T5 Personal Combat System Review, Opinion, and Problems
- Thread starter Supplement Four
- Start date
Seriously? If you have a firefight in the cargo area or bridge or engine room of your ship, under T5 rules that isn't going to do any damage to critical equipment? Wow, that is a big change! Bring out the FGMPs for repelling hijackers!
Maybe so. Just seems odd that T5 would use keywords (Snub and Body) that are already known to Traveller players as meaning particular things, and then use those same keywords to mean something completely different.
That with all due respect is rubbish. Personal Combat has Battle Damage on p.232 for handling just such systems damage. Note the damage locations tables for Vehicles, ships, devices, tools and weapons. In the Equipment chapter there are armor values for construction materials which can be used for firing through walls and bulkheads.
The only thing I would say is that it will be the referee's responcibility to assign damage from "misses" and accidental hits. There's nothing to stop a PC intentionally aiming at and hitting something on purpose and the Battle damage section gives you the tools to resolve the damage.
David Johansen
SOC-12
One thing I'm having trouble figuring out is why there are so many damage types when they have no different effects or defenses. Bullet and Pen and a couple others. Especially when according to the example damage types don't stack against defenses so Pen doesn't even make it easier to penetrate armor. Given that most weapons with Pen also have Bullet I'd almost think it should do half damage after armor but always be applied to armor first or some such thing.
I'm sure there was more discussion of damage types somewhere in one of the versions but I can't find it in the book.
It also looks to me like the armor values are very high relative to the damage values if like damage types don't stack against armor.
I did finally get a book, though it came from my distributor, which is pretty disappointing. Especially since, when I first talked to them about T5 they didn't even know it was coming and hadn't seen the kickstarter.
I'm sure there was more discussion of damage types somewhere in one of the versions but I can't find it in the book.
It also looks to me like the armor values are very high relative to the damage values if like damage types don't stack against armor.
I did finally get a book, though it came from my distributor, which is pretty disappointing. Especially since, when I first talked to them about T5 they didn't even know it was coming and hadn't seen the kickstarter.
When I stumbled upon the armour rules for starships (p.336), I couldn't help but wonder if there had been an original intention to include rules for anti-layers or coatings on PC sized armour.
David Johansen
SOC-12
There was some discussion of Pen doing half damage after armor but I'm pretty sure that was just a misunderstanding of the severity calculation which is just the difficulty dice for Medic skill rolls.
I'm pretty sure Pen (of all things) should stack with Bullet or Slash. I can see how Frag wouldn't.
I'm pretty sure Pen (of all things) should stack with Bullet or Slash. I can see how Frag wouldn't.
Hopefully, when the dust settles, we'll get a definitive answer from Marc.
Very true, but assuming bulkheads have the same armour value as the ship then you are looking at AV8 minimum on internal bulkheads and they are x10 versus personal weapons which would make it armour value 80 minimum. I have yet to see a personal weapon do enough damage to penetrate that.
Traveller has always in the past specified damage values for getting through bulkheads w explosives or energy weapons, and simply stated that projectile weapons are ineffective against bulkheads. Dunno if T5 has changed that as I don't have it yet.
There is a LOT of important stuff inside a starship other than the bulkheads: controls, machinery, electronics, drives... Also, people; you don't want stray shots going through two partitions to kill a crewmate that you can't even see. (Most of a ship's interior walls are partitions, not bulkheads.)
Sure, if it is a life or death fight against armored pirates you may have to bring out rifles and lasers and just cross your fingers that nothing important gets destroyed in the firefight. Otherwise, you are careful about escalating from non-lethal weapons to something like a snub pistol that is designed to minimize risk to anything other than your target, because shooting a hole through a vital jump drive component while in a backwater system can ruin your whole year.
True but bulkheads will only occur between compartments. From the ship damage tables you can reason out where these occur on the deckplan. Internal walls and partitions will have AVs in the range 4 to 60 or Wood to Structural metals. Personal weapons certainly stand a chance of penetrating those. Maybe a Marine in Battledress with a SpaceAxe is just like a tin opener?
Breaching charges and massive explosions are a threat to bulkheads of AV80+
On the other hand if you have any sense you don't bring personal weapons onto a starship and engage in a fire fight that could end up breaching the hull, internal walls or damaging vital equipment.
