Minor Spycraft Gripe

[Voneth]

buzzard: Don't mind the Ranger, you just hit a pet peeve of his ... pointing out flaws in d20 Modern.

 

[Ranger REG]

So what? If I want to play a reality game, I go to a live-fire range.

 

[dpmcalister]

So what? If I want to play a reality game, I go to a live-fire range.

I used to love the actual firing, but cleaning the rifle afterwards is a right pain

 

[buzzard]

I used to love the actual firing, but cleaning the rifle afterwards is a right pain

You ought to consider how much of a pain it is when you take about 4 or 5 different pistols with you and they all have to be cleaned. However the fun of shooting offsets this.

buzzard

 

[Morgenstern]

Ok I'll go down the ones that immediately come to mind and bother me.

For some reason MAG decided that a 9mm would do more damage than a .40 S&W (same average, but higher max for the 9). This is illogical and unsupported by what studies do exist on this topic.

Ok, right off, I willfully skirt around the debates on the best round in the .40 S&W/9mmP/.45 ACP range. Those things have a tendency to break down into the same sort of squabbling reserved for not-so-polite religeous debate, with litterally dozens of different systems for calculating "damage" being put forward. Given that I needed a system that somewhat reliably converted available data to a number of vitality or wound points (not cavity size or jell displacement ) we used one that examines muzzle velocity and bullet weight, runs it through a conversion formula, and spits out a damage code . Since all of the firearms in the book have damage codes from one conversion system and most of them seem to be basically workable, the fact that a .40 S&W produces slightly lower muzzle energy than a 9mm gave it a damage code with an equal average damage, but a narrower range. The .45 is on the other side with the same average and a wider range. To match this to real world experience, both the .40 and the .45 have the takedown quality (yes, I know you groan about this further down). So a .40 user is going to find that he does the same damage as a 9 over time, but the TD gives him significantly more stopping power. MAG does treat the .40 as the better round.

One other detail, the HK UPS in .40 S&W has a 13 round magazine (I know since I have one, having bought it pre-ban). The Sig Sauer P220 in .45 ACP is listed as having 9 round magazines, but it only has 7 in reality. I'd have to check Gun Digest to see if the rest are correct. I only list these because I own them.

Yeah, the ban caused a lot of weapons to have a US-limited ammo number rather than the actual capacity of the weapon. Naturally super-spies are folks who tend to ignore such things as local gun law in the pursuit of their duties, so we'd have preffered to have the real number . We've been trying to track those down. I'll be happy to add the HK UPS to the list to be corrected. Should be reflected in the Latest Word sticky on our forums where I collect misc. errata and rulings in between major updates to the master document in about 10 minutes.

Then there's the ammo types. Those rules have a couple glaring holes. They are with three of the ammo options.

Hydrashock- there is no steel post in the center of a Hydrashock. The post is cast into the lead of the bullet and is merely supposed to make it mushroom (expand) better. If there were a steel post in the center they would be illegal for civilian purchase, and I do have a few boxes.

Hmm. Have to double check that. Have a link to the manufacturer's site?

Winchester SXT (Black Talon)- this ammo description sounds like a technical document published by HCI, and is equally accurate. These rounds do not expand into viscious slashing claws as stated. The lead remains bonded to the jacket, so you really don't get any sharp edges.

So how is that different from any FMJ bullet, and what's the big hooplah over them then?

Also the very rules involved are, how best to delicately state this- stupid. According to the rules if you are shot by these they act like wounding weapons, but only for vitality. For wounds, you only bleed for one extra round. Now as I understand it, vitality means you've dodged. Thus how can it be that a bullet which has been dodged causes continued vitality damage? Does it follow you around and keep tiring you out?

Vitality isn't strictly a dodge, as there are poison delivering weapons that don't require damage to wounds to work. In this case the idea was you've got one of these little buggers in you and it continues to make a bit of a mess.

Then, last but not least silly, you have the wad cutter description. It rambles on some nonsense about the shape of the bullet tail and then makes them more accurate, but less damaging. Of course reality has nothing to do with this. Wad cutters (also known as full wadcutters, since there is such a thing as a semi-wadcutter) are bullets, usually cast in lead, which are shaped like a cylinder. They have a flat front end, and a flat or sometimes concave rear end. They are designed to punch nice neat holes in paper targets. They are also usually shot only in revolvers (though there are some semi-autos which are designed to shoot them). If anything they would do more damage than normal ammo. They would certainly not do less, or be more accurate.

*chuckle* Well, I had to work with the descriptions given to me. I'll see if I can't tweak these to be a bit more in line with the intended functionality. So, has anyone done a study on what happens when you shoot someone with one? I think they got an accuracy bonus since they were principly used in target shooting...

Another gripe would have to be the recoil rules. They are excessive. By the calculations in the book I would have to have a 16 or higher strength to shoot like I do, and I don't go to the gym that much.

Maybe you have the Perfect Stance feat . Most people take a moment to stand properly (brace action), which gives a big bonus to resisting recoil.

The takedown rules are also fairly silly. They seem to ignore conservation of momentum, and make it WAY too easy to knock someone down. Then again I can at least accept them on the basis of trying to capture cinematic feel.

There is a bit of errata to that causing it to be less effective if it only inflicts damage to vitality. It was knocking people over a bit too often as originally written . And yes it's there for cinematic purposes, along with giving a distinct difference to some of the heavier rounds.

If you go to www.spycraftRPG.com you can get to our forums, and in there is a permanent anouncement for the master errata document. A few changes there may help bring the book more in line with your expectations. We are working to make it the best firearms gide that we can .

 

[Morgenstern]

Just to show that we're not completely mad, I though I'd list some max ranges for the Modern Arms Guide weapons. This does presume the shooter has the Extreme Range feat. I also recomend a x16 scope, but a few action dice will do just as well for Soldier agents .

5.56 NATO - 833 yards (ok, a little short for 1000 yard competition)
7.62 NATO - 1166 yards (will do just dandy at the shootout)
7.62x54mm Soviet - 1333 yards
.300 Win Mag - 1500 yards (the Afganistan shots appear legal)
.458 Win Mag or .338 Lapua Mag - 1666 yards (nearly a mile)
.50 BMG or 12.7x107 Soviet - 2500 yards (nearly a mile and a half)
14.5x114mm Soviet - 3500 yards (pretty much 2 miles)

Hope this helps,

 

[buzzard]

Ok, right off, I willfully skirt around the debates on the best round in the .40 S&W/9mmP/.45 ACP range. Those things have a tendency to break down into the same sort of squabbling reserved for not-so-polite religeous debate, with litterally dozens of different systems for calculating "damage" being put forward. Given that I needed a system that somewhat reliably converted available data to a number of vitality or wound points (not cavity size or jell displacement ) we used one that examines muzzle velocity and bullet weight, runs it through a conversion formula, and spits out a damage code . Since all of the firearms in the book have damage codes from one conversion system and most of them seem to be basically workable, the fact that a .40 S&W produces slightly lower muzzle energy than a 9mm gave it a damage code with an equal average damage, but a narrower range. The .45 is on the other side with the same average and a wider range. To match this to real world experience, both the .40 and the .45 have the takedown quality (yes, I know you groan about this further down). So a .40 user is going to find that he does the same damage as a 9 over time, but the TD gives him significantly more stopping power. MAG does treat the .40 as the better round.

Granted, it does come close to a religious matter with some, but as I will say you can create a bullet loading for a .40 which will exceed a 9mm in muzzle energy, and still have the greater cross section. Though I do recognize that the average damages are the same, I would prefer if the .40 got the nod in max damage. There must be some reason for the FBI and most police departments switching over.

I imagine that for your calculations you took the 180 grain .40, while I would have run with the 165 grain. Not that it matters but I could look up some numbers in the ol' reloading manual.

Yeah, the ban caused a lot of weapons to have a US-limited ammo number rather than the actual capacity of the weapon. Naturally super-spies are folks who tend to ignore such things as local gun law in the pursuit of their duties, so we'd have preffered to have the real number . We've been trying to track those down. I'll be happy to add the HK UPS to the list to be corrected. Should be reflected in the Latest Word sticky on our forums where I collect misc. errata and rulings in between major updates to the master document in about 10 minutes.

I had a feeling you guys got caught by the ban. I did just pick up a book on guns (Jane's Guns Recognition Guide), which does have magazine capacity. Maybe if I'm sufficiently bored I'll check over the magazine capacities of things I don't own and let you know. The problem with this book is that it doesn't describe all the variations by caliber (which is how you ended up with a 9 shot P220 in .45).

Hmm. Have to double check that. Have a link to the manufacturer's site?

www.federalcartridge.com
Though the law is enough of an argument. Back in the 80s the Feds decided that "cop killer bullets" had to be banned. This meant that any pistol caliber round made of anything harder than lead or copper was a no no. Thus if the Hydra-Shoks had a steel core, I couldn't own them. Though to be more directly factual, the Federal site has a nice little Hydra-shok diagram showing the post as part of the lead core.

So how is that different from any FMJ bullet, and what's the big hooplah over them then?

Ahh, here we need a history lesson.
Back in the early 80's a number of FBI agents were trying to track down a couple of bank robbers/murderers in Miami. One way or another they managed to stop the perp's car (rammed it into a tree in a residential area- DOH!). A rather major shootout occured. Over a hundred rounds were exchanged. The Feds were armed with S&W 9mms using Winchester silvertip ammo (standard JHPs), .38s and shotguns (only one agent used a shotgun). The bad guys had a mini-14, and .357s. While the perps(2) eventually went down, a few of the feds were killed (3 or 4), and others were wounded. The perps soaked up the 9mm rounds without being stopped (one of them I think had 14 rounds in him before a shotgun finished him off- this is all reliant on my crappy memory, though I have a reference I can check). This confrontation had two major effects.
A) The FBI decided that 9mm wasn't "good enough for government work" and they had S&W develop the 10mm (which for those who don't know is like a .40 magnum). This became their standard issue weapon(later changed to the .40).
B) Winchester decided to re-design their ammo because it was found that many of the shots were not achieving sufficient penetration. In fact, the car windows were stopping a lot of the JHP rounds. Thus they had to find a way to get better penetration, but still get expansion to keep the lethality(and not shoot through people). This led to the development of the Black Talon. The idea here was to increase the strength of the copper jacket, but to score it in places so the jacket could tear when the cavity was under hydrostatic pressure. This does result in a petal type arrangement when it expands. However the copper core and jacket are designed to stick together. This means you don't get the "vicious claw like edges" that HCI was having a fit over.

Vitality isn't strictly a dodge, as there are poison delivering weapons that don't require damage to wounds to work. In this case the idea was you've got one of these little buggers in you and it continues to make a bit of a mess.

Well then I misunderstand vitality. I prefer to think of it as dodging. In any case why could the thing stop doing the extra damage once it is in wounds? (I know the gods of balance).

*chuckle* Well, I had to work with the descriptions given to me. I'll see if I can't tweak these to be a bit more in line with the intended functionality. So, has anyone done a study on what happens when you shoot someone with one? I think they got an accuracy bonus since they were principly used in target shooting...

I'd make them something like +1 damage (a flat lead round will deform fairly extensively, but not in a nice controlled mushroom like a JHP), but with really lousy armor penetration. The main advantage I would give them is make them dirt cheap. They would be easily half the cost of FMJ (which should be cheaper than JHP, but isn't).

Maybe you have the Perfect Stance feat . Most people take a moment to stand properly (brace action), which gives a big bonus to resisting recoil.

While I do use a nice isosceles stance, I could not be called perfect.

There is a bit of errata to that causing it to be less effective if it only inflicts damage to vitality. It was knocking people over a bit too often as originally written . And yes it's there for cinematic purposes, along with giving a distinct difference to some of the heavier rounds.

If you go to www.spycraftRPG.com you can get to our forums, and in there is a permanent anouncement for the master errata document. A few changes there may help bring the book more in line with your expectations. We are working to make it the best firearms gide that we can .

I'll have to check out that errata.

 

[buzzard]

Just to show that we're not completely mad, I though I'd list some max ranges for the Modern Arms Guide weapons. This does presume the shooter has the Extreme Range feat. I also recomend a x16 scope, but a few action dice will do just as well for Soldier agents .

5.56 NATO - 833 yards (ok, a little short for 1000 yard competition)
7.62 NATO - 1166 yards (will do just dandy at the shootout)
7.62x54mm Soviet - 1333 yards
.300 Win Mag - 1500 yards (the Afganistan shots appear legal)
.458 Win Mag or .338 Lapua Mag - 1666 yards (nearly a mile)
.50 BMG or 12.7x107 Soviet - 2500 yards (nearly a mile and a half)
14.5x114mm Soviet - 3500 yards (pretty much 2 miles)

Hope this helps,

I did mention that I liked your range increments. This just confirms it. Though I should have gone back and done some editing. The shots in Afghanistan were with a new round, the Remington .300 Ultra Magnum. But the difference probably isn't that great.

buzzard

 

[Lugh]

There must be some reason for the FBI and most police departments switching over.

Stopping power. They want a bullet that will a person on his @$$ on the first shot. That's represented in Spycraft by takedown. Note that takedown is not necessarily the cinematic action of being knocked off your feet and back five feet by the impact of the bullet. It is any effect that causes you to go prone. With vitality damage, that may represent "shock and awe" causing you to hit the dirt to avoid getting hit. Or, it may represent getting your knee tagged, causing you to drop and writhe around for a bit.

Well then I misunderstand vitality. I prefer to think of it as dodging. In any case why could the thing stop doing the extra damage once it is in wounds? (I know the gods of balance).

Vitality is any damage you take that is not serious. Fatigue, scratches, bruising, or "You shot my hair!" Essentially, it's the effect that makes the hero look like he's been in a fight by the end of the movie. It wouldn't require more than basic first aid to patch up (a couple of stitches at most). It's a funky, cinematic hero-factor, that is NOT represented well by any single real-world equivalent. Hence, some of the rules around it make the kind of sense that's not.

While I do use a nice isosceles stance, I could not be called perfect.

But, the fact that you're in a stance means that you are braced (and probably taking the aim action, for that matter). Try firing from the hip, and see how well you do. Of course, the firing range probably won't let you, because your shots would be too wildly erratic, endangering the other patrons. Check to see the advantages of bracing, and then take that into account.

 

[buzzard]

Stopping power. They want a bullet that will a person on his @$$ on the first shot. That's represented in Spycraft by takedown. Note that takedown is not necessarily the cinematic action of being knocked off your feet and back five feet by the impact of the bullet. It is any effect that causes you to go prone. With vitality damage, that may represent "shock and awe" causing you to hit the dirt to avoid getting hit. Or, it may represent getting your knee tagged, causing you to drop and writhe around for a bit.

Well common sense dictates that Takedown cannot be a shock and awe effect since the recipient doesn't always know what caliber is being flung at him. The only effects that can knock someone down are:
A) Hitting a place that will affect the ability to stand (knee, hip, foot, leg bone).
B) The target reacting to being shot, which should require a wound hit.

Considering that an elephant gun (.460 Weatherby Magnum) has less momentum transfer than a major league fastball, I have issues with takedown. The afforementioed shootout in Miami led to the adoption of bigger caliber bullets by almost everyone in law enforcement. Considering that the targets were sitting in a car, I don't think it was about knocking them down.

Vitality is any damage you take that is not serious. Fatigue, scratches, bruising, or "You shot my hair!" Essentially, it's the effect that makes the hero look like he's been in a fight by the end of the movie. It wouldn't require more than basic first aid to patch up (a couple of stitches at most). It's a funky, cinematic hero-factor, that is NOT represented well by any single real-world equivalent. Hence, some of the rules around it make the kind of sense that's not.

This interpretation of vitality supports my argument against the Black Talon wounding rules.

But, the fact that you're in a stance means that you are braced (and probably taking the aim action, for that matter). Try firing from the hip, and see how well you do. Of course, the firing range probably won't let you, because your shots would be too wildly erratic, endangering the other patrons. Check to see the advantages of bracing, and then take that into account.

An isosceles means that I am using a two handed grip. Let me explain the situation of how I was shooting. I was shooting a Sig Sauer P220 in .45 ACP at a target at 7 yards. Each shot was taken as quickly as I could bring the muzzle down from recoil and line up the next shot. This was a five shot group done in probably under five seconds, maybe six. Thus I was not aiming or bracing. Now the Sig does have a ported barrel and a recoil reduction guide rod. I factored these into the calculations based on the recoil rules. My groups doing this were about 3 inches, which is fairly close to as good as I get when I take time to aim (which says nothing good about my shooting).

Also I really doubt that I am inept enough that firing from the hip would send the bullets anywhere but downrange. That might not hit the target, but I will certainly get the direction right and they will hit the backstop. Though point shooting is absolutely something that requires a lot of practice.

buzzard