MD missiles in SDC settings, compromises and house rule idea

[Tor]

According to Rifts Conversion Book 1 page 31 (or whatever number in Revised, I think the note is still in there) while mini-missiles and grenades for the most part follow the standard (lazyish) point-for-point conversion system, the full-size (short-medium-long range) missiles seem to get really killer in SDC dimensions.

We have missiles of the short-medium-long variety in HU. Obviously PF would not have them. Although they could plausibly exist in Nightbane or NaSS or TMNT I only recall seeing things like rocket-launchers and bazookas (presumably on par with mini-missiles) and not any larger kinds. Perhaps there might be some in Systems Failure or After the Bomb 2nd Edition or Mechanoid Invasion Trilogy... or in the upcoming Mechanoid Space, dunno. If anyone knows if 4-category SDC missiles are in any books other than HU knowing where to look would be appreciated.

So anyway, back to RCB. Presumably besides Rifts-missiles these conversion notes would also apply if bringing MD missiles from other settings like Robotech or Splicers into SDC settings like HU...

The damage itself does not bother me... but the alteration of blast radius does... it seems very strange.

For example, let us say I am looking down a 100 ft corridor which then makes a right turn and then travels another 100ft and there is an enemy at the end of it...

If this scenario happened in Splicers and I shot an LRM (let us say, a Nuclear-multi-warhead) at that corner (am firing blind and this is not a smart missile so am assuming no turning and continuing down the other corner)... my enemy would be utterly unharmed being outside of the blast radius.... even if he was an unarmored SDC human with say... 5 HP and 4 SDC, he does not even have a tenth of 1 MDC and my missile does HUNDREDS of mega-damage.

But if I then took my nuclear multi-warhead LRM through a dimensional portal into HU and then found another pair of 100 foot corridors linked at a right turn... if I fired at the corner THIS time, the expanded-radius would now easily destroy the wussy opponent.

Something seems really wrong about that...

But I do like the idea of a conditional expansion of missile blast range.

It occurs to me that certain explosions (Supernova in HU, Godblaze in Dragons and Gods, Annihilate in Federation of Magic) have tiered damage based on how close you are. It occurs to me that we could modify (as house rule) these conversion notes to work like that.

Basically in the case of this, a 50ft radius missile should do full damage to the initial target, half damage to everything else within 50 feet, and then a twentieth as much damage to everything from 50 to 150 feet.

This would not be a major upset in MDC settings. It does mean you could vape more SDC targets with a missile, but it also means things further on the edge would have a greater chance of survival. A short-range missile doing 20 MD (new minimum roll) would only do a single point of MD, something an unarmored Juicer could survive, and which would scratch up but not seriously compromise most other MDC things.

I believe that this tiered-damage should also be used in SDC settings. Rather than full damage (MDx10) to the entire tripled-radius, I think MD missiles in SDC settings should do MDx10 to the main target, then MDx5 to everything else within the main radius (the radius it originally had in the MD setting) and then MD divided by 2 to everything within the next two thirds (or 50 to 150 in the before example).

We could follow that division for normal HU missiles as well. Full damage to primary target, half damage to everything within primary radius, then initiate another radius (total triple so double the main radius added) where you take a tenth of that half damage (or a twentieth that the primary target takes).

So in HU if I used an SDC-style nuclear-multi (inferior to the MD versions in damage) people 100 feet away would only take 2d4x5 which is survivable but still makes missiles a little more dangerous-seeming, which the limited-radius effect really took away from.

Instead of the triple radius of CB1 we could even expand that to x5 or x10 for it to be really dangerous.

Or perhaps a series of radii beyond the main and for each additional radius, you divide the damage by half.

So say there was a 50ft radius missile LRM doing 2d4x100 MD (or 20thousand to 80thousand damage).
Take half within 100
quarter within 150
eighth within 200
sixteenth within 250
32nd within 300
64th within 350
128th within 400
256th within 450
512th within 500
1024th within 550 (at this point, unless you are getting natural 20s, MDC targets will not be getting damaged)
2048th within 600
4096th within 650
8196th within 700
16,392th within 750
32,784th within 800
65,568 within 850
131,136 within 900

At that point we can see that even if a missile rolled max damage (800 MD or 80 000 damage) it is so many radiuses away that it would not even inflict a single point of damage to an SDC creature, barring a natural 20 or other means of attaining critical-doubling.

That would make nukes a lot more threatening, a nuclear multi-warhead sounds like a weapon of mass-destruction, makes me think of Hiroshima and wiping out cities, so it should have a radius that affects more than just a house.

I guess it shold be possible to design missiles with reaction limiters if you want to do narrow targets (but then, I figure that is what AP missiles are for) but it should be possible to take them off and affect larger radiuses even if only things nearest the blast center will take the most damage.

Since powers of 2 are not always easy to divide by, if GM does not have a calculator on hand, some simple rounding and generalizing could approximate the above effect. Like for example, have the damage by a tenth if range x 4 away, divide by 100 if beyond range x 8 away, divided by a thousand when something is range x 10 away.