My main one is that the book says that the combat on the personal scale is quite lethal and they have two options for making it less lethal. So my question was if any of you had any experience with these and which you felt was better. Or do you have your own home rule?
We use three rules that work in concert to keep the game risky, but not always so deadly.
1. We use the alternate hit location rules (head,torso etc.)
2. Fatigue damage is not shaken off so easily.
3. We use a variation on the "Increased Armor Effectiveness" rule on page 192 as follows:
The way we play it the
purpose of armor is to convert real damage into fatigue damage, how well it does this depends on the shot's AP rating verses the the armor's BAR rating, using the following:
1. If the BAR >= AP the damage of the shot is reduced by the difference and all remaining damage is converted to fatigue damage up to the BAR.
2. If the AP > BAR the shot's damage is not reduced and only the difference between the two is converted to fatigue. This way you still get some protection from wearing armor even against high AP weapons.
I don't have my book's with me at the moment, but here's of how this works out for a 5 point torso hit of various penetration ratings on a character wearing a flak jacket (which I think is AP 4B).
Shot AP Fatigue Dmg. Body Dmg.
1 2 0
2 3 0
3 4 0
4 4 1
5 3 2
6 2 3
This isn't perfect, but it lets weak armor still help in common situations and prevents all my characters from going to the pub in ballistic plate.