Firearms, joules and damage dice

[Atgxtg]

20 hours ago, Thot said:

 

I believe this should be googleable. Please start a thread! It's not as if this would take any mentionable amount of disk space on the server.

It's mostly a bunch of notes for rules and guidelines done up over a decade. A lot of the early stuff is obsolete now, as I have a better understanding of how the physics behind it all works that I did when I started. If I could finalize a few of the formulas and design rules it might make a nice wiki. I still got a few bugs with some of the math, and also some compatibility issues with the existing BRP writeups. Trying to keep the results compatible with the existing BRP stats is problematic. As the firearms damages stuff you've done can illustrate. 

It would make more sense to email bits and pieces to you, if you wanted to see something that to post any of it. it would really need to all be updated to using the same conversion guidelines before it could be put online. 

20 hours ago, Thot said:

This is quite insightful. Many thanks!

You're welcome. I hope to one day to complete the projects. But I suspect that at some point I'm going to have to make it a BRP variant and sacrifce soem compatiblity for internal consistency. 

[Questbird]

On 11/12/2016 at 3:35 AM, Thot said:

 

I believe this should be googleable. Please start a thread! It's not as if this would take any mentionable amount of disk space on the server.

 

This is quite insightful. Many thanks!

Atgxtg mentioned his formulas helpfully in another thread about fighting huge creatures:

 

[Chris]

Try looking at Mythras / RQ6 rules and the RQ6 Firearms PDF

I think most of your issues have covered in there.

Guns ignore some armour. There are combat effects like  Drop Foe, Impale, Bleed, Pin down all these help make guns effective while not over killers.

 

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Chris said:

Try looking at Mythras / RQ6 rules and the RQ6 Firearms PDF

I think most of your issues have covered in there.

Guns ignore some armour. There are combat effects like  Drop Foe, Impale, Bleed, Pin down all these help make guns effective while not over killers.

 

It's not too bad, although I'm not all that found of the big adds some rifles get. It ends up making them far more deadly than they are in real life. The more I look at existing stats the more I'm tempted to try and find some formulaic approach. 

[Atgxtg]

On 11/14/2016 at 0:51 AM, Questbird said:

Atgxtg mentioned his formulas helpfully in another thread about fighting huge creatures:

Yeah, I blab a lot! I've mentioned various bits of this stuff on several threads over the past decade. If somebody is (still) interested in it, I can dig up my notes. I've even got some stuff simplified into game terms. 

[Chris]

19 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

It's not too bad, although I'm not all that found of the big adds some rifles get. It ends up making them far more deadly than they are in real life. The more I look at existing stats the more I'm tempted to try and find some formulaic approach. 

I am not sure that a minimum of 6 is to bad. At best its only a mayor wound, a average roll will cause a serious wound which will destroy a limb. Which also seems fair for a 50cal sniper rifle.  

I see grazes as a near miss which the  pin down combat effect covers.

However I do like what you are doing.

I spent a lot of time in the past doing similar stuff but now I just let the Role play take center stage and let the players worry about big damage weapons hitting them as well. 

[Atgxtg]

1 hour ago, Chris said:

I am not sure that a minimum of 6 is to bad. At best its only a mayor wound, a average roll will cause a serious wound which will destroy a limb. Which also seems fair for a 50cal sniper rifle.  

But overkill for a 7.62.

[Thot]

10 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

But overkill for a 7.62.

Why do you believe that?

[SDLeary]

15 hours ago, Thot said:

Why do you believe that?

Well... a 7.62 rifle round can graze first of all. Or just give a flesh wound. A hit in the limb (or even certain parts of the torso), even with a medium size round like that, can just be a flesh wound, going right through and hurting like hell, but otherwise not hindering the recipient. Thats a pretty hard low end to achieve with an add of 4, or any add for that matter.

Many modern rounds have to fragment, or tumble in cavity, to achieve their true capabilities. Fragmentation and tumbling doesn't always occur. 

Most deaths occur when a round hits an artery and the subject bleeds out. If the round is a small one, there might only be a small entry wound and very little actual damage. Some deaths occur when a vital organ is hit, and shock causes it to stop. Death is not instantaneous. With firearms weighted as they are, any average rifle hit on a limb should see large chunks of flesh flying off. A crit... sure, but not an average hit. 

I think in order to normalize the list closer to real world observation, the d12 has to be revived, and all adds removed.  

SDLeary

Edited November 18, 2016 by SDLeary

[Thot]

45 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

Well... a 7.62 rifle round can graze first of all. Or just give a flesh wound. A hit in the limb (or even certain parts of the torso), even with a medium size round like that, can just be a flesh wound, going right through and hurting like hell, but otherwise not hindering the recipient. Thats a pretty hard low end to achieve with an add of 4, or any add for that matter.

Many modern rounds have to fragment, or tumble in cavity, to achieve their true capabilities. Fragmentation and tumbling doesn't always occur. 

But these things are, as far as I know, rare freak events, not regular occurrences?

45 minutes ago, SDLeary said:

Most deaths occur when a round hits an artery and the subject bleeds out. If the round is a small one, there might only be a small entry wound and very little actual damage. Some deaths occur when a vital organ is hit, and shock causes it to stop. Death is not instantaneous. With firearms weighted as they are, any average rifle hit on a limb should see large chunks of flesh flying off. A crit... sure, but not an average hit. 

I think in order to normalize the list closer to real world observation, the d12 has to be revived, and all adds removed. 

 

So you would propose to lower firearm damage, but add a significant chance for bleeding (and equivalent things) to occur?

[SDLeary]

1 hour ago, Thot said:

But these things are, as far as I know, rare freak events, not regular occurrences?

I think they happen a lot more than many realize, and the larger the round the less likely to occur, but they still do. Witness the reports from the troops of several nations serving in Iraq and Afghanistan that reported torso hits with their 5.56mm, but then their targets getting up to continue their advance. This prompted a quick re-evaluation by many nations, and essentially is responsible for the emergence of the modern Designated Marksman at the squad level, with a medium caliber weapon to provide a heavier punch. And while the heavier punch helps, even DM's have reported people getting up and moving off. Body Armor? Possibly. To the best of my knowledge though, none of our opponents over there wear the bulky armor to fend off rifle rounds, the way our own troops do. 

Quote

 

So you would propose to lower firearm damage, but add a significant chance for bleeding (and equivalent things) to occur?

Depending upon the hit point economy and scope of the game, yes. At the very least getting rid of the adds, and reintroducing the D12 to handle those weapons that use 2d6. In all honesty I would probably rework the list so that pistols start our slightly lower (1d4?), and having a bit of overlap between large caliber handguns and small caliber rifles.

At baseline BRP with standard HP and Major Wounds, I think bleeding would be enough, perhaps with 1pt/turn on a special, and 1pt/melee rd on a critical. If using Locations, then you also have the regular incapacitation rules once a location drops below 0 HP.

SDLeary

Edited November 18, 2016 by SDLeary

[Atgxtg]

On 11/17/2016 at 7:08 AM, Thot said:

Why do you believe that?

SD Leary covered most of it. Basically it has to do with how hit points work in the game. In real life a bullet can go through someone and not necessarily kill or even incapacitate them, even if it strikes them in the chest or abdomen. But with fixed hit points, hit locations and a high minimum damage it becomes automatic. I'd much rather see 3D6 or even 2D10 than 2D6+4. for damage. But then, I prefer the old RQ dagger damage of 1D6 to the revised 1D4+2. It's kinda funny that 2 point leather might stop any sword (even a 2D8 greatsword), but won't completely stop a dagger, ever.  

 

On 11/17/2016 at 10:29 PM, SDLeary said:

Many modern rounds have to fragment, or tumble in cavity, to achieve their true capabilities. Fragmentation and tumbling doesn't always occur. 

On 11/17/2016 at 11:19 PM, Thot said:

But these things are, as far as I know, rare freak events, not regular occurrences?

Not necessarily. It depends on how you design the bullet. For instance, some rounds (Glaser Safety Slugs, Black Talons), are pre-fragmented (like a mini shotgun shell)  If you design a bullet to be barely spin stabilized, then it will be more likely to tumble when it starts to loose spin, such as when it hits something. There are claims that the 5.56 NATO round was designed to do just that, in order to inflict more serious wounds. There are also claims that this caused problems with the original AR-15s/M-16s as firing through the jungle flora could cause rounds to loose stabilization and veer off target. 

 

[Atgxtg]

On 11/17/2016 at 11:19 PM, Thot said:

So you would propose to lower firearm damage, but add a significant chance for bleeding (and equivalent things) to occur?

The chance for bleeding for any bullet wound should probably be at around 100%. The chance of significant bleeding depends on where you get hit- or to be more clear about it, what parts of the targets anatomy are hit, how it was hit (i.e. does the shot go clean through or come in at an angle and tear something open) and to a lesser extent, what they are hit with (i.e bigger caliber bullets tend to make bigger holes). Depending on those variables, a person could bleed to death in a matter of seconds (less than a melee round) or in hours of days. There are also things like the wound going septic, and the effects of pain and shock to consider. 

 

It would probably make sense to tie the rate of blood loss to the  damage taken, sucess level, and a random die roll. So a 5 point wound should usually bleed out faster than a 1 point wound. 

[SDLeary]

12 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

It would probably make sense to tie the rate of blood loss to the  damage taken, sucess level, and a random die roll. So a 5 point wound should usually bleed out faster than a 1 point wound. 

This makes sense. I think baby steps though are needed in order to get people into the correct mindset with firearms.

I would probably go with 1HP/hr for a normal hit; 1HP/turn for a Special; and 1HP/melee round for a Critical. Fast enough on the low end for players to take notice, and slow enough on the high end that there aren't completely caught off guard for something to save their character. This would force some GMs to remain in "combat" until the danger passed rather than simply the end of combat.

Add to this rolls for consciousness and/or shock, and you keep the deadliness of firearms, with a much more "real world" take on their actual effects.

SDLeary 

[Chris]

Mythras Fatigue rules and bleed effect covers this very neatly.

Also the bigger rounds need not have a lot more damage but better range brackets and amour penetrating. 

Also the Drop Foe effect is there for close calls.

[Atgxtg]

3 hours ago, Chris said:

Also the bigger rounds need not have a lot more damage but better range brackets and amour penetrating. 

 

Except that that isn't necessarily the case. The bigger rounds usually have worse armor penetration. One of the major factors in armor penetration on how concentrated the attack is. A smaller round focuses the energy of the attack over a smaller area and tends to penetrate better. It's not the whole story, but all else being equal the smaller round will penetrate better than the larger one.

[Atgxtg]

11 hours ago, SDLeary said:

I would probably go with 1HP/hr for a normal hit; 1HP/turn for a Special; and 1HP/melee round for a Critical. Fast enough on the low end for players to take notice, and slow enough on the high end that there aren't completely caught off guard for something to save their character. This would force some GMs to remain in "combat" until the danger passed rather than simply the end of combat.

I'd rather tie the bleeding rate to the damage taken rather than just the success level. Reason being that a lot of the time armor soaks up most of the damage and a special success only ends up doing a point or two. I'd figure that a 10 point "normal" hit is probably going to bleed out faster than a 2 point special. 

it ight even be worth considering allowing a CON roll to avoid the hit point loss.Maybe on a special success the character stops bleeding, and on a fumble things get worse. 

[Questbird]

9 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I'd rather tie the bleeding rate to the damage taken rather than just the success level. Reason being that a lot of the time armor soaks up most of the damage and a special success only ends up doing a point or two. I'd figure that a 10 point "normal" hit is probably going to bleed out faster than a 2 point special. 

it ight even be worth considering allowing a CON roll to avoid the hit point loss.Maybe on a special success the character stops bleeding, and on a fumble things get worse. 

Now you're getting into hitpoint-less combat territory..

[SDLeary]

10 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

Except that that isn't necessarily the case. The bigger rounds usually have worse armor penetration. One of the major factors in armor penetration on how concentrated the attack is. A smaller round focuses the energy of the attack over a smaller area and tends to penetrate better. It's not the whole story, but all else being equal the smaller round will penetrate better than the larger one.

Yes, to some extent this is true. Witness the performance of 5.7x28 mm, and 4.6x30 mm rounds against body armor and helmets. Generally good at defeating armor, but not much good at doing anything else.

SDLeary

[SDLeary]

10 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

I'd rather tie the bleeding rate to the damage taken rather than just the success level. Reason being that a lot of the time armor soaks up most of the damage and a special success only ends up doing a point or two. I'd figure that a 10 point "normal" hit is probably going to bleed out faster than a 2 point special. 

Not necessarily. There are numerous instances of people with "serious wounds" surviving for some time before receiving medical attention, and the medical crews really have no idea how they survived. In my proposal, based on the 10 pt wound, the person would bleed out in an hour or two, assuming no medical intervention. 

There are also situations where wounding is not that significant, but the wound is in just the right place; femoral or brachial arteries anyone? So the subject of the two point special would bleed out, on average in about 50 min; possible with a nick in the arteries mentioned, but probably a bit on the slow side.

As a note, at this point I'm not contemplating armor, only the wound to the character, so that which makes it through armor. 

10 hours ago, Atgxtg said:

it ight even be worth considering allowing a CON roll to avoid the hit point loss.Maybe on a special success the character stops bleeding, and on a fumble things get worse. 

I could go for a CON roll, sure. The issue there becomes how often? I'm also not sure if I would penalize a fumble in this instance. We already have rules for movement aggravation of injuries. 

Now, I could see myself requiring a First Aid of equal or greater success level in order to staunch the bleeding.

SDLeary

[Matt_E]

I am reminded of the ongoing scene in "Reservoir Dogs", where the hero is slowly, slowly bleeding out from a shot to the gut. Even if it's not totally realistic, it makes for good drama. :-)

[Atgxtg]

15 hours ago, Questbird said:

Now you're getting into hitpoint-less combat territory..

Not necessarily. What we are getting into is the territory on non-instant damage. That can work just fine with hit points

[Atgxtg]

13 hours ago, SDLeary said:

As a note, at this point I'm not contemplating armor, only the wound to the character, so that which makes it through armor. 

The problem I have with that is that any special hit that does minor damage through armor ends up being a faster bleed out than any high damage but low success level wound.I think it ends up making firearms too powerful compared to other weapons. I mean, if someone skewers you with a spear but only gets 1 point through the armor, it's not all that bad an injury, but if someone gets just 1 point through with a critical hit from a firearm the character is at serious risk of death from bloodloss.

I think if we did that, we'd have to seriously revise all the other weapon damages to maintain some sort of parity.  

13 hours ago, SDLeary said:

I could go for a CON roll, sure. The issue there becomes how often? I'm also not sure if I would penalize a fumble in this instance. We already have rules for movement aggravation of injuries. 

I was thinking the CON roll would be required each time interval for damage. On a special success or better the character stops bleeding and doesn't have to roll anymore. On a normal success the character doesn't take damage that interval, but still has to keep rolling. Fumbles make it worse. I don't really see this being all that much of a problem, since people who are injured are going to try and treat the injury as soon as they can. 

13 hours ago, SDLeary said:

Now, I could see myself requiring a First Aid of equal or greater success level in order to staunch the bleeding.

SDLeary

I think that might be too harsh. It gives someone with First Aid a 90% about a 45% chance of stopping someone from bleeding to death from a  a 1 point critical hit! That makes firearms way to lethal. Doctors can usually stabilize an injury if they can get to the patient quickly.  I think I be more inclined to have the success level of the attack adjust the difficulty of the first aid roll (i.e. easy/normal/hard). That way the players have a reasonable chance of stopping someone from bleeding to death from a critical. 

[SDLeary]

28 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

The problem I have with that is that any special hit that does minor damage through armor ends up being a faster bleed out than any high damage but low success level wound.I think it ends up making firearms too powerful compared to other weapons. I mean, if someone skewers you with a spear but only gets 1 point through the armor, it's not all that bad an injury, but if someone gets just 1 point through with a critical hit from a firearm the character is at serious risk of death from bloodloss.

I think if we did that, we'd have to seriously revise all the other weapon damages to maintain some sort of parity. 

Well, yes. That does take us to the second part of the problem. A spear or sword skewering you is going to ruin your day more probably than a hit from a 22. We do need to adjust firearms, and in my opinion down. I'm not sure we have to more than tweak Melee though. 

The nature of firearms is such that it essentially rendered ancient armor obsolete, or at least made it so difficult to make an effective armor that weight of armor becomes a serious issue. This was done because of the force applied by the projectile would punch right thru, with enough retained force (yes, I know I'm not using the accurate terms here) to still cause serious injury. In order to deal with this, I think we need to revive an idea that we'e floated on these forums before: Penetration Value. Whether this would be a class/class number, or simply a number of armor points that the projectile ignored, I'm not sure of the right answer at the moment.

We should probably take that to another thread though if we want to talk about that. In fact, we might want to do that anyway as we have strayed quite a bit from the original topic.

28 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I was thinking the CON roll would be required each time interval for damage. On a special success or better the character stops bleeding and doesn't have to roll anymore. On a normal success the character doesn't take damage that interval, but still has to keep rolling. Fumbles make it worse. I don't really see this being all that much of a problem, since people who are injured are going to try and treat the injury as soon as they can.

I would allow something like that on a normal hit. On a special or critical, I would think that the damage (either due to meat damage or organ damage) would be to severe for them to treat themselves, assuming they remain conscious. Assuming they are conscious, perhaps something like this to slow the bleeding, but as for treating the injury, that would be a First Aid roll.

28 minutes ago, Atgxtg said:

I think that might be too harsh. It gives someone with First Aid a 90% about a 45% chance of stopping someone from bleeding to death from a  a 1 point critical hit! That makes firearms way to lethal. Doctors can usually stabilize an injury if they can get to the patient quickly.  I think I be more inclined to have the success level of the attack adjust the difficulty of the first aid roll (i.e. easy/normal/hard). That way the players have a reasonable chance of stopping someone from bleeding to death from a critical. 

Come now! You've cut yourself shaving! You know how hard it can be to get things to stop!

I see your point. So yes, a modifier rather than equal or greater success level. 

SDLeary

[Atgxtg]

One of the methods used in a BRP firearms supplement  ( I forgot which one-maybe the modern equipment supplement?)was that instead of armor soaking points, as s done now- it is treated as more of a allor nothing prospect. It makes sense, in game terms, since weapon damage is not on a linear scale. Basically, an attack that does 10 damage vs. 8 armor is probably getting more energy/damage through than a 6 point hit vs. 4 armor. But, that would mean a rather radical rethinking of things. Basically it would become a variant game system instead of just modifying what's already there. 

 

As far as the CON roll goes, I'm not considering it to be someone treating them self, but rather the effects of clotting and the fact that in real life bleeding rate can be a bit more variable than 1 point per round.hour.etc. 

Maybe another approach could be to have the success level  CON roll determine the rate of the blood loss? 

 

Another, simpler approach might be to assume that half of firearm damage comes from blood loss and could be prevented if given first aid before some sort of time limit runs out. Much the way you get so long to reattach a limb with magic. So, for example, a successfully treated 8 point gunshot would would only do 4 points if treated successfully in the first time interval (minutes, hours etc. based on the Success level of the attack).