Firearms and ranges

[Ranger REG]

Of course, there is a repercussion. Now we'll have to recalculate every firearms range increment. That means firearms will be upgraded to uber x2 level.

Just take the maximum effective range and reduce it to 2/3. If anyone is willing to take Far Shot, then they get the maximum. Nevertheless it is still 50% increase to the present stat (120 feet; upgraded from 80 feet).

 

[ErichDragon]

I'm not sure how you do it in the Marines, but in the U.S. Army you fire at a pop up target that does not move, and appears in the same exact (or 2 exact) places every time. Also you do not move before or after the shot. Even if you only have 60 seconds to shoot 10 rounds, the fact that you know the exact location of the target and that it will never move on you would grant some considerable circumstance bonuses.

Also, firing at targets is a whole different ballgame than actual combat. If you take that same Marine, after 3 weeks of training, and even hint that the target might fire back, I guarantee the success rate will go way down.

All that being said. You can't and shouldn't try to recreate reality in a RPG. If anyone has ever played Twilight 2000 you know what I mean. Those rules are so realistic that they are pretty much unplayable. A simple 5 on 5 squad skirmish took my brother and I almost 4 hours to reslove. In reality those firefights are over in about 15 seconds of continuous fighting. At that point one side either runs away, is pinned down or is dead.

 

[lmccauley]

All that being said. You can't and shouldn't try to recreate reality in a RPG. If anyone has ever played Twilight 2000 you know what I mean. Those rules are so realistic that they are pretty much unplayable.

Or Phoenix Command. With the Advanced Damage Tables, you had one set of tables to determine the location hit (from either the front, oblique, side or rear) on a D1000 and tables for 64 hit locations showing the amount of damage done depending on the size of the wound and the penetration.
Rules covered glancing off bone into other hit locations...

Each weapon had a table showing its Aim Time Modifier - a measure of the weapon's accuracy and speed of aim. The longer you aimed, the more accurate you were, up to a point. Pistols were fairly accurate pretty quickly; rifles took longer to bring to bear, but ended up more accurate if you aimed for a reasonable length of time. Plus they listed damage class and penetration at 20, 40, 80, 140, 200, 400, 600 and 800 yards. Oh yeah, and the time of flight, which could add a random element if your target was sufficiently far away that they might have moved in between the time you fired your snipers rifle and the bullet arrived down-range... that rule was in the Advanced Rules Supplement, I seem to remember. I won't even start to explain about how shotguns worked, other than to say you could tell exactly how many pellets hit the target...

Oh, yes, and I did try to use it in games once or twice and it was... slow! LOL!

Cheers,
Liam

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

My group is combat vets and avid hunters.
We saw the range increments and the feces hit the rotating blades.
"WHAT! I learned how to shoot an M-16A1 farther than that!"
"I made a shot farther than that in Panama!"
"I was qualified out a lot further than that on the Light-50!"
"This M-203 range is absurd!"
"What kind of crack were the developers smoking?"
"I hit a T-72 tank at further than that with a crappy old M-72 LAW!"

So we looked over the ranges.
We looked over the criticals.
We looked over the damages.

Personally, ALL of them are screwed up. A Light-50 will blow a hole as big as God through a man. An AK-47 can sever a leg. A .45 to the chest will serious impare someone's functioning.

Personally, without reposting the damage/range/crit threat and increment that we playtested and are using, I can't think of any good advice on the damage and crit mods.
Ranges?
Oh, yeah... LOL... Thanks, Heather.
Ranges, it's simple...
If they are proficent, double the range. Plain and simple.

And yes, you can hit someone at 300m out, while the bullets are hitting near you and your cheek is bleeding from richoceted stone... One shot. One Kill. I think my pants are full.

 

[Kesh]

Personally, ALL of them are screwed up. A Light-50 will blow a hole as big as God through a man. An AK-47 can sever a leg. A .45 to the chest will serious impare someone's functioning.

And the reason they don't do that in the game is:

It'll do the same thing to your character.

Most people don't want a game where they walk outside, and die instantly from the sniper down the street. d20 Modern is more James Bond or Rambo, than Saving Private Ryan.

 

[Mistwell]

Oh dear, I see the Armchair Generals have found this thread. All is lost. Only a matter of time before this becomes a d20 Reality discussion now.

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

Oh dear, I see the Armchair Generals have found this thread. All is lost. Only a matter of time before this becomes a d20 Reality discussion now.

//Cross eye and stick out tongue, wiggling fingers.
Oh, I see that my wishing to intigrate my personal experiences outside my living room and away from my TV are to be frowned upon.
I take thy rebuke kindly, maiden, and perhaps I shall endevour not to intrude my real life experiences and utilitize my intellect while attempting to ponder the mysteries inherent in some publications.
//try to look serious again after poking fun back...

LOL, I'll assume you weren't talking to me...

Personally, I feel that you can do it two different ways...
Cinematic, where you keep it the way Modern d20 is written, which let's you be Colonel Matrix, Rambo, James Bond or Dirty Haryy, which is fun and great. LOL I like those too.
or
Hard-Where PC's really worry. We do this on occassion for our "one-shot" adventures, which can be a lot of fun.

Still, seeing those stats still choked me. I've seen the "battle-mat" arguement, I've seen the attempt on the WotC board to justify those ranges, and still, I'm not convinced that, even in a heroic game, that the ranges should be as low as they are.
But, that's just me.

//nyah nyah nyah nyah!!! LOL

 

[Kesh]

Actually, if this were a Call of Cthulu d20 game, I'd probably be right there with you. Characters are supposed to die in that one.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Actually, if this were a Call of Cthulu d20 game, I'd probably be right there with you. Characters are supposed to die in that one.

No, it's not as straight as that. They always have the joice to become completely insane in the brain...

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

Well, most people will die outright when they are shot by a AK47 or a .50 in D20 Modern - because most people are level 1 characters with never more than 5 hitpoints. 2d8 points of damage make an average of 9, which means -4 hp for our d20 Modern Commoner - enough time to lose a leg and watch it bleeding... (Well, not "ingame really", because you fall unconcious before, but who really wants a game where a person can watch and feel himsel slowly dying?)

Real Life Combat is brutal, deadly, bloody. And it uses the "Universe" as computer for estamiting effects.

D20 Modern Combat is clean and heroic, and it allows even a single gamemaster to handle the effects...

Mustrum Ridcully