Making guns lethal.

[Plane Sailing]

One thing that I've done which you might want to consider - I've swapped round the benefit for cover and concealment.

IRL, cover is better than concealment from all sources I've been able to investigate*, but in d20 world the concealment mechanic is better for you than the cover mechanic, because it gives you a chance of escaping the damage.**

So what I do is say that standard concealment gives you +4 AC and greater concealment gives you +8 AC.

For cover, the %age cover you are able to take is the %age chance that an attack hits the cover instead of you. I set the maximum cover percentage roughly as follows

Shooting over a low wall or crate: 50%
Shooting round a corner with a longarm: 60%
shooting round a corner with a sidearm: 70%
Peeping round a corner to see what is going on: 90%

and so on.

This makes taking cover a very important thing to do in a gunfight (all PCs and NPCs try to get to cover as quickly as possible when a gunfight kicks off).

The other thing that I do is to only allow defence to apply against gunfire if you either (a) moved your speed last round or (b) are adjacent to cover you could concievably duck behind.

I don't know if those ideas might prove useful to you.



* for a couple of limited examples:
http://www.officer.com/article/article.jsp?siteSection=3&id=32796
http://www.map-reading.com/ch11-4.php

** most noticeably in standard d20 if attackers are much better or much worse than you. If the attacker is much better, a +4 cover bonus to AC might not make you any harder to hit. If the attacker is so much worse that he only hits on a 20 then additional cover makes you no harder to hit because he is still automatically hitting on a 20. However, a miss chance is applied after the roll to hit - so a miss chance can still save your bacon in either of those cases (and it can even save your bacon against a critical hit - something which an AC bonus doesn't help with). That is why I maintain that miss chances are a better all round defence than AC bonuses.

Regards.

 

[FraserRonald]

One thing that I've done which you might want to consider - I've swapped round the benefit for cover and concealment.

That sounds like a great idea. If you really want to, you can use cover as DR if it does get hit, so hiding behind drywall = not so great; hiding behind concrete--much better.

I would use this mechanic, along with changing MDT to 10 and making Massive Damage Saves vs. amount of damage.

Now, the important thing to realize is that failing a MAS does not mean the character is dead, it means the character is at -1 and dying. Hopefully this will not equate to reqular TPKs, but getting put down to -1 is crappy for a player and will teach them to respect my authority! Er, I mean, respect firearms.

Hope that helps.

 

[Klaus]

Another thing you might do to make guns deadlier is half the Defense bonus of equipment and natural armor (round down, minimum 0).

 

[ValhallaGH]

Now, the important thing to realize is that failing a MAS does not mean the character is dead, it means the character is at -1 and dying. Hopefully this will not equate to reqular TPKs

Though it will if the loss of firepower from that missing teammate is the difference between success and failure. It's like dying in D&D after your cleric has True Res. It keeps you out of the fight but in the campaign if your team can still win.

I've nearly TPK'd during a BBEG fight. Two party members failed MDS in the first round, so it was suddenly two 7th level bads versus two 5th level heroes. Had they not convinced one of the badguys to surrender (after finally dropping the other) then they would have all died. Remaining bad had 43 hp, the two standing heroes had a total of 16 hp.

Massive damage can seriously screw the party, by changing a challenging encounter to overwhelming with the simple removal of PCs for the duration of the encounter. If you want more dangerous guns then make them more likely to force massive damage saves (MDS), and you can alter massive damage to make it even more dangerous. This can be done a couple of ways, as I've outlined before. Personally, I'd recommend the static damage guns for consistant MDS ( d4+X idea upthread) without changing the number of dice.

 

[Old Drew Id]

Near the very end of our last Modern campaign, we discussed using Ranged Attacks of Opportunity with firearms. The rules are very simple, based on the existing AoO rules:

If someone performs an action that would normally provoke an AoO and they are within one range increment of an enemy with a firearm, the enemy can shoot as an AoO.

All other "normal" AoO rules apply. You only get one per round, if they tumble or cast defensively then they can negate the AoO, concealment and cover can prevent an AoO, etc.

This only applies to guns, not to all ranged attacks. The effect should be that guns are not exactly more deadly but they are definitely more scary. A sniper on a rooftop can cover an entire city block easily. Give him Combat Reflexes and he can hold off a large number of enemies pretty easily. The only way to approach is to dodge from one piece of cover to the next (using Tumble) until you are close enough to charge him. Standing there and shooting at him actually provokes an AoO (using a ranged attack while threatened) so you have to seek cover to safely shoot back at him. Even if you don't care about the AC bonus from cover, you need it just to avoid the AoO's.

The other nice effect of this is the "battlefield effect". In a military close trench-warfare type battle, normal rules say that if you are fast enough you could run from your trench to the enemy trench in a single round, then engage the enemy in melee. Not realistic considering that there should be fifty enemies in the other trench who would get a shot off. But at the same time, having all 50 enemies with readied attacks also seems wrong because they would not hold a readied action all day. This rule makes charging across no-mans-land realistically suicidal, not because of 50 readied actions but because of 50 AoO's. The only safe way to charge would be under concealment or in a mass charge where the AoO's could be spread out, which matches realistic tactics.

(Also, we used the VP/WP system and bumped all firearms to 3 dice, but that's a seperate issue. )

 

[ValhallaGH]

Side note: In my experiences, WP/VP is generally less lethal than a d20 Modern-style Massive Damage. WP get hit less often than damage thresholds do, and the hp character doesn't have an extra pool of hp to carry him through when he's out of his class-based stuff.

I'm just mentioning this so that you can have another perspective on your choices, not to start a Vitality / HP debate.

Of course, a True20 damage save is always scary. A bit complicated but scary.

Edit: The first range increment AoO rule is a pretty interesting idea.

 

[Aussiegamer]

1st range can be quite a distance, I can see a case for max 10m rule though.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

1st range can be quite a distance, I can see a case for max 10m rule though.

I think the point was to make things like a Sniper (or 50 riflemen lying in the opposing trench) appropriately dangerous.

The rule has some appeal, I admit, though I have some doubts about giving it essentially "free" attacks at such ranges. Maybe it should require a fullround action each round to set up a "control area". Though this might be a lot like readied actions...

 

[Plane Sailing]

Near the very end of our last Modern campaign, we discussed using Ranged Attacks of Opportunity with firearms. The rules are very simple, based on the existing AoO rules:

If someone performs an action that would normally provoke an AoO and they are within one range increment of an enemy with a firearm, the enemy can shoot as an AoO.

All other "normal" AoO rules apply. You only get one per round, if they tumble or cast defensively then they can negate the AoO, concealment and cover can prevent an AoO, etc.

This only applies to guns, not to all ranged attacks. The effect should be that guns are not exactly more deadly but they are definitely more scary. A sniper on a rooftop can cover an entire city block easily. Give him Combat Reflexes and he can hold off a large number of enemies pretty easily. The only way to approach is to dodge from one piece of cover to the next (using Tumble) until you are close enough to charge him. Standing there and shooting at him actually provokes an AoO (using a ranged attack while threatened) so you have to seek cover to safely shoot back at him. Even if you don't care about the AC bonus from cover, you need it just to avoid the AoO's.

The other nice effect of this is the "battlefield effect". In a military close trench-warfare type battle, normal rules say that if you are fast enough you could run from your trench to the enemy trench in a single round, then engage the enemy in melee. Not realistic considering that there should be fifty enemies in the other trench who would get a shot off. But at the same time, having all 50 enemies with readied attacks also seems wrong because they would not hold a readied action all day. This rule makes charging across no-mans-land realistically suicidal, not because of 50 readied actions but because of 50 AoO's. The only safe way to charge would be under concealment or in a mass charge where the AoO's could be spread out, which matches realistic tactics.

I like this rule a lot. It appears to be simple, consistent, playable and encourages real-life tactics.

It also works well with other aspects of AoO you haven't mentioned here (just for brevity, I imagine) - for instance, someone doesn't normally get an AoO while flatfooted, so if you surprise someone you could charge them and engage in melee without getting shot. But if they have combat reflexes...

Cheers

 

[Nadaka]

Near the very end of our last Modern campaign, we discussed using Ranged Attacks of Opportunity with firearms. The rules are very simple, based on the existing AoO rules:

If someone performs an action that would normally provoke an AoO and they are within one range increment of an enemy with a firearm, the enemy can shoot as an AoO.

All other "normal" AoO rules apply. You only get one per round, if they tumble or cast defensively then they can negate the AoO, concealment and cover can prevent an AoO, etc.

This only applies to guns, not to all ranged attacks. The effect should be that guns are not exactly more deadly but they are definitely more scary. A sniper on a rooftop can cover an entire city block easily. Give him Combat Reflexes and he can hold off a large number of enemies pretty easily. The only way to approach is to dodge from one piece of cover to the next (using Tumble) until you are close enough to charge him. Standing there and shooting at him actually provokes an AoO (using a ranged attack while threatened) so you have to seek cover to safely shoot back at him. Even if you don't care about the AC bonus from cover, you need it just to avoid the AoO's.

The other nice effect of this is the "battlefield effect". In a military close trench-warfare type battle, normal rules say that if you are fast enough you could run from your trench to the enemy trench in a single round, then engage the enemy in melee. Not realistic considering that there should be fifty enemies in the other trench who would get a shot off. But at the same time, having all 50 enemies with readied attacks also seems wrong because they would not hold a readied action all day. This rule makes charging across no-mans-land realistically suicidal, not because of 50 readied actions but because of 50 AoO's. The only safe way to charge would be under concealment or in a mass charge where the AoO's could be spread out, which matches realistic tactics.

(Also, we used the VP/WP system and bumped all firearms to 3 dice, but that's a seperate issue. )

This won't work.
Say you have two equally matched forces armed with firearms faceing each other within the first increment. One side decides to shoot first because shooting first gives you the advantage right?
wrong. because shooting first means that the opposition gets to take thier AoO, so in effect the decision to shoot first allows the other guys to get the first shot. And if the opposition has the combat reflexes feat it means that everyone on your team can get shot multiple times before you get to take your shots because the combat reflexes guys can make 1 AoO for each target that provokes and each one can target the same provoker as another character.
Does this make any sense? nope.