Problem with full pellets shotgun damage [4th]

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by giomvrck

Oh, we understood now, we was forgeting the fact that RoF is not used in very close range shots. Which makes sense, actually. So in this case your solution sounds good.

Except for the unmultiplied RoF of the shotgun, of course. Some of them do have RoF high enough to get a bonus when at very close range or firing slugs.

Originally Posted by giomvrck

As for it, we are having problem to figure out why this wound modfier should be applied, since the shot continues to be a load of separated pellets and not a huge solid projectile (which in the case of slugs, for gurps, means pi++). We just get to figure out the idea of using full pellet damage (9d+9 instead of those 4d+4 the rule says). Can you explain it to us? Thanks.

Honestly, the differences are marginal so long as you also multiply the DR by 9 instead of 4 with your approach. 9d+9 pi with 9xDR and 4d+4 pi++ with 4xDR are almost the same. The pi++ is slightly weaker against living targets and stronger against unliving or homogeneous ones, and causes about half as much blunt trauma. Oh, and it's half as effective against hit locations that replace the wounding modifier like Vitals or Skull.

Really the main case for 4d+4 pi++ is that the short-range blast is actually a lot like a very soft slug, and adding together the damage of multiple projectiles is not great mechanics. Looking at my previous paragraph, do you think it makes sense that close range buckshot should be more effective than a slug against strong flexible armor and more lethal than a slug if you shoot someone in the vitals with it?

This does have the downside that if you have ridiculously high skill, you might do slightly less damage at short range. That does bug me a little, but a lot of RoF-related mechanics bug me in various ways.

[Varyon]

The easiest way to think of a shotgun at "boomstick range" (10% 1/2D) is that the pellets are so tightly packed when they impact that they function more like a highly-frangible slug than as multiple impactors.

As for the powder load, GURPS appears to assume comparable power for slugs and shot, so "same damage as a slug, but worse armor penetration" seems appropriate.

[giomvrck]

The pi++ is slightly weaker against living targets and stronger against unliving or homogeneous ones, and causes about half as much blunt trauma.

It is the opposite, isn't? Unliving and Homogeneous things take only a fraction of the damage, isn't? And living takes normal wound multiplier.

Answering both Ulzgoroth and Varyon:
The fact that the pellets has less penetrative capacity multiplies only for half the number of pellets, but since the area of damage is too large the damage changes to pi++. It's what Tactical Shooting says. And it's almost the same as rolling individual 9 pellets of 1d+1 of damage. A person with DR 3 takes a shotgun shot from 2 yd appart, and suppose that we will use the damage roll for the nine pellets rolled, the average damage of 1d+1 is 4, so the person DR is 3, hence, the damage drops to 1, so nine pellets is 9 of average damage. Now imagine the same case but using the rules of B409 and Tactical Shooting. The DR rises to 12 (half the number of pellets times rounded down), so the 1d+1 turns only 4d+4 pi++, so the average damage in 4d+4 is 16, since the armor is 12, then the average damage is 4, but it's pi++, then rises to 8. The same goes for unarmored, which is the same damage. And using Rcl of slugs makes senses because you will not receive the benefits of the Rapid Fire.

[giomvrck]

But the problem is: in this past case the target is a human, but what if it was a vampire (unliving)? The damage using the B409 and Tactical Shooting is 4 (since large piercing damage on unliving thing is halved). And using individual 9 pellets damage, the average damage is 1 (already subtracting DR) times 1/3, which is 0.33 of damage. At this point, if we consider the minimum damage that GURPS says, it will be 1, for a total of 9. Which is discrepant, because the damage would be 0.33 times 9 = 2,97, or 3. But in this case we consider the 3 due to bugs came from rounding. It's just a addendum.

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by giomvrck

It is the opposite, isn't? Unliving and Homogeneous things take only a fraction of the damage, isn't? And living takes normal wound multiplier.

I meant in comparison to the regular piercing damage.

Against living targets, pi++ does twice as much wounding as pi, but as you calculate it starts at a little less than half as much damage so it comes out almost even. Against unliving targets pi++ does unmodified wounding and pi does 1/3 wounding, so the pi++ is 3 times as much per point of damage for about 1.5 times as much final impact. Against a homogeneous target it's 1/2 and 1/5th, which still puts the pi++ slightly ahead.

Originally Posted by giomvrck

Answering both Ulzgoroth and Varyon:
The fact that the pellets has less penetrative capacity multiplies only for half the number of pellets, but since the area of damage is too large the damage changes to pi++. It's what Tactical Shooting says. And it's almost the same as rolling individual 9 pellets of 1d+1 of damage. A person with DR 3 takes a shotgun shot from 2 yd appart, and suppose that we will use the damage roll for the nine pellets rolled, the average damage of 1d+1 is 4, so the person DR is 3, hence, the damage drops to 1, so nine pellets is 9 of average damage. Now imagine the same case but using the rules of B409 and Tactical Shooting. The DR rises to 12 (half the number of pellets times rounded down), so the 1d+1 turns only 4d+4 pi++, so the average damage in 4d+4 is 16, since the armor is 12, then the average damage is 4, but it's pi++, then rises to 8. The same goes for unarmored, which is the same damage. And using Rcl of slugs makes senses because you will not receive the benefits of the Rapid Fire.

There's technically a couple glitches in there. The average roll of 1d is 3.5, not 3. And because the minimum damage result after DR is zero, 1d+1 against DR 3 actually works out to ~1.7 average damage. (Roll results are 0, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4)

But it looks like you've got the picture, yeah.

Originally Posted by giomvrck

But the problem is: in this past case the target is a human, but what if it was a vampire (unliving)? The damage using the B409 and Tactical Shooting is 4 (since large piercing damage on unliving thing is halved). And using individual 9 pellets damage, the average damage is 1 (already subtracting DR) times 1/3, which is 0.33 of damage. At this point, if we consider the minimum damage that GURPS says, it will be 1, for a total of 9. Which is discrepant, because the damage would be 0.33 times 9 = 2,97, or 3. But in this case we consider the 3 due to bugs came from rounding. It's just a addendum.

I did my own analysis on this above, but it looks like you've used pi+ instead of pi++ damage for the shotgun blast...

The damage for individual pellets actually works out to .67, not .33, because the wounding for dice results come out to 0, 0, 1, 1, 1, 1. So if you hit with all 9 (which is hard!) the average wounding is 6.

The 4d+4 pi++ vs DR 12, if we're lazy about the math, has 18-12 = 6 damage on an average roll which translates directly to 6 wounding. It's actually better than that because of the zero bound, but with 21 possible rolls it's a little bit of work to get the right answer.

EDIT: Did it with a spreadsheet, the difference is tiny because the chances of rolling 11 damage or less on 4d+4 turns out to be only 2.7%

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

Really the main case for 4d+4 pi++ is that the short-range blast is actually a lot like a very soft slug, and adding together the damage of multiple projectiles is not great mechanics. Looking at my previous paragraph, do you think it makes sense that close range buckshot should be more effective than a slug against strong flexible armor and more lethal than a slug if you shoot someone in the vitals with it?

Maybe make if 4d+4 pi++ with a crappy Armor Divisor. (0.5)? (0.25)?

[Ulzgoroth]

Originally Posted by Anders

Maybe make if 4d+4 pi++ with a crappy Armor Divisor. (0.5)? (0.25)?

That's already the rule. Specifically, it multiplies the armor by 4.