Chase combat houserules, A few tweaks to flesh it out Options

[Shrike30]

Abbandon's questions got me thinking about the house rules I use for chase combat, so I figured I'd post them up here, and see what people thought.

Chase combat turns last 60 seconds (or 20 combat turns). In theory, you're only supposed to use them when the entire combat takes place in vehicles, but sometimes that gets a little ridiculous to assume, and it's annoying to have to switch out of chase combat every time you want some ganger on a street corner to take a shot at a passing car.

If the primary participants in the combat are in vehicles, but you have something random going on (such as the chase happening in the Redmond Barrens, with gangers spraying bullets and RPGs at the car full of PCs chasing one of their member's car through their neighborhood), you would probably do well to continue using the chase rules, but have the ground-based fighters treated as threats that are present for one turn (as each turn is another minute of the chase, and the people who had range to you a minute ago probably don't any more if you're doing 120 down side streets). Each ground-based shooter could, in fact, represent several shooters... if you've got gangers hanging out every window in the neighborhood shooting AKs at the car, it might make sense to say that they're exposed to an average of 4 shooters at any given time during that chase turn. So, 4 gangers would involved in the "chase" during that turn (despite the fact that there's more like 40, spread out along the chase route), taking the usual penalties for shooting at moving vehicles, and allowing the characters in the vehicles to spend time shooting at the static threats around them, not just the vehicle they're involved in a chase with. Imagine the rolling convoy scene from Black Hawk Down... a volume of fire directed out of the vehicles would reduce some of the fire coming back into the vehicles. Each turn, you should assess the threat posed to the vehicles in the chase, and have a number of shooters "outside" to represent that.

Another house rule I threw onto chase combat is that all ammunition expenditure is multiplied by 10, then rounded in a somewhat appropriate direction (trying to imply that since each turn is 20x longer than your normal combat turn, you might get a few more shots off). A Ruger Super Warhawk is emptied every time you "fire" it (6 rounds is less than 10). A Predator IV runs out every two times you fire it (15 rounds in the mag, and I round generously). A submachinegun on burst fire runs through 30 rounds every time you fire a short burst, so sammies will be slamming in a new mag every IP. Long bursts (eating 60 rounds apiece) and Full bursts (eating 100 rounds apiece) are possible with weapons like submachineguns (usually running 30 rounds or so in the mag apiece), but when you reload, it expends 2-3 magazines in the process: Crazy Eddie has spent this chase combat IP just laying into the other car with his Ingram Smartgun, so in game terms, he's fired a Full burst. On the next Chase Combat IP, (in game turns) he uses a free action to eject the mag with his smartlink and a simple action to put in a new one... a normal reload action. Smartguns hold 32 rounds (i think? roughly 30) in the magazine, and he's just expended 100 rounds, so after "reloading," Eddie has left three empty mags (32x3 = 96, close enough to 100 for me) on the floor of the car. The Ruger Super Warhawk mentioned earlier would go through two speedloaders every time you reloaded it, since 6x2=12, or pretty close to 10.

Any thoughts? Questions?

[James McMurray]

I don't think they're really necessary. You can already incorporate sporadic environmental threats just by having some potshots happen during the turn. Ammunition expenditure is less because you take fewer shots. If you're spending more rounds you should be getting more rolls to damage your opponents.

The main rule that chase combat needs is some way to factor speed into the equation, but even that isn't really necessary. If you're in a city setting maneuverability is more important than speed, and if you're in an outdoor setting where disparate speeds are great and full speed can be achieved, the faster vehicle gets to escape if it wants to. If it wants to stay you're in standard chase combat.

[Nim]

[James McMurray]

If you want to account for that lot time, the easiest thing to do would be to lower the length of the chase round. You can use the chse rules with 3 second rounds, although they still wouldn't mesh well with regular combat because of the abstraction of distanes. 1 chase round = 3 regular rounds would make for faster action and still allow time for lots of jockeying for position.

[Abbandon]

lol im glad my retarded post inspired thought. I was just trying to figure out how normal chase combat works lol.

Now that i understand that vehicle combat is a more time consuming event than combat on the ground i dont think i agree with your ammo house rule. To me a vehicle turn isnt about guys blazing away on full auto just emptying clips into each other.

It is cars swerving and speeding up and slowing down and making the people in the vehicles shoot LESS. They are not gonna shoot wildly not unless they are gangers. Professional runners would be taking aim at tires and heads and windows.

Atleast thats what i think of when i think about a car chase.