Star Wars d20: Starship weapons against personnel targets.

[Angcuru]

One of my players was thinking that since character-sized weapons i.e. blasters are ineffective against starships, wouldn't that make starship weapons extra damaging against characters/people/non-starship targets? I can't find anything about this in the rules, and I was wondering if anyone has a solution to this.

 

[domino]

Assuming that the starship can hit a person sized target, what with the size penalty differences, yeah.

That more effective just stems from the sheer amount of damage. SW D20 armoring is Damage Reduction, so most hand weapons simply don't have enough damage to punch through the DR.

Unless I'm completely wrong.

 

[nak9788]

Alot of systems use a Mega-Damage system whereby pesonal weapons deal a "normal damage" and heavy weapons like a tank's main gun deal "mega-damage" They also use armor and "mega-armor".

Basically a pistol deals so much damage. I personal wearing a flak vest would negate some of that damage. But a tank has "mega-armor" so it wouldn't do anything but bounce off.
Only a weapon with "mega-damage" could penetrate it.

In the other direction, a mega-damage weapon would ignore all normal armor. Plus it would deal its damage x10 to a personal target.

I don't know how Star Wars rules work, but you might want to try to adopt a similar system. (At least the x10 damage for your question)

 

[Ankh-Morpork Guard]

No extra damage. They don't NEED extra damage. Most of the starship weapons do multiple d10s worth of damage and then mulitply that by AT LEAST 2. I'd suggest ignoring DR from personal armor and such, but beyond that, the starship weapons that will come into contact with personal combatants are deadly already.

 

[kenobi65]

To build on what the others are saying:

1) A higher-level heroic character can probably survive one (or more) hits from a starship weapon. But, keep in mind that VP "hits" are really "near-misses" -- the hero moves just enough out of the way to make a hit into a glancing blow. If a starship weapon scores a "true" hit on a character (i.e., a hit that does WP damage), it's almost always going to do lethal damage. Even a wimpy 4d10x2 laser cannon on a light freighter is going to be doing an average of 44 points of damage.

2) Going the other way, most ships have significant DR. Space transports typically have DR20, capital ships DR40. This means that personal weapons are going to have a very hard time doing any damage at all against bigger ships.

(Note: ship DR has been errataed. If your RCRB shows the YT-1300 as having DR10, then you have the pre-errata printing, and should double the DRs (both for hull and shields) for all the ship stats.)

So, I see no need to add any adjustment rules.

 

[DarkSoldier]

1) A higher-level heroic character can probably survive one (or more) hits from a starship weapon. But, keep in mind that VP "hits" are really "near-misses" -- the hero moves just enough out of the way to make a hit into a glancing blow. If a starship weapon scores a "true" hit on a character (i.e., a hit that does WP damage), it's almost always going to do lethal damage. Even a wimpy 4d10x2 laser cannon on a light freighter is going to be doing an average of 44 points of damage.

I saw a 16th-level character take a hit from an orbital bombardment. He went from full to -118 in one shot.

 

[kenobi65]

I saw a 16th-level character take a hit from an orbital bombardment. He went from full to -118 in one shot.

Ow. That's just not gonna grow back.

(Out of curiosity, what was the damage dice on that weapon? And, did the damage have to get through his VPs first?)