Dice Robotech - The Invid War - OOC Thread

[Silanon]

Sherwood Short question: Since the command ship grants us all an additional action, shouldn't John have another action left to use? Are you holding that one for something special, or am I missing something? Just wondering because I'm (finally) down to one action myself...

 

[Sherwood]

Sherwood Short question: Since the command ship grants us all an additional action, shouldn't John have another action left to use? Are you holding that one for something special, or am I missing something? Just wondering because I'm (finally) down to one action myself...

You are right! I missed that. Psychie , I do have one more action for a total of six due to the command ship bonuses.

 

[Psychie]

I missed that too. I'll make sure to let you go again.

 

[D. Rex]

Psychie
Is it possible to fire enough missiles to effect a group rather than a single target?

 

[Psychie]

Technically no, but I don't like that rule. I have a rough idea of a house rule that we can try out and see how well it works.

It will require you to launch five missiles per target you wish to try and hit. Then, you roll a d20 to hit each one. Assuming you hit a target, you will then need to roll a d4+1 per target to see how many of the missiles hit it.

This system feels a little overly complicated, but at the moment, it is what I have come up with.

 

[Sherwood]

Well, in the Invid Invasion saga of the cartoon, there was a scene where Rook and Lance took a pair of Alphas and stood back to back and fired off a ton of missiles to engage a large swarm of Invid, so there is some precedent to this idea.

 

[Psychie]

Exactly. If you want to give it a shot, we can experiment with this. It may get reworked if it turns out to be too clumsy or if someone comes up with a better mechanic to try this.

 

[Sherwood]

Here is a thought. Can a swarm attack like this be attempted using missiles from both of the linked Veritechs to spread out the payload drain?

 

[Psychie]

I would be ok with that.

 

[Sherwood]

Sweet.

 

[D. Rex]

Technically no, but I don't like that rule. I have a rough idea of a house rule that we can try out and see how well it works.

It will require you to launch five missiles per target you wish to try and hit. Then, you roll a d20 to hit each one. Assuming you hit a target, you will then need to roll a d4+1 per target to see how many of the missiles hit it.

This system feels a little overly complicated, but at the moment, it is what I have come up with.

Gotcha! So. If I wanted to fire on three targets (in a group, assuming groups are enemies in formation), I would launch 15 missiles.

I would then roll 3 d20 rolls, (+3 to each if missile bonus applies)

Then a (5xd x X) damage per each hit.




Some thoughts!
Depending on enemy clustering, could be limited only to enemy groups. Or multiple groups if enough missiles are fired (e.g. firing everything)

Maybe a bonus or penalty depending on missile type AoE.

A consideration on what may happen during a failed roll(miss or misfire) of that many missiles.

 

[D. Rex]

A side effect of this rule, could be Psychie throwing out not handfuls of invid at us, but swarms.

 

[Psychie]

Sounds like you have got it down. So long as you don't roll a '1' on the attack rolls, a 2-4 would just be a miss.

 

[Sherwood]

A side effect of this rule, could be Psychie throwing out not handfuls of invid at us, but swarms.

There is no such thing as one Invid. They attack with overwhelming numbers until the enemy is toasted.

 

[D. Rex]

There is no such thing as one Invid. They attack with overwhelming numbers until the enemy is toasted.

We are going to need more missiles.

 

[Sherwood]

Well, there is another way to deal with Invid. The central eye is extremely lightly armored. A successful direct fire weapon attack at the eye is almost certain to kill the pilot inside. The downside to this is that it takes two actions to make a Called Shot to target such a small location on a moving foe.

 

[Psychie]

Just remember that the Inorganics don't have that weakness. You have to blast them down the old fashioned way.

 

[Sherwood]

True.

 

[Silanon]

Just thinking out loud here: That's a ton of rolls for firing just a few missiles. I mean, we need some form of AoE, or these kind of encounters will simply go on for ages - and we're fighting the Invids, so there's more swarms coming. But there has to be a better way than this, right? I mean, I like rolling dice - but I think Rex just rolled 40 different dice to blow up two Invids. As a comparison, with four attacks with the pods, I'm rolling 16 for the same result.

Rex mentioned the word "swarm", which reminds me of Pathfinder. There, tons of small creatures are grouped up with a single hp pool for all of them. Couldn't you do something like that here as well?

Let's say we have 5 Invid troopers with 100 mdc each - then that's a swarm with 500 mdc total.
If you target the swarm, as a whole, that takes two actions (just like aimed shots are special ones to take out single foes, it feels right that the special shots against masses should cost just as many actions - intuitively, convince me of the opposite, folks).
You may want to add a malus on that shot, or perhaps not; maybe a -2, or -4 to hit, or something.
You can only target the swarm with AoE damage.
When rolling damage, you only do 70% damage - number can be tweaked, but that's 1d4 of 5 missiles on average if I'm not mistaken - just a convenient way to have less rolls

If the swarm has 50% mdc or less, its attack actions only do 75% damage. If it has 25% or less of its mdc, it does 50% damage instead. This represents the first losses in the swarm, or more losses the more damage the swarm takes. You need a rule like that, or it's pointless to fire at a swarm without taking it out right away.

Note: We roll once to attack, and once for damage, same as usual. We just do cooler stuff with those rolls.

Now what happens if you want to target a single Invid within the swarm, just like I'm doing that all the time at the moment? Every individual in the swarm has the average mdc of the swarm. If the 500 mdc swarm from above has 300 health, then every single Invid in there is on 60mdc. You hit one of them and take it out? Then it's a swarm of 4 Invids, 100 mdc each, so 240/400 mdc on the swarm. And you now have one less foe shooting each round.

Remark: This allows for specific tactics: You might first use the AoE action to reduce a swarm's damage a little, then begin to shoot down the damaged foes individually to save missiles. Note that due to the lack of individual rolls, it's possible to take a swarm out in one go with a higher likelyhood - you just need to hit one attack roll and fire enough missiles. That's an exploitable flaw, but maybe fine? I mean, if the player is willing to risk a ton of missiles on one roll, that's a decision, right?


Just an idea because the method we're testing right now seems clunky. I'm imagining rolling all this stuff for a group of 10 Invids, and I know right now that I'd decide to take them out one by one instead because I'm just lazy like that.

 

[Sherwood]

It might just be best to stick to the rules and not have a AoE attack to hit multiple targets like this.

 

[Psychie]

It might just be best to stick to the rules and not have a AoE attack to hit multiple targets like this.

I am starting to think you are right. Well, we will move on with this fight, and go to standard 1x1 attacks, unless you have a weapon with a large blast radius like a Medium Range missile that the Beta's can fire from their wings.

 

[MrSaturnUL]

I did not see all of this.... Wow, those are some walls....

 

[MrSaturnUL]

So, I take it that from now on, we just stick to single targetting, until we find a better way to handle this sort of thing?

 

[Psychie]

Yes. There may be special occasions that I will allow a multiple target attack with your short range missiles, but for the near future, we'll do one on one shooting.

 

[Sherwood]

I can deal with that.