Vehicle Chases and Attack Penalties

[Metaphysician]

So, last session, I ran a game on Akiton with use of the vehicle rules. You know, wasteland, caravan, raiders on buggies. It went fine, except for one thing: the attack penalties for attacking from a vehicle were simply too harsh. Nobody could hit anybody on much less than a 19, until they were actually engaged and started jumping between vehicles.

So, two questions:

1. Does the attack penalty actually apply in chase rules, where its vehicle vs vehicle, or did I misread and its only supposed to apply in vehicle vs foot?

2. Assuming I did read the rule correctly- can anyone think of a problem with simply ruling otherwise anyway? I understand why you want the penalty for shooting at people on foot, since otherwise "drive by shooting" becomes too powerful. That logic doesn't apply with two vehicles of similar speed fighting each other with the chase rules.

[Tiberius1701]

If they weren't going full speed, it should have just been around -2 for most vehicles - not too bad.

If they were going full speed against low speed or stationary targets then it should be pretty hard. That's why drive by shooting are normally only tactically successful if they are a sneak attack against flat-footed, or used as an intimidation tactic (shooting up your house).

In chases though, one house rule I would use is say that if we are on a relative map, and all cars are moving at high speeds, they just get the lower penalty - they don't count as top speed relative to one another.

[breithauptclan]

Couple thoughts:

1) I don't automatically assume that the vehicles are going at top speed during a chase. It may be that they are. It may also be that they are weaving through traffic, avoiding obstacles on the road like potholes or other debris, or even driving off-road. Also the speed up action doesn't make much sense if the vehicles are already going at top speed. And to top it all off, vehicles with different top speeds can still participate in the chase together.

So if you want to run the chase at a speed lower than top speed for these reasons, then you would use the lower attack penalty for the vehicle.

2) In high speed chases, it does make sense that the success of the chase is dependent more on the piloting skills of the drivers than the combat skills of those characters riding shotgun. Give your skill-based characters some time to shine.