.50 Calibur Revolver

[Super Squirrel]

I read in the paper today that a new 5 shot revolver is on the market now for $980. It is different, because it is the first firearm to feature a .50 Calibur round. I'd quote the article if I hadn't misplaced it but it is said to have the stopping power to take down a charging bear. Any idea what the write up for that would be?

My initial guess would be 2d6 RKA, Double Knockback, Charges 5, Real Weapon.

[Aroooo]

Originally posted by Super Squirrel
I read in the paper today that a new 5 shot revolver is on the market now for $980. It is different, because it is the first firearm to feature a .50 Calibur round. I'd quote the article if I hadn't misplaced it but it is said to have the stopping power to take down a charging bear. Any idea what the write up for that would be?

I don't follow the gun world to closely, but there ave been .50 cal revolvers before. My uninformed guess would be this is a new production gun, rather than a custom job.

Originally posted by Super Squirrel
My initial guess would be 2d6 RKA, Double Knockback, Charges 5, Real Weapon.

I would think a high STR min too, possibly even the 1 1/2 hands limitation (probably two hands to compensate for the monster recoil).

Aroooo

[Gary]

Originally posted by Super Squirrel
I read in the paper today that a new 5 shot revolver is on the market now for $980. It is different, because it is the first firearm to feature a .50 Calibur round. I'd quote the article if I hadn't misplaced it but it is said to have the stopping power to take down a charging bear. Any idea what the write up for that would be?

My initial guess would be 2d6 RKA, Double Knockback, Charges 5, Real Weapon.

I wouldn't give it double knockback. The machine gun version which is much more powerful doesn't have it. A +1 stun multiple would work though.

[AlHazred]

Bah, there've been .50 caliber handguns before; the .50 Desert Eagle springs to mind. This is all marketing. I mean, who really thinks a slightly bigger gun is a "new order of threat to law enforcement"? Where'd they find this guy? Has he ever heard of this Bin Laden guy and the nukes he's trying to buy? How's that for a "new order of threat"?

Anyway, it's probably a 2d6+1 RKA, +1 STUN, 5 Charges. For superhero-level games, I might be convinced to go to 2 1/2d6, but that's as far as I go.

[Super Squirrel]

You can see how much I follow the gun world. The most I know about it comes from watching the History channel. I suppose there are .50 caliburs out there. This one is designed to be one handed. I'd imagine the wrist would hurt afterwards but it is definitely one handed.

[Fitz]

Back in the days of the Raj in India there was a relatively common large-bore pistol in use generally called a "howdah pistol". The intended function of the weapon was twofold: first, to blow out the brains of your elephant if it ran wild, and second, to blow out the brains of a tiger if it jumped up on to your elephant. It was a double-barrelled break action (like a shotgun) and loaded .577 Express elephant gun rounds.

At first, the same rounds as those used in the rifle were used, but it was soon found that their recoil was far too great for a handgun, and cut-down versions of the cartridge were produced specifically for the pistols.

[Old Man]

I think the distinction with the new S&W .50 is that it's a .50 magnum. I don't see how a normal human could fire one without snapping their wrist, but whatever.

The same article mentioned that they're also producing an alloy .44 magnum revolver that weighs 1.5 pounds. See my wrist snapping comment above.

[Edsel]

Originally posted by Old Man
I think the distinction with the new S&W .50 is that it's a .50 magnum. I don't see how a normal human could fire one without snapping their wrist, but whatever.

The same article mentioned that they're also producing an alloy .44 magnum revolver that weighs 1.5 pounds. See my wrist snapping comment above.

I have a Colt Anaconda .44 magnum revolver and I can control it one-handed with +P ammo. I don't really consider myself to be of more than average strength so I think a .50 .magnum would be controllable with a two-handed stance.

[AlHazred]

There's an article on the 500 S&W Magnum round here. The guy doesn't seem to have had that much trouble, and doesn't look to be above a 13 or 14 STR. You could set the STR Min there with no argument from me.

[cboscari]

I am not a gun guy, which is why I bought Guns! Guns! Guns! from BTRC. With this amazing book, you can figure out how real guns would rate in several game systems, including HERO. You can also build guns don't really exist (like laser) and figure those out too, but from what I understand, there is a lot more at issue than caliber, such as muzzle length, and other factors. MAybe someone with a copy of GGG can give us an answer...
Chris

[Agent X]

Originally posted by AlHazred
There's an article on the 500 S&W Magnum round here. The guy doesn't seem to have had that much trouble, and doesn't look to be above a 13 or 14 STR. You could set the STR Min there with no argument from me.

Dude! You are mighty when you can measure actual people's strength in Hero stats from memory. Just for the sake of balance, close FRED and move away from the book for say, 5 minutes. Everybody needs a break once in a while.

[Toadmaster]

Ok, first of all I find many see .50 cal and start thinking of the M2HB .50 machinegun. If you look at the picture at the bottom of the page of the link you will see that the bullet alone from the machinegun is larger than the entire .500 S&W cartridge.

The .500 S&W is listed as a 325 grain bullet at 2000fps, this computes as 2886 Ft/lbs of muzzle energy. This compares to the power of a .30-06 rifle or several of the large magnum handguns like the .454 Casull. It is much more powerful than the .44 magnum which has about 1200 ft/lbs of energy. The .50 cal M2HB machinegun on the other hand has in the neighborhood of 13,000 ft/lbs.

Off the top of my head I'd say 2d6+1 with a +2 stun mod sounds about right (a 325 grain bullet is heavy, almost 50% heavier than the bullet of the .44 magnum) Strmin 14 or 15 seems fair, there currently is no method more scientific than taking a SWAG at this time. It is probably a very heavy revolver so could be fired one handed but I wouldn't try it, 1 1/2 handed does not seem unreasonable.

As to other .50's
The Desert Eagle .50AE is probably the most available since it is regular production. Not a .50 but the .454 Casull revolver is in the same power range and is also a production weapon.

The rest are semi-custom and would be more difficult to get.
.500 Linebaugh and .475 Linebaugh (the .475 is actually the more powerful of the two)
Century's "The mother load" in .50-70 is probably the most powerful of the .50's (about 3000 ft/lbs) although I heard they were working on an even larger revolver in .50-110. The .50-70 version has a 10" barrel and weighs 6 lbs, I've seen a picture of this revolver being fired and lets just say it look odd and completely out of proportion to the shooter.

Thanks for the link, I hadn't heard of the .500 S&W yet, seems like there is a new cartridge coming out each month lately.

[Monolith]

Nightwind uses a .50 Desert Eagle. There is a nice write-up for it in the Millennium City supplement. I'd post the stats here but I think that might violate the confidentiality agreement. It will be out soon though.

[cboscari]

Toadmaster-

As I mentioned, don't know much about guns except for what I read in Guns, Guns Guns! but with the stats you gave, they gave 2d6+1 killing damage as well. I'm glad we have that settled
Chris

[BasilDrag]

Originally posted by Toadmaster
Ok, first of all I find many see .50 cal and start thinking of the M2HB .50 machinegun. If you look at the picture at the bottom of the page of the link you will see that the bullet alone from the machinegun is larger than the entire .500 S&W cartridge.

The .500 S&W is listed as a 325 grain bullet at 2000fps, this computes as 2886 Ft/lbs of muzzle energy. This compares to the power of a .30-06 rifle or several of the large magnum handguns like the .454 Casull. It is much more powerful than the .44 magnum which has about 1200 ft/lbs of energy. The .50 cal M2HB machinegun on the other hand has in the neighborhood of 13,000 ft/lbs.

Off the top of my head I'd say 2d6+1 with a +2 stun mod sounds about right (a 325 grain bullet is heavy, almost 50% heavier than the bullet of the .44 magnum) Strmin 14 or 15 seems fair, there currently is no method more scientific than taking a SWAG at this time. It is probably a very heavy revolver so could be fired one handed but I wouldn't try it, 1 1/2 handed does not seem unreasonable.

As to other .50's
The Desert Eagle .50AE is probably the most available since it is regular production. Not a .50 but the .454 Casull revolver is in the same power range and is also a production weapon.

The rest are semi-custom and would be more difficult to get.
.500 Linebaugh and .475 Linebaugh (the .475 is actually the more powerful of the two)
Century's "The mother load" in .50-70 is probably the most powerful of the .50's (about 3000 ft/lbs) although I heard they were working on an even larger revolver in .50-110. The .50-70 version has a 10" barrel and weighs 6 lbs, I've seen a picture of this revolver being fired and lets just say it look odd and completely out of proportion to the shooter.

Thanks for the link, I hadn't heard of the .500 S&W yet, seems like there is a new cartridge coming out each month lately.

{This is also in response to cboscari}

I've got "Guns! Guns! Guns!" 3rd edition (aka 3G3), and the companion book "More Guns!" because I'm not that much of a gun person either.

Using the sited webpage, and those books, it looks like the 500 S&W is in the .50AE/.454 Casull range.

BTW, what's shown on the webpage is not a revolver, but a single-shot bolt-action handgun. Most really, really powerful handguns are single-shot bolt-actions.

Someone pointed out a written-up character with .5oAE's; I'd use them for the 500 S&W. It doesn't look like there'd be enough difference to matter, in game-rules terms.