Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

[bigdamnhero]

One thing about Hero firearms I’ve never been thrilled with is the low ammo consumption rate. Even if you give every character Rapid Attack, it still usually takes several turns to empty a pistol magazine - which is neither realistic nor in genre. Dark Champions has several options (p195-7) for increasing the amount of lead thrown around, but I’ve never actually used any of them. So if you have, which ones did you use, and what did you like/dislike about them? Or what other tricks/house rules have you used to create a hail of projectiles? Did they have any noticeable effects on game balance? Thanks.

[Sundog]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

In one of my DC games, quite a while ago now, I had a player who had the power to blze away at an area with his twin handguns. We built it as a seperate power in his multi, with the side effect "empties both clips" and area effect cone. It turned out to be great for taking care of swarms of mooks but largely ineffective agaisnt bosses (due to reduced damage potential).

[BlackEagle]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

Then you have weapons built into vehicles such as Armored trucks and of course Helecopters. Specialty "weapons" such as those make great advantage. Good examples of that are Airwolf and Streethawk. One is a helecopter built for combat and stealth. The other is an armed motercycle able to do high speeds and other stunts.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

Those are both good examples of exceptions to the rule. But I'm actually looking for ways to make high ammo consumption the norm, rather than the exception. In most action movies, the heroes are not the only ones littering the floor with shell casings; thugs blow through ammo extremely fast too, they just don't hit as often (or at all). So I'm interested in ways to make that the default setting for a campaign rather than a power build for specific characters.

 

What got me thinking about this was reading the Monster Hunter International series, where "empty the magazine, drop that gun, grab a different gun" is a pretty standard Full Phase action. Steve is probably addressing this in the RPG, but I'm impatient.

[sinanju]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

Those are both good examples of exceptions to the rule. But I'm actually looking for ways to make high ammo consumption the norm' date=' rather than the exception. In most action movies, the heroes are not the only ones littering the floor with shell casings; thugs blow through ammo extremely fast too, they just don't hit as often (or at all). So I'm interested in ways to make that the default setting for a campaign rather than a power build for specific characters. [/quote']

 

Well, the easiest way to handle that--NPCs blasting away ineffectively--is through GM fiat. Just describe them that way. "The goons blaze away in your direction! Lead is flying everywhere, blasting holes in walls, shattering glass, punching holes in furnture. The shell casings fall like rain around the goons' feet. " Then you roll as normal, to see if any of those bullets actually hit anything or anyone of consequence.

 

For that matter, you could handle the PCs the same way. Just assume everyone is running through truly heroic quantities of ammo at all times--but you're only rolling normally, because most of those shots (on both sides) serve to interfere with the other guy's ability to shoot you.

[IndianaJoe3]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

You could reduce the penalties for Multiple Attack, or build most semi-automatic weapons with Autofire (or a higher level of Autofire for those that have it already).

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

Well' date=' the easiest way to handle that--NPCs blasting away ineffectively--is through GM fiat. Just describe them that way. "The goons blaze away in your direction! Lead is flying everywhere, blasting holes in walls, shattering glass, punching holes in furnture. The shell casings fall like rain around the goons' feet. " Then you roll as normal, to see if any of those bullets actually hit anything or anyone of consequence.[/quote']

That certainly works from a narrative standpoint. After all, no one visualizes a sword duel as two people standing still for 3-4 seconds, swinging their swords once, and then standing still for another 3-4 seconds - it's assumed to be a series of blows, parries, etc. The challenge with firearms is how do you then address Charges? If it still takes me 3-4 Turns to empty my pistol magazine, that undermines both the realism and the feel I'm trying to achieve.

 

I'm thinking one simple option might be that one Charge doesn't have to equal one actual bullet. Maybe each "shot" in game terms actually equals 3 bullets, one of which is an actual attack while the rest are basically just sfx. You could keep the same ratio for auto fire, so a "3 round burst" in game terms actually eats up 9 bullets. Of course one consequence of that method is that high-SPD heroes will run out of ammo much faster than low-SPD mooks, which again is neither realistic or genre. (You'd probably need to recalculate the value of the Charges Limitation for guns if you're paying points for equipment.)

 

Another idea might be to tie ammo expenditure to Segment rather than Phase? Say you fired your gun on Phase 4 and your next action is Phase 8; you're assumed to also be firing on Segments 5, 6 & 7 even tho none of them count as attacks. That way mooks burn through ammo at basically the same rate as gun-fu heroes, they're just far less effective. Maybe each non-Phase Segment eats up one round, or maybe they eat up the same number of rounds you fired on Phase 4? The latter might be going overboard and could actually discourage players from making Multiple Attacks.

[Greywind]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

Give the good guys Hollywood guns and call it a day.

[sinanju]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

That certainly works from a narrative standpoint. After all' date=' no one visualizes a sword duel as two people standing still for 3-4 seconds, swinging their swords once, and then standing still for another 3-4 seconds - it's assumed to be a series of blows, parries, etc. The challenge with firearms is how do you then address Charges? If it still takes me 3-4 Turns to empty my pistol magazine, that undermines both the realism and the feel I'm trying to achieve.[/quote']

 

Again, GM fiat is the answer. There's no reason why "one charge" has to mean one bullet. Or even one magazine. "[PC Hero] blazes away at the bad guys, flinging lead downrange with deadly accuracy. He ejects the first magazine and reloads without missing a beat. As he runs for cover closer to the bad guys, he ejects the second magazine and slams the third one into position before firing again. He lays down covering fire for his buddy, then ducks behind cover to reload again." Only that last one need count as an actual charge expenditure. As long as the game mechanical limits are adhered to (he gets, for instance, three phases in which he can fire before he has to reload) it doesn't really matter if in the interim he chews through several magazines worth of bullet.

[Beast]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

go with fast draw it will give you a 1/2 phase extra for movement

 

1 thing to consider doing is instead of buying all the charges on the weapon

make the weapon a Multipower and differing rates of fire

in the gun I'm posting below it has only 80 rnd of ammo in 4 clips so a bit more tracking is needed

 

Pistol FN Five pt Sev7n: Multipower, 75-point reserve, (75 Active Points); Limited Power Power loses about a third of its effectiveness (normal load is 4 clips with 20 rnds 80 shots total; -1/2); all slots OAF (-1)

NOTES 4 clips of 20 rnds each if using Area of Effect Selective treat each charge as 4 charges for the other slots Double Tap and Unload into that sucka each charge is worth 2 single shot charges

 

Single shot: RKA 2d6 (45 Active Points); 4 clips of 20 Charges (+1/2)

Hitting 4 targets in 3 to 4 seconds: RKA 2d6, Area Of Effect (4 2m Areas; +1/2), Selective (+1/4) (52 Active Points); 4 clips of 5 Charges (-1/4)

Double tapping: RKA 4d6 (75 Active Points); Reduced Penetration (-1/4), 4 clips of 10 Charges (+1/4)

Unloading into that sucka: RKA 4d6, Autofire (2 shots; +1/4) (75 Active Points); Reduced Penetration (-1/4), 4 clips of 5 Charges (-1/4)

 

Those are both good examples of exceptions to the rule. But I'm actually looking for ways to make high ammo consumption the norm, rather than the exception. In most action movies, the heroes are not the only ones littering the floor with shell casings; thugs blow through ammo extremely fast too, they just don't hit as often (or at all). So I'm interested in ways to make that the default setting for a campaign rather than a power build for specific characters.

 

What got me thinking about this was reading the Monster Hunter International series, where "empty the magazine, drop that gun, grab a different gun" is a pretty standard Full Phase action. Steve is probably addressing this in the RPG, but I'm impatient.

[Toadmaster]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

At one time we allowed for semi-auto rapid fire, basically using the autofire rules, but with a -2 on the initial roll and up to up to 3 shots fired. I believe we swiped this from Danger International but upped it from 2 shots to 3 shots possible.

 

For autofire we used the 3rd edition version (I think 4th dropped the bonuses, maybe we just extended the bonus beyond 10 rounds) of autofire that gave +1 for a 3 round burst, +2 for a 5 round burst, +4 for a 10 round burst, and +2 for each doubling beyond that (+6 for 20 round burst, +8 for 40 round burst etc). We based max burst on actual cyclic rate, so most conventional weapons were limited to a 10 round burst, a few could do 20. Greater than 20 was mostly gatling style weapons (mini-guns, Vulcan cannons etc).

 

While this didn't have a huge effect on ammo expenditure of automatic weapons where 3 and 5 round bursts remained the most popular, it did greatly increase ammo use on semi-auto weapons. We may have allowed 2 short (less than max rate bursts) with a -2 (so no bonus on a 5 round, and a -1 on each 3 round), but I really don't remember anymore if we did that or just talked about allowing it.

[BlackEagle]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

Not just the type of weapon used but also the type of amo sould also dictate points. Not to mention the calaber of weapon used. I like the 3 and 5 round burst idea. Thats how the military does it. Dont want to use up all your amo in one fell swoop.

[bigdamnhero]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

At one time we allowed for semi-auto rapid fire, basically using the autofire rules, but with a -2 on the initial roll and up to up to 3 shots fired. I believe we swiped this from Danger International but upped it from 2 shots to 3 shots possible.

 

For autofire we used the 3rd edition version (I think 4th dropped the bonuses, maybe we just extended the bonus beyond 10 rounds) of autofire that gave +1 for a 3 round burst, +2 for a 5 round burst, +4 for a 10 round burst, and +2 for each doubling beyond that (+6 for 20 round burst, +8 for 40 round burst etc). We based max burst on actual cyclic rate, so most conventional weapons were limited to a 10 round burst, a few could do 20. Greater than 20 was mostly gatling style weapons (mini-guns, Vulcan cannons etc).

 

While this didn't have a huge effect on ammo expenditure of automatic weapons where 3 and 5 round bursts remained the most popular, it did greatly increase ammo use on semi-auto weapons. We may have allowed 2 short (less than max rate bursts) with a -2 (so no bonus on a 5 round, and a -1 on each 3 round), but I really don't remember anymore if we did that or just talked about allowing it.

Yeah, I remember those 3ed bonuses, and kinda missed them when they went away. (5ed Dark Champs has something along those lines as an Optional Rule.) It makes some sense to me, especially for marginally-trained mooks to have a "spray & pray" option where large ammo expenditure increases your chance to hit at all, rather than just allowing multiple hits.

 

Hmmm...what about a variant of the Spreading rules? Instead of trading off lower damage for higher OCV, expending Charges gives you an OCV bonus, but still only results in one attack mechanically. Autofire is unchanged, since it's a different mechanic that allows you to hit multiple times. You'd definitely want to cap it somehow, especially for NPCs, or things could get real lethal real fast....

[dmjalund]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

There was a recent episode of Mythbusters which showed that any automatic weapon out there (barring those with chain clips) will run out of ammo in 2 seconds

[Toadmaster]

Re: Storm Of Lead - Your Thoughts?

 

There was a recent episode of Mythbusters which showed that any automatic weapon out there (barring those with chain clips) will run out of ammo in 2 seconds

 

They obviously didn't try every weapon. As a general rule of thumb not bad, but there are plenty it wouldn't work for.

 

The Soviet PPSh-41 has a rate of fire 900 rounds per minute (15 per second) but it came standard with a 71 round drum, so about 6 seconds of continuous fire. On the other side the German MP-40 had a 30 round magazine and a rate of fire of 500 rounds per minute (just a pinch over 9 rounds per second) so it takes a little over 3 seconds to empty the magazine. The US M3 "Greasegun" has a marginally slower rate of fire (450 rpm) than the MP-40 so it takes about 3 1/3 seconds to empty the magazine. The Thompson M1928 "tommy gun" made famous by the St Valentines Day massacre has a rate of fire of 600 rounds per minute, with a 50 round drum magazine so 5 seconds of firing time. Uzi, 600 rounds per minute, 30 round magazine so 3 seconds of firing time.

 

So 6 iconic automatic weapons, looks like a sloppy job by mythbusters (I assume the jr members? They don't seem to take the same care as Adam and Jaime).