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#1 aleserdartigan Nov 30, 2010 12:06:36

After much debate, and help from my local D20 guru, I came up with a near-perfect solution for vehicle based combat in a campaign.  The goal was to avoid guaranteed instant kills enough that it gave players a good propability of survival.  These rules would apply only to primary vehicle weapons like a Tank's cannon, artillery, mortars, etc, but not auxillary weapons like mounted machineguns and such which would use normal damage. DRAGON ISLES - YEAR 319: Vehicle Combat Rules v0.5 Fixed Damage Instead of having 1d10 or whatnot per millimeter of the gun, the gun size has been made irrelevant and the damage based on the tank's class (Mini, Light, Medium, Heavy, Super Heavy). The damage was determined with the help of E-Tools to figure out based on a Level 20 Fighter with 25 constitution and perfect rolls for hit die, what the maximum number of HP a player could ever have. This number was around 320. Based on that the fixed damage for cannons comes out to the following: Super Heavy: 320      DC: 25  Heavy: 280                DC: 20 Medium: 240              DC:15 Light: 200                  DC:10 Mini: 160                    DC: 5 Fixed HP Like weapons, instead of trying to balance between all the various tanks and variants, the HP is set again by the tank's class: Mini Tank (ex: T-70 or TeKe 94): 160hp                          PR: 12 Light Tank (ex: Panzer II, Stuart): 180hp                       PR: 14 Medium Tank (ex: Panzer IV, T-34, Sherman): 210hp     PR: 16 Heavy Tank (ex: Black Prince, Tiger, JS-III) 250hp          PR: 18 Super Heavy (ex: Maus, E-100) 280hp                           PR:  20 Tanks vs Infantry For combat vs infantry, the tank would roll vs the characters reflex. If he hits, the gun does the amount of damage described above. If he misses then depending on how much he missed by, the gun would deal the following damage: Miss                     Distance Away                      Damage                     DC 1-2                                 5'                                   90%                        25 3-4                                10'                                  75%                        20 5-6                                15'                                  50%                        15 7-8                                20'                                  25%                        10 9-10                              25'                                  10%                         5 11+                          Total Miss                              0% If the character is hit with what would be a fatal blow, the player rolls a fortitude save against the DC of the gun. If the character survives he is reduced to 1hp and rendered unconscious. Tank vs Tank When fighting another tank, the attacker rolls to hit as normal. If the attack hits, he then has to determine if the round penetrated the defenders armor. He rolls 1d20 against the defenders Penetration Rating (PR). If the resulting roll is less than the defender's PR the tank is dealt a glancing blow and receives no damage. If the resulting roll is equal to or greater than the defender's PR, the round penetrates the tank's armor for full damage – hardness. Depending on the tank's class, the attacker may receive a bonus or penalty to the roll. Mini: -2 Light: -1 Medium: 0 Heavy: +1 Super Heavy: +2 Example: A Tiger (PR=18) is fired upon by a Sherman (PR=16) the round is on target so the driver rolls 1d20 to see if the round hits. He rolls a 17, but because the Sherman is a medium tank, and he is firing at the front of the Tiger, the gun receives no bonus to penetration, so the shell is deflected off the Tiger's thick hull. The Tiger returns fire, rolling a 15. Since the Tiger is a heavy tank it receives +1 to penetration resulting in a final roll of 16. The round hits dealing 280 damage -14 (Sherman's hardness rating) against the Sherman's 210hp. The tank is destroyed in a single well-placed hit. Please note that if the tank is penetrated, the players inside can still make the normal fortitude roll to check for possible divine intervention. Critical Hits: Tanks cannot score normal critical hits against infantry or other vehicles. Instead, the attackers will receive circumstantial +1 bonus to penetrate when attacking enemy armor from the rear. Non Fatal Damage - Vehicles: If a tank's armor is penetrated , but the vehicle itself is not destroyed, roll 1d6 to check for damage using the following chart: 1 - No Effect 2 - Treads Damaged - Reduce Movement by 1/2 (Rounded down) 3 - Primary Gunner Wounded - Can't fire cannon next turn and suffers -2 to hit afterwrds. 4 - Secondary Gunner Wounded - Can't fire cannon next turn and suffers -2 to hit afterwords. 5 - No Effect 6 - Tank Disabled: Crew abandons vehicle. Example: As the first Sherman explodes, a second circles around from behind a bombed out building and opens fire on the Tiger from the rear. He rolls 17 for penetration but gets a +1 bonus for attacking rear armor, thus making the final score 18.  The Tiger is dealt 220 damage (240-20 for hardness) out of the Tiger's 250hp.  The Tiger is still alive, so the player rolls 1d6 to check for damage.  He rolls a 6 meaning the tank is now disabled.  Moments after the shell hits the tiger the top hatch flips open and the crew begins to bail from the tank.