Evil Bikers (Tacky's players, begone)

[takyris]

Okay, so, I may not be understanding vehicle rules right. I'm not planning on a car chase or anything, since none of my players care about driving quite that much, but I do plan on having my PCs do a "Magnificent Seven/Seven Samurai" deal with a small rural community being attacked by skeletal bikers. (It's a bit more complicated than that, but that's what's important.)

So, if I want my bikers to run somebody down, I have to have them voluntarily do a collision. Assuming that the bikers are going at Street speed (ie, 15-35 mph), that means that they do 4d4 damage, Ref15 half, and then the biker has to make a Drive check, DC 16 (15+1 for Street Speed) or lose control of his vehicle. Is that right? The bike also takes 4d4, as does the driver, although the bike has hardness 5 and the driver can make a Reflex 15 save for half. Also, the bike drops its speed to stationary.

For bikes, this seems okay -- you drive up and plow into somebody, and you're gonna have to stop, and the bike might suffer a busted or bent piece somewhere. The damage seems unimpressive, although the average of 10 points damage is enough to take out the average non-physical 1/1 Ordinary (a smart/dedicated, for instance). Perhaps if I was ramming somebody, I'd be gunning the engine, which would put me at highway speed -- 4d8 damage, not 4d4, and a DC17 check to control my bike. This would also do a lot more damage to my bike, though.

Again, not advocating a rules change -- A motorcycle isn't meant to run people over, and it's much better at doing ride-by attacks (although the only thing I've found that gives a bonus to melee attacks while coming at someone that way is the Lance, and my biker guys are pretty much usng clubs, machetes, and firearms). Just wanna make sure I've got my ducks in a row -- although I might alter the rules to allow any melee weapon to deal double damage when attacking from a vehicle that is charging the target, not just a lance.

The rules do seem a bit stiff when applied to something like a semi, moving at highway speed, plowing into a lone human target. My moviegoing experience implies that the poor human should get squashed, while the semi pretty much continues on unimpeded. According to the rules, though, the semi would drop to alley speed (ie, dropping from 55 to 15 mph), and the driver would have to make a Drive check to avoid losing control of his vehicle. Since I don't have any semi attacks planned, this isn't a big deal, but would most people just house-rule this to have no effect on the semi?

And, as a side question, if I have Drive-by attack, and I drive by my opponent and whack him with a club as I do (doing double damage in my house rule, possibly), do the people I'm attacking get attacks of opportunity on me? If this were shot on the run or spring attack, I wouldn't provoke attacks of opportunity, but it doesn't specifically say so in this case.

Thanks!

 

[ledded]

It sounds like you are reading the d20 Modern rules right, though I'd have to check my book to be for sure.

We use the spycraft chase rules in our game, but I think the d20 Modern rules are pretty much used for collisions, damage, etc except we do house rule a few things, like I think a human does less damage (half? I'm not sure) to a bike/car/truck etc and the GM will make a judgement call on the 'slowdown'. So if a bike rams you, chances are it will stop or significantly slow down, but a loaded semi may not even notice that much.

I dont think that opponents get the AoO when doing the Drive by, but another person other than the target possibly could. One thing to remember is that a lot of vehicles provide cover which can negate an AoO if I remember properly (dont think the bike provides any cover, I'm not sure). I may not be right about that, I know it was that way in D&D but I'm not sure about Modern AoO's.

Sounds like a fun campaign though.

 

[takyris]

Ledded: It's gonna be fun, man. We'll see, but I'm pretty jazzed.

Okay, so, here's the house rule I'm considering to give bikers a bit of added power when whacking people: For each speed category of difference between target and driver, add 1d6 damage on a hit, provided that it's a weapon that adds a strength bonus to damage. So a guy moving at alley speed (20 mph) would add 1d6 damage if he hit someone with a club while driving by, but if he were moving at highway speed (55 mph), he'd add 3d6 damage. This damage is also applied if a stationary person readies an attack or attacks on his turn against someone zooming by, but it doesn't apply to attacks of opportunity -- the idea here is that if you're "setting your spear" in some d20 Modern version, you can hit them just as hard as they can hit you, but if somebody rides by you and you take a quick jab as they go, you don't get that extra effect. This makes the bikers devastating if they get to drive-by attack hapless citizens at high speed, but easy targets for things like wires stretched across the road, which would get that bonus damage as well.

Next question: Okay, you've got your evil bikers. Evil bikers ride around whacking people with chains and clubs and, in some cases, firing shotguns. Now, the only one of those tactics that bikers can do by the book is the club. A chain is large, and thus takes both hands, as does a shotgun. I've got one guy with a sawed-off shotgun, to make it medium, and I've made a smaller version of a chain (basically a small-sized flail, Small, 1d6, 20/x2, and the usual bonuses to disarms and ability to trip). Can anyone suggest rules for how somebody would use a normal-sized shotgun while driving a vehicle? I was thinking of going with a flat -4 penalty -- enough so that it's not an attractive option, but still possible for people who really want to look cool. I'd probably have to extend this to other areas out of fairness -- if my players want to fire a rifle one-handed, they can do so, at that -4 penalty. This isn't likely to come up, though... BAB isn't easy to come by in d20 Modern, and my PCs like to hit.

Anybody who's used the d20 Modern vehicle rules got some good tactics for evil bikers? I could really use some help!

EDIT: Additional question for driving afficianados:

From the SRD:

"45-Degree Turn: Any vehicle can make a simple 45-degree turn as part of its movement. The vehicle must move forward at least a number of squares equal to its turn number (shown on Table: Vehicle Speeds and Modifiers) before it can turn. Making a 45-degree turn costs 1 square of movement."

All is good up until "1 square of movement". Does that mean that if I'm on Character Scale, I lose 1 of my (possibly) 20 or 30 squares of movement, but if I'm on Chase Scale, I lose 1 of my 2 to 4 squares of movement? That seems... odd. Chase scale seems a lot more penalizing -- but maybe I'm just not getting the scale. It's not a big deal here, since I'm primarily anticipating bike-versus-person stuff, which means I'll be staying with Character scale.

Thanks,

 

[Old Drew Id]

We've varied a little bit from one situation to the next, but more or less the rules we've used in the Medallions group are:

Driver makes a drive check as an attack. That sets the DC. Walker must make a Reflex save against that DC or get hit. If the walker does get hit, they take damage as given in the d20 Modern core book, or 1d6 for every 10 MPH the vehicle was going, depending on the mood of the GM. The vehicle takes that same damage back (after subtracting hardness) but we mitigate that damage for larger vehicles in a sort of fuzzy way.

If I needed a hard rule for that, I would say that the vehicle cuts the damage it takes in half for every size category it is larger than the person it hit. That keeps things hard for the motorcycle, but makes it much easier for the semi. As for a drive check after the hit to maintain control of the vehicle, I would use the book DC, but then cut that by a factor of 4 maybe for every size category the vehicle is bigger than the walker.

But then again, I think a lot of this is based on out particular preferences as a gaming crew. We like our personal battles as precise as robotic surgery, but we play fast and loose with the car chases...