Quick Question: LAW

[takyris]

So, that rocket-launcher dealie...

What's the deal? You fire it at a person. You miss. You say, "darn, missed. Now I roll on the grenadelike weapon table," and if the person was within 150 feet, you still catch them in the radius of the blast.

Or, optionally, you read into the text that if you don't hit, the rocket doesn't explode, and you're left with "Yeah, missed him due to his undercover shirt. No damage at all. Rocket? I have no idea what happened to it. It's off over there somewhere."

Can anybody help?

And yeah, I know it's designed for use against tanks, but it seems perfectly legal to try to use it on people. Well, on the ground at people's feet, since that's Defense 10.

 

[DMScott]

So, that rocket-launcher dealie...

What's the deal? You fire it at a person. You miss. You say, "darn, missed. Now I roll on the grenadelike weapon table," and if the person was within 150 feet, you still catch them in the radius of the blast.

I believe it only has a 10' blast radius (assuming you mean the one on pg 102 of the main rulebook rather than one in a supplement somewhere, I only have the main book).

And yeah, I know it's designed for use against tanks, but it seems perfectly legal to try to use it on people. Well, on the ground at people's feet, since that's Defense 10.

Well, if somebody was firing a LAW at me, I think that would be a good clue that I should have left the area five minutes ago if I wanted to survive the experience. d20 Modern characters have a slightly better chance of surviving if they've got a few levels under their belt, but it's still not a weapon they should dismiss out of hand.

 

[pensiv]

And yeah, I know it's designed for use against tanks, but it seems perfectly legal to try to use it on people. Well, on the ground at people's feet, since that's Defense 10.

That's how I use those sorts of weapons in FPS video games. Can't see what's wrong with using them like that in d20.

 

[bubbalin]

Well, if somebody was firing a LAW at me, I think that would be a good clue that I should have left the area five minutes ago if I wanted to survive the experience. d20 Modern characters have a slightly better chance of surviving if they've got a few levels under their belt, but it's still not a weapon they should dismiss out of hand.

Massive damage is interesting too.

 

[takyris]

I should note that in the game we played last night, each player controlled two 10th-level PCs, two 2nd-level ordinaries, and two decoy blips. We were playing a plotless team strategy game where everyone started with 20 Wealth and could buy anything they could afford.

My assault rifle specialist was caught in a grapple and was understandably unhappy. He did have Evasion and a pretty good Reflex save, though, so he opted to draw a thermite grenade and drop it each turn in the grapple. He's done it three times so far and made his save each time. It's tough to flavor-text "Dropped grenade at my feet while grappling with bad guy and somehow avoided ALL damage, while bad guy only got singed, too," but you can do it if you really really try.

Thanks for the responses. Just wanted to make sure I wasn't missing anything.

 

[S'mon]

How much damage does a direct LAW hit do in d20 modern? I remember in my AD&D/Twilight 2000 hybrid they did around 450hp damage, handy vs enemy deities.

 

[takyris]

10d6, Reflex 17 or 18 for half. Which is still gonna force an MDT on pritnear anyone it hits. And if it hits an object, it ignores the first 10 points of hardness before dealing damage.

And if a LAW hits an individual person, they don't get a Reflex save, I believe.

 

[S'mon]

10d6, Reflex 17 or 18 for half. Which is still gonna force an MDT on pritnear anyone it hits. And if it hits an object, it ignores the first 10 points of hardness before dealing damage.

And if a LAW hits an individual person, they don't get a Reflex save, I believe.

Pretty pathetic, huh? About as good as a fireball?

What do RPG-7s do? 1d6, save for half?

Edit: This is one of the things I really hate about D&D/d20 - the ridiculously low damage of 'mechanical' weapons. The mid-level Fighters IMC are regularly hitting for 45 points damage with their two-handed weapons, while a ballista does a whopping _3d6_ - average of 10 points?!

 

[takyris]

S'mon, it's one of the nastiest weapons in the game. There ARE no fireballs in non-magical d20 Modern, and even my 10th-level fast hero wasn't going to make every single Reflex save at that DC -- in d20 Modern, DC15 saves are missable even at high levels. You don't have cloaks of resistance and stat-boosting items to get all your saves up into the teens.

And if it does more damage than your Con, you have a decent chance of automatically dropping to -1.

So, uh, the damage is just fine. Really. Ordinary 4d6 frag grenades can be a near-instakill if you roll well.

 

[DMScott]

Pretty pathetic, huh? About as good as a fireball?

What do RPG-7s do? 1d6, save for half?

Edit: This is one of the things I really hate about D&D/d20 - the ridiculously low damage of 'mechanical' weapons. The mid-level Fighters IMC are regularly hitting for 45 points damage with their two-handed weapons, while a ballista does a whopping _3d6_ - average of 10 points?!

d20 Modern is a heroic-type game that simulates action/adventure fiction. Things like LAWs serve two purposes in that genre:

- the weapon the hero really has to avoid getting hit with
- a good way to kill a lot of extras and make impressive kabooms

Because it's a game rather than a novel or movie with full script control, it's good to have a mechanism for heroic types to survive when point 1 goes horribly wrong and the thing goes off nearby. The damage is set accordingly - so that normal mooks are pretty much automatically dead, but a really heroic mid-level character might come through relatively OK (or he might also become soup, depending on how the dice go). If players start abusing that game mechanic by jumping in front of LAWs or some such thing, then I think the GM is perfectly justified in upping the damage and save DCs.