Fallout: Year Zero advice - Critical Hits and Armor

[FlukeboxHero]

I'm working on a Fallout System based on the Year Zero Engine (YZE).

• Players roll a pool of d6's, and 6 counts as a success.
• The main tension of the system comes to whether or not to re-roll dice

I have two areas that I'm struggling to convert from Fallout.
1) Critical Hits:

In the YZE games where there are critical hits, they are based off of individual weapons and require a certain number of successes on an attack.

ex: A 10mm pistol has a critical hit value of 3. You need to roll three 6's to get a critical hit.
​

2) Armor:

Armor has a number value based on how many d6's are rolled for defense (weapons has a set damage value, no rolls for damage).
If a Vault suit has a armor value of 1, the player would roll 1 d6 and block a point of damage on a 6.

The only plan I have here is to make power armor roll with a d8 or d10 (advanced), or even a d12 for ATHENA power armor.
​

Any ideas, criticisms, or changes you want suggest are appreciated!

 

[Yossarrion]

I don't follow on crits. You need 6s to succeed at anything, but if I roll 3+ 6s on a 10mm I crit? What do crits do? Most d6 pool systems usually have rolls of 4+ being success and 6+ being critical successes. Whats the average amount of dice a 10mm pistol rolls?

Armor sounds like it wouldn't do much. Rolling a 6+ on a d8/10 is still bad odds and if we're talking about power armor is a major feels bad moment. If you want to keep it the same with 6s wild, maybe allow power armor (and other end game threats like Deathclaw hides) to just remove dice out of the pool for attacks while still rolling a large number of dice to try to block damage.

 

[FlukeboxHero]

I don't follow on crits. You need 6s to succeed at anything, but if I roll 3+ 6s on a 10mm I crit? What do crits do? Most d6 pool systems usually have rolls of 4+ being success and 6+ being critical successes. Whats the average amount of dice a 10mm pistol rolls?

If you crit, you roll on a table for effect (which I have broken down by body area).
And at most, you could roll like 10 dice or so (5 Attribute dice + 5 skill dice + bonus gear dice), but that would be for a high level or hyper specialized character.
Maybe I should make successes be on a 5 or a 6?

Armor sounds like it wouldn't do much. Rolling a 6+ on a d8/10 is still bad odds and if we're talking about power armor is a major feels bad moment. If you want to keep it the same with 6s wild, maybe allow power armor (and other end game threats like Deathclaw hides) to just remove dice out of the pool for attacks while still rolling a large number of dice to try to block damage.

And yeah, the armor system is pretty weak. There's an element I cut out of the base rules where if you roll a 1 on an armor roll, you armor degrades, and you lose a die on the next defense roll until the armor is repaired. It's a death spiral, and that sucks for a Fallout setting.

Do you think I should have damage rolled against a flat armor value, rather than rolling armor? (Pistol rolls a d6 + 2 for damage, and combat armor has a DT of 6 or so) Then a crit would just be rolling extra dice (an extra d6 for each extra success?).

Powerful attacks like you said or armor piercing damage would just ignore armor.

 

[Yossarrion]

If you crit, you roll on a table for effect (which I have broken down by body area).
And at most, you could roll like 10 dice or so (5 Attribute dice + 5 skill dice + bonus gear dice), but that would be for a high level or hyper specialized character.
Maybe I should make successes be on a 5 or a 6?

Let's say I have a 5 in an attribute and a 5 in guns skill, and I have a special nifty 14mm pistol and my riot gear helmet giving me 5 extra dice each for a total of 20. I am an end game character and when I roll to shoot something I will on average get 8 successes, 3 of which will be crits. Does this sound about right? Is this an example of something at the high end of the system doing well or is this not a good roll at all for threats in the end game.

Do you think I should have damage rolled against a flat armor value, rather than rolling armor? (Pistol rolls a d6 + 2 for damage, and combat armor has a DT of 6 or so) Then a crit would just be rolling extra dice (an extra d6 for each extra success?).

Powerful attacks like you said or armor piercing damage would just ignore armor.

Yes I think DT not only ties it together with fallout but also makes it feel better to upgrade armor. The DT could reduce the total die pool that the attacker rolls and then for power armor and big critters you could add DR and halve the damage they take after everything is considered.

As far as weapons doing flat amounts of damage on top of a die roll that sounds appropriate.

 

[FlukeboxHero]

Let's say I have a 5 in an attribute and a 5 in guns skill, and I have a special nifty 14mm pistol and my riot gear helmet giving me 5 extra dice each for a total of 20. I am an end game character and when I roll to shoot something I will on average get 8 successes, 3 of which will be crits. Does this sound about right? Is this an example of something at the high end of the system doing well or is this not a good roll at all for threats in the end game.

Geez, that's a lot of d6's. Yes, that's exactly how it works! That is definitely a high end roll. The statistics table in the reference document doesn't even go pat 10 dice.
Also, I didn't even think about armor giving bonuses. That's smart!

In the YZE system, people can only die from a roll on a crit table (which I'd only do for notable NPC's). I'm planning on stealing a page from the Fantasy Flight Star Wars rpg; each additional roll on the crit table adds 10 to the result rolled.

Yes I think DT not only ties it together with fallout but also makes it feel better to upgrade armor. The DT could reduce the total die pool that the attacker rolls and then for power armor and big critters you could add DR and halve the damage they take after everything is considered.

As far as weapons doing flat amounts of damage on top of a die roll that sounds appropriate.

I won't have DT reduce the die pool at the start, but if no -powered armor becomes too tanky, I'll implement that.

 

[Yossarrion]

Geez, that's a lot of d6's. Yes, that's exactly how it works! That is definitely a high end roll. The statistics table in the reference document doesn't even go pat 10 dice.
Also, I didn't even think about armor giving bonuses. That's smart!

In the YZE system, people can only die from a roll on a crit table (which I'd only do for notable NPC's). I'm planning on stealing a page from the Fantasy Flight Star Wars rpg; each additional roll on the crit table adds 10 to the result rolled.



I won't have DT reduce the die pool at the start, but if no -powered armor becomes too tanky, I'll implement that.

Interesting, alright. Well let me know how it goes. I've been tinkering on postmans PnP for Pax and his group.