Steve Jackson Games Forums - 'Shotguns have dkb/dbt' - where did that myth (?) come from?

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- - 'Shotguns have dkb/dbt' - where did that myth (?) come from? (https://forums.sjgames.com/showthread.php?t=64976)

Re: 'Shotguns have dkb/dbt' - where did that myth (?) come from?

Quote:

Originally Posted by Biker Matt (Post 894390)

sorry to say, but my roommate's a marine, and he's shot a 9mm into a plastic milk carton and had the bullet bounch off!

Eh, yes?

I'm hard-pressed to find the relevance here. Do you mean that because implausible things sometimes happen in the real world, there is no point to scientific research?

Re: 'Shotguns have dkb/dbt' - where did that myth (?) come from?

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Originally Posted by Biker Matt (Post 894383)

If you treat Shotgun damage the same way, you may get that 1d+1 or +2 of regular damage, and some multiplier for knockback damage (averaging, say, 18-22 points for purposes of knockback, making your average person go back 2-3 yards with the single hit), which brings it MUCH more in-line with the other firearms listed in terms of effectiveness (and that much more realistic, too!)

Which considering how many people have all ready told you shotguns do not do knock back, makes this a cinematic not realistic in any way rule.

Re: 'Shotguns have dkb/dbt' - where did that myth (?) come from?

Talking about injury mostly, not knockback...
The rule about blunt trauma, I don't see why it'd be doubled for a shotgun and nothing else. However, there's a larger chance of getting multiples of ten to do trauma when you hit with lot of pellets. The really close range rules are kind of nasty for a shotgun, I'd need to look, but I think you count all of the pellets as one attack for armor purposes. If not, then damage maybe should be counted as a total for blunt trauma?

100 hits each doing 9 points, on a vest with DR10, would do nothing. 100 hits on a vest with DR10 doing 10 points of damage would do no penetrating damage, but 100 points of blunt trauma damage. Seems to me the difference is very minimal for such huge difference in effect. If counted as a total, the first one would do 90 points BT.

Re: 'Shotguns have dkb/dbt' - where did that myth (?) come from?

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Originally Posted by Jerron (Post 894462)

You multiply .5 x the ROF-multiplier with both damage and DR for each shot fired to get damage for each shot. So the penetrating damage increases (as you hit a lot more often than is to be expected) and theres lots of more blunt trauma. For even more grit, you could also implement some mechanism to determine the range/conditions at which ALL of the bullets (full ROF-multiplier) hit. I guess the blunt trauma the shotgun inflicts doubles, because flexible amor is designed to divert the force of impact from one bullet and fails to do so when a lot of them hit at the same time, because there will probably be some points at which a lot of different bullets apply impact too, no uniform distribution and also because the amor wafts forward and backward when hit and the part the next pellet strikes just might be already moving towards you so there is not much protection from the dispersion. In fact, the amor might rip at that part and the pellet might penetrate.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Jerron (Post 894462)

If not, then damage maybe should be counted as a total for blunt trauma?

Yes, it should, the book says

Quote:

[379]Flexible Amor and blunt trauma[...]for every full 10 points of cutting piercing or impaling or every 5 points of crushing damage stopped by your DR, you suffer 1 HP of injury due to blunt trauma.

, so to be super realistic you would need to count all of them, even between firefights. 100 hits each doing 9 points damage, would thus do 90, 100 hits each doing 10 pts, 100 points of injury.
Sadly it seems to be a little more complicated than I thought, but I should be getting a nice book soon that covers such questions.

Re: 'Shotguns have dkb/dbt' - where did that myth (?) come from?

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Usual estimates for punches assume about 1/6 the striker's mass, if the striker is leaning into the blow. Good punches aren't "whip cracks" that channel tons of energy into a hand. Good punches are closer to battering rams that have the entire arm, shoulder, and upper quarter of the torso behind them. An uppercut can do significantly better.

I strongly disagree with the first part, and strongly agree with the second. Punches should have the arm, shoulder and upper part of the torso (and more importantly the abdomen, legs and especially hips), but a whip crack punch will be devestating if the timing of the crack is good, and much faster and less committing than a battering ram. Of course, it takes a lot of practice to find the proper timing for the crack, but well, fighting is a skill after all - may as well practice it well.