Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Tenex

It would be more difficult, but you could extend a shotgun shell length (in the old days they were made out of paper). You could then fit it in a double barreled breech loading shotgun. An extended shell wouldn't fit in a Remington 870 or a box magazine, but there's no reason you couldn't put one in a breach loader.

I doubt it would blow up in your face if you kept the weight the same, but perhaps someone with more physics can opine on the effect of more volume. I leave it to someone else to conduct the real world experiment.

12G shotguns historically had shells up to 3.5" or so in the black powder era and I think heavy rifles of that bore may have gone up to 4", but the pressures of modern smokeless powders are much greater and I don't expect you can just extend the shell length indefinitely without issues with either chamber pressure or the materials strength of the casing.

There are probably engineering solutions available, but past a certain point, you're probably no longer modifying a 12G shell and shotgun, you're inventing a new round of the same caliber and a weapon to fire it.

In any case, I think a compact double-barrelled pistol shotgun, loaded with jacketed wooden stakes as large as it is possible to launch from a 12G shell, would be excellent weapons for dealing with many types of vampires from popular culture at close quarters, especially if they've been stunned or disoriented with other weapons first. Those weapons would just be almost entirely useless against anything else, as such light projectiles would be inaccurate and anemic compared to real slugs or bullets.

[Tenex]

Wooden baton rounds are commercially available for the shotgun, but they are expressly marketed as less lethal. Actually getting the penetration you want would require modification since the less lethal stuff is designed to not penetrate the body.

[dcarson]

Originally Posted by Tenex

Wooden baton rounds are commercially available for the shotgun, but they are expressly marketed as less lethal. Actually getting the penetration you want would require modification since the less lethal stuff is designed to not penetrate the body.

Make it pointy and fin stabilized and you up the odds. Baton rounds are lethal sometimes and IIRC are supposed to be fired at the ground in front of the crowd to bounce at leg height.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Tenex

Wooden baton rounds are commercially available for the shotgun, but they are expressly marketed as less lethal. Actually getting the penetration you want would require modification since the less lethal stuff is designed to not penetrate the body.

Originally Posted by dcarson

Make it pointy and fin stabilized and you up the odds. Baton rounds are lethal sometimes and IIRC are supposed to be fired at the ground in front of the crowd to bounce at leg height.

It's theoretically possible to make a wooden baton pointy and stabilise it in flight despite the front thus being the lightest part, but, again, it makes the projectile even lighter for a given OAL of the round and the functionality as a weapon thus even more anemic, outside a supernatural weakness to wooden stakes.

Basically, it becomes an ultra short range finishing weapon against vampires that need to be staked and is pretty suboptimal against any other opposition, especially anyone using real guns firing real bullets, from cover at reasonable infantry ranges.

If the vampires you are hunting are the 'cool' modern ones, wearing 'The Matrix'/'Vampire the Masquerade' chic of mirrored shades, leather long coats and assault rifles, as opposed to the more refined and aristocratic type, girded in a frilly dress shirt and hundreds of years of angst, you're probably in trouble.

[mr beer]

Does the stake have to be pure wood?

What I'm getting at, is could you make a sort of short fat crossbow bolt, fin stabilised and with a pellet of lead buried inside the wooden tip to make it heavier at the business end even though it's thinner there?

If you can get a 'stake thrower' to operate accurately at heart size targets up to even only 10 or 15 yards, it's going to be a one-shot, one-kill weapon in the hands of a Guns! slinging Monster Hunter.

Also it then becomes a less completely terrible backup weapon.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by mr beer

Does the stake have to be pure wood?

What I'm getting at, is could you make a sort of short fat crossbow bolt, fin stabilised and with a pellet of lead buried inside the wooden tip to make it heavier at the business end even though it's thinner there?

I've been assuming that a fair compromise would be to take a hollow cavity slug where the conical base is basically hollow, bore a much smaller hollow-point hole in front and insert a wooden 'stake' that is shaped like the hollow inside of the slug, with a sharp tip that fits into the small hollow at the tip of the slug.

You ought to be able to get a 250-300 grain slug that way, which will not be completely useless as a ballistic projectile and ought to allow a skilled user to get the wooden stake to the vampire heart, with a possible bonus of destroying a lot of tissue around it with the massively deforming lead slug.

Originally Posted by mr beer

If you can get a 'stake thrower' to operate accurately at heart size targets up to even only 10 or 15 yards, it's going to be a one-shot, one-kill weapon in the hands of a Guns! slinging Monster Hunter.

Also it then becomes a less completely terrible backup weapon.

True.

I've always assumed that hunting Monster Hunter monsters required the upper bounds of human capabilities as pretty much the cost of entry. Without being at least as good at the very best special operators who have ever lived, humans without supernatural abilities basically have no chance to survive in a career that requires them to actively hunt creatures that are at least as intelligent as humans, but also much stronger, significantly faster and cannot be stopped except with massive firepower or exotic anti-supernatural weapons.

The ways movies and modern TV shows portray vampires and werewolves, they appear to have ST 25+, DX 15+, HT 15+, Basic Speed 12+, Dodge 16+ and sometimes the ability to run at highway speeds and jump high enough to basically count as flying. And they usually have Supernatural Durability and/or Regeneration (Fast), which is mitigated only by the specific countermeasures that kill or incapacitate them. Facing that is pretty much a death sentence if you can't reliably hit the heart at ten yards, assuming you get time to shoot.

If you're lucky enough to be facing the kind of movie or TV vampires and werewolves that are stunned for a couple of seconds by massive trauma from non-exotic bullets, at least if they are powerful enough, the go-to tactic will be to shoot the monsters with assault or battle rifles and, if necessary, dispatch them while they are stunned with shotguns loaded with exotic loads.

[lwcamp]

Originally Posted by Icelander

I've been assuming that a fair compromise would be to take a hollow cavity slug where the conical base is basically hollow, bore a much smaller hollow-point hole in front and insert a wooden 'stake' that is shaped like the hollow inside of the slug, with a sharp tip that fits into the small hollow at the tip of the slug.

You ought to be able to get a 250-300 grain slug that way, which will not be completely useless as a ballistic projectile and ought to allow a skilled user to get the wooden stake to the vampire heart, with a possible bonus of destroying a lot of tissue around it with the massively deforming lead slug.

Penetration usually depends primarily on sectional density. So to get the same penetration as a shotgun slug, you would need to launch a stake with the same diameter and the same weight. So with lead something like 11 g/cm^3 and a good hardwood at more like 0.7 g/cm^3, the stake would need to be about 16 times as long. A shotgun slug is roughly 2 cm in length, so we are looking at a 30 cm or so stake. I figure what you do is jack a special "stake holder" round, sans the stake, into the chamber. Then you push the stake (with a specially modified latching base) through the barrel starting at the muzzle until it locks in place in the shell. Aim at the vamp, shoot through the heart, and BOOM! staked vamp.

And yeah, you would need to engineer the stake for forward stability in flight. Make the front end out of ironwood and the back out of fir or something, to get a shuttlecock like effect keeping the point forward.

Originally Posted by Icelander

I've always assumed that hunting Monster Hunter monsters required the upper bounds of human capabilities as pretty much the cost of entry. Without being at least as good at the very best special operators who have ever lived, humans without supernatural abilities basically have no chance to survive in a career that requires them to actively hunt creatures that are at least as intelligent as humans, but also much stronger, significantly faster and cannot be stopped except with massive firepower or exotic anti-supernatural weapons.

The ways movies and modern TV shows portray vampires and werewolves, they appear to have ST 25+, DX 15+, HT 15+, Basic Speed 12+, Dodge 16+ and sometimes the ability to run at highway speeds and jump high enough to basically count as flying. And they usually have Supernatural Durability and/or Regeneration (Fast), which is mitigated only by the specific countermeasures that kill or incapacitate them. Facing that is pretty much a death sentence if you can't reliably hit the heart at ten yards, assuming you get time to shoot.

I always wondered how monster hunter and urban fantasy genres dealt with human heroes like Beowulf, Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Herakles, Lancelot, and other folks from legend. You know, the guys* who took on monsters and beat the snot out of them with nothing more than brawn, wits, and some sharp bits of steel (and not even that, in the Beowulf vs. Grendel matchup). Sure, Gilgamesh and Herakles were demigods, so maybe they don't count, but the rest were just mortal men who went toe to toe with these superhuman beasts and came out on top.

Luke

* In the legend they are usually guys. Off the top of my head I can't think of any female monster hunters who operated without divine grace or witchery doing their dirty work for them. I guess I just have to conclude that our ancestors were irredeemable sexists.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by lwcamp

Penetration usually depends primarily on sectional density. So to get the same penetration as a shotgun slug, you would need to launch a stake with the same diameter and the same weight. So with lead something like 11 g/cm^3 and a good hardwood at more like 0.7 g/cm^3, the stake would need to be about 16 times as long. A shotgun slug is roughly 2 cm in length, so we are looking at a 30 cm or so stake. I figure what you do is jack a special "stake holder" round, sans the stake, into the chamber. Then you push the stake (with a specially modified latching base) through the barrel starting at the muzzle until it locks in place in the shell. Aim at the vamp, shoot through the heart, and BOOM! staked vamp.

And yeah, you would need to engineer the stake for forward stability in flight. Make the front end out of ironwood and the back out of fir or something, to get a shuttlecock like effect keeping the point forward.

I expect that getting the same penetration as a solid lead alloy slug would be unrealistic. I'd settle for decent penetration, enough to reach a human heart from an angle. 10" or so would usually do it.

There's also the fact that with the same amount of powder a 250-300 grain single-cavity slug filled with a tiny wooden stake will reach a higher velocity than a 660 grain solid slug. The SD and thus penetration will be less, but we're still probably looking at a reasonable Dmg, much higher than with any all-wood projectile that a shotgun could launch.

Originally Posted by lwcamp

I always wondered how monster hunter and urban fantasy genres dealt with human heroes like Beowulf, Gilgamesh, Odysseus, Herakles, Lancelot, and other folks from legend. You know, the guys* who took on monsters and beat the snot out of them with nothing more than brawn, wits, and some sharp bits of steel (and not even that, in the Beowulf vs. Grendel matchup). Sure, Gilgamesh and Herakles were demigods, so maybe they don't count, but the rest were just mortal men who went toe to toe with these superhuman beasts and came out on top.

Luke

* In the legend they are usually guys. Off the top of my head I can't think of any female monster hunters who operated without divine grace or witchery doing their dirty work for them. I guess I just have to conclude that our ancestors were irredeemable sexists.

These are high point value superheroes who, like Batman, claim they don't have superpowers while ignoring physics, human limits and the laws of probability.

Stat them like PCs of 600+ point games.

[Icelander]

The Leader 50 A1 in .50 BMG seems to be commercially available by now.

It's about the OAL of a typical battle rifle and just a couple of inches longer than an M16 and it weighs about 21-22 lbs. fully loaded.

Depending on how well the recoil is managed compared to heavier .50 BMG rifles, it certainly looks like an ideal weapon for a monster hunting gunslinger who wants a shoulder weapon with some real authority.

[Kale]

What about good 'ol .303 Mark VII full of wood pulp? :)