Problems with firearms?

[Spatula]

Combat is lethal ... with the MDT saves and average damage of weapons, characters can and will get killed.

Welll... characters can and will get knocked down to -1. You're not going to get a lot of out-and-out kills except perhaps when you score a crit against someone with single-digit HP.

Average damage for most guns is not that great, unless perhaps you're playing in an FX-heavy campaign. Crits are hard to get (no Improved Crit except as a class ability, no keen weapons), and because of the lack of damage modifiers, have a decent chance of not causing a lot of harm.

 

[Spatula]

If you want to "spray" an opponent and be more likely to hit, I suggest using Autofire. (Maybe a house-rule that you can autofire just a 5 ft square if you have the Burst Fire feat?) Unless your opponent has Evasion they will take damage. (One of my GMs hates Autofire because it's not realistic to use so many Fast villains.)

Getting hit by autofire results in a DC 15 Reflex save to completely negate the damage. Evasion does not enter into the equation (nor armor, as is often noted). As the level of your foes increase, it becomes less and less useful, unfortunately - DC 15 isn't that hard to make by mid-levels.

 

[swrushing]

Well, that's, uh ... interesting. Tell me, what's the longest time you spent resolving that one autofire attack? Or does the 10-ammo limit takes up one of the attacks you can do?

The autofire attack is a single full round action attack.

the largest volley i have seen used in play emptied a 30 round clip, one die roll to hit (10 rounds), 10 more rounds to score the hit, one damage roll, then another damage roll since the enemy was still up. So a net of three rolls. How long? I dont really recall... maybe 20-30 seconds.

This was for the M16 guy, the P90 guys have 50 round clips so they could take longer.

 

[VirgilCaine]

Bullets designed to actually shatter on impact, dum-dum rounds, are fairly rare as well as being outlawed by the Geneva Conventions.

I thought Dum-dums were just an attempt to have a hollowpoint-esque effect?
Some British troops in India, I thinkm, modified some bullets so the tip of the bullet wasn't jacketed, and thus the lead could spread better--but it didn't work well, so they stopped doing it. IIRC, anyway.

 

[argo]

BTW I think a sword hit certainly ought to do more damage than a bullet in almost all circumstances. ... If a longsword does d8 damage, no way a 9mm pistol should do 2d6.

Except that that is just the _base_ damage die. Consider this example.

Guy with longsword (holding it two-handed) and 16 Str. Power attack for 2. Does 1d8 + 8 for an average of 12.

Guy with pistol, 10 in every stat. Does 2d6 for an average of 6.

In other words a guy with talent (abilities) tranning (feats/abilities) and experience (levels/BAB to spare) can easily do as much or more "damage" with a meele weapon as some mook with a gun. But in a contest between two mooks, one with a sword and one with a gun, the one with the gun will win. That seems to be perfectly "realistic" to me.

There is a reason why the gun, and not the sword, is called "the great equalizer".

 

[ledded]

Except that that is just the _base_ damage die. Consider this example.

Guy with longsword (holding it two-handed) and 16 Str. Power attack for 2. Does 1d8 + 8 for an average of 12.

Guy with pistol, 10 in every stat. Does 2d6 for an average of 6.

In other words a guy with talent (abilities) tranning (feats/abilities) and experience (levels/BAB to spare) can easily do as much or more "damage" with a meele weapon as some mook with a gun. But in a contest between two mooks, one with a sword and one with a gun, the one with the gun will win. That seems to be perfectly "realistic" to me.

There is a reason why the gun, and not the sword, is called "the great equalizer".

I agree completely, and it reinforces the point that a guy with a sword can be a viable alternative, but he has to be really good at it to make a go. A melee expert can rule the combat with *average* damage being much higher even against much bigger guns (weapon specialization, power attack, two-handed weapon use, etc all raise damage) even if the bigger guns have higher *potential* damage, as long as he can get close before he gets gunned down of course

Also, the only point I disagree on is that the gun guy will always win... sure, it's pretty much more likely in 99% of the cases, but I've known a sword practitioner that could very feasibly get his sword out and put a man down before he got the pistol out of the holster if the encounter started close up. But that surely is not an 'average' guy.

 

[Spatula]

Except that that is just the _base_ damage die. Consider this example.

Guy with longsword (holding it two-handed) and 16 Str. Power attack for 2. Does 1d8 + 8 for an average of 12.

Guy with pistol, 10 in every stat. Does 2d6 for an average of 6.

Average of 2d6 is actually 7 (3.5 * 2). And the sword damage is 1d8+6 (Modern doesn't give the 2-for-1 PA when using two-handed weapons), average of 10.5.

But to reinforce your point, the melee classes in Modern (Strong & Martial Artist) get +1 BAB/level, and they are the ONLY classes to get that. So they will have BAB to spare for power attack. Several melee weapons also have increased threat ranges (or, for the martial artist, feats can increase the threat range and multiplier), making crits more likely. The fixed bonus damage one gets when using melee weapons (from STR, PA, etc.) is worth a lot more than extra dice (like from Double Tap) when it comes to crits. I'd rather have 2d8+12 than 6d6. The average damage is actually the same (21), but the sword in this case does at least 14 damage, and crits twice as often.

Come to think of it, is the extra damage from Double Tap and Burst Fire even multiplied on a crit?

EDIT: Just looked it up, and the extra dice of damage from Double Tap and Burst Fire do not get multiplied.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

I drew up a career soldier to illustrate some of the math for the use of Burst Fire.

Career Soldier, Strong Hero 3/Soldier 3, CR 6, Medium Humanoid (human), HD 3d8+3d10+12, hp 45, Mas 14, Init +2, Spd 25 ft., Defense 22 (+2 Dex, +6 tactical vest, +4 class), BAB/Grap +5/+7, Atk brawl +8 melee (1d6+3, nonlethal) or rifle-butt +7 melee (1d6+3) or M16 +8 ranged (2d8+2) or burst fire +4 ranged (4d8+2) or frag grenade +7 ranged touch; S/R 5 ft./5 ft., SV Fort +6, Ref +5, Will +3; AP 3; Str 14, Dex 15, Con 14, Int 10, Wis 13, Cha 8

Occupation: Military (bonus class skills: Hide, Survival, bonus feat: Personal Firearms Proficiency)
Skills: Nah, this is just for the math.
Feats: Advanced Firearms Proficiency, Armor Proficiency (light, medium), Brawl, Burst Fire, Personal Firearms Proficiency
Talents (Strong Hero): Extreme Effort, Melee Smash.

As you can see here, a soldier using Burst Fire (+4 attack bonus) has almost no chance of hitting Defense 22 (10% chance, assuming no range or cover penalties), and even with a normal attack has a 40% chance of hitting.

At higher levels this is less of a problem, since Defense does not scale as quickly as attack bonuses (unless, perhaps, you're a Fast hero wielding a heavy melee weapon).

 

[Spatula]

As you can see here, a soldier using Burst Fire (+4 attack bonus) has almost no chance of hitting Defense 22 (10% chance, assuming no range or cover penalties), and even with a normal attack has a 40% chance of hitting.

That's 15% (18-20) and 35% (14-20) chance, respectively.

 

[Ranger REG]

The autofire attack is a single full round action attack.

the largest volley i have seen used in play emptied a 30 round clip, one die roll to hit (10 rounds), 10 more rounds to score the hit, one damage roll, then another damage roll since the enemy was still up. So a net of three rolls. How long? I dont really recall... maybe 20-30 seconds.

This was for the M16 guy, the P90 guys have 50 round clips so they could take longer.

And what about belt-fed MG? (SAW?)