Colt New Service

[acrosome]

In Pulp Guns 1 the Colt New Service in .45 Long Colt has a damage of 3d-2 pi+. That seems like an odd damage. Is it errata? Should it be either 3d-1 pi+ or 2d+2 pi+?

The other long-barreled .45 Long Colt pistols do 2d+2 pi+, so I sort of assume that's what it is supposed to be, especially since it is equivalent to 3d-2 in GURPS terms.

[RyanW]

It should perform pretty much the same as the SAA with the 5.5" barrel. The only notable difference in the cartridge is a slightly wider rim*.

* True .45 Long Colt often failed to extract in the New Service because of the narrow rim. On the other hand, M1909 ammo didn't fit properly in the SAA, forcing the operator to leave every other chamber empty.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by acrosome

In Pulp Guns 1 the Colt New Service in .45 Long Colt has a damage of 3d-2 pi+. That seems like an odd damage. Is it errata? Should it be either 3d-1 pi+ or 2d+2 pi+?

The other long-barreled .45 Long Colt pistols do 2d+2 pi+, so I sort of assume that's what it is supposed to be, especially since it is equivalent to 3d-2 in GURPS terms.

In Adventure Guns, there are several other .45 Long Colt revolvers. They consistently do 3d-2pi+ from 7.5" barrels and 2d+1pi+ from shorter barrels, so I think it's deliberate.

[acrosome]

Originally Posted by johndallman

In Adventure Guns, there are several other .45 Long Colt revolvers. They consistently do 3d-2pi+ from 7.5" barrels and 2d+1pi+ from shorter barrels, so I think it's deliberate.

But the other .45 Long Colt revolvers in PG1 all do 2d+2 pi+...

[War_lord]

Originally Posted by acrosome

In Pulp Guns 1 the Colt New Service in .45 Long Colt has a damage of 3d-2 pi+. That seems like an odd damage. Is it errata? Should it be either 3d-1 pi+ or 2d+2 pi+?

The other long-barreled .45 Long Colt pistols do 2d+2 pi+, so I sort of assume that's what it is supposed to be, especially since it is equivalent to 3d-2 in GURPS terms.

At least in my books, the Colt SAA is also 3d-2 p+ in both High Tech and Pulp Guns 1, it also mentions that the S&W Hand-Ejector in .45 LC does 3d-2 so it's unlikely to be accidental. If you want to turn it into 2d+2 pi+ for consistency's sake, it's not going to break anything, just makes the damage move more towards an averaged center.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by acrosome

But the other .45 Long Colt revolvers in PG1 all do 2d+2 pi+...

Maybe it's a case where the CNS should do less damage than the other revolvers, but the author felt a full -1 was too big of step (3d-2 averages 8.5, while 2d+2 averages 9)?

Personally, in general, I think that above 1d things should follow the pattern nd-1, nd, nd+1, nd+2, (n+1)d-1, etc, so I'd be inclined to change that to 2d+1 or 2d+2; with all the others doing 2d+2, I'd probably go with that, unless the CNS has a notably short barrel compared to the others. But I really can't say if this was done on purpose or if it was something that got overlooked (that is, maybe they initially used 3d-2 for several weapons, then later in the process opted to standardize more in keeping with the above pattern and forgot to update the CNS stats).

[acrosome]

Ignore me- I just looked through all of the stats a bit more closely and you're right, .45LC out of an approximately 7.5" barrel is reliably listed as 3d-2.

But then there is still weirdness: the 5.5" Artillery model is 2d+2... so it will have a lower maximum but will actually average higher damage. (And I think that's where I was getting confused, by looking at my collated tables.)

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by acrosome

But then there is still weirdness: the 5.5" Artillery model is 2d+2... so it will have a lower maximum but will actually average higher damage. (And I think that's where I was getting confused, by looking at my collated tables.)

It's because it's got the word Artillery in it, that automagically makes it more powerful.

More seriously, I'd call that one an error; if 7.5" barrels are 3d-2, a 5.5" one shouldn't be higher - at most it should be 3d-2, and 2d+1 is likely more appropriate. Assuming the same cartridge loads, anyway, but I assume you've already accounted for that.

[Icelander]

Yeah, 3d-2 simply isn't a damage that you can get by using the rules in the Modifying Damage sidebar in GURPS High-Tech.

Now, if some over-abundance of greed for granularity led to its inclusion between 2d+1 and 2d+2, I'd accept it and move on. Damage going 8, 8.5 and then 9 is logical enough, especially as we also get the 9.5 next, from 3d-1. But a higher velocity with the same bullet doesn't get you lower penetration by any GURPS damage formula of which I'm aware.

I honestly don't know why it was decided that 7.5" barrels should reduce the Damage of .45 Colt rounds. It makes no sense and deceives innocent players, who think GURPS suplements are supposed to be well-researched and reliable, into thinking that the .45 Colt was an ineffective revolver round, popular due to dumb old-timey people not knowing how empirical results worked.

I'll grant that there have been many fairly anemic loads sold commercially for .45 Colt, out of an abundance of caution when it comes to the age of the revolvers still in use, and the risk, remote though it might be, of liability. But not one of those loads was consistently slower from a 7.5" Colt SAA or Colt New Servide barrel than it was from a 5.5" barrel of the same revolver model.

If 5.5" long barrels are correctly statted at 2d+2 pi+, either a longer barrel makes no practical difference, which happens sometimes when you've burned more or less all the effective propellant gasses (highly doubt it, .45 Colt gains a lot of velocity in longer carbine barrels), or the next step in the GURPS damage progression is 3d-1 pi+.