Fudge Psi-Wars: Weapons and Armor and Mooks, Oh My!
Everyone is eagerly awaiting the second part of Dr. Tan-Shai’s rescue and to see how Fudge handles Psi-Wars an actiony combat scenario (or a couple of people are at least mildly interested), but before running a combat scenario, we will need to define some weapons and armor. Since the scenario will involve Story Element combat against “mooks,” it will also be useful to have some simplified “mook” combat rules.
Weapons
In default Fate, weapons are assumed to be part of the appropriate combat skills. A character with the Shoot skill is assumed to have an appropriate ranged weapon. If the character loses the weapon for some reason, his shoot skill temporarily useless or reduced in the case where he gains access to an inferior weapon. Fate does have some optional rules for weapons doing extra damage, but they are discouraged in modern Fate. For Psi-Wars, we should use more mainline Fudge rules.
In Fudge, weapons usually add to the Offensive Damage Factor (ODF) and often have additional stats such as range, reach, damage type, etc. The specific details are defined by the game designer.
Fudge 10th Aniversary Edition has has two sections for weapons and armor: Weapons and Armor in Fudge by Alex Weldon and A set of Weapons and Armor for Fudge by Kent Matthewson. They both have sci-fi weapons and armor, so it is worth reviewing them for a starting point for Psi-Wars weapons and armor.
Note that we won’t get all of the mechanical variety in Fudge as in GURPS. +1 is a huge bonus to damage in Fudge but fairly minor (but still important) in GURPS. This post will also only cover personal weapons. Vehicular weapons are for later. The main difference is scale, so the conversion should be fairly simple.
Blasters
Blasters are important weapons in Psi-Wars. Everyone has some sort of blaster. It has blaster pistols and rifles. Within the pistol category, it has three general sizes: holdout, standard and large. Rifles may also be categorized into carbine, standard and large sizes. Can we get at least that much detail out of Fudge? We shall see. If not, we will at least need a divide between pistols and rifles.
Before trying to design our own blasters, we should examine predesigned blasters. I have no plans to make a blaster design system. Both articles mention rapid fire rules, but I will leave that for another time.
Weapons and Armor in Fudge
Weapons and Armor in Fudge’s prebuilt Sci-Fi Randged Weapons table lists lasers, plasma weapons, particle weapons, a lightning gun, a stun ray and a shockwave weapon. For blasters, particle weapons seem most appropriate. The particle weapons are divided into pistol, rifle and cannon sizes. Cannon may be too large for a typical personal weapon. I suspect it is tripod mounted stationary or vehicle mounted weapon. We will ignore it for now but note that heavy weapon specialist characters may make use of it as a personal weapon.
The two particle weapons have the following stats:
Name | RoF | Short | Medium | Long | Base Range | Base Dmg | Falloff | Lethality | Critical |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Particle Pistol | 5 | 30 | 60 | 150 | 30 | +4 | - | Lethal | Armor Piercing |
Particle Rifle | 8 | 40 | 80 | 200 | 40 | +6 | - | Lethal | Armor Piercing |
What do those statistics mean? Not all of the statistics are intended to be used together.
RoF is fairly obvious, but details may depend on the length of a combat round.
Short, Medium and Long are three broad range bands for accuracy of a weapon. A short ranged attack requires a minimum of a Fair result while Medium and Long require Good and Great minimum attack results respectively. In any case, the attack still must exceed the target’s defense to hit.
Base Range is intended for a function based ranged attack difficult such as a linear or logarithmic scale based on the base range. This is used in place of Short, Medium and Long.
In both cases, the listed ranges are in meters.
Base Dmg is the weapon component of ODF.
Falloff is for explosive weapons and is not applicable to blasters.
Blasters are lethal weapons. Other options are non-lethal and quasi-lethal.
Critical is for Weapon-Specific Criticals. It ignores armor on a critical hit.
The table doesn’t list number of shots or reload time, but we can define these too.
Using Scale, we can scale the weapon damage based on size. If we consider a standard sized pistol or rifle as a Scale 0 pistol or rifle, we get +3, +4 and +5 ODF holdout, standard and large pistols and +5, +6 and +7 ODF carbine, standard and large rifles. If we check that against ARC “Resolution” Mk V for our large pistol and I-99D, Startrodder SC 740 or Stellar Dynamics RB-16 for our carbines, we get essentially the same damage in GURPS which is consistent for our weapon scale rule. If we adjust ranges, rate of fire and number of shots, we can get a surprising amount of detail in Fudge blasters. I did not expect these results.
A Set of Weapons and Armor for Fudge
A Set of Weapons and Armor for Fudge lists laser and blaster pistols and rifles. We want blasters.
The blaster weapons have the following stats:
Weapon | Type | ODF | RoF | Shots | Reload |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Blaster Pistol | energy (particles) | +5 | 1 | 15 | 3 |
Blaster Rifle | energy (particles) | +6 | 1 | 35 | 3 |
This gives us shots, damage type and reload time but not range bands, but fear not, the article gives us range bands for historical and modern firearms. We will use the modern table since Psi-Wars blasters are glowing bullets:
Type | Mediocre | Fair | Good | Great | Superb | Legendary |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Snub | 10 | 20 | 30 | 40 | 50 | 70 |
Pistol | 20 | 30 | 45 | 65 | 100 | 150 |
Shotgun | 10 | 15 | 25 | 40 | 60 | 90 |
Rifle | 125 | 200 | 300 | 450 | 675 | 1000 |
Range is in meters, and reload time is in seconds.
The article also lists some Optional Bonuses to Range (usually +1):
- Bracing against a solid object
- Scope
- Laser Sight
and Optional Penalties to Range (usually -1):
- Poor light
- Firing without aiming properly (snap-shot)
- Concealment/cover (-1 to -3 depending on amount of cover)
An astute reader (or even someone paying mild attention) will notice that the two articles list very different weapons with different details. At a glance, I prefer the results from Weapons and Armor in Fudge, but taking ideas from both articles may yield desirable results.
Psi-Wars Custom Designed Blasters
I may do that later, but that requires analyzing armor and wound potential. I want to get something quick and analyze later if necessary.
Plasma Weapons
Plasma guns are sort of like the Psi-Wars, ultra tech shotguns/grenade launchers. They are cool, so Fudge Psi-Wars should have them too. Pirates need guns, and space pirates love plasma weapons. I am treating grenades separately.
Weapons and Armor in Fudge
Weapons and Armor in Fudge has three categories of plasma guns: pistol, rifle and cannon. As with blasters, we can ignore cannons at this stage.
The plasma gun stats are as follows:
Name | RoF | Short | Medium | Long | Base Range | Base Dmg | Falloff | Lethality | Critical |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Plasma Pistol | 5 | 25 | 50 | 100 | 30 | +5 | 1 | Lethal | Combustion |
Plasma Rifle | 8 | 30 | 60 | 120 | 40 | +8 | 2 | Lethal | Combustion |
We know what the most of these mean, but what is Falloff, and what does Combustion do?
Combustion is fairly obvious. Plasma weapons set things on fire on critical hits.
Falloff is used in explosions. Anything in the Falloff radius takes the base damage. Anything within double Falloff radius takes base damage -1, and anything within triple Falloff radius takes base damage -2, etc. The explosion may continue beyond base damage 0 and potentially harm characters of small scale or that otherwise have a negative Defensive Damage Factor (DDF). Since the explosion damages the area automatically, apply the base damage as the ODF. Don’t apply the relative degree and only apply defensive factors such as armor or toughness. The article doesn’t mention contact explosions. Perhaps they get a bonus or do add the relative degree since they hit the target rather than simply the area near the target.
GURPS Psi-Wars doesn’t have the same level of detail in plasma weapons, but we have the Redjack ACE-11, R&L “Outlander” 683 and Redjack R8K-88 as our standard pistol, carbine and standard rifle at +5, +7 and +8 ODF respectively. They don’t match quite as well as the blasters, but they are probably close enough for government work.
The Wyrmwerks HC16 “Nova” works fairly well as a large plasma pistol, but I am not sure where the NU46 “Blitzmark” fits.
A Set of Weapons and Armor for Fudge
A Set of Weapons and Armor for Fudge doesn’t have plasma weapons.
Grenades
Both articles have modern grenades, but neither have plasma grenades. This post is getting too long, and I won’t need grenades for Dr. Tan-Shai’s rescue, so I will ignore this for now.
Muscle Powered Weapons
I am ignoring this for now too. Ben Dayfall has a force sword, so I don’t care about vibroblades, rocket hammers or ceramic katanas right now. Muscle powered ranged weapons are niche. Future me (or someone else) can deal with that later.
Note that strength is added to ODF for muscle powered weapons. Bows and crossbows are exceptions. They have their own strength. Bows have a minimum strength required to use effectively while crossbows have a required strength that can be met using special arming mechanisms at the cost of time and additional equipment.
Force Swords
Force Swords are important in Psi-Wars, so Fudge Psi-Wars will need to support them. This is obvious.
Weapons and Armor in Fudge
Surprisingly, Weapons and Armor in Fudge doesn’t have any sort of laser sword. Instead, it has a laser sickle and a plasma mace.
The stats are as follows:
Name | Damage | To-hit | Lethality | Speed | Reach | Critical |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Laser Sickle | +6 | +2 | Lethal | 7 | 5 | Sever |
Plasma Mace | +8 | -1 | Lethal | 4 | 6 | Combustion |
What do these new stats mean?
Reach is fairly obvious. It determines how far a weapon can strike effectively. I am not sure what the units are, but I don’t think it is meters like with ranged weapons. It appears to be abstract units used to determine combat order in alternating combat rounds in conjunction with speed. In simultaneous combat, they can be combined in some way to grant some bonus in combat. The article gives a few vague options. Fudge also has a rule that the combatant with the longer weapon often gets a bonus.
The Sever critical effect severs a limb or a head on a critical hit. Who would have thought?
If we force sword type weapons in the style of Weapons and Armor in Fudge, we can combine the stats for swords with the damage of blasters. In GURPS Psi-Wars, a basic force sword does 8d(5) damage while a full size blaster rifle does about 6d+2(5) damage. That means a force sword should do approximately +1 to +2 damage compared to a blaster rifle giving it +7 or +8 damage. We can call it +8 for a nice number that keeps damage at approximately +1 ODF/1d GURPS damage. We can examine the number later when we examine armor and wounds.
Using long sword (really more of an arming sword, but everyone gets that wrong) stats with the above damage bonus and applying scale, we get the following stats:
Name | Damage | To-hit | Lethality | Speed | Reach | Critical |
---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Force Blade | +6 | +0 | Lethal | 6 | 2 | Sever |
Force Gauche | +7 | +0 | Lethal | 5 | 3 | Sever |
Force Sword | +8 | +0 | Lethal | 4 | 4 | Sever |
Grand Force Sword | +9 | +0 | Lethal | 3 | 5 | Sever |
A Set of Weapons and Armor for Fudge
A Set of Weapons and Armor for Fudge does have a laser sword. It also has and energy lance and halberd and a laser staff.
The laser sword’s stats are as follows:
Weapon | ODF | Type | Reach | Speed | Parry |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Laser Sword | +5 | E | 0 | +1 | +1 |
What do these stats mean?
Speed and reach mean what you think they mean, but A Set of Weapons and Armor in Fudge treats them as bonuses/penalties instead of whatever abstract value Weapons and Armor in Fudge uses. A Set of Weapons and Armor in Fudge give some different advice for how to apply the bonuses/penalties.
Parry applies a bonus/penalty to defense if using separate offense and defense. If using combined attack and defense, invert the sign and apply it as a penalty/bonus to opponent’s skill.
Type is energy.
Note that this puts the laser sword at the same damage bonus as a blaster pistol.
Applying scale and comparing with muscle powered melee weapons, we get the following weapons:
Weapon | ODF | Type | Reach | Speed | Parry |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Force Blade | +3 | E | -1 | +2 | -1 |
Force Gauche | +3 | E | -1 | +2 | 0 |
Force Saber | +4 | E | 0 | +2 | +2 |
Force Sword | +5 | E | 0 | +1 | +1 |
Grand Force Sword | +6 | E | 0 | +2 | +2 |
Weapon Conclusion
Note that Weapons and Armor in Fudge gives higher damage values than A Set of Weapons and Armor for Fudge. This will give Weapons and Armor in Fudge higher potential overall wound potential. We will need to examine wound potential to see if that is desirable.
At this point, I prefer the ranged weapons from Weapons and Armor in Fudge, but I suspect that some hybrid will work best. For melee weapons, I prefer the way A Set of Weapons and Armor for Fudge handles speed and reach, but the damage potential definitely needs to be consistent with ranged weapons. I suspect that a hybrid approach will be best with melee weapons too.
Armor
Fudge tends to treat armor as increasing DDF and shields as reducing the attacker’s skill. This is similar to GURPS where armor increases DR and shields give an active defense bonus. GURPS Psi-Wars uses both armor and shields, so Fudge Psi-Wars should too.
Armor
Neither prebuilt armor list gives us quite what we want. Both have split protection. Weapons and Armor in Fudge has armor penalties and a hard vs soft distinction while A Set of Weapons and Armor for Fudge has rules for partial armor and using TL as scale.
A simple thing to do is to pick armor defense levels based on how protective they should be against various weapons. For now, we will only consider defense against energy weapons since that is the damage type of immediate concern.
In standard Fudge, characters gain wounds of various levels based on damage they receive. This is the standard wound table for reference:
Damage | 1-2 | 3-4 | 5-6 | 7-8 | 9+ |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
Wound | Scratch | Hurt | Very Hurt | Incapacitated | Near Death |
Additionally, attacks that succeed with a relative degree of +1 are considered grazes and can deal a maximum amount of damage. This is the standard table for maximum of graze damage for reference:
DF | Result |
---|---|
<0 | Undamaged |
0-4 | Scratch |
5+ | Hurt |
Weapons and Armor in Fudge
Weapons and Armor in Fudge based Psi-Wars weapons have a high damage potential.
Blaster Pistol
Let us start with a blaster pistol. A standard blaster pistol has ODF +4.
Unarmored
Against an average unarmored target (DDF 0), this is gives DF +4. A graze produces a Scratch. A minimal solid hit has a relative degree +2 which is added to ODF resulting in 6 damage and a Very Hurt wound. A relative degree +3 (Success with Style in Fate) results in Incapacitated.
This is a fairly reasonable result, but it is less damaging than GURPS Psi-Wars. In GURPS, we would expect an incapacitation check or at least a major wound. In Fudge, we get a Very Hurt result which results in -2 to most actions until healed. Fudge characters don’t get to continue acting after receiving an Incapacitated result, and Psi-Wars characters are fairly tough, so this is actually a fairly close result. In both cases, rapid fire has the potential to give a fatal injury.
Note that a Hurt result is not possible in this scenario, but it is possible for a tough, unarmored character with an innate DDF to gain a hit result.
Light Armor
Let us consider “light” armor to be +1 DDF. This is somewhat close to standard battleweave bodysuit in GURPS which gives an effective 4 (or 1d) DR. A graze still produces a Scratch, and a minimal solid hit still produces a Very Hurt result. A relative degree of +3 is reduced to a Very Hurt result. In GURPS, we still expect a major wound, and a Reeling result is reasonable.
Light-Medium Armor
This is our westerly survival suit or duelist body sleave and has DDF +2. In GURPS, it would have effective DR 7-9 (about 2d). A graze would still do a Scratch while a minimum solid hit would finally give merely a Hurt result. A relative degree of +3 would produce a Very Hurt result. At this point, Fudge results may be harsher.
Medium-Heavy Armor
This is our ARC pilot or light space knight armor and has DDF +3. In GURPS, it would have effective DR 12 (about 3-4d). A graze would still do a Scratch. A +2 or +3 hit would both give Hurt. Fudge is much harsher at this point.
If we want to be sure to be “immune” to a blaster, we need DDF +6 or +7. It depends on whether a relative degree is a critical hit or represents aiming in the gaps.
Blaster Rifle
Now, let us examine a blaster rifle. A standard rifle does ODF +6.
Unarmored
Against an average unarmored target (DDF 0), this is gives DF +6. A graze produces a Hurt result. A +2 degree produced Incapacitated, and +3 produces Near Death. In GURPS, we get unconsciousness checks and even expect death checks. This result is reasonable. Fudge doesn’t do “death from a single attack” against a resisting important character by default.
Light Armor
Light armor will give DF +5. A graze still gives Hurt. +2 and +3 produce Incapacitated. In GURPS, a battleweave bodysuit will turn a to probably not fatal while still incapacitating.
An astute reader will recognize that rifle gives one wound level higher than a pistol.
Force Sword
This analysis will be brief. A force blade is equivalent to a blaster rifle (exactly the same in GURPS too), and a force sword is a wound level higher than a blaster rifle.
A Set of Weapons and Armor for Fudge
There is no point in repeating the above analysis. Blaster rifles are equivalent while blaster pistols are a half wound level more potent. Force swords are heavily nerfed.
Conclusion
The set detailed above derived from Weapons and Armor in Fudge weapons works fairly well. It may require some minor adjustment, but it is good enough for now. It gives results close enough to the GURPS versions that it should “feel” off. The systems are different, so differences should be expected.
Shields
Weapons and Armor in Fudge gives shields an armor value with varying bonuses against melee and ranged attacks. A Set of Weapons and Armor for Fudge uses the default shield rules for Fudge. Use the default rules with relatively small shield giving +1 to defense or -1 to opponent’s skill and a larger giving +2 to defense or -2 to opponent’s skill. It is simple and works.
Remember that the shield bonus/penalty reduces an attacker’s relative degree which can reduce damage or turn a serious hit to a graze.
Mooks, Oh My!
Part two of the test scenario will feature combat against mooks using story elements. Before doing that, it will be useful to examine options for handling mooks.
Before examining options for mooks, we need to answer a fundamental question. What is a mook? Mooks don’t really have any individual personality, and most mooks come as part of hoards. In general, a mook is less a character and more an obstacle.
In GURPS Psi-Wars mooks get taken out of a fight if they take a single point of injury. Mooks also miss the PCs in the first round of combat, can be cursed through the use of IP, etc. The idea is to make individual mooks nonthreatening and preventing groups of mooks from automatically overwhelming the PCs. We can import those rules into Fudge, but Fudge has its own options.
Simple Options
One option for mooks mentioned in the SRD is to assume that mook trait checks always equal the trait level. For example, a generic Imperial trooper with a fair blaster skill always rolls a fair result. When using story element combat (and why wouldn’t you), this converts mooks into static obstacles. This makes combat against mooks quick and simple.
Can we simplify mooks even more? Yes, we can! Remember that mooks operate in groups. Instead of treating individual mooks as characters, we can treat groups of mooks as characters. A single Imperial trooper may be a Mediocre challenge, but a group of mooks may be a Good or even a Great challenge. A “wound” to a group of mooks can represent one or more members being taken out of the fight. The Incapacitated wound could mean that the group is routed or otherwise defeated. Remember that Hurt gives a -1 penalty and Very Hurt gives a -2 penalty, so those states represent enough members getting defeated that the group begins to become less effective.
What about mooks in Melee?
Fudge has a rule for fighting multiple opponents in melee. Each opponent after the first gives the character a -1 penalty to skill. Additionally, the character must win against each opponent in order to damage any of them. If the group of opponents consists of identical mooks, this would be mathematically similar to combat against a single character with increased combat ability. We wouldn’t get the possibility of multiple opponents hitting, but we can call that part of the relative degree.
Conclusion
Fudge has several serviceable yet simple options for Psi-Wars weapons and armor, and it should handle combat against mooks quickly and simply when using story elements. We should now have everything we need for part two of the test scenario.