Piercing damage against low tech armor

[psydraco]

Hi friends. I am about to start a wasteland campaing and the following question showed up to me and my friends:

As bodkin arrows have a armor divisor against TL 0-4 armor, so high tech firearms that does any kind of piercing damage will have armor divisor 2 to this armors as well?

Thanks

[Ulzgoroth]

No, why would they?

[Icelander]

Arrows made from hardened steel have an Armour Divisor.

So do bullets made of hardened steel, because that's how you make AP ammo.

Ball ammo made of lead has no Armour Divisor.

[Willy]

Also crossbow bolts have also a bodkin point basis set campaign page 277, similar to arrows. Crossbows fit well in a postapocalyptic wasteland scenario.
Gun ammo is covered in the same book page 279.
GURPS High Tech has a bunch more options about guns and offer a lot of gimmnicks and acessoirs for them, not to mention other items for all kinds of adventuring live, gun ammo is covered here to a extent at page 166 following.

[Anders]

Armor divisor and injury type are completely independent - you can have any combination and you can't tell from one what the other is.

[psydraco]

Thanks for all the awnsers.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by psydraco

Thanks for all the awnsers.

One thing I feel should be noted here - bodkin points do pi damage because armor-piercing projectiles in GURPS cause less wounding, and there isn't an imp- wound type. Really, bodkin points shouldn't be less effective against Kevlar and the like than normal arrowheads - if you don't mind a little extra complication, you may get better results treating bodkin points as "impaling with only x1 WM." That, or have armor-piercing arrows that better match the historical record, which are constructed more-or less like normal war arrowheads but out of hardened steel; they cost more than normal arrows - somewhere between x2 and x4 IIRC - and have an armor divisor of (2), but otherwise are exactly the same. The reason bullets suffer reduced wounding is due to a variety of factors that aren't present in an arrowhead - most notably, AP bullets don't distort/expand/fragment in the body like normal bullets do, so they tend to leave more narrow wound channels (and dump less kinetic energy into harming the target in cases of overpenetration).

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Varyon

That, or have armor-piercing arrows that better match the historical record, which are constructed more-or less like normal war arrowheads but out of hardened steel; they cost more than normal arrows - somewhere between x2 and x4 IIRC - and have an armor divisor of (2), but otherwise are exactly the same.

Of course what that does is make a half-decent PC archer able to blow right through heavy plate and average a major wound for the guy inside without having to aim for the vitals or armour chinks or anything like that.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Rupert

Of course what that does is make a half-decent PC archer able to blow right through heavy plate and average a major wound for the guy inside without having to aim for the vitals or armour chinks or anything like that.

I can certainly see a case made to have the WM be lower for game balance purposes, yeah. Then again, getting ~2d(2) imp from a bow probably requires comparable investment to getting ~3d+1 cut with a swung weapon, and those manage comparable wounding against the DR 7 Heavy Steel Corselet from Characters, so the former isn't necessarily broken (there is the issue you can manage this from range, of course, but you often need higher skill to reliably hit a ranged target than you do to reliably hit a melee one).

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

That, or have armor-piercing arrows that better match the historical record, which are constructed more-or less like normal war arrowheads but out of hardened steel; they cost more than normal arrows - somewhere between x2 and x4 IIRC - and have an armor divisor of (2), but otherwise are exactly the same.

Eh, that grossly overestimates the relevance of hardened steel for arrows. In general the reason for hardened projectiles is so they don't self-flatten when they hit armor, but penetration mechanisms for arrows against hard armor aren't terribly dependent on having a sharp point, and against soft armor (leather, cloth, etc) the arrow doesn't flatten anyway.