Holy crap, think quick!

[Anthar]

Given in a zombie apocalypse style setting things go down-hill pretty fast and people in order to survive need to act quickly. One important thing when surviving against Zeds is your safe haven/camp. Generally you need one that is close enough to resources (ie towns and cities for salvage) but isolated enough that you won't attract thousands of Zeds over for dinner. I know that there was a previous thread on constructing safe haven, but you have to fortify very quickly for the short term before planning and implementing more permanent structures. This question stems from my driving past a Fisheries Office the other day and spotting tens of thousands of stacking bricks with heavy handles on them that are used to make quick portable barracades/walls. These bricks were about two feet cube and designed to stack and interlock and I thought that they would be just perfect to shore up a building in the short term. Can anyone come up with other resources/materials that would make surviving in the short term much more manageable?

[azazel1024]

Chainlink fences and a post digger.

A couple of guys could put up 1,000ft perimeter in a day easy. Another day to string plenty of concertina wire along the top.

Sand bags, a backhoe or skid steer and a compactor.

Also it was either FEMA or I think the army corp of engineers that recently came up with a 'massive' sand bag that is rigid/semi-rigid that can quickly be filled with something like a backhoe or skid steer in-place. I think it is something like 8x8x8ft. You could build a wall of those real fast and then work on burying the back side with dirt and topping it with a lot wall of sandbags and concertina wire.
-Matt

[Anthar]

These are all good, but what if they only have say 10 to 30 minutes to work on any given project before it attract too many Zeds before they have to either fortify or move on. Remember that heavy equipement uses up valuable fuel very quickly, an essential resource needed for power and transportation. Transportaion is essential for being able to retrieve resources and I believe in such an instance that every use of it should be carefully planned so the survivors are not caught out in the cold so to speak.

[azazel1024]

Unless it is a building you are hoping and and bording up, there isn't any fortification you can resonably errect in 10-30 minutes.

You could possibly errect a few hundred feet perimeter of chainlink fence in maybe an hour if you had 10-15 people working on it and a bunch of post diggers.

Alternately in a large city or a dense suburb you could fortify a city/suburban block with things like sandbags and chainlink fences pretty quickly by just walling off alleys and gaps between the buildings.

Unless you are being really noisy about it, even in a quite setting a skidsteer doesn't make all that much noise. Having worked on a golf course grounds crew one summer, but using one and being near them, you really can't hear one more than about 200-300 yards away unless you are doing something awful noisy, like trying to break concrete or asphlat with them. Digging up dirt and plowing it around doesn't make all that much noise. If there are zeds within that distance its likely they'll notice you working quitely with manual tools anyway.

[MaxxSterling]

In this game, none of these matter, as the undead do more damage then a shotgun slug, with a single punch. Even if you made a steel house, they could punch it down in 5 rounds.

[MaxxSterling]

Too bad the magic zombies in this game can see/sense your P.P.E. even if visually, anything else would just walk right on by...

[Anthar]

Too bad the magic zombies in this game can see/sense your P.P.E. even if visually, anything else would just walk right on by...

That's what truely screws the PCs in this game. All the Zeds have to do is catch a glimpse of you and they see your PPE. No camouflage can hide that, so in this setting humanity is doomed.

[MaxxSterling]

Regardless of what it is, It's pretty F'n sweet. But in this game, it'd be better to roll up a zombie and try to finish off humanity, then to try to play a character that even at 10th level can die from a single punch or bullet wound.

[Ronin Shinobi]

Regardless of what it is, It's pretty F'n sweet. But in this game, it'd be better to roll up a zombie and try to finish off humanity, then to try to play a character that even at 10th level can die from a single punch or bullet wound.

Which is the basic point for all horror films. The "victims" have little to no advantage and having to rely on their wits to survive. If system had wanted to munchkin it dead reign would have been a rifts supplement were players can have a vast amount of power and weapons. However game is meant to be in the style of a horror film or story and not a resident evil shoot'em up.

[Ronin Shinobi]

Only thing I would say is broken is the zombies, ridiculous high AR.

[azazel1024]

Yeah, 1-3 zombies against a person with simple melee weapons shouldn't be that big a deal. A dozen of them with a handgun should be a moderate threat.

50 of them with anything short of a tac vest covered in frag grenades, a couple of assualt rifles with LOTS of reloads (to switch between when the barrels and chambers overheat), and a bit of protection to make it hard to get at should be a serious threat.

a couple of hundred should spell doom and/or RUN for even a small group of survivors.

Most zombie movies, even survival ones, a handful of zombies isn't much more than a morning workout. It is when they start getting in to the dozens to hundreds that they prove to be a very, very serious problem.

Heck with the moan, and the numbers you find any most sized towns let alone cities they would be a serious threat even if toned down a few notches. As presented much worse than 1:1 in hand-to-hand spells people dying and more than 2 or 3:1 with ranged weapons is going to cause some serious sweet unless you are at REALLY long ranges to cut them down.
-Matt

[RoadWarriorFWaNK]

Only thing I would say is broken is the zombies, ridiculous high AR.

the problem with that isn't the zombies, it's the rules for Armor Rating. Armor Rating is an archaic and obsolete mechanic with no real world counterpart. It doesn't make sense. I can attack a zombie with a machinegun that would tear a normal person to shreds, but because i didn't get a high enough strike roll, it does nothing?? oh but then I hit the same zombie with a baseball bat and break its face open just because i rolled higher??
The A.R. mechanic is there to show that zombies are impervious to pain and don't take as much damage as living people do. Which is fine, but the rules should just say that instead of dredging up this silly mechanic.

[Ronin Shinobi]

Only thing I would say is broken is the zombies, ridiculous high AR.

the problem with that isn't the zombies, it's the rules for Armor Rating. Armor Rating is an archaic and obsolete mechanic with no real world counterpart. It doesn't make sense. I can attack a zombie with a machinegun that would tear a normal person to shreds, but because i didn't get a high enough strike roll, it does nothing?? oh but then I hit the same zombie with a baseball bat and break its face open just because i rolled higher??
The A.R. mechanic is there to show that zombies are impervious to pain and don't take as much damage as living people do. Which is fine, but the rules should just say that instead of dredging up this silly mechanic.

AR system isn't obsolete or archaic, it just doesn't apply well to zombies is all. After all everything does have a natural resistance from getting damage. I'm sure you've dropped something fragile and by the stroke of luck it didn't break or shatter. That's basically how AR works, however with zombies it doesn't make sense since even dead they should not be treated with an AR dead since humans in the system didn't have one to begin with.

[azazel1024]

Only thing I would say is broken is the zombies, ridiculous high AR.

the problem with that isn't the zombies, it's the rules for Armor Rating. Armor Rating is an archaic and obsolete mechanic with no real world counterpart. It doesn't make sense. I can attack a zombie with a machinegun that would tear a normal person to shreds, but because i didn't get a high enough strike roll, it does nothing?? oh but then I hit the same zombie with a baseball bat and break its face open just because i rolled higher??
The A.R. mechanic is there to show that zombies are impervious to pain and don't take as much damage as living people do. Which is fine, but the rules should just say that instead of dredging up this silly mechanic.

AR system isn't obsolete or archaic, it just doesn't apply well to zombies is all. After all everything does have a natural resistance from getting damage. I'm sure you've dropped something fragile and by the stroke of luck it didn't break or shatter. That's basically how AR works, however with zombies it doesn't make sense since even dead they should not be treated with an AR dead since humans in the system didn't have one to begin with.

Nope, it needs a complete rework still. It is silly that MDC objects have no AR in those settings.

Next AR is related to the roll to strike, that should at most be part of it. ARs higher than 20 should be possible, and it shouldn't just be a roll to strike, a weapon's damage and/or penetration value should come in to play in here.

Think about it, with the current system, even a tank with an AR of 20 can be damaged with a .22 pistol if you have decent bonuses to strike and roll well. Sure, in a couple of descriptions in HU and maybe one or two other settings it mentions things like Tanks and APCs can't be damage by anything less than a .50 cal. Well, there are plenty of tanks that can shrug off some RPGs with no issues, no matter where they were hit.

Frankly any AR should be possible, and the roll against AR should be your roll to strike, bonuses and PV of the weapon (with no max possible). You really should see some things like M1A1 Tanks having ARs of 35 or 40, but an M1A1's main gun might have a PV of 25. A gunner with a few bonuses to strike has a pretty darned good chance of damaging another M1A1...that .22cal pistol with a PV of 2 on the other hand...well, its impossible to damage the tank with any realistic bonus to strike with the weapon (natural 20's can't overcome AR in this revised system, by the by).
-Matt

[Silveressa]

that .22cal pistol with a PV of 2 on the other hand...well, its impossible to damage the tank with any realistic bonus to strike with the weapon. (natural 20's can't overcome AR in this revised system, by the by).
-Matt

Just to get overly technical, (for those who enjoy the niggling of reality in their games) but a .22 rifle round, fired into an M1 Abrams radiator (granted you need an elevated line of fire above the tank to shoot at it) can damage and cause it to over heat in time. (a dozen years ago, Back when I was in the ANG one of the Sergeants pointed this out to me when I commented on the companies tanks being pretty much invincible .vs infantry without rocket launchers.)

My nit picking aside though, I agree fully with the AR changes you mention, since it would help add much needed realism to the game. I would go further and treat p.v against an unarmored target as a damage bonus as well. This would help better represent the devastating effects of firearms/bullets against unarmored flesh and civilian vehicles.

(Yes one could argue a high p.v against a unarmored person would result in the bullet going clean through, and thus doing less damage, but given some bullets already do less then hand to hand attacks this helps balance the situation nicely.)

[azazel1024]

I wasn't trying to quite look at it from a "is there any possible way something 'dinky' can damage a tank".

Granted what you mentioned, you can disable a tank, but you couldn't actually destroy one in such a way and the other way is probably at best an incredible freak shot. I'd imagine even from an elevated position the louvers on the radiator cover are probably pretty close together and also probably angled, so you'd need to be at just the perfect angle and just the right location to get a .22, .223, etc to go through and hit the radiator causing a leak.

I could go along with PV being a damage bonus against unarmed targets, or maybe better yet, have any excess 'strike roll' being applied as a damage bonus in some manner.

One of the other things I don't like is you could roll a 19 to strike, plus a 7 bonus for a total of 26 to hit...and roll three 1's on a 3D6 rifle round. You got an amazing hit! But, oh sorry, aparently that amazing hit passed right by all major arteries, veins, organs and somehow even seems to have been a grazing shot even though you could have sworn you hit center of mass.

AR - (roll to strike + PV + bonuses) = Damage bonus.

Don't apply for fisticuffs, but apply for everything else.
-Matt

[Anthar]

Don't tomatoes do 1d6 damage, and suffer no penalties when targeting the head?

[Silveressa]

One of the other things I don't like is you could roll a 19 to strike, plus a 7 bonus for a total of 26 to hit...and roll three 1's on a 3D6 rifle round. You got an amazing hit! But, oh sorry, aparently that amazing hit passed right by all major arteries, veins, organs and somehow even seems to have been a grazing shot even though you could have sworn you hit center of mass.

AR - (roll to strike + PV + bonuses) = Damage bonus.

That always annoyed me with melee combat involving swords as well. A solid 25 to strike (with bonuses) on a 2 handed claymore can do all of 4 points of damage against an unarmored mans torso.

I've used the strike bonus on top of the xdx damage for attacks (besides unarmed attacks) minus the opponents dodge roll when playing palladium for the past few years, and I found it balanced things out near perfectly.

(A 26 to hit is impressive, but when the opponent rolls a 22 to dodge it's not nearly as solid a blow as when they roll a 7 to dodge)

In DR, since most of the zombie types can't dodge it translates into massive damage, yet unless it's to the brain it only blows off limbs, or further disfigures the body, slowing but not stopping their advance.

I've also toyed around with letting players use their P.P bonus as a bonus to strike (and thus consequently damage) with firearms to offset the problem of a high 18+ P.S giving a larger bonus in melee, then a .9mm handgun can achieve, no matter the persons accuracy since there's no attribute bonus for ranged weaponry. (It worked well in play testing, but I haven't used it often enough to tell if it's truly balanced or not.)

Edit:

oh and:

Don't tomatoes do 1d6 damage, and suffer no penalties when targeting the head?

To clarify that KOTD strip, it's actually a special breed of highland turnips that bypass the A.R of helmets and can kill. (Thanks to Knuckles death from a goblin/orc child throwing one at his head and takign damage, despite the fact he was wearing a helmet.)

[Vrykolas2k]

I just halve the zombie AR.
They're already a bit overly tough as-is.