Firing from Stealth?

[dfinlay]

Originally Posted by infoweasel

So our GM is going to be running GURPS 4e Basic Set TL3 in a Conan / Hyborian Age settings. Good times.

I've got my Ranger-y guy built with 150 points, but one of the reasons I groaned when he said we'd be running GURPS (again) is because the rules set is so damned dense and complicated as to make even simple questions enough to send me to a forum and ask rather than trying to do the research myself (already tried and failed to find anything).

As a bit of a side note, this is probably the wrong approach to take to starting playing in someone's else's GURPS campaign, especially if you hate rule-density. GURPS has very few rules (the only really important one is roll 3d6 and try to get under skill plus modifiers) and a lot of guidelines.

Unless you are playing in a game that is all about tactically manipulating the rules to your advantage, build the sort of character you want to play, run that character by the GM to make sure it models what you want it to model then when a situation comes up, describe what you're doing to the GM and let him tell you what to roll.

Unlike many games, GURPS models reality closely enough that you don't actually need to know the rules to make reasonable decisions.

If your GM is comfortable with GURPS, how this will likely play out when you ask him about something you want to do in play is the following: If he/she knows a guideline that relates to the situation, he/she may use that. If he/she doesn't know one or doesn't like the guideline for whatever reason, he/she will come up with a rough guess as to how hard the task should be and use that. If his/her intuition fails and he/she doesn't know how hard the task should be, he/she might look through the books for a relevant ruling.

The point, though, is that, so long as the GM and you have a shared construct of the situation and the style of the world built up, you can describe your actions, the GM can understand what you mean by them and come up with a reasonable estimator for their difficulty. No need to get lost trying to look up minutiae.

Originally Posted by infoweasel

Any other advice for playing a ranger-y stealth-y archer type is also welcome since I don't know GURPS half as well as most other systems.

Yes, two pieces of advice:

1. Ask your GM for help with making your character. He/She probably knows the system better than you and it'll help tie you into the world better.

2. Have fun.

[Captain Joy]

Originally Posted by Harald387

After the End 2: The New World offers some rules for firing from stealth: your first victim gets no defense, and after that you roll a quick contest of Stealth (I'd allow substituting Camouflage for a prepared sniping position) against the opponents' best Perception (I'd allow Observation, if better). The Perception roll takes range penalties, but gets +9 (beams, silenced guns) or +13 (unsilenced gun). For a bow I'd reduce this bonus further - +6 or even +4.

I'd not substitute Camouflage. I'd make a failed Stealth vs Per mean they notice that something is over there. It would take a subsequent Camouflage vs Per failure for them to actually see you enough to target you directly.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Captain Joy

I'd not substitute Camouflage. I'd make a failed Stealth vs Per mean they notice that something is over there. It would take a subsequent Camouflage vs Per failure for them to actually see you enough to target you directly.

Eh, requiring victory with two rolls may be a bit much. "I think I see something, oh wait, just a tree," shouldn't be two different rolls, but rather the result of a single one. I'd probably say, in cases where both Camouflage and Stealth are appropriate, you can use the one you have less skill in as a Complementary Skill (+1 to primary on Success, +2 on Critical Success), and the better one as the primary skill.

As a possible alternative, a generous GM could have the character roll against both, and use the skill with the higher MoS as the primary, the other as the complementary. If we had a character with Camouflage 14 and Stealth 16, and he rolled an 11 against Camouflage (MoS 3) and a 14 against Stealth (MoS 2), you'd have Stealth as the complementary, for a +1 and total MoS of 4. Actually, having this as an option might be a legitimate Perk, although I'm not certain if it should require some specialization per skill/task or just be a generic thing where you use this method anytime you have the option of rolling against either skill (and the other skill can be complementary). I'm leaning toward the latter, as it's something that probably doesn't come up very often.
A really generous GM would let the character roll twice, then decide which skill gets which roll. Above, the character would assign the 11 to Stealth (MoS 5) and the 14 to Camouflage (MoS 0, so +1 to Stealth), for MoS 6. If the above is a Perk, I'd eyeball this as something like [5] - it's an underpowered, highly-specialized version of Luck.

[Cheomesh]

Stealth is for ears, camo is for eyes.

I'd give a bonus to the targets spotting you if you were losing a bow (assuming it was short enough that you don't give yourself away while shooting). Especially if it hit something. Arrows are slow enough that it will narrow down the direction it came from much more readily than, say, a gunshot.

M.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Cheomesh

Stealth is for ears, camo is for eyes.

Nope. Invisibility gives a bonus to Stealth.

[Tinman]

Originally Posted by Varyon

Depending on the weapon and the quality of the silencer, a gun can be not much louder than a bow...

That's totally incorrect. (Unless you are playing in a very cinematic game.)
A silencer will reduce a gun shot from a very loud bang to a much less loud bang. It will not make it quiet.

[Cheomesh]

Well, a bow isn't quiet either. But yeah, unless you're using subsonics, it's still going to be quite loud when you discharge your firearm.

Originally Posted by Anders

Nope. Invisibility gives a bonus to Stealth.

Dang it, gone and gooned that up. Been a while since I've used stealth rules, will need to check.

M.

[Anders]

If I had to guess, Camouflage is for constructing a place to hide in while Stealth is for making use of what's there. But I could be completely wrong about that.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Tinman

That's totally incorrect. (Unless you are playing in a very cinematic game.)
A silencer will reduce a gun shot from a very loud bang to a much less loud bang. It will not make it quiet.

Going off of HT158, a shot from a bow is roughly 80 dB. A firearm firing exotic "silent" ammunition is 100 dB (+2 to hear relative to the bow). .22LR is 130 dB (+5 relative to the bow). A suppressor for a .22LR, be it baffle or wiper, can give up to a -4 to Hearing. Thus, a .22LR fired through a high quality suppressor is at a total +1 to Hearing, while a weapon firing silent ammunition is at a total +2 to Hearing, both relative to a bow. That's what I call "not much louder" - while it's technically 1.5x or 2x as loud, this isn't actually that huge of a difference between being able to identify the source and not. If you interpreted my statement as claiming that a firearm can be as quiet as a bow at GURPS resolutions, your statement would be correct, but that's not what I meant.

Note the above is using the realistic rules from High Tech - if you go cinematic, it's fairly easy (depending on how the GM boosts suppressors) to get firearms that are quieter than a realistic bow (although in such settings, a bow should be completely silent already, thus maintaining an edge over even silenced firearms in this regard).

[kdtipa]

Originally Posted by Anders

If I had to guess, Camouflage is for constructing a place to hide in while Stealth is for making use of what's there. But I could be completely wrong about that.

Yes the camouflage skill is for making camouflage, and making something harder to see. The way I understand it, you could use the camouflage skill to camouflage yourself, and it would give a bonus to your Stealth roll when it's opposed by vision.

As for the original poster... Stealth and firing a bow are a good combination. The first shot (if the stealth was successful as keeping them from seeing you) would keep them from being able to defend at all. You can't defend against an attack you don't know is coming. After that, someone else was correct when they said the stealth would be effectively broken, but they might still not see you if you're camouflaged really well. They could defend (probably dodge) at the -4, and take wild shots back at you or move closer... but you'd have a pretty good time of taking shots until they found you.