Scott asks:
>We've heard estimates that Twilight 2000 characters can take excessive
>damage without becoming dangerously wounded or unconcious. I believe
>that Rob Dean estimated that an average character could be hit with
>Six or so .50 calibre machine gun bullets before becoming unconcious.
Simple answer, there isn't one, there are to many variables involved. If
we assume average numbers for most things we still have Hit Location(1d10)
which you can't take an average on.
Before I continue let me make a few comments. First I play TW2k, Merc:2k and
Dark Conspiracy quite a bit. For the group I game with it's the system we've
been using for a while. What I consider the primary purpose/goal/need that a
system has to meet is that it is playable. Realism is nice, but it always
comes in second. If the game isn't playable then it doesn't matter how
realistic it is.
Back to mechanics, in the TW2k system a character can take a lot of damage
before dying, but knocking a character down, which puts him/her out of action
for at least the remainder of the round is easy. Knocking a character out is
not that hard either. I believe the hard to kill aspect of the system is
intentional. Face it, how many people enjoy having their character killed in
the first round of being ambushed.
In TW2k there are 3 levels of wounds: Slight, Serious and Critical. Any damage
up to the first break point is Slight, up to double the break point is Serious
and above that is Critical. (Dark Conspiracy adds another level which is half
the Slight level and is called Scratch.)
The standard effect of wounds is:
(Scratch): Lose next action (initiative).
Slight: -1 to your initiative.
Serious: Additional -2 to your initiative, if any action performed,
character must roll under constitution on percentile dice
or lose conciousness.
Critical: Effective 0 initiative, bleed to death in 20 rounds(10 min.)
unless medical attention received.
Other effects:
If total damage absorbed during a phase is greater than your agility
attribute you are knocked down and lose any remaining actions for that
round.
Hit Location: A d10 is rolled: 1 Head, 2 Chest, 3 Left Arm, 4 Right
Arm, 5-6 Abdomen, 7-8 Left Leg, 9-10 Right Leg.
Any time a character takes damage to the head there is a chance for
unconciousness, add a d6 to the damage taken and subtract the characters
constitution attribute, the result is the number of rounds the character
is unconcious for.
A serious wound to the head results in automatic unconciousness for the
specified number of rounds.
In order to regain conciousness, with any serious wound, requires a roll
equal to or less than the characters constitution attribute. And, once
a character is concious, any physical action performed will cause the
character to again lose conciousness if a successful percentile con
check is not made.
Game turn note: A round is 30 seconds and is broken into 6 phases of 5 seconds
each. A character has an initiative from 1-6 and this tells how many
phases a character may perform an action in.
Now that I've rambled on for a while, back to the original comment.
A .50 cal round, in TW2k does 8d8+8 damage, or 36 points of damage.
A character with average stats has the following hit point levels:
Slight SeriousCritical+
Head1020 21+
Chest3060 61+
Others2040 41+
So one .50 cal round will kill 10%, slight 10% and serious 80%.
I'll admit I think a .50 cal round to the chest should be more
than just a slight wound. But also, just two weeks ago, while
running a Merc:2000 scenario a PC lost consciousness after being
hit by a .50 cal round and subsequently drowned when his boat sank.
>Since I don't have the game, could someone with the books look up the
>following for me?
>How many 120mm shells does it take to kill a Twilight 2000 character?
ONE. Unless, of course, it was an illum round, :-) Actually there is
nothing in the rules about a character being "hit" by a 120mm round
just blast effects if the round goes off near the character
If people want to talk more please feel free to email me. There are a lot
of modifications we have made to the rules for "playability" purposes.
By the way, some of the most fun I've had playing Dark Conspiracy has just
been creating new characters when others die or "retire" for other reasons.
Brian
[email removed]