Old & Wild West Stunts

[Hide]

Hey there,

I am designing a PC to play in a cinematic "old wild west" setting.

For starters, at least I would like to achieve the following:

1. Shoot from the hip without penalties.
2. Save the hung man cutting his rope with a bullet and shoot a tin can in the air and make it fly until I spend all my gun's ammo.
3. Instant reloads.
4. Jump/escape from a moving vehicle or ride (i.e. train, horse) without receiving damage when I hit the ground.

In your opinion, what kind of skills advantages am I going to need?

Thanks!
- Hide

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Hide

Hey there,

I am designing a PC to play in a cinematic "old wild west" setting.

For starters, at least I would like to achieve the following:

1. Shoot from the hip without penalties.
2. Save the hung man cutting his rope with a bullet and shoot a tin can in the air and make it fly until I spend all my gun's ammo.
3. Instant reloads.
4. Jump/escape from a moving vehicle or ride (i.e. train, horse) without receiving damage when I hit the ground.

In your opinion, what kind of skills advantages am I going to need?

Your first two are basically covered by Gunslinger - hip-shooting lets you use a gun in close combat without bulk penalties, which Gunslinger provides by default, and it adds the weapon's full Acc (if it's a pistol) to all non-close-combat shots, allowing you to make tough shots like you're describing much more easily.

Instant reloads are the Quick Reload perk, which is cinematic, so Gunslinger will let you qualify for it. For a revolver, you'll need a speedloader to make it truly instant, otherwise it takes a round. That's still pretty quick compared to a typical revolver, though!

Leaping from a moving vehicle without taking damage is a bit tougher. Acrobatics skill lets you reduce the distance of a fall by 5 yards, if you're free to move and prepared when you fall. I'd allow that to also reduce the effective speed that you hit the ground at when jumping from a vehicle (so, for example, if you leap from a stagecoach going at Move 15, you could make an Acrobatics roll to reduce that to effectively Move 10), which would reduce the damage from the collision with the ground.

But making you take no damage is trickier. The Super Jump advantage does say that if you deliberately jump from a distance equal or less than your maximum high jump distance, you take no damage. You could buy Super Jump with the limitation "Only increases maximum high jump distance for falls", which I'd rate at -50%. That's kind of a weird build, though.

[Icelander]

See GURPS Gun-Fu for all the shooting questions. Start with Gunslinger and pick up a few cinematic Perks for the specific stunts you want to do. Shooting from the hip is a technique.

As for jumping from a moving train or from a horse, actually, GURPS does not have a good mechanism in place for abrasive damage from vehicle (or mount) accidents that are not collisions. I'm guessing it would count as Crushing damage and that Acrobatics could avoid it as with falls, so I'd recommend taking Acrobatics and as much DR (Tough Skin -40%; Limited: Crushing -40%) as the GM will let you take, possibly with Special Exercises Perks if he requires it.

If it were treated in all respects as falling damage (which I wouldn't, as a GM, but I'm not sure whether the RAW says any different), Catfall will keep you safe from such damage.

[Kelly Pedersen]

Originally Posted by Icelander

If it were treated in all respects as falling damage (which I wouldn't, as a GM, but I'm not sure whether the RAW says any different), Catfall will keep you safe from such damage.

Well, not quite - Catfall automatically reduces the distance of a fall by 5 yards, and then allows a DX roll to halve damage from greater distance. So it's not perfect protection from falling damage. Nonetheless, I think Catfall is a good idea. I'd say that a lot of cinematic action heroes do tend to have it, or at least something close.

And I would count the damage from falling off a vehicle as falling damage, at least partially. The abrasive damage from scraping along the ground is not falling damage, of course, but mitigating the initial falling damage should nonetheless prevent some of that abrasive damage, I would think - if you can effectively keep your feet when you hit the ground, you should never take the scraping damage in the first place.

Perhaps require an Acrobatics roll when you first impact a surface while moving relative to it, at a penalty for speed (I'd just use the Speed/Range table for that) - if you succeed, you take the regular collision damage, but you keep your feet or at least find a way to roll rather than scraping, whereas if you fail, add +1 per die to the collision damage, or +2 per die for particularly rough and abrasive surfaces (sharp rocks, asphalt, glass shards, etc.). So Catfall would be beneficial in those circumstances because it would negate the need for an Acrobatics roll to land well.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Kelly Pedersen

The abrasive damage from scraping along the ground is not falling damage, of course, but mitigating the initial falling damage should nonetheless prevent some of that abrasive damage, I would think ...

Quite light armour will help a lot vs. abrasive damage. Motorbike leathers are the real-world example.