Quote:
Originally Posted by HANS
The problem with this, again, is that Dodge for firearms does NOT involve dodging the bullet. The speed of the projectile (or laser beam) is completely irrelevant. You dodge the line of sight of the shooter, really. You dodge his presentation (his aim). You move erratically. Again, all the discussions about the velocity of the bullet miss the point. The reason is that we KNOW that you cannot dodge a bullet by seeing the projectile and moving out of its way. However, we also KNOW that you can dodge the presentation and that you can make hitting yourself more difficult. That is Dodge. I concede that the terminology might be flawed, as it lumps it together with dodging things that you can, actually, evade this way (baseballs, spears, 40-mil grenades, etc), but it works.
Cheers
HANS
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Shooting at 600yds with an M1 Garand, looking through a spotting scope you could see the bullet travel by the air it displaces. If that were visible to the naked eye, you could likely dodge the bullet the same way (but more difficult) you could dodge an arrow.
The Dodge This rules include two things: a very difficult roll to spot the incoming projectile (penalized by -13 or more because tiny, tiny bullet) and a less-difficult roll to get out of its way assuming you can spot it.
You can easily see and spot slow-moving projectiles like axes and baseballs. You can see and avoid faster and smaller projectiles like arrows. I've seen video of a swordsman cutting an airsoft pellet in two, and you can dodge paintballs. At some point, this ability to see and avoid breaks down, and Dodge This lets that ability break down by applying larger and larger penalties to the perception and avoidance rolls.
It also introduces (or restates; I've seen similar concepts elsewhere) Evasive Movement, which is an attempt to generally make yourself harder to hit.
This article was born from several games with honest-to-goodness suspension of disbelief issues that nearly ruined those games for the players. I hit it from several directions - perception, tactical awareness, evasion, and pure avoidance.
I know - and acknowledged right there in the article - how the Dodge rules work in GURPS, or how they're supposed to work. I also know, from experience as well as repeated complaints here on these forums, where they break down. Dodge This addresses many, though perhaps not all (such as Kalzazz's observation about prediction shots and shotguns) of those complaints systematically, which allows GMs and players to customize their game to taste.