» Wed Aug 11, 2010 4:22 pm A shotgun fires pellets.
To understand the root of the way it's displayed you have to understand GURPS, the roleplaying game Fallout (the venerable original) was supposed to be based on before licensing issues got in the way and forced Interplay to invent the SPECIAL system.
In GURPS DR is "Damage Reduction" in FONV this concept is back in a big way as "damage threshold." Unlike in GURPS damage below the DR does not cause no damage at all, but it does cause very minimal damage.
When you understand this it's easy to see that 7 hits at 5 damage is very inferior to one hit at 35 damage when the foe has armor. on the other hand 1x20 is far inferior to 7x5 when the enemy doesn't have DT/DR.
In essense a weapon with multiple projectiles will hit multiple times for less damage and each "pellet" is affected by DR/DT. This makes, in general, multiprojectile weapons far better against the unarmored or lightly-armored than the heavily armored.
FONV seems to use a modification of the GURPS rules for hits below the DT. In GURPS one point per die of bruise damage is transferred *if* the target is in "soft armor", IE Kevlar or Spectra or Monocrys. In FONV more than that seems to get through, but it's still inferior to a hit that can burn through the DT/DR outright.
I actually like the change. Now if only they adapted the GURPS special rules for plasma weapons, where plasma reduced DR of armor through burning and melting, then Energy weapons might not be the step-headed redchild of more flexible and varied-ammo physical guns.
Oh well I guess you can expect that from a TL 5+4 alternate-tech GURPS world.
To understand the root of the way it's displayed you have to understand GURPS, the roleplaying game Fallout (the venerable original) was supposed to be based on before licensing issues got in the way and forced Interplay to invent the SPECIAL system.
In GURPS DR is "Damage Reduction" in FONV this concept is back in a big way as "damage threshold." Unlike in GURPS damage below the DR does not cause no damage at all, but it does cause very minimal damage.
When you understand this it's easy to see that 7 hits at 5 damage is very inferior to one hit at 35 damage when the foe has armor. on the other hand 1x20 is far inferior to 7x5 when the enemy doesn't have DT/DR.
In essense a weapon with multiple projectiles will hit multiple times for less damage and each "pellet" is affected by DR/DT. This makes, in general, multiprojectile weapons far better against the unarmored or lightly-armored than the heavily armored.
FONV seems to use a modification of the GURPS rules for hits below the DT. In GURPS one point per die of bruise damage is transferred *if* the target is in "soft armor", IE Kevlar or Spectra or Monocrys. In FONV more than that seems to get through, but it's still inferior to a hit that can burn through the DT/DR outright.
I actually like the change. Now if only they adapted the GURPS special rules for plasma weapons, where plasma reduced DR of armor through burning and melting, then Energy weapons might not be the step-headed redchild of more flexible and varied-ammo physical guns.
Oh well I guess you can expect that from a TL 5+4 alternate-tech GURPS world.
Just wanted to give you some props Seraphian. Players who never played the older Fallout games such as myself have no idea about this stuff. Very interesting.
