Increasing lethality

[afnord]

Weird double post.

[afnord]

There are lots of ways to ramp up deadliness

1) Back to basics or 3rd ed. Death Saves at 1/2 HP. So if you have 10 HP then you make death save at -10 HP and again at -15 HP

2) Use penalties on Death Saves. At -2xHP you get a penalty of 1 on Death Saves that only get worse

3) Use the wounding wild die. There are rules for it's use somewhere. I call it the blood die that get's rolled alongside damage. You roll 1 and your opponent is in for a nasty suprise. It may hit the joint, arteries, vitals etc.

4) Aim for the vitals, it's only -2 in theory as miss by 1 is a hit.

5) 9mm is on average enough ruin your dodge if you have no armor and force you to roll for stun. If that happen then you are in heaps of trouble.

6) HT 12 character has a 20% chance to make 5 death rolls at no penalty, you'll get him in the long run.

See not hard to make Gurps deadly. IME Wild West/Victorian/1920s is one of the most deadly games in Gurps because of lack of armor. One good shot and your character is toast.

[Ji ji]

Originally Posted by RyanW

You could also say the initial wound must exceed at least HP/8 (rounded up), or some such number, to get bonus damage to the vitals. Maybe it could become HP/10 for Skinny, HP/6 for Fat, and HP/4 for Very Fat. That's just numbers off the top of my head, and first thing in the morning, so it might be a stupid idea after I'm fully awake.

A player of my team showed me his idea to revamp firearms rules and we are considering to use it for our current (mindless) dinosaur-hunting adventure.

He modeled penetration as bullet speed * sectional density; and wounding mod as bullet energy / penetration.
Vitals hit is not on a specific location, but any torso hit succesful by 3+. Wounding mod is reduced to x2 (proposal brought by me, after this thread).
A hit qualifies for vitals only if basic damage (after DR) is over HP/3.
Damage is rolled with no more than 3d, multiplied as needed.
High damage rolls and/or critical hits handle exceptional shots.

We are going to give it a try, but I already feel that it will work well.

[Gollum]

Originally Posted by Ji ji

[...] Wounding mod is reduced to x2 (proposal brought by me, after this thread). [...] Damage is rolled with no more than 3d, multiplied as needed.

If I did understand things well, there is a little problem here: it means that a sniper rifle .338 (9d+1 of damage) would inflict less damage by hiting the vitals than by hitting anywhere else in the torso... Unless "multiplied as needed" means that you would multiplied the 3d result by 3 before mutltiplying it by 2 for hitting the vitals, of course.

[VonKatzen]

Originally Posted by Gollum

If I did understand things well, there is a little problem here: it means that a sniper rifle .338 (9d+1 of damage) would inflict less damage by hiting the vitals than by hitting anywhere else in the torso... Unless "multiplied as needed" means that you would multiplied the 3d result by 3 before mutltiplying it by 2 for hitting the vitals, of course.

Given that a .338 (Lapua or Norma) stands a good chance of dropping a grizzly in one shot that is a big issue.

[Ji ji]

Originally Posted by Gollum

If I did understand things well, there is a little problem here: it means that a sniper rifle .338 (9d+1 of damage) would inflict less damage by hiting the vitals than by hitting anywhere else in the torso... Unless "multiplied as needed" means that you would multiplied the 3d result by 3 before mutltiplying it by 2 for hitting the vitals, of course.

Of course.
3d is used in order to keep a high SD. 9d+1 is rolled as 3d*3+1.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Ji ji

Of course.
3d is used in order to keep a high SD. 9d+1 is rolled as 3d*3+1.

But I thought you were going to reduce the vital wounding mod to x2?

(and a vital hit would be decided by MoS)

maybe if you give an example of what happens is someone shoot's a ST10 / HP10 person on the torso with such a round

Cheers

TD

[Rupert]

I assume 9d+1 would become 3dx3+1 for a normal torso hit and 3dx6+2 for a vitals hit.

[Ji ji]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

But I thought you were going to reduce dteh vital wounding mod to x2?

(and a vital hit would be decided by MoS)

maybe if you give an example of what happens is someone shoot's a ST10 / HP10 person on the torso with such a round

Cheers

TD

Rupert got it. Sorry if I have been unclear.

With the spreadsheet values, a .338 LM would be 10d damage, 1.9 wounding mod. Slightly different from HT values, but not much.
It translated to (3d+1)x3 on a normal hit.
If the torso hit is a success, you roll 3d+1, multiply by 3, and you get basic damage. After DR is subtracted, you multiply the damage by 1.9. To this point it’s close to normal rules, just different values.

Let’s say we rolled 12. Then it is (12+1)x3=39. DR is 0.
As HP is 10, 10 is delivered to the target and 29 is overpenetration.
10 is multiplied by wounding mod, so 10x1.9=19 HP lost. Ouch!

If the torso hit is a success by 3+, then it should be a vitals hit. Is the damage after DR above (HP/3)? That is, over 4. Yes, it is.
So you multiply 10 (damage before blow-through) by 1.9 (wounding mod) by 2 (vitals hit mod).
10x1.9x2=38 HP lost.

BTW, the bullet overpenetrate by 29, so it could possibly kill somebody standing behind even if he wears body armor with steel plates.

I tried a simulation of .375H&H and .500NE against cape buffalo and bush elephant and I got very good results. I suspect some strange (maybe, too realistic?) effect can happen in special circumstances with very fast bullets (300WM, Weatherby Magnums, Norma Magnums and such), I will check in game or as soon as I have more free time.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by Ji ji

Rupert got it. Sorry if I have been unclear.

With the spreadsheet values, a .338 LM would be 10d damage, 1.9 wounding mod. Slightly different from HT values, but not much.
It translated to (3d+1)x3 on a normal hit.
If the torso hit is a success, you roll 3d+1, multiply by 3, and you get basic damage. After DR is subtracted, you multiply the damage by 1.9. To this point it’s close to normal rules, just different values.

Let’s say we rolled 12. Then it is (12+1)x3=39. DR is 0.
As HP is 10, 10 is delivered to the target and 29 is overpenetration.
10 is multiplied by wounding mod, so 10x1.9=19 HP lost. Ouch!

If the torso hit is a success by 3+, then it should be a vitals hit. Is the damage after DR above (HP/3)? That is, over 4. Yes, it is.
So you multiply 10 (damage before blow-through) by 1.9 (wounding mod) by 2 (vitals hit mod).
10x1.9x2=38 HP lost.

BTW, the bullet overpenetrate by 29, so it could possibly kill somebody standing behind even if he wears body armor with steel plates.

I tried a simulation of .375H&H and .500NE against cape buffalo and bush elephant and I got very good results. I suspect some strange (maybe, too realistic?) effect can happen in special circumstances with very fast bullets (300WM, Weatherby Magnums, Norma Magnums and such), I will check in game or as soon as I have more free time.

Right OK got it (I think)

How are you getting a Wounding mod of 1.9 on this round?

going from the system you cite would suggest that bullet energy is almost double penetration, but penetration is itself Velocity x Sectional density.

Of course all this depends on how you take real life stats like Velocity and sectional density turn into gamable ones like 'penetration' (I assume round energy here is 1/2m*v^2)

Anyway lets compare to RAW

the lapua .338 is as pointed out 9d+1 pi (avg 32.5)

On basic torso hit it's capped at 10 injury (but bleeds at -6)

by raw a vitals hit would be a 98pt injury (so dead)


net result is increased immediate injury on non vital torso injuries but reduced injury on Vitals, mainly because you've applied the overpenetration cap to vitals.