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Old 03-15-2016, 04:10 PM   #51
Icelander
 
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

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Honestly, a competent shooter ought to do fine with the .30-.30. Especially if they only face black bears, brown/grizzly bears are unlikely in most of the lower 48 states in the U.S. in 1986.
Normal bears won't attack in hordes either. Assume in this case that the Godless killing machines will pull no punches. Grizzlies with grey wolf scouts, all of whom are fiercer and more ornery than feral hogs crossed with wolverines. Also hungry. So very, very hungry.
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Old 03-15-2016, 04:25 PM   #52
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

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Or just get an AR in the old standby big game cartridge, the 458 WM.
http://www.petersenshunting.com/gear...nemo-omen-458/
That's obviously awesome.
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Old 09-12-2018, 11:29 AM   #53
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Default AR-10 in 45 Raptor

So, has anyone statted out the 45 Raptor round?

While it will not work form an AR-15 type rifle, which is certainly a complication, the ability to fit 20-rd in a standard AR-10 type magazine is a huge increase in firepower compared to .450 Bushmaster, .458 SOCOM or .50 Beowulf.

Sure, using the AR-10 as the basis means that the weapon will be larger than a carbine made from AR-15 components, but the US legal barrel length limit of 16" means that all the AR-15 carbines will have Bulk -5 anyway, meaning that the size difference is abstracted away in game terms. Only if the characters have the means to either wait for the paperwork to register their firearms as SBRs or the inclination to ignore the legalities can they take advantage of the reduced profile of the AR-15 compared to AR-10, chambering a 10"-14.5" barrel AR-15 in one of the monster hunting calibers.

I believe that the in the real world, big bore semi-automatic rifles and carbines may be a solution looking for a problem, but in a world with supernaturally tough critters, the ability to rapid-fire 240-400 grain expanding projectiles at rifle velocities suddenly becomes very valuable. Sure, .308 well placed will do for nearly any realistic hunting, but against regenerating werewolves or nigh-indestructible vampires, tulpas or shoggoths, sometimes you need a weapon shooting at .308 velocity with a bullet that is at least 150% the mass of a .308 and expands to 0.6-1.0 inch diameter.
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Old 09-12-2018, 03:26 PM   #54
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Default Big Horn Armory AR500

The Big Horn Armory AR500 rifle and the 10" barrel pistol version thereof look pretty interesting, especially if a character makes his own bullets and needs big ones so he can make hollow-points with enough volume in the cavity to fit a dose of silver nitrate, wolfsbane or whatever chemical happens to be toxic to the critter du jour. He can use the same bullets for the .500 Auto Mag and, say, a back-up handgun in .500 S&W Magnum.
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Old 09-12-2018, 03:44 PM   #55
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Default Old School Lever Gun and Revolver is New Again

Of course, there is something to be said for the traditional Old West armament of a lever-action rifle and revolver that share ammunition, especially in a Monster Hunting setting where magic interferes with new-fangled technology or vice versa.

And thanks to modern materials and manufacturing, now we can feel up to any size of monster with a simple trapper carbine and revolver... chambered in .500 S&W Magnum, thanks to Big Horn Armory and their Model 89 rifle or carbine. For those who prefer the .460 S&W, get the Model 90.

The fact that specialty hollow-cavity supernatural payload bullets made for .460 S&W can also be used in 45 Raptor, .454 Casull and .45 Colt loadings means that you'll only need one really odd custom made bullet mould for your entire team of cryptozoologist/hunters.
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Old 09-13-2018, 05:59 PM   #56
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

I admit this discussion baffles me because it seems more about 'what is the most powerful rifle a human could shoot based on modern cartridges' rather than actual monster hunting. In the former it's all about producing the biggest kinetic energy value within human recoil tolerance limits, whereas the latter is more complicated.

If you want to figure out what the biggest rifle a human could fire is you need to decide things like 'how complicated do I want my weapon to get and do I care about reliability or mechanical complexity' and 'do I need to be mobile or can I lie down'. In either case there are a lot of things you can do to generate high KE guns without making recoil a problem. If you can lay down, you might go with a 'recoilless' concept and/or a really good muzzle brake (like the RT-20. If you're looking for technological doodads you could use a variation on recoilles known as RAVEN. If you need your rifleman to be more mobile then it gets trickier, but you still have muzzle brakes and/or soft-recoil/fire-out-of-battery concepts (but each has its own issues) alongside various 'hyperburst' or 'balanced recoil' concepts (although the latter I hear only works with SCHV to be truly effective. And the former is only useful for burst firing.. and both are vastly more complex guns.)

If you're actually hunting monsters, its going to depend on what you're hunting and what its vulnerabilities are. Not all monsters will require antimaterial guns, and stuff that makes good AP typically makes for poor wounding unless you get pretty complex (read: expensive), creative or high-tech with the ammo. Something that is largely fleshy but regenerative (trolls, vampires, etc.) might need less AP and more wounding potential (fragmenting rounds, buckshot ammo, etc.) to make large holes and with ammo designed to inhibit regenerative properties. More biological/less magical 'monsters' would probably be different, and large monsters vs small monsters is yet another category (although something dinosaur sized might need something closer to 'antimaterial rifle' or 'man portable autocannon...)

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Originally Posted by lwcamp View Post
If you really don't like uranium for some reason, tungsten, tungsten carbide, iridium, osmium, platinum, and gold all have the density. Gold might be a bit too deformable for high penetration against hard armor, but at the low velocity you will get from a shotgun I doubt you'd see much difference in any of the others. Don't expect to see pyrophoric action from uranium at these speeds, either.
If your monster is squishy (EG no exoskeleton, outer shell, or something like that) then you might want 'soft' bullet materials to deform/fragment inside the body to make large wounds whilst also inhibiting other defensive mechanisms (like the aforementioned regeneration.) Silver and gold would be ideal for these given their 'mystical' associations but also high density and relative softness. DU might be useful if you have an enemy harmed by incendiary effects (pyrophoric) and they also happen to be a 'hard' enough target they can trigger the self-sharpening, but I suspect it might have limited utility unless you adopted some RIFTS-style 'radiation harms supernaturals' concept.

A high sectional density would help with range and energy retention at range though, although a 'hard' AP-type round is also prone to over-penetration with little/no deformation (meaning little energy deposited on the target)

Again I think the nature of the ammo (and weapon) will ultimately be tailored to the kind of monster threat you're fighting and there can be a ton of options there.
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Old 09-13-2018, 06:27 PM   #57
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Default A Reason for Big Bore Weapons Against Supernatural Monsters

Big bore weapons are not necessarily better because they deliver more kinetic energy. It's more a question of the larger projectiles having more volume to deliver chemicals or other agents that affect supernatural beings.

A 50-77 grain 5.56x45mm bullet may be an excellent weapon against natural, biological targets around human size, but there simply isn't much space for a large cavity in the projectile. If you need to deliver a decent 'dose' of silver nitrate or wolfsbane, military rifle rounds do not offer much volume for this, even if you use a hollow-point bullet in the same caliber.

Working with projectiles in the .45 to .50 caliber size range, weighing five to ten times what a standard assault rifle bullet does, you've got a lot more space to fit in a large cavity hollow-point and deliver a dose of something that kills, weakens or inhabits your supernatural target.

Another issue is that you want to avoid overpenetration and cause structural damage, because you can't rely on the same wounding mechanisms as with living, natural targets. Vampires, tulpas, re-animated corpses and a range of other supernatural targets are human-sized and do not have magical armour or anything, but they may not have many (or any) organs that they care about, lack cardiovascular systems and even central nervous systems.

As such, physical damage may only be relevant in breaking the bones or other load-bearing structure that keeps them upright and moving. High-velocity, small caliber rounds that zip through the torso of a human-sized target may inflict fairly rapidly lethal injury on a human by causing severe bleeding, but against a target already dead (or never really living), you might want a much heavier hollow-point, for massive tissue damage and reliable destruction of load-bearing bones.

Don't get me wrong, a rifle bullet that tumbles or fragments will absolutely break bones, but if I'm trying to get a mobility kill against an unstoppable undead menace by shooting out the hip and leg bones, I'd prefer .45 caliber projectiles that weigh 240 grains and move at 2,650 fps over .308 projectiles that weigh 168 grains and move at the exact same velocity.
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Old 09-15-2018, 09:41 AM   #58
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Default Monster Hunters as a Genre and the Effects on Choice of Weapons

Jack Sawyer, Monster Hunters is a recognised genre in GURPS and other RPGs where PCs locate, investigate and destroy supernatural threats that lurk in secret and prey on the human population in a world that mostly resembles our own. The PCs may be working for a secret government agency, but more often than not, their monster hunting activities are not only clandestine, but also extralegal.

In terms of weaponry, this means that the targets are rarely gigantic dragons, dinosaurs or cattle-swallowing giant worms, if only because it's hard to explain how biological megafauna could remain hidden anywhere near any population of humans in the modern world. Sure, there may be the occasional adventure into truly desolate regions where cryptids of unusual size may be encountered and/or an excursion into another world full of dragons made of dreamstuff, but largely, the threats will be mythological creatures capable of hiding within human society.

This means the fey, angels and demons, vampires, werewolves and other shapeshifters, rogue witches, necromancers and the unquiet dead, as well as a host of culture-specific variations and alternatives. Many of these threats can and do look mostly human and bullets may operate in their flesh in mostly familiar ways, but very often they either lack the biological weaknesses that lead to incapacitation and death for humans and most animals (do not bleed, suffer shock, pain or fear) or regenerate at absurd, supernatural speed, enough so that being shot in the head is merely a few seconds of inconvenience.

Generally, the way to deal with such threats is to use weaponry made from or containing substances that metaphysically affect the supernaturals, which will differ with each individual type. Wood to the heart, silver, gold, 'cold forged' iron, blessed relics, holy water, garlic, wolfsbane, silver nitrate, etc.

And movies to the contrary, making bullets from wood or silver is very far from optimal. One makes for an extremely ineffective projectile, the other ruins barrels and is highly inaccurate. The better way is to make projectiles from suitable metals, like lead or copper alloys, with either a core of the desired material or a hollow cavity to deliver it.

The fact that monsters exist in secret also means that the hunters must cloak their activities in secret. They must select weapons that are powerful enough to cause massive tissue damage to rapidly regenerating critters and fire projectiles with enough diameter to allow for some volume of payload, but which can also be concealed in ordinary vehicles and, ideally, carried around fairly inconspiciously. And for PCs who do not enjoy covert support from a government, the weapons also must be something that they can obtain, generally either legally purchasable or personally modified from a commercially available weapon.

Anti-materiel rifles will often be desirable, but rarely practical to deploy with, not unless you can get one that takes up no more space than an ordinary hunting rifle. In general, maximum firepower in the most compact packages possible is something that monster hunters will always need.
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Old 09-15-2018, 12:07 PM   #59
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

Thinking on desirable weapons for this, you are rather likely to need the ability to modify rounds in the field. As such, box fed shotguns strike me as the best solution. Plastic shotgun rounds can be opened up with a pen knife, and pressed back closed with a bit of super glue. Box magazines still give you rapid reloading, and if you go with .410 you can also use them in revolvers.

If you are going after a dragon, get .50 BMG or one of the 20mm options.
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Old 09-15-2018, 06:15 PM   #60
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Default Re: Modern Monster Hunting Guns [XM500, MICOR Leader 50, etc.]

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Thinking on desirable weapons for this, you are rather likely to need the ability to modify rounds in the field. As such, box fed shotguns strike me as the best solution. Plastic shotgun rounds can be opened up with a pen knife, and pressed back closed with a bit of super glue. Box magazines still give you rapid reloading, and if you go with .410 you can also use them in revolvers.
In the world of shotguns with detachable box magazines this is relatively new....

http://www.mossberg.com/category/series/590m-mag-fed/

I do think the 20 round double column magazine looks like a small loaf of bread and isn't likely to fit your LBV very well. Still, if you want to maximize boom-power this might be a serious candidate.
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