[HOE] Re: Explosions are their own reward...

["Reuben McCallum" <bloopy40@hotmail.com>]

>Date: Fri, 30 Jun 2000 11:04:14 EST
>From: dr_nukem@hotmail.com
>Subject: [HOE] Massive Damage ... lookin for a good discussion ... [PEG] 
>[Hopler]
>
>Greetings one and all!
>
>Having finally made the leap from DL in HOE, I've got an interesting
>question/discussion.  If this has already been discussed (just popped into
>HOE world here) please go easy on me...just one mutation.
>
>In the old days, massive damage was pretty simple to figure out.  Be it
>falling, fire, explosion, whatever, you just found out how much damage
>happened, calculate wounds, and then roll location for each wound.  After
>all wounds have been applied, you then take into consideration armor and
>spend fate chips.  Easy.
>
>With the publishing of Iron Oasis, a new set of rules has come out.  I just
>so happen to have it handy...
>
>"Attacks and other events, like falling damage, now inflict their full
>damage to 1d6 hit locations. It is possible for the attack to inflict its
>damage to the same location more than once.
>
>In the case of explosions, the number of hit locations affected are reduced
>by 1 for each burst radius crossed. An explosion with a burst radius of 5
>yards, for example, would affect 1d6 locations within 5 yards, 1d6-1
>locations between 5 and 10 yards, 1d6-2 locations between 10 and 15 yards,
>and so on. It is possible for an explosion to affect zero areas - your
>brainer just got lucky!
>
>Since damage is now applied to specific hit locations, armour works 
>normally
>against massive damage, ie positive AVs lower the die type and negative AVs
>subtract from the damage."
>
>Now, in my opinion, this seems...well...wrong.  I thought the original 
>rules
>worked very well and actually gave players a chance at surviving.  With the
>new MD rules, explosions are much more deadly.
>
>So, I ask you, which system do you like and why?
>
>PEG guys, any comments on why the new system?  I think John Hopler actually
>wrote the book, any comments John?
>
>Cheers,
>
>Dr. Nukem

I agree with Dr. Nukem. Now although it is true about posses ridin' out 
grenade blasts with chips, posses only got a few grenades to go round. I 
certainly haven't found too many instances of groups abusing this. And if 
they do, put a few innocent hostages in the way (the bigger and cuter the 
eyes, the better). It'll stop 'em using those grenades quite so readily.
My argument against it is that it make encounters with Automatons and the 
like near impossible to resolve. Take for example, the Boise Horror 
adventure
S
P
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L
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R
S






S
O
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Space....
Now in the battle aboard Sky Raider, my posse had enough problems trying to 
avoid being blowed up anyways. And it did lead to some interesting tactics 
(the huge brawny mutant grabbing an automaton, and with the help of some 
friends, hurling it out the side of the zepplin to explode on the ground 
below, and then using that explosion to determine how close the ground was), 
but even with that, the near penultimate battle in the conference chamber 
did a huge job on them. And that was with the old rules. The new rules would 
have killed 'em right there. And the way I saw it, there wasn't much of a 
way of gettin' around having an automaton exploded. One of the options for 
resolving the scene as written into the adventure is that simon whacks one, 
it explodes, and then he's knocked out.
Now very few posses I know lose a chip if they can help it, and throwing 
grenades at their feet doesn't seem to go with the chip preservation 
attitude expressed by most posses. In fact, the idea of wasting hard earned 
chips (not to mention bucks) icing peons so that they're real low when they 
have to face badmasta X would send most of my players into panchronic 
giggles. It's never really been a problem.
Lots of the rules in Deadlands seem to have been written to cater more to 
cinematic reality rather than real-world reality, and for good reason. For 
example, Automatic weapons, though effective, are not all that special, a 
skilled fighter can easily hold off ravening hordes of peons, and following 
that vein, heroes shouldn't be assasinated by large explosions constantly, 
but these same things do wonders against hordes of shlocky minions. That's 
what grenades are there for! What exciting action climax had people the hero 
detonating a bomb to kill the evil arch villain (don't bring up the 
specialist, that movie sucked harrowed weiner)? But how many times has Arnie 
tossed a grenade into a large group of RTBEJ's(Rag-Tag Bunch of Expendable 
Jerks), and easily whethered the oversized explosion? That's what fate chips 
are for! And let's not forget that in the real worldtm, Grenades are not for 
killin' folks outright. They're for disabling them. I find that the current 
explosion rules do that just fine.
Reuben "Taking sedatives now" McCallum
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