Wing and Sword: a d20 Modern military campaign [METAGAME]

[The Shaman]

I'm interested in playing. I'm working on the character as I post this.

Woo-hoo!

 

[Barak]

Yay! Can hardly wait for this game to start..

Alright.. I have a decent chance of making the jump check.. Would need a 9, which is better than 50%. My chances of making the tumble check are much lower, since I'd need a 15. Which means I'd -probably- face a DC 11 reflex check. So all in all, not -too- bad. Especially since I have decent HPs.

 

[знаток]

Vidal Gaspard has moved.
http://www.enworld.org/forums/showthread.php?t=114109

 

[знаток]

Alright, I have some questions. First, my character will be done tonight, but I'll try to post what I have this morning.

1. Are action points intentionally restricted? It doesn't match the rules.
2. Are Appraise and Use Rope trained-only skills?
3. mild concern: Combat jumping technique and equipment, at least in the US, has not really changed much since WWII. Given that, there is typically only about 1 serious injury (i.e. broken ankle or leg or moderate to severe concussion) in about 500-1000 jumpers. Dying as a result of a combat-style jump is less likely than dying in a car accident nowadays, and I've never heard of it happening on a normal landing, only in water landings, trouble in the door or upon exiting, 'chute failure (caused either by mechanical or packing faults or conflict with other jumpers and airspace once it's deployed), etc. Once the 'chute is open, the worries are typically over for a well-trained paratrooper. What I'm saying is landing is the easy part. Your system for determining injuries upon landing may work out - I'll have to see it in action - but it seems right now that 4 or 5 or 6 chances in twenty to take damage from it is unrealistic. Again, I can't speak for the French training or equipment, but I imagine it doesn't differ much from ours.

P.S. Corcoran's may have been the bomb in the 40s and 50s, but compared to today's boots and shoes, they're pretty uncomfortable, and you can upgrade that to terribly uncomfortable when you're talking about extended use such as a lengthy march. But those guys were tough and unspoiled. I appreciate their presence in the campaign though. I've spent seven years in them and have grown pretty attached.

P.P.S. I'm very excited too.

 

[The Shaman]

Alright.. I have a decent chance of making the jump check.. Would need a 9, which is better than 50%. My chances of making the tumble check are much lower, since I'd need a 15. Which means I'd -probably- face a DC 11 reflex check. So all in all, not -too- bad. Especially since I have decent HPs.

Tumble in a trained-only skill, so you'll just have to make the Jump check then the Reflex save for Normand to land safely. In any case a hard landing is unlikely to kill you, just knock you around a bit.

The mechanic is based on one detailed by Rich Redman, one of the designers of d20 Modern - he suggested the Jump check and also said that Pilot and the Aircraft Operations (parachute) feat are required for parachuting. Since parachuting and flying a Cessna are two very different things, and your characters aren't operating parafoils, I thought that seemed excessive and trimmed it down a bit. The mechanic relies on the existing falling rules as well - the 20' drop came from conversations with my uncle and my father-in-law, paratroopers who saw service in Europe and Asia respectively.

I'm going to post a couple of other house rules, including the paradrop rules, later. I've got one for suppressing fire (making it a special attack for characters without the Suppressing Fire feat from Ultramodern Firearms), a vehicle acceleration rule I picked up, and the Cool check, another Rich Redman joint from his "Notes from the Bunker" article series on the d20 Modern website at WotC.

Equipment looks good. Let me get this right though. We have two grenades and 5 magazines (4 in pouches and one in the rifle) ? And is the M3 a combat knife or a survival knife (has stuff in the handle)?...Also, pay no attention to what I said about the French equipment, after some light research, I realized those were old American gear. Silly me...

Correct on the ammunition: five box mags totalling 50 rounds, two grenades, and a combat knife (the kind without the compass, matches, and secret decoder ring).

The web gear and combat knife are of American manufacture - the rest is French-made. Other units of the French army made extensive use of U.S. equipment - expect to see M1 Garands among both sector troops and the fellaghas (the ALN fighters), for example - and nearly all of your transport will be American surplus - jeeps, Dodge weapons carriers (known as the PowerWagon in its civilian incarnation, one of the all-time great 4x4 trucks), deuce-and-a-halfs, halftracks, and C-47s, when you're not being dropped from Nordstars, of course.

 

[The Shaman]

Alright, I have some questions. First, my character will be done tonight, but I'll try to post what I have this morning.

1. Are action points intentionally restricted? It doesn't match the rules.
2. Are Appraise and Use Rope trained-only skills?
3. mild concern: Combat jumping technique and equipment, at least in the US, has not really changed much since WWII. Given that, there is typically only about 1 serious injury (i.e. broken ankle or leg or moderate to severe concussion) in about 500-1000 jumpers. Dying as a result of a combat-style jump is less likely than dying in a car accident nowadays, and I've never heard of it happening on a normal landing, only in water landings, trouble in the door or upon exiting, 'chute failure (caused either by mechanical or packing faults or conflict with other jumpers and airspace once it's deployed), etc. Once the 'chute is open, the worries are typically over for a well-trained paratrooper. What I'm saying is landing is the easy part. Your system for determining injuries upon landing may work out - I'll have to see it in action - but it seems right now that 4 or 5 or 6 chances in twenty to take damage from it is unrealistic. Again, I can't speak for the French training or equipment, but I imagine it doesn't differ much from ours.

P.S. Corcoran's may have been the bomb in the 40s and 50s, but compared to today's boots and shoes, they're pretty uncomfortable, and you can upgrade that to terribly uncomfortable when you're talking about extended use such as a lengthy march. But those guys were tough and unspoiled. I appreciate their presence in the campaign though. I've spent seven years in them and have grown pretty attached.

P.P.S. I'm very excited too.

First, welcome aboard! We seem to have a well-rounded group of both players and characters, which is awesome.

I'll cover your questions in order for simplicity's sake.

1. Yes, the number is lower than you would normally have for a 2nd level character. It represents the idea that you character has already escaped a few tought scrapes and used some of his "luck," as it were, to get where he is today. Put another way, you used all but one action point getting from first to second level.

It's intended as a balancing measure. I hope that clarifies things a bit.

2. No - both skills can be used untrained per the System Reference Document.

3. In order to suffer a serious injury using my homebrewed jump rules, you have to fail your Reflex save pretty badly, and if you spend an Action Point on the save you basically reduce your chances of serious injury to about 10% at worst - that may be higher than the statistical average, but it seems reasonable for adding an element of derring-do to our adventure game. The most likely consequence of failure is getting the wind knocked out of you (nonlethal damage that heals relatively quickly).

I applied the same game-logic to 'chute failure - would it add anything to the game to be told your character's primary and secondary both failed? In my humble opinion, not really. In the spirit of adventure, manage the landing is all I ask...

This is my first attempt at using this system - I've playtested it with a couple of different characters for myself, but if it doesn't seem to work after our first adventure, you won't have to ask me to revisit it, 'cause I'll already be tweaking away before your next drop. (Your characters are guaranteed at least two, by the way... )

4. The Corcorans are statted not to simulate their actual performance so much as the way they were preceived by those who wore them (and perhaps more importantly, those who didn't have them and wanted them). Good boots are like gold to any soldier, and the quality of the Corcs was so far above most of what was out there at the time that they developed a healthy reputation for comfort and durability. The mastercraft benefits are meant to reflect that reputation, much the way some of the mastercraft weapons in the core rules are based more on reputation than on quantifiable, discrete measures of performance. It's a bit of myth-making for the game in which I hope you'll indulge me.

I'll post the collected house rules in this thread today and start the actual game thread on Saturday ( ). I will also create a thread in the Rogues gallery for the character sheets.

Game on! Woo-hoo!

 

[Bobitron]

Awesome! I will add equipment to Marcel later today, and I'll be ready to rock.

 

[Barak]

First, my thoughts on the questions posed, for what they're worth.

The parachute thing. The main "problem" here is.. What, in game terms, constitute a trained-paratrooper? Is it someone who maxed out jump and tumble? And, more importantly, what level is that person? A 1st level maxed out paratrooper of average Str and Dex would have at a minimum +2 jump and tumble skill (that's assuming they are both cross-class and a Ref save of +0 (assuming a bad Ref save class). So yeah, chances of doing a bad jump are semi-good. But if we take a 3rd level character, assume a Str and Dex of 12 (not really superhuman), and maxed-out -class- skills, we jump to +7 to both skills, which reduces chances of injury greatly. And we haven't figured out any feats/occupations that might make those go higher, not unlikely for a "pro" paratrooper.

About the boots. Add to what The Shaman has said that while the corcs might not be all that nice, how do they compare to -regular- boots? I'd assume (perhaps wrongly) that the other boots were even worse, yet they give no penalty. Therefore, it makes some sense to give the corcs a bonus.

As for the group.. First all, I'm -very- glad to see that last character sheet. I was starting to worry that we'd all die before even being fired upon, lost in the desert or something, and unable to find sand in our boots.

Also, despite the legion's reputation, I'm very glad that we have no psycho killer in there either. Heck, as far as I can tell, Normand was the only one to even have a brush with any criminal element, and he didn't like it.. I didn't fancy having some dude with us who wanted to torture puppies at every step..

 

[Bobitron]

Also, despite the legion's reputation, I'm very glad that we have no psycho killer in there either. Heck, as far as I can tell, Normand was the only one to even have a brush with any criminal element, and he didn't like it.. I didn't fancy having some dude with us who wanted to torture puppies at every step..

Haha, I was considering playing a pretty rough character at first, but steered myself away.

 

[The Shaman]

The Rogues Gallery character thread is up here - please cut and paste your characters into this thread.

The...site...is...working...very...slow...ly...for...me...today - I'll try to get the houserules posted by the end of the day, but it's literally taking me more than five minutes to even get a thread to open, let along post anything, so please be patient. Hopefully the site admins will figure out the problem.