Finer granularity for small calibers?

[Donny Brook]

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?

[The Colonel]

...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.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

...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.

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).

[Polydamas]

Originally Posted by The Colonel

...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.

One thing which the book shows is that if you want a reliable, powerful semi-automatic handgun in the interwar era, your options were limited. And sometimes it could be hard to get ammunition for one of the few powerful models.

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!

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

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?

.22 Short, Long and Long Rifle are all pi- (0.5), as is .25 ACP.

.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.

[johndallman]

Originally Posted by Polydamas

One thing which the book shows is that if you want a reliable, powerful semi-automatic handgun in the interwar era, your options were limited. And sometimes it could be hard to get ammunition for one of the few powerful models.

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.

[Varyon]

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.

[Fred Brackin]

Originally Posted by Donny Brook

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?

After the question of "What would this break?" you get to the question of "What difference would this make?". I'm afraid the answer might be "Not much.".

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.

[johndallman]

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.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Fred Brackin

After the question of "What would this break?" you get to the question of "What difference would this make?". I'm afraid the answer might be "Not much.".

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.

Part of this is going to depend on what wounding rules you're using, and part revolves around what happens away from straight average wounding. For example, with 2d-1, WM x0.5 means average wounding of 3 HP while WM x0.7 means average wounding of 4.5 HP (and as an average, this isn't rounded*). Using the normal wounding system, you need to hit an average of 2.33 times to drop the target below 1/3rd HP (3.33 times to reach HP 0, 6.67 to reach -HP and the first Death Threshold, 10 for the second, and so forth, with 20 hits to reach -5xHP) in the first case, 1.56 times (2.22, 4.44, 6.66, and 13.33, respectively) for the second. And, while not terribly likely, the second case will on average deal a Major Wound without needing a x2/x3 damage critical hit once out of every six hits (damage roll of 9-11 on 2d-1 has a 16.67% probability), while this is impossible in the first case. This certainly isn't a huge difference, but at the same time it's certainly not nothing. Of course, as a lot of the benefits lay in wound accumulation, using something like Conditional Injury is going to make the difference less pronounced (although I believe there you still end up with the second being capable of causing a wound that is one category more severe than the first can produce).

*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:

	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