 April 21, 2008 - 6:59am | This weekend we used Bill's new skill system along with a damage system based off Top Secret SI. Refer to: New Skill System It took a little getting used to but in the end I liked it because it gave more realism to the game. A Player or NPC could loose the ability to use a limb, get knocked out or in our case Cane hit a Sathar in the hand dislodging his sonic disruptor! (Thank you Cane). In the Alpha Dawn rules I believe todo the same a Player would have to roll a critical success. NOTE: Ablative Damage appears in the Star Frontiersman Issue 8. |
 July 24, 2008 - 7:14am | True. They are not a huge advantage though. Due to the fact that they jamb more easily, and you need to carry bullets and SEUs. At least I got to scare an alien rabbit thingy...... |
 July 26, 2008 - 9:05am | Not to mention possible problems with the gauss weapon overheating. "You're everything that's base in humanity," Cochrane continued. "Drawing up strict, senseless rules for the sole reason of putting you at the top and excluding anyone you say doesn't belong or fit in, for no other reason than just because you say so." —Judith and Garfield Reeves-Stephens, Federation |
 July 27, 2008 - 7:25pm | Has anyone got house-rule ideas on how to apply these Ablative Damage rules to the variable appendaged dralisites and multi-limbed vrusk? |
 July 29, 2008 - 6:04pm | Try taking the total points allowed for the limbs as it now stands and then dividng that number by the number of limbs the Dral or Vrusk have. Unfortunatly, they tend to loose the use of their limbs fairly quickly. As Zkit-a-licht, a vrusk, once said, "Damn, I lost three legs in that last fire-fight!" "Look at the bright side," replied Adam, a human, "at least you have five left. If I had lost three legs in that fight, my girlfriend would be mighty upset." |
July 31, 2008 - 5:27pm | I am the one and only TRUE thread killer! |
 July 31, 2008 - 6:00pm | I don't think you killed it , it's just not a "hot" topic at the moment. I think that not a lot of people are really thinking about it or maybe aren't interested in the topic is all.Ad Astra Per Ardua! My blog - Expanding Frontier Webmaster - The Star Frontiers Network & this site Founding Editor - The Frontier Explorer Magazine Managing Editor - The Star Frontiersman Magazine |
 August 1, 2008 - 5:36am | I think you should keep the system for Vrusk as the same for humanoid types, but describe the left/ right limb as 'limbs' or something similar ( sorry, still got my work head on at the moment, so nothing creative jumping out) - you still get the same effect for mobility injuries, without the complication of recording multiple limbs (which is tedious). |
August 1, 2008 - 8:05am | So.. how many legs can a Vrusk loose (on each side) before it becomes "hindered"? |
August 1, 2008 - 1:14pm | So.. how many legs can a Vrusk loose (on each side) before it becomes "hindered"? Woot, you're kinda missing my point. The ablative system in SF8 only has 2 thresholds - numbed and thrashed. So this could be applied to the left or right set of legs of a Vrusk without referring to how many legs they lose. I see any damage inflicted to the vrusks legs as spread amongst all the legs and not specifically one. Of course you could implement such a system to include such detail, but it would overcomplicate matters IMHO. |
August 2, 2008 - 8:55am | So.. how many legs can a Vrusk loose (on each side) before it becomes "hindered"? Seeing that vrusk have 4 legs per side I always went with two from one side would hinder movement, the loss of one leg was of little consiquence, two would halve movement and three legs from one side would make it near impossible for movement (consider the vrusk as crawling). Also the loss of two legs from each side would reduce the vrusk's movement to a crawl. I think you should keep the system for Vrusk as the same for humanoid types, but describe the left/ right limb as 'limbs' or something similar ( sorry, still got my work head on at the moment, so nothing creative jumping out) - you still get the same effect for mobility injuries, without the complication of recording multiple limbs (which is tedious). I do not disagree with the fact that it is tedious, but at the time, I had a group of players who enjoyed the realism. |
August 3, 2008 - 8:21am | Cliff your joke about the human losing three legs was great! Thanks elpotof for that reminder. 'Thrashed', as it applies to limbs, doesn't necessarily have to mean blown to smitharines. [Not unless the player asks for it - so as to have an excuse to add some cybermod!] Keeping it simple, using the generalized conditions outlined in the article, works for me. For games with added realism and shameless, gratuitous violence though, the extra work and detail could make for a more rewarding experience for the players. On the delemma of dralisites I was thinking that maybe, by absorbing damaged limbs and growing fresh replacements, would allow these aliens to shift damage boxes from one hit location to another (probably best going from limb to central body mass; it wouldn't make sense to have a Dral character shift damage from a hand to a foot as they aren't connected.) This would be an interesting way of getting around the impairments suffered by wounds. The dral character would be foolish to shift to much damage (numbed or thrashed) into their chest or abdomin regions as this could kill them. I'd rule that the head zone cannot receive any shifted damage at all (and let's face it; who would really be that stupid to try it anyways...) |
 August 3, 2008 - 11:59am | I am not certain I would encourage the idea that any lose of limb was an "acceptable" loss in game play. I would consider any significant limb loss reguardless of race to be catastrophic injury resulting in significant penalty even for Vrusk characters. In the real world a bug can survive and most likely function with the loss of a limb but since I dont know anyone who speaks bug its kind of hard to determine how the bug actually "feels" about this loss or to guage a pain threshold for insects. Lizards who are capable of regenerating lost limbs don't seem to go around offering them up for sacrifice even though they could be grown back. So while a lost limb maybe survivable for a Vrusk, I would venture a guess that he wouldnt be in the mood for talking after having a leg shot off and may require a Sta and Int die check to stay in the fight or succumb to pain, shock and blood loss loosing consciousness. I personally would take it one step further and require the die check every turn the character goes without medical attention until the character passes out. Dralasites, well thats more interesting, what happens to a dralasites insides if the exterior membrane is severly damaged or ripped open by lost limb. We are assuming that a dralasite has a semi solid interior because if a dralasite were anything like the gel pad on my mouse pad if it were punctured the gel would leak out from the laceration. So a dralasite with severe membrane rupture like a limb loss maybe in a lot more trouble then a Human or Vrusk. Unless your interpretation of a Dralasite in-nerds is that of a semi solid maliable gelatin substance. I also think that dralasites would be less prone to limb damage from cutting or bludgeoning attacks as pressure that is applied to limb just redistrubes the dralasites mass somewhere else in the blob. Puncture wounds and non-cotterizing holes I believe would cause more damage to dralasite then other races. But to sum things up I don't think I'll ever take limb loss as a casual wound to any of the races during combat. |
August 4, 2008 - 7:54am | Our house rule is that if a character or npc loses all the boxes on a limb in one shot or attack he will lose th elimb. It hasn't happened in a game yet. I guess this house rule makes it pretty rare. At least I got to scare an alien rabbit thingy...... |
August 4, 2008 - 8:36am | That's a great idea. A weapon that does 4D10 damage has an average probability of doing 2 damage boxes of injury; but, once the dice are rolled, it could be 4 boxes or none! I'd say that the character's maximum number of health boxes are the damage threshold needed to achieve before toasting the limb. "Beware the villain sporting a laser rifle and powerpack!" I can see "Kill Bill" situations with a skilled PC using a sonic sword (5D10 damage!) Or worse: a samuri-like assassin after the PCs. . . Nasty! |
 April 12, 2009 - 10:05am | Ya i've been using the TS:SI Hit Location since the early 90s myself .. I owned both SF and TS:SI since they first came out .. I like being able to annotate which part of the body was hit and if it was hit too many times or damaged too much, then it's perm disabled (until it was replaced by a Cybergenetic part). If anyone had seen the SF character sheets I had designed, I included the hit-location chart on them as well .. modified of course to each race that is since some have more LIMBS than others ;) Tim Timothy R. Norris admin@StarFrontiers.com admin@WolfeBaneDevelopmentCorp.com http://starfrontiers.com https://www.facebook.com/starfrontiers |
