[MH] Ten bore Colt 'pistol'

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by MarcellRaba

t definitely not 6d+3 pi++ or what the other suggestions were.

That was not a suggestion. It was applying the existing rules for the damage for any 10G slug i.e. 4x a single round of buckshot for that gun.

You should note that the acepted damage for a 12G slug is 5D or at least 4D+4 and that's more than a Brown Bess too.

[hal]

If what I'm reading is correct, it seems that the "slug" was not invented prior to the turn of the century.

In that sense, I suspect that you'd need to go the route of having a 10 gauge shotgun do damage as a shotgun shell rather than as a slug.

I can't say for certain that the shotgun can't be a single projectile...

Still reading up on it and trying to find historical information on shotguns of the 1855's onwards.

[adm]

This would be roughly .75 cal, a not uncommon musket round at the time, while it would not be a modern shotgun slug, it would be close enough.

Thinking about this the TL4 Flintlock Musket, .75 at 4d pi++ on page 279 from the Basic rule book should be close enough.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by adm

Thinking about this the TL4 Flintlock Musket, .75 at 4d pi++ on page 279 from the Basic rule book should be close enough.

That TL4 Musket might well be calculated using Serpentine Powder. The 10G shotguns in various places would be using very late black powder that's rather more efficient. 0.5 REF instead of 0.3. You ca't jsut go around assumign that black powder is black powder over long periods of time.

[adm]

True, but being a revolver action, it will not be as efficient with the newer powder. While not an exact fit, it ought to be close enough for the gaming table.

[MarcellRaba]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

That was not a suggestion. It was applying the existing rules for the damage for any 10G slug i.e. 4x a single round of buckshot for that gun.

You should note that the acepted damage for a 12G slug is 5D or at least 4D+4 and that's more than a Brown Bess too.

There is one huge issue with this, the game assumes otherwise that barrel length and other stuff matters. So you either reverse engineer the whole stuff to get somewhat accurate stats or you won't get accurate stats at all. You cannot apply a full sized shotgun's characteristics to a large handgun.

All I'm saying, don't apply existing rules for which they were never intended to be applied.

Edit: since I figured from reverse engineering (thanks to Douglas Cole) that if we shot a ball out of this (which is what slugs were before slugs existed) it would be 3d+2 pi++ we now can apply high tech rules for shotshells. Typical 10 ga shotshell contains 10-18 pellets, but we'll go with the 13 given in the books.
NS=1/NP and NP is a known number of pellets which in our case is 13, gives a nice number of 0.277.
3d+2 has an average basic damage of 12.5, multiplied by 0.277 comes out to 3.46 or almost exactly 1d.
So each pellet is 1d pi and there's 13 of them.

And of course this only applies if we assume that the values given for black powder firearms are correct.

[The Colonel]

Making this a pistol tends to make me think we need an Affliction (Broken Wrist) to attach to it. How the hell do you fire a 10g. pistol without injuring yourself?

[Anders]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Making this a pistol tends to make me think we need an Affliction (Broken Wrist) to attach to it. How the hell do you fire a 10g. pistol without injuring yourself?

Very carefully.

[hal]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

Making this a pistol tends to make me think we need an Affliction (Broken Wrist) to attach to it. How the hell do you fire a 10g. pistol without injuring yourself?

I seriously doubt that it will break the wrist. GURPS already has rules for a situation like this - if your ST isn't sufficiently high enough to handle the weapon, you suffer an accuracy penalty equal to -2 per point of ST you lack for firing the firearm.

While I'm leaning towards a 1200 feet per second velocity for the round based on what I'm reading, but I don't know how accurate what I'm reading is.

But, supposing that 1200 feet per second isn't too off the base, the following parameters apply.

Bullet Mass 700 grains or 45.36 grams

Bullet Diameter .772 cal or 19.3 mm

Velocity: 1200 feet per second or 365.76 meters per second

Bullet Damage: 5d-1

Half Damage Range (per Doug's spreadsheet): 281 yds
Mas Range: 1436 yds

Mind you, I've not analyzed whether or not 1200 is consistent with reality or not.

When I checked to see what a typical load was for a shotgun in that era, the square load came up in my research. All a square load is, is a shotgun shell whose powder load in dram equivalents (and thus in Black Powder drams outright) is equal to the weight of the shot being fired. Thus, a 1/10th of a pound projectile will also utilize 1/10th of a pound of powder.

What I will likely do when I get the chance, is list the powder weight in grains for known bullets, the bullet weight in grains, along with the muzzle velocity for said bullet. I can get a general feel for what energy is present in the load of powder vs the weight, and get a theoretical muzzle velocity for a square load...

What are the break points?

if 1145 feet/sec generates 5d6-1
1109 feet per second generates 4d+2
1041 feet per second generates 4d+1
975 feet per second generates 4d+0
908 feet per second generates 4d-1
874 feet per second generates 3d+2
806 feet per second generates 3d+1
739 feet per second generates 3d+0

For what it is worth - Cartridges of the World lists pistol cartridges and rifle cartridges as well as military cartridges (both current and obsolete) - but as I found my book last night and found to my dismay - it does not list MUCH in the way of shotgun data.

:(

Theoretically? I can list the grain weight of black powder for the obsolete 1860's handguns and rifles vs the mass of the bullet and use known muzzle velocities for the round - and maybe get a reasonable theoretical value for what a shotgun shell massing at 700 grains using 700 grains of black powder should achieve relative to rifle and pistol values. But using the values generated via the spreadsheet based on Doug's work - I don't expect the shotgun "ball" to do more than 5d-1 pi+

Hope this helps.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by MarcellRaba

All I'm saying, don't apply existing rules for which they were never intended to be applied.

Firing a single slug out of a shotgun barrel is exactly what the rules were intended for.

There are rules for shortening shotgun barrels. They are on p.106 of High Tech. I don't know if you are familiar with them. They contemplate barrels as short as 8 inches but do not lower damage at all.

Gunpowder does not burn in a smooth linear curve for the entire length of the barrel. Most of it immediately goes "BANG!" when the primer goes off. That's why pressure curves peak sharply and fall off rapidly with time.