"Realistic" gun damage

[mhd]

I'm by no means a gun nut, but looking at the equipment tables, it seems that damage is mostly derived from caliber, which seems to sell rifles short and totally breaks down at .50/.75 black powder weapons.

 

Is there some supplement / fan-made stuff that has better values? Given Google and some guide lines, I might even be able to pick enough together for my personal needs if someone has interesting formulas (muzzle velocity?). If I remember correctly, there as some independent multi-system weapons design book quite a while ago, similar to Traveller' New Era's "Fire, Fusion & Steel", can't remember the name or the company…

[Beast]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

5th ed Equipment guide has expanded rules for firearms

for black powder use slug from a shot gun as a base line

figure on a 20 second reload time(at Spd 2) 3 shots a minute

20 ga. is around .55 cal doing 2d6+1 averaging 8 body mook is dying or has a limb crippled or is dead if it is a head shot

12 ga. is around .65 Cal doing 2.5d6 9.5 body

10 ga. is around .75 cal doing 3d6 11 body

 

Use hit locations and 8 body for mooks and normals

head shot x2 body ,has most dying 50% with a 1d6 9mm

Vitals are x1.5 body

also use the disabling rules

 

if you are going with little or no resistant def w/killing attacks,it will be bloody

 

Rifles tend to over penetrate but have much greater range and accuracy than a pistol

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

I'm by no means a gun nut, but looking at the equipment tables, it seems that damage is mostly derived from caliber, which seems to sell rifles short and totally breaks down at .50/.75 black powder weapons.

 

Is there some supplement / fan-made stuff that has better values? Given Google and some guide lines, I might even be able to pick enough together for my personal needs if someone has interesting formulas (muzzle velocity?). If I remember correctly, there as some independent multi-system weapons design book quite a while ago, similar to Traveller' New Era's "Fire, Fusion & Steel", can't remember the name or the company…

 

I remember that book, and I used to have a copy, but now I've also forgotten the title. Drat!

 

I think the ammo table in Dark Champions has some good damage values which are based on caliber and cartridge length. I don't have it with me right now, but I'm pretty sure that it gives a higher damage value for a .22 rifle round than a .22 short. (for example)

 

 

Edited to add: if I decide to go with the "DIY" approach, I think I'd choose muzzle energy rather than muzzle velocity. And you can find typical muzzle energies for various types of ammo on the wiki.

[Christopher]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

Also consider Imparing, Disabling and Bleeding Rules.

Even if you (8 Body) don't die outright from 10-15 Body, the loss of Blood will kill you quickly.

[Brother Jim]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

Guns, Guns, Guns was the title.

 

EDIT: Tried googling it and got nothin'. So I dug them out.

 

Publisher: BTRC

Author: Greg Porter

 

Title: Guns! Guns! Guns! (also 3G3 (Third Edition))

Item No: BTRC 4001

ISBN: 0-943891-19-1

1996

136 pages (last numbered page is 123)

EDIT2: Available as a PDF from various sources. e23, DriveThruRPG, etc.

 

Title: 3G3 More Guns!

BTRC 4002

ISBN: 0-943891-26-4

1993

232 pages

EDIT2: Only available as a DTF, BTRC sells it for $20.

[mhd]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

Ah, of course, Greg Porter, who also did CORPS and the Vehicle Design System… Thanks, I'll look into that.

 

My main concern was about comparing the raw damage values, right now I don't need a perfect gunshot wound simulation. Having spent a few months in GURPS recently, the damage values just looked a bit too close together. Some of that is an artifact of the DC steps, of course. But the spread still seemed a bit too low, so I thought I might as well look into it a bit more.

 

Quickly browsing through GURPS High-Tech for .50 weapons I get the following, with the HERO values from various sources I could search for on this forum or look up in my old copy of Dark Champions in parens:

 

Flintlock pistol - 1d6+2 (2d+1)

Musket - 4d6 (3d6)

Desert Eagle - 4d6 (2d6+1)

M82A1 - 12d6 (3d6)

 

Quite a difference. Yes, GURPS is considered a bit more deadlier and more interested in tactical crunch, of course. (Wikipedia lists the muzzle velocity of the Barrett at 850 m/s, that of a Enfield Musket at 270 m/s, BTW)

 

For my next campaign, I'm more interested in the earlier weapons (comparable to early 1800s tech), so I have to see whether I should scale those down or keep the 2d6-3d6 range and just consider the contemporary weapons a bit below peak efficiency. I do have to compete with longbows, after all…

[Christopher]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

For the damage of gun, keep the advantages in mind. Especially increased Stun is very common among the rifles and heavier pistols. And that is a +1/4 Addvantage.

[Tom Carman]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

You could try digging up Western Hero. Granted it's 4th Ed., but it was pretty heavily focused on blackpowder cap-and-ball and cartridge guns.

[bigbywolfe]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

Keep in mind that the value listed is also for standard ammo. You can adjust for FMJ, Hollow Point, and so on.

[Sean Waters]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

I have Guns, Guns, Guns! Pretty cool reading if you want an Imperial Roman machine gun, but it assumes that damage is largely a product of energy delivered (IIRC: it is in a box in the loft somewhere).

 

The thing about guns is that they are instantly deadly if you hit in the right place, fatal more slowly if you do enough tissue damage/cause enough bloodloss, and hydrostatic shock is apparently a myth. Hero optional rules are not bad at that BUT Hero is probably too generic a game rule set to really accurately tell the difference between a 0.30 and a 7.62*. there are games that do make a fist of it. One called Millennium had a rule set that was really quite astonishing, using a clear overlay to determine exact hit locations and having a lot of differentiation in dame effects, but I do not really know how accurate even that is.

 

To me, 'realistic' is you are scared for your character when there is a lead poisoning epidemic. In a superhero game, for example, normals can not be killed with a single shot from most handguns (you need 5DC kill to fatally wound an 8 Body normal, and a very good roll with it at that), but if you use bleeding and hit locations and impairing and disabling, any bullet will be scary.

 

 

 

*I know: I'm trying to be funny.

[mhd]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

Oh yeah, Millennium's End with its overlays, I think I still go that somewhere. I think Kenzer's wild west "Aces & Eights" does something similar. Aftermath might have some involved firearms rules, too, but it's in the set of games where I have a small subroutine running in my brain repressing detailed knowledge of them.

 

I think a big issue regarding the spread of gun damage is the similar spread of armor. Bullets can be stopped, some rather easily, so you'd need to simulate that in a game. Which is why HERO gets away with simpler vehicles, bullet-proof vests - which in turn helps a lot with Supers gaming. You've got to make your trade-offs somewhere. GURPS opted for the more tactical side, which in turn creates some problems with different settings and styles of play. Don't get me wrong, I don't want to convert its concepts wholesale. I just noticed that for the stuff I'm looking at, the values as given seem a bit off. So I'm looking at some campaign-specific spot rules to fix that. For another type of campaign, I'd leave things as is or might change things in a different direction. Even in a generic game not everything can and should be used as-is, and HERO does have some nice tool-kitting options for that, e.g. with damage not being the only factor.

[sinanju]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

The thing about guns is that they are instantly deadly if you hit in the right place' date=' fatal more slowly if you do enough tissue damage/cause enough bloodloss, and hydrostatic shock is apparently a myth. [/quote']

 

Quoted for truth. An ex-LEO friend of mine has lots of stories (some personal experience, others from other LEOs, and many documented sources) to point out that: the effects of gunshots on the human body are wildly unpredictable. People have dropped dead from a single .22 pistol round, dead before they hit the ground. Others have soldiered on (so to speak) despite having a magazine of large-caliber bullets pumped into them, including direct hits to the heart and brain. (That's not to say they didn't die, or wouldn't eventually--but they can stay on their feet, active, and dangerous for longer than anyone would think.)

 

I also agree with the general consensus that if you want "realistic" weapons effects, you need to make use of the full array of damage effects: Hit Locations, Impairing & Disabling rules, Damage multipliers for various calibers, Bleeding rules, etc. Superheroes (or even high-end action heroes in nominally realistic movies) routinely shrug off injuries that ought to be far more deadly or debilitating than they show them to be.

[sinanju]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

Quoted for truth. An ex-LEO friend of mine has lots of stories* (some personal experience, others from other LEOs, and many documented sources) to point out that: the effects of gunshots on the human body are wildly unpredictable. People have dropped dead from a single .22 pistol round, dead before they hit the ground. Others have soldiered on (so to speak) despite having a magazine of large-caliber bullets pumped into them, including direct hits to the heart and brain. (That's not to say they didn't die, or wouldn't eventually--but they can stay on their feet, active, and dangerous for longer than anyone would think.)

 

I also agree with the general consensus that if you want "realistic" weapons effects, you need to make use of the full array of damage effects: Hit Locations, Impairing & Disabling rules, Damage multipliers for various calibers, Bleeding rules, etc. Superheroes (or even high-end action heroes in nominally realistic movies) routinely shrug off injuries that ought to be far more deadly or debilitating than they show them to be.

 

*Edited to add: Oh yeah, he also has a theory as to why cops who are killed are often found lying where they were shot, but criminals more often than not are found blocks away, where they collapsed while trying to run or climb a fence. Guys who tend to become cops are (for the most part) "play by the rules" sorts; when they played Cops N' Robbers as kids, if they were "killed" they fell down. Criminals tend to be the sort of kids who cheated. When they're badly injured, they both tend to revert to type. The criminals cheat; the cops lie down and play dead. (As a result, he emphasized in training that you do not, by God, stop when you're shot. You KEEP FIGHTING, **** your eyes!)

[Xavier Onassiss]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

There's also the Compendium of Modern Firearms by Kevin Dockery. I used to have that one as well, and found it the most useful of all for its sheer inclusiveness. I don't recall another RPG supplement that listed so many real-world firearms (with game stats) as the Compendium.

 

And now I'm thinking maybe I shoulda kept that one. Anyway, it's still available.

[Christopher]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

I also agree with the general consensus that if you want "realistic" weapons effects' date=' you need to make use of the full array of damage effects: Hit Locations, Impairing & Disabling rules, Damage multipliers for various calibers, Bleeding rules, etc. Superheroes (or even high-end action heroes in nominally realistic movies) routinely shrug off injuries that ought to be far more deadly or debilitating than they show them to be.[/quote']

There is an expanded Hit Location Chart in one of the APG's. It includes the Neck (more vulnerable than the head).

 

For Super- and Heroicgames I would go so far as to say that all Firearms could use Blast/Normal Damage. It's always "only a flesh wound" and only high body roll can actually lead to injury.

[Sean Waters]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

One way to customise how firearms cause damage is to create a more complicated bullet, or rather a more complicated build for a bullet: you might have a 1/2dd RKA as the basic effect and additional DCs of damage depending on how well you hit: say +1/2 d6 if you make your roll to hit by 2, another +1/2d6 if you make it by 4. That would mean a gun would routinely do 2d6 in the hands of an expert under good conditions, but would tend to do less damage (simulating hits that are not 'centre of mass' or some such) in the hands of a less experienced gunman (they shoot a bit wider) or under less than ideal conditions (even the expert is going to struggle to be exactly on target at 150 metres with a handgun), but still allowing for a lucky shot to be really dangerous under any conditions and in the hands of a novice.

 

That, of course, does not differentiate between different calibres and weapons in its basic form, but you could build weapons that tend to cause more bleeding (add 'damage over time' to some of the extra damage) or you could have weapons that are more inherently dangerous (they add damage every +1 on the to hit roll) or somesuch. Again you might not wind up with anything that is 'real world' realistic, but you would perhaps have weapons that have a lot of flavour and that feel 'cinematically realistic'.

[dmjalund]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

Hydrostatic shock is enough to kill fish in a barrel

[Christopher]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

Hydrostatic shock is enough to kill fish in a barrel

I think they meant the effect of hydrostatic shock in a human body.

Or the one suffered by a human in a swimming pool.

Both are propably so weak, they can be ignored.

[Captain Obvious]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

Hydrostatic shock more or less requires an enclosed area, like a barrel of fish, or a skull full of brains. Most parts of the human body are too stretchy for the shock effect to have a devastating effect.

[Martin2]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

I'm by no means a gun nut, but looking at the equipment tables, it seems that damage is mostly derived from caliber, which seems to sell rifles short and totally breaks down at .50/.75 black powder weapons.

 

Is there some supplement / fan-made stuff that has better values? Given Google and some guide lines, I might even be able to pick enough together for my personal needs if someone has interesting formulas (muzzle velocity?). If I remember correctly, there as some independent multi-system weapons design book quite a while ago, similar to Traveller' New Era's "Fire, Fusion & Steel", can't remember the name or the company…

 

Some people will give you lots of gun stats relating to real world situations and other will give you games stats relating to other game systems.

 

Some will give you numbers like this gun has a % death rate for hitting a center body / head / arm but then it will all the relate to your "average" body and "average" resistant protection (if any) of your average person.

 

This will all change from game to game.

 

Simple thing would be to take book values and increase or decrease every gun by active points X to the level you would want (you could have different X factor for black powder, modern, thrown, bow etc).

 

Or just don't have any name that relates to a real world weapon and give them the numbers you want.

 

What most players do normally when they have access to enough money is pick the best RKA, specific advantage for specific situation for HKA, RKA etc. Less will pick it for coolness etc value over a reduced active point cost or no advantage etc.

 

Hero is the game where you have very few limits .

[NuSoardGraphite]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

I have Guns' date=' Guns, Guns! Pretty cool reading if you want an Imperial Roman machine gun, but it assumes that damage is largely a product of energy delivered (IIRC: it is in a box in the loft somewhere).[/quote']

 

With earlier editions of Hero, bullet damage seemed to also be based on energy delivered. If one looked up the KE characteristics of an individual weapon and compared the damage statistics in HERO, one would find that they were pretty consistent in that. I have no problem with this approach. The basic determiner of damage is going to be its energy. This give you the baseline for damage, which in HERO doubles as Armor/material penetration. After determining the baseline (KE to damage conversion) then you modify the damage and/or apply advantages and limitations based on the type of round being employed. If the round is Armor Piercing, then it gains that Advantage but perhaps loses a bit of Damage Class. (the round has much less of a chance of fragmenting and may pass right through the target causing less damage). If the round is a Hollow Point, designed to fragment within the targets body, it may gain +1 or +2 DC, but also gains the limitation of Reduced Penetrating which makes such rounds almost worthless against Body Armor. A heavy round such as a shotgun slug or a larger round like a .50 calibur could be given +1 Stun Multiplier to represent the fact that even if Body armor stops such a round, much of the energy will still be felt causing pain and some slight trauma. Penetrating can be used for such an effect as well to simulate minor tissue/bone damage that can result. Tracer rounds, when used with fully automatic weapons add to the Range modifier, making it easier to target opponents beyond close range.

 

One thing I do not understand is when people want to simulate realism so closely, that they want to develop insanely complicated rules to mimic reality, rather than simply mentally translating the general game effects to fit the situation at hand. For example, a high-powered, .50 cal rifle has the capability of blowing clean through body armor without much difficulty. We all agree that if that .50 cal round hits something vital on the target, they are in serious trouble, probably dead or dying. However, if a non-vital part of the body is hit, then chances are pretty good that the round will simply blow through the target without too much effect beyond some shock/trauma and severe bleeding depending on the blood vessels in the area struck.

What I want to know is; How is this not a function of the damage roll? On a low damage roll, the round simply blows through the target, not doing much in the way of damage. On a medium damage roll, the round hit something quasi vital, caused sever shock/trauma and/or hit a major blood vessel. On a high damage roll, a vital organ was struck and the victim is in trouble. It's pretty cut and dried. This ain't rocket science. For a campaign that wants realistic damage rules, use Hit Locations, Impiaring/Disabling and Bleeding rules and you are pretty much good to go. Anything more is superfluous and will probably severely slow down an already tedious combat system.

 

The thing about guns is that they are instantly deadly if you hit in the right place, fatal more slowly if you do enough tissue damage/cause enough bloodloss, and hydrostatic shock is apparently a myth. Hero optional rules are not bad at that BUT Hero is probably too generic a game rule set to really accurately tell the difference between a 0.30 and a 7.62*. there are games that do make a fist of it. One called Millennium had a rule set that was really quite astonishing, using a clear overlay to determine exact hit locations and having a lot of differentiation in dame effects, but I do not really know how accurate even that is.

 

Hit Locations, Impairing/Disabling and Bleeding rules go about as far as any RPG system needs to go in determining how deadly/effective an attack has been. I understand that not everyone agrees with me and that they want detailed rules for when people get shot, but then you end up having to design two sets of rules for dealing with firearms...one set for when they interact with living beings, and another set for when they interact with materials and vehicles.

 

To me, 'realistic' is you are scared for your character when there is a lead poisoning epidemic. In a superhero game, for example, normals can not be killed with a single shot from most handguns (you need 5DC kill to fatally wound an 8 Body normal, and a very good roll with it at that), but if you use bleeding and hit locations and impairing and disabling, any bullet will be scary.

 

Indeed. Whenever someone mentions how hard it is to kill/hurt characters in HERO, I always remind them that these optional rules exist to mitigate character toughness in the system. Most of the time people who think HERO isn't deadly either A: Didn't know about those optional rules, B: Knew about them, but never used them or C: (most commonly) Pile on WAAAAAAAAY too much defense. High defenses are great for Superheroic type games/genres where you want epic battles that last half a game session, but for genres/campaigns that want grittier or more realistic combat where characters get hurt regularly and opponents can die quickly, defenses can easily interfere with such an atmosphere and they must be scaled accordingly.

[Tasha]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

Also Hero isn't a "realistic" game and only can be made so with a ton of work. Work that IMHO could be better spent in planning great stories.

 

Like others said. Use Hit Location, Impairing/Disabling Wounds and the Bleeding Rules if you want to increase the "realism" level of your games. You will find that your games will have greater lethality using those rules. Also limiting the availability of body armor(and the Combat Luck talent) will also ratchet up lethality.

 

I have just gotten to the point where I think it's best to just use the published materials. Even when I don't quite agree with how stuff is built. This allows your players to buy the same genre books as you and to use the stuff within. Otherwise you end up with a HUGE player handout that noone will read after Char Gen.

 

With all RPG's I say KISS (Keep It Simple, Stupid). I don't know about you, but I have better things to do than rewrite the Firearms charts in HSEG. YMMV.

 

Tasha

[Ragitsu]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

I don't know about you, but I have better things to do than rewrite the Firearms charts in HSEG. YMMV.

 

Tasha

 

Different folks for different strokes.

[mhd]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

Hey, like I've said before, I really wasn't thinking about requiring a degree in trauma surgery for the players - note the quotation marks in the thread name.

 

Two things prompted my query:

 

1) The relatively low spread, e.g. .22 plinker/1d6 - .50 BFG /3d6 (excacerbated by me coming from GURPS, where damage can be substantially higher with BODY/HP being pretty much the same)

2) Black powder weaponry doing more damage than anti-vehicular weapons, because they've got a bigger caliber, i.e. bullet size beating all other technological implications.

 

So "realistic" as in "d6 in proportion to actual output". Just some basic math, not advanced medicine

[Ragitsu]

Re: "Realistic" gun damage

 

2) Black powder weaponry doing more damage than anti-vehicular weapons' date=' because they've got a bigger caliber, i.e. bullet size beating all other technological implications.[/quote']

 

An M72A3 does more damage than an Enfield 1853. Unless there is some obscure musket/rifle and LAW combination, I have no idea what you are talking about.