A Time of War Examples

[monbvol]

Since it has been asked for by a few people I've decided to start a new thread to show examples of A Time of War's various mechanics.

Feel free to contribute and/or ask questions.  To get the ball rolling I'll start off with fire arm based combat damage resolution.  All examples will be as I best understand the rules as written, not using any of my house rules to avoid confusion.  Attributes will also be assumed to be a 4 for any examples where attributes are needed.

GM has decided not to use the optional hit location rules because they slow down the game too much for his tastes and is using standard lethality rules.

The below examples are to explicitly illustrate the damage rules.  As such certain elements in the narratives are taken for granted as just happening without showing full turn/combat resolution.

Non-burst fire firearms versus personal armor:

Ranger Bob is on foot with his standard bolt action rifle and sees Poacher Joe about to shoot some poor endangered animal with his combat shot gun.

Ranger Bob having the drop on Poacher Joe snaps off a quick shot at Poacher Joe.  GM declares it is Medium Range for Ranger Bob's bolt action rifle.  Ranger Bob's player rolls 2d6 adding 3 for his Small Arms skill and subtracting 2 for range for a final total of 8(rolled a 7 with a final total modifier of +1 to the roll versus a target number of 7).  Ranger Bob hits Poacher Joe but what Ranger Bob hadn't counted on was Poacher Joe was wearing a flak jacket.  Since the flak jacket has a ballistic rating of 5 versus the bolt action rifle's AP of 4 with a type of ballistic this reduces the base damage of the bolt action rifle from 4 to 3 and since Ranger Bob did not roll a high enough margin of success to get any bonus damage, Poacher Joe only takes 3 standard damage and one fatigue damage for taking lethal damage since the round failed to penetrate his armor.  If the round had penetrated or Poacher Joe wasn't wearing any armor he'd have taken even more lethal damage instead and most likely have to make a check to keep from passing out.

Poacher Joe manages to duck out of sight and play hide and seek with Ranger Bob and works into Short Range where he has the drop on Ranger Bob.  Poacher Joe rolls 2d6 plus 4 for his Small Arms skill with no modifier for range due to being Short Range.  Ranger Bob being an under paid government employee on the fringe of his realm has to make due with a second hand Capellan Confederation Standard Infantry Suit with a Ballistic rating of 4 on the torso.  This is a problem for Ranger Bob as Poacher Joe is using a Combat Shotgun with an AP of 3 and is a Splash weapon with a poor result of 7(base roll of 3 addin 4 for his skill versus a target number of 7), still just enough to hit.  When the optional hit location rules are not in play Splash weapons have their AP increased by 1 to represent hitting less armored adjacent locations.  So Ranger Bob's armor is penetrated taking 5 lethal damage with 1 fatigue just for taking damage and since so much damage penetrated his armor all values of his armor are reduced by 1!  What is even more important is that he has to make a check to stay awake with a -3 injury penalty!

Burst fire capable weapon with AP versus tactical armor:

Meanwhile on another battlefield we find PBI Jack and his comrades ready to ambush an enemy mech.  Armed with an autorifle and AP ammunition they wait for the mech to get in close knowing they need every advantage they can get.  PBI Jack finally opens up letting his full burst go.  Rolling 2d6 adding his Small Arms skill of +4 and a further +3 for the size of the Battlemech and noting his weapon's statistics a -1 for firing a burst PBI Jack gets really lucky and rolls two 6's and proceeded to roll another d6 for a 4 bringing his final total to 22.  Battlemechs are protected by BAR 10 tactical armor meaning 4 damage is subtracted from PBI Jack's attack with the remainder divided by 10 and rounded normally.  Since he fired a full burst of AP ammo PBI Jack rolled well enough to do 17 damage, subtracting 4 from that damage brings it down to 13 damage.  Dividing by 10 and rounding normally this means PBI Jack all by himself managed to do 1 point of damage to a Battlemech.

Next post I'll cover recurring damage weapons and general ordinance.

[Acolyte]

Standard lethality rules Poacher Joe would take 3 points standard damage, not fatigue. it's one of the armor tweaks from the companion that changes it.

   - Shane

[Bedwyr]

Thank you for this.

Though any chance of splitting up the paragraphs a bit more with some titles or bullets? It'd help me process the information faster. No worries if it's too much trouble for you.

[monbvol]

I actually did want some feedback, especially on formatting, before I continued this project.  As such I'll play around with this a bit then get back to examples here after a while(got some other things to finish up first).

And doh, so used to the improved armor effectiveness rules in AToW on page 192 that I think of those as the standard rules.

[Atlas3060]

Also Combat Shotgun is 3B/5S, not six.

So that would have been 5 points, plus if you take damage 1 Fatigue Point.

[monbvol]

One more thing to fix.  :P

Let me know if that is distinct enough of an edit to help separate the paragraphs.  If it is I'll go ahead and get on to recurring damage, ordinance, and other area effect weapons next.

[Atlas3060]

One more thing to fix.  :P

I like the intent of this thread.  O0
So yes I'll errata you whenever I can.

Also if you need another hand in this, I'll try to cook up things.

[monbvol]

You are more than welcome to add examples.  I'd love nothing more than this to be a very useful thread for the community.

To keep the ball rolling though:

Anti-vehicle ordinance versus Battlearmor:

Once again we find PBI Jack in the thick of things where he probably doesn't belong, facing down a suit of Sylph Battlearmor.  This time though PBI Jack has a SRM launcher with an anti-vehicle warhead.  The GM declares a Medium Range shot and PBI Jack rolls 2d6 plus his Support Weapons skill of 3 and subtracts 2 for range for a total of 12.  Since this is an ordinance weapon Margin of Success does not add to the base damage as it does with other weapon types.  The Anti-Vehicle warhead is an AP 8 eXplosive 12 Base Damage weapon and consulting the chart on 187 we find that the Sylph's 5 armor gives it a 7/7/6/6 Melee/Ballistic/Energy/eXplosive rating.  8 is greater than 6 and thus there is no base damage reduction leaving 12 base damage to be divided by 6(the eXplosive rating for a Sylph).  This is enough to apply 2 points of damage to the Sylph armor with a further standard damage going directly to the operator and a fatigue for taking standard damage.

[bluedragon7]

This is a good idea, for new players it might be helpful to add a kind of table/list in addition to the text, with each line representing one operation.

[monbvol]

Which is making me consider having just one example a post when I go back and clean up the thread again.  That way you could link people to particular examples without having to go through the entire thread.

[PurpleDragon]

Lurking for the examples as they show.  Not only will I find this useful, but it should end any disagreements that might creep up in my group once I get it going again. 
 
Thank you for your time and effort.    :)

[Kitsune413]

You say it is medium range. That he adds 3 to his 2d6 roll and subtracts 2. But you don't say what his target number was. Why it was his target number. Or what he rolled (which was a 7. But it would be more concise if you stated it.

You say he has the drop on someone but don't mention that because of that you are skipping initiative.

[Kitsune413]

To help I'll just run an example encounter. We will have some Dest Troopers assaulting a Federated Suns fire base. Who wants to be my Volunteer Dest Trooper? Good way to involve some melee.

[Atlas3060]

Small Arms are Simple/Basic skills, as such their TN is 7.
So when adding and removing all the modifiers to the roll (once again roll not target number...I gotta remember that at times), if the result was 8 (like in the first example) it was a success.
Same goes for the second example as well, its final value was 7 and was a success.

[monbvol]

To help I'll just run an example encounter. We will have some Dest Troopers assaulting a Federated Suns fire base. Who wants to be my Volunteer Dest Trooper? Good way to involve some melee.

I was trying to focus on the express mechanic of how damage was dealt with fire arms but thinking about it I take the point that it may be as you indicate, wise to elaborate and clarify.

Small Arms are Simple/Basic skills, as such their TN is 7.
So when adding and removing all the modifiers to the roll, if the result was 8 (like in the example) it was a success.

I've learned not to take things like this for granted.  Though that will be the challenge for this thread, how to provide sufficient example without going too far.

[skiltao]

When the optional hit location rules are not in play Splash weapons have their AP increased by 1 to represent hitting less armored adjacent locations.

Surely the default rules for combat use the Splash weapon's default AP value, and it's the optional rule that would have you modify the AP (decreasing it by 1).

[Kitsune413]

Surely the default rules for combat use the Splash weapon's default AP value, and it's the optional rule that would have you modify the AP (decreasing it by 1).

Nope. Without using Hit Location Rules splash gives you +1 AP.

When using hit location rules Splash gives you -1 AP. But when you roll your location roll. It hits the lowest armor rated adjacent area.

So when using the Hit Location Rules. If you shoot them in the chest but they aren't wearing a helmet then they take it to the face. Likewise, in the same situation, if you shot them in the face it would just stay there.

[monbvol]

Yup.  Though I'm having to hold myself up for a bit now as I contemplate some revisions and adjustments for how to proceed.  Like I know for sure I need to start giving page numbers for reference in AToW for where to find these rules that are being explained.

[skiltao]

I did not know ATOW would do something that silly.

A request: whenever ATOW does something as unintuitive as that, please call it out as unintuitive, so readers know it is ATOW being silly and not you making a mistake.

[Kitsune413]

I did not know ATOW would do something that silly.

A request: whenever ATOW does something as unintuitive as that, please call it out as unintuitive, so readers know it is ATOW being silly and not you making a mistake.

That depends on someones definition of unintuitive. I think one of the big things that is happening is that ATOW follows Battletechs example. Its a simulator. All RPG's are simulating something. But ATOW tries to be more granular.

[skiltao]

This particular case has nothing to do with granularity or being a simulator; it's very straightforward: the default rules should use the default values, and the modified rule the modified value.

You may be right that other cases will be less clear cut. Since the purpose of this thread is to clarify ATOW's rules, it would seem best to call them out too.

[Kitsune413]

This particular case has nothing to do with granularity or being a simulator; it's very straightforward: the default rules should use the default values, and the modified rule the modified value.

You may be right that other cases will be less clear cut. Since the purpose of this thread is to clarify ATOW's rules, it would seem best to call them out too.

They are trying to simulate splash damage. In a situation where you aren't using the rule they intend to increase the weapons armor piercing to simulate the splash effect.

When they don't you subtract from the armor piercing value but it can spread.

For ease of simplicity you could that it should have the default armor penetration when not using hit location rules and -2 ap when you are. But then you have a weapon quality that doesn't do anything without hit location rules. So maybe they wanted to keep the weapon quality.

[Atlas3060]

Apparently in the rulebook, Hit locations are optional.

Basic personal combat rules presume that all characters aim their
attacks at the target’s center of mass, and so any damage done is
generalized.....

So his example was the default way of playing: no hit locations, bump the AP of the shotgun up by 1.

[skiltao]

Atlas, that's been said two or three times already. (Unless the AP increased by 1 because the weapon switched ammo type from from slug to shot? In which case, that's not at all clear in the example.)

Kitsune, firstly, how do you get -2 AP? The example says there's only a difference of 1. Secondly, I doubt that was the rationale; it's more normal to have optional weapon qualities than it is for weapon values to be wrong by default.

[Kitsune413]

Kitsune, firstly, how do you get -2 AP? The example says there's only a difference of 1. Secondly, I doubt that was the rationale; it's more normal to have optional weapon qualities than it is for weapon values to be wrong by default.

If you don't use the hit location rules it is +1 AP to splash weapons.
If you do use the hit location rules it is -1AP to splash weapons but can hit a less armoured location.

If you were trying to simplify the rule by setting the splash weapons AP one point higher and ignoring the splash rule entirely when not using hit location rules, then to follow the current rule you would have a 2 point AP disparity that would have to be remedied.

[skiltao]

Aha! Thank you. Yes, that would be better.

[monbvol]

Combat Shotgun by default uses shot instead of slug.  Indeed except for the Avenger CCW there is no slug option for shotguns.  I'll admit this is a bit odd but that's the way AToW is written and that it is not entirely out of question that by the age of interstellar flight shotguns only persist due to being able to use shot and any incident where slug would be more advantageous there is a better alternative in some other weapon.  After all you do have to switch barrels to switch between solid slug and shot for shotguns.

Still though I take the point that my narrative should be changed to reflect that not using hit locations is the default rule and that optional hit locations are not in effect.

[Kitsune413]

Shotguns and Needlers with low AP are well liked when fighting aboard space ships where puncturing an interior bulkhead can be potentially deadly.

[monbvol]

And re-reading my narrative I do see I already call out hit locations as the optional rule.  Still though a lot to consider on my part about how to structure this to be useful and clear before I can get back to writing examples.

[beachhead1985]

This is great and really helps me understand the combat rules a bit more.

@ Monbvol

Will you be doing something like this for chargen?