05-02-2021, 03:48 PM | #1 |
Join Date: Aug 2014
Location: Snoopy's basement
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Finer granularity for small calibers?
So I'm looking through Pulp Guns and I'll find myself thinking 'Hm, that looks interesting.'
But then I realize that no-one in my gaming group is going to likely pick many interesting guns because of the halving of Pi- damage. So I am wondering if there should be finer grades of Pi damage for small calibers. What about improving damage for larger Pi- calibers to a 0.7 multiple and creating a class of Pi-- with the 0.5 multiplier for the smaller ones? If I wanted to do this, what break point would be good for one level vs. another? |
05-02-2021, 05:16 PM | #2 |
Join Date: Jul 2006
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Re: Finer granularity for small calibers?
...you could limit the weapons that are for sale where they are. I suspect the majority of people using less impressive calibre weapons are doing so because they cannot obtain (or afford) better ones.
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05-02-2021, 06:12 PM | #3 |
Join Date: Dec 2012
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Re: Finer granularity for small calibers?
Also for ease of concealment or greater capacity (lots of Holdout guns use smaller calibres for this reason, and because their intended ranges don't need much more).
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05-02-2021, 09:53 PM | #4 | |
Join Date: Jan 2006
Location: Central Europe
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Re: Finer granularity for small calibers?
Quote:
Gun culture has changed a lot though. In the 1930s, it was a revolutionary practice to strip and clean handguns at regular intervals after they had been carried in a pocket!
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05-03-2021, 03:05 AM | #5 | |
Join Date: Mar 2006
Location: Iceland*
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Re: Finer granularity for small calibers?
Quote:
.32 ACP and similar rounds are pi- (0.7) to pi- (0.8), depending on exactly the velocity and grain weight of the specific loading. This is ball or FMJ ammo.
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05-03-2021, 08:09 AM | #6 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Finer granularity for small calibers?
The best options seem to be a Colt Government, with ammunition readily available in the Americas, but patchy in much of the rest of the world, or a Luger P08, if you can get it gunsmithed to raise its reliability.
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05-03-2021, 08:42 AM | #7 |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Finer granularity for small calibers?
If you really want fine granularity, there's the idea that, for bullets that don't expand or fragment, setting WM as equal to caliber in cm works well. This does have the issue that 9mm (sort of the "gold standard" for average) is a WM of 0.9 rather than 1.0. AP and the like are generally around x0.7 to final WM, while expanding and fragmenting are generally around x1.5 (boosting fragmenting to something like x1.8 might not be out of the question; note this would put 5.56 NATO right at WM of 1.0 when close enough to fragment; another consideration would be that bullets that are markedly longer than they are wide could get x1.3 from tumbling, putting 7.62 NATO at a WM of 1.0). If you don't want to shift everything like this, you could just have this in play for the pi- calibers.
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05-03-2021, 09:45 AM | #8 | |
Join Date: Aug 2007
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Re: Finer granularity for small calibers?
Quote:
The problem revolves around where the breakpoints are and the msot important one for this purpose is the Major Wound number. For humans with 10 hp that is 6. You only get that much wounding with at least 2D-1 P (avg. 6). You'll see this with .380 ACP or .38 Special. this actually is where most modern experts on firearms self-defense would set the minimum effective caliber. So while most .32 guns at 2D-1 or even a full 2D P- aren't making the threshold with 3 pts of effective wounding moving them up to (.7) wouuding only gives them 4 pts. The 7.63 x 25mm Mauser round is the notable exception. At 3D-1 in Gurps the change takes it from (9.5) x (.5) round down to 4 to 6.65 round down to 6. If this is the only significant change the whole thing may not be worth your time. Give those interesting sounding .32s to your mooks. It'll cut down on PC casualties.
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05-03-2021, 10:00 AM | #9 |
Night Watchman
Join Date: Oct 2010
Location: Cambridge, UK
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Re: Finer granularity for small calibers?
Makes sense. Most use of .32 pistols has been for deterrence or threatening applications (Civilian pocket pistols, officers' symbols of rank) where killing causes more difficulties than wounding.
They're much more effective on brain or vitals locations, where the pi- is replaced by the location multiplier, but getting to do that is difficult. The Welrod suppressed pistol (Tactical Shooting, p. 54) is built for the job, and .22 pistols are easy to modify for it.
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05-03-2021, 10:10 AM | #10 | |
Join Date: Jun 2013
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Re: Finer granularity for small calibers?
Quote:
*EDIT: Decided to do the math properly, and when the GURPS rounding rules come into play (round wounding down, minimum 1 HP), it turns out x0.5 actually has an average of 2.78 HP and x0.7 an average of 3.75 HP. This works out to: Code:
x0.5 x0.7 <1/3xHP 2.52 1.87 0 HP 3.6 2.67 -HP 7.2 5.33 -2xHP 10.8 8 -3xHP 14.4 10.67 -4xHP 18 13.33 -5xHP 21.6 16
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GURPS Overhaul Last edited by Varyon; 05-03-2021 at 10:25 AM. |
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