Wagon Overrun FTW!

[JiffyPopTart]

So, last week we were fighting approximately 70k zombies arranged in three giant blocks of Zombie Mobs.

After spending 75% of the battle trying to push a cart off a bridge (I rolled 1,1,2,2,1 before I gave up, I wrote it down it was so annoying) I decided to do something fun by wagonjacking someoneones ride and trying to bowl through the Mob.

We just sorta winged the rules for it in that session, but afterwards I sat down to read the rules listed in the AV (of all strange places) for vehicular combat.

From what I read, the wagon can indeed run over an opponent, doing 1d10 damage per square of movement before it hit, but it takes the same damage in return (along with damaging me and any other passenger on the wagon). The two-horse team has a move of 4 pulling the wagon, so at top speed it would deal 4d10 to the unfortunate overrunee and wagon and half that amount to myself, my passengers (and possibly the horses, I cannot recall).

Does this seem like I have it all down to anyone who has actually done some vehicular homicide in their games?

DS

 

[Infiniti2000]

I don't have the AV, but thanks for the pointer. I had a plan to use a "runaway wagon" in my campaign and posted such in the plots forum.

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

Yeah, well, those crashing rules really only work for vehicles hitting each other or fairly substantial objects. They don't make even the slightest sense when you have say a wagon running over medium sized opponents. Nobody obviously ever playtested that stuff at all. I advise basically ignoring the whole crashing/ramming section of the vehicle rules and coming up with something better. What's in the book might work OK if its just some oddball thing that came up once and had to be handled. Beyond that its pretty useless.

 

[JiffyPopTart]

Agreed. A wagon shouldn't break just because it ran over 5 zombies at full speed.

I think a better way to do it, and what we did, was make the wagon used the "Improvised Attack" charts from the DMG.

I do smell a third party supplement for these rules, however. Being a dwarf my natural inclination is to build a metallic beast of a battlewagon to mow down my enemies once I get back to town and have access to a shop.

DS

Infiniti: If you don't have the AV, I believe the wagon has somewhere in the neighborhood of 100HP before it is destroyed. I don't have the book with me at the moment.

 

[Turtlejay]

Ever seen a car that hit an animal? Or a person?

A wagon is much less sturdy than a car. A couple of solid hits, even at the lower speed of a wagon, could render it inoperable. Not destroyed, just broken.

I do see a problem when you have something large, sturdy, and probably armored, like an airship. There should be hardness or something to mitigate that.

Jay

 

[Trebor62]

Wagon attacks for a basic wagon would best be modeled as two attack against Reflex. The first would knock the target prone on a hit, with a secondary attack against reflex that would do damage reflecting the person being run over and crushed by the wagon after being knocked down.

It wasn't the getting hit by the wagon that was so dangerous, but being knocked down and then run over by the wagon that was real cause of death and crippleling injury.