Survivable Musket

[Varyon]

Maybe they're already in the Survivable Guns paradigm? Their being composed entirely of lead seems like it should lead to expansion, treating them as HP with an increased WM but AD (0.5). However, the damage of LT muskets is based on their actual penetration against steel, meaning they should actually be dealing twice as much damage as they currently are written as doing, to overcome the poor AD. As this would make them incredibly lethal (9d(0.5) pi++), they are simply given a normal armor divisor and reduced damage, - the same effect as we would see applying Survivable Guns.

[CarrionPeacock]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

Nope, I've checked Basic, Low Tech and High Tech and found no item with "musket" in its' name that has a 1/2D of 180 yards or longer. The earliest weapon that does is the Dreyse from the 1840s.

80 to 130 yards seems commen.

You're correct, I was referring to the one on Low-Tech but somehow I got the number wrong.
Regardless, that's -11 to hit beyond its 1/2D range, no one is going to deliberately try that. If a someone's hit by an attack beyond 1/2D range, that's going to either be a stray bullet or a shot aimed at a mass formation, not the most common situation in a game.

Originally Posted by Varyon

Maybe they're already in the Survivable Guns paradigm? Their being composed entirely of lead seems like it should lead to expansion, treating them as HP with an increased WM but AD (0.5). However, the damage of LT muskets is based on their actual penetration against steel, meaning they should actually be dealing twice as much damage as they currently are written as doing, to overcome the poor AD. As this would make them incredibly lethal (9d(0.5) pi++), they are simply given a normal armor divisor and reduced damage, - the same effect as we would see applying Survivable Guns.

Maybe, I don't understand how GURPS calculates its damage (penetration on homongenous steel of xmm thick? wtf?) but 9d damage on unarmored individual is going to deal 60+ injury, instant-kill on average. I know muskets are dangerous, but that seems beyond what's reasonable.

[Aldric]

Originally Posted by CarrionPeacock

How many points those characters had? Because a single hit can cause 28 injury on them, enough to make a HP 14 character start rolling for death. My guess is that those characters didn't need DR because they relied on high Dodge, which costs a lot of points.

Started at 150, don't think they went past 200. Dodge was probably in the 9-10 range, their strategy for surviving Muskets was not being the target first and foremost, acquiring cover (mainly from being engaged in melee with friendlies of the musketeer), hoping for a misfire or a miss and finally dodging the shot if it ever came to that.
Failing all that, they relied on their trusted companions to carry their unconscious (but hopefully still breathing) form to the ship's medic, who luckily had training in esoteric medicine.

But then, there weren't that many muskets to begin with, and there were several sailors named Bob who could be hit instead, but you're right, a solid hit from a musket on a DR 2 character spelled certain unconsciousness and possible death. That's why, when faced with the possibility of half a dozen muskets at short range, they decided to use a cannon to open a door.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by CarrionPeacock

Regardless, that's -11 to hit beyond its 1/2D range, no one is going to deliberately try that. If a someone's hit by an attack beyond 1/2D range, that's going to either be a stray bullet or a shot aimed at a mass formation, not the most common situation in a game.

Muskets typically have Acc 2, and you can use them from a musket rest for a +1 from Braced. Aiming for a total of 3 rounds gives a further +2 to hit, All-Out Attack gives at least +1 (some variant rules give it a +2). If it's the first shot of the battle, you'll likely have a +1 to Acc from Careful Loading. All that together is +7 (or +8), for a net -4 (or -3). Not an easy shot, certainly, but not nearly as difficult as you've made it out to be. A PC trying to shoot a long range target from the hip is likely Doing It Wrong.

Originally Posted by CarrionPeacock

Maybe, I don't understand how GURPS calculates its damage (penetration on homongenous steel of xmm thick? wtf?) but 9d damage on unarmored individual is going to deal 60+ injury, instant-kill on average. I know muskets are dangerous, but that seems beyond what's reasonable.

From what I understand, the majority of firearms - and I think some of the mechanical artillery from LT - do damage based on their penetration of RHA steel, setting 1" of RHA as 70 DR or 20d damage. If we assume a musket should have an armor divisor of (0.5) due to firing an unjacketed lead ball, and that such muskets penetrate up to ~0.23" of RHA, they would need to deal around 9d(0.5) pi++. It's possible the LT authors instead just calculated what penetration a 20 mm diameter, 50 gram projectile moving at ~350 m/s, would actually have (basically treating a musket bullet as though it were an FMJ round). Plugging that into Douglas Cole's ballistics spreadsheet gives damage pretty close to what we see in LT, after all.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

If we assume a musket should have an armor divisor of (0.5) due to firing an unjacketed lead ball

(0.5) is normally for rounds designed to expand, I'd probably be okay with giving decent quality musket balls no armor modifier. Muskets have poor penetration relative to their power because they're large caliber for their power, which is already reflected in being pi++.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

(0.5) is normally for rounds designed to expand, I'd probably be okay with giving decent quality musket balls no armor modifier. Muskets have poor penetration relative to their power because they're large caliber for their power, which is already reflected in being pi++.

They're made of lead, which I'd expect to smash up and thus expand out upon impact. After all, jacketed soft points are treated the same as HP in GURPS rules, and they're basically just FMJ's with no copper on the business end (so shouldn't have a different effect than just shooting a pure lead bullet). With that said, however, a sphere (or even minie ball) of lead may well behave quite a bit differently from lead shaped into a modern bullet (with lots of extra weight behind the head), so I can certainly buy that it wouldn't splat and ruin its armor divisor so readily. After all, buckshot doesn't get a negative armor divisor or a wounding boost from expanding, now that I think about it

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Varyon

They're made of lead, which I'd expect to smash up and thus expand out upon impact.

There's also spherical, which greatly limits the relevance. Shot isn't given a (0.5) armor divisor.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Anthony

There's also spherical, which greatly limits the relevance. Shot isn't given a (0.5) armor divisor.

Not buckshot anyway.Smaller shot sizes do have divisors.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by CarrionPeacock

...

Maybe, I don't understand how GURPS calculates its damage (penetration on homongenous steel of xmm thick? wtf?) but 9d damage on unarmored individual is going to deal 60+ injury, instant-kill on average. I know muskets are dangerous, but that seems beyond what's reasonable.

You might want to use the over-penetration rules from HT,

Put simply damage from Imp & Pi on the torso is capped at 1xHP, the idea being after that point the damaging object has reached the other side of the body.

This functionally stops high powered rifles from being instant HT check one hit kills.

But a couple of points:

1). if you do this you need to use the bleeding rules to represent the potential of such wounds to eventually kill you, and you use what the total injury value was without the cap to calculate the bleeding. I.e a wound from a more powerful round will bleed worse even if it blasted out the other side with plenty of damage past the threshold compared to a less powerful round that only just beat the cap.

2). There's sometimes a question over weather you apply the injury type adjustment before or after the cap. I apply it before and then apply the cap this reduces the initial injury but still means big Pi+, Pi++ and Imp wounds will bleed more. This IIRC is correct by the rules in HT, but I know some apply the cap and the injury mod (this is important for Pi++ musket balls!)


Point 2 raises questions about Pi- which can throw up some oddities but since it's not relevant for musket balls I won't go into that here!




So what does that mean for 4d+2 Pi++ muskets?

OK going with rules in campaigns vs. an unarmoured 10HP/10HT target a musket at less than 1/2D range will do on average 16pt damage which will be a 32pt injury which will put them at -22 = 2 HT death checks = 75% chance of being killed instantly (not so bad if you use mortal wounds).

OK pretty bad

vs. your DR9 wearing cuirassier

it 16-9 7pts damage, which after the Pi++ multiplier = a 14pt injury, which while not good and certainly puts them out the fight saves their life unless they eventually bleed out

This is not unrealistic full power muskets at short range went through even thick breastplates like this. But don't forget that 4d+2 Pi++ musket is at TL4 a 20lb bit of kit! (weight goes way down as they improve at TL5 etc). Cavalry getting hit by volleys of musket fire were in trouble!

What a DR9 breastplate is good for is stopping or massively reducing 2d pistols & 3d carbines and leaving the wearer still combat effective! i.e. the kind of guns opposing cavalry might be firing at you. even with the muskets that DR is having a significant effect in terms of overall injury prevented and severity of bleeding.


So how about when you apply the over-penetration rules?

Against the unarmoured target the 32pt injury is capped at 10 actual HP lost, but bleeds at -6 calculated from the 32 total . This pretty much takes the target out the fight and unless there's medical care close at hand likely still ends in eventual bleeding out and death. But at least for targets you care about after they're out of the fight there's a chance they might survive.

For the cuirassier with the DR9 breastplate the 14pt injury turns into 10* actual HP lost and bleeds at -2 calculated from the 14 total. Again pretty much takes them out he fight but gives them a bit longer to find treatment before bleeding out to -10 hp and making HT checks to stay alive


Needless to say unless you are firing TL4 muskets around the corner from a TL8 A&E unit you might still be in trouble so a lot of this might just come down to how long does it take to die from bleeding!



One last point regarding the over-penetration rules, they also introduce the optional rules for any torso hit from Pi & Imp is on a 1 in 6 actually a hit to the vitals.



*this is an oddity of applying the injury mod before the over penetration cap as the basis damage that penetrated the breastplate (7) would not be enough to reach the over penetration threshold! You can tweak this to say that the over penetration rules don't apply unless the initial damage is enough to meet them. In which case in this example the wound would be the same as under the campaign rules (14hps lost) but that itself can throw up some oddities in that some wound that don't over penetrate will do more immediate damage than ones that do!.

[Tomsdad]

Originally Posted by CarrionPeacock

..., but there's plenty of historical armors that's said to have withstood direct musket fire. It's usually a duplex construction but for whatever reason GURPS only gives a meager extra point of DR for it, which makes it absolutely useless against weapons using multiple dices.....

OK a few points on that. What kind of examples are you thinking of?

And come to that what muskets did they resist. The examples of firearms in LT are just that general examples not hard and fast listings of all weapons with that name throughout the period.

So the TL4 4d+2 Pi++ 20lb Musket in LT* is not the stats for every musket ever in the TL4 period. Some troops described in the historical record as firing muskets could even have been using lighter less powerful weapons in the lists. Other factors may have been in effect. For example gun powder charges were at these times often a variable thing, especially by the time it got to being loaded in the field. I.e not every historical musket was 4d+2 but also not every Musket that in GURPS terms was rated at 4d+2 was necessarily firing 4d+2 every time it fired.

The 1/2D threshold in GURPS is a playable abstraction, so again saying all muskets did 4d+2 out to GURPS 1/2D range and then 1 yard after that drop to 2d+1 is a simplification. On top of that given the 1/2D range for muskets is low and given a lot of shots would have been at large formations even with low Acc cavalry getting shot at by muskets over their 1/2D isn't that far fetched. DR9 will stop 2d+1 completely a lot of the time, and massively reduce it's effects the rest of the time.

I.e. mapping historical anecdotes to GURPS potentially needs to take a lot mitigating factors into consideration beyond comparing abstract listings in tables as hard and fast results.

Going back to the armour, yes there were breastplates that could stop a lot of penetration but they tended to be very thick in areas and thus very heavy. One of threads where this came up before DanHoward cited examples with mid lines up to 7-8mm thick! Plus you have armourers tricks like angling the plate to promote deflection and increase presented thickness against likely directions of attacks, reducing thickness and thus weight in other areas etc, etc.

So what rules are you using for making armour, you mention duplex so I assume LT?

I'd recommend the Pyramid articles that basically allow you to (within limitations) choose a thickness and material which in turn gives you DR and weight. I'd also then apply the tailoring rules in LT that covers those armourers tricks to maintain effective protection but save on weight. The article mentions it is compatible with this.


Even without that article if you look at DanHoward's Loadouts book, the C17th ECW London Lobster has a proofed DR12 breastplate



*stats from memory