Underpowered Guns in d20 Modern (rant, long)

[S'mon]

Doesn't that seem a bit high? I mean, you aren't getting through that with anything. It seems to me that conjuring a meteor swarm ought to deal at least as much damage to a tank as a modern missile would - not enough to destroy or disable an Abrams, probably, but enough to scratch the paint at least.

For that matter, I would think that a +5 adamantine vorpal blade in the hands of a superhumanly strong high-level fighter would be able to carve up an Abrams given a fairly reasonable amount of time, say a minute or so. Er, assuming no interference. :\

A modern man-portable missile fired at the front of an Abrams would barely scratch the paint, yup - you'd need something like a direct hit from a Tomahawk to destroy it. It's just possible to damage an Abrams' engine block by coming up behind it and shooting it up the derriere (grand-ma friendly) - this was done in Iraq during the US invasion, by Iraqi forces using RPG-7 grenade launchers (which do 55d6 in my system, derived from Twilight:2000), but it's difficult to do & still didn't harm the occupants. Few D&D spells are designed as armour-penetrators, a meteor swarm is more like FAE (Fuel Air Explosive) - it'll incinerate infantry & light armoured vehicles but I don't see why you'd expect it to penetrate over a meter of depleted-uranium-enforced armour. If you want +5 adamatine vorpal blades to carve through anything, have them ignore DR/Hardness or whatever, like Luke's lightsaber. But scaling realistically from human-scale to vehicle scale it'll remain impossible to penetrate Chobham armour with your 20th level Fighter, who's probably only doing 120 or so damage/hit! Of course that's plenty enough to destroy APCs, IFVs, Apache attack helicopters... plenty of superhuman stunts remain possible to high-level PCs, even with a realistic aproach to scaling damage & armour.

 

[S'mon]

I guess an Abrams'-killing Sorcerer could use a Ranged Touch Attack to send his meteor swarm down the Abrams' gun barrel?

Personally I like a fairly gritty (rather than anime-like) style when the 40th level PCs take on the US 1st Armoured Division; if the PCs are smart when they realise their meteor swarms and other attacks are bouncing off the tank's frontal armour, they'll attack vulnerable areas like the tracks, viewfinder, exhaust... just like infantry have to do IRL.

 

[ragboy]

Doesn't that seem a bit high? I mean, you aren't getting through that with anything. It seems to me that conjuring a meteor swarm ought to deal at least as much damage to a tank as a modern missile would - not enough to destroy or disable an Abrams, probably, but enough to scratch the paint at least.

For that matter, I would think that a +5 adamantine vorpal blade in the hands of a superhumanly strong high-level fighter would be able to carve up an Abrams given a fairly reasonable amount of time, say a minute or so. Er, assuming no interference. :\

Though it depends on the cinematic level of your game, that DR is probably accurate. The only thing that's getting through the front and side hull and turret armor of an M1A1-M1A2 is another M1A1-M1A2's main gun shot. Mobility kills are much easier, even with something as wimpy as a heavy grenade or RPG. But, you're not penetrating crew compartments with anything less than a 120mm DU round. In general terms, I'd put the armor at something like this:

Front hull, front skirts, and the front sides and back of the turret: Very High (120mm or higher)
Rear and side hull and top of the turret: High (25mm can penetrate)
Rear skirts, track and anything outside the tank: Low (.50 can chew them up).

I watched a T72 shoot an M1A1 at point blank range (about 50 yards) in the side of the turret and the round bounced off.

My tank ran over a mine on the front left and it destroyed the track, and 2 roadwheels, but did not penetrate the bottom hull armor or the heavy skirt (though it did blow it off its hinges). Another tank in our division backed over a mine and it penetrated the rear hull and caught the engine on fire.

As to the damage from an M1A1/A2, that's another story. That same engagement, both my tank and several others shot through T72's to kill other T72's behind them. Two catastrophic kills (turrets flying in the air and massive fireballs) with one shot.

I have a couple of presentations from GD Land systems from the current war as well, with pictures depicting armor performance. There's actually a very disturbing incident where an unknown (possibly hand-held) weapon penetrated the softer skirt and the actual side hull armor injuring the gunner. If anyone's interested I can dig those up and send them along.

 

[Krieg]

There's actually a very disturbing incident where an unknown (possibly hand-held) weapon penetrated the softer skirt and the actual side hull armor injuring the gunner. If anyone's interested I can dig those up and send them along.

General consensus is that it was either an RPG with a newer warhead design (PG-7VR) OR an AT-14 Kornet, with the RPG being the most likely culprit.


Considering the location of the attack, my money would be on the former as well.

 

[takyris]

IMO **.50 HMG** rounds should not be bouncing off 6th level heroes leaving only minor abrasions! I'm willing to accept that a 'hit' on a high-level character might be a scratch, but the "oh, it really missed but damage represents fatigue" argument leaves me cold. In the d20M RAW, .50 rounds are not effective against a mid-level warrior; the original poster's point. That offends against even cinematic realism IMO.

S'mon, why the difficulty accepting "it's only a scratch/graze/near-miss"? Do you have similar trouble accepting it when it's a six-foot-six behemoth with a greatsword swinging at a guy with a lot of hit points?

The high-level character has enough experience to be out of the way when that gun starts firing. The idea that more hit points means that a character is capable of absorbing more gunshot wounds to the chest is, well, just as silly in my opinion as you seem to feel the "damage for high-level characters means a graze or near-miss" theory is for you.

And really, while we can certainly talk about how it could conceivably be broken if you use bad flavor text -- "My bad guy shot the team's Tough Hero point blank but only rolled a 2 on 2d12, and he has DR 2/-, so he got shot point-blank with this heavy machine gun for no damage! The system is broken!" -- 2d12 damage per round of autofire is going to take out most PCs pretty quick. Or maybe my players just have lousy dice-luck. In any event, nobody in my game takes Massive Damage or Autofire saves lightly.

Again, however, I'd note that for all my defense of the system, I switched to armor-as-DR and VP/WP. It's more work, but my players and I currently like it better. My feeling so far is that 99% of the time, the existing d20 Modern rules end up giving about the same end result as using WP/VP and armor-as-DR, but the numbers by which you get to that end result are different. Therein lies the room to break (and then complain about) the system.

 

[Kelleris]

We see to be thinking of "destroyed" in different ways here. To me, immobile and unable to attack is destroyed - your tank has just become a terrain feature with pre-existing occupants, not a vehicle or a creature. A "destroyed" vehicle is the same as a "killed" monster - it's not going to hurt you anymore. You don't have to force a dragon through a fine mesh screen to render it dead, so I don't see why everyone equates a destroyed vehicle with a smoldering crater and atomized armor.

I would put a meteor swarm's damage at around a Tomahawk, actually - that's what I meant by missile. An RPG in my book = a fireball spell (well, with a high enough caster level). The meteor swarm would peel a small bit of armor off the tank, blast any sensor apparatus to pieces, probably heat the hull up to an inconvenient level (I know nothing about the heat-dissipation abilities of an Abrams, so maybe not), most likely do enough damage to the main cannon to render it non-functional (a cylinder of metal is much more likely to break with a direct hit than piles of reinforced armor), and probably screw up the treads as well. That is a destroyed tank. That the men inside are fine is immaterial - when you kill a dragon, the wizard it swallowed could very well still be alive.

Also, again IMO, the aforementioned high-level fighter with a +5 vorpal adamantine greatsword would do similar damage. He would not dice it into one-inch cubes - he would destroy it.

Then again, we may just be on totally different pages here. I am constantly annoyed by character's inability to damage the scenery in D&D. It takes some of the fun out of casting a meteor swarm for me to know that a 3-5 foot thick stone pillar has piles of hit points, hardness, and half damage versus fire. If I cast a high-level blast spell, I want the building I'm in to stand a reasonable chance of collapsing. Under the current rules, you can barely level a cottage with a lightning bolt.

Also, I'm not sure I like the linear increase in damage for weapons. 8x penetration should not equal 8x the dice because hp progressions only look linear. If we accept the assumption (built into the CR system) that gaining two levels doubles a character's capablities, a 20th-level character should have about 750 times the damage-soaking ability he had at 1st level. For me, this is why that 5th boost to a weapon's enhancement bonus is so much more expensive than the first and why damage bonuses from Strength are linear and carrying capacity is not.

 

[jezter6]

Apoc,

I liked a good part of your 1/2 MDT, MDT, and 2xMDT system. I think that, coupled with a system earlier in the post that looks reminicent of M&M damage system, would probably be awesome.

Go ahead and post them when they're developed, because I'm looking for just that type of system.

 

[mmu1]

A quick bit of trivia relating to the DR on an Abrams, and whether it's realistic: IIRC, Modern authorities on the subject of tanks estimate (since the current values are obviosuly secret) the frontal turret protection on many modern Main Battle Tanks with composite armor to be equivalent to nearly 1 meter (40 inches) of high-quality rolled armor plate.

 

[ragboy]

We see to be thinking of "destroyed" in different ways here. To me, immobile and unable to attack is destroyed - your tank has just become a terrain feature with pre-existing occupants, not a vehicle or a creature. A "destroyed" vehicle is the same as a "killed" monster - it's not going to hurt you anymore. You don't have to force a dragon through a fine mesh screen to render it dead, so I don't see why everyone equates a destroyed vehicle with a smoldering crater and atomized armor.

I would put a meteor swarm's damage at around a Tomahawk, actually -

And if you have meteor swarm in your campaign, then obviously, it should be taken into account when used against a tank. If you're playing a more realistic game, then probably not. But, in order to support all that game-wise, you'd have to have location armor and a corresponding location hit system, and degradation of systems, etc. etc. Lots of dice and tables, if that's your poison (and I love Battletech, but not for role-playing).

The problem as I see it (and I don't use that word like it is a big problem) is that d20 Modern grew out of D&D which is heavily slanted toward super-heroism, melee and magic and an abstract hit point system. Makes things flashy, mano-y-mano and speeds up the system, but sacrifices reality. That "reality" is just in starker contrast because most people know without a doubt that if they charged a .50 cal gun emplacement wearing medieval armor, then they'd be a bloody spot in seconds.

The toggle on reality is totally up to the DM and players.

If you're taking d20 Modern and using it in a realistic combat environment, then the numbers have to be tweaked as that realistic toggle gets closer to realism. And other rules have to be bolted on (like a hit location system for vehicle-on-vehicle combat that takes into effect system degradation, etc).

So, yeah, guns are underpowered, but there's a reason for it. Tanks are underpowered, and probably should be in the generic d20 modern setting. An elf carving up an M1A1 with a vorpal sword stretches the bounds of reality, but then again, it should. So, if your campaign is designed to have an armored knight charge across a field and take out a .50 cal gunner, then the rules are just right. If not, fix it.

 

[Kelleris]

In order to support all that game-wise, you'd have to have location armor and a corresponding location hit system, and degradation of systems, etc. etc.

What about what I said implies this? Now, if you want anything short of a cruise missile (maybe a nuke?) to do something to a tank with generic DR 1200, then you'll desperately need hit location charts. All you need for a meteor swarm (or a blast of fireballs, or a powerful incantation) is hardness and hit points. If you get through the hardness and hit points, the tank is disabled, destroyed basically. I was just trying to point out that "destroyed" and "molten slag" are not the same thing. If a powerful magical attack, including the kinds available to high-level d20 Modern characters, destroys a tank under the basic rules, I'm just saying that that's not unreasonable. Obliterating a main battle tank would be, but not destroying it. Not the same thing as far as any d20 game I've ever seen is concerned. Or do slain monsters just fade off the map in some games? Demanding that any attack be able to vaporize a tank to destroy it is like requiring a character to disintegrate a monster to kill it. Basing the tank's hardness on 40 inches of high-quality steel is as bad an idea as basing an elder earth elemental's hit points on what it takes to destroy a wall of equal weight.

The core rulebook for d20 Modern, incidentally, says that they went for an action movie feel, so saying that it's somewhat unrealistic is a design flaw is a bit silly. I agree with you there - I'm just saying that DR 1200 goes way back over into unrealistic (in a game world with magic) after hurtling clean through realistic.

Also, how do you feel about my argument that the linear hp progression conceals a geometric basis. I'm of the opinion that d20 sneaks geometric mechanics into decidedly linear-looking progressions with aggravating frequency, but whenever I bring it up (re: fighters, level gain, etc.), nobody pays attention to the point. I like to think it's my intimidating logical prowess, but I somehow doubt that's it.