Optional Combat Round System?

[Kor]

I have been running a d20 Modern campaign for about 6 months now. Its a military based campaign with a heavy reliance on firearms. Early in the sessions I found the party quickly succumbing to melee weapon wielding attackers.

In reality terms (arg, I hate saying that when talking about a fiction roleplaying game) a person 30 feet away from me will be cut down to shreds in his "charge" as I unload the clip of my Sub-machine gun into him. The d20 combat round rules just have never fit well with firearms.

I did some tweaks on my own which helped, but now I have decided to create my own Combat Round System for d20 Modern. Before I do this though, I was wondering if anyone else out there has done this and posted their system or knows of a website containing such a system? (I hate to go through all the work of re-inventing the wheel.)

Thanks.

 

[Masada]

As a half measure without attempting to completely re-write combat you might try a few things to make combat more gritty (aka: deadly).

You could try lowering the Massive Damage Threshold to 10. This is easily exceeded with small arms fire and should cut down charging in to the bullets. Another tweak in unison is to make Charge deny your dex bonus to Defense (makes you flat-footed since you're not dodging and such). Apply this rule to running as well.

OR

Implement Vitality/Wounds and allow players to use Action Points to confirm critical threats. Critical hits go straight to wound points with normal damage. Since most players will only have 12 to 16 wound points this again makes combat more deadly and players less likely to charge in to gunfire. Also rule that Charging and Running make the PC flat-footed.

While VP/WP seems like no big deal, it really changes the feel of combat. Can't hurt to try it.

OR

You can make special NPC characters and player characters shine but stealing some pages from Spycraft 2.0 combat. Assign your rank and file mooks only a saving throw bonus. When a mook takes damage just make a damage + the bonus you assigned against save DC 10 + 1/2 the damage dealt. Failure means death to the mook. Damage is accumulative making each save harder. PC and special NPC damage is dealt with in the normal manner (how ever you define normal). This makes for very cinematic combat scenes with droves of mooks dying while the PC's slug it out.

(Spycraft 2.0 rocks!)

 

[Victim]

You could also make firearms threaten an area kind of like reach weapons, so that if someone closes from too far away the characters can shoot them as an AoO. It wouldn't be very helpful with high defense/HD melee attackers though.

 

[ValhallaGH]

So, you're complaining about guns versus melee?
Solution 1) Longer battlefields. Short ranges favor melee weapons, long ranges favor ranged weapons.

Solution 2) Redesign combat. I'll suggest something similar to Original Deadlands. It's a bit more complex than d20 but it might give you what you want.

Everyone rolls Init as normal but initiative is rolled each round. Take the total rolled and divide by five; this is the number of cards that each character gets to draw from a standard 52 card poker deck. Proceed in card order, from highest to lowest. Each card is one round of actions, so someone with five cards (Init of 25 to 29) gets to take full actions at five different times in a round.
Order is: Ace, King, Queen, Jack, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. For same values, highest suit goes first: Spade, Heart, Diamond, Club.
This allows a person with a terrible roll (5) to go first, by virtue of being lucky enough to draw the highest card.
For rolls less than 5, no cards are drawn. The character siezes up, dives for cover or otherwise is unable to act this round.
Improved Initiative becomes an excellent feat, as it guarantees at least one draw each round.
Generally, the DM has one deck and the players have another.

Solution 3) Get over it. (See below.)

In reality terms (arg, I hate saying that when talking about a fiction roleplaying game) a person 30 feet away from me will be cut down to shreds in his "charge" as I unload the clip of my Sub-machine gun into him.

Ah, a complete lack of research.

Within 20 yards, or sixty feet if you don't do yards, is the range at which most professional shooters (police, military, etc.) consider a knife as deadly as a pistol. At that range, a person with a knife can stab a shooter before the vast majority of people can shoot him dead; I'd portray this as a certainty but there are always a few exceptions (five that I'm aware of).
Don't even get me started on longarms, which usually take a fraction of a second longer to bring to bear than a handgun. In most firefights, lifespans are meassured in fractions of seconds.

The lesson? Don't base your complaint upon reality.

 

[Victim]

It's seriously 20 yards? I thought I heard that knife range was 20 feet, but I'm no expert.

 

[SteveC]

I ran a multi-dimensional multi-genre game using D20 Modern, and I had set up reality rules for more cinematic and more gritty worlds. What I did for the most "realistic" rules was, if I remember:

Melee attacks are unchanged.

Against missile attacks, unless you have cover or are taking a movement action, you are treated as flat-footed and lose your defense bonus.

Wounds
Taking damage equal to your massive damage threshold scores a wound point.
For each multiple of your M Damage Threshold you take, you take another wound.
Wounds heal at a rate of one per day.
Take more wounds than your character level, and you are immediately disabled and placed at -1 HP.
Each wound point causes a -1 penalty to all actions.
Characters may spend an action point to ignore penalties to wounds for 1D6 minutes at a time. This is the adrenaline rule.

Massive damage saves are DC 15 + 2 per 10 points of damage over the threshold, but you may add you armor and natural armor bonus to this roll.

It worked like a charm, although the group left this world pretty fast...

--Steve

 

[Aussiegamer]

in D&D I think that the thrown range max is 5x and knives are 10' not yard increments.

In Nexus, I changes burst to not be a ref save but a normal attack, thus adding serious damage potential to the defender. To offset this I have recoil and also that mibs take max 20% damage from any one attack, as most of the bulk of a body is in the torso.

I have shot through cover rules, thus that paper wall is not really going to protect you like a steel wall.

I have combat damage threashold, there are three different layers to it (these are set by a number set like d20M damage threashold). At lower levels you get some nasty damage that stays with you until fixed, with upper levels allowing for fort save v damage or drop to -1hp. This allows for limbs to be blown off and then allow for cybernetics to be used if you like. Or you are just a one armed fighter until you get regeneration done or what ever system you like for limb replacements.

I also have an active initiative, which changes the order depending on what happens in the combat, also uses the knowledge Tactics as a base for better reactions in the combat.

I tried to make it still dangerous, the playtesters have died from grenades and being hit in the chest by a mech assault cannon (with a critical hit on top, so there was just a pair of smoking boots left :\ ), but tring to also make it able to enjoy the combats.

hay how about posting some of your ideas

 

[chris.crouch]

I don't have any house-rules for this, but here are a couple of suggestions:

1) Allow non-flatfooted firearms wielders to improve their initiative at the cost of a penalty to hit, probably at 1-1 ratio. So the gun guy can squeeze off a hurried shot at knife guy.

or

2) Have movement reduce initiative, at about 2 initiative per 5'. So knife guy would have his initiative lowered by 12 when he charges gun guy. A bit more bookwork, but also more general.

FWIW I've also heard what ValhallaGH reported: at 30' it's not at all certain that gun guy will win that fight. What I had heard was phrased differently, with a different emphasis - not saying the knife guy actually has the edge, but that the gun guy is not completely safe.

Chris

 

[Kor]

I think I will be planning on designing a new Combat Round System -- I had actually planned on designing one for D&D anyways, so this will be a good challenge for me to make the same system workable for both D&D and Modern. I already have some pretty good ideas for how to make it work so once I have something put together I'll post it. (My goal is to better allow for projectile weapons such as mondern day guns to be a bit more "realistic" in the combat round sense, yet not completely change the system to the degree that it would require redesigning all support rules such as feats and combat modifiers.)

Currently I do use a Vitality and Wounds system, however I found that criticals were pretty much guaranteed deaths... so what I did was make the first 1x of any critical apply against wounds and the rest I applied against vitality. Also since in firefights I was finding that criticals were fairly common I then decided that only "special NPC's" were capable of delivering criticals on the PC's. (These being the primary villians / bosses / leaders in the encounters). Enemys (aside from special NPC's) had only hit points, where-as the specials had vitality and wound points.

I also found that the massive damage Threshold was too low, so I increased it to CON +10... this has worked quite decently.

 

[Kor]

Within 20 yards, or sixty feet if you don't do yards, is the range at which most professional shooters (police, military, etc.) consider a knife as deadly as a pistol. At that range, a person with a knife can stab a shooter before the vast majority of people can shoot him dead; I'd portray this as a certainty but there are always a few exceptions (five that I'm aware of).
Don't even get me started on longarms, which usually take a fraction of a second longer to bring to bear than a handgun. In most firefights, lifespans are meassured in fractions of seconds.

In my reference to an attacker being 30' away, I meant to describe a situation where the gun wielder is aware of the attacker and has his gun ready. I agree that if my pistol is still holstered and someone 30' away from me runs at me, I might be lucky to get even 3 shots off -- and those would be rushed shots at a moving target while I am bringing my pistol up to sight it.

In the situation though, which is the case with my gun-toting pc's, where they have their fire arms at the ready -- then a person charging 30' will be subject of an unloaded 9mm clip (15 bullets), or worse if up against a SMG or Assault Rifle. (I am not a trained professional and I can accurately pump off 3 shots per second with a 9mm).

Anyways I appreciate all the ideas, I'll try some more experiements with my party

The lesson? Don't base your complaint upon reality.

Normally, I would agree... especially in a fantasy or heavily science fiction based campaign... however in a modern military campaign setting, the short falls of the d20 rules concerning firearms are so glaring that it actually takes away from some of the enjoyment of the campaign.