03-17-2018, 12:32 AM | #31 | ||
Banned
Join Date: Mar 2018
|
Re: Increasing lethality
Quote:
Quote:
Real small arms should have a very small chance of doing almost insignificant damage, a pretty good chance of doing moderate damage, a smaller chance of giving a fatal wound, and a very small chance of killing someone instantly. How likely each category is in relative terms would depend on the exact caliber and barrel length (bigger bullets penetrate better and leave a bigger hole, longer barrels can deliver more acceleration to the bullet) with shot placement being by far the most important determinant of lethality. In most cases a sword or axe wound is far worse than a pistol or rifle wound. The major difference is that a pistol or rifle can blow right through someone, and thus has a somewhat higher chance of destroying organs or major blood vessels than a glancing blow from a melee weapon. Overall, small arms should do less damage overall than medieval melee weapons but when they critical should do really horrific amounts of damage. But criticals should be less common than in GURPS. You can see how factoring all this into any reasonable dice-roll system would be problematic. A table with multiple rolls and result look ups would be more realistic, but also a pain in the butt. Even most video games (where the math is no problem and hit locations are determined by actual bullet arcs) they don't bother with this stuff - in Rainbow Six 3 the bullet either bounces off your armor, slows you down, or kills you instantly. This isn't particularly realistic, but it's probably as much as most players can be bothered with. Last edited by VonKatzen; 03-17-2018 at 12:36 AM. |
||
03-17-2018, 12:33 AM | #32 | |
Doctor of GURPS Ballistics
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Lakeville, MN
|
Re: Increasing lethality
Quote:
For non-humans it might not hold; for humans it works fast in play and well enough for verisimilitude with how I was taught to shoot that it doesn't break anything.
__________________
My blog:Gaming Ballistic, LLC My Store: Gaming Ballistic on Shopify My Patreon: Gaming Ballistic on Patreon |
|
03-17-2018, 01:57 AM | #33 |
Join Date: Aug 2004
|
Re: Increasing lethality
Right. The reason I think exploding damage dice would be fun is I'd like to have a strongly skewed distribution: a small increase in the average, and a big increase in the right tail. So even against a relatively tough target, you would have a substantial possibility of achieving a one-hit kill.
__________________
https://diceandlives.wordpress.com |
03-17-2018, 03:14 AM | #34 |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
|
Re: Increasing lethality
TBH for the longest time I thought it was RAW and did it! (I conflated the staying conscious check penalty with the death check here). IME it wasn't an issue!
Last edited by Tomsdad; 03-17-2018 at 11:55 AM. |
03-17-2018, 03:26 AM | #35 | |
Join Date: Aug 2004
|
Re: Increasing lethality
Quote:
To wax pedantic for no particular reason: Say a big archery target is +0 TH. In the center is a small bullseye: -5 TH. If you just want to hit the big target, you'd naturally aim for the center to maximize your chances. That's no different from actually aiming for the bullseye. Here, it'd make perfect sense that aiming for the target and succeeding by 5 would hit the bullseye – or, that aiming for the bullseye and missing by up to 5 would still hit the big target somewhere. Same thing. On the other hand, if we're talking human target (+0 TH) vs head shot (-5 TH), the head is definitely not the center; there's no reason to assume that a whole-body shot that succeeds by 5 would automatically hit the head, or that a head shot that misses by up to 5 would automatically hit the body. The latter is how RAW generally treats all "big part vs small sub-part" situations (with options available to allow that a miss against Part A might hit Part B); it assumes that you have to try to hit the small sub-part. That RAW treatment is what I was referring to. That said, while RAW seems fine for most body hit locations, the vitals seem close enough to a "bullseye in the center" that I can easily see treating them that way, as you describe. It's a simplification, and in this case, makes fights deadlier too...
__________________
T Bone GURPS stuff and more at the Games Diner: http://www.gamesdiner.com Twitter: @Gamesdiner | RSS: here ⬅︎ Updated RSS link | This forum: Site updates thread (occasionally updated) (Latest goods on site: GLAIVE Mini levels up to v2.4. Update to melee weapon design tool, with more example weapons and commentary.) |
|
03-17-2018, 03:27 AM | #36 | |
Join Date: Jan 2010
Location: Brighton
|
Re: Increasing lethality
Quote:
But one issue with bleeding rules is that the rate of bleeding it still 1 (or 3 on crit fail) per min*. It might be worth a house rule where as you increase bleeding penalties you also reduce the period of the bleeding test cycles (however this is double dipping, more work and really just speeding up the outcome) *in this case any location that bleeds faster by the bleeding rules in MA will be mnoot as 6dx2 pi+ won't be capped in them |
|
03-17-2018, 04:05 AM | #37 | ||
Join Date: Jul 2012
|
Re: Increasing lethality
Quote:
Quote:
Now, in campaigns I’m in, “he makes a Targeted Shot to the Vitals” acts as an alarm bell that this is a skilled shooter. And since it’s usually accompanied by Rapid Fire then a skilled shooter means every Attack action threatens multiple hits to the Vitals. |
||
03-17-2018, 10:19 AM | #38 | ||||||||
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Vancouver, BC, Canada
|
Re: Increasing lethality
Quote:
Quote:
Unless you were talking about something else, the "miss vitals by 1, hit the torso" is not an optional rule, it's from the Basic Set Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
Quote:
As I mentioned previously, however, GURPS' rules mean that the gameplay of combat and combat aftermaths can be vastly different than the gameplay of another system. This is one of the things I'm trying to figure out. Thanks a lot for all the other information! Quote:
The nice thing with a 10 minute cycle is that, for an average character, it maps to your death checks... so you roll for bleeding, and if you fail, you drop by -10HP and probably do a new death check. Rinse and repeat. It's a tough proposition, as there's a lot in the balance for that one check, but then the death check is even more important so maybe it's not so bad. Quote:
Last edited by lordabdul; 03-17-2018 at 10:26 AM. |
||||||||
03-17-2018, 11:14 AM | #39 | |
☣
Join Date: Sep 2004
Location: Southeast NC
|
Re: Increasing lethality
Quote:
Maybe halve the reduction (and zero doesn't stop) when dealing with bleeding that would require surgery, provided it makes some sense for external first aid to actually help at all (blood vessels in limbs, for example).
__________________
RyanW - Actually one normal sized guy in three tiny trenchcoats. |
|
03-17-2018, 11:35 AM | #40 | |
Banned
Join Date: Mar 2018
|
Re: Increasing lethality
Quote:
Last edited by VonKatzen; 03-17-2018 at 11:40 AM. |
|
Thread Tools | |
Display Modes | |
|
|