Phasers!

[thedungeondelver]

Specifically hand-held ones.

So I always wondered about ST phasers in RPGs. It seems that the ol' Phaser 1 and Phaser 2 both had but two settings - stun and destroy. Destroy did its job with a terrible efficiency, but I sorta wonder about how that works out in an RPG context: you hit something, and it is effectively disintegrated.

But, on reflection (no pun intended) aren't there ST episodes where phasers do kill, but not destroy? I'm thinking of Nancy Crater in The Man Trap. McCoy shoots her (twice?) before she dies, and (obviously) neither time does she disintegrate. I've had a couple of thoughts on this, and how it works in RPG mechanics:

1. The phaser does a variable (but still very much lethal) amount of damage. Compare it to a fireball spell in AD&D. You might die by taking huge amounts of damage, and all your equipment fails its save, and likewise is reduced to ashes. Or alternately, you might take that one HP that puts you unconscious and losing 1 HP per round, and your equipment does make its save - thus you're still there, still bleeding, still breathing, but dying none-the-less.

2. While destroy is a setting, there are variable power settings: Sulu heated a rock to try and warm the stranded shore party in The Intruder Within, but didn't destroy the rock; maybe he only used "Destroy 1" or something like that.

What do y'all think?

[finarvyn]

Funny how I watched TOS so many times and never really thought about this.

I've always accepted the "stun or kill" model, since it's the only two settings that I think were ever specified in the shows or technical manuals. I guess the 3rd setting must be "heat" or something like that.

(Of course, the problem was most likely that different authors weren't consistent with each other and sometimes plot overcame consistency: "Well, this character can't just vanish because we have this cool death-scene all scripted out. Can't he/she just collapse near death, give the final speech, then drift away...?"

[Falconer]

I think “disintegrate” is the setting where the target completely vanishes.

I want the players to be very scared of being hit by a hand phaser, as well as strictly admonished not to shoot people upon pain of court martial. Both seem to be the case in the show, and it means a LOT of fist-fights, which I like.

[rflowers]

It bothered me a lot that the phasers sometimes disintegrated the target, and other times they didn't.

I think they had quite a range of power; they could be used to heat up rocks, or basically just make a wall disappear.

[coffee]

According to the Technical Manual, there were basically four settings:

Stun
Heat
Dematerialize
Disintegrate


(Keep in mind this is from 20 years or so ago, the last time I looked.)

It always bothered me that they didn't list a "kill" setting -- which was mentioned on the show.

Also, there were stun and heavy stun both (in the show).

In short, it's pretty confusing. But hey, that just means you can do whatever you want with it!

[Falconer]

According to Star Fleet Technical Manual, there are four settings: stun, heat, disrupt, and dematerialization. For one thing, you could rule that the higher settings use up the stored energy so quickly, that stun is most effective in a fight (because you can take out the most people).

[coffee]

Disrupt!

That was it. I knew I wasn't remembering it right...




And I would indeed rule that the higher settings would use up the power much more rapidly.

[robertfisher]

Don’t forget that they can be set to “overload” too for use as an impromptu hand-grenade.

It’s also specifically mentioned in “Devil in the Dark” that Phaser II is significantly more powerful than Phaser I. Though it would seem that extra power only really makes a difference when you’re hunting Horta. ^_^ Also, using more than one phaser together can make a difference. (It took both Kirk and Spock shooting together to harm the Horta.) Spock also mentions that continuous use by a single phaser can have a similar effect.

I think a phaser set to kill should indeed kill a (human) character in a single hit. If you want to increase survivability, make hits harder to achieve or something.

[coffee]

Jan 7, 2010 23:53:37 GMT -5 robertfisher said:

It’s also specifically mentioned in “Devil in the Dark” that Phaser II is significantly more powerful than Phaser I.

I don't know if you've noticed, but a Phaser II has a Phaser I stuck in the top of it. It's basically a power pack to enhance the Phaser I. That's why it's more powerful.

[Badelaire]

Jan 7, 2010 23:53:37 GMT -5 robertfisher said:

I think a phaser set to kill should indeed kill a (human) character in a single hit. If you want to increase survivability, make hits harder to achieve or something.

I've long debated what I'd want to do about a one-hit kill weapon if I ever ran a ST RPG. I think the best middle-ground solution I came up with was to allow a hit character some sort of reflexes-based save (assuming they were aware that they were being fired upon). Success would mean the shot is only a "graze", and although not an auto kill, the shot would still do a substantial amount of damage, possibly enough to kill or incapacitate the target regardless, but avoiding the stigma of a "if you're hit, you die" weapon.

The alternative to this would be to say a "graze" occured if the attack only succeeded by a small (10-20%) amount. If the hit succeeds by more than that, it'd be a solid hit, and a kill-shot.

On the other hand, I'm also a big fan of "phasers on stun", and a good case can be made that if a character is going to take a kill-shot, as opposed to just using Stun, then a hit should give a kill.

[chgowiz]

Something else to remember here... in Star Trek RPG, killing should be a thing of horror, unless you're defending against deadly force. Security personnel would probably be set to stun always and it would usually be the bad guys using "kill" more often. This would force tactics and a sense of caution in the players as well as the understanding from the bad guys that killing the good guys usually gets them killed. There's no Cure Light Wounds in Trek!

[coffee]

Jan 8, 2010 11:53:57 GMT -5 @chgowiz said:

There's no Cure Light Wounds in Trek!

But there is advanced medical care. If Bones McCoy can get to you before you stop breathing, you'll probably pull through.

But your point is well taken -- we're not dungeoneers here. Starfleet personnel don't just go around randomly shooting people for the fun of it.

[slortar]

The way I handled it in my RPG is that you can set the phasers to stun or kill (or explode, if you need a grenade ).

If the target's an unimportant NPC, then whatever you want happens, mostly happens if you hit. They either disintegrate, die, or pass out (the stun maybe has a save, too lazy to check this out, at the moment). In any case, they're not really central to the plot, so there's not much point in worrying about them too much.

If the target's an important NPC or PC, then you either save to avoid stun or you take the listed damage, depending on the phaser's setting. It's only after you run out of HP that you get disintegrated--if you still have HP left, then it symbolizes you dodging out of the way at the last minute or just getting grazed, or the phaser hitting whatever you're cowering behind instead of you.

I balanced it out so that phasers do quite a bit of damage, enough to pose a serious threat, but not enough to instakill if you're careful. Most PC's start out around 5-7th level, if you're playing a normal campaign, which works out to 25-40 hp in the Microlite20 system and phasers do anywhere from 2d8 to 4d8 damage, I believe.

Since unimportant NPC's (like a normal human civilian) have 3.5 hp per level, the math kinda works out right, I think. Phasers are a threat, so gunfights should be fairly rare, but they don't cause the looming fear that a one-hit kill system would have.

[robertfisher]

Jan 8, 2010 11:53:57 GMT -5 @chgowiz said:

Something else to remember here... in Star Trek RPG, killing should be a thing of horror, unless you're defending against deadly force.

Yeah. The “beam a photon torpedo onto their bridge” made me think of this too. I makes me think that—like the Marvel Superheroes game—there should be a penalty for killing.

[blackbat242]

Jan 7, 2010 0:24:33 GMT -5 Falconer said:

According to Star Fleet Technical Manual, there are four settings: stun, heat, disrupt, and dematerialization. For one thing, you could rule that the higher settings use up the stored energy so quickly, that stun is most effective in a fight (because you can take out the most people).

Exactly... and "disrupt" refers to cellular function, not to cellular integrity, thus killing without leaving a mark.


There are actually only two modes of a phaser... neuro-electrical & thermal.

Neuro-electrical:
Stun delivers an electrical shock of variable intensity to the target's neurological system {heavy/knock-out & light/paralyze}

Disrupt a higher-powered version of "Stun" sufficient to disrupt cellular functioning, causing death


Thermal:
Heat delivers a moderate amount of energy to agitate molecules into higher energy state {sometimes used to inflict non-fatal but painful wounds/burns}

De-materialize also called "Disintegrate", this acts as "Heat", but delivers enough energy to vaporize the target (or a portion of it)

Detonate releases energy into a feed-back circuit, building up active energy until the containment structure fails.