ISO A4 format - Freelance Traveller

Doing It My Wayarmour modifier, as given in the Traveller rules, isapplied to the damage. Always use the SemiAutoline of the armour modifiers if the weapon has one.Damage for a rifle against a cloth-armouredindividual would now be 3d-2 (3d for a rifle, asusual, with a modifier of -2 for cloth as per theregular Classic Traveller armour table)To find out how much damage results in whattype of wound, average the character‘s STR andDEX, rounding up. If a character takes double thisfigure in damage then he is killed instantly. Equalor greater damage means he‘s down and dying.Two-thirds is a serious wound and one-third a minorwound. Round all fractions up.So, for example, a character with a UPP777777 would have wound thresholds of 3, 5, 7and 14 equating to the usual Traveller woundthresholds of 1, 2 and 3 characteristics reduced tozero plus an overkill, instant death, vaporised result.All damage is cumulative.ArmourDue to the new damage rules, numeric valuesmust now be assigned to armour types. Use the followingtable as a guide.Jack 6Mesh 8Cloth 8Ablat 6 (x2 against lasers)Reflec 12 (x0 against all except lasers)Combat 10Battledress 10 plusThe difference between Cloth and Combatdoesn‘t seem much until you remember the modifiersin the Traveller Weapon tables. A Rifle, as wehave already seen, does 3d-2 against Cloth Armourbut it does 3d-4 against Combat Armour. On anaverage roll, a Rifle will damage a cloth armouredadversary but will leave one in combat armour unscathed.The observant will notice that laser weaponssuddenly become very deadly against targetsnot wearing Reflec, Ablat or Combat armour.Battledress ratings can vary according to justwhat battledress is in your game. If it‘s poweredcombat armour then leave it as it is. If, however,your powered armour is more like a Landmate(Appleseed) or a Marauder Suit (Starship Troopers)then you‘ll want to up the protection rating.Example: Corporal Aziz of the Colonial MarineCorps fires his ACR at a fleeing terrorist. The terroristis at medium range and evading. Aziz fires aburst of 5 rounds requiring 8+ to hit. Aziz has askill level of 3. His first shot rolls a 4 plus his skill,3, minus 2 for evading at medium range, and plus 1for firing an ACR at medium range with HE roundsfor a total of 6. His first round misses. The secondrolls 11+3(skill)-2(evasion)+1(range)-2(recoil)=11.A hit! The third shot misses (roll: 4+3-2+1-3=3), asdoes the fourth (7+3-2+1-4=5); the fifth (11+3-2+1-5=8) by a small miracle also hits. The terrorist iswearing a ballistic cloth flak jacket (cloth+1 inClassic Traveller terms) that stops 8 points of damage.Checking the HE ammo against cloth armour,we find a modifier of -3 which, as it‘s Cloth+1, becomes-2. Aziz rolls his 4d6 damage and gets 15-2(ACR HE cloth modifier)-8(armour rating forcloth)=5 points of damage. Consulting the Terrorist‘sUPP, the Referee finds that the terrorists isbuilt like Rambo (UPP A8C) with thresholds of4/8/11/22; the ACR‘s HE round has caused a minorwound. The second round that hit rolls only 7 on4d6 and bounces off the flak jacket even as the terroriststumbles and falls…A few thoughts on Traveller weaponry.The Light Assault Gun is described in Book 4:Mercenary as ―essentially a heavy rifle‖. This mademe think of the old Boys Anti-tank Rifle (.55 cal)and Barret Light (.50 cal) weapons, but on a moreconsidered reading of the text I noticed that it onlyweighs 4.5kg (loaded)—about 10lbs in US nonmetricmeasurement—while being, without abullpup configuration, a quite handy 900mm long(35.5"-ish). Comparing it with an M1 Garandwhich Wikipedia puts at 5.3kg and over 1100mmlong, we can see that the Traveller LAG isn‘t ananti-material rifle. Comparing its muzzle velocityand projectile weights with other Traveller weapons,we find that it‘s actually similar to a high velocity,rifled, magazine fed shotgun. In 20th cen-(Continued on page 17)16