Alternate Core Documents

[Seraph-Colak]

The light spell illuminates potency yards and dazzles (-10 penalties) half that. Within one yard and you're blinded and take -30s. Theres no scale for the -30 so what happens if you have a one trick pony with a super charged light spell? Is it still just one yard or should there be a scale on that?

[Chayn]

As Kkat suggested, I put my two caps here:
1)It would be a lot easier for Short burst to hit target once for first Degree of Success(a simple success) and once more for every two DoSs with a maximum nimber of hits equal to 3 or weapon's Rate of Fire, whatever is better.For Full Auto one hit for first DoS and one more for each additional DoS until maximum of 10(or how much bullets is fired) of weapons FA Rate of Fire.
2)Make a table of "Multiple hits" so that a player could look at hit zone of first bullet and just trace where others went if it is not precise shots we're talking about.

If somepony wonders what I'm talking about just google Warhammer 40k RP "Multiple Hit" table. It will require some tinkering, but save quite a lot of time.

[Viewing_Glass]

I like the idea Chayn to try and simplify things, but I think it unfairly penalizes Burst and ROF weaponry. Considering that, on average, you are looking at a roll of a 51 on a d100, in order to get the most out of those types of weapons you are going to need to have a 100 in that skill. While this seems alright, it also means that enemies that use these types of weapons (for the PCs to get as loot) will end up having to have that high of a skill.

Like I said, I understand the idea of trying to simplify the rolls regarding Burst and ROF weaponry (Because I've used Arcane Blast at Expert) but, at the same time, I don't feel this is the proper way to go about it.

[TyrannisUmbra]

I like the idea Chayn to try and simplify things, but I think it unfairly penalizes Burst and ROF weaponry. Considering that, on average, you are looking at a roll of a 51 on a d100, in order to get the most out of those types of weapons you are going to need to have a 100 in that skill. While this seems alright, it also means that enemies that use these types of weapons (for the PCs to get as loot) will end up having to have that high of a skill.

Like I said, I understand the idea of trying to simplify the rolls regarding Burst and ROF weaponry (Because I've used Arcane Blast at Expert) but, at the same time, I don't feel this is the proper way to go about it.

They're also already some of the strongest weapons in the game by far. They need to be heavily penalized in terms of accuracy in order to make up for being so strong. I've gone through the math in this thread before, but the gist was that some of the RoF weapons could very easily kill a high level character in endgame armor (We're talking between 25-40 DT), within a single round of combat. And the lower end weapons are just as bad, if not worse when compared to the levels of armor you'll have at that point in time.

[TyrannisUmbra]

Here's a pretty big question that I just encountered right now.

The target spell (and also SATS by extention) doesn't specify whether the AP amount is a hard cap (as in, your attacks can't exceed it and still get the bonus), or a soft cap (after the attack that passes that number, the spell ends). I'd like some clarification to be added to the spell description.

[Viewing_Glass]

Ah. I think its meant to be a hard cap (to prevent abuse). But yes, that should be specified.

In regards to ROF/Burst Weaponry: Only against targets with lower DT and very little DR do these have much impact. However, in higher level games you find that very rarely do those things occur.

[TyrannisUmbra]

In regards to ROF/Burst Weaponry: Only against targets with lower DT and very little DR do these have much impact. However, in higher level games you find that very rarely do those things occur.

It's been quite a while since the last discussion about this, but the old discussion still applies since the rules were left in place as they were. The only change since then was crit multiplier, as far as I can remember. The degrees of success idea is a much better one than what we use now, except in the case of crits, since most crits would therefore be maximum degrees of success. You could fix it by saying for burst/full auto, crits are rolls that end in 1, but that seems messy...

The older discussion about burst/RoF weapons and why they need to be limited by more than just weapon skill is included below:

Spoiler: show

Auto weapons are absolutely scary to someone in light armor, they're supposed to be, especially if that pony has sunk three weapon specialization perks into them. But, let's look at the math. Assuming somepony did use that twice a round, they'd do 96+32d10, or 272 damage taking average rolls (let's assume all the attacks hit). So, 272-8*DT, definitely scary if you've only got 10 DT, eating 192 damage there. But, at a DT of 20, easily available with 500 caps dropped into armor, that amounts to 112 damage - scary, but far from unreasonable. At my character Night Light's current DT of 31 with 20% DR, he'd take a whopping 20 damage from that full-round attack. Some weapons are good against low DT targets, some are better against high DT targets.

...

Not only that, but an assault rifle is supposed to be low tier! The kind of weapon that you wield when the only ponies that have over 200 HP are the ones with 9-10 END, and pretty much everyone has 10DT. You want a better estimate for your endgame examples?

Assault Carbine, 15+1d10 at 25AP, with a RoF of 5. 5mm rounds ignore 10DT baseline. Not even counting ranks of Action Filly, you get three bursts a round. 75+20d10 per 5-shot burst, 3 bursts, making 225+60d10 for a round, applying (DT-10)*15. Average rolls, 555 damage total before reduction. DT of 10, take full damage. Instant death. DT of 20, take 405. Instant death. 30DT and 20% DR, 204 damage per round. Two rounds to die.

Assault Carbine, 15+1d10 at 25AP, with a RoF of 5. 5mm rounds ignore 10DT baseline. Not even counting ranks of Action Filly, you get three bursts a round. 75+20d10 per 5-shot burst, 3 bursts, making 225+60d10 for a round, applying (DT-10)*15. Average rolls, 555 damage total before reduction. DT of 10, take full damage. Instant death. DT of 20, take 405. Instant death. 30DT and 20% DR, 204 damage per round. Two rounds to die.

Something's off here. How are you getting 20d10 per burst?

Three ranks of Armed Dangerous will give you an additional 3d10 per bullet, for a total of 15+4d10 on the assault rifle. Full Rate of Fire causes 75+20d10 per 5-shot burst.

Viewing Glass got it in one.

Ummm well one problem, full auto fire's twice the bullets as its ROF, and if you roll odd on a two hit that hits its two hits not one, so potentially twice that in damage, and with crits, twice that as well!

[Viewing_Glass]

There was the interesting thought that, instead of making them solely limited by number of degrees of success (Have a 100 in a skill and roll a 91? Sorry, only hit with one bullet), is to straight out decrease accuracy for ROF weaponry. Perhaps one of the best ways I have seen this done is as follows:

Each shot is at a -10% penalty to accuracy, with an additional penalty of 5% multiplied by your ROF, and if you are under Strength for the weapon, there is an additional -5% accuracy to hit for every roll per point of strength you are short.

This results in an ROF 3 weapon, when used in Full-Auto mode, giving the Wielder a -25% to hit a target.

So, let's run those numbers again. The T2 Assault Rifle has an ROF 3. On average, you hit with 4.5 attacks, rounding up to 5 for ease of math. Assuming you have 100 firearms and strength appropriate, this means you are going to hit 3/4 of the time. With three ranks of armed and dangerous, that means base damage (assuming all shots hit) is 75+20d10, or 185 damage on average (Average damage of a d10 is 5.5. Times 20, it comes out to 110). With DT 10, the math looks like (185-50)*.75 (Damage - DT*5. Total multiplied my chance to hit). This comes out to 101.25 damage. Yikes, that hurts, but at 35 AP you are going to only get two of those off in a turn. This also doesn't take into account weapon condition (which, in turn, lowers the damage even further), range, or any misc bonuses to hit or miss.

Now, let's look at the extreme/end game case. Minigun, with its ROF of 6 against two examples. A pony in Reinforced Canterlot Security Barding, perfect quality, with perfect Quality Mesh Cloak and an Elixer that gives 10% DR. Our other pony is wearing Power Armor, Perfect Quality, with Perfect Quality Mesh Cloak and has a similar elixer, netting him 30% DR.

Average Damage for normal Ammo (3 Ranks Armed and Dangerous and Bloody Mess): 9 Bullets times 15+5d10 equals 382.5 damage, rounding up to 383 damage.
Reduction to hit: 10 plus 6 times 5 equals a -40% chance to hit.
Chance to hit: 60%

Light Armor Example:
Total initial DT: 26 DT
After 5mm: 16 DT
Damage after DT: 239 Damage
Damage after DR: 216 Damage
Damage after Hit reduction: 143.4 damage.

Heavy Armor Example:
Initial DT: 34 DT
After 5mm: 24 DT
Damage after DT: 167
Damage after DR: 116.9 damage.
Damage after Hit Reduction: 70.14 damage.

So, yeah. Even with the nastiness that is a Minigun with three ranks of armed and dangerous and bloody mess, the hurt still delivers against light armor while heavy armor trudges on through, and that isn't counting Knight in Shining Armor or Tough Hide. So, the reduction actually does help things out overall. Those in Light Armor continue to have problems with ROF weaponry (Which, they should be) while those in Heavy Armor grunt a bit and keep on working.

[SilverlightPony]

So much math.

[Viewing_Glass]

I was studying for Statistics. Thus my excuse for being on math.