I've cooled off on Delta Green over the years, but I was recently asked by a friend of the blog to repost this article from my DG master document. I wrote it a few years ago when I first started playing Delta Green. I saw a lot of characters die because the players misunderstood how the game system worked, made poor choices due to rules inexperience, and didn't take advantage of simple but easily forgotten mechanics that would have protected them. Automatic weapons and explosives killed more Agents than all the monsters in the game combined.
The tips presented here are mechanical rather than tactical. They will not save Agents from poorly chosen fights, bad strategic decisions, or an overly bloodthirsty attitude that comes back to bite them. But nobody should die because of a game rule that wasn't intuitive.
The tips presented here are mechanical rather than tactical. They will not save Agents from poorly chosen fights, bad strategic decisions, or an overly bloodthirsty attitude that comes back to bite them. But nobody should die because of a game rule that wasn't intuitive.
Equipment
Maximize your chance to hit. A character with 20% in Firearms should purchase a shotgun with a laser or holographic sight (+20% to hit) and load it with buckshot (+20% to hit) to reach the modifier cap of +40%, giving themselves an effective 60% chance to hit. If you’ve got a lousy firearms, chances are you’ve also got a high INT, meaning you can likely buy both without taking any Bond damage. Pistols can be equipped with laser sights. Even characters with a decent skill should still use attachments on their weapons for the +20%.
Wear armor. Unless you’re going undercover at a swimming pool, beach or pornographic film set, you can get away with a soft kevlar vest under your clothing, providing 3 armor. If you know a location contains hostiles and you’re going in with a longarm, prepared to take someone’s life, throw concealability to the wind and gear up with a suit of tac armor (5) and helmet (1) for a total of 6 armor. Any armor protection at all can stop a shotgun from killing you in one hit (armor is doubled vs buckshot) and can make the difference between life and death when hit by other weapons.
Carry a first aid kit no matter how high your character's first aid score is. If you have the base first aid score of 10%, you're equally likely to critically fail as you are to actually heal someone. First aid can kill the patient by dealing damage on a critical failure, and the +20% chance to heal your target from the kit reduces the odds of that happening.
Stun guns and cattle prods use DEX times 5 to hit, which can seem attractive to characters with poor weapon skills. Remember that the target gets a CON save to shrug off the stun. Your average Joe has 10 CON, granting a 50% chance to tank it even if you hit. Use with caution.
Maximize your chance to hit. A character with 20% in Firearms should purchase a shotgun with a laser or holographic sight (+20% to hit) and load it with buckshot (+20% to hit) to reach the modifier cap of +40%, giving themselves an effective 60% chance to hit. If you’ve got a lousy firearms, chances are you’ve also got a high INT, meaning you can likely buy both without taking any Bond damage. Pistols can be equipped with laser sights. Even characters with a decent skill should still use attachments on their weapons for the +20%.
Wear armor. Unless you’re going undercover at a swimming pool, beach or pornographic film set, you can get away with a soft kevlar vest under your clothing, providing 3 armor. If you know a location contains hostiles and you’re going in with a longarm, prepared to take someone’s life, throw concealability to the wind and gear up with a suit of tac armor (5) and helmet (1) for a total of 6 armor. Any armor protection at all can stop a shotgun from killing you in one hit (armor is doubled vs buckshot) and can make the difference between life and death when hit by other weapons.
Carry a first aid kit no matter how high your character's first aid score is. If you have the base first aid score of 10%, you're equally likely to critically fail as you are to actually heal someone. First aid can kill the patient by dealing damage on a critical failure, and the +20% chance to heal your target from the kit reduces the odds of that happening.
Stun guns and cattle prods use DEX times 5 to hit, which can seem attractive to characters with poor weapon skills. Remember that the target gets a CON save to shrug off the stun. Your average Joe has 10 CON, granting a 50% chance to tank it even if you hit. Use with caution.
Be Prepared
Have your weapon in your hand when searching a building. You don’t want to lose your first action readying your gun, especially if the other guy is already prepared.
If combat hasn’t started and you have to draw on someone, the best time to do it is when they’re distracted, or out of your line of sight altogether. If you can, leave a situation amicably and come back with your gun out, rather than racing them to pull out your weapon (and potentially losing).
You're never going to come up with a perfect plan, and if you could, you probably couldn't get all the other players to follow it 100 percent. But try to figure out beforehand if anyone is planning on using explosives, or picking a hand to hand fight. Don't be the guy at the top of the DEX order who rushes in to tackle an enemy to the ground, blocking the three Agents behind him from using their weapons.
Attacking from stealth gives a 20% bonus to your chance to hit and automatic critical damage on the first round of battle. If you find yourself in this situation (or better yet, engineer it) you can usually end the fight in a single round of combat.
Armed Combat
Use cover. Remember that you get 3 free meters of movement with your action. Spend it getting behind cover, if you aren’t there already. Any amount of cover prevents a successful lethality roll from instakilling you (although not the raw damage). Armor from protective cover stacks with worn armor, meaning your vest (3 armor) which couldn’t stop a 5.56 (3 AP) is a viable form of personal protection when paired with the wheel arch of a car (5 armor) for a total of 8 armor.
Shotguns loaded with buckshot suffer a damage penalty versus armored targets. Thankfully, they also get a bonus to their chance to hit. By spending the bonus on a called shot to ignore armor, you can deal full damage versus them.
The grenade is your friend, and because he’s your friend, he goes into the room first. Not everyone has access to flashbangs, pipe bombs or frag grenades. But if you do, use them liberally, before entering rooms known to contain opposition. Hand thrown projectiles use your Athletics score at a 20% bonus, giving you a good chance to hit. They have the added advantage of not giving away your position if thrown in the dark, lacking a muzzle flash or report.
The Unarmed Combat skill is for pinning or disarming people, not dealing damage. Punching a guy for D4-1 damage is a waste of an action that could save your life. Take his gun or take him down.
If the other guy has his weapon drawn while yours is still in the holster, and you're at immediate risk of getting shot, you might want to go for a pin or disarm rather than drawing and letting him get a free action on you.
Page 53 of the Agent’s Handbook states that fighting back in hand to hand combat “does not protect you against ranged attacks unless you’re close enough to push the ranged weapon away.” If someone tries to shoot you point blank, and you haven’t acted that turn, you can spend your action on an Unarmed attack to disarm or pin the shooter. By that same token, remember that if you’re close enough to get a point blank (+20%) bonus against someone, they’re close enough to take your gun away.
Last Resorts
If the group agrees you need to escape a losing battle, then use your turn to escape. Don't be the one player who sticks it out to keep shooting and tarpits the rest of the group. In a gunfight, breaking line of sight is more important than how much physical distance you put between you and the enemy. If you use your entire action to move, you can go 30 meters, which should be enough unless you're fighting in an empty field.
Some creatures in the Delta Green world have lethality breakpoints below which they cannot be damaged, full stop. Others have special damage resistance types that lethality rolls chew right through. If you encounter such a being, didn't bring a lethality weapon for the job, and can't run away and get one, your best bet is ramming damage. Errata has nerfed it but a speeding car is still one of the most lethal weapons in the book, and a truck or SUV hits as hard as a rocket launcher.
Stun guns aren't as good as they initially seem, but the important thing is that they can still Fight Back. For your average historian, a stun gun has a 25% chance to inflict a stun on your average joe (10 DEX to hit versus 10 CON to resist), but it improves the academic's measly 40% Unarmed to an effective 50% for the purposes of fending off attacks.
ReplyDelete