chiseling away damage. How to?

[Cormac22]

Alright, my party has been playing this system for a couple months now and we have a question. How is the system supposed to deal with damage accumulation? Or put another way, how is a character supposed to take down a big opponent without a howitzer?

As an example, in the last session the party went up against a couple Brodkil leaders (14 armor, 28 toughness). The party is pretty well loaded for bear: a couple C-10s, a couple TK rifles, Vibro-longsword, TW flaming swords, and a dragon. The fight went on for something like 10 rounds. Multiple times one player or other would score a hit and deal 25 points of damage, which translates into nothing. You've got to get some really good rolls to break 28 with 4d6. It can be done, they did it, but what if they had been equipped with lighter gear in the 2d6 range? No way.

In the traditional RIFTs system you can actually open up a tank with a laser torch, it just takes a while. Each hit, no matter how low the roll, takes some off the total. So what is the mechanic in SWADE? I've been house ruling it to where 10% (rounded down) of successful hits damage gets deducted from the targets toughness, and a point deducted from armor from suitable hits. It seems to keep fights challenging, but not impossible. This last session was played "straight" (other than all weapons/armor that should be MDC actually being MDC) which is why the 5 on 2 fight took up the entire 2 hour session, and even then I resumed the chip away thing for the final 2 wounds on the last enemy.

How do you do it?

[Doswelk]

https://silentmaskrpg.files.wordpres...e-swade-v5.pdf

[Jiminimonka]

As Doswelks link shows, there are some tricks to Savage Worlds combat. Use of Edges, Called Shot (to bypass some or all of the armour), Wild Attacks. Tests are also very important, if your character is out of range to be effective in combat, they can Test an opponent, making it vulnerable or distracted (or both with a raise) and a Support roll so their allies get bonuses.

Also GRENADES can be very useful, especially Plasma (It Burns!)

[Cormac22]

That's a useful guide, and I just shared it with my group, but it doesn't answer the question.

Traditionally a City Rat armed with a Wilks 320 laser pistol (1D6 M.D., now 3D6) and a bunch of moxy could take down a Skelebot (130 M.D.C, head 40 M.D.C). It would necessitate a lot of cover and run and gun, but 4 M.D. here and 3 M.D. there adds up over a couple e-clips. Under the current rules, this fight would be flat-out impossible.

Now lets consider a big-baddie, like the aforementioned Brodkil leader. A whole gang of City Rats armed with their traditional starting gear of "an energy pistol" don't have a hope or prayer of taking one down even with Called Shots doing +4 damage. But they should, since damage adds up. It shouldn't be an easy fight, but it shouldn't be impossible either. If there isn't a system mechanism to whittle enemies down, then I'll continue using my 10% thing. Which I apply equally to the party, if nothing else it causes them to have to roleplay fixing armor and healing up post fights.

[Doswelk]

I have no idea what you are saying in your example above whatever it is it isn't Savage Worlds, suspect it might be Palladium Rifts!

D&D with their Challenge level mentality has conditioned GMs and players to think that all encounters SHOULD be possible if your PCs are the correct level, that isn't how RPG used to be, and life isn't either.

A group of archers with compound bows encounter an Abrams tank, they fire their arrows at if and nothing happens, they SHOULD lose, but once the tank stops and the crew get out, they can easily pepper the crew with arrows.

Now if the archers had a magical (Heavy Weapon arrow) that does 3d6 damage they still need to do 69 points of damage (assuming no AP) to inflict three wounds on the tank! (Possible but unlikely). SO now they have to come up with a plan to disable the tank (maybe dig a pit and lure it into it, etc.)

A tough fight should sometimes be impossible or at least implausible to win if they stand and shoot, but the dice could go their way, in every other aspect the party to be looking for an angle to counter the problem, maybe they just need to go and steal a bigger gun!

Savage Worlds is not a Hit Point based system where you can whittle down the enemy, you can create an encounter where the PCs cannot stop an enemy and if they do not realise this they can die, a lot of the earlier Savage Worlds books used to state this when it came to random encounters.

[Doswelk]

On another note I found version 10 of the survival guide...

DO not know where I got it from now, so created a shared dropbox link

[Maetco]

First, welcome to Fantasy Grounds and SWADE!
Second, this forum is for FG, so it's not the best place to ask about the RPG systems it supports. A forum dedicated for that specific system or just Reddit is probably better.
Third, no, SWADE doesn't have a way to grind opponents down, and it's a feature, not a bug.
Fourth, I think you are missing the whole point of the 'problem' at hand. Since you have introduced an opponent to the party, who is nigh indestructible, the party should find a narrative way to solve this problem. Maybe they need to find a special weapon to take it down. Maybe they need to imprison it instead of killing it. Maybe they just need to read a bed time story to it and it will fall into 1 000 year slumber.

[Jiminimonka]

First, welcome to Fantasy Grounds and SWADE!
Second, this forum is for FG, so it's not the best place to ask about the RPG systems it supports. A forum dedicated for that specific system or just Reddit is probably better.
Third, no, SWADE doesn't have a way to grind opponents down, and it's a feature, not a bug.
Fourth, I think you are missing the whole point of the 'problem' at hand. Since you have introduced an opponent to the party, who is nigh indestructible, the party should find a narrative way to solve this problem. Maybe they need to find a special weapon to take it down. Maybe they need to imprison it instead of killing it. Maybe they just need to read a bed time story to it and it will fall into 1 000 year slumber.

He is talking about Savage Rifts, just been used to playing Rifts which is a different ball game altogether.

[Lonewolf]

Armor is bypassed with AP. Toughness is only 14 vs AP Grenades. Damage average 13.5 vs 14 toughness is bad news for them.