combat in 2.0

[badlucky]

i am planning a campaign and i have chosen the 2.0 rules because they seem the like the closest to a 1:1 translation of the systems from fallout 1 and 2.

one of my favorite things about it is the strategic combat, however im concerned about it being very number crunchy. im worried that it might bore my players if the encounters ending up getting drawn out too much.

is this a valid concern? am i stressing about nothing? if not what can i do about it?

first time GM btw

 

[jpness422]

Hey there! Small world.. I too am a first time GM. I just started a campaign with some friends using the 2.0 ruleset. However I've found that I'll omit some things to lessen the burden of my players, especially since most of them are new to PnP RPGs in general. My very first playthrough I had us go against some molerats to test out the combat system. I omitted Light, and cover when determining the 'to hit' %. I also didn't use the damage formula (ID-DT)-((ID-DT)xDR) because I knew it would just take up too much time and I already bombarded my players with math during character creation. Nor did I factor in weapon/armor condition.

Molerats attack was something like 3AP which allowed them to attack twice, but I made it so they could only attack once... HOWEVER, I fully plan on having all of these features in game in the future, I just didn't want to overload on everyone, which was your concern. Combat in 2.0 is very math heavy. I've had people say d20 versions of Fallout are easier, but I love the original Fallouts and 2.0 just seems the most natural extension of those games.

To aid me as GM, I also created a Google Docs spreadsheet to help me with damage calculation. Here's a link to the folder where I keep that and some other handy things. I don't know if you can copy what I had and use it yourself or not, but I can show you how I made it if it'll help.

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1x4X3i6QhmPF7fbMjFchUunVJwlqDgEZK?usp=sharing

 

[Crubbers]

Hey, some things you could possibly try would be to substantially increase the damage done by either players, enemies, or both, and/ or making a computer program where you enter in damage, damage threshold, and any other variables and let the computer calculate it. However these methods may not be for everyone though as increasing the damage might make the game too easy or too hard and programming code to do the math for you might also be challenging. Hope this helped though!