Firearms and ranges

[Henry]

Let's be nice - we all play this game, after all (I should hope)...



I think the biggest thing to look at is the battle mat size - even the biggest commercial mats are only - what - 50 squares across?

An M-16 with a range of 180 feet will cover almost 2/3rds of the map in one range increment. The most penalty anyone would suffer would be -2 to hit, and that's a looong shot. Effectively, ranges would not be considered when using the greater values. If adjudicating firefights without miniature representation, it's not that big of a deal, but on a battlemat, it would be safer to say that Rifled firearms have no range penalties at all, only counting target's Defense and cover bonuses.

 

[takyris]

What about some sort of compromise -- d20 Modern has Chase Scale versus normal scale -- why not Sniping Scale? You could say that when no hostile force is within 100 feet of the sniper, double the range increment (or whatever).

As for your other comments, remember that it's an abstract game system, and when people with a lot of hit points take a few points of damage, it's really a close miss. Think of all the times that your buddies in the field almost got hit but didn't. Those "misses" would be hits that didn't do a lot of damage.

If a 90-hp character with 90 hp gets hit for 10, it's a bullet zinging into the tree over his head -- or hitting the wall nearby and cutting him a bit with flying chips of concrete. If that 90-hp character has only 15 hp left and gets hit for 10, it's an in-and-out on some nonvital part of the body -- no major organs hit, no bones shattered.

Only once you're in the negatives do you have any chance of dying. People tend to say things like, "Hey, I took him to -7 hit points -- that means I blew his head off!" Negative seven hit points means a wound that is likely to be lethal, but still has a good chance of being survived. -10 hit points would be a shot to the heart. From positive hit points to -20 hit points in a single shot would be "head blown off".

I don't know guns, and am at peace with the fact that I don't know guns, rangewise, so argue to your heart's content there. But don't bring hit point damage into it. They already made guns more lethal than longswords -- and a swing from a sharpened sword can pretty much kill anyone if they don't get out of the way.

("Getting out of the way" is a fancy way of saying "Hit Points")

-Tacky

 

[Ralts Bloodthorne]

//snip//
As for your other comments, remember that it's an abstract game system, and when people with a lot of hit points take a few points of damage, it's really a close miss. Think of all the times that your buddies in the field almost got hit but didn't. Those "misses" would be hits that didn't do a lot of damage.

If a 90-hp character with 90 hp gets hit for 10, it's a bullet zinging into the tree over his head -- or hitting the wall nearby and cutting him a bit with flying chips of concrete. If that 90-hp character has only 15 hp left and gets hit for 10, it's an in-and-out on some nonvital part of the body -- no major organs hit, no bones shattered.

Only once you're in the negatives do you have any chance of dying. People tend to say things like, "Hey, I took him to -7 hit points -- that means I blew his head off!" Negative seven hit points means a wound that is likely to be lethal, but still has a good chance of being survived. -10 hit points would be a shot to the heart. From positive hit points to -20 hit points in a single shot would be "head blown off".

I don't know guns, and am at peace with the fact that I don't know guns, rangewise, so argue to your heart's content there. But don't bring hit point damage into it. They already made guns more lethal than longswords -- and a swing from a sharpened sword can pretty much kill anyone if they don't get out of the way.

("Getting out of the way" is a fancy way of saying "Hit Points")

-Tacky

Thank you, Tacky!
You know, I was wondering when someone would bring that up.

That handles the damage, but what about the crit multiplier, threat rating and (still) the ranges?

 

[takyris]

Yeah, see, I argued the points I thought I could win.

I'm pretty darn clueless on guns, so no arguments from me on that point. I know enough about guns to successfully disarm someone, provided that they're stupid enough to get within five feet of me, and I know that once you get more than twenty-five feet away from a guy with a gun (as in, running away), your chances of getting hit go down a bunch (crime statistics and stuff involving analyzing shots fired versus shots hitting). So maybe the handgun ranges aren't that bad.

No practical longarm experience to speak of, though.

If you were gonna modify rules, would it make sense (from a real-world perspective) to modify them so that they've got good long-range power but are much worse in close combat? Can you really hit someone who is that close to you with a rifle? Not a stationary target, but one who could, over the course of six seconds, move from one side of your field of vision to another?

I thought that with rifles, in general, you set yourself up, and then even if you fired multiple shots, you were primarily aiming in the same narrow area -- changing "area of fire" to someplace new slowed you down a bunch or made you less likely to hit unless you took some time to aim?

Note: I'm thinking of rifles, not shotguns.

Note2: I am so VERY possibly full of it, and have no ego-attachment to whether or not that is the case.

Note3: While I like realism, I don't want to play in a game where everyone either uses rifles or takes a "lesser" weapon for roleplaying reasons. If possible, I'd like there to be tradeoffs.

-Tacky

 

[Pagan priest]

For those reading this who are not gun nuts, here is a useful definition:

A firearm's effective range is the distance it can be fired AT the target as opposed to ABOVE the target. Within effective range, gravity has not yet deflected the trajectory of the bullet sufficiently to cause it to drop more than the height of a person. I. E. if you aim at the head you might still hit the foot.

Beyond effective range, you must aim over the head of your target.

Effective range is determined largely by the speed of the bullet. It cannot be changed by any feat or skill on the part of the user of the weapon. "Ye canna change the laws of physics!"

(Okay, so its not the dictionary precise definition... those knowledgable about guns already have the better definition, and those that do not know quite so much have something to work with.)

A weapon like the M16 fires a fairly fast bullet and therefore has a fairly long effective range. 550 yards was mentioned; I do not have anything that contradicts that figure.

Note that a bullet will travel a very long distance beyond its effective range. Hitting a target beyond effective range is a combination of skill and luck... the more skill you have, the less luck you need.

Having said all that, I do not see a reason to change the range values from their given numbers. Those values were created on the assumtion that a character that wanted to do better would have the Far Shot feat and would mount a scope on the weapon. In fact, if we want to accurately portray real world combat values, every roll to hit with a firearm in combat would need to be confirmed by rolling exactly 100 on a d100. I seem to recall that for every bullet fired in battle that actually hits an enemy soldier, over a thousand are fired.

On the other hand, if you want to discuss changing the ranges and damages of the heavy weapons, I'd be happy to join in.

 

[ThoughtBubble]

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!"

First, allow me to say that I'm still pretty much a D20 M newbie.

As far as these issues go, at least some of them are adressable. With training under harder circumstances, I think that's the way everything goes. In practice, I know the moves for disarming a person weilding a knife by heart and can do it in my sleep. In real life, I'm probablly just going to get myself cut up if I tried it.

As far as the range, accuracy and damage goes, I think there's something you folks may not have been keeping in mind. At level one, the range incrment and BAB are all assuming that you're going to make a shot every six seconds while walking up to thirty feet. I'm no gun person, but I sure can't even aim and move at the same time. Can you folks? How about within 3 seconds of dropping prone? How about while jumping out of a window? How about while sliding across the hood of a car? That's the crack they were on. Six seconds is about the time it took me to type this sentence. Could that be the factor you weren't taking into account?

Easy ways to fix this would be giving a bonus for not moving during your turn (to both range and bab), giving a bonus for supported fire, giving a bonus for spending more than one turn aiming, and I believe there's a feat in there for added range. And for the military style campaign, nothing would be better than feats that improve upon all those previous points.

So, now, what's wrong with crits?