DC III and recoil
Posted: Tue Sep 08, 2020 4:24 am
I'm rereading various DC books because I might have a good chance to get a campaign started with my gang of friends. My preference is to use DC III because it's had the benefit of many years worth of player experience with previous editions, to update and tweak the rules.
So, recoil.
Recoil has always been a bit clunky and time-consuming in the GDW system whether it's Twilight: 2000 2nd or 2.2 editions, Dark Conspiracy, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs or Traveller: The New Era.
I don't have any particular problem with the way DC III handles recoil in regards to its effect on a characters ability to hit the target but there are other aspects to the way recoil is handled that are... ah, shall we say, "interesting".
DC III uses the concept of having recoil make the Task to hit a level of difficulty harder if the amount of recoil exceeds the character's strength attribute.
I prefer this idea over the earlier editions because it's much quicker to implement and I don't want to have to stop the game flow to calculate specific Task numbers based on reducing the number by the result of cumulative recoil minus Strength score for each successive shot.
So yes, DC III is less fiddly.
However...
According to the DC III rules, recoil also affects the damage done by a weapon. This is where, for me, things get seriously derailed.
How? Seriously, how does recoil cause a bullet to do less damage?
If it was recoil affecting hit location I could understand it, but damage? No way.
Here's what the book says (Conspiracy Rules, page 119): - EDIT: I should point out that this is in regards to automatic fire
In addition, the ability to control the burst also causes the damage to be modified based on recoil as well.
For each range band beyond Medium Range (Long and Extreme) the base number of damage dice is reduced by one (1).
For example, once the cumulative recoil is greater than the character’s strength, the Base Damage is reduced by 1 for Long range and 1 more for Extreme range.
The minimum number of damage dice due to recoil is always one (1).
However, penetration can reduce this number to zero (0).
I think I understand why that was done, but it is, in a word, nonsense. The ability to control the firearm has absolutely no impact on the damage done by the projectile, should the projectile actually hit the target.
So, am I missing something here, have I misunderstood the intent, is this an attempt to reduce the abilities of "gunbunny" characters with stupidly high gun skills?
I have no intention of implementing that part of the recoil rules because most of my players won't want to fuss about with numbers in the middle of a session if they feel that that part of the rules seem a bit off.
Plus the idea of recoil causing less damage is absurd.
However, I would still like to hear other people's thoughts on this.
So, recoil.
Recoil has always been a bit clunky and time-consuming in the GDW system whether it's Twilight: 2000 2nd or 2.2 editions, Dark Conspiracy, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs or Traveller: The New Era.
I don't have any particular problem with the way DC III handles recoil in regards to its effect on a characters ability to hit the target but there are other aspects to the way recoil is handled that are... ah, shall we say, "interesting".
DC III uses the concept of having recoil make the Task to hit a level of difficulty harder if the amount of recoil exceeds the character's strength attribute.
I prefer this idea over the earlier editions because it's much quicker to implement and I don't want to have to stop the game flow to calculate specific Task numbers based on reducing the number by the result of cumulative recoil minus Strength score for each successive shot.
So yes, DC III is less fiddly.
However...
According to the DC III rules, recoil also affects the damage done by a weapon. This is where, for me, things get seriously derailed.
How? Seriously, how does recoil cause a bullet to do less damage?
If it was recoil affecting hit location I could understand it, but damage? No way.
Here's what the book says (Conspiracy Rules, page 119): - EDIT: I should point out that this is in regards to automatic fire
In addition, the ability to control the burst also causes the damage to be modified based on recoil as well.
For each range band beyond Medium Range (Long and Extreme) the base number of damage dice is reduced by one (1).
For example, once the cumulative recoil is greater than the character’s strength, the Base Damage is reduced by 1 for Long range and 1 more for Extreme range.
The minimum number of damage dice due to recoil is always one (1).
However, penetration can reduce this number to zero (0).
I think I understand why that was done, but it is, in a word, nonsense. The ability to control the firearm has absolutely no impact on the damage done by the projectile, should the projectile actually hit the target.
So, am I missing something here, have I misunderstood the intent, is this an attempt to reduce the abilities of "gunbunny" characters with stupidly high gun skills?
I have no intention of implementing that part of the recoil rules because most of my players won't want to fuss about with numbers in the middle of a session if they feel that that part of the rules seem a bit off.
Plus the idea of recoil causing less damage is absurd.
However, I would still like to hear other people's thoughts on this.