Re: B5: Infinite range heavy beams ?

Tom McCarthy wrote:

> We played a game with the Earth Force Source Book space ship combat
rules
[...]
> As the rules are written, that meant each die had
a -11 on it, but if either rolled a 6, then that would be rerolled for
more
damage with no modifiers.[...]
> thought this to be an exploitation of the rules, and
> that the heavy beams should be limited to range 36 or 42 MUs, or that
> penalties above -6 should be applied to the rerolled die.
[Before anyone says: Yes, I have seen Jon T's response, that he intended
the range to be limited]

How would you handle applying the penalty to subsequent dice ?
Something like this:

If the penalty is grater than 6 and a "natural" 6 is rolled, then
re-roll,
applying
a reduced penalty of 6 less then the original penalty.

eg.
Rolling against a penalty of 13:
1) the die is rolled once, landing on 6
  - indicating a re-roll with a reduced penalty of 7 (ie 13-6)
2) the dice is re-rolled also  landing on 6
  - indicating a re-roll with a reduced penalty of 1 (ie 7-6)
3) the dice is rolled, and again lands on 6
 - the penalty reduces this to 5 (doing 1 point of damage ?),
   but because it was a natural 6, we still need to re-roll (without
penalty this time)
4) the unpenalised roll produces a 5 (at last!) (doing 1 damage ?)

If you're that lucky, you deserve to hit !
(or at least, to have your dice checked for weights)

[Off topic digression follows...]

Actually, this reminds me of an incident in a Star Wars RPG game, where
someone was "guest playing" one of the storm troopers attacking our
party.
No disrespect to aging Jedi knights, but normally they can't hit the
broadside
of barn, but the SW-RPG rules have the same sort of re-rolling scheme...

Oh, a six.
Ok, re-roll..
Oh, another one,
and another one,
and another one.

<BLAM> one critically injured character :-(

If I remember correctly, the victim is on this list,
you know who you are ;-)

Alun.