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Old 10-10-2019, 04:04 PM   #14
Varyon
 
Join Date: Jun 2013
Default Re: Survivable Musket

Quote:
Originally Posted by CarrionPeacock View Post
Regardless, that's -11 to hit beyond its 1/2D range, no one is going to deliberately try that. If a someone's hit by an attack beyond 1/2D range, that's going to either be a stray bullet or a shot aimed at a mass formation, not the most common situation in a game.
Muskets typically have Acc 2, and you can use them from a musket rest for a +1 from Braced. Aiming for a total of 3 rounds gives a further +2 to hit, All-Out Attack gives at least +1 (some variant rules give it a +2). If it's the first shot of the battle, you'll likely have a +1 to Acc from Careful Loading. All that together is +7 (or +8), for a net -4 (or -3). Not an easy shot, certainly, but not nearly as difficult as you've made it out to be. A PC trying to shoot a long range target from the hip is likely Doing It Wrong.

Quote:
Originally Posted by CarrionPeacock View Post
Maybe, I don't understand how GURPS calculates its damage (penetration on homongenous steel of xmm thick? wtf?) but 9d damage on unarmored individual is going to deal 60+ injury, instant-kill on average. I know muskets are dangerous, but that seems beyond what's reasonable.
From what I understand, the majority of firearms - and I think some of the mechanical artillery from LT - do damage based on their penetration of RHA steel, setting 1" of RHA as 70 DR or 20d damage. If we assume a musket should have an armor divisor of (0.5) due to firing an unjacketed lead ball, and that such muskets penetrate up to ~0.23" of RHA, they would need to deal around 9d(0.5) pi++. It's possible the LT authors instead just calculated what penetration a 20 mm diameter, 50 gram projectile moving at ~350 m/s, would actually have (basically treating a musket bullet as though it were an FMJ round). Plugging that into Douglas Cole's ballistics spreadsheet gives damage pretty close to what we see in LT, after all.
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