Problems with firearms?

[S'mon]

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 with your point that in considering relative damage, one needs to consider typical examples of use. Eg on the LAW thread, people seemed happy with the idea that a direct hit from a LAW missile did 10d6 dmg, or 35 hp, and compared that to a greatsword's average 7hp dmg. I pointed out that a power-attacking high level fighter can easiy do 40-50 damage/hit with a greatsword. IMC (modern/D&D crossover) I used a realistic damage scale for weapons, so a direct LAW hit does around 350 damage/hit (100d6), a direct RPG-7 hit does around 200 dmg/hit, and so on.

I wouldn't regard your d6+8 longsword guy as a _typical_ case, though. Typical for me would probably be STR 13, 1-handed wielder doing d8+1, or average 5.5/hit. Typical greatsword damage IMC would be around 2d6+2, or 9 dmg/hit. IMC a 9mm pistol round does 1d6 dmg, or average 3.5/hit, equivalent to a shortsword thrust by a wielder of average strength. I think that's perfectly reasonable. A 5.56mm rifle FMJ round does 2d6 dmg, a 7.56mm does I think 3d6+1, a .50 Browning or Barrett type rifle round does 8d6, and so on - 30mm autocannon does I think 16d6.

I'm basing damage on the result of a direct hit to a human, so inherently non-fatal scratches are ignored, assumed to be 'misses'. From figures I've seen, about 50% of all 7.56mm hits to unarmoured humans are fatal; about 25% of 5.56mm hits are. Can't recall data for 9mm pistol hits but I'm sure it's much lower, I suspect around 5%. For .50 it's well over 90% fatal, though some people survive - in D&D terms, the ones with lots of hp & a low damage roll. No human being survives a direct LAW hit, though.

I think the d20 hit point system is already cinematic enough, without high-hp high-Fort characters being almost invulnerable to weapons - in cinema terms I prefer 'Saving Private Ryan' type combat to 'Desperado'. Heroic PCs can be made hard to hit by level-related boosts to their AC, but IMO should still fear being hit by heavy weapons. They should fear large amounts of autofire, but real (unarmoured) people have kept on fighting after being hit by 16+ small-calibre bullets so I'm prepared to allow high level PCs to do the same.

 

[ledded]

<snip>. IMC (modern/D&D crossover) I used a realistic damage scale for weapons, so a direct LAW hit does around 350 damage/hit (100d6), a direct RPG-7 hit does around 200 dmg/hit, and so on.

I totally agree with you here. A direct hit from a LAW/RPG should do a boatload more damage to a person (while being scaled for vehicles, etc). My quesiton is, why did you rate a LAW so much higher in damage potential than an RPG-7, out of curiosity?

I wouldn't regard your d6+8 longsword guy as a _typical_ case, though. Typical for me would probably be STR 13, 1-handed wielder doing d8+1, or average 5.5/hit. Typical greatsword damage IMC would be around 2d6+2, or 9 dmg/hit. IMC a 9mm pistol round does 1d6 dmg, or average 3.5/hit, equivalent to a shortsword thrust by a wielder of average strength. I think that's perfectly reasonable. A 5.56mm rifle FMJ round does 2d6 dmg, a 7.56mm does I think 3d6+1, a .50 Browning or Barrett type rifle round does 8d6, and so on - 30mm autocannon does I think 16d6.

1d6 for a 9mm? You do realize that it makes it nearly impossible to kill anyone, even low-hp ordinaries, with a shot from a handgun don't you? With average damage, bullets would be bouncing off of most everyone who was hit with one.

That's quite a difference in scaling for the assault rifle ammo, though maybe a bit more balanced. I agree that the .50 cal should be around in that range, or higher.

I'm basing damage on the result of a direct hit to a human, so inherently non-fatal scratches are ignored, assumed to be 'misses'. From figures I've seen, about 50% of all 7.56mm hits to unarmoured humans are fatal; about 25% of 5.56mm hits are. Can't recall data for 9mm pistol hits but I'm sure it's much lower, I suspect around 5%. For .50 it's well over 90% fatal, though some people survive - in D&D terms, the ones with lots of hp & a low damage roll. No human being survives a direct LAW hit, though.

Just for curiosity's sake, I'd like to see where those figures came from. If you are basing your damage ratings for handguns off of those, I think you may be short-sheeting a lot of firearms with those numbers, especially when you are apparantly keeping melee weapon damage (and crit ranges) where they are (a wooden stick does the same die as a 9mm Glock, even more if the user of the stick has a positive strength modifier).

For example, if the average human has, say, 6 hit points, then on average even a 2d6 damage would barely put them to negative. Using a 1d6 9mm it would be near-mathematically impossible to kill someone, and darn near unlikely to do them lasting harm if you scored a crit :\

I think the d20 hit point system is already cinematic enough, without high-hp high-Fort characters being almost invulnerable to weapons - in cinema terms I prefer 'Saving Private Ryan' type combat to 'Desperado'. Heroic PCs can be made hard to hit by level-related boosts to their AC, but IMO should still fear being hit by heavy weapons. They should fear large amounts of autofire, but real (unarmoured) people have kept on fighting after being hit by 16+ small-calibre bullets so I'm prepared to allow high level PCs to do the same.

Well, with those ridiculously low handgun damage ratings it shouldnt be very hard (just kidding)

Seriously, if you were going to be more of a 'grim and gritty' I would have thought that you would scale *up* damage from all weapons and not just the heaviest ones. While it is true that there are quite a few accounts of people being hit multiple times by firearms fire and surviving, there are also quite a few historical accounts of men being hit numerous times by melee weapons and surviving, even after losing hands or parts of other extremeties. More appropriately, there are quite a few modern examples of folks getting shot once with a handgun and flat out being dead soon after.

 

[S'mon]

I totally agree with you here. A direct hit from a LAW/RPG should do a boatload more damage to a person (while being scaled for vehicles, etc). My quesiton is, why did you rate a LAW so much higher in damage potential than an RPG-7, out of curiosity?


1d6 for a 9mm? You do realize that it makes it nearly impossible to kill anyone, even low-hp ordinaries, with a shot from a handgun don't you? With average damage, bullets would be bouncing off of most everyone who was hit with one.

That's quite a difference in scaling for the assault rifle ammo, though maybe a bit more balanced. I agree that the .50 cal should be around in that range, or higher.


Just for curiosity's sake, I'd like to see where those figures came from. If you are basing your damage ratings for handguns off of those, I think you may be short-sheeting a lot of firearms with those numbers, especially when you are apparantly keeping melee weapon damage (and crit ranges) where they are (a wooden stick does the same die as a 9mm Glock, even more if the user of the stick has a positive strength modifier).

For example, if the average human has, say, 6 hit points, then on average even a 2d6 damage would barely put them to negative. Using a 1d6 9mm it would be near-mathematically impossible to kill someone, and darn near unlikely to do them lasting harm if you scored a crit :\

Well, with those ridiculously low handgun damage ratings it shouldnt be very hard (just kidding)

Seriously, if you were going to be more of a 'grim and gritty' I would have thought that you would scale *up* damage from all weapons and not just the heaviest ones. While it is true that there are quite a few accounts of people being hit multiple times by firearms fire and surviving, there are also quite a few historical accounts of men being hit numerous times by melee weapons and surviving, even after losing hands or parts of other extremeties. More appropriately, there are quite a few modern examples of folks getting shot once with a handgun and flat out being dead soon after.

1. Re LAWs and RPG-7s - a modern LAW will around twice as much armoured plate as an RPG-7, eg according to Directory of the World's Weapons (1993) a LAW 80's penetration is over 600mm, to 330mm for an RPG-7, 375mm for an RPG-18. Considering how much more a LAW costs, that's not surprising. You can argue that humans aren't made of armoured plate, but tanks are, and I like to keep everything on the same scale for ease of scaling up and down the line, so I can have MBTs fighting dragons, gods vs power-armoured Troopers, etc.

2. 9mm doing 1d6 - well admittedly this was set in 1e/2e when a spear also did 1d6 damage! However that's 2d6 on a critical, where a typical human has maybe 4hp. If you fall to -1 hp you're _dying_ so I don't see the problem you postulate. IRL many police and others who use handguns are contemptuous of 9mm parabellum because it _does_ lack stopping power, it often _won't_ put down the determined assailant, even with several hits, hence the continued popularity of .357 magnums, Colt .45s (firing .45ACP), and such. Of course most normal people who are shot 'assume' they're mortally wounded and immediately fall down (more of a Will than a Fort save), but immediate kills as a result of a 9mm hit in combat conditions are extremely rare.

Edit: How to calculate damage. GDW, responsible for Twilight:2000 and Traveller: Fire Fusion and Steel, have lots of info on this. Damage is affected by both size of bullet, which affects size of the wound trail, & kinetic energy imparted, which increases the size of the wound and 'shocks' the target. For rigid targets damage is largely proportional to the kinetic energy imparted to the target. Essentially, for a solid bullet hitting a human, damage can be worked out quite simply by finding the lateral cross-sectional area of the bullet, which is its diameter x length*. Tests indicate that, leaving aside questions of body armour, damage - stopping power - is almost wholly directly proportional to this figure. A bullet that's twice as long or twice as wide, does twice as much damage.

*Including length of the powder charge in the unfired round gives an even closer result.

 

[S'mon]

'Ridiculously low handgun damage' - well, I think it went up to a hefty 2d6+2 for a high-grain .44 Magnum round. You have to recall that this system features Recoil too, though - that .44 Magnum can be fired accurately only at a much slower rate than the 9mm pistol can, or by a much stronger firer. The 9mm pistol is easy to draw quickly, has much less recoil, and is an adequate deterrent in most cases. The .44 Magnum is much more likely to kill the target, but it's expensive, slow to draw, has high recoil, and a much smaller ammunition capacity. Police forces who issue their men with 9mm pistols don't actually _want_ them to kill anyone, they're supposed to arrest the perp after all - it's a (fairly) good compromise between (desired) effectiveness and (undesired) lethality. Similar arguments are made about the 5.56N rifle round - killing the enemy is not particularly desired, a wounded foe ties up far more enemy resources than one drilled by a 7.56N.

 

[ledded]

1. Re LAWs and RPG-7s - a modern LAW will around twice as much armoured plate as an RPG-7, eg according to Directory of the World's Weapons (1993) a LAW 80's penetration is over 600mm, to 330mm for an RPG-7, 375mm for an RPG-18. Considering how much more a LAW costs, that's not surprising. You can argue that humans aren't made of armoured plate, but tanks are, and I like to keep everything on the same scale for ease of scaling up and down the line, so I can have MBTs fighting dragons, gods vs power-armoured Troopers, etc.

I see. You are trying to compensate for d20's inability to deal with penetration in any shape or form by upping the damage.

2. 9mm doing 1d6 - well admittedly this was set in 1e/2e when a spear also did 1d6 damage! However that's 2d6 on a critical, where a typical human has maybe 4hp. If you fall to -1 hp you're _dying_ so I don't see the problem you postulate. IRL many police and others who use handguns are contemptuous of 9mm parabellum because it _does_ lack stopping power, it often _won't_ put down the determined assailant, even with several hits, hence the continued popularity of .357 magnums, Colt .45s (firing .45ACP), and such. Of course most normal people who are shot 'assume' they're mortally wounded and immediately fall down (more of a Will than a Fort save), but immediate kills as a result of a 9mm hit in combat conditions are extremely rare.

Well, I agree with your statements in principle, i.e. most people shot with smaller caliber weapons do not immediately 'die' on the spot, I still disagree with your damage ratings vs. melee weapons for it. If it works for you, that's great, but I think you should apply the same scale to many of your melee weapons (which is more my point). Data like you are collecting can be collected for 'short swords' and a variety of historical weapons, albeit with more difficulty. Basically, I'm not so much disagreeing with you on the actual damage as much as how it is scaled against most melee weapons. Plus the fact that other than reducing someone to below 0, most d20 games have little in the way for accounting for bleeding wounds, shock, or mental reactions to being hit with gunfire; often later bleeding, infection, improper care, or just shock on the scene will cause a gunshot victim's death moreso than the direct effects of the actual-on-the-spot gunshot. These arent modelled in d20 very well, and probably shouldnt be unless you really want that level of complexity.

Edit: How to calculate damage. GDW, responsible for Twilight:2000 and Traveller: Fire Fusion and Steel, have lots of info on this. Damage is affected by both size of bullet, which affects size of the wound trail, & kinetic energy imparted, which increases the size of the wound and 'shocks' the target. For rigid targets damage is largely proportional to the kinetic energy imparted to the target. Essentially, for a solid bullet hitting a human, damage can be worked out quite simply by finding the lateral cross-sectional area of the bullet, which is its diameter x length*. Tests indicate that, leaving aside questions of body armour, damage - stopping power - is almost wholly directly proportional to this figure. A bullet that's twice as long or twice as wide, does twice as much damage.

*Including length of the powder charge in the unfired round gives an even closer result.

Yes, this is true to a great extent, but I would take a look into more real-life resources on this subject like ballistic gelatin tests, etc for establishing variance between energy transfer, penetration, wound channel distribution, and the various other factors that can be measured instead of just relying on a gaming source (that is, if you havent already). Still, for gaming purposes, the aforementioned methods are sufficient for most folks, and while I may disagree somewhat it still sounds like you've done some actual homework, so I'll agree to disagree with you

'Ridiculously low handgun damage' - well, I think it went up to a hefty 2d6+2 for a high-grain .44 Magnum round

Sorry there , I was just joking as I mistakenly assumed you had scaled most of your handguns to the d20 Modern model, which you probably have not considering your stats for the .44.

 

[swrushing]

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

What about them? The question was what the longest time it has taken. In play we haven't had those used. In my game, the typical weapons are assault rifles, smgs, pistols and such, not the heavier weapons. Ammo capacities will rarely, if ever, exceed 50.

frankly, its has taken so little time, i would doubt that even if it took maybe 10 "volleys" (say 1 to-hit roll, 7 damage rolls, and possibly a wasted fire roll made by the player after i have moved on to the next guy) to drop the enemy it would take longer than, say 90 seconds. I mean, making a damage roll, asking "still up?" and rolling again takes very little time. (if you can count on your figners you don't actually have to stop and mark off shots between these steps, just mark them all off at the end.)

Is your concern that this mechanic will make combats take longer?

 

[Ranger REG]

Yes, that is my concern, especially a machinegun with 300 rounds.

 

[Psion]

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".

That's not because of the comparative damage so much as the fact that the guy with the gun has a better reach and can't effectively be blocked.

 

[swrushing]

Yes, that is my concern, especially a machinegun with 300 rounds.

Thats what i figured. So far, it has not happened that way in play. matter of fact, autofire is one of the quicker ways to drop an enemy.

if a guy takes 5 damage rolls to drop, and you are shooting him with normal fire, you need at least five to hit rolls and five damage rolls spread over multiple rounds during which its likely Ac values shifted a little due to modifiers. if you ever MISS, it requires even more rolls over more rounds.

With this autofire mechanic, and your 300 round machine gun, it would take one to-hit roll and five damage rolls to drop him over the course of a single round.

Thats going to resolve much quicker.

Again, in play, iirc the largest battle i have run so far was 4 pcs with about a dozen npcs on their side against 18 enemies. 3 of the PCs and about half the NPCs had autofire capable weapons. It was in a crowded hangar. The battle ran fairly quickly, taking a little over an hour to resolve. Far and away the longest single attack resolution came from two grenades (to hit roll, scatter, save for everyone in the radius, damage for everyone in radius) not from the autofire.

thats from IN PLAY results.

While we can ponder or fret over hypotheticals, the worry of this mechanic making combats last longer has not yet proven to be even a possibility, an "almost happened" or a comes close in actual play.

if you decide to try it in a real game, and your playtest shows it makes combats go longer, then definitely let me know.

 

[Aaron2]

With this autofire mechanic, and your 300 round machine gun, it would take one to-hit roll and five damage rolls to drop him over the course of a single round.

Thats going to resolve much quicker.

It seems to me that with this mechanic, an NPC (no matter how feeble) can kill any PC (no matter what level) automatically in one round if given enough amunition. That hardly sounds like fun from the PCs perspective.


Aaron