Problems with firearms?

[Quasqueton]

"Technically, it does have to do with limiting the waste of ammo. When firing on automatic, you get a diminishing return on the number of bullets fired (with rifles and such). After the first few rounds, the following bullets go wild. It is the first few rounds that score and are useful."

So, when you don't have Burst Fire feat, then only the first bullet count (resolve as a normal attack) and the remaining two or four bullets are wasted (i.e., go wild).

Sounds possibly reasonable. It would mean that if one doesn't have the feat, burst mode is no more useful than firing semi-automatic.

With Burst Fire feat, you have a greater degree of control, thus you do more damage.

Sounds reasonable too.

But what I'm getting from this thread is that, saturating an area should guarantee greater damage. Ergo, autofire rules is useless. Correct me if I'm wrong.

I wouldn't say the autofire rule is useless, just the wrong mechanic. Definitely, saturating an area or individual target with more fire should do more damage. Whether damage in the game means more bullets hitting the target (HP = physical ability to take punishment), or more effort by the target to dodge (HP = turning hits to grazes).

Quasqueton

 

[Ranger REG]

So what is your preferred autofire rules? That DC should equal attack roll? Or DC equal 10 + autofire shooter's BAB + Dex mod?

Or should we completely throw away the standard autofire rules and start from scratch and a different approach (not as area attack rule with Reflex saving throw)?

 

[zenld]

Actually thats a good question.

We have a lot of whats wrong, what have you done to fix the problem?

Very curious to see how this one gets resolved.

zen

 

[S'mon]

I'll be using the Twilight-2000 d6 rule in my modern d20 games, I've used it before and it gives autofire the right 'feel'.

BTW I think a sword hit certainly ought to do more damage than a bullet in almost all circumstances. The tissue damage from a sword compared to a bullet is far higher. Admittedly bullets do often cause psychological shock and a fall-down reflex in people unused to being shot, probably more than melee weapons do, and high velocity rounds cause bone-shrapnel effects, but the basic rule is the bigger the wound, the more the damage. If a longsword does d8 damage, no way a 9mm pistol should do 2d6.

 

[Ranger REG]

I dunno. A longsword can cause great slashing injury to the ordinary person with one good strike you can penetrate and damage internal organs, but it doesn't have the same power that a bullet fired from a gun has when it pierce and penetrate deeply into the same person.

 

[ledded]

Sounds possibly reasonable. It would mean that if one doesn't have the feat, burst mode is no more useful than firing semi-automatic.

And having done this a couple times, I can tell you it takes some adjustment (i.e. training) to make burst/automatic fire actually effective.

I wouldn't say the autofire rule is useless, just the wrong mechanic. Definitely, saturating an area or individual target with more fire should do more damage. Whether damage in the game means more bullets hitting the target (HP = physical ability to take punishment), or more effort by the target to dodge (HP = turning hits to grazes).
Quasqueton

Why? Why should it? I mean, I understand that you are throwing a lot more lead down range, but what makes it so much more damaging to *one* person in an area that is being sprayed? In game terms, if a person is taking up a amount of an area essentially equivalent to 5 square feet (his square) and you fire 10 bullets into 4 of those squares, what makes him that much more likely to take a ton of damage? Is it because we are saying that the whole automatic stream of bullets impacts the same small area? What if there are multiple people in that 10x10 area, how do you decide who gets more damage? Do they all take a ton more damage just because it's cool autofire, much more so than if someone carefully aimed using semi-automatic fire but took longer?

So the rules as they are say Burst fire is saturaing an individual with fire from an automatic weapon. If you want your never-been-trained folks to be able to do it, just remove the restriction and let the feat just be something that lowes the penalties. (-6 to burst without the feat, -4 or -3 with it?). If that isnt palatible, reduce or remove the penalties even more.

Just off the top of my head, what is sounds like is that we need 2 different types of autofire. One is the spray-and-pray that is modeled by d20 Modern... fire into an area attempting to hit or suppress one or more enemies; slinging lead with a weapon that has a high rate of fire in such a way that making aiming individual bullets at each target problematic at best. Second is targeted autofire, you want to hold down the trigger and spray, say, 10 bullets or 15 bullets or 100 bullets at *that guy* or *that door*, unlike a Burst Fire attack in that you are not trying to aim carefully and just pull off a controlled, short burst which for some silly reason requires training to do (taking the feat).

Regular autofire: keep it the same, or add an additional die of damage for the extra bullets spraying around?

So targeted autofire, do you go with an opposed roll (the dodging effect) as described above, or give in a penalty to hit (-4? -6?) but do an extra 3 die of damage? What do the current autofire-hating folks think?

 

[S'mon]

I dunno. A longsword can cause great slashing injury to the ordinary person with one good strike you can penetrate and damage internal organs, but it doesn't have the same power that a bullet fired from a gun has when it pierce and penetrate deeply into the same person.

Uh, no.

 

[S'mon]

So targeted autofire, do you go with an opposed roll (the dodging effect) as described above, or give in a penalty to hit (-4? -6?) but do an extra 3 die of damage? What do the current autofire-hating folks think?

In my previous games, for targeted autofire I've used noramal d20 to-hit rules, but affected by recoil where the burst recoil exceeds firer's Strength, a burst having more recoil than a single-shot. Eg: If the firer with STR 10 shoots 2 10-round targetted bursts at the target, and each burst has Recoil 7, the total recoil is 14, so both bursts are -4 to hit (or you could treat it as a single 20-round burst). On a hit, a die is rolled equal to the number of bullets in the burst, eg a d10 for a 10 round burst, and that's the number of bullets that actually hit, each doing normal damage - the first bullet can also threat to Crit. This works well for skilled users - eg a police weapons specialist with an MP5 will use a targetted burst vs a terrorist to get an almost guaranteed put-down. For most users and in most circumstances, saturation fire using the Twilight-2000 style d6 rule is preferrable - typically each '6' is a hit, spread amongst the targets in the area; or else all 6s are hits vs the primary target, with half the bullets that missed rolled again, and any 6s on those are hits to nearby targets. It works brilliantly in my experience.

 

[SweeneyTodd]

Interesting thread. You guys have raised a bunch of issues I hadn't thought about. (I really want to try the d6=hit method, as I see a lot of autofire sprayed around in my games.)

I'm not trying to be realistic in my game, so I guess it doesn't affect me too much, but I've noticed that the one player who's most interested in playing "by the rules" is also the resident gun-bunny. I'd be curious what his input is on this.

 

[slingbld]

I dunno. A longsword can cause great slashing injury to the ordinary person with one good strike you can penetrate and damage internal organs, but it doesn't have the same power that a bullet fired from a gun has when it pierce and penetrate deeply into the same person.

Actually whne talking about the stopping power of firearms it's referring to the system shock caused by the sudden displacement of tissue. A bullet can do quite a bit of damage & shock.
Now when you look at a large, leathal melee weapon such as a longsword. The actualy amount of tissue damaged by a blade passing through a human is substantially more than that of a bullet. The speed of the sword does not cause the massive displacement but the volume of damage the sword causes can generally be considered enough to make up for the lack of the shock.
Also to consider, a slashing weapon (like a falchion) can cause a would several inches deep, running the length of the slash. If this slash is left to right, running across the midsection of a human, this can easily be enough to partialy disembowl the victim.
Now look at a hollow tip round. It's designed to break apart & cause massive damage throughout the area it strikes,this is where you get the examples of a small entry wound yet a massive exit wound.
These are four examples of what mardern firearms & archaic melee weapons are capable of. If you notice, each has an amazing ability to destroy the human body. Each in a different way. But I feel it is wrong to say that one is more or less effective than the other (modern vs archaic) at destroying tissue. The real advantage is not in the amount of damaged caused but rather in the ability to cause it a great range.
Now: You throw in automatic weapons & the modern firearm will always be more leathal in that for every slash or stab of a sword, you can fire multiple rounds, with higher rates of fire proving even more leathal (mini-guns anyone??)

Stepping of the soapbox now.