Damage Table Rule?

[Kell]

I have come up with a quirky rule that might help make the game seem a little more down to earth. The rules state that when creating a mech in BF or QS you add up all damage capable of doing for a certain range, divide by 10, and that is the damage output for that particular unit. Problem is, is that the armor to total damage ratio doesn't quite add up. (hence all my heavies fall in the first couple of rounds.) So borrowing from another thread, and incorporating the Cluster Hits table to roll on after a hit, allows for an easy transition to a unit not hitting with all his weapons every round. But nckestrel brought up a good point. I am only counting the weapons when I hit not the weapons that might hit if I fail the To- Hit roll. So I came up with my own tables.

When you roll your 2D6 to determine whether or not you hit, add in another dice (preferably a different color to distinguish it). This dice is the damage result dice. If you succeed in your To Hit roll, consult the Unit Damage Table to see how much damage your unit actually did by using the damage result dice.

Ex: you Marauder does 4 damage at medium range, You successfully rolled the To Hit number with your regular 2D6 and got a '3' with your 3rd (Damage Result Dice). Therefore you hit for 2 points of damage (probably hit with both PPC's, but missed with everything else).

But if you failed your To - Hit roll, and your Damage result dice shows a 6! you consult the Rate of Miss Damage.
So if the Marauder misses the To- Hit roll, but rolled a 6 with his 3rd dice, he still does 1 point of damage (scored a medium laser hit perhaps).

Anyway here is the table let me know what you think. I have played it once through and it was pretty fun. Made the game seem a little more down to earth and didn't take up a lot of extra time. This works better when playing Quickstrike or Quickstrike with hexes

[Papabees]

I like the concept and the table but don't like the idea of having to consult the chart as I think it would slow things down a bit. If there was some way to have the die results already listed on the cards per range... As an alternative something we have tried is to roll a set of 2d6 for each potential damage point. meaning if my Mad does 3 dmg at medium range I roll 3 sets of 2d6 and for each set that hits i score a point of damage. Seemed to go pretty well.

[Medron Pryde]

Whoa....that's a good idea too...bring out the box of death for QuickStrike....

:)

[Kell]

Rolling 2D6 for each point of damage sounds like a lot of rolling. Especially if you can do 8-10 damage.

[Medron Pryde]

Yeah, but its what you do in BTech when you hit with an LBX 10...;)  And there really aren't many 'Mechs that do that much damage.

Most 'Mechs seem to hit the 3 damage or so range for heavies, and 4 or 5 for assaults at most.  It is a fairly rare unit that does more than that.

On most units, you'd be rolling between 1 and 3 sets of dice which really isn't any more than most people do when playing BattleTech.

[Wereferret]

This is a great idea, and is probably exactly what I needed to be able to use Quickstrike with Warchest ongoing Chaos campaign games.  Simple, and appears like it would make the game less deadly.  I'll playtest this one at the house with the wife this week and post a review on how it goes. 

[Papabees]

Rolling 2D6 for each point of damage sounds like a lot of rolling. Especially if you can do 8-10 damage.

Also you roll them all at once so it no biggie..."I need eights...Two sets out of four hit...two damage".

[Kell]

tried another way of getting the damage a little more realistic to battletech without having to roll alot of dice. The maz number of dice is 6 ( three sets of 2D6)

when you roll choose on set of 2D6 to represent the "odd - number" damage result (black or red dice seem to be handy)
The table goes like this:

Max Damage              1        2          3         4          5         6          7          8           9         10
Damage per 2D6        1      1/1     1/1/1   1/1/2   2/2/1   2/2/2   2/2/3    3/3/2    3/3/3    3/3/4

Played it once and seem to do the job by making the game feel more like reality. The guys I play with also admitted that they never understood how all weapons automatically hit with one 2D6 roll and like this new way.

[Wereferret]

Kell,

Just to let you know, we ran a QS game this weekend using your original houserule posting from the top of the thread, and it worked great!  We were running through the Sword and Dragon Campaign, that we normally run under TW rules and tried QS, both to play a couple missions more quickly and to just try something new.  The transition was remarkably smooth, and your damage system meant took some of the edge off our guys staring at their precious mech's that were always only 3 or 4 bubbles away from annihilation.  Some of us kept forgetting to roll the extra D6 in the event of possibly scoring a damage on a miss, but otherwise it added no time to the game, made sense with the rules and was appreciated by all the players.  Nice job!   [notworthy]

P.S. - 100th Post!   [rockon]

[Medron Pryde]

Yeah, I did the one set of 2d6 for each point of damage idea at a game not long ago.  It worked PERFECTLY, and really helped to randomize the damage a lot.

:)