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Does anyone have access to the stats for 1.) an E-Web, 2.)A disruptor, 3.) a concussion missle. If you do, would you mind posting them? The Reason will be revealed later.

E-Web
Cost: 8,000
Damage: 6d8
Crit: 19-20
Range: 80 meters
Weight: 38kg
Type: Energy
Size: Large
Group: Heavy

That's all there is in the Main Book I have.

6d8 with a crit range of 19-20... The D&Der in me is screaming about how broken that is. I just had to smack myself and remind me that I'm at a Star Wars forum and not my usual haunts (as resident rules guru at a D&D board).

Rogue 9 wrote:6d8 with a crit range of 19-20... The D&Der in me is screaming about how broken that is. I just had to smack myself and remind me that I'm at a Star Wars forum and not my usual haunts (as resident rules guru at a D&D board).

Blaster Rifles do 3d8 with the same crit range.

Remember though, this isn't D&D, where a hand crossbow bolt to the head just tickles.

Critical also doesn't double the damage am I right? It just bypasses Vitality...which now that I think about it is fucking deadlier than Critical :p

Super-Gagme wrote:Critical also doesn't double the damage am I right? It just bypasses Vitality...which now that I think about it is fucking deadlier than Critical :p

Yup. Autokills grunts (any 0-Level NPCs), too.

D&D doesn't even do fantasy all that well, IMO. Science Fiction and Modern? Bleah.

Give me Silhouette any day.

Hotfoot wrote:

Rogue 9 wrote:6d8 with a crit range of 19-20... The D&Der in me is screaming about how broken that is. I just had to smack myself and remind me that I'm at a Star Wars forum and not my usual haunts (as resident rules guru at a D&D board).

Blaster Rifles do 3d8 with the same crit range.

Remember though, this isn't D&D, where a hand crossbow bolt to the head just tickles.

A hand crossbow bolt to the head does not "just tickle." That is what we like to call the Double 20 Clause. If you roll a natural 20 and your critical confirmation roll is also a natural 20, you make a third attack roll. If that hits, congrats you got an auto-kill, bypassing hit points and such. Either that, or you could put the bolt into the head of a helpless foe as a coup de grace and automatic critical, forcing them to make a Fortitude save (DC 10+damage dealt) or die. But this isn't a D&D board. *Smacks self again for forgetting twice in one thread.*

Rogue 9 wrote:

Hotfoot wrote:

Rogue 9 wrote:6d8 with a crit range of 19-20... The D&Der in me is screaming about how broken that is. I just had to smack myself and remind me that I'm at a Star Wars forum and not my usual haunts (as resident rules guru at a D&D board).

Blaster Rifles do 3d8 with the same crit range.

Remember though, this isn't D&D, where a hand crossbow bolt to the head just tickles.

A hand crossbow bolt to the head does not "just tickle." That is what we like to call the Double 20 Clause. If you roll a natural 20 and your critical confirmation roll is also a natural 20, you make a third attack roll. If that hits, congrats you got an auto-kill, bypassing hit points and such. Either that, or you could put the bolt into the head of a helpless foe as a coup de grace and automatic critical, forcing them to make a Fortitude save (DC 10+damage dealt) or die. But this isn't a D&D board. *Smacks self again for forgetting twice in one thread.*

Given I could still survive it, doesn't quite exude the same thought as in a good many RPGs wherein head shots kill, no ifs ands or buts...which is what Hotfoot is referring to.

Rogue 9 wrote:

Hotfoot wrote:Blaster Rifles do 3d8 with the same crit range.

Remember though, this isn't D&D, where a hand crossbow bolt to the head just tickles.

A hand crossbow bolt to the head does not "just tickle." That is what we like to call the Double 20 Clause. If you roll a natural 20 and your critical confirmation roll is also a natural 20, you make a third attack roll. If that hits, congrats you got an auto-kill, bypassing hit points and such. Either that, or you could put the bolt into the head of a helpless foe as a coup de grace and automatic critical, forcing them to make a Fortitude save (DC 10+damage dealt) or die. But this isn't a D&D board. *Smacks self again for forgetting twice in one thread.*

Funny, I don't see any references in the 3rd Ed. PHB or the 3.5 reference documents about a "double 20 clause". Secondly, it's just plain stupid that less than one quarter of one percent of crossbow bolts to the head are instantly fatal. The basic rules are set up in such a way that low level characters die relatively quickly, but high level characters shrugs off damage that would have killed them a year ago. Justify hit points as "luck" or whatever else you want, I frankly don't care. The mechanics of the game are set up so that if someone tries to do something that might make sense in the real world, it falls apart in the logic of the D&D system. That is, of course, unless you add a host of various new rules which change the system to your liking. How they changed the D20 system to Star Wars helps, but it's really not enough, and those ridiculous rules concerning going to the dark side? Please. If we play the game, it's because we enjoyed the movies and want to recreate them. Luke used choke, and he didn't have to spend years of his life reconciling the fact that he simply choked two Gammoreans instead of having to fight (and likely kill) both of them getting into Jabba's palace...

But that's a bit of another rant.

While you're right, this isn't a specifically D&D forum, it is the gaming forum of the site, and so D&D, which is a game, is clearly in the boundaries for this place (though perhaps not this thread).

Hotfoot wrote:

Rogue 9 wrote:

Hotfoot wrote:Blaster Rifles do 3d8 with the same crit range.

Remember though, this isn't D&D, where a hand crossbow bolt to the head just tickles.

A hand crossbow bolt to the head does not "just tickle." That is what we like to call the Double 20 Clause. If you roll a natural 20 and your critical confirmation roll is also a natural 20, you make a third attack roll. If that hits, congrats you got an auto-kill, bypassing hit points and such. Either that, or you could put the bolt into the head of a helpless foe as a coup de grace and automatic critical, forcing them to make a Fortitude save (DC 10+damage dealt) or die. But this isn't a D&D board. *Smacks self again for forgetting twice in one thread.*

Funny, I don't see any references in the 3rd Ed. PHB or the 3.5 reference documents about a "double 20 clause". Secondly, it's just plain stupid that less than one quarter of one percent of crossbow bolts to the head are instantly fatal. The basic rules are set up in such a way that low level characters die relatively quickly, but high level characters shrugs off damage that would have killed them a year ago. Justify hit points as "luck" or whatever else you want, I frankly don't care. The mechanics of the game are set up so that if someone tries to do something that might make sense in the real world, it falls apart in the logic of the D&D system. That is, of course, unless you add a host of various new rules which change the system to your liking. How they changed the D20 system to Star Wars helps, but it's really not enough, and those ridiculous rules concerning going to the dark side? Please. If we play the game, it's because we enjoyed the movies and want to recreate them. Luke used choke, and he didn't have to spend years of his life reconciling the fact that he simply choked two Gammoreans instead of having to fight (and likely kill) both of them getting into Jabba's palace...

But that's a bit of another rant.

While you're right, this isn't a specifically D&D forum, it is the gaming forum of the site, and so D&D, which is a game, is clearly in the boundaries for this place (though perhaps not this thread).

The reference is in the DMG as an alternate rule, but almost everyone I know uses it. And that is not less than one quarter of one percent of bolts to the head are instantly fatal. That's less than one quarter of one percent of all bolts fired, which is quite the difference.

Rogue 9 wrote:The reference is in the DMG as an alternate rule, but almost everyone I know uses it. And that is not less than one quarter of one percent of bolts to the head are instantly fatal. That's less than one quarter of one percent of all bolts fired, which is quite the difference.

I don't see it listed in the system references for 3.5, so either they didn't see fit to list alternate rules in what's supposed to be a comprehensive reference for the game, or they have since removed it. In any event, the point still stands that you have to jump through hoops in order to kill anyone with a hand crossbow bolt in D&D. A normal hit just tickles, even if the target is standing butt-ass naked in a field when he's shot. Even if the attack result succeeds by over twenty, the damage can still be a pitiful 1 hitpoint.

There's no way to have a terrorist using a hostage as a human shield credibly unless the hostage is under the effects of a "hold person" spell or unconscious, and the terrorist can't just pull the trigger to kill the hostage, he's got to spend a full round concetrating on blowing the hostage's head off, and this is only possible if you extremely abuse the letter of the law for coup de grace attacks as is (I should also point out that you technically can't coup de grace something like, say, a sleeping vampire, or anything else immune to critical hits, so you can forget about staking Dracula in his coffin).

The image in the D&D books (PHB and/or Songs and Silence) of a halfling rogue holding someone up with a hand crossbow is what really set this off for me. It's ridiculous, they are showing a scene which could never concievably happen unless you completely butcher the rules as they are now.

You can stake a vampire in his coffin, its listed under their weaknesses in the Vampire description.

Yes, holding someone at bowpoint isn't well covered. Want links to threads addressing the issue? I've seen some pretty good houserules on the subject. Or, since this is a gigantic off topic digression, we could jsut stop now.

Rogue 9 wrote:You can stake a vampire in his coffin, its listed under their weaknesses in the Vampire description.

Yes, but it comes back once more to a litany of special-case rules to handle something which is much easier to explain through a few, simple, easy to understand rules.

Yes, holding someone at bowpoint isn't well covered. Want links to threads addressing the issue? I've seen some pretty good houserules on the subject. Or, since this is a gigantic off topic digression, we could jsut stop now.

Again, it comes down to house rules in order to cover what should be a fairly obvious usage of the tools provided. This is the problem with D&D and D20 in general. The incredibly abstract rules governing the world trip over themselves when players think outside of the box even just a little. It's one of the reasons why I vastly prefer Core Silhouette over D20 any day of the week.

Perhaps to best illustrate this, I provide you with the following

The depths of Hotfoot's mind once wrote:From what I understand of WW, the system is like an abused wife. The writers and a considerable number of the players are the drunk, abusive husbands who just want her to shut up, make dinner, clean the house, and have sex.

D&D is like your first girlfriend. You get all built up over it, you dream about it, think it's so great, think it's "the one". Then one day several years later you realize that you both were young, inexperienced, fumbling, but overall it's what got you started on your path. Maybe you go on to make your own system, or maybe you find the one that's right for you, but in the end, you move on. Those who don't, well...if they're happy, hey, they'll never know.

Now, Silhouette, that system is like a fine woman...curves in all the right places, and in action, Yowza! She'd make the Pope want to...uh...play role-playing games...yeah...

What? That's what I was going to say...

Well, you have to admit that d20 is a considerable improvement over, say, 2e AD&D. As for simple rules, how simple can you go? First you're arguing that d20 is oversimplified and then say that it needs to be simplified more. What? That's what all this abstraction that you're complaining about is: simplification so that you don't have to worry about accurately simulating every single possible event that could happen in real life. That's what AD&D tried to do, and look what happened to it. I'd rather go with d20.

Rogue 9 wrote:Well, you have to admit that d20 is a considerable improvement over, say, 2e AD&D.

Yes, it is. Unfortunately its improvement can be compared to showing once a season as opposed to once a year.

As for simple rules, how simple can you go? First you're arguing that d20 is oversimplified and then say that it needs to be simplified more. What? That's what all this abstraction that you're complaining about is: simplification so that you don't have to worry about accurately simulating every single possible event that could happen in real life. That's what AD&D tried to do, and look what happened to it. I'd rather go with d20.

There's a massive difference between simplifying the massive amounts of special case rules into a fewer number of better-worded rules that achieve the same effect without causing bouts of confusion any time a crack between rules is discovered. Also please note that abstraction and simplification are not the same things. The abstraction seen in D&D results in dozens upon dozens of special case rules, modifiers, errata, house rules, etc. in order to smooth out gameplay. The abstraction of character classes needlessly complicates character creation and advancement, for example.

Allow me to paint this for you in another light, so that you may understand me better. Dungeons and Dragons Third Edition is the Windows 98 of roleplaying games. 3.5 is Windows 98 Second Edition. It's still running crappy old DOS at the core of it, and that provides the biggest problems in its design.

D&D is abstracted beyond the point of reason at its core. To make up for that, they have a litany of special case rules to make it work better. Obviously, not every possible event that could happen isn't covered, but in trying to cover most of them, they open the door for players and GMs to wonder about the rest, and then be forced to make new rules to account for those situations. Only for that to happen, you have to have a nearly photographic memory in order to remember all of the rules all of the time, especially if you're the GM (Oh? You didn't remember that ranged touch attacks ignore Armor, and that grenades count as ranged touch attacks? Your level 3 party should have easily beaten that Shadow Dragon Hatchling that not even the uber-munchy fighter couldn't touch with a 19 if you had just pelted it with alchemist's fire).

So what's the solution? Get rid of the old abstract system and get a new one. Keep the settings, streamline the rules, and go from there. Only that's never going to happen, because everyone loves the base rules for a reason I can't even begin to fathom. Maybe one day we'll get D&D XP, but I doubt it.

The key to solving this problem is to make an effects-based system, one where the player is not concerned with specifically how they are going to kill the monster, in other words, none of this "five foot step, full attack, while blessed, raged, using my two-handed sword so increasing my strength bonus by 1.5, while under the effects of bull's strength, and with my left testicle whistling a song of courage." stuff, with special rules determining just how each thing affects or does not effect the fight. Yes, tactical thought should be a part of combat, but you shouldn't have to be a blasted walking encyclopedia in order to memorize each specific type of attack, what it does, how it does it, and what it's creator had for breakfast twenty years ago.

Here's an example of an effects based solution to multiple attacks versus D&D's attempt at multiple attacks.

D&D: At level 1, you can only make one attack per round. Every time your base attack bonus increases by 5, you get an additional attack per round, but only if you spend a full round for your attack. Each additional attack is inherantly less accurate than the one before it, and your Base Attack Bonus decreases by five for each additional attack. However, if you are weilding two weapons, you can make two attacks per round, but you take penalties to do so, which can be lessened by certain feats or special cases for specific character classes, which will be explained in the next twelve diagrams.

Silhouette: You get normally get one action per round. For every additional action beyond one that you take, you take -1 to all actions done in that round. So if you want to drive a car in a car chase and shoot out a window in the same round, you take a -1 to both actions. If you want to fire twice and drive, you're at a -2 to all three actions, and so on.

In D&D, if you want to stab someone twice in the same turn at level one, you can't, even if your DEX is 18. You're just not physically capable of doing so, according to the rules, for whatever reason. In Silhouette, there's nothing stopping you, except the fact that the more things you try to do at once, the less likely you are to succeed at all of them. As you improve your character, the more capable you are of taking multiple actions and succeeding.

Then there's the part where the stats don't do what they would logically do, and how armor is directly equal to agility (and all the special case rules that attempt to separate them again). Which is simpler, as system which recognizes the difference between body armor and avoidance from the start and thus does not need a complex set of rules to describe the parts the absracts miss, or D&D?

I'm confused; if D20 is DOS and D&D is Windows 98, does that mean WEG's D6 is a Mac?

Darth Utsanomiko wrote:I'm confused; if D20 is DOS and D&D is Windows 98, does that mean WEG's D6 is a Mac?

Dunno...possibly, but I'd probably label it as OS/2 Warp or Amiga. Sure, it may be a great system, but nobody makes anything for it anymore.