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Okay, here is the write up for the M113 APC that I thought I had put up earlier. How does it look? M113 APC STR 49 SIZ 69 (10,400kg) Hit Points: 25 Move 18 (64kph) Handling: -17% Fuel Capacity: 5 hours Weapon: M2HB .50 caliber Heavy Macninegun Damage: 2d10+4 Range: 400m Ammo: 200 round belt (10 belts in vehicle) Attacks: 1 or burst Malf 98 Hit Points: 18_____ Notes: Hit Locations An F rating for AP means that you use the APs of the side facing the attacker. Lights: These are used for illumination in the dark. If reduced to 0 HP light in broken. At -HP wiring is destroyed. Tracks: Used to move the vehicle. At 0 HP a track is inoperative, applying a -15% penalty to handling, and reducing Move to 6. If reduced to -HP the track is destroyed. If both tracks are disabled the vehicle is immobilized.. M2HB: The .50 caliber machinegun mounted outside the vehicle Controls: Either the actual controls or the machinery that links them to the tracks. If reduced to 0 HP the vehicle is sluggish, suffering a -10% penalty to Handling. If Reduced to -HP the vehicle cannot be steered. Engine: If reduced to 0 HP the Engine “konks” out, but can be restarted with a Luck roll. Speed will be cut in half. If reduced to -HP the engine is dead, and there is a 20% chance of a fire of 2D6 intensity. Crew: Damage that penetrates armor hits a random occupant. Note that while the vehicle can't be impaled, a crewman can, although he does get the benefit of the vehicles APs in addition to his own. Commander Gunner: Attack his the person manning the M2. As most of the body of the gunner is still inisde the vehicle, hits to legs or abdomen must penetrate the facing APs. For other locations the gunner gets a Luckx3% roll to see if he gets facing APs from the hatch. Gear: The attack hits some sort of gear carried inside the vehicle. This could be a radio, food stores, water, tools, or personal gear. For each 5 points damage assume something is broken. Internal gear must overcome the facing APs, while external gear is attached to the outside of the vehicle and gets less protection. Fuel: The vehicle Fuel tank is hit. If reduced to 0 HP the tank is leaking fuel, curring the capacity by half and giving a 25% chance of any flame starting a fire. If reduced to -HP the vehicle is out of fuel, stops dead, and has a 25% of vapors starting a fire of 2D6 intensity. The M2HB: This is a .50 caliber Machinegun is capable of burst fire, capable of as many as 50 shots per round.

Probably not. The dice are d6s in EABA but that would be too high for BRP. Tighter bell curves are better ballistics. The problem with wide die ranges like 2d8 is that it doesn't handle armor well. If a given caliber bullet can penetrate armor , it should be able to do so pretty much all the time. But with a 2d8 roll the results will be all over the place. Sometimes it penetrates and sometimes it doesn't. EABA gets around that by rating armor in dice and subtracting it before damage is rolled. So a 4d attack vs. a 2d vest does 2d damage. But a 2d attack against a 4d vest won't penetrate. Like I said earlier, you can't make something in BRP that will stop a .45 than won't stop a .357 Mag. The alternate solution would be to differentiate between Penetration and Damage. For instance if the .45 had a PEN of 6, and the .357M had a PEN of 8. Hits that fail to penetrate could so some minimal blunt trauma, and those that do penetrate do damage but are modified by AP.

Oh, I really messed up, can find the M113 stats. O'll have to find the post.

Yeah, there are a couple. Once nice thing is that EABA, CORPS and Timelords all use a mathematical progression for weapon damages and armor. BRP doesn't So it is much easier to see if Weapon X can penetrate Armor Y or not. For instance, in CoC with the .45 at 1d10+2 and the .357M at 1D8+1D4 you can't make armor that will stop a .45 without it stopping the .357. I've been toying with using EABA values for firearms, since it would solve a lot of problems. We could even switch dice from d6s to d4s and get very nice BRPish damages. For example. .32ACP: 1d4+1 9mm: 2d4+1 .45 ACP: 2d4 (+2 S: Stopping Power, it applies if Penetrates armor) .357M: 2d4+2 .44M: 3d4 5.56NATO: 4d4+1 7.62NATO: 4d6+2 .50cal: 6d4+1 Note that the max damages are with a point of the CoC values for all the weapon except the .45 (and that could be tweaked in Stuff! depending on load). Also the progression is smoother and damage is more in a bell curve. All factors that make it much, much easier to work up armor values that will stop certain guns while allowing others to penetrate. What makes Stuff so attractive is that Greg thought out a lot of the weired stuff and options and did up rules for them (designing custom body armor, robots, battle suits, Hyperdrives and Warp Drives are all optional extras in the Vehicles chapter). So there are some thing that are worth looking at to get ideas on how to do them up in BRP. The Stopping Power, Penetrating Power and Blasting Power rules would be great for BRP.

True. I'm serious considering revamping impales to getting the extra damage IF it gets through armor. Maybe even tweaking criticals to 3 or 4 times damage with APs.

Here is a sample of the format I am thinking of going with for the weapons in the "Western Handbook". I'll put a table at the end too for quick reference. Does it suck?

I would love to handle damage reduction over range, but either than a 1/2, 1/4 approach it gets clunky. Still double damage for most anti-tank gunt at close range is quite realistic. The penetration values give are not at the muzzle but 2000km down range (or more for ship weapons, and yeah I have started work on the Iowa-class Battleship). As for the 20D6 or 2D6x10 damage for an Tank round. That is actually based on an 120mm AP round used in the M1A2, than can penetrate 700mm+ of armor. Of course that sort of damage would penetrate Dragons pretty effectively too. I needed that sort of damage to get it to work with the 70 point armor of the M1A2. (The good news is that it is designed to fire at tanks, so anything smaller that SIZ 90 or so would be tougher to hit). I supposed I could half AP values for AP weapons. I know BRP is going to separate different Armor types too. I might be able to do that without crits & specials, but need to check the weapon damages closely. Basically since a 120mm explosive tank round is doing 15D6 I need to rate the other stuff accordingly. Plus, I really think the 120mm round should be a "Dragon Slayer" in RQ terms so I need to give it at least 40-50 damage to do the job, even if I half the dragon's AP. Hit Locations: It was an Idea. I'll probably stick with the normal hit locations, although I think I'm going with a different approach for armor. I think I want to do AP by facing, rather than by hit location. So if you are shooting at the side of an APC you need to get through the side armor, and so on. Basically I need to separate between internal and external hits. Stuff inside get the vehicle APs, stuff outside get it own.

Actually the DEX limit is still there for weapon skills and a few other things. They did admit that the limit was artificial, and suggested dropping it if your group could role play the time commitment properly. Priests of war gods typically could fget their weapons skills over the limit on cult time, etc..

As far as I know, nothing yet. BRP was orginal designed for handling man to man (or man to troll, elf to duck) battles and the rules make sense in that light. For instnace if a spear point or bullet finds a chink in the armor it strike a soft body underneth. On the other hand if the same bullet that finds a chink would come up against a not soft soft chassis and proably more armor. But getting rid of the impales vs. helps. I think I'll come up with a special cuess chart through. That way character could shoot out the lights, tires and other surface features. Probably do something similar for critical. Maybe leave a slight chance of a "magic bullet" getting in through a eye slit or some such and doing to damage inside, but for the most part the probabilities are just to low to work. It doesn't have to be perfectly real. But I don't want to see APC crews gunned down by guys toting Uzis. At least not unless they are on top of the APC firing through a hatch. Yeah, it CAN get very complicated. Especially since Penetration drops over range., something that BRP ignores, not to mention the effects of impales and what not. Part of the problem is the overall scale. With a Sword or pistol in BRP is you barely manage to penetrate the foes AP you do a point or two. With tank guns, the energy is so great that if you "just barely" penetrate the tank's AP there is probably enough energy left over to wipe out the crew, with superheated plasma or radioactive metal flying around. But I think I can get something that is playable without getting to complicated. Here is what I thinking of doing: 1)No Impales: If weapons can't impale vehicles that would be a big plus. (Thanks 3D6. BTW, I've got to use that name for a droid the next time I run Star Wars!). 1B)- Ony allow an impale if the initial damage penetrates the armor? 2) No crirticals. Same reason as #1. 3) AP rounds will get increased damage for Penetration purposes but reduced damage afterwards. For instance an Armor Piercing 9mm bullet might go from 1D10 to 2D8, but any damage that gets through is cut in half. A 50 caliber AP round might do 4D8+6, but also half actual damage through armor. 4) A Hit Location Chart. That way damage could be assigned to things like Handling, passengers, fuel tanks and such. Non penetrating surface hits could shoot out tires, lights, mess up a track, etc. 5) Big damage doers, like tank guns could use a mutiplier for damage. For instance a Tank GUn that would do 20D6 damage could roll 2D6x10 or 4D6x5. It is easier to roll and add up, plus better matched up with how hits against vehicles work. A hit that gets atwo points through the AP is getting 10 points through! 6) Maybe no vehicle Hit Points! Rather the damage gives penalties depending on what is hit. SIZ will factor in as to how much damage is needed to get the penalty. For instance every 5 points of damage through a car might mean a 10%penalty, while a tank might need 10 points for the same penalty.

:thumb: Man you made my life easier.

Could be. I've got several different RPGs for the era and they all give different prices ($15-$35), and I took the lowest.. If anyone has a better source let me know. I'll do some surfing and see if I can find some authentic prices. I wonder if maybe the $5 price was the Price in the East and the $15 + the price out West. The shipping costs and markup were probably pretty high back then. A $6 price with the RQIII 2.5x mulitple for transporting from City to Rural would come out to $15, too. And that matches up well with the $35 price for trasporting it out to the wilds. I also am thinking of lowering the range a little since the .45 revolver in CoC has a base range of 15m, so the Peacemaker with a 7.5" barrel will probably be a 20. Likewise, since these weapon are still using blackpowder I'll probably take a point or so off the damages. A .45 in 1875 isn't as powerful as a .45 in 1925.

What I was thinking of for AP was to increase the damage die, but reduce any damage that gets through. Probably not a big difference, since AP rating seem to increase with the square root on the thickness in BRP. In order words to double the AP you need four times the armor. So if a .50 cal does 2d10+4 (as in CoC), the an AP round might do 3d10+6 at best. The nice thing about #3 is that it would reflect how obsolete weapons are not as effective against modern armor. It isn't just the thickness, but the hardness. Of course this is only going to come up if you have modern (or futuristic) tanks up against obsolete tech, not something that should pop up often in an RPG.

Stuff! "you make it you break it" Is a supplement for the EABA RPG. Stuff! is a very simple design system that lets you build Weapons, Vehicles, Gadgets, Creatures and Civilizations for EABA, and has conversion notes for several other RPGs. One thing that makes Stuff! interesting is that the designer also created Guns! Guns! Guns! (3G3) the weapon design system for Timelords, CORPS (and usable for most other RPGs), and CORPS VDS, the vehicle design system for CORPS (Another related RPG). As both 3G3 and VDS are probably the most detailed and comprehensive design systems out there, and Stuff! was based off of them, it makes the results fairly accurate despite the simplicity. I'll give you an example of how easy Stuff! is to use. Lets say we are building that Ford Escort in Stuff! Powerplant: Atomic Era +30 STR 1.5 ton loaded mass: -3 =Strength +27= Top Speed 40m (144kph/90mph) 27/3=9d+0 Strength for Game purposes. Acceleration is based on 1/2 STR (27/2=14) 1.5 ton loaded mass: -3 Ground Vehicle: -9 =Strength +2=Acceleration of 3m per turn. A Loaded Mass of 1.3 tons is worth 10 hits and it's 6 hex size gives it a damage limit of 6 1d+0 armor is the default for an unarmored vehicle. So the final version would look like 1981 Ford Escort Crew: 1+3 passengers Strength: 9d+0 Top Speed: 40 Acceleration: 3 Hits: 10 Damage Limit: 6 Armor Front: 1d+0 Right: 1d+0 Left: 1d+0 Top: 1d+0 Bottom: 1d+0 Rear: 1d+0 Not too shabby.

Yes and no. There are multiple ways to scale. For instance most RPGs, including BRP use scaling in the weapon damages an stats. A dragon isn't 7 times larger and stronger than a man, but more like 192 times. Likewise the .50caliber bullet isn't just twice as powerful as a .45ACP round. There are some difficulties with the approach BRP has used though. Part of the problem is that there is a big difference between penetrating ability and damage potential. Shotgun pellets can do a lot of damage, but don't penetrate well. Another problem is that since armor in CoC increases based on the square root of the thickness, an impale that does double damage also can penetrate 4 times the armor. The latter is what makes working up APs for vehicles so tough. For example: An M-113 APC has armor that is resistant to all pistol rounds, but won't stop a .50 bullet. In CoC the highest pistol damage is 2D6+4(.44 Magnum). Now if you give the APC 17 points of armor it will stop a .44 and also stop most rifle rounds. A .50 cal bullet doing 2d10+4 will even penetrate it 16% of the time, which is a bit off. If an impale or critical pops up, and then a 9mm can get through.

I think the problem is that POW can go up each session. As pointed out earlier, getting a POW gain roll is fairly easy assuming you know an offensive spell. Then it all boils down to making the improvement roll. If you buy some Divine spells, you lower your POW, but actually make it easier to go up. Again going to the multiple checks idea, if it took 1 check per 5 POW to earn an improvement roll, you would slow down the advancement to about half or a third of the current rate with no other changes in mechanics.

Arrrgh Niteshade! Now you got me thinking of doing a Stuff! conversion. Stuff! would solve all the problems, vehicles, spaceships, computers, weapon damages, armor. It's also fast and easy to reverse engineer for real world vehicles.

Hmm. The SSK has a 6L engine and the H6 has an 8L engine. Since HP represents "killing" the vehicle, maybe they just reflect "killing" the motor rather than actually destroying the vehicle. a Taurus has a 3L engine but reflects 70 years of automotive advances. So maybe we could use Engine SIZ or displacement as the base?

After looking over the vehicles in CoC more carefully, and discovering that the SIZ 51 Mercedes has 2/3rd the hit points of the SIZ 48 Taurus, I'm inclined to reverse my position and work in a CON factor for vehicles. Maybe we could call it DURability? Now to rate it.... Well, Reverse Engineering time. a 1999 Taurus has SIZ 48 or so, and 30 hp points. Good ol' algebra says 60-48=12 DUR. a 1929 SSK has SIZ 51 and 20 hp so algebra says in has a 40-51=-9 CON, err DUR. Uh -9?, back to the R&D lab.

(Turning the hot lights onto threedeesiz) "Alright, spill it. What in da new book? Don't make me get rough wit'cha."

Final SIZ, HP Scores are in flux until we see the BRP book. I just went with what seems to be the mostly likely vales to appear in the new rules, since they are using the COC chase rules in BRP. Ammo needs to not only penetrate the armor, but kill the vehicle too. If we gave an M1 90 hit points, then an tank round would have to be able to do over 90 points of damage AFTER armor. So that would kick up weapon damages. The problem is that since COC really compresses the scale, with a .50cal bullet oinly doing twice the damage of a .45ACP getting a good damage curve is problematic. I was thinking of a hit location chart. Hits to Body do HP damage, hits to cargo trash cargo, hits to engine can slow or stop the vehicle, hits to passengers hurt people, hits to controls reduce handling and so forth. That way the Hit Points can stay low, since only some hits will really damage the vehicle. Another idea might be to use a damage limit like they do in EABA. In EBA vehicle damage is capped based on the size of the vehicle. The idea being that small arms don't really damage big ships, just the crew and components. EABA then raises the cap for certain types of attack that blow through the armor. For instance, in EABA a M113 APC has only 17 hits points, but has a damage limit of 3 so any attack that gets through it's armor can only do 3 points of damage to the vehicle itself. So even if a Russian 14,5mm MG round that does 6d+2 hits the APCs side armor (4d+1) and gets 2d+1 through, the vehicle will only take 3 points. Any one unlucky enough to get hit by the bullet would take 2d+1 with no limit). Now things like Anti-tank rockets kick up the limit by 1 per die that they surpass the armor. So a 13d+0 anti-tank rocket that hit the 4d+1 side armor would raise the Damage limit by 9 to 12. So the vehicle would still exist, but the folks inside and all the internal systems would take 9d damage from the HEAT round and be killed. But at least it leave a nice home for the squirrels. Yes, but bullets also don't really do much damage to the actual car.They just poke lots of holes in it. It's the passengers inside who are going to get damaged. Yes and no. Material make sense, but I used SIZ since more massive vehicles will need stronger and thicker materials for support. Basically an 18 wheeler has thicker wheels and components that soak up more kinetic energy. Even if you take something large and reaatively soft, like a supertanker. YOu could shot the thing full of holes from now to doomday with small arms fire before you really damage the vehicle. 'Killing" it through Hit point loss is really a non issue.

One thing that would help, would be to give cult members and shamen/sorcerors a POW gain each year. Then you could lower the improvement chances without preventing someone from becoming a Rune Priest. If the POW was by rank, with Priests getting 3, Acolytes 2 and Initiates 1 character could always get some improvement. That allows the GM to be a bit more stingy with the rolls without slamming the door on potential Priests.

One solution I liked was the one used in TimeLords. Extra Weight counted as permanent ENC. So in RQ terns if someone gained an extra point of SIZ, they would get the bonuses, but be treated as if they were carrying 6 ENC (6 ENC=1SIZ in RQ for ENC purposes). Simple to do and easy bookkeeping.

I'm seriously thinking of listing two damage values on the weapons table. One that meshes with the values in Call of Cthulu, and another set that are a bit toned down and smother in progression. They would drop a .45 from 1D10_2 to 1D8, or maybe 2d4 with the +2 kicking in after armor (not much of a factor in the Old West). An .25 could do 1D4, a .36 Navy 1D4+1,a .45-70 Govement round would do 5d4. , and a .577-450 round do something like 3D4+2 or 4D4. Maybe tweak crticals to x3 instead of max? So that way the chance for an instank kill with most weapons is still there, but remote.

I know. It is one of the big pains in the butt when design the vehicle rules. As written, the rules were designed with the the idea of things like dagger points finding gaps through metal and striking the soft guy inside. They were not designed with the idea of things like .25ACP rounds finding gaps through 200mm of CHOBHAM armor and striking the not so soft chassis inside. Halving APs won't work through because the weapon damage and AP scales are so condensed in CoC. A 9mm pistol can sometimes get through 2 inch plate (19AP) thanks to impales (the other problem). Even halving armor makes the crew of an M113 APC vulnerable to AKM and M16 rounds. So We need to figue out how to: 1) Reduce the effects of crticals 2) Reduce the effects of impales. I was thinking of a couple of ideas: !) Only apply impale effects If the attack penetrates the armor. Basically the impales in the rules were really the ability to find a chink and hurt a person. Against something solid like a tank, the bullet would probably bounce or go splat. I was thinking of Calling this Hardened Armor and it would only apply to vehicles that have been specifically armored as such (like tanks). So you can still impale a Chevy truck. 2) Maybe have Hardened Armor drop critical hits to impales. That way there is still a chance of small arms firing pulling off a golden BB effect but it would take a critical roll and a high damage roll. 3) AP rounds of the same tech or higher could ignore HArdened Armor. SO that way an WWII era 76.2mm AP shell will "bounce" off a T-92 Tank, but a modern 120mm APFSDSDU shell will still punch right through.

Thanks to DirkD. The original was a pain to go through with all those "dead" pages in the front.