[High-Tech] Question about the Baker Rifle vs the Brown Bess

[Mailanka]

So I'm reading this article on the Baker Rifle on War is Boring and, naturally, being a GURPS fan, I go to look up the stats. The article claims that the Brown Bess, the musket of the era, wasn't accurate past 70 yards, while the Baker Rifle was able to peg an officer at 600 yards.

According to GURPS High-Tech, the Brown Bess "was heavy and expensive, and had poor range and accuracy, (even compared with contemporary weapons)," while the Baker Rifle was a "successful flintlock rifle (issued) by elite rifle units in the British Army" So far, so good: the two sources agree. But when I look at the stats, the Brown Bess has an Acc of 2 and a range of 100/1100 while the Baker Rifle has an Acc of 3 and a Range of 80/900. I suspect the difference in range has more to do with the power behind the round not with the accuracy of the weapon, but an Acc of 2 is not particularly inaccurate (all the other TL 5 muskets have identical accuracy), and +1 acc is about a +50% accuracy increase. If the Brown Bess is only accurate to 70 yards, then the Baker Rifle would, according to these rules, only be accurate to 100.

In reality, I suspect that Plunkett is just a fellow with exceptional accuracy and some serious Precision Aiming, but the difference seems to be that one couldn't be that accurate with a Brown Bess, while one could be that accurate with a Baker Rifle, but nothing in the statline really reflects this, nor the Brown Bess's notorious inaccuracy (noted by both article and book). In fact, from where I'm sitting, it looks like an adventurer would prefer the statline of the Brown Bess over the Baker Rifle: the former has a faster load time, superior damage, superior range and cheaper. The only real downsides are higher ST (not a problem for a hero), slightly heavier (1 lb) and worse recoil (irrelevant, of course).

Thoughts? Is there a rule I'm missing covering smooth-bore inaccuracy? Is there errata? Is the difference "below the GURPS Threshold?"

[weby]

I cannot say on the core question, as I have fired black powder guns only a few times and they have all been modern reproductions.

I agree that a +1 acc is a fairly small step. But with 4e the available steps are pretty low (0 being pocket pistol with no sights and 5 being a sniper rifle) so if one is barely 2 and other is a high 3.. rounding to few values can cause effects like that.

Lets see the effects of firing at the target 600 yards away by RAW without cinematic things:
Range penalty for 600 yards is -15
Step one: Base acc 3,and likely when you are sniping you do a careful load giving +1 acc=4.
So lets see the weapon maximum: 22+acc*2. As that acc is said to include match ammo and the effect of careful loading is similar it should likely be added. so 22*8=30. So the maximum at 15 is good enough.
So expected of a sniper: Deadeye so you can do precision aiming without a scope.
Total modifiers: Accuracy +4, bracing +1, Extra aiming +2, precision aiming +4, Range -15 Total:-4 So fully doable if you have all the time in the world and reasonable skill. Note that skill over 19 only makes your shot quicker in this case.

Now lets look at a more typical shooter with the musket and that 70 yard shot while fighting in the line:
Range penalty for 70 yards: -9
Here we do not need to worry about the maximum acc.
Accuracy: 2 and there is no careful loading thus stays 2
Total modifiers: Accuracy +2, Extra aiming +2, Range -9 Total:-5 So you would need a good skill to hit often at 70 yards. Also note that most people would get penalties for being under fire and such too.

So first look: Both 600 yard sniper shots by experts and mostly misses at 70 yards look both reasonable numbers by RAW.

Now the not so reasonable thing; Swapping the weapons in the examples would make:
The sniping to be maximum effective skill 13 and the penalty -6. Still doable, but you start to need really high skill for reasonable hit probabilities.
The firing normally would be total -4. Still requiring a good skill to hit reliably.

So overall the distances given for normal effective shots and best sniper shots

A note on adventurer use: A Fine(accurate) Brown Bess would still only be only $175 and have the same acc as the Baker rifle at just over half the cost...

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by weby

I agree that a +1 acc is a fairly small step. But with 4e the available steps are pretty low (0 being pocket pistol with no sights and 5 being a sniper rifle) so if one is barely 2 and other is a high 3.. rounding to few values can cause effects like that.

5 isn't a limit on values of acc. Higher numbers than that are allowed. It's the value of acc that's supposed to adequately represent those weapons.

Originally Posted by weby

So expected of a sniper: Deadeye so you can do precision aiming without a scope.

That won't really accomplish anything when "The bonus past the +Accuracy+2 for ordinary Aim maneuvers can’t exceed the lower of your scope’s bonus and your gun’s basic Accuracy."

[weby]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

5 isn't a limit on values of acc. Higher numbers than that are allowed. It's the value of acc that's supposed to adequately represent those weapons.

Those are the approximate values for base pistols and rifles, with only the semiportables like .50 cal going over. When talking about handheld weapon for TLs 5-8, you need to go semi portable/non portable or fine or very fine to go over the basic 5.

Thus a baic musket and a black power weapon would likely fall into that range (0-5) and not outside it With both likely being less accurate than a current sniper rifle but more than a pistol without sights giving likely available ranges of 1-4 actually. So if you actually read the thing in context instead of trying to detach it...


If you are trying to claim that either of those should be above 5.. I would definitely argue against it.. Now if you instead tried arguing that a musket should be acc 1 and a black powder rifle should be acc 4 instead of 2 and 3 I would just shrug my shoulders and say "I have no idea".

That won't really accomplish anything when "The bonus past the +Accuracy+2 for ordinary Aim maneuvers can’t exceed the lower of your scope’s bonus and your gun’s basic Accuracy."

The Deadeye perk says that you do not need all the special gear and mentions scopes in the list, thus my reading is that it removes the scope part of the limitation. Thus you are limited to the weapon acc.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by weby

Thus a baic musket and a black power weapon would likely fall into that range (0-5) and not outside it With both likely being less accurate than a current sniper rifle but more than a pistol without sights giving likely available ranges of 1-4 actually. So if you actually read the thing in context instead of trying to detach it...

But is there any particular reason a Brown Bess, given its notorious inaccuracy, couldn't have an Acc of 1? Is there a reason that would be too low?

The Deadeye perk says that you do not need all the special gear and mentions scopes in the list, thus my reading is that it removes the scope part of the limitation. Thus you are limited to the weapon acc.

If we assume that a scope is not necessary, then that would mean a Brown Bess maxes out at +2 with precision aiming (or, perhaps even argue that it's impossible for a musket, which might be reasonable), while a rifle would max out at +3. Thus, the Acc bonus "doubles up"

[weby]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

But is there any particular reason a Brown Bess, given its notorious inaccuracy, couldn't have an Acc of 1? Is there a reason that would be too low?

Acc 1 would drop it to be equal to normal pistols of the era. I do not know how realistic that would be.

If we assume that a scope is not necessary, then that would mean a Brown Bess maxes out at +2 with precision aiming (or, perhaps even argue that it's impossible for a musket, which might be reasonable), while a rifle would max out at +3. Thus, the Acc bonus "doubles up"

Yes, that follows.

Note that several organizations teach special long range shooting tricks to use without scopes.

US marines being the most famous current example where from what I understand every marine is taught how to hit things out to 800 yards? with the basic rifle. Also the British army going into WW I was known for it's superb long range shooting.

Both could be something else of course, but deadeye+Precision Aiming would at last work as solution to model such.

Also the description for precision aiming separately caps it at acc +7 total (+2 base extra seconds, +5 precision aiming). There would really be no need for that note if you always had to use scopes as they as already capped at +5.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by weby

Acc 1 would drop it to be equal to normal pistols of the era. I do not know how realistic that would be.

Just so. It's a granularity issue.

The Brown Bess is clearly more accurate at ranges up to 50 or even 70 yards than most flintlock smoothbore pistols, not to mention, realistically speaking, thrown weapons or most low-tech missile weapons. It's not that hard to teach someone to hit a man-sized target at 50 yards nine times out of ten in a couple of weeks, something that takes a lot more training and effort with a sling, bow or even crossbow, let alone javelin.

So giving it Acc 1 would make it much harder to use effectively, in comparison with low-tech ranged weapons and TL4+ pistols, than should realistically be the case.

On the other hand, the Baker Rifle is effective at 3 times the range of a Brown Bess musket, even more for specialists. That would ordinarily argue for at least a +2 higher Acc, as well as the bonus for careful loading. But the Baker Rifle is not equally or more accurate at ranges of 200+ yards than a modern M4 carbine, which would be the case if we gave it Acc 4 or higher.

And so, we get Acc 2 and Acc 3, as imperfect compromises in the service of playable simplicity and non-infinite available numerical representations for Accuracy.

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Icelander

And so, we get Acc 2 and Acc 3, as imperfect compromises in the service of playable simplicity and non-infinite available numerical representations for Accuracy.

I was afraid it would be something like that. There's further inaccuracy noted with the higher recoil values... but those also have no impact on the GURPS-mechanics of accuracy.

If I wanted to further differentiate the weapons for a hypothetical TL 5 campaign, what could I do? I like the idea of removing the possibility of precision aiming for muskets (lacking rifling, their ballistics would be too unpredictable at those distances). Is there anything else I can do?

[Ulzgoroth]

If the ballistics somehow manage to be such that for the unstabilized bullet the trajectory space isn't a cone, but more of a trumpet, it might be accurate to give it an additional penalty to hit at some distance thresholds.

That's extra complication, though.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

If I wanted to further differentiate the weapons for a hypothetical TL 5 campaign, what could I do? I like the idea of removing the possibility of precision aiming for muskets (lacking rifling, their ballistics would be too unpredictable at those distances). Is there anything else I can do?

My first thought is to cap skill on the brown bess.

There is a difference between the possible accuracy of the weapon and the aid in accuracy by the weapon. right now the problem is a sniper can pick up any gun and use riffle -20 to ignore practical limits on range. capping skill for various guns is probably the best way to handle this. A less extreme method is to half effective skill after the cap: if the cap is 14, and you have skill 20, you have effective skill 17 with the weapon.