[MH] Gun Wielding Foes

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

I think GURPS absolutely does not give enough credit to the awesomeness of braced scoped rifles in the hands of people who have not a clue what they are doing at least as far as hunting goes . . . . 200 yds to the vitals of a deer with a scoped braced rifle and time to aim is very easy and definitely not skill 13, it should be something people can do from default as long as they don't have non familiarity and all . . . . . definitely not a '200 hours of training' thing, more like 'a box of bullets and an afternoon, with bullets left over for the actual hunting'

I wouldn't put too much stock in the 200 hours thing. GURPS is far more granular than most RPGs out there, but even it has to abstract stuff out. A default mostly covers something someone has no experience with, so a default is what happens when you toss a gun to someone and say "Go, shoot."

Familiarizing someone with a gun, showing them some pointers, and giving them a chance to mess around with it is certainly going to considerably improve their skill, which can be represented by a single point in a skill. Arguably, there should probably be a shadow-zone between "Default" and "one point of skill" but GURPS doesn't have that.

(Though one fix for that sort of thing might be an optional rule that sort of represents the opposite of an unfamiliarity penalty: If someone shows you how to use something, you can ignore up to -2 points worth of default penalties with just that weapon, which only lasts for a while before it fades away. Hence why you can show someone a weapon and they'll gain experience with it, but show them the same weapon a month later, and they'll have forgotten where the safety is unless they did some additional study and practice to cement what you taught them, aka spent a character point).

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

Familiarizing someone with a gun, showing them some pointers, and giving them a chance to mess around with it is certainly going to considerably improve their skill, which can be represented by a single point in a skill. Arguably, there should probably be a shadow-zone between "Default" and "one point of skill" but GURPS doesn't have that.

I'd say that the afternoon of shooting pointers is pretty explicitly what it takes to eliminate familiarity penalties. And that even with that hitting targets past 50 yards with a rifle is unpredictable. Some people can do it just after that afternoon, some people will keep hitting all over the paper after hundreds of hours of instruction.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

I'd use defaults for someone who's never used a gun before, like a completely green gangster, a college kid who's just been tossed a gun for the first time in his life, or what have you.

A gang banger who's plinked some beer cans with his buddies, knows what a safety is, but still insists on turning the gun "gangsta style" probably has no more than 1 point. A skilled and experienced gangster who's done a few drive-bys might go all the way up to 12. I think you could apply the same to survivalists and cultists. These are people with no formal training, but that doesn't necessarily translate to a complete lack of skill. I'm presuming that they have SOME experience.

The next set are people with formal training. That formal training might be minimal (skill 12), or it might be substantial and backed up with plenty of experience (skill 13-15).

Skill 16 is really about as high as you're going to get before you're really going to get into a "heroic" zone that suggests that the characters have names, personality, individuality, and should be treated as such, rather than as goons. And some heroes will have less than 16 gun skill, naturally.

And, of course, just because you're a gang-banger, police or soldier doesn't mean you actually do have skill with a gun. Everyone's green at some point, and cops and soldiers can be desk jockeys too.

Systematic and complete; sounds like you have it down for your games.

Personally, and you can tell by my question, I think your ranges are probably high by about 2-3 points, but that's just me.

[starslayer]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Why would you not just use defaults for that? Not trying to be persnickety . . . asking a serious question. I'd have the description you used be default, which will be Guns-6 to Guns-8 in most cases. For Guns-10 through Guns-12, these are DX to DX+2, that is, people who put a lot of time into a combat skill (the DX+2 level being somewhat meaning in GURPS "serious at it," since it's the breakpoint for most meaningful bonuses for things like Karate, Wrestling, etc).

That makes the assumption that gangbanger has DX10- DX 10 is the average for humans in general- and as an average you will encounter people with more and less then ten, some 'grew up in the street lived by the law of my fists and now I've got a gun' gangbanger likely has above average strength dexterity and health simply to have made it to adulthood in a gang situation. They have had to take repeated blows and recover quickly, engage in fistfights where weapons were involved, run away from police, and climb over fences and the like. There occasional stints in jail have left them with nothing to do but work out, and they've used a variety of performance enhancing drugs.

If a gang has even moderately limited resources they don't give there least or average reflexes members the weapons, they give those to the the ones who are most likely to hit something with them (the DX >12 members). If the have enough resources that everyone has a pistol then they also likely have a space where the police won't question a lot of gunfire, so they can spend some time shooting trashcans and beer bottles.

In either scenario if you encounter a gangbanger with a pistol your looking at someone with above average dexterity and potentially enough 'plinking' training to account for DX-1->DX level skill.

Of course there lack of formal training and combat theroy means that they are not able to make use of proper bracing, aiming, and will make ineffective use of cover- but it still makes them a large threat at short ranges.

[DouglasCole]

Originally Posted by Kalzazz

I think GURPS absolutely does not give enough credit to the awesomeness of braced scoped rifles in the hands of people who have not a clue what they are doing at least as far as hunting goes . . . . 200 yds to the vitals of a deer with a scoped braced rifle and time to aim is very easy and definitely not skill 13, it should be something people can do from default as long as they don't have non familiarity and all . . . . . definitely not a '200 hours of training' thing, more like 'a box of bullets and an afternoon, with bullets left over for the actual hunting'

One of the things that will get you from what Crakkerjakk and I have been more or less agreeing on, to where you are, is the task difficulty modifier.

When putting holes in paper for sighting in, you get:

Range/speed precisely known: +3
No personal risk, no stake in outcome, no risk to others: +3
Outdoor range, not perfect conditions: +1 to +2

Net here is about +8

Take a nice rifle (Acc 5) and a good scope (+3 or +4).

Aim, Brace (+1), AoA (Determined) (+1). The Precision aiming bonuses are rolled into the +8 above.

So after four seconds or so, you're at skill + 18 or so. A vitals-size target at 200yds is -15.

So you're at Skill+3 to make that shot. Skill-11 makes it 90% of the time. DX 11 (Guns-7) still makes it 50% of the time.

And that's not including any expert guys around telling you what to do, which is in effect, a spotter and teacher who will walk you through each shot.

[Kalzazz]

I've trained people (casually . . . I have points in teaching, but I doubht I have points in guns) My experience has been that 'able to reliably nail a soda can at 100ish yds' in the wild or 'able to put 2in groups at 100yds at a range' is a process that goes as follows

1. Find someone who is vaguely interested in the notion of shooting things (usually a foreign classmate)
2. Person shoots 20 or so times with a .22 with a scope, familiarizing themself with the notion of breathing and squeezing the trigger without recoil
3. Person then moves to the deer rifle and after a few shots is able to pull off the above feats, firing 10-20 rounds total with it

I haven't trained anyone to hunt deer though

My own training prior to deer hunting was 'Here is the rifle, okay, remember the breathing and trigger pull?' (when I was 13 or so I did Tetrathlon with an air pistol, so had gotten the basic ideas then)
'Yeah'
'Well, its the same thing. Put the scope on the target and do that, rest the rifle on the back of the chair here and shoot that log'
Shoot the log 4 times successfully
'Alright, good to go'

And Ive been quite successful at the deer hunting . . . . on the off chance a deer is dumb enough to commit suicide by wandering in front of me and standing still for a bit. It did take me some more practice to where I was good enough at shooting standing up braced against a tree as opposed to sitting, but usually am sitting anyway (after a gun, a comfortable yet lightweight chair is the number two resource a deer hunter needs)

[Mailanka]

Originally Posted by DouglasCole

Systematic and complete; sounds like you have it down for your games.

Personally, and you can tell by my question, I think your ranges are probably high by about 2-3 points, but that's just me.

A DX of 10 and 1 point in gun skill gives you 10, and without some house rules, your choice is between 10 and 6 to represent the lower end of skill spectrum. That's pretty binary, and so where you decide to issue that single point tends to look fairly stark. If you only give it out after "200 hours of training, something like boot camp," then skill 10 is rare. If you give it out after an hour of plinking with a gun, then it's very common. I'm sure both of us fall short of either end of that spectrum.

2-4 points represents some real training or experience. Beyond 4 points and a skill becomes a serious investment (1 point gets you skill 10, another +1 point gets you skill 11, and another +2 points gets you skill 12), so skill 12 is about as high as you're going to get the average guy who isn't going to make his life out of this. That's a soldier or a cop or an experienced thug. Higher than that requires either talent (DX 12) or dedication (8-12 points in a skill). DX 12 and 1 point gets you skill 12, and DX 12 and 4 points gets you skill 14. DX 10 with 12 points also gets you Skill 14. So this is the range for skilled or talented professionals.

Talent AND Dedication will make some waves: 12 points and DX 12 will get you skill 16. This is your special ops sniper who borders on a hero in his own right, and probably only counts as a goon in high powered games (which MH is).

That's the logic behind it. I'm gonna go out on a limb here and predict that you'll agree with me every point of the way, and the only real difference between us is when we give that first point, and how quickly we hand out the rest, ie "What does 1 point mean," and "how much dedication really goes into 4, 8 and 12 points," and "how unusual is DX 12."

[Crakkerjakk]

Originally Posted by starslayer

That makes the assumption that gangbanger has DX10- DX 10 is the average for humans in general- and as an average you will encounter people with more and less then ten, some 'grew up in the street lived by the law of my fists and now I've got a gun' gangbanger likely has above average strength dexterity and health simply to have made it to adulthood in a gang situation. They have had to take repeated blows and recover quickly, engage in fistfights where weapons were involved, run away from police, and climb over fences and the like. There occasional stints in jail have left them with nothing to do but work out, and they've used a variety of performance enhancing drugs.

That's for the successful gangbangers. The vast majority of them are actually more likely to have below average attributes due to childhood malnourishment, drug abuse, etc. Well, in addition to not actually having reached their full growth yet, being often underage.

[Ze'Manel Cunha]

Originally Posted by Mailanka

A DX of 10 and 1 point in gun skill gives you 10, and without some house rules, your choice is between 10 and 6 to represent the lower end of skill spectrum. That's pretty binary, and so where you decide to issue that single point tends to look fairly stark.

The Dabbler Perk works for much of that, lets you cut into the default without going all the way to a single point the skill.

A lot of people have hobby skills which are in the Dabbler Perk pool.

[Kalzazz]

To be honest, the 12-14 range for goons for me is chosen mostly due to 'this tends to be a range where combining full auto fire and range penalties, it usually balances out to a moderate chance of potential hits, which is good because badguys always whishing is boring, but goons landing lots of hits and lots of crits isnt fun either'

edit - and yes, firing full auto drains the magazine in 3 rounds, but usually goons die before that happens anyway. I can't recall a single game I've ever run where not only did the goons burn through their first magazine they lived long enough to reload and start firing another