Talismans are weird though

Hey, let's have a look at talismans, a specific subtype of magic item in Pathfinder.

"These amulets are imbued with magic that allows them to protect their wearer against a very specific danger. A talisman triggers automatically as soon as the listed condition is fulfilled. Although talismans occupy the neck slot, up to three talismans can be worn on one cord or chain. Wearing multiple talismans in this way offers a greater variety of protection, but a wearer can benefit from only one talisman’s effect at a time. If another talisman would be triggered while its wearer is under the effect of another talisman, that talisman is not triggered and can still be used later." -- Source

Talismans come in greater and lesser varieties. A greater talisman is usable once per day. A lesser talisman is a single-use item that turns to dust after use - Pathfinder loves these kinds of items, though in my experience players hate them. Then again, my players tend to think of treasures in terms of things they invest money in, rather than the older approach of stuff you find randomly lying around. I should do more of that.

Pricing of talismans is odd. A talisman is "use-activated" (it triggers when you do the thing or the thing happens to you - no magic words required), and most of them replicate a spell effect. According to the magic item creation rules (which are guidelines, sure, but this is a relatively simple case): Single use, use-activated item costs (spell level x caster level x 50 gp). This covers potions and so on.

A lesser talisman of beneficial winds, for example, replicates the 1st-level spell feather fall. This requires a caster level of 1, so our calculation is 1 x 1 x 50gp. That is indeed the price of the item! Good.

A lesser talisman of danger sense, on the other hand, replicates the 1st-level spell anticipate peril at caster level 5 (which gives a +5 bonus on a single initiative roll). This calculation is thereafore 1 x 5 x 50gp, or 250gp. However, the actual cost is 750gp.

A lesser talisman of freedom gives 3 rounds of freedom of movement (a 4th-level spell) when grappled, paralyzed, or entangled. It has caster level 7, so our calculation is 1,400gp. However, its duration is drastically curtailed, to 3 rounds rather than the 70 minutes the caster level suggests. Nevertheless, it costs 900gp, which is a very modest discount. Alternatively, the party wizard could purchase a wand with a single charge for 420gp, and cast it before entering the danger zone - this is a bit of a gamble, but it's significantly cheaper, doesn't occupy an item slot, and will last for several encounters. After all, one encounter normally lasts less than a minute!

A lesser talisman of life's breath brings a wearer back to life (maybe) the first time they die. This is a 5th-level spell effect, with CL 9th, giving 2,250gp as our basic cost. The talisman costs significantly more, a mighty 3,500gp.

For single-use items, these are extremely expensive and it's not surprising players disdain them at the levels they're normally available. What's going on? The greater versions costs ten times the price, but are usable once per day.

Part of the puzzle seems to be that quirk in the slot usage. "Although talismans occupy the neck slot, up to three talismans can be worn on one cord or chain." That might explain why a talisman of danger sense is triple the expected price, along with similar items like the sealed summons talisman; the others are harder to calculate.

If that's the case, it creates a weird situation. A talisman is worth more because it has the potential to share a neck slot with up to two other items which are also talismans. That isn't worthless, but it's quite a specific requirement. In effect, talismans push you towards getting other talismans in order to justify the inflated price tag - even though this means you end up paying well over the odds for all three items. Moreover, the range of talismans is quite limited. If you wanted to use a neck slot for anything that isn't a single-use or once-per-day effect, or any effect that isn't covered by the existing range of talimans, you're out of luck.

At the lower end of the scale, there's a perverse effect where somebody who could never afford several talismans probably can't afford one, because the pricing is inflated on the assumption of taking all three. Why the talisman of beneficial winds gets a free ride here I don't know. A 3rd-level NPC sailor could afford a 500gp greater ToBW to survive falling from the crow's nest, assuming they don't need anything else (though the sensible thing would be to have a couple for the ship, which are issued to whoever's climbing the rigging). Our 3rd-level NPC guard can only afford a lesser akoben talisman to resist sleep spells, since the greater version is 4,500gp and she'd need to be 7th level for that, at which point there are many other things she should be investing in, like decent armour.

But wait! Pathfinder has actual rules for incorporating multiple magic item properties in a single slot.

"Multiple Different Abilities: Abilities such as an attack roll bonus or saving throw bonus and a spell-like function are not similar, and their values are simply added together to determine the cost. For items that take up a space on a character’s body, each additional power not only has no discount but instead has a 50% increase in price." -- Source

If we follow that principle, a lesser talisman should cost at most (spell level x caster level x 75gp), and 10x that for the greater versions. Not all of them are straight-up spell effects; however, where they vary from spells, they tend to offer worse benefits, impose penalties, or only trigger after some unpleasant experience (such as being shot at least twice in a single round). On the whole, this is equivalent. There's also the factor that many of them reflexively trigger, whereas in most cases (unlike the talisman of beneficial winds) the comparable spell isn't reflexive. That's certainly worth more! Regrettably, Pathfinder doesn't suggest how much more. As a starting-point, I'll say it's double the cost. If the trigger doesn't help with the effect that triggered it - say, fire resistance only after you've taken fire damage - it doesn't increase.

This would suggest pricing as follows:

75 gp (Beneficial Winds), 150 gp (Akoben), 150 gp (Sealed Summons), 150 gp (Warrior's Courage), 450 gp (Arrow Protection), 150 gp (Pentacle), 450 gp (Scarab), 450 gp (Triskelion), 300 gp (Danger Sense), 900 gp (Freedom), 1,250 gp (Ankh), 750 gp (Protection from Flames), 150 gp (Good Fortune), 2,100 gp (Healing Power), 3,000 gp (Hamsa), 3,500 gp (Life's Breath)

The scarab talisman is tricky. Immunity to a very limited subset of poisons and to distraction, for the duration of one combat, only if the rerolled saving throw is successful? The 3,000gp swarmbane clasp gives immunity to distraction and allows the wearer to deal full damage to swarms, permanently, but doesn't help with poison. Assuming the poison immunity and damage benefits are roughly equivalent, that suggests the talisman should be closer to 300 go, boosted to 450gp because it's a shareable slot.

As for the talisman of danger sense? Games really really want initiative to be valuable, but in reality, it's only valuable in the first round of combat and only if it allows you to go before the enemy. After that, everyone's going cyclically. Still, that's not my call. On the other hand, heightened awareness is also a 1st-level spell, which hangs around much longer than anticipate peril, and gives you a flat +4 bonus to initiative without the need for any heightened caster levels. That suggests the real value of the talisman is much lower, around 300 gp since it's reflexive, and it gives a +4 bonus.

The talisman of good fortune allows rerolling a die, and only a natural 1. This is a strictly worse, reflexive version of hermean potential and worth far less than suggested here.

The talisman of healing power is almost twice the price of an equivalent potion (by pricing rules, 1,400 gp). It's functionally similar to greater false life, which would cost 2,100 gp and gives temporary hit points, with the same net result. Given the long duration of a 7th-level greater false life, paying for the reflexivity seems excessive. The aegis of recovery gives slightly fewer hit points, but triggers under much nastier circumstances (imminent death, not moderate injury) and gives an ongoing bonus to a variety of saves, for only 1,500gp.

The talisman of freedom is too hard to judge. Translating down freedom of movement into a reflexive ability that lasts for three rounds instead of 70 minutes is simply guessing. Given how nasty being grappled, paralyzed, or entangled can be, I've left it untouched. Same goes for the hamsa and ankh, whose effects are weird enough that determining what's being charged for is beyond me. The talisman of life's breath is actually a reasonable price.

Of course, these prices are still only appropriate if you're going to wear three of them in the neck slot. If not, they should be even cheaper!

Fundamentally, the issue comes down to hard-coding a conditional benefit into the price of the items. While I do like the idea of talismans and enjoy using them when I can (at the normal prices, too), by putting this weird exception into the rules, they've ended up with prices that don't really reflect the utility of the items.

On failure, its outcomes and its implications: psychology

I feel like it's been ages since I was able to put together anything substantial for this blog. To be fair, nothing I write now is ever likely to compare to the insane (in relative terms) popularity of my post about animal companions...

And also to be fair, it's been a very busy few months and I'm ill. But still. I do enjoy writing for this blog and feeling like someone appreciated it.

This is going to be a miniseries about failure in RPGs, or at least in some RPGs. I fear it may be a bit dry and very rambly. Still, I present it for your delectation, or at least to keep you mildly diverted on the bus.

So a while ago I wrote some responses to a Walking Eye episode about Numenera. Very little of that is relevant right now, so let me pull out the bit which, randomly, sparked this week's post-game conversation. It is is in fact talking about Dungeon World, for some reason.

Playing with Traveller worldbuilding

As mentioned previously, I have for a while been considering running some Traveller, in a very desultory way, and started playing with the world-creation tools.

There are a number of potential "issues" with Traveller world creation. While I've spotted some of these myself, they're backed up to some extent by comments from others around the Net. As so often, this is an impressions-in-progress sort of post, and whether apparent "issues" actually end up being a problem is yet to be seen. Things that seem weird from one point of view may work perfectly well in play, and things that seem arbitrary may let you build a perfectly reasonable universe.

Monitors: those pesky mammals

I have made what I modestly call world-shaking strides in the development of my silly reptile game, and am now assembling a very preliminary draft! It's all very exciting. Then, I ran into a problem: to whit, mammals.

See, Monitors has a carefully-designed system for monitoring body temperature and its effects on your ability. This is perfect for portraying reptiles. However, mammals work completely differently. Instead of allowing fluctuating core body temperature, they have to stay very very close to a specific temperature or die. Instead of relying on heat absorption and dissipation, they generate their own heat and have their own heat-dispersal mechanisms.

Put a reptile somewhere cold, and it gets cold. Put a reptile somewhere warm, and it gets warm. Put a cold reptile in a jumper and put it in a warm room, and it remains cold. Put a hot reptile in a jumper in a cold room, and it stays hot.

Put a mammal somewhere cold, and it stays around 37C until it keels over. Put a mammal somewhere warm, and it stays around 37C until it keels over. Put a mammal in a jumper in a warm room, and it stays at 37C, gets increasingly uncomfortable and then keels over. Put a mammal in a jumper in a cold room, and it remains at 37C.

Do you see the problem?

Mammals and other homeothermic endotherms have several separate things going on:

• They maintain a stable body temperature. The game mechanics must allow this, or they'll all die.
• They are impaired over time in either cold or hot conditions.
• They generate their own heat. They can generate extra if they're particularly cold, but they're always pumping out heat. If there's no way to disperse that heat, it can build up disastrously.
• They have cooling mechanisms. They can sweat or pant to dissipate unwanted heat.

Mammals can stave off getting cold or hot more easily than reptiles, but if they do get very cold or hot, they don't cope with it as well.

I think that, mirroring nature, I'm going to need more than one system to make mammals work right. In fact, I probably need to have rules for homeothermy (a separate heat chart) and endothermy (mechanics), and possibly also cooling (more mechanics). But first, I need to work out what actually happens to mammals over a long period under various rulesets, and to do that, the best option is probably a model. Which means coding.

Monitors: you win, Dan, you win

So after not inconsiderable thought (as John Major might have said, if he designed RPGs) I have decided to move Monitors over to a dicepool system.

Initial thoughts for the system are as follows:

• D6-based.
• Each point of Attribute lets you roll one die.
• Traits may grant additional dice.
• Lingering effects may grant or remove dice.
• Penalty dice remain in use. They are rolled at the beginning of the turn as previously. If the die hits or exceeds the target number, it negates one success on all relevant tasks this turn; on a roll of 1 the effect dissipates and the penalty is removed. Die size varies, so a 1d4 penalty is mild, but a 1d12 penalty is likely to hit hard and often.
• If you have an appropriate Skill, you gain one automatic success.
• More difficult tasks require more successes.

Because Skill grants an automatic success, a skilled character will automatically succeed at simple tasks. They will also be much more likely to succeed at more challenging tasks, since they need to roll fewer successes. This system seems preferable to allowing rerolls or changing target numbers, either of which would increase the chance of success but still allows a chance of abject failure - with this system there's only so badly an expert can do. It's also simple, which is a big factor.

Opposed rolls work in the same way - roll Attribute plus relevant traits, highest score wins. On a tie, a skilled character wins. If there's no skill discrepancy, break the tie however you like unless a tie seems appropriate.

The question is, what target number do we use, and how big an Attribute pool? I did some calculations.

I get the feeling that the sweet spot for this system might be target 3+, 3 dice and 2 successes as the default "moderate skill, average difficulty" challenge. This would give a 75% chance of success - not what I'd pick for a crunchy game, but it seems appropriate in a cheery adventure game of highly competent professionals. A better attribute or having training offers a very high chance of overall success, while even someone with a low attribute has a 45% chance of success on normal challenges. Meanwhile, simple challenges are only an issue for the least competent (67% with a single Attribute and no training). The low target number means difficult scales fairly sharply (which multiple successes always does) but maintains at least a bit of a curve; compared to even the 4+ probabilities there's far less of a gulf.

In this case, we could reasonably assume that Attributes go from 1-5, but Monitors (due to exacting recruitment rules) can't have any lower than 2. This immediately offers the possibility of NPCs just being bad at things and getting shown up. There might be the odd Monitor PC with an Attribute of 2, but in most cases they'll be at least a little higher. On the other hand, training continues to be relevant whatever your Attributes are; on an average task an Attribute 5 PC will fail one time in twenty, while a trained Attribute 5 PC will fail less than one time in two hundred. I would expect dicepools to generally cap out at 8 (Attribute 5 + 2 traits + assistance).

Difficulties will go up several steps but down only one. Most die rolls should require 2 successes or more, but the Easy 1 success roll is there for when failure might be interesting and/or diepools are very small. Anything particularly easy just works. Harder tasks are much more interesting, because they let you highlight the competence and heroism of your arcane cyber-lizard by doing things that are really freakin' hard.

Bolting the Stable Door

Important statistical note:

in the following article, I a) forgot; and b) really couldn't be bothered with factoring in the Tearing special property for weapons into my already-nightmarish calculations. Deal with it.

So as an adjunct to my recent faint melancholy about Brother Nikolai, we got talking about the Heavy Bolter. We are not alone in this. The Internet is, in fact, full of people discussing the Heavy Bolter and its OP-ness or perceived lack thereof. In general there's a feeling that it's too good because it does huge amounts of damage. Dan identified a more specific problem, in that the Heavy Bolter is, mechanically speaking, the best possible weapon for:

• Killing lightly-armoured troops
• Killing heavily-armoured trooops
• Killing enormous resilient monsters

and is extremely good (though possibly not quite as good as a heavy flamer) for:

• Killing hordes
• Destroying civilian vehicles

and with some serious luck it's actually capable of taking out an actual tank.

A Heavy Bolter rolls 2d10+10 with Pen 6. Each d10 has a 1/10 chance of getting Righteous Fury. Let's assume (extremely conservatively) a 50% chance of confirming Righteous Fury, so a 1/20 chance per d10.

If you roll a single 10, you have a minimum of 27 against the target's Armour, enough to damage a light military vehicle like a bike or walker. You're more likely to have 31.5 as the average roll is 5.5. The Righteous Fury die will tend to increase this to 37, enough to damage a military transport vehicle.

If you manage to roll two 10s (either initially or via Righteous Fury) you have a very reasonable chance of getting the 45 needed to damage a tank.

After some nasty brute-force statistics (which I am willing to concede errors in as I can't really be bothered double-checking)... I reckon you have a 69% chance of damaging Armour 25, a 5% chance of damaging Armour 35, and a 0.36% chance of damaging Armour 45. That, of course, is per hit. A Heavy Bolter will cheerfully get five or six hits, and can get as many as ten. Two rounds of Heavy Bolter fire have about a 50% chance of damaging an armoured personnel carrier like the Rhino. Tanks are vastly, vastly less likely, but it gets complicated with these very low odds and I really can't be bothered calculating the odds allowing for multiple sets of Righteous Fury. Let's just say: it's possible.

The reason this is a problem is twofold. Firstly, it's contrary to canon, where the Heavy Bolter is a very good rapid-fire antipersonnel weapon that can also take out very light vehicles when necessary, but is ineffective against heavily-armoured targets and entirely useless against tanks. Secondly, because the weapon is handed out like a party favour and requires no effort whatsoever to obtain, and is one of the few weapons whose effectiveness not only increases with a good attack roll but does so linearly and does all this at extreme range, there is rarely any point taking any other weapon whatsoever in any circumstances. If this mechanic were to truly represent the in-game universe, the entire Adeptus Astartes should be walking around with Heavy Bolters out of sheer tactical pragmatism.

A possible solution

After some reflection, I am still inclined to think the solution is one I briefly outlined on Dan's blog: firmly embracing the canon. According to everything I have ever read on the subject, bolt shells work like this (nicked from a random online description):

The bolter fires self-propelled, armour-piercing, mass-reactive explosive missiles called bolts. They are constructed to detonate a split-second after penetration, to optimize damage.

A significant part of the damage from a bolt shell comes from detonation after penetrating the target's armour. If the shell does not penetrate the armour, there is no secondary damage from the explosion.

We run into a slight problem here, because Tabletop and RPG model things in substantially different ways despite largely sharing terminology. Thanks for that.

In tabletop, there is (depending on edition) a 1/3 or 2/3 chance that a heavy bolter shell will simply ping ineffectually off armour, even before the ability of Marines to simply shrug off damage comes into play. However, if the shell gets through Armour (with a failed armour save) and Toughness (with a successful wound roll), it will take out the Marine every time because they have only one Wound. So will any weapon.

In the RPG, it is literally impossible for a heavy bolter shell not to penetrate power armour. They have Penetration 6 and a minimum damage of 12, while power armour is at most 10, half the required amount to shrug off a bolt shell. Moreover, only a minimum roll against a hit location of Torso will fail to wound the average Marine (2d10+10 Pen 6 versus Armour 10 and Toughness 8) which is about a 0.1% chance. However, thanks to having 20-odd Wounds the Marine can survive a single full-strength hit from a heavy bolter, although two will almost certainly be fatal. On average each shell will inflict (11.5 + 10 Pen 6 - Armour 2 [8-6] - Toughness 8 =... ) 11.5 Wounds. Against a Terminator this would be 5.5 Wounds.

Whether we can implement a canonical version of bolt weapons depends substantially on how we're prepared to interpret Toughness. If Toughness represents the likelihood that a weapon will not cause injury, thanks to very tough tissue and so on, then we can reasonably argue that a bolt shell failing to overcome Toughness + Armour does not penetrate enough to explode effectively. If Toughness represents the target's resilience to pain or ability to endure damage, however, then we can't fairly argue that a bolt shell that has overcome Armour has not penetrated to a point where full damage from the detonation should be inflicted. Unfortunately, while this might just about be acceptable against mid-heavy infantry like the Space Marines, it's nonsensical against most heavier targets. Terminator armour is only Armour 14, still automatically penetrated by a heavy bolter shell; so is a Carnifex, the toughest Tyranid you're ever likely to encounter. Only the absolutely most armoured entities around - most of them semi-mechanical things - have Armour getting above 16.

But it's not impossible. My mechanical suggestion is that all bolt weapons have their damage split into two parts. Only the first half is inflicted automatically. If the initial damage overcomes Armour, the secondary damage is inflicted; otherwise it has no effect.

Implementing Mass Reactive Bolt Shells

With a heavy bolter, the combination of fixed bonus (+10), Penetration (6) and dice makes a very powerful combination, starting at 16 - more armour than virtually anything we'd encounter. Halving the damage seems the most logical step, but because of the weighty Pen 6 this still leaves us with 12 minimum penetration. If we were to accept the Toughness-as-defence model, then this isn't too bad. Space Marines have A+T of 16 and occasionally a little more; rolling 1d10+5 Pen 6 would leave us with about a 50% chance of a heavy bolter breaking through their defences to inflict additional damage (another 1d10+5). Sadly, even I am sceptical about that interpretation of Toughness for anything other than pure mechanical balance against heavy bolters.

So noting that Armour is typically 8 for a Space Marine, and only 14 for a frikkin' Terminator, we need the minimum damage + Pen for a heavy bolter to be less than 8 if we want this to be any damn use, and ideally for a 14 to be a rare and special thing. Exactly what kind of odds we're looking for depend on how closely we want to adhere to tabletop and which version of tabletop at that.

In the most recent version I played, the chance of a heavy bolter shell taking out a Space Marine are 1/3 (to fail Armour) * 2/3 (to inflict a Wound), giving 2/9. I don't think we should go any earlier than that for examples, and I haven't played any more recent version so I can't use those (and besides, frankly the chances of Space Marines getting any less resilient are slim to none). Bearing in mind that Wounds work differently, I think it's reasonable to work on the odds of a Space Marine running out of Wounds in Deathwatch as the comparator. Let's also note that a tabletop heavy bolter in that iteration fired three shots a round, of which two would hit on average. I believe that means the chance of taking out a Space Marine in any given round were 1-(chance of not taking out, to the power of number of attempts), which means 1-(7/9²) = 1-(49/81) = 1-0.6 = 0.4

The same iteration of the rules would have odds against a Terminator of 1/6 to fail armour and 2/3 to wound, giving 1/9. The chance for a heavy bolter to take one out is about 0.2 per round. In earlier, crunchier iterations, it was vastly less.

Against a Space Marine, I suspect a Deathwatch heavy bolter is also liable to inflict about two hits. Someone using a heavy bolter will likely be competent with it and have equipment or skills that increase their chance of success, meaning an average 50% roll will be a little way under their target number. It could be a lot under, but let's be conservative for now and assume one additional hit.

Working backwards, a Space Marine has about 20 Wounds, so we're looking for heavy bolters to have a 0.4 chance of taking out a Space Marine with two hits; or more broadly, for one bolt shell to inflict about 10 Wounds on average. At present, it inflicts about 15. Ideally, to fit with the canon, I would like there to be a slim chance of the shells glancing uselessly off power armour. I also want this system to be generalisable to other bolt weapons, such that a boltgun has a much larger chance of bouncing off harmlessly.

I get the feeling I probably shouldn't mess with the Pen. That means Damage is all we have to play with for now. I'll begin by maintaining the same overall damage, but that may not last.

First attempt

What if we cut things right down and have the initial damage be only 1d10 Pen 6? Under this scheme, there's a 1/10 chance of a heavy bolter shell glancing off a Marine. Otherwise, it'll go through and inflict the additional 1d10+10 from the explosion. There's also a 3/10 chance of wounding a Terminator. In both cases the additional damage will automatically overcome Toughness, but it's virtually impossible to take down a Marine in a single hit. The average damage will be 21.5 Pen 6.

Damage is (0.9 * (21.5 - 8 - [8-6] = 11.5)), which is 10.35 against a Marine.

Extra added bonus maths!

As noted below I forgot about variable armour, and had to go back, rather against my better judgement.

There's a 40% chance of hitting Torso armour, which is 10 rather than 8. I thought this was a measly difference to begin with, but it actually isn't. Against Armour 10, the shell has a far greater 3/10 chance of failing to penetrate and causes less damage overall.

Average damage to a Marine is therefore the weighted average of (0.9*11.5=10.35) and (0.7*9.5=6.65), giving (6.65*0.4)+(10.35*0.6) for a final average of 8.87.

Overall and accounting for Armour, average damage per hit is 10.35 8.87 against a Marine or 1.65 against a Terminator. This means that, pleasingly, it will take an average of two three hits to fell a Marine and twelve to fell a Terminator.

The heavy bolter remains more or less equally effective against the Marine, and anything less armoured (almost everything) but is now vastly less impressive against a more heavily armoured target.

In contrast, the heavy plasma gun would do an average of 18 damage to the Terminator and annihilate the Marine instantly, the lascannon would do vaporise both, and an assault cannon would finally be a better option for anti-Terminator operations.

Oh, and I should probably rule that the Tearing special rule is applied to the secondary damage, not the initial impact. Allowing a reroll on that would substantially boost the chances of penetrating armour - again, I can't be bothered to do the maths, but it would largely eliminate the chance of a Marine escaping injury from a shell.

That's surprisingly pleasing for a first attempt! What if we apply this principle to the humble bolter? The bolt pistol has identical damage, so we only need do this once.

Bolter

With the bolter (2d10+5 Pen 5), we'd be looking at 1d10 Pen 5 - almost the same. Well, again, if we assume most of the damage comes from the mass reactive charge (as we are repeatedly told by canon) then it makes sense the initial impact of the actual shell is only slightly more dangerous because it's a little bigger.

Here, we have a 1/5 chance of not penetrating power armour - actually, slightly less accounting for Armour 10 on torso, which is a 40% chance hit location... gah.

No, no, I can do this. If we hit non-Torso, there's a 4/5 chance of penetrating power armour, at which point we do an average of (16 Pen 5 vs. Armour 8 and Toughness 8 =...) 5 damage, so overall 4 average. If we hit Torso, there's only a 3/5 chance of penetrating and we do only 3 damage through A+T 18, so 1.8 average. So the final average damage is ((4*0.6) + (1.8 * 0.4) = 2.4 + 0.72 =...) 3.12 damage on a hit. I hope. Maybe? Oh, whatever. It's low, okay? It's low.

Currently, I note, the average damage is ((5*0.6) + (3*0.4)) = 4.2, so it's really not a huge difference. The maximum damage is unchanged. Worth noting, it is now possible to do zero damage to a Space Marine with a bolter, which was not previously the case, but given that this happens all the time in the vast array of Marines vs. Chaos Marines literature out there, this does not bother me one tiny jot. I also think that's far less of a problem mechanically than the opposite - things crossing the "possible to Wound" boundary. The difference between "invulnerable to this" and "1% chance of injury" is far more significant from a game management POV than the difference between "always injured by this" and "95% chance of injury".

---

Suggested bolt weapon fix

So here's a summary of the important bits from all that guff...

All bolt weapons gain the Mass Reactive quality.

Mass Reactive

Designed to detonate moments after impact, Mass Reactive shells must penetrate armour to achieve their full potential. Initial damage from a Mass Reactive weapon is 1d10, applying Penetration as normal. If the result is less than the target's Armour, the attack is deflected. Otherwise, determine the remaining damage and apply the total against Armour and Toughness as normal.

The Tearing property applies to secondary damage only. Righteous Fury applies to initial and secondary damage.

Example

Brother Genericus fires his bolter (2d10+5 Pen 5) at a Tyranid Warrior. His first hit rolls 1d10 initial damage and scores a 2. With the bolter's Penetration, this penetrates 7 Armour, against the Tyranid's 8, and spangs off its armour.

His second shot rolls 1d10 and scores a 7, piercing 12 points of Armour in total. The shell pierces the Tyranid's carapace and explodes, and the remaining 1d10+5 damage kicks in. With the Tearing property Genericus rolls an additional die and chooses the best; he rolls a 3 and a 1 and chooses the 3, giving 8, which is added to the initial roll. The final damage is 7+3+5=15 Pen 5 against the Tyranid's Armour 8 and Toughness 10. This does 2 Wounds.

A third shot rolls an initial 9 and easily penetrates. Genericus rolls 6 and 8 and chooses the 8 for a final damage of 22 Pen 5. Deducting 3 points for Armour and 10 for Toughness, the hit does 9 Wounds to the Tyranid.

---

I was expecting to expend more brainpower on this (but not more time, I spent several hours on this, which time I'm sure will be roundly appreciated by a vast horde of admiring oh who am I kidding...) and probably end inconclusively, but then my second idea kind of worked pretty much exactly how I wanted, so... yeah, bye.

Monitors: enumerating weapon balance

So I'm now trying to move on to creating a few representative weapons (which may well end up being 'all the weapons' - I'm not looking for an in-depth shopping experience from Monitors). In trying to work out the relative balance of weapon types, what I've ended up doing is drafting a quick spreadsheet. The idea is that weapons have (as discussed previously) a number of properties (range, damage, type of effect, bulk and so on) which present advantages and drawbacks. In theory, therefore, it should be possible to assign values to the benefit or cost to each instance of a property, and therefore guess at the relative value of a weapon as a whole.

By "instance of a property", I'm not deliberately being smug, I just can't think of a better term at 11.43pm after being on the go constantly since 7am. You will notice that this does not stop me from writing unnecessary blogposts...

A property here is something like Range, Bulk or Blast. An instance of a property is one of the possible values - but using the word value here would be confusing! So instances for Range include Short and Long, instances for Bulk include Hand and Heavy, and instances for Blast are Blast and -.

Feel free to point out more appropriate terminology. I'm sure there's a word for it in chemistry.

Value is relative to some arbitrary mean, determined subjectively by looking at the instances and picking one.

For interest and entertainment, I decide (after trying a few weapons I've used in examples already) to stat out every possible weapon in the system. Turns out this is serious business. There are at least 18000 possible values (gotta hate those multipliers) and that doesn't include at least one facet - gas weapons. Of course, some values will be nonsensical. I can't imagine Blast Melée weapons would make it out of testing, for one, and some weapon/visor values will make no sense. However, there are currently 790 possible weapons with a zero overall cost. This is some serious business...

Knocking things down (with some effort) to only those combinations that make any damn sense, I'm left with 4882 possible combinations. Now we no longer have explosive weapons designed for grappling, gas grenades with no blast effeect, photon weapons that target Mask or other anomalies. Most of these vary only in armour penetration, which has 9 possible values (from 0 to 16 in steps of 2). Only 233 are now zero-rated, and it looks like they do include some of every instance.

Unsurprisingly, the most expensive possible weapons are handheld weapons with Pen 16 and Strength 3 that target non-Armour defences. The cheapest are heavy close combat weapons with Strength 1 and no Pen that target Armour. What I'm actually mostly interested in are the zeros, because these should (allowing for the arbitrariness of my assigned values) be of roughly equal value on the whole when no special circumstances are taken into account.

Grenades, it turns out, are complicating matters. I gave them a high negative because they're single-use items. But nobody's going to take grenades as an alternative to a blaster rifle. They're a supplementary weapon. This spreadsheet is (very roughly) okay for evaluating the worth of weapons if you're gearing up for a mission and picking between them, but it doesn't really make sense to treat grenades that way when deciding how good to make them compared to other weapons. The end result is some very powerful grenades. I will tweak this value.

Post-tweaking (with a much lower grenade price of -2 rather than -5) grenades look a bit more normal. I change things around logically so that, rather than being a separate Type, Grenade is an emergent property of being both Thrown and Blast; anything else should be reusable in theory, at least in the next fight. This allows for both Hand (traditional grenade) and Heavy (two-handed) explosive weapons. It also allows for other kinds of thrown weapons; anything from daggers (Thrown Hand) to rocks (Thrown Heavy). I got rid of all Thrown Assault weapons (Assault being the 1-or-2-hand category until I have a better name) since I can't really think of anything it'd apply to. Generally, either it's small and throwable (Hand) or heavy enough you need two hands to heave it. I can't think of a single item that you'd be able to throw one-handed but be more effective with both hands, the physics just seems off.

Also as a result of this exercise, I decide to rejig the way soft attacks work. Rather than each having an assigned die size, I'll make them work more similarly to hard attacks, which have only a Strength value. Both types will inflict a number of Armour Saves equal to Strength to determine how effective they are against a target. However, for soft attacks, cumulative successes will increase die size, making the more powerful weapons both more likely to take effect and likely to last for longer. It also means that it'll be harder for a single good save to completely protect a target from what should be a powerful weapon, causing less swinginess.

Tradeoffs

Hmm. I'm suggesting using a system where more powerful weapons can roll more dice, and more penetrative weapons can punch through armour. But is there actually a meaningful trade-off between these two, in this system, or are these going to be different niches rather than rivals? It seems, intuitively, that extra dice are a very strong bonus because even with all other things being equal, they offer at least the possibility of taking down high-Wound enemies rapidly. Time for some maths.

Much calculating later... If I've got my statistics right, then it's not until you're hitting defences of 10 or higher than there is any numerical reason to take Penetration equal to that defence rather than more dice. On low Pen values (e.g. 4) the slight advantage of negating small Armour values (+0.2 probability) is hugely outweighed by the high likelihood of the target failing an armour save, which makes the second die a very strong bet (+0.8). There are some weird blips in the data because of the intersection of the two rules, so that Pen 10-19 grants a small advantage against Armour values in the exact same range, but at higher Armour values extra dice regain their benefit.

In short, the range of situations where it's worth taking Pen rather than Strength (extra dice) is extremely limited. As high Armour values are likely to be rare, it's a non-choice. Moreover, Strength has the secondary benefit that it can inflict more than one Wound in a single hit, which a single die with high Pen physically can't. So these are not going to be balancing factors, certainly not directly. The drawback of the unmodified Armour system I chose is that the value of high Penetration scales severely with enemy defences, whereas in a modifier system it would be a bit more static.

Arguably, at this point I should be considering whether I'm happy with the combat system, but frankly I don't want to open that can of worms again.

The straightforward response here is that I need to reevaluate the nominal price I'm putting on both Pen and Strength. Pen is currently massively overpriced, while Strength is rather undervalued. To begin with, I arbitrarily allocated a point of cost for every 2 Pen, and only a point for each dice. As the calculation above shows, this is madness.

Let's step back a bit and look at how I'm weighting the various properties.

Valuing properties

Range

I decided that, for the most part, Range instances are a wash. Weapons each have their niche and work badly outside it, be it long or short range; a rifle lets you take on distant enemies, but a pistol is better in a room-to-room shootout. Moreover, RPGs tend towards quite short-ranged encounters, within either a room or a smallish area, which gives little scope for long-ranged weapons to really benefit, while the shorter-ranged weapons will be favoured. I made an exception for melée weapons, because not being able to work at range is a serious issue. These currently come in two categories, Close (your classic duelling range) and Grapple (wrestling, clawing, and general wrangling), though whether I'll keep that distinction I don't know. Under the current system, a pistol is usable with difficulty at Close range and with very great difficulty in a brawl, while you're basically never going to successfully fire a rifle in a wrestling match.

Blast

Weapons with a blast effect sound great, but in practice they're likely to be of limited use. Enemies aren't always going to form up in handy groups, and against single enemies they're of no benefit. There are also those situations where you or an ally would be caught in the blast, or something vital would be damaged. In contrast, a more powerful or accurate weapon is always going to help. So a blast is a plus, but only a smallish one, I think.

Class

The classes basically break down into Wounding and soft weaponry. I don't think there's likely to be a massive advantage to one or the other. Soft weapons aren't (currently) able to defeat an enemy entirely, but they will inflict immediate and significant effects on the target, whereas Wounding takes some time to be effective against tough opponents. Either weapon will be able to take down minor NPCs in a single hit. Of the other types, Shock weaponry will be less effective against armour, but with special bonuses against robots, and gaining a Blast effect if fired into water. Chemical effects are the only one to currently incur a cost reduction, because they'll be ineffective against many targets - I'm probably going to change this later to have Gas and Toxin subtypes and apply the reductions to those instead, allowing chemicals like acid to function normally, especially for handling acid-spewing alien gribblies.

Defence

Short and sweet, all defences other than Armour cost slightly more to target, because they're less likely to exist. Only a subset of enemies will deliberately wear protective eyegear, let alone gas masks. However, some creatures (including robots, aliens, elementals and so on) may have innate protection against such attacks, while things like spacesuits and motorbike helmets will offer some protection. So a small increase in cost for now.

After some playing around, I manage to get an array of weapons that roughly fit my conceptions and are roughly balanced. Obviously this kind of arbitrary balancing exercise is no substitute for playtesting. I'm quite chary of some of the numbers, such as Blast being worth more than Strength - that's actually fairly unlikely and I should probably adjust it at some point.

Broadly speaking, the idea is that only zero-cost weapons are commonly used (though I've ticked a couple of lower-cost ones as backups, like knives, while a handful of higher-cost ones may be available in particular circs). This is a bit of a tricky concept because I'm used to the idea that you sometimes buy more "expensive" weapons and they're just more difficult to get, but the thing is that my pricing system is intended to incorporate indirect value as well as direct value. I'm trying to sound out what will make sense to use in play, not just what will be mechanically balanced. So allowing some weapons that are explicitly advantageous when damage, accuracy, effectiveness, social costs and convenience are taken into account would undermine the whole exercise.

Those flagged as Alien are items I don't intend for Monitors to use, but where I wanted to dig up a balanced example or two for what kind of weapons NPCs and enemies might have. Those marked as Improvised are items that aren't Monitor-approved, but that characters might end up using in emergencies. Naturally, enemies and NPCs may end up using weapons that vary on the effectiveness scale from those intended for PC use, and measures may be needed to keep these from being used by PCs - though I'm sort of hoping that the tone will encourage people to stick to signature weapons.

Oh, and for reference, here's the costs I'm using:

Monitors: all about armour

Dan suggested trying a model where armour is what you might call "hard" - that is, it doesn't get modified by weapons, but can be negated by weapons over a binary threshold. I'd expect this to make armour a lot more effective, since even a weapon slightly underpowered for the armour has to deal with the full value of it. As much of the time Monitors will have the better equipment, this would tend to make Monitors more effective in combat. It would also streamline combat because armour will either be ignored, or unmodified - no need for arithmetic.

As there's now no use for a modifier in this model, critical hits (half skill) would instead allow you to roll an additional die for injury and discard the worst result. Instead of a wounding roll, let's call this an Armour save - partly to differentiate them, and partly to highlight that the weapons are generally powerful enough to cause injury if not blocked by armour.

Heavy weapons, which I haven't really talked about yet, could roll additional dice, making them valuable against high-Wound enemies.

Example

Greenclaw fires a volley of shots at some hostile gun-runners, hitting three times. As they've been loading crates, they're wearing exosuits that give Armour 12. Greenclaw's rifle is only Strength 7, so the suits protect against it. The gun-runners can roll a d20, and on a 12 or less their armour protects them.

One of the shots rolled a critical hit (half Greenclaw's skill). In this case, the gun-runner must roll two saves and discard the best result.

Hearing the racket, Toa pops up over a ridge and looses off a precious armour-piercing stun round. The Strength 14 shot blasts straight through the gun-runner's armour and releases powerful chemicals into her bloodstream, leaving her in a limp heap on the floor.

This model would transform some of the results from last time, because now rather than one factor (discrepancy between weapon and armour) there are two (is the armour better; if so, what is the armour value?). Note that in the examples below, I've tweaked Armour values to reflect the fact that it's rolled under on a 1d20, keeping it in line with Skill for simplicity.

Outcomes

Professor Rayner fights two thugs with armour no better than her pistol, and the same for theirs. With no armour save available, both are on 45%. It takes her five shots to take both down, and seven shots for them. Her odds are poor unless she goes first, but if so, she's got an edge.

Xerxes (skill 8) will wound a thug (skill 4) on 75%, while they're still on a 45%. He can take two and even three down in two rounds, but three will beat him before he gets the chance. Thugs with armour would be a much tougher proposition; they'd need at least 3 points of armour to withstand a pistol, but this would drop his chances to 66% and lose him the fight (this is, of course, why Xerxes carries a flare pistol).

Greenclaw (armour 7, rifle 7, skill 12) gets an armour save and ignores armour when fighting bandits (skill 8, armour 3-4, rifle 6). She should cause a wound 71% of the time, but it'll take 7-9 shots to defeat 4-5 bandits respectively (a little faster than the last model). She'd take 38 attacks from five, or 24 from four. They have only a 35% chance to wound her, so she can expect to survive 9 shots, or about one round.

This one has worked out less satisfactory than last time, perhaps. But as I said, I'm not sure it's actually appropriate for her to take on four or five bandits at once. This is sort of the burning question at the moment. If I do want that sort of thing, then I suspect I need to seriously consider upping the number of wounds Monitors have, because the undamaged/unconscious threshold is very sharp right now. This isn't a maths question, but a genre one, and right now I don't have a definite answer.

My inclination is that no, I don't. In that case, this isn't a problem - from the maths above, two Monitors of Greenclaw's competence, or her and a couple of less accomplished fighters, should be able to handle the bandits. The kind of rabble that Greenclaw should be able to handle on her own would be less accomplished, and probably better modelled as a mob. I will need to consider how to make those kinds of DMing distinctions intuitive.

Ukala (armour 10, skill 16, rifle 8) would like to fight several mercenaries (armour 6, skill 12, rifle 7) at once. She gets a hit with 86% probability, while they're on a 39%. Essentially, she can take nearly one merc per shot, but can still only withstand 7 shots, which means she can't afford to take fire from more than two mercs simultaneously - she could just about take four if she gets the drop on them and rolls well early on, but could equally well be doomed.

The Kargbeast has four Wounds, armour 10, str 9 and probably melée of about 15. The Kargbeast has a substantial advantage once it gets into combat (there's no way Ukala has a Strength 10 melée weapon, and she's probably got a lower melée skill), which means Ukala needs to get some shots off before combat starts. She has a 50% chance of wounding here, and so would need eight shots to bring it down - she won't get that. However, if she can inflict a wound or two she's got roughly even odds of taking it in melée.

Toa, providing he has a rifle capable of penetrating robot armour, can effectively take out a robot with every shot. He might well be much less effective against other targets, though. If he has military armour at about a 10 (better than most weapons can handle) he can survive about 10 shots from Skill 10 robots - less than last time, actually, and I'm increasingly thinking that I've misjudged armour values. This means he can realistically fight maybe three such robots if he gets lucky. Of course, if he's getting to fire first, he can take five on.

A high-grade military bot might have armour 16 in this system - some of the heaviest around, and more than Toa's rifle can handle. Toa can cause a wound around 26% of the time, calling for 12 shots. This means it will take him about six rounds to defeat the bot, and it's likely to beat him first. This is, of course, ignoring any side-effects of using a shock rifle on a robot - something I'm considering implementing.

Monitors: Imagined and modelled combats

Another long, dry post full of maths that only makes sense when you can consult an extensive set of related tables you don't have access to yet. Hooray!

So, I've had bit of a think about weapon types and examined some of the maths involved in hit and damage rolls. What next? Right, I said I'd look at narrative expectations of results.

I think it's reasonably important to do this at this stage, because disconnect between what you imagine and what happens in play is liable to cause all kinds of... I kind of want to say "cognitive dissonance" but I don't know why and I'm not entirely clear what that is. It's going to throw you off, is what I mean. If you're expecting to wade through storms of bullets and instead go down like a ninepin, that'll wreck your expectations. If you expect your character to cower behind barrels and fire off inaccurate warning shots while trying to calculate an intellectual solution, but they take down heavy infantry at long range with a handgun, that will also change the complexion of the game and tend to redefine your character. If you expect a hard-nosed tactical game where you constantly look for advantage, swap weaponry and cling to cover, then a looser game where your tactician character can't really use those features to advantage will disappoint. So I need to work out what I actually expect from this game and the various characters you might run into.

Going back to basics, the starting points are:

• Simply in order to qualify for active service, Monitors are all baseline competent with weaponry, and can hit a person-sized target at the average distance for a weapon.
• Monitors have access to better equipment than ordinary criminals, security guards and local militias, but not all Monitors will take such equipment.
• Monitors are frequently outnumbered and must be able to defeat a moderate number of opponents, given their skill and equipment.
• While a range of equipment types are available, Monitors are expected to stick with their preferred gear most of the time, rather than constantly switching for tactical advantage.
• Almost any weapon is more likely to wound than an unarmed attack, which will be our baseline
• Almost any armour is more protective than

I will need to revisit soft attacks at some point, as I think under the current rules it's not especially viable to rely mostly on soft weapons: there's simply no way to eliminate a target. Perhaps cumulative attacks can result in a wound? Or perhaps the results of the attack are hampering enough that a target can be readily brought down with the equivalent of the "clean blow to the jaw" so beloved of Dick Barton et al?

Also, some sample characters:

• Professor Rayner, the noted physicist dandy, who uses weapons only reluctantly and wears nothing but silk
• Xerxes Hardly, special investigator, handy with a pistol but preferring guile to force
• Siobhain Greenclaw, hardy adventuress, equally comfortable with rifle, jetbike or antique vase, and geared up for tough situations
• Captain Ukala, former special forces, a crack shot in military armour
• Toa, finest shot in the spinward sector, professional rogue robot hunter with the social skills of a sprig of broccoli

Rayner is likely to avoid combat entirely. If a firefight ensues, she will largely stick to covering fire while seeking another option. She's unlikely to engage in long-range shooting under normal circumstances, and wouldn't expect to hit anything. In extremis, and at short range, she would pull a gun in self-defence, and expect to have a reasonable chance to stop one (two at the outside) attacker with fairly basic gear. I wouldn't expect her to take down any well-trained or armoured attacker with straightforward shooting, but to rely on intelligence, or make skillful use of the environment to buy enough time to escape or finally get in a lucky shot. Under fire, she can weather an injury as well as any other Monitor, but I'd expect most accurate shots to cause an injury.

Xerxes uses violence as a backup when stealth fails. He's comfortable enough with a weapon to confidently take on a crook or security guard and expect to win, especially since he can usually get the drop on them somehow. Facing more than a couple of opponents, though, he'd look for other options. He's unlikely to carry anything heavy enough to dent serious armour, and would make special arrangements if he expected that kind of trouble. His tough clothing should soften impacts a bit, but he still wants to avoid getting shot at in the first place. In a brawl, he expects to knock out the average street thug fairly handily, but will go down quickly to a gang.

Greenclaw is willing to engage in a firefight with whatever bandits, aliens or extradimensional horrors care to kick off. That kind of character expects to fight off larger numbers of opponents, to pick off weak enemies fairly readily and tougher ones with a few shots, be they mercenaries or wild beasts. She isn't expecting to tear through military targets, but does expect to survive an encounter with a fairly dangerous enemy, holding it off and getting out of there until a better opportunity presents itself. We'd also want her to weather a few hits with the survival gear she has.

Ukala will probably be drawing a bead as soon as an enemy presents itself. She fully expects to defeat several soldiers single-handed, to go toe-to-toe with robosaurs or Kargbeasts, and have a decent bash at vehicles if she has the kit to hand. In a straight-up gunfight, most shots should hit home, and only well-armoured targets should regularly withstand them. A particularly tough opponent ought to weather a few shots in order to be satisfying, but should still be defeatable.

Toa will be deeply disappointed to miss a shot against any but the trickiest target. He expects to pick off fleeing robots at long range, take out drivers as they race past, and hit that vulnerable thermal outlet valve more often than not. While he probably won't carry the heaviest weapons, he should be able to use accuracy to take on tough targets, and should rarely have cause to worry about any kind of firefight. Facing hostile creatures, there's really no more sensible tactic than finding a good spot to shoot from and beginning as soon as they come into view.

Breakdowns

Okay, where does that leave us?

Just in passing, I'm going to say that I don't especially anticipate Monitors going around with a heavy weapon as their usual kit. While I'm perfectly happy for them to do that, they're special agents rather than actual soldiers, and even when confronting bandits and the like, unwieldy heavy weapons aren't usually the best choice. But I'll try to keep those as a viable but not overpowered option too.

Also, for clarity: this is not an exercise in picking the result I want and then allocating modifiers to fit. I am in all cases starting with the descriptions given above (each character has 4 Skill points more than the last) and rules described elsewhere, applying them as the situation would warrant and then looking to see what the numbers do. So while I can't rule out subjectivism, I am at least trying to limit it.

I will be using the model with a +5 Wounding bonus for rolling half the target number to hit, as suggested at the end of the last post.

Rayner

If we treat Rayner as our suggested Skill 4 character, then assuming a short-range +5 bonus for pistols she'd hit 45% of the time, so can draw a weapon and still have a decent shot. If the pistol is exactly as good as the target's armour, she should successfully hit and wound a target one time in four. Anyone starting a fight is probably as good if not a bit better at fighting, but then ordinary mooks have only one Wound. Thus, Rayner should be able to take on one or two low-quality mooks and have a decent chance at coming out on top. Let's see.

With the +5 close bonus, it will take Rayner an average of four shots (two rounds) to cause a wound.* It will tend to take her eight attacks to drop both mooks. Depending how long the first one takes, and whether they go first or last, two mooks with exactly the same gear can get off anywhere from zero to sixteen attacks. Most likely, each will take about four shots, and so they can get off about seven shots before the first goes down, and then another four. This will tend to inflict 2.75 wounds. Just about perfect, I'd say. Rayner has a very slight advantage against two fairly feeble attackers, or one more competent attacker, but would be taken down very quickly by three.

*this took me several sprawling tables to calculate, which may appear elsewhere on the blog in future.

Xerxes

Allowing Xerxes a skill of 8, a +5 close bonus and a +1 strength weapon, he has a 44% chance of wounding, which translates into just under three attacks for an average wound on a thug. He's most likely to use force when he expects to win, which means he'll likely be getting another bonus somewhere and dropping the thug in one round, but let's not assume that. Against two, he can take them down in five shots, during which they might get off four to eight shots before one falls and another couple before the second. More likely it will be six before the first falls and another two before the second drops, for a total of eight attacks, inflicting 1.6 wounds through his tough coat (2 armour). Xerxes comes out battered but conscious and the odds against him going down are decent.

In a brawl (no weapon mods), he has a 25% chance to wound while theirs is a mere 11% because of his outfit. Being generous, they might have some equivalent protective gear and drop his chances to 21%. Here it's likely to take him five attacks to cause a single wound, but he can still easily take out both of them (ten attacks) while taking only 1.8ish wounds in the same period. About the same. It's going to take more than just a couple of two-bit thugs to drop Xerxes when he's on form, but three of them (or two with weapons) can handle it.

I'm happy with that.

Greenclaw

Greenclaw (skill 12 in ranged and melée) expects to fend off, say, four or five competent bandits (Skill 8, armour 3, str 6 rifle). With her rifle and moderate armour, she has a +4 advantage in attacking them, and a 0 modifier in defence. The bandits have a 25% chance of inflicting a wound, while her odds are 50%. It should take her five rounds on average to finish off the bandits. During this time, if they stand their ground, she will suffer a total of 50 shots. With the best will in the world, there's no chance she can handle that. Hiding in cover would improve her odds by making it harder to hit her, but they can do the same, of course.

In practice, we're not expecting Greenclaw to stand in the open and shoot; she should be using some of her actions to move around for advantage, getting out of the line of fire for some bandits and forcing them to move around too, so she can handle them piecemeal. Assuming that this will allow only half the remaining bandits to attack each round, and that Greenclaw and the bandits each spend one action moving per round... she'll have to weather a more reasonable 25 shots, which is just slightly more than she can expect to survive. With suitable application of cunning, cover and tactics, and allowing for things like cowardice on the part of the bandits, I think it's reasonable.

Greenclaw expects to drive off a mob of cultists. Not being properly trained, the cultists have a puny skill of 2 and their rusting weapons are -5 against Greenclaw's armour. They have only a 4% chance of inflicting a Wound. Meanwhile, Greenclaw's skill 12 and +6 weapon grant her a 56% chance. She can mow down the cultists in 18 shots, but really they will probably scatter once half go down (nine shots, five rounds). However, that's plenty of time for them to get off 148 shots, if we allow them all to fire each round, twice as many as they need. To succeed here, Greenclaw will have to rely on not all the cultists having ranged weapons, on blast weapons like grenades, or on some being distracted each round by jostling for position, by clambering over obstacles or by crazed chanting. Not awful, but not amazing. Using auto-wound minions as discussed earlier would make virtually no difference here, as the issue is hitting the cultists. But a mob of cultists should not be modelled individually; such puny and numerous opponents should be a mob entity that's modelled individually. So this is a false issue right now.

Greenclaw expects to defeat a Kelithan Rockchewer (three Wounds, armour 6, str 4) and to survive an encounter with a Kargbeast (four Wounds, armour 8, str 9) but not defeat one in a straight-up fight. Her ranged weapon has about a +2 on the Rockchewer's armour, while the laser knife she'll probably use in melée will only be a str 3-4. If she can open fire before it reaches her, her odds are about even - she'll cause about 1.3 wounds in three shots, while it'll take five melée attacks to cause the remaining wounds. The Rockchewer is probably better in combat than she is (skill 16) but even so, will take four rounds of combat to defeat Greenclaw - too long! However, if the Rockchewer gets the drop on her, she will be in trouble. On the other hand, if it's a juvenile no more skilled than her then it's even odds.

What about the Kargbeast? Well, this isn't really a maths question but one of actions. Greenclaw needs to use her actions for evasion and escape - or for delaying attacks, like slowing darts - and rely on the Kargbeast spending some on attacks. As long as the Kargbeast isn't likely to take her down in a single strike, she should be okay.

Ukala

Ukala expects to take half-a-dozen mercenaries single-handed. Mercs are skill 12, with rifles like Ukala's (but probably a little less good - str 6) and armour 6. Ukala has skill 16, a str 8 rifle and armour 8 - as I said above, most of her shots will find a target. With a 58% hit chance, it'll take Ukala eleven shots to drop them all if she relies on straight-up shooting, though as a competent soldier she shouldn't be. As previous examples will demonstrate, this is far too long (they get 66 shots, and need only 10), but Ukala should be using suppressing tactics and throwing grenades and so on. Nevertheless, I don't think this is good enough purely off the numbers, though it's hard to tell how it would work out in play with many more factors involved. The classic situation tends to have the hero picking their moments, ready and waiting when a searching merc rounds the corner, or spinning out from behind a pillar. In short, Ukala shouldn't reasonably expect to the mercs as a group, but by taking on a couple at a time. Having done some checking, the most she can realistically take on even terms is only two, simply because they get more shots than she does and are moderately competent. One to keep an eye one.

Ukala expects to go toe-to-toe with a robosaur or Kargbeast and have a decent chance. The Kargbeast has four Wounds, armour 8, str 9 and probably melée of about 15. The Kargbeast has a substantial advantage once it gets into combat, which means Ukala needs to get some shots off before combat starts. If she does, all well and good; she should be able to get a wound in, possibly two. If she uses a soft attack (which would be sensible) she can reduce the beast's offensive ability in the long run, and improve her odds. On the other hand, if she leaps into melée the Kargbeast is likely to emerge battered but victorious.

Ukala expects well-armoured targets to weather her shots and prove tough to defeat. At present, that's entirely possible if armour values are basically unlimited. If they're capped around 10-12, she can expect to do around one wound in every two or three rounds of fire.

Toa

Toa has a skill of 20, and a dedicated anti-robot rifle (shock weapon) designed for mid to long-range fire. He would have military armour, but not heavy stuff, since he expects to be the one doing the shooting. I'll grant that armour of 7, and assume that a mob of security bots have weak weapons with about a +2, so Toa has advantage by 5 points.

With no attack modifier for range and a weapon that's likely to be at least +5 against the robots compared to their armour, Toa can expect to damage a robot a full 88% of the time, dropping five robots in three rounds of focused fire. He can take out a ten-bot squad in six rounds, which is probably not enough to stop a distant target from closing into melée (if it wants to). If it's a firefight, during that time Toa would be exposed to... wow, let me just do some maths...

Okay, Toa is going to be taking 136 attacks before he drops the robots - assuming they choose to fire rather than move. I think we need to assume that a robot with a weapon has at least some idea what it's doing, and more so if in a pack, so let's give them a "militia" score of 10. They're looking at a 19% wound chance. Even allowing for all Toa's advantages, ten robots are likely to drop him in the first round with things as they stand (16 attacks, to be specific). If he's in a bit of cover, they're looking at two rounds of fire. Toa is a great robot hunter, but can't simply stand around blasting at overwhelming numbers of militia-grade robots with his current gear. He's going to need to try long-range fire (where their weapons will be penalised or ineffective), some proper hunting tactics (divide and conquer) or just some really serious armour if he wants to weather that kind of situation.

What about a single high-grade military bot? Let's allow the robot Armour 10, and Toa's rifle Strength 5 against it (a total penalty of -5). Due to stellar marksmanship, he will score a wound a full 38% of the time, allowing him to take the heavily-armoured military bot down in four rounds of sustained fire - providing he stays standing that long.

Assessment

Okay, I would say this isn't awful, but also has some obvious weak spots. One prominent one is that I haven't really established a high-end power level for dangerous beasts, so it's hard to tell if that stuff works (the Kargbeast is only slightly better than a Monitor, which is hardly "terrifying alien monstrosity" level). Strength in numbers very rapidly allows competent enemies to overpower a Monitor despite the difference in wounds, because three one-wound enemies with two shots each can hugely outshoot a three-wound Monitor with two shots. This is true at very small numbers of competent enemies, well before you get into hordes.

Mobs

Here's the other question: what would it take to survive a mob of ten enemies for several rounds? That's a classic of fiction, after all. Incidentally, I am well aware that this is not the way to handle large groups of enemies, I'm just curious.

A mob of poorly-trained Stormtroopers may have Skill of only 2-3 and low-quality weapons. It will take them 50 shots to take down the Professor, 60-odd for a lightly-armoured Monitor, or 75+ to drop a target with military armour of grade 6 or better. However, 60 shots is only three rounds of fire for a squad of ten Stormtroopers! You'd need to reduce their wound chance to a mere 3% before it'll take 100 shots (5 rounds for them) to drop you on average. Meanwhile, Rayner will take 77 shots to destroy the robots (39 rounds) and Xerxes will take 38 shots (19 rounds) - neither stands a snowball's chance in a kiln. Heavy armour does a limited amount to help here - what you really need is penalties to hit, which calls for evasive action and/or cover. I don't think this is that outrageous to be honest - characters surviving mobs do typically use speed, mobility or cover to survive - but if I want tank-like characters soaking up damage then I'm going to have problems in this model.

So mobs are something I need to look at again, and like just about every other (combat-including) RPG out there, I will probably end up with some swarm rules for handling large numbers of ineffectual targets. I have also mentioned the idea of minion NPCs, who don't even have wounds but go down to a single hit from any kind of weapon, which would perhaps be a better fit for the Stormtroopers.

There might also just be some standard rules for mobs of weak enemies, allowing them to look nasty while presenting less of a threat than expected. For example, it makes sense that in normal circumstances only part of the mob can get a clear line of sight, while others are distracted, cowering under suppressing fire, clambering over obstacles and so on. Similarly, it may be easier to hit a mob if you aren't aiming at a specific target.

I could add rules for suppressing fire. They can be pretty broad-brush and affect only certain enemies (one-wounders, who come in mobs). Alternatively, taking cover might be a part of the rules for such NPCs, allowing GMs to present a mob of them while having standard rules that prevent them being too much of a threat.

Of course, this doesn't deal at all with the actions issue, because the idea of actions is you sometimes do things other than standing still and shooting. You use cover, manoeuvre for advantage, run from overwhelming force and try to pick off isolated targets.

The other thing is that, impressive as Monitors should be, I don't especially want individual characters to be fighting off large numbers of enemies on a regular basis. That sort of thing should be restricted either to genuine swarms, to very particular situations with very particular gear, or to streaks of outrageous luck and cunning. Apart from any other considerations, if a single Monitor that's anything other than a minmaxed combat machine with outrageous gear can wade through ten enemies worth differentiating in a straight-up fight, the GM is going to be faced with managing huge numbers of NPC combatants and combats will grind to a screeching halt. There is no problem with a Monitor fighting, say, ten pirates, as long as they appear in small groups or are otherwise unable to bring their numbers to bear. Similarly, there's no problem with a Monitor defeating a horde of crazed hoover-bots that pose virtually no individual threat.

On top of that, a lot of the time (though not all) Monitors should be working in groups, and three or four can handle a significantly larger number of enemies far more effectively than one, because it's a smaller multiple. Broadly speaking, if one combat-ready Monitor can handle two or three enemies then a group should be able to deal with eight to twelve at once, which is a nicely impressive number.

Next steps

I want to try out an alternate model (suggested, as so often, by Dan) which would exchange Wound rolls for an unmodified Armour save. This would emphasise the idea that Monitor weapons do hurt if they hit you, and only some decent armour will protect you. Powerful weapons would not modify the roll, but simply penetrate armour of a particular value or worse. This can greatly speed up play because there's no roll for high-pen weapons, while allowing armour to be really very good against weapons that are even slightly weaker than it.

I also want to take a look at mob rules.

One day, I will actually get round to publishing some actual armoury again!

Musing on Maths

I have been running quite a lot of maths recently to try and work out whether different combat models would work in Monitors, let alone what numbers to use. And this has given me a huge amount of sympathy for people faced with doing this sort of thing professionally.

The thing is, it's relatively simple (by which I mean to say, very complicated) to do calculations for what would happen (on average, of course) if hero X and enemy Y stand still in an enemy room with no features whatsoever and shoot or stab at each other. You can, if you want, tweak the numbers to produce different results, or different distributions - maybe you want pretty reliable combat, perhaps you prefer it dramatically swingy. You might introduce a complicating layer of different attacks, or perhaps multiple combatants, but while these make things even more difficult it's still possible to see how you model it with maths, even if the execution is a pain.

The problem really comes about when you try to introduce other stuff. That is, anything that allows combat to be remotely interesting.

In combat, we want heroes to use cunning and stealth and tactics. They take cover, launch surprise attacks, use suppressing fire. People don't fire endlessly at static targets, but duck and crouch and move around for perceived advantage. Large groups try to encircle smaller groups, while the smaller groups try to use terrain and technology to create bottlenecks, allowing them to face only a few enemies at a time.

How much of an advantage can the hero gain by doing this? Exactly how much do we want the hero to do it - or any particular heroic archetype? Should they be taking cover frequently for a small bonus, occasionally for a large one? How successfully should they be able to bottleneck enemies, and how does that relate to different enemy types? How effective is that suppressing fire?

Very quickly, you end up in the situation where you'd have to picture the whole fight in your head in detail in order to work out exactly what kinds of factors you want to come in and how effective you want them to be. You end up with an unmanageable number of things to take into account, and potentially with a massively-spiralling set of rules to handle it all. Or else you resort to alpha-testing each possible set of rules in detail, each time having to decide not only what effects you care about, but the numbers that should be attached to them. Real game designers have my sincere sympathy. I have no idea how they handle this stuff.

Which is to say nothing of Grapple rules.

Monitors: combat maths

Maths!

So far I've got one injury model I'm mostly looking at, with one backup. I need to look at the numbers for weaponry, to try and get them about as effective as I want. Fair warning, this is a fairly long and relatively dry post, so if you're looking for reptile jokes and shoehorned song references, I'd wait for another one.

Let's start with some assumptions.

The system needs to cover targets wearing anything from 'nothing' to heavy battle armour, with common targets including criminals (with ordinary clothing), pirates (lightly armoured), wild beasts (unarmoured) and military threats (moderate armour). In addition, many creatures will have some degree of innate armour from scaly skin, barklike flesh, thick blubber, being a robot and similar protection.

Weaponry needs to cover a range from bare-knuckle brawling, through primitive clubs and slings, focus heavily on futuristic handguns and blasters, and allow breathing space for lizard-portable heavy weaponry and vehicle-mounted hardpoints. While the setting features starship-mounted artillery and the like, I don't need a system to rigorously model what happens when you fire those at a person: I think we can guess.

Attack Roll, Wound Roll model

Attack Rolls

• An attack roll involves a roll under the attacker's skill. The defender may roll to evade if in melee or if they spent an action for evasion on their previous turn. If they fail, they are affected by the attack.
• A wounding model handles most physical attacks, while blinding damage is modelled with a blind die and slowing with a slow die. Restraint by ropes, webs and so on requires a Strength check to escape (with occasional allowance for Houdini stunts).
• A wound requires a roll of 11+ on the d20, with weapon strength as a bonus and armour (or other defence, depending on the weapon) as a penalty. This number should be tweaked so that Monitors have around a 75% chance of wounding an average target - coupled with the need for skill rolls to hit, they should end up with about one wound per two actions, which is a single round.
• An unsuccessful roll leaves the target pinned: they suffer a penalty until they spend an action to recover.
• Monitor-grade characters have 3 wounds, civilians 1, and hulking alien monstrosities 5 or more.

We're looking at 1d20 rolls of 11+, with armour and weapon as opposing modifiers. If we want to allow some scope for any weapon to affect any target, then the greatest possible difference between armour (including hide) and weapon strength must be 9. At a pinch, we might allow heavy armour to provide complete protection from unarmed attacks and possibly from primitive weapons like clubs - not sure about this. Given the system is non-lethal anyway, I think allowing a mob of animals or civilians to overwhelm a character is probably okay. Moreover, because we have Pinning rules, we could allow very minor creatures to have a bigger differential than that, overcoming the classic Wizard/Cat phenomenon while allowing for particularly puny NPCs to, in fact, be temporarily disabled by a housecat.

Let's assume that armour 0 represents soft squishy creatures with no armour, 1 indicates thick civilian clothing or scales, 3 is basic protective gear, 5 is riot armour and 7-8 is military grade. Armour values above that are restricted to heavy infantry, vehicles and serious monstrosities and will be occasional occurrences rather than regular opponents.

See below for number-crunching. I couldn't easily get the table to look how I wanted; while the colours provide a broad indication, it's important to note that we're actually not aiming for the attractive green zone of 100% kill rates, but actually more of a fetching yellow.

Chance of causing a wound by modifiers

	Weapon bonus
Armour penalty		0	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10
	0	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%	90%	95%	100%
	-1	45%	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%	90%	95%
	-2	40%	45%	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%	90%
	-3	35%	40%	45%	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%	85%
	-4	30%	35%	40%	45%	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%	80%
	-5	25%	30%	35%	40%	45%	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%	75%
	-6	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%	45%	50%	55%	60%	65%	70%
	-7	15%	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%	45%	50%	55%	60%	65%
	-8	10%	15%	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%	45%	50%	55%	60%
	-9	5%	10%	15%	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%	45%	50%	55%
	-10	0%	5%	10%	15%	20%	25%	30%	35%	40%	45%	50%

Analysis

Looking at this table, I think we're looking at a weapon strength of 7-8 for the go-to Monitor weapons if we want a ~70% wound rate on average targets. This will allow... okay, someone with Skill 4 (basic training only) will hit 20% of the time, and so cause a wound 15% of the time overall, which with two actions a turn means they're likely to wound someone every third turn; if they can get the drop on them or otherwise gain an advantage, though, that'll increase significantly (because accuracy is the main problem, with a +4 bonus to hit, every second shot is likely to cause a wound). A more military character who actually takes some weapons training (Skill 10) has only a 39% chance of failing to wound with two shots.

Of course, there will be other factors to consider. Some weapons should be weak against certain enemies and strong against others. Large weapons are unwieldy, but may be more powerful or simply affect more targets. Light weapons can easily be concealed, drawn and even used in a brawl. Some weapons are useless in the wrong circumstances, or have side-effects.

A problem here (in one sense at least) is that the numbers involved mean weapons will be heavily concentrated towards the top of the table, simply because of probability. With a minimum skill of 4 for Monitors, rolling under skill on 1d20 to hit and needing an 11+ on a d20 Wound roll, they have only a 10% chance of causing a Wound. This means that as soon as armour comes into the equation, weapons need to be at least equally good to offer a significant chance of success. A +4 overall modifier will increase the chance to 15%. Of course, one way to look at this is that the minimum skills are exactly that - representing a Monitor whose skills lie elsewhere, and who uses weapons as a fall-back. If they've upped their skill to 8, they're already succeeding 20% of the time when weapon strength equals armour, which tends to mean about a 35% Wound rate per round if they're just attacking. Still not huge, admittedly.

Sanity check

Pause a minute. Is this actually a problem? What success rate will be satisfying?

D&D is my go-to for combat success rates.

• AD&D. A 1st-level fighter has THAC0 20 with a +1 specialisation bonus, and most likely no Strength bonus. Against a level-appropriate goblin (AC 6) this calls for a roll of 13, giving a 40% chance of goblin-brutalising. A wizard has a 35% chance. Either will likely kill the goblin in one hit.
• D&D 3.5. A 1st-level fighter probably has Str 16 and a +1 BAB, for 1d20+4 overall. Against a level-appropriate goblin (AC 15) this gives exactly a 50% chance of hitting, and almost certainly killing it. A wizard is more likely to have Str 8 and a +0 BAB, for 1d20-1 overall, which gives a 25% chance of success.
• D&D 4E. A 1st-level fighter probably has Str 18, 1/2 level (+0) and a +2 proficiency bonus , for 1d20+6 overall. Against a level-appropriate goblin (AC 16-17) this gives a 50%-55% chance of a hit. A minion will be killed instantly, but other types may easily have 30 hit points, and will survive three or four hits (at 1d8+4) on average. This means the fighter will take around eight attacks to kill the goblin! That's a very dramatic difference from earlier editions, and results in extended fights that I for one found tedious. I think three to four is more my speed for your thug-level creatures. Of course, fighters aren't the big damage-dealers... a striker will add extra damage, around 1d10+4 to 2d8+4, dropping that to two or three hits. A wizard functions very much like a fighter here so there's no real difference.

At this point, I'm inclined to think that it's not a huge problem if unoptimised characters have a low chance of success. I'd perhaps prefer a 20-25% level, simply because Monitors are supposed to be competent and it's annoying to constantly fail. On the downside, that's actually more or less impossible in the current model because they have only a 20% chance of hitting the target, and so would need a more or less 100% wound chance. The other problem here is that differentials have different effects at different skill levels: each +1 to weapon is roughly +1% for a skill 4 character, but a full +5% for a skill 20 character. Of course, I could simply up the skill level of Monitors. Or I could decide that if a professor of physics who passed basic weapons training ,but mostly investigates space-time anomalies and negotiates with local officials, can only drop a hostile moving target one time out of five, that isn't actually a problem. That decision is likely to come in a future post.

Obligatory table of wounding chances:

1d20 wound roll cumulative wound chances by target number and skill

	Target number (as modified)
Skill	1	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
1	5%	5%	5%	4%	4%	4%	4%	3%	3%	3%	3%	2%	2%	2%	2%	1%	1%	1%	1%	0%
2	10%	10%	9%	9%	8%	8%	7%	7%	6%	6%	5%	5%	4%	4%	3%	3%	2%	2%	1%	0%
3	15%	14%	14%	13%	12%	11%	11%	10%	9%	8%	8%	7%	6%	5%	5%	4%	3%	2%	2%	1%
4	20%	19%	18%	17%	16%	15%	14%	13%	12%	11%	10%	9%	8%	7%	6%	5%	4%	3%	2%	1%
5	25%	24%	23%	21%	20%	19%	18%	16%	15%	14%	13%	11%	10%	9%	8%	6%	5%	4%	3%	1%
6	30%	29%	27%	26%	24%	23%	21%	20%	18%	17%	15%	14%	12%	11%	9%	8%	6%	5%	3%	2%
7	35%	33%	32%	30%	28%	26%	25%	23%	21%	19%	18%	16%	14%	12%	11%	9%	7%	5%	4%	2%
8	40%	38%	36%	34%	32%	30%	28%	26%	24%	22%	20%	18%	16%	14%	12%	10%	8%	6%	4%	2%
9	45%	43%	41%	38%	36%	34%	32%	29%	27%	25%	23%	20%	18%	16%	14%	11%	9%	7%	5%	2%
10	50%	48%	45%	43%	40%	38%	35%	33%	30%	28%	25%	23%	20%	18%	15%	13%	10%	8%	5%	3%
11	55%	52%	50%	47%	44%	41%	39%	36%	33%	30%	28%	25%	22%	19%	17%	14%	11%	8%	6%	3%
12	60%	57%	54%	51%	48%	45%	42%	39%	36%	33%	30%	27%	24%	21%	18%	15%	12%	9%	6%	3%
13	65%	62%	59%	55%	52%	49%	46%	42%	39%	36%	33%	29%	26%	23%	20%	16%	13%	10%	7%	3%
14	70%	67%	63%	60%	56%	53%	49%	46%	42%	39%	35%	32%	28%	25%	21%	18%	14%	11%	7%	4%
15	75%	71%	68%	64%	60%	56%	53%	49%	45%	41%	38%	34%	30%	26%	23%	19%	15%	11%	8%	4%
16	80%	76%	72%	68%	64%	60%	56%	52%	48%	44%	40%	36%	32%	28%	24%	20%	16%	12%	8%	4%
17	85%	81%	77%	72%	68%	64%	60%	55%	51%	47%	43%	38%	34%	30%	26%	21%	17%	13%	9%	4%
18	90%	86%	81%	77%	72%	68%	63%	59%	54%	50%	45%	41%	36%	32%	27%	23%	18%	14%	9%	4%
19	95%	90%	86%	81%	76%	71%	67%	62%	57%	52%	48%	43%	38%	33%	29%	24%	19%	14%	10%	5%
20	100%	95%	90%	85%	80%	75%	70%	65%	60%	55%	50%	45%	40%	35%	30%	25%	20%	15%	10%	5%

In case anyone needs to do anything similar...

The chance of wounding is calculated as (chance of rolling X or better on 1d20)*(chance of rolling Skill or less on 1d20).

For a one-die roll, the chance of rolling X or better is calculated as (1 - (X-1)*(1/sides)) and the chance of rolling Skill or less is (Skill*(1/sides))

For multi-die rolls, I produced a table of possible 2d6 rolls, and used a CountIf function to tot up occurrences of each roll. A secondary row then simply added up each number's probability and the previous cell's cumulative probability (zero in the first cell), to produce a cumulative probability.

Maybe I'll do another post just for this stuff...

Alternatives

Curved model

One possibility would be to switch damage rolls to a 2d10 roll or similar. What would that do?

With a 2d6 roll needing a 7 or better, a skill 4 character would need a +5 on weapons to get a 20% Wound rate. That being said, a mere +1 or +2 would allow around a 15% rate, which is better than the previous option. To hit 50%, you'd need to have about skill 12 and a +2 weapon.

Changing the die size doesn't improve matters - you need a bigger modifier with d10s. However, one thing it does do is create a bell curve. Is this a good thing? Well... if I'm not using variable damage then a bell curve is irrelevant, since we're modelling only change of overall success rather than degree of success, and a flat graph with cutoffs does that perfectly well. If I do want to use variable damage, then a bell curve would be worth investigating, but at the moment, no.

2d6 wound roll cumulative probabilities

Target number (as modified)
Skill 1d20	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12
1	5%	5%	5%	4%	4%	3%	2%	1%	1%	0%	0%
2	10%	10%	9%	8%	7%	6%	4%	3%	2%	1%	0%
3	15%	15%	14%	13%	11%	9%	6%	4%	3%	1%	0%
4	20%	19%	18%	17%	14%	12%	8%	6%	3%	2%	1%
5	25%	24%	23%	21%	18%	15%	10%	7%	4%	2%	1%
6	30%	29%	28%	25%	22%	18%	13%	8%	5%	3%	1%
7	35%	34%	32%	29%	25%	20%	15%	10%	6%	3%	1%
8	40%	39%	37%	33%	29%	23%	17%	11%	7%	3%	1%
9	45%	44%	41%	38%	33%	26%	19%	13%	8%	4%	1%
10	50%	49%	46%	42%	36%	29%	21%	14%	8%	4%	1%
11	55%	53%	50%	46%	40%	32%	23%	15%	9%	5%	2%
12	60%	58%	55%	50%	43%	35%	25%	17%	10%	5%	2%
13	65%	63%	60%	54%	47%	38%	27%	18%	11%	5%	2%
14	70%	68%	64%	58%	51%	41%	29%	19%	12%	6%	2%
15	75%	73%	69%	63%	54%	44%	31%	21%	13%	6%	2%
16	80%	78%	73%	67%	58%	47%	33%	22%	13%	7%	2%
17	85%	83%	78%	71%	61%	50%	35%	24%	14%	7%	2%
18	90%	88%	83%	75%	65%	53%	38%	25%	15%	8%	3%
19	95%	92%	87%	79%	69%	55%	40%	26%	16%	8%	3%
20	100%	97%	92%	83%	72%	58%	42%	28%	17%	8%	3%

2d10 wound roll cumulative probabilities

	Target number (as modified)
Skill 1d20	2	3	4	5	6	7	8	9	10	11	12	13	14	15	16	17	18	19	20
1	5%	5%	5%	5%	5%	4%	4%	4%	3%	3%	2%	2%	1%	1%	1%	1%	0%	0%	0%
2	10%	10%	10%	9%	9%	9%	8%	7%	6%	6%	5%	4%	3%	2%	2%	1%	1%	0%	0%
3	15%	15%	15%	14%	14%	13%	12%	11%	10%	8%	7%	5%	4%	3%	2%	2%	1%	0%	0%
4	20%	20%	19%	19%	18%	17%	16%	14%	13%	11%	9%	7%	6%	4%	3%	2%	1%	1%	0%
5	25%	25%	24%	24%	23%	21%	20%	18%	16%	14%	11%	9%	7%	5%	4%	3%	2%	1%	0%
6	30%	30%	29%	28%	27%	26%	24%	22%	19%	17%	14%	11%	8%	6%	5%	3%	2%	1%	0%
7	35%	35%	34%	33%	32%	30%	28%	25%	22%	19%	16%	13%	10%	7%	5%	4%	2%	1%	0%
8	40%	40%	39%	38%	36%	34%	32%	29%	26%	22%	18%	14%	11%	8%	6%	4%	2%	1%	0%
9	45%	45%	44%	42%	41%	38%	36%	32%	29%	25%	20%	16%	13%	9%	7%	5%	3%	1%	0%
10	50%	50%	49%	47%	45%	43%	40%	36%	32%	28%	23%	18%	14%	11%	8%	5%	3%	2%	1%
11	55%	54%	53%	52%	50%	47%	43%	40%	35%	30%	25%	20%	15%	12%	8%	6%	3%	2%	1%
12	60%	59%	58%	56%	54%	51%	47%	43%	38%	33%	27%	22%	17%	13%	9%	6%	4%	2%	1%
13	65%	64%	63%	61%	59%	55%	51%	47%	42%	36%	29%	23%	18%	14%	10%	7%	4%	2%	1%
14	70%	69%	68%	66%	63%	60%	55%	50%	45%	39%	32%	25%	20%	15%	11%	7%	4%	2%	1%
15	75%	74%	73%	71%	68%	64%	59%	54%	48%	41%	34%	27%	21%	16%	11%	8%	5%	2%	1%
16	80%	79%	78%	75%	72%	68%	63%	58%	51%	44%	36%	29%	22%	17%	12%	8%	5%	2%	1%
17	85%	84%	82%	80%	77%	72%	67%	61%	54%	47%	38%	31%	24%	18%	13%	9%	5%	3%	1%
18	90%	89%	87%	85%	81%	77%	71%	65%	58%	50%	41%	32%	25%	19%	14%	9%	5%	3%	1%
19	95%	94%	92%	89%	86%	81%	75%	68%	61%	52%	43%	34%	27%	20%	14%	10%	6%	3%	1%
20	100%	99%	97%	94%	90%	85%	79%	72%	64%	55%	45%	36%	28%	21%	15%	10%	6%	3%	1%

Bigger modifiers

Another possibility is to decide that armour and weapons can have substantially bigger modifiers. Maybe +5 is a weak weapon, +10 a normal one and +20 a heavy weapon.

With a normal +10 weapon and a +5 lightly armoured target, you'd have a... 15% chance again. A solid skill 12 shooter would have a 45% chance per shot, and a 16 skill sharpshooter a 60% chance. That's actually not too bad. Against an unarmoured target you'd automatically succeed. A heavy weapon would injure anyone without at least 11 points of armour. This might work okay.

Sharpshooting model

We could also allow some interplay between the hit roll and the wound roll. At the most basic level, if you roll half your skill or less, you get a +5 bonus on the wound roll. I'm keen to avoid odd little aspects of fixed-roll Critical Hit rules, such as the situation where all hits on a tough monster are critical, so let's see how this one might work out.

Under this model, our skill 4 professor needs a 4 to hit (a 9 against a straightforward target, or a 14 against an easy target). Normally she needs an 11 to wound, but half the time she hits she'll score a critical and need only a 6+. This looks a bit fiddly to model, but broadly speaking we should be able (I think) to average the values for a 4/11 and a 4/6 (slashes are successive rolls), which gives us a 13% in d20/d20 or a 15% in d20/2d10. For higher values, a skill 8 gets 25, a skill 12 34% and a skill 16 50% in d20/d20. 29%, 40% and 58% in 2d10.

I'm actually quite pleased with this one. I think we can work with this.

Percentage chance of wounding with +5 bonus for half-skill hit

Skill	d20/d20	d20/2d10
1	3%	4%
2	6%	7%
3	9%	11%
4	13%	15%
5	16%	18%
6	19%	22%
7	22%	25%
8	25%	29%
9	28%	33%
10	31%	36%
11	34%	40%
12	38%	44%
13	41%	47%
14	44%	51%
15	47%	54%
16	50%	58%
17	53%	62%
18	56%	65%
19	59%	69%
20	63%	73%

Single Roll model

Single Success

The Single Success Roll model might be something like: 1d20 + AttackerSkill + weapon modifier - DefenderSkill - armour = damage. So 1d20 + 12 Ballistics + 2 (heavy blaster) - 8 Dodge - 4 armour = 1d20 + 2 damage (however that translates). My main objection here is it's fiddly maths! In practical terms, the player would roll 1d20 + skill + weapon = damage, and the GM would apply damage - defence - armour = result. So it's two separate lots of maths, but it's still something to bear in mind. I'm a bit tempted by this model, though. It's straightforward.

Let's see how this version might play out, adapting it for the current wound model so the overspill from the attack roll becomes the Wound roll.

1d20 + AttackerSkill + weapon modifier - DefenderSkill - armour = Wound roll

Assuming our professor's weapon and armour cancel out, the average will be 10.5 + 4 + 0 - 4 - 0, giving a score of 10. For an equally puny opponent (DS4), that's about a 50% chance of a successful Wound. More likely, the enemy will have a bit of an edge here, and the odds will drop somewhat. A skilled character with skill 10 has around an 80% chance to take down an ordinary criminal (DS4), and around a 50% chance to drop a mercenary (DS10). A real sharpshooter with 15-20 skill can drop a mercenary (DS10) with military armour (+5) one shot out of two and drop henchmen like flies.

Another version would scrap DefenderSkill (for simplicity), and would allow a wider range of armour values to compensate. I think basically this would work either way around, so we can decide later whether or not defensive attributes are a good idea.

Here there are a lot of factors at play in a single calculation, and so it's a bit tricky to decide how they interact. The relative frequency of various armour types will make a significant difference to success over time. Monitor weaponry is likely to make less difference, as PCs tend to broadly stick with the gear they have except where there's a level-based upgrade model.

There's not a huge amount of maths I can usefully do here. Broadly speaking, though, I'm slightly less happy about it for some reason. Not sure why. Any ideas?

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That really is an awful lot of stuff (and it takes freakin' ages to do those tables if you're fussy like me and insist on peeling off all the revolting useless bits of code that importing tables adds, and making the cell/row/table structure halfway respectable) so I'll leave it there for now. I still need to think about what sort of narrative results I'd want from various situations, in order to try and juggle the numbers appropriately.