gunslingers in the Old West.
 
No, PTSD, while a real issue (and has been for centuries) has never, and is still not, affected/affecting more than about 10%-20%* of combat veterans, no matter how many years of combat they have seen.

So no, unless you designate that the character HAS developed PTSD (I would give that as one possibility for a "non-fatal" failed survival roll), then that wouldn't be present.

Even if a character did develop PTSD, better (and more-consistently-applied) mental health treatments would reduce both the frequency and severity of PTSD.


* 10% historically, a max of 20% for current combat veterans (it is less than that by most estimates).
The type of combat experienced, and other related factors (such as age when combat is first experienced, etc), has significantly more effect on whether one develops PTSD than does how many combats/how long in combat.
 
@Enoki and others...

All I'm looking for is an easy way to model becoming hardened in combat so that the instinct to duck and freeze (for a firefight) or back off/stand down (from fisticuffs) can be wrangled.

Sure, I could just go with, hey, they're PCs so if they say they stand and fight they just do...if their background would justify it.

But then I thought...why not have some way of grading how much of their background would allow this?

I don't want to model reality or PTSD. Just a simple game mechanic.

Perhaps I'll look into importing the Psych Conditions from Unknown Armies. I think there was a port of it for Nemesis, which is a variant Godlike game, which could easily port to Traveller.

Or maybe I'll try to come up with a way for a high CUF rating to act as a penalty for certain interaction skills that would be hampered by being inured to violence...think John Rambo in the movie First Blood. Hmm...perhaps a -1 DM for CUF 3, -2 DM for CUF 4, and -3 DM for CUF 5.
 
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Do you make your players make morale checks for their characters every few turns, if they fail they cower or run away?

In my experience players do not like morale rules dictating how their character behaves in combat. CUF is a rebranded morale rule.

That said I have toyed in the past with Aftermath like 'personality' traits/secondary characteristics. A character has various secondary stats like combative/competitive, charisma/socialising that sort of thing. These were rated as either -1/0/+1 and affected various situations as they arose.
I wasn't sure they were worth the bother so dropped them.
 
@mike wightman

I don't want to institute a rule to take away player agency. I am looking for a simple mechanic to reflect what battle-hardening would do for you, both the positive and the negative, and how a lack of battle-hardening would likewise come into play...in a soft way, not a hit-them-over-the-head-with-a-hammer way.
 
You could come up with a general overall effectiveness DM that considers this.

A "hardened veteran" is perhaps more likely to hit, or do anything, else because the combat is less distracting. They're not moving slowly, duck and dodging, cowering, etc.

Consider an "under fire" negative DM that applies to most any task, with hardened veterans more resistant to that DM. In the end the hardened veteran never gets a net positive, rather it just offsets the negative effects of the encounter that may slow or impair a less experienced participant.

The surprise factor, mentioned above, could be larger DM for the first few rounds for example.

It would be up to the Referee to determine how much the situation is negatively impacting the players and NPCs. But the key point is that, in the end, the veteran doesn't get bonus, he just doesn't get as impaired.
 
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