Playtest Feedback: Personal Combat

[Morrus]

Thanks for the write-up, I have had an interest in the system so am keen to hear more about how it plays out in practice.

Just to contribute, I really love suppressive fire rules. I feel that they really give a pinned-down effect and make machine guns and similar weapons play the way I feel they should. In the instance mentioned of the character wishing to give support to the fleeing civilians, I feel that some good rules for supressive fire could really help there. The best rules I have seen for this are in Shadowrun 5th edition. To bastardize them, I would suggest something like this:

A) You pick an area to lay down suppressive fire in. EG a LMG can do a 5 meter line area of effect, or X squares.
B) Everybody in that area is given the choice to fall prone or dive behind cover. If they don't, you attack them as normal, with a bonus to hit. If they do take cover, you automatically miss them.
C) From here on, until you stop doing it, your gun runs out of juice or overheats, everybody in the suppressed area gets -X to all attacks and cannot move out into the open.
D) At any time, the enemy can choose to not take the - to attack, or to move out into the open. If they do, you get a free shot on them.

The particulars need adjusting for the game of course, but I find that the rules worked really well in my Shadowrun games. It gives people the feeling of being pinned down and having to just take cheaky potshots. It plays out very tactically and makes people fear machine guns as much as they should. I like having a weapon can really change the battle without actually doing any damage at all.

The interactions between this style of suppressive fire and your pinned-down and crossfire rules could be very interesting, but very deadly. The HMG lays down the suppresseive fire, trapping people, while the standard infantry move to outflank. There is a reason that people use grenades, smoke and airstrikes to get rid of machine-gunners.

On a side note, excuse my ignorance, but does the Pinned-down rule make sniper-nests and entrenched positions a little impractical? You would have to give them such a huge bonus to defence to counteract the advantages the attackers get. Would it be an idea to say that an entreched position has X dice resistance to being pinned down? So in a properly made sandbagged machinegun nest or a WWII normandy bunker, you ignore the first 3 bonus dice that the enemy are getting to pin you. I think that this could help distinguish between an encounter where you are storming a defensible position and an encounter where the battlefield just happens to have various peices of debris to take cover behind.

A properly entrenched position would simply ignore the pinned down rule. Some careers are also able to do so - a sniper ignores the rule, for example, as one if his special abilities.

 

[Morrus]

For Pinned Down, I'm wondering if it's workable to put the onus on the attacker. Something like this:

Pinning Down
When shooting at an opponent who doesn't change position, your aim against them improves over successive rounds as you account for cover and anticipate their positioning. Each turn you make a ranged attack against an opponent, you will gain a cumulative 1d6 bonus to attacking them on subsequent turns. This bonus is lost as soon as the opponent moves to a position at least 10' (2 squares) from his current position, or if you make no attacks against that character on your turn.​

That solves the issue of new attackers against the target, adds a requirement that attackers keep up the pressure to maintain the bonus, and also gives pinned-down characters a tactical decision to make - either they can move to eliminate the penalty, or they can concentrate on killing their attacker. However, it also requires attackers to track their bonuses accurately. I'd suggest having players stack up their bonus dice in front of them, or using different-coloured d6s for the bonus dice.

That's not a bad idea. Largely the same effect, but the tracking is a little easier.

 

[MarkB]

The other way to work it would be, instead of providing a cumulative bonus to attackers' dice pools, make it a cumulative numerical penalty to the target's defence. That way, a pinned-down character keeps track of their own penalty and their attackers just roll normally.

 

[Nagol]

The other way to work it would be, instead of providing a cumulative bonus to attackers' dice pools, make it a cumulative numerical penalty to the target's defence. That way, a pinned-down character keeps track of their own penalty and their attackers just roll normally.

Since the attacker is likely faced with just one defender, but the defender can be targeted by many attackers with different bonuses, it is probably best to have the attacker track.

 

[MarkB]

Since the attacker is likely faced with just one defender, but the defender can be targeted by many attackers with different bonuses, it is probably best to have the attacker track.

The attackers' bonuses are irrelevant in this version. The only thing that affects the penalty to the defender's score is the number of rounds he's spent in one place, and that's easy to track.

 

[Morrus]

The other way to work it would be, instead of providing a cumulative bonus to attackers' dice pools, make it a cumulative numerical penalty to the target's defence. That way, a pinned-down character keeps track of their own penalty and their attackers just roll normally.

That's exactly what it is right now . Cumulative 1 die per round.

 

[MarkB]

That's exactly what it is right now . Cumulative 1 die per round.

Yeah - but it's a cumulation that each attacker needs to be aware of. If you penalise the defender, only he needs to track his defense score. Maybe it's just swings and roundabouts, but it seems like it might be easier to track that way. I'll see how it feels in practice once our group starts playtesting combat.

 

[LucasC]

Hey, fancy chucking the blank versions of those character sheets up in the character sheet area? Always good to give folks options!

Done.