Vehicle Combat, man vs machine Options

[Rory Blackhand]

And can you even dodge a melee attack? Under melee you go straight from the success test to resisting damage. I thought this was the main difference from being shot at and being swung at? It doesn't sound like a rigger can use his skill in this melee situation or am I reading it wrong?

[BitBasher]

[Rory Blackhand]

What makes me wonder the most is that the weapon is capable of having a base power high enough to damage a vehicle, but those full auto fire weapons are not. The extra damage from full auto is not similar to the extra damage from a well placed swing of the polearm. After reviewing it, I am leaning towards allowing the extra power to effect the target. If anyone is able to damage an armored target it should be someone that is an expert at using the weapon, ie. lots of dice.

[BitBasher]

Well, in the part of the rules where it says you can increase the power of a melee attack for each 2 sucesses beyond deadly does it say you're increasing the Base Power of the attack? If not you're more than welcome to do it that way, btu it's a house rule. :)

[Wounded Ronin]

I'm still not sure how to handle attempts to run pedestrians over.

[BitBasher]

[Wit]

pedestrian ramming is easy, just figure out the base damage level as determined by speed (1-20mpt = L, 21-60mpt =M, 61-200mpt =S, 201mpt+ = D). Then you stage it up one level for the pedestrian, and down one level for the vehicle (a S level attack will do D to the pedestrian and M to the vehicle). The power is the speed divided by 10, rounded down.

A house run that I like is if your vehicle is going 201mpt+ and you hit a pedestrian, the pedestrian doesn't get a dodge test (hey, you're going 150 miles per hour. they're not even going to see you coming), and the damage stages up to Road Paste (body is gone, equipment is destroyed).

[SpasticTeapot]

I'm going to go with the AD&D "set to recieve a charge" rule: When you're braced for impact and you've got something moving twoards you at high speed and with a lot of mass, you're liable to puncture something. Of course, cars are usually much less squishy than horses, but with a dikoted weapon you're looking at being able to damage something as it drives by. Of course, any amount of force that large is likely to knock you about, and stun damage/knockdown are both possible side-effects.
Think of it this way: You need one heck of a lot of armor to shrug off driving into a large steel spike at 150 kph.

[BitBasher]

[Foreigner]

Hmm.

I had a mental image of a PC standing flat-footed and holding an Uber-Heavy Pistol of some sort in a two-handed grip, a la "Dirty Harry" Callahan, but somehow I don't think that that would work too well in the world of the 2060s.

Unless you substitute a Troll PC for Dirty Harry and a Panther Assault Cannon for the Smith & Wesson Model 29 .44 Magnum, that is....

:P

--Foreigner

[Kagetenshi]

"This is the Panther, the most powerful handgun in the world."
"That's not a handgun."
"Shut up. So I bet you're asking yourself, did I fire six shots, or only five?"
"Um, I can see the belt sticking out."
"Shut up."

~J

[Wounded Ronin]

[Wounded Ronin]

[Foreigner]

Wounded Ronin:

At which point, the PC with the hand-cannon draws an IDENTICAL weapon from under his jacket and says:

"Oh, that's okay. I was a member of The Boy Scouts of America. We're 'ALWAYS prepared'." :D

:eek:

(And yes, I am aware that the motto of the BSA is "Be Prepared", and not "Always Prepared".)

--Foreigner

This post has been edited by Foreigner: Apr 5 2005, 03:42 PM

[Tarantula]

[Tarantula]

[SpasticTeapot]

What about the adept power of rooting? Providing your spear does'nt break, an adept with 10 levels of rooting can just stand in place and watch the vehicle impale itself.
Also...what ever happened to shooting out the tires or the ever-popular "sticky bomb"

(For those of you who have yet to meet a GURPS player buddy of mine, a "sticky bomb" is a grenade covered in neodiyum magnets, with a set of bags under a porous outer layer that break under impact. If your opponent is ferrous (and most cars are) the grenade will stick to the undercarriage (Boom!), and if not, the bags will break, releasing and allowing to mix a potent mixture of cyanoacrylate and accellerator, making the bomb adhere almost instantly. And, if the car's cruising at 150mph, chances are you'll be out of the blast radius to boot.)

And besides, what ever happened to anti-materiel rounds? Lousy against people, marvellous against large metal targets (Read: almost any vehicle)

[Tarantula]

No, an adept with rooting can be flattened in place by the vehicle squishing him terribly. Just as with ramming, if the pedestrian takes D, the vehicle rolls on over them. Also, all 10 levels of rooting does is give the adept 10 extra dice on their knockdown test. Since taking a D wound has no knockdown test, its automatic, it actually grants them no bonus whatsoever, other than a +2 tn to keep the polearm pointed at the vehicle.

Actually, as far as magnetic bombs go. M&M pg 30 says "Note that in 2061, most metals are nonferrous, semi-metallic polymer compounds, including those used in weapons and cyberware. Ferrous metals are still used in heavy vehicles (big cars and trucks), building support structures (railings, beams, cables) and so on."
I'd take Big cars and trucks to be body 4+ vehicles, as cars are defautly body 3, and trucks are standardly body 4. Well, if the bags break on impact, I'm pretty sure unless you chuck it into the front of the car, that it would stick to the pavement. Also, the rigger would get a dodge test vs your throwing skill, which would have a large target number modifier due to the speed the vehicle is travelling at.

How can something that is great against large metallic objects NOT be a good round vs people? If it can rip through steel, it will rip through someones head, including any helmets just fine, so how is it non-effective vs people? They don't exist is what happened to them.