If you use variable Mechwarrior skills, you get a Pilot rating and a Gunnery rating, which is either 3 or 4. Pilot skill rolls are all over the place. You have to make them to do just about anything cool.
Gunnery skill, though . . . I can't find a single instance where it comes up except under Variable Mechwarrior Skills (p. 36). That's it. You have the skill, and you can improve it over time . . . and it doesn't seem to do anything in play. MW skills go down as you get better, so I'm not even sure how you'd use it. Giving Gunnery as a positive modifier to attack rolls means everyone is going miss even worse than before (+4 to the target number on 2d6 roll-over mechanics isn't conducive to hitting; +4 on the roll means the more skilled, the worse!)
Anyone familiar with Battletech know the answer?
Gunnery was a modifier to hit. A 4 created a +0 modifier on the to hit roll, with lower skill (as in better) subtracting that modifier and higher skill adding to it. As such, a 2 gunner would have a -2 to hit on all rolls, meaning they hit those long range shots a lot more.
ReplyDeleteMakes sense.
DeleteI don't have a copy of the original Battletech where I can find it, but the reference in a Citytech book was on page 15, Base To Hit, where it says pretty much what I said above.
ReplyDeleteThanks. I'm close to 100% certain it's not actually in the Battletech book I have. Citytech came out in, what, 1986? That might be when they realized they hadn't included any actual rules for Gunnery.
DeleteI just did a little poking at internet sources for the material, and from a quick scan-through, in the Expert mode of Battledroids, you use the pilot's Gunnery Skill as the base target number, then modify for range. That was a difference from Battletech, where the range determined the base to-hit number, then the skill was a modifier to that (the numbers work out to the same though).
DeleteThe original Battletech books never actually mention Gunnery Skill except as a trait; not modifiers or how to use it except to say it affects Basic To Hit rolls. The Battledroids rule make sense. It's really a crazy oversight that they dropped it from the book like that.
DeleteThanks for checking. This has been an itch at the back of my head for a long, long time but I just hadn't gotten around to looking into it.
At least with the old Battletech, your gunnery skill is your base to hit number to which mods (like range, target speed, your movement, etc.) are added to determine the final to-hit number. So for instance with a Gunnery 4 skill at short range with both you and the target standing still, you'd need to roll a 4+. If the target is moving to get a +2 DRM, you'd need a 6+. If that same target is at Medium range (another +2 DRM), you'd need an 8+. Someone with Gunnery 3 would need a 7+ to hit that medium range moving target.
ReplyDeleteI believe physical attacks used the Piloting Skill for the base to-hit.
The 1985 edition of Battletech doesn't say that, though. Weapons have a specific to hit score by range, so Gunnery Skill needs to modify that. Battledroids does work as you describe, though, as Panzerkraken notes above.
Delete