Using people as cover and bullet penetration in d20 modern

[D-rock]

I was curious if anybody has a system for figering out if a bullet will go through somebody. Take for example a situation where you incapacitate somebody and put their body between you and your enemies to use them as cover. I know I can give a cover bonus, but it seem unreasonable to think that every bullet shot by every gun will stop once it hits the person you are using as cover, and I don't mean just using AP rounds. It seam some high power rifles with bullets that don't deform as much on impact would also penetrate through, while pistol and shotgun rounds fired at a person wearing body armor almost never would. Also whould it hit you for as much damage, and how would your cover's body armor effect things.

 

[Crothian]

I didn't see any rules for it, but there should be. And not just for using people as cover. One can hide behind a table, but a decent gun should shoot through most normal tables. Same with doors and walls.

 

[D-rock]

You could give inanimate objects a break DC for smashing through it. Well I guess you could give one for people to, but that would be slightly more complicated. What would be a bullets equivelent strenght check to see if it could go through something. Also, it would be different than smashing through it because you only need to make a small hole. It isn't like a person smashing a door with a sludge hamer because the door would still be intact(well probably).

 

[Mr Fidgit]

another way to handle it may be by using the object's hardness and hit points as a factor, letting any damage caused by a weapon that exceeds the object's hit points to do the remainder of the damage to whatever is on the other side...

a person is standing behind a 'normal' wooden door (hardness 5, hp 10), using the door as three-quarters cover (+7 bonus to defense). the person's Defense is normally 15. if the shooter misses the person by a number in the range of the cover bonus (i.e. the shooter rolls a 15-21 - which would hit the person if they didn't have cover), he will strike the door instead. if the shooter's weapon damage exceeds the door's hardness and hit points (15), and extra damage is dealt to the target

in this example, most guns wouldn't be able to penetrate the door, but i think it still works well as an example. if you've ever seen old doors that are actually made of solid wood, i belive they could deflect or resist most damage from firearms. now, if you have doors in your apartment or house like mine, they aren't solid wood, and are really fairly flimsy (i've seen a guy punch through doors like this - with no damage to himself!)

 

[Crothian]

By going through the total HP of an object, you'd totally destroyed that object. A bullet through a door, does not totally destroy the door. Also, people get shoot a lot and the bullet goes through them, but they don't die becasue of it.

I'm thinking of pentrating the hardness and doing more then 10% damage. So a door with hardness of 5, 10hps would absorb the fiorst 6 (5 +1) points of damage that a bullet does and the rest would be applied to anything else in the bullets path.

 

[D-rock]

I have seen hunting rifles go through small trees, and even high calaber bullets shot from a pistol go through 2X4s although not always. Plus, when you bash in something reducing its hp you are destroying a much greater area than a small hole. You wouldn't need to blow the entire door out to hit something on the other side. ...hmmmm... maby it just has to do more damage than it hardness, but you would have to account for things of different thickness. Plus it wouldn't solve the problem with living things.

 

[D-rock]

I'm thinking of pentrating the hardness and doing more then 10% damage. So a door with hardness of 5, 10hps would absorb the fiorst 6 (5 +1) points of damage that a bullet does and the rest would be applied to anything else in the bullets path.

This idea isn't that bad, the only problem I see with it is that many of the guns would be able to punch through an inch of steel with a good damage roll with would require 13. Maby, for things more dense than wood you could require it pentrating the hardness and doing 20% or 30% of the totall hit points.

 

[Mr Fidgit]

By going through the total HP of an object, you'd totally destroyed that object

i've always considered doing the object's hit points in damage as penetrating it. if any object made of wood an inch thick would be destroyed if 15 points of damage was dealt, then a small chest, a desk, a door, a dining table and a banquet table would all be 'destroyed' equally by 15 points of damage

I'm thinking of pentrating the hardness and doing more then 10% damage

i don't think i would handle it like that. this way most handguns could fire through an inch of concrete (hardness 8, hit points 15 - 10 points to penetrate) on a good roll - not to mention Point Blank Shot and Weapon Specialization. even an inch steel would only be 13 points

it wouldn't solve the problem with living things.

i'm not sure there would be a way to do this with the current d20 system. maybe it could be done with a hit location chart - like, if someone gets hit by a bullet in the ribcage, the bullet's much less likely to come out the other side than if a person was hit the mid-abdomen...

 

[D-rock]

i've always considered doing the object's hit points in damage as penetrating it. if any object made of wood an inch thick would be destroyed if 15 points of damage was dealt, then a small chest, a desk, a door, a dining table and a banquet table would all be 'destroyed' equally by 15 points of damage

I think part of the problem is that destroying an object can mean a lot of things. It you were going to destroy a door so you could pass trough it you would have to destroy most of it unless you are going to squize through a small hole. It always seems just busting it open as sort of going through its break DC. I think reducing its hp to 0 dosn't mean you disintigrate the entire thing, it means you destroy enough of it where it is no longer functional as it was originaly attended. A chest would be smashed to splinters, A door/wall would have a hole large enough to walk through, a table might still have its legs and ends but the middle would be smashed.

Anyway having it just go through it hardness seems more realistic.

 

[D-rock]

Does anybody have a good idea what the hardness and hp of flesh are. It seems by its nature that it absorbs energy better than some solid substance. So maby 1 hardness with 10hp per inch of thickness. So say the average person is 10 inches thick you would need 11 hp for a normal bullet to go through him. Depending on what he was wearing it could be more. Not absolutly realistic, but it would stop some bullets.