Weapon Ranges - Real and Mechanical

[BhelliomRahl]

In my game I have several players who are a little fanatical about their guns, its one of the reasons I am running a MHI game.  They keep complaining to me about the ranges on some of the guns.  Some of the Sniper Rifles only have ranges of about 300-400m and they say that this is way too short, that some should be over a 1km.

 

I have told them repeatedly that the ranges are mechanically derived to maintain balance.  Am I correct in this statement?

 

I have said that they can create a custom gun and pay for what ever range they want.  One of the characters is a very skilled Gunsmith and has built weapons previously.

 

I have also stated that if they bring me document specification on a gun in the book and if range is greater I will allow them to use that range.  Does anyone know of a good site which lists weapon specifications?

 

Have people observed any problems with the ranges list in MHI?  I myself find them to be fine and my players have generally not been shooting at over 300m but they keep mentioning it and its getting a little tedious, so I would like to resolve it.

 

[bigbywolfe]

Most people cant make a 1km shot. There is a difference between maximum range of a projectile and the practical range. Unless one of them wants to play one of the world's top snipers it is just nit picking.

[BhelliomRahl]

The Player's Character was an Army Sniper before joining MCB (He is also ex-army himself, although I believe he was in demolition and bomb disposal). 

 

The problem I think is that in the MHI book there is a x10 Telescopic sight which offsets 14pts of Range penalty which is 1km. As you have to Brace or Set with that scope it offsets another 2pts, so if he is shooting between 1-2km using that scope he is at no Range Penalty.  So mechanical speaking he has a very good chance of hitting his target and about 75% chance of a head shot with is OCV modifiers.

 

So the book lists Scopes to allow shooting at that range but does not list any weapons which could make effective use of it.

[Roter Baron]

What about a compromise: Allow the guns to shot farer but doing half damage after the mechanical maximum.

The head-shot would be still quite deadly, the scope not without its use, game balance would be intact and the whining (which is not totally without a cause) would stop.

[PaycheckHero]

The hero range rules were really written for superhero energy blasts, not projectiles.  I don't think it's an issue of game balance so much as just an issue of a general-purpose rule that can't possibly work equally well for the human torch's fire blast, a wizard's spell, and a bullet.  Too the extent that there is a game balance problem, what happened was that they nerfed everyone's range just to control the guys that bought their powers No Range Penalty.  In the end, someone made a simple rule that seemed to work for Champions.  They ranges are probably quite long for magic, and are assuredly too short for most firearms (OTOH they might be too long for birdshot, given that what matters is not how far the projectile can go but rather how far out can we pretend it is still doing the same damage to targets as it does up close).

 

Absolute ranges are usually not listed for firearms because they will depend on the bullet weight, muzzle velocity, and drag coefficient, not which firearm.  For example I can handload rounds for the same rifle with very different muzzle velocities and very different drag coefficients, and thus very different absolute ranges.  If you really must have such data the procedure is sort of tedious but would be something like this.  You would first turn to the handloading data for your rifle, and pick a specific bullet and load.  The bullet chosen gives you the bullet weight and drag coefficient, and the loading data gives you the muzzle velocity in, probably, a 24" or 26" barrel.  You'll have to handwave what the velocity will be in barrels of other lengths, or find some rules of thumb.  Then you use exterior ballistics data to find the elevation angle which gives the greatest range for a bullet of that weight and drag coefficient going at that velocity, and use the distance at that elevation angle.  Good reloading books used to have tables for that kind of calculation, but I think these days you're expected to use software so they can use paper for other things besides repetitive tables.  You can probably also find a calculator that will do this on the net, I think I used one once to determine maximum point blank range for a load I was working up.  I'm too lazy to find it for you, but it shouldn't be hard.  Also note that I probably forgot some detail, but I think that gives you an idea of how you would find the data you seek.

 

Now let me try to convince you that you just don't need to do any of that.  The fact is that any rifle bullet can carry, IIRC, 2-3 miles (don't quote me on that, but the exact number doesn't matter).  That's why one of the basic safety rules is *don't shoot at or over the horizon*.  The practical range limit on virtually any firearm is accuracy, not absolute range per se.  One minute of arc (around 1" per hundred yards) is often used as a kind of dividing line between accurate and inaccurate rifles, with off the shelf factory rifles often not doing better than two or three MoA, and well tweaked competition doing under a MoA.  (Warning: that was from memory and I don't absolutely guarantee I remembered the number right).  That means that even a mediocre rifle is capable of a headshot at a couple hundred yards (your target is something like what, 4" in radius?), and a body shot at considerably further than that (you can afford to miss your aimpoint by more).  Most shooters aren't capable of that without a bench, so in practice the average gun is better than the average shooter.  At the other end of the spectrum an expert will demand and be able to use sub-MoA accuracy.  Needless to say Julie uses a rifle good enough to let her use her skills.

 

To be honest, I suggest that you simply ignore the hero maximum range rules and allow a rifle to shoot as far as necessary to let a character use his range levels--there is no real game balance issue, particularly since the bad guys can benefit from the same rule if they have the skills...heh, heh, heh.  It's a game, make life simple.  However, if wrangling over the details is part of the fun for your knowledgeable players, you'll basically have to re-write the range level rules because they make very little sense (in fact, the hero firearms rules don't make that much sense except in a comic-book reality sense, but I digress).  The following is too complex for most games, but at least resembles reality a little:

 

* Divide the accuracy-enhancing modifiers into two kinds--those that aid the shooter so he shoots better (e.g. telescopic sights) and those that improve the gun's own accuracy (e.g. a higher quality barrel).  More accurate ammo, either premium match ammo or hand-loaded, would fall into the latter category.  The kind of players who would actually like rules like these would probably enjoy arguing for an hour or two about what fits in to which categories.

 

* Treat the shooter aids as per the usual rules--they're range levels built into the focus.  The others instead increase a new firearm property: inherent accuracy.  Inherent accuracy works like vehicle dex, in that a shooter can only use the lower of his total range levels (including those from maneuvers and those built into the firearm!) and the gun's inherent accuracy.  Since the rmod bonuses for accurizing your gun are intended to all add together, and we're now separating them, the bonus values might need tweaking if you want to be picky about it.

 

* Guesstimate what a factory rifle's inherent accuracy should be before tweaking.  If you think for a while, you'll realize that this is basically the same as the range penalty at whatever distance you think the rifle has around a 50% chance (50% is close enough to 11-) of making a body shot.  Here is my guesstimate; say that a decent quality rifle should have a 50% chance of making a body shot at 512m.  Since the range penalty at range R in champions is essentially 2*lg(R/8m) (where lg is the base 2 logarithm) then this gives an inherent accuracy of 2*lg(512/8) = 2* lg(2^6) = 2*6*lg(2) = 12.  Because hero range penalties are logarithmic, this number is fairly insensitive to the exact distance; a rifle that achieves this accuracy only out to 216m still has an inherent accuracy of 11.  But don't take my word for it, let your group find a consensus.  Any players that will tolerate this sort of thing can have endless hours of fun arguing about this kind of number, why deny them the pleasure?  The only problem is they may have so much fun arguing that they forget to actually play.

 

* Again, the second kind of accuracy bonuses add to this base maximum accuracy rather than adding range levels.  The player still has to find enough range levels from maneuvers, optics, and the like to take advantage of the base accuracy bonuses.

 

This is simplistic and ignores all sorts of things but does behave more realistically.  An "rmax 12" factory firearm simply isn't capable of taking full advantage of those great +14 optics.  That's life; it's pointless to put a competition scope on a factory Winchester lever-action that is only good to 3 MoA.  On the other hand, a poor scope will prevent you from using a benchrest rifle to it's potential.  This need to balance the quality of your optics against the quality of your firearm happens in the real world: there is a rule out there that suggests that you should spend as much on your scope as on your gun.

 

Note also that an average shooter is incapable of taking full advantage of his rifle because he's not as good as the gun is--a shooter has to be able to muster a lot of range bonuses before he needs an accurized rifle.  This is correct in general, but since hero doesn't try to model reality rmax=12 might not get the balance right.  Feel free to tweak until it feels right rather than assume 12 is a magic number.

 

I guess a group of players that are sufficiently dedicated gunnies might actually like rules like that.  Just make sure that they *all* do.  Take pity on that one guy that just stays quiet when the others are arguing guns....

 

If you actually try this out, I'd like to know the results.

[Tasha]

I also advocate ignoring the system's Max Ranges. We have always done so for our Modern and SciFI games. Otherwise my Sniper wouldn't have been able to headshot those Go'auld from a KM away with her Barret M82

As for how to differentiate between things that make the Gun inherently more accurate and other things like Scopes. Things that make the gun inherently more accurate are bought as just Penalty Skill Levels and Skill levels for the gun. A great scope is bought the same, but requires Concentration to work (ie looking though the sights can make you less likely to be dodging around) Those rules should be in the MHI book, otherwise look in the Hero System Equipment Guide, which can be Printed on Demand.

[BhelliomRahl]

Thank you PayCheckHero for your comprehensive work.  I understand most of it, but I think it is becoming a little complicated.  I might give a copy to my player and let him try to work all the numbers out if he wants, the work load might encourage him to leave it alone and get on with the game.

 

My initial thought was inline with Tasha's, to ignore the Max Ranges and base them on Line of Sight and Environmental Conditions.

 

Thanks for every ones input.

[PaycheckHero]

Thank you PayCheckHero for your comprehensive work.  I understand most of it, but I think it is becoming a little complicated.  I might give a copy to my player and let him try to work all the numbers out if he wants, the work load might encourage him to leave it alone and get on with the game.

I probably wasn't very clear, but that's basically what I suggested. While the standard system doesn't actually make sense if you reason closely about it (and most people don't have enough knowledge to do this anyway), its easy and produces OK results. I wouldn't suggest anyone impose the alternative I described except in one specific case that, based on your description of your players, could actually apply to you: your players are such enthusiastic gunnies that they both notice the logical problems in the existing system and really enjoy arguing gun minutia and trying to "get it right." In that one case, I thought what I described would be more satisfying for gun geeks and still remain playable.

 

What I tried to recommend was something like the following: just ignore the hero maximum range rules. If you want a logical fig-leaf for your fiat, say that "real-world maximum range" is part of the "real weapon" limitation (it's obviously not a limitation for guns, but hero allows a mix of good and bad in a limitation so long as the overall result is limiting). If and only if your players still want to argue about realism in hero, or are just hankering to get their gunnie on, and it isn't going to drive *you* crazy, then consider adding details like "inherent accuracy." But don't do it unless it is *fun*.

 

If by chance you actually use inherent accuracy, beware that it's going to make it harder to get high bonuses because after a point you kind of need to get them twice--once to raise the weapon's Inherent Accuracy and once to get enough range levels to take advantage of it. I'm not sure this is actually a problem, but if you and your players think it is bump up some of the bonuses to compensate.

[PaycheckHero]

I also advocate ignoring the system's Max Ranges. We have always done so for our Modern and SciFI games. Otherwise my Sniper wouldn't have been able to headshot those Go'auld from a KM away with her Barret M82

Good show. God forbid we inadvertently disallow *that*!

 

As for how to differentiate between things that make the Gun inherently more accurate and other things like Scopes. Things that make the gun inherently more accurate are bought as just Penalty Skill Levels and Skill levels for the gun.

If this is about the little (little?) houserule I offered, I know how the books says to calculate it. My point is that the book method makes absolutely no sense in terms of how guns actually function and how accuracy is achieved. If I hand you a rifle that has a match barrel, tight chambers, some careful throating, ammo with very low runout and extremely consistent charges driving match bullets, and so on, and then ask you to shoot it offhand in something like combat situations, *none* of that accurizing will make any difference in the result whatsoever compared to, say, shooting a stock Winchester lever-action (guns that are not noted tack-drivers). The *gun* is more consistent, in the sense that it will make smaller groups if it is clamped to the bench, but *you* are no more consistent in that situation and your own inconsistencies will completely dominate. So it's technically silly to give you bonuses for that. You need better conditions (better sights, more time, prone position or a bench, etc.) to take advantage of that nicely tuned rifle. If that weren't true, Winchester 30-30s wouldn't be such a popular rifle for hunting whitetail. They're not accurate, but *they're good enough for conditions*.

 

My point was rather that few players and GMs *care* that the simple hero method doesn't make sense, so you do what is fun. The OP could possibly have players who think it is fun to use a somewhat more realistic system. *I* could have fun with it myself. For that matter, Larry Correia might too if he were actually playing in the game. But that's definitely an exception, and it shouldn't be used unless everyone thinks it sounds *fun*. For most cases, I think you and I and about everyone agrees to just drop the hero max range rule and let people shoot as far as they have the levels for, within line of sight. It's easy, and doesn't usually produce absurd results.

[PaycheckHero]

*dupe*