Light sources and vision question

[tshiggins]

Hey, bocephus, here's something to consider, and perhaps something to try.

When the guys at SJGames started the GURPS line, a bunch of the writers supposedly tried to reality-check everything they could without injuring themselves or somebody else; talked with (and eventually recruited) people with actual combat experience (such as SA Fisher) to help draft the rules; and made the best logical extrapolations about anything they couldn't reality-check, in an effort to create gameable abstractions with considerable verisimilitude.

Nobody lets SJGames staffers fire 105mm artillery, for instance (at least, as far as I know...), nor have any made it into space (yet). :)

So, why don't you do something similar?

The next time you go to the archery range, take a friend with a good stopwatch.

Have him or her time how long it actually takes you to put arrows in paper targets at various distances, in a safe, non-stressful environment.

I'm fairly certain it will take no less than three seconds per shot, measured from draw to release, not even counting how long it takes to pull the arrow from the quiver and nock it.

Three seconds, minimum. Probably five or six, and that's if you're good.

Now then, it may occur to you to check how accurate you can be with only one second between draw and release.

Please don't do that. That's never a good idea, and only an acceptable one if somebody will kill you, if you don't. You run the very real risk that you'll injure yourself, or others.

Have someone time you during a normal shooting session, and see what happens.

That's supposedly what SJGames tried to do, and that's what many of the contributing authors have done, one way or another.

[Refplace]

Originally Posted by tshiggins

The next time you go to the archery range, take a friend with a good stopwatch.

Have him or her time how long it actually takes you to put arrows in paper targets at various distances, in a safe, non-stressful environment.

I'm fairly certain it will take no less than three seconds per shot, measured from draw to release, not even counting how long it takes to pull the arrow from the quiver and nock it.

Three seconds, minimum. Probably five or six, and that's if you're good.

As a child I wanted to compare my shooting to D&D, I timed at about 3 seconds from a ground quiver shooting at about 10y and I could reliably hit the target with 3 seconds between shots till I ran out of arrows.
But that was pretty much ideal conditions and a good sized target about the size of a torso. It was great lighting, a well practiced distance, and no danger to myself. Also ground quivers are faster to draw than many other quivers and minimize moving the bow compared to other types.
I had been shooting for several years at that point, though not full time and been to several tournaments. Not competitively, just a few hundred people shooting at about a 100 targets over a weekend.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

The 'Range Bands' in Action 2 are literally only to break down the various ranges into 5 distinct groups for chase purposes, they aren't supposed to be used with combat. You still use the SSR for all range penalty purposes.

Ah OK, sorry I thought it grouped existing ranges into broader range bands and applied a range penalty to the whole band.

Originally Posted by bocephus

...I think that the bulk of the issue lays with what I was considering to be a 1 point skill. It has a lot to do with that 200hrs concept that I have heard about for years and took it more to heart than I should have....

Yep the 200 practice / 100 hour instruction rule is very abstract and more about allowing background improvement (especially considering the huge range of skill it potentially covers) don't worry too much about it for calculating a hard and fast 'you can only be X skilled if you spent Y time doing/learning a thing' restriction.

If you hang around on these forum long enough you'll see attempting to fit real life to the system is a fairly common event. But GURPS is rpg system that was designed to try give a working abstraction of real life in a pleasing and playable way :-).

[bocephus]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Yep the 200 practice / 100 hour instruction rule is very abstract and more about allowing background improvement (especially considering the huge range of skill it potentially covers) don't worry too much about it for calculating a hard and fast 'you can only be X skilled if you spent Y time doing/learning a thing' restriction.

If you hang around on these forum long enough you'll see attempting to fit real life to the system is a fairly common event. But GURPS is rpg system that was designed to try give a working abstraction of real life in a pleasing and playable way :-).

And thats a very valid point. I use GURPS because it most closely resembles a real life depiction. But I allow a person to throw a fireball, then got a little overly invested in realism.

After all of this I think I will settle on a medium variation of the rules to accommodate my adventure setting and my players enjoyment and not just ignore the books.

I'll use the range mods at half penalty basically increment on 5s, allow them to keep the Acc of the weapon as a built in bonus (that super rarely goes over 3 and 80% of the time is a 2), but add the 3 seconds of aiming on top of that to find some balance for the new range penalties. Since its only bows and spells I dont have to deal with bracing and other stuff... that is pretty much the extent of the rules as they apply to range. Cover, Size mods, movement and RoF I have been using from the book anyway.

Bows in my world are also fairly fragile, PCs are constantly replacing them or repairing them or trying to find strings for them.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by bocephus

And thats a very valid point. I use GURPS because it most closely resembles a real life depiction. But I allow a person to throw a fireball, then got a little overly invested in realism.

Ah well you are hardly the first to do that, I've been known to do the same ;-)!

There's actually a live thread on the training rules at the moment

Originally Posted by bocephus

After all of this I think I will settle on a medium variation of the rules to accommodate my adventure setting and my players enjoyment and not just ignore the books.

I'll use the range mods at half penalty basically increment on 5s, allow them to keep the Acc of the weapon as a built in bonus (that super rarely goes over 3 and 80% of the time is a 2), but add the 3 seconds of aiming on top of that to find some balance for the new range penalties. Since its only bows and spells I dont have to deal with bracing and other stuff... that is pretty much the extent of the rules as they apply to range. Cover, Size mods, movement and RoF I have been using from the book anyway.

Bows in my world are also fairly fragile, PCs are constantly replacing them or repairing them or trying to find strings for them.

Sounds good to me and if it works for your game that is all that matters.

You might also want to mess around with making fine quality arrows potentially available for an extra +1 acc. (also ties in nicely with the fragility point)



On this subject in general I would also recommend two pyramid articles as well, the first is:

"The Deadly Spring" (Issue 3/33) this is an optional more in depth look at making bows and arrows and has some extra rules and options for bows in the system

and the second is:

"On Target" (Issue 3/77). This is a set of optional rules for that revamps the aiming action, it adds more variability and options. Basically make it aiming more interesting thing to do than say "I aim" every second for three seconds to get the same bonus as the last time.

I mention this last one not just because it's a good article in it's own right but actually because it halves the range and SM penalty mods at certain points (the roll to aim), and your idea reminded me of that.


Both written by Douglas Cole, (who also posts here)

[safisher]

Originally Posted by bocephus

And thats a very valid point. I use GURPS because it most closely resembles a real life depiction. But I allow a person to throw a fireball, then got a little overly invested in realism.

I should point out that Tactical Shooting has rules that I use with medieval archery. As you say, the real beauty of GURPS is you can take all these pieces from here and here and assemble your own rule set. Not everyone will make the same decisions, but that's fine. In GURPS Monster Hunters The Mission there are rules to use range bands. These are handy.

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by safisher

In GURPS Monster Hunters The Mission there are rules to use range bands.

AHA! That's where they are.

Hey Tomsdad, the Action 2 range bands and MH 2 range bands are nigh identical, with the MH bands using the the lower of the SSR penalty for that range. So if Action 2 says "-3 to -6" you use the -3.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by evileeyore

AHA! That's where they are.

Hey Tomsdad, the Action 2 range bands and MH 2 range bands are nigh identical, with the MH bands using the the lower of the SSR penalty for that range. So if Action 2 says "-3 to -6" you use the -3.

Cool, thought I'd seen it somewhere (but I don't really use either so was hazy)

[evileeyore]

Originally Posted by Tomsdad

Cool, thought I'd seen it somewhere (but I don't really use either so was hazy)

I do use it, but it's in my house rules with only the Action 2 pg number so I forgot I may have taken the "use the lower penalty" from MH 2.