Re: Survivable Guns Realism
 

There are lots of fights with modern weaponry in my secret-agents campaign (see .sig). What keeps the PCs alive is:

1. Crappy odds of being hit.
2. Random hit locations for practically all automatic weapons and fragments.
3. Body armor.
4. Campaign-mandated Luck.
5. A good medic.

Between plausible skill levels (default for ordinary people, 10-12 for most trained ones, and 13-14 for elite NPCs) and believable shooting conditions (range, concealment, lighting, etc.), most hits are random bad luck. When hits do occur, a good many strike arms, legs, hands, or feet (nasty but nonlethal). Vests and – on strike missions – helmets greatly mitigate the effects of hits to the torso or head. Luck can make long-odds hits miss, move sure-fire hits to less-serious hit locations (preferably heavy torso armor, but even an unarmored limb is better than the face). And the medic can treat the minor blunt trauma from hits to armor, and ensure that limb hits don't turn PCs into lifelong cripples.

Re: Survivable Guns Realism
 

I've imposed a random hit location ruling unless you take a turn to aim. Does this seem like bad practice?

Re: Survivable Guns Realism
 

It may be realistic . . . it's hard to say, because some excellent shooters really do seem able to call all their shots. It might be best to rule something like "For unaimed fire, apply hit location modifiers to skill at the very end. If they take effective skill below 10, ignore them and call the shot random instead." That will privilege high-skill PCs over low-skill mooks, and I'd playtest it before calling it a good option.

Re: Survivable Guns Realism
 

I've been trying to research the matter, and it seems that most people aim while shooting in 1 second windows, which is contrary to GURPS methodology. When people are doing accurate gunshots, whether moving or otherwise, they are following the aim maneuver's ruling of steps, getting scope bonuses, and using two hands to brace pistols, but they tend to be firing every second with at most 2 seconds.

However, I do notice they take time for the initial aiming, but the attack doesn't lose aim once it's established.

So to summarize my thoughts, I feel like Aim bonus should just be sticky until you do something other than an aimed attack. Though I do notice they try to keep from firing too many bullets for recoil to mess up their aim.

And mostly I meant (On my previous post) automatic torso hits. I feel like "I shoot the torso" automatically constantly without taking action to focus on the torso is kinda lucky from what I'm watching.

That being said, I am not a firearms expert, just trying to figure out what feels right for this campaign I'm running.

Re: Survivable Guns Realism
 

Check.... Follow up shots in Tactical Shooting I think? You get half acc for shots on the same target after you've sighted in on a target.

Re: Survivable Guns Realism
 

That houserule seems like too much work, and too different from the original game mechanics.

If I were to do something similar, I'd keep the mechanics as similar as possible. Probably something like this:

When figuring out damage, figure out the 'Accumulated Damage' and the 'Single Strike Damage' separately. Single Strike Damage does the normal things it can do - cripple limbs, cause a major wound, kill, etc, all based on the normal limits. Accumulated Damage can kill or do anything else accumulated wounds do - but rather than just subtracting Single Strike Damage from Accumulated Damage one-by-one, accumulated wounds take (One Fifth of the lesser of Current Accumulated Damage and Single Strike Damage) + (Greater of Current Accumulated Damage and Single Strike Damage). Round down at the 'one fifth' stage (or maybe round up; not sure which).

Example:

A man with 14 HP is walking down the street when he is shot for 2d pi damage. This does 7 HP of injury, giving him 7 HP of accumulated wounds. This isn't yet a Major Wound. He is then shot again, this time by an SMG. He is hit four times for 3d pi- damage each. These do 8, 4, 5, and 3 damage. The 8 injury wound is a Major Wound, and his new accumulated total is 8 + 7/5 + 5/5 + 4/5 + 3/5, rounding down at each division stage to get a wound total of 8+1+1=10.

(Alternatively, round up at the division stages to get 8+2+1+1+1=13). He's not quite at negative HP even though he's taken wounds of 7, 8, 4, 5, and 3 injury.

There's no need to keep track of individual wounds in this system, just the running total. It works in all other ways like normal wounding.

Re: Survivable Guns Realism
 

One thing I wanted to add regarding the effects of three rounds to the torso point.

We've been dealing with strict average expectations, average damage, average stats. In such an instance three 9mm rounds to the torso will automatically kill (miss a Death roll by 3+) a ST10, HT10 target 25.9% of the time. It will put them at mortal status (missing a death roll by 1 or 2) 24.1% of the time, and not put them in danger of immediate death 50% of the time (making the roll).

Obviously bleeding complicates that, and its not going to take too long to lose another 3hps and trigger another death roll when rolling bleeding at -5 on 60 second intervals.


Now obviously there will be cases of people shot three time in the torso with 9mm and making it. Some of that will be variation in damage rolls, but there's a big variable to consider the stats in question.

Now as a filthy stats normaliser I'm not going to play that card particularly hard, but the way GURPs works a point of two on those stats makes a massive difference

same set up but with ST11 and HT11

27 pts is still a over -1xhp so its death roll but this time it's:

Automatic kill 16.2%
Mortal 21.3%
Makes the roll 62.5%

and it doubles the bleeding time until the next death roll


same set up but with ST12 and HT12

27 pts is still a over -1xhp so its death roll but this time it's:

Automatic kill 9.3%
Mortal 16.7%
Makes the roll 74.7%

and it triple the bleeding time until the next death roll

So while I'm not going to claim everyone who survived 3 rounds to the torso is ST/HT12 (and I don't need to ST/HT10 can do it) a higher then average stat will help a lot.

Leaving aside RL for the moment, for those who are thinking 3x 9mm round is too lethal RAW, how often are the PCs closer to ST/HT 12 than ST/HT10?

And of course going the other way using the halving method it will take on average 6x 9mm round to the torso (or 2x to the heart) to risk a death save on a ST/HT12 target and it will be:

Automatic kill 9.3%
Mortal 16.7%
Makes the roll 74.7%


A big enough chunk of muscle being removed will stop function.

But I agree I dislike anything that's automatic. However even the halving damage will still pretty much automatically get a crippling result with rifle calibre rounds.

So TBH if part of the justification of this is to reduce crippled limbs form rifle rounds it's not a very good one, and I think solutions to specific problems are better off being specific to the problem themselves.

Re: Survivable Guns Realism
 

Sure, but small arms are not generally going to take out that much flesh (arguably blowthrough on limbs should be done before wound modifiers, but then you get into pi- being completely incapable of crippling a limb, which is wrong).

Re: Survivable Guns Realism
 

If you mean small arms as in pistol calibre stuff than I'd pretty much agree, if you mean bigger rifle stuff I'd disagree I've seen pictures of a 7.62 wound to a leg where the keyhole effect sliced an oval of flesh from the thigh that was a big chunk. (Think small shark bite size chunk missing).

I don't even necessarily mind Pi- having hard time crippling limbs, you can have accumulated wounds and crippling joints and extremities is a lower threshold.

Re: Survivable Guns Realism
 

Thanks! That's exactly it!