SLA Industries : Making Armour Work
Article by Simon Chan ()
Optional Rules
This section contains a few 'House Rules' as well as ideas I haven't been able to force down players' throats over the years. It's just a collection of drafts and notes, so don't expect too much. These all assume the reader already knows how SLA Industries rules work (at least in the vague kinda way I do).
Damage and Hit Points
Why different Damage / Hit Points rules?
Under the standard rules, the penetration and damage rating of a bullet is completely irrelevant. All that is important is the total PEN + DMG (i.e. AP rounds are a waste of time. Go HP and HESH every day). In addition, lower armour values were virtually useless and doesn't match up to their descriptions in the flavour text. I therefore wanted to make armour do something and to adjust the balance between different ammo types. This rule adds a little more book-keeping as players need to keep track of two types of damage. To keep everything together, some of the Standard rules have been repeated.
Lethal Damage
Lethal damage is damage that is immediately lethal. Taking any Lethal damage is a sign that things are going badly wrong. Whenever an Operative takes Lethal damage, she also takes a Wound. Effects of Wounds are shown below. If an Operative ever has as much Lethal damage to a location as it has Hits, then that location is crippled.
Crippled locations no longer function, even if damage is healed back below the location’s Hits through use of drugs or Flux. Proper medical treatment is required to repair the damage. If the crippled location is Total Hits, Head or Torso, the Operative collapses and begins to die. She would normally have a number of minutes equal to her PHYS to live; or rather she is dead but can be resuscitated at this time.
If an Operative takes as much Lethal damage in a single blow as she has Hits in that location, the location is ‘severed’. Immediately death is the result if this is a critical location.
Blunt Trauma Damage
Blunt Trauma damage is damage that is not immediately lethal, though enough of it can kill you. It mainly represents system shock and fatigue rather than any real damage.
If an Operative ever accumulates as much Blunt Trauma damage in a location as it has Hits, the location will stop working. If this is a critical location, the Operative will fall unconscious or become completely stunned from pain and shock. Any further Blunt Trauma damage done to that location will be considered Lethal, though no Wounds will be caused.
In essence, you can take twice as much Blunt Trauma damage as Lethal damage.
Wounds
For every Wound an Operative receives, she has a –1 penalty to any tasks she undertakes. Wounds will also bleed. With 1 Wound, the Operative will bleed a Hit every 5 Turns. This time is reduced for each additional Wound until the Operative is bleeding every Turn. Further Wounds will mean the character bleed more than a Hit a Turn. I.e. An Operative with 8 Wounds will bleed 4 Hits a Turn. Bleeding is treated as Blunt Trauma damage and is inflicted to Total Hits. Following the rules above an untreated Wound will eventually lead to unconsciousness, followed shortly by death. This is a Bad Thing™.
Kick Start, Flux et al
Regeneration, Kick Start, Flux healing, etc. all heal Lethal and Blunt Trauma damage at the same time. Ain't that great?
Inflicting Damage
DMG, PEN and PV
Just about every single weapon has two ratings; Damage (DMG) and Penetration (PEN). They are opposed by the Protection Value (PV) of whatever protection an Operative happens to have. Whenever an Operative is struck or shot, actual damage inflicted can be calculated as follows:
Damage = DMG – Modified PV
Where, Modified PV = PV – PEN (minimum 0)
If Modified PV is higher than 0, then the attack had failed to penetrate the protection. Any damage taken is therefore treated as Blunt Trauma damage. If the Modified PV is 0, the protection had been breached and damage is considered Lethal.
Regardless of the above, if the base PEN of the attack is 0 or higher, the target will always take a minimum of 1 Blunt Trauma damage, representing bruising. Dodgeybone better ignore this rule (seeing how they’re vehicles rather than armour!).
In Summary
These rules do decrease the deadliness of the game somewhat. Folks who don't like it should either drop it or modify it (the guy who's running the game I'm playing at the moment doesn't 'double-up' Hits like I do, instead handling the two damage types like it's done in Aeon Trinity).
Even Body Tissue Paper can save your life! HESH that would annihilate an Operative under the standard rules will still put you down, but at least the armour was worth something. Note also that PV5 is just sufficient to stop a 10mm pistol round. AP and HEAP are well worth it for the penetration as it causes wounds by sacrificing sheer damage power. And what's more, armour actually stop the rounds the descriptions say they do.