How do you use snipers?

[ericthered]

Yes, Alexander plays with higher stats than most people. I don't think its that relevant to the question.



I can think of a few times I've used snipers in my games.



In the first, the sniper was a murderer and the PC's were the detectives in charge of hunting him down. They were pretty cautious, but the sniping mostly served the purpose of making the murder difficult to track down and apprehend. I seem to remember him getting a few different victims. I think he was the guy who got tackled by a ST 17 tiger person indoors, but I'm not sure.


The second time was against High-End (500+ CP) monster hunters. The sniper was an inhuman, and was working with backup. Of course, with the typical monster hunter mix of luck and inhumans, bullets were not nearly as scary as they could have been. Two of the inhumans ran him down in a high speed chase through the city that involved some out-of this world athletics on both sides.



One of the PC's in the monster hunters game was a commando, and he played pretty tactical, which ended up looking a good deal like a sniper. He got his chance to shoot somewhere around two dozen faerie monsters charging through a park at once, though the strong assist goes to the techie and the team's research for getting the right bullets.



I built a sniper for use in the old west once, but never got to use him in the wilderness, because the game fell apart first.

[EskrimadorNC]

Originally Posted by Anders

According to wikipedia, the longest recorded kill with a sniper rifle was about 3,500 yards. That's -20 to hit. Assuming the character has skill 20, adding the bonuses for aiming, rifle, and scope, what does that give us?

I' m guessing you are talking about the Canadian CTF-2 Sniper from this Wikipedia article.

So we know he was using a McMillan TAC 50 rifle. According to the Wiki article, it can mount up to a 25x Scope. The Sniper article also mentioned that the shooter was using Match Grade ammunition.

The closest we can find in High Tech to the Tac 50 is the Barrett M107 (HT Pg. 118). So we should probably go with Accuracy 6 +4(25x Scope).

It's a good guess he had a spotter with a range finder, so likely knew EXACT range to target. He probably took an AoA maneuver, had the weapon Braced on a bipod, took at least two extra seconds to AIM. We don't know if the target was behind cover, or what the visibility modifiers were (if any). So we will assume it's a broad daylight shot with a stationary target and no cover.

Here is what we have so far:

Range: -20 (for 3871 yards)
Acc: +6
Scope: +4
Extra Aim: +2
Match grade ammo: +1
Braced: +1
Knowing exact Range: +3
Spotter succeeding on Observation: +1

That's a net of -2 to Skill. You can move that up or down a bit with options from Tactical Shooting like Precision Aiming, Bullet Travel, MOA, etc.

All in all, it looks like a fairly easy shot from a GURPS perspective, when in reality it's probably EXCRUCIATINGLY DIFFICULT.

As written, a Rifle-15 guy could pull that shot off 83% of the time. Your World Class Sniper (Rifle-18) could do it 98% of the time, or 75% of the time at night by the light of the full moon (-4 visibility) with no Night Vision.

GURPS firearm rules are the best I've ever worked with in an RPG by a LARGE margin, but they are really way too generous when calculating the odds for long range shots.

[Rolando]

at those long range shots part of the success is if the target don't walk during the bullet time to target.

You may argue is a bit of luck that the target stood relatively still for the 3 to 10 second travel time (?). So a big part of being a sniper is to decide when to shoot... if you can get your target sitting on the toilet you can guarantee it will not move much for a while.

[johndallman]

Really, skill 24 is pointlessly high. I did the calculations for the pre-WWI British Army's musketry test, the "Mad Minute". To pass, you needed to get 15 shots into a 36” circular target at 300 yards in 1 minute. You scored better for hits on the inner part of the target, but the sources I have conflict on just how.

Target size is +0, range is -13. +3 for lack of stress, +1 for an outdoor range, +3 for known range and static target.

That’s a net -6, or a net -1 after a single Aim with an Acc 5 Lee-Enfield, +1 for Braced, and +1 for All-out-Attack (Determined). Starting with a loaded gun, you spend 20 seconds aiming and shooting it empty; 5 seconds reloading it, another 25 seconds shooting it empty and reloading again, and can get 5 more shots off at the end for 25 shots total.

You need about 60% of your shots to hit, at +1 to skill, which means you only actually need skill 10, although skill 11 makes it comfortable. If the situation is stressful, it gets harder.

A Mauser K98 holds 5 shots, so you spend 10 seconds shooting, 3 seconds loading, and can get 24 shots off in a minute.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by EskrimadorNC

All in all, it looks like a fairly easy shot from a GURPS perspective, when in reality it's probably EXCRUCIATINGLY DIFFICULT.

As written, a Rifle-15 guy could pull that shot off 83% of the time. Your World Class Sniper (Rifle-18) could do it 98% of the time, or 75% of the time at night by the light of the full moon (-4 visibility) with no Night Vision.

GURPS firearm rules are the best I've ever worked with in an RPG by a LARGE margin, but they are really way too generous when calculating the odds for long range shots.

Bullet Travel, which you mentioned, is pretty big. You're getting a modifier on this shot of 5d-25, with tends strongly towards -7.5. That makes it worse-than-even odds for your world-class shooter.

(MOA doesn't wind up mattering for the numbers you used, but it would preclude Precision Aiming or higher skill improving on the performance of your skill-18 shooter.)

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Anders

According to wikipedia, the longest recorded kill with a sniper rifle was about 3,500 yards. That's -20 to hit. Assuming the character has skill 20, adding the bonuses for aiming, rifle, and scope, what does that give us?

Using Basic: AoA +1, Braced +1, Aim 3+ seconds, +2, Scope - unknown say +3, Acc - also unknown say +6 = 13- so the shot should hit about 5 in 6 times. With Guns-15 it's 8-. So if your game has people running round with Guns-20 or more, they do not need all the eztra stuff in Tactical Shjooting to make record-breaking shots. If Guns-15 is considered really good in your games, they might need those assists (or Luck).

As for the OP's question, I've used snipers a couple of times in my games. A couple were to cover high-tension meetings, and the PCs have had one covering some of these as well. Usually they haven't been needed, and when did come into play their main effect was to make leaving cover exciting.

A couple of other times they've been used in fire-fights where their main effect has been to limit PC movement options, though one sniper using an anti-tank rifle did cause a PC to have to get an arm regenerated.

I've used them once to create the old "You're pinned down by a sniper, it's hot, your friend needs to get medical aid, you're running low on water, it's hot..." situation for some drama. Also, as a lesson about reading mission briefings (the players asked for them, they were provided, and then they didn't read them, though they were less than one side of an A4 sheet of paper). If they'd read the darned briefing they'd have known the mission area was often infiltrated by hostile sniper teams and they could've taken some precautions. As it was the victim and friends had to stay in cover, pinned down, for quite some time while their backup slowly moved in, and then swept through the sniper's position, by which time the sniper had left. They never had catch the sniper team, and had several PCs badly injured by them.

Note - most snipers have Guns-12, and are distinguished from other combatants by their equipment and by also having reasonable Stealth, Camouflage, etc. skills. The good ones have Guns-15 and correspondingly good support skills. The PCs have combat skills that start at 15 and go up to 30+, but the snipers still give good account of themselves. Heck, even mooks with guns-12 and an assault rifle do as long as their weapons can penetrate PC armour.

Note that Guns-12 and the sniper rifle used above (Acc 6(+3)), when used to take fully aim shots, etc. has a 15- to hit at 100 yards, or a 12- to hit the vitals (and a miss by one still hits the Torso). Spotting someone who is concealing in cover at 100 yards is non-trivial (they're not 'in plain sight' and there's a -10 for range) even for characters with Vision-15+ and Observation-20.

[nudj]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

I was just curious how people use snipers in their games? For example, let us imagine that you have a realistic and unpowered 250 CP character with ST 12, DX 14, IQ 12, HT 12, Craftiness 4, Stalker 4, Camouflage-20, Guns (Rifle)-24, and Stealth-24. How would you use them in your HT or UT campaigns?

That's not realistic, it's cinematic. No way I would use a sniper like that in a cinematic campaign unless it was supers.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by nudj

That's not realistic, it's cinematic. No way I would use a sniper like that in a cinematic campaign unless it was supers.

It would be perfectly at home in an Action campaign.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by Anders

It would be perfectly at home in an Action campaign.

I dunno. It looks really lopsided compared to the Assassin template in Action.

[Alden Loveshade]

Originally Posted by Anders

According to wikipedia, the longest recorded kill with a sniper rifle was about 3,500 yards. That's -20 to hit. Assuming the character has skill 20, adding the bonuses for aiming, rifle, and scope, what does that give us?

I'm tempted to say "Critical Success." But that would probably trigger the Rules Lawyer response.

Has that 3,500 yard claim been verified? And I wonder how high the shooter was. This is of course an extreme, but if you fired a bullet from a plane, you could possibly kill someone who was miles below.

I'm far from an expert on firearms, but did have a relative who was a sniper in the military. When asked if he ever killed anyone, he said, "I don't know." He said in the middle of a battle, who shot who is largely anyone's guess. He said he did fire at someone who died, but doesn't actually know who or what killed him.

From a practical point of view, anyone could be shot by random fire. I was. (And no, that's not an impressive war story. My injury was trivial.)