Survivable Guns Realism

[Anthony]

Realistically, weapons have:

• Lower variance in penetration than GURPS implies; what variance there is mostly comes from different strike angles and the target's armor being different at different locations.
• Higher variance in lethality than GURPS implies; there should be a fairly substantial chance that a 7.62 round (7d) blows through without doing more than tissue damage, and that a .22LR (1d+1 pi-) inflicts a mortal wound.
• Extremely unreliable about incapacitation, particularly with less than lethal damage.
• Less cumulative effect. In GURPS, if one hit has a meaningful chance to kill, three hits is an automatic kill. To some degree this could be covered by variance in lethality.

However, that combination of traits doesn't really result in survivable guns; if anything, it would probably increase the odds of PC death.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Less cumulative effect. In GURPS, if one hit has a meaningful chance to kill, three hits is an automatic kill. To some degree this could be covered by variance in lethality.

This is something I've toyed with, but not to the point of serious playtesting. What it takes is a system where each injury is its own "wound", with a severity based on the damage inflicted. The consequences of injury are based on the worst wound received, rather than an accumulation of damage (though blood loss and shock should still have cumulative effects). L.W. Camp has an interesting houserule along these lines on his GURPS page.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

This is something I've toyed with, but not to the point of serious playtesting. What it takes is a system where each injury is its own "wound", with a severity based on the damage inflicted.

Not necessarily; it's also possible to just use extremely high variability in damage, a la Phoenix Command (where the range in damage from being hit by a pistol is something like 5-1,000). I briefly get into this in my article on wound size modifiers, basic idea is that you add 1d-4 to effective wound size, which means a pi attack doing 10 penetrating damage would have a chance to do 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, or 20 injury.

[vierasmarius]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Not necessarily; it's also possible to just use extremely high variability in damage, a la Phoenix Command (where the range in damage from being hit by a pistol is something like 5-1,000). I briefly get into this in my article on wound size modifiers, basic idea is that you add 1d-4 to effective wound size, which means a pi attack doing 10 penetrating damage would have a chance to do 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, or 20 injury.

Hmm. I'd prefer to handle such damage variability through hit location (such as a Torso shot's 1/6 chance of hitting the Vitals, or 1/6 chance of hitting the Skull through the Face). To each their own though.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Not necessarily; it's also possible to just use extremely high variability in damage, a la Phoenix Command (where the range in damage from being hit by a pistol is something like 5-1,000). I briefly get into this in my article on wound size modifiers, basic idea is that you add 1d-4 to effective wound size, which means a pi attack doing 10 penetrating damage would have a chance to do 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, or 20 injury.

lwcamp has his own take on that concept, which basically comes down to - turn xd+y to 1d*x+y for damage, SM 0 experiences blowthrough at 2x whatever is rolled (SM -1 at 1.5x, SM -2 at x, SM +2 at 5x, etc). So, with GodBeastX's situation, let's assume the dog is around SM -1. The pistol would be 1d*3+1 pi+1, and each shot has an equal chance of doing 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, or 19 damage. Blowthrough being 1.5x means these would actually be 2, 3.5, 5, 6.5, 8, or 9.5 damage, for 4, 7, 10, 13, 16, or 19 injury (bullet is effectively pi+2 against target). I've experimented some with his wounding system, and will probably start playing with this bit soon as well.

[Langy]

Originally Posted by vierasmarius

This is something I've toyed with, but not to the point of serious playtesting. What it takes is a system where each injury is its own "wound", with a severity based on the damage inflicted. The consequences of injury are based on the worst wound received, rather than an accumulation of damage (though blood loss and shock should still have cumulative effects). L.W. Camp has an interesting houserule along these lines on his GURPS page.

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.