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I grant you that the "shootout at noon" os mostly fiction. But at for the moetality rates of gunsdhots, that is also a fiction caused by the pulps, Hollywood, TV, etc. THe information avaiable from real world shootings, both in the Old West and in the modrn era show that very few gunshots actually kill someone right away. Instant kills are limited to within the crtical hit % and most other deaths occur later. THat is actually one of the problems with shootouts. Unless you can severe the guys spine, he is going to have at least 10 seconds of so to act before he passes out from blood lost. And that is the "best case" scenario. So if you want to play "how it really was" then you need to reduce the instant kill rates.

That is why I want to base the damage on the military standard ball ammunition. Once we do that, it becomes easy to do... I know a few RPGs that do that, some quite well. 3G3 for Timelords is probably the best of the bunch in that line. Yup. Shot placement is #1. And I do like the idea of better rolls doing more damage, but that would be more along the lines of a major revision to all of combat (skill certainly counts with swords). We do sort of have that anyway with special and critical successes. From what I've read only the Brain and Spine hits are instant kill/disablement. Everything else is psychological, since it is going to take at least a round for the target to bleed out. Usually longer. Probably a Will roll. Since Will is POW in BRP, then a Luck roll. If using CoC SAN rules they would world too. Being hit by a bullet would certainly be a shock. But agian, that is if we wanted to go to that level with it. Getting your arm hacked off with an axe is at least equally traumatic, and lethal.

But did you ever notice if they were waiting for something?

Agreed. A .45 also inflicts larger wounds that a 9mm. What I was referring to was the the myth of how .45s would "knock a man down", or "send him flying". That's fiction. It you blow out a kneecap or something you might make someone fall, but it isn't the force of the bullet. And if the bullet could send a man flying backwards, firing the shot would send the shooter backwards as well. I also agree with it reason for being used by special forces, although I think that has to do with the subsonic nature. Basically if you need to silence a pistol, why not take one that already is subsonic and has the heaviest bullet? Plus the same forces who use the .45ACP also use 9mm pistols and SMGs. Also for good reasons. I don't think I want a .45 SMG that wasn't using at least semi-jacketed ammo. That's what I thought. Most of the data I've seen points to a 9mm being better at penetrating body armor. Again, this is all subject to load. Some .45 rounds can penetrate really well, and some 9mm rounds, such as Glaser safety slugs don't penetrate that well. If someone has something that shows otherwise I'd like to see it. As it stands I don't accept that a .45ACP has the same penetration ability as a .357 Magnum. The same wounding ability, maybe. Possibly even better, since it has a bigger, heavier bullet.

So what. Instead of discussing the matter you get into a huff?

Then back them up. Basically the "I think this because some I trust told me so." isn't any sort of solid evidence. I know lots of guys who have fired different weapons, from police, army soldiers, marines, the navy, hunters, etc. That doesn't prove anything. Heck, I know one guy who switched from a 9mm to a 38 Special because it was wider. Now the 9mm is .355 and the .38 Special is .357 and in that case width isn't a factor. But that was his reason. I know a guy who was in Military Intelligence who is the one who believes that the .45 can stop a heart. I can't just take you word on how good your sources are. I'll take data that is backed up like ballistics tests and NIJ ratings. I know a very reliable four year old who believe Santa Clause is going to stop at her house on Christmas Eve, and who has seen Santa. I don't doubt her reliability, or her veracity. That doesn't prove that Santa exists. If you have some sort of evidence that supports a .45 penetrating deeper than a 9mm, please show it. Otherwise, I'm going with the vast majority of evidence to the contrary. Truth be told, the actual load being use is more important than caliber in regard to the 9mm/.45 thing. Especially considering how long both rounds have been in service and how much the charges have been upped over the years. You talked before about the errors of "conventional wisdom" but seem to fall back on the same fallacy that created them. Believing things without evidence. Perhaps the biggest abuse of "conventional wisdom" is the .45s reputation as a "manstopper". It right up there with bullets "knocking" people back or down.

The "basic" rule in RQ3 was that every time you took something a step away from it place of manufacture you mutiplied the cost by 2.5. While I'm not sayingg that was the case in the US in the 1800s< it does make the price descrpancies clear up. If a Peacemaker was $6 in the East, 6=2.5=$15 in the est, and 15x2.5=$37.50 for those hard to reach places. I've got 4 Western RPGs, and some sourcebooks, but don't have much in the way of authnetic prices.

Uh, not sure I can. The good points: 1)It is streamlined. Think of the CoC rules. 2)Magic has been downgraded to keep sorceroer from being as overpowering as they were in SB1 3) Specific summoning spells/magic for the being that pop up in the Elric books. 4) They altered the cultural notes to better fit Moorcocks works. Argrimilans are no longer the Young Kingdom's answer to the USA. The bad points: Well, pretty much everything else. Stats don't mean much, there is a rip off of RQ spirit magic grafted onto the game that doesn't belong there. Also, since Mogoose is now publishing Elric stuff I doubt you'll see any support for it from Chaosium. Not that they have done a good good of supporting the game. They certainly never lived up to their claim of it being the new in house fantasy RPG setting that they claimed it was going to be after the AH deal. I'd say save your money and just use BRP.

Maybe, but then it makes stat improvement pretty pointless. What it the advantage up upping your DEX? What I liked about RQ3 was that each point of stat meant something. One thing I don't like about CoC and most of Chaosium stuff based off of it is that except for hit points and damage bonus, you stats are meaningless. The statx5% rolls rarely came up, as there was usually a skill that replaced the stat roll. So if a character had a 13 or 17 Strength tended to make little difference.

A lot of "conventional wisdom" about firearms, well, most of it, is just crap. I'm with you there. RE: The .45 Penetration. A lot of combat vets don't know crap about ballistics either. You get a lot of weird anecdotal stuff that doesn't hold true. I know one guy who swears that a .45 can cause your heart to stop from "blunt trauma" right though a ballistic vest because of some story he heard about a guy who died under such conditions. Personally, I think it was probably the years of streak dinners that did it not the .45. As for recoil, that is highly subjective. You probably already now about perceived recoil. Much of that varies by shooter. It one reason why most shooter experts recommend that people use a gun that they feel comfortable shooting rather than a cannon that they can't control or makes them flinch when the fire it. All the ballistics tests I've seen put the 9mm ahead in penetration, although not in wound cavity. Of course if you are not using standard ball loads it's a whole different story, but the Geneva convention prohibits most of those. Not that it would matter much against first world armies. RE; THe 5.56 For instance the 5.56 tumbling thing. Lots of guys from 'nam swear the bullet tumbles in the air. Not true. If it did you couldn't aim the thing. What is true is that the 5.56 bullet does have as much spin stabilization as some other rifle rounds and it tends to break up on impact. I've read that it penetrates As for CoC, gun stats are pretty much a non issue. Most mythos creatures only take 1 point, or are just immune, assuming that the character made the SAN roll and can still pull the trigger. . So the stats are academic. I'm tweaker for purposes of doing the vehicle rules. TO get those to work right, we need to work out what sort of scale/progression is being used to make everything else fit. For example, I did up a M113APC writeup. To make it work, it needed to be able to stop pistol and rifle rounds, yet be vulnerable to 12.7mm rounds. With 7.62 and 5.56 rounds both maxing out at 16 points, and 12.7mm rounds doing around 2D10+4 or +5 then 17-20 was the "window" left to work in. And that assumes that you can't impale a vehicle like a person. With 20 APs the M113 can stop a rifle, but not a M2 MG, Dragon, or a Superstrong hero. All possibilities with BRP. Right now, it looks like they used a square or cubing formula for damage and armor progression. So that is what I'm going to try to use to get a "master scale". Elephant's and one shot kills. Actually the rules aren't too bad on this. If you assume the 4 pt armor from CoC (looks like it is 8, halved vs. firearms), use hit locations, allowing for telescopic sights and aimed shots, then the chances of dropping one is fairly good with a Elephant gun. The problem is that with BRP damage is all at once. Realistically, the Elephant is probably alive when it hits the ground and dies sometime while the shooter is walking up to it. Same is true with a shooting people. Almost no one dies from the bullet. Rather they die from the blood loss and from the loss of certain body functions. That's why casualtiy lists are "X killed, 5 times wounded". One thing I liked about the Bond Rules and wish that BRP had was that you could take a penalty to hit to up your damage class. Something like attacking at 1/2 chance but shifting your damage die up to steps.

I don't thing Defense will work. All you end up doing is dropping the hit chances a little. Personally I favor the 1 Luck/POW point to shift the success rating approach probably with a Luck roll to limit it. For the BRP Old West threat, I suggested swiping from Boot Hill 3rd edition. If an attack would kill a character you make a Luck save, and if successful turn the hit into a 1 point wound for a MP.

It's nice to please somebody some of the time. Now if only I could find some authentic prices lists and see what they say. I suspecting that the differences I'm seeing could be partly due to import costs (a Springfield Rifle was probably a lot cheaper in Massachusetts than in Texas or New Mexico).

For BRP or in general?

I have done some of that. The problem is the stats are not consistent from game to game. Despite statements of how BRP was the first "generic" RPG the truth is that damages have not been consistent from game to game. For instance a M16 in Superworld does 1D8+2, but an "assault rifle" in Future World does 4d6, while a M16 in CoC 5th edition does 2D8. Even longbow damages have shifted depending on if you are playing RQ, Stormbringer or Call of Cthulhu. One thing that BRP will hopefully do is standardize the weapons in the game for all genres.

No problem with opinions, that's why I started a thread. I can't very well ask for feedback and get upset when I get it. According to the data I've seen the 9mm is a better penetrator than the .45. Keep in mind, I'm talking the standard .45ACP round. In fact you are the first person I've heard claim otherwise. As far as the big game goes. The problem is that the lighter bullet doesn't keep it kinetic energy as well (lower momentum and inertia) and so looses the energy before it can penetrate. IN my revision this is factored in with the +S and -P. Since animals don't wear body armor, penetrating round won't be as effective as damage doers. Penetration is more than just function of mass. it is more a factor of energy over area. There are also things like material hardness that factor in, too.That is why penetrator rounds are more narrow. It hold true from pistol ammo all the way up to tank round and their discarding sabots. HEre is a simple test. Have a friend hold up a sheet of paper and try to push your finger through it. Chances are, unless your fingernails are sharp, you can"t. On the other hand, you can poke a tack through easily. Of course the tack doesn't do much "damage" to the paper. As for the other rounds. 9mmK: Ehh, maybe. .22LR: Yeah probably should drop that down a little. .357M.: Not in comparison to the rifles. If we keep it at D8+D4 then the .44 needs to go up further, and that would mean the rifles and heavier weapons need to go up. Keep in mind a Class II NIJ vest will stop .357 rounds. From the way the math is working out that seems to be around the 8 point vest given in the CoC book. As it stands in CoC the .50 cal is only doing twice the damage of the .45ACP. 5.56N- Well it does 2D8 in CoC, and my mod actually nerfs it a little. And from what I've read the 5.56 penetrates better than the 7.62 Russian round. Plus the 5.56 is typically traveling fast enough that when the bullet fragments it can inflict serious wounds. While I'd like to have more spread between the 5.56 and 7.62, it would mean pushing up the 12.7mm bullet. Considering the HP scores of elephants, bear and other big game, I'd have liked a higher rating for the .50cal. .44M. -If type IIIA can stop it then we need to put the damage at about that level. I'm thinking a IIIA vest will be around 11 points or so. This gives a .44 a slight chance of penetrating or doing some serious blunt trauma. Thanks for the opinion, though. I'll look over some stuff. The hard part is fitting this all in with the "data points" for armor and weapons gfiven in CoC. Vehicle APs need to be set in the range where they can stop weapon A without stopping Weapon B. The wide die ranges for damage play havoc with that.

Not really. Even with a low amount of gunfighting, the results don't change, just the frequency. Sooner or later weapons will be used, at least somewhat. Once that happens it is simply a case of mathematics. With no armor to speak of an no parry, and limited dodging, the casualty rate will be high. Much higher than it was historically. Melee combat had things like armor, shields and parries to mitigate the weapon damages. With CoC it din't matter much, since you were lucky if the opposition were using firearms. With BRP two shots from most firearms will take most characters down to zero HP.

I've been tweaking the firearm damages again. I adjusted a coupleof weapons to better scale them in relation to other weapons (notable the .44 Mag). I was wondering how this looks to people. .25ACP 1D6(-2P) .22LR 1D6+2(-2P) 9mmK 1D6 .45ACP 1D8(+2S) 9mm 1D10 .357M 1D10+1 .44M 2D6 (+2S) 5.56mm NATO 2D8+1 (-2P) 7.62 NATO 2D8+2 (-2P) 12.7mm (M82 Barret) 2D10+4 (+2S) 12.7mm (M2 Browning) 2D10+5 (+2S) The -2P means that the damage is reduced by 2 after penetrating armor. So if you got 6 points past the armor you end up doing 4. The +2S means that it does 2 extra points of damage if the initial damage manages to penetrate the armor. So a .45 or .44Magnum are nasty if the get through your body armor. This way a .45 can have a higher damage than the 9mm without being a better penetrator.

Ah, thanks. Some complexity. How significant a jump would depend on how on how fine a grade. Light (-10%)/Medium (-20%)/Heavy (-30%) wouldn't be as complex as a differernt values for each weapon, in 1% increments (:eek:).

I think it also has to do with the setting you are gaming in. For instance, some of us have been discussing using BRP for an Old West game. Problem is, weapon damagfes are high (actually too high) and there is no armor. So most fights will endup with someone dying after the second of third shot, with little in the way the can do for defense (Dodge is both low and limited). A Hero Point option is one way around that. Otherwise the setting really isn't playable. You will simply end up loosing too many PCs.

Ah. Yeah, we pretty much decided to dump impales as such, but will probably have a special success chart or benefit of some type. Basically the double damage on impales made the condensed damage vales a nightmare. TO make something proof against a 5.56 round, I'd need 32 points of armor, putting it beyond the ability of a .60 cal to penetrate without an impale. As it is, I ignored that the armor was aluminum just to get decent values. Me too. by BRP seems to follow a quadruple the thickness, double the AP rule. If 2" of steel plate has 19AP in CoC, then I can't have 1.5 inches of aluminum with a higher AP value. Oh, if it helps, I was thinking that modern firearms would punch through most medieval armors, so roughly count the APs as half, or subtract 5 or so. I can't see medieval plate stopping a 9mm or .357 round. So 8 point plate was only worth 4 or 5 points would the APC look better? As far as I can reverse engineer, the formula for APs in BRP is Armor Value: Square root of thickness (in millimeters) x type factor Type Factor Metal (steel) 2.7 Concrete 0.75 Hardwood 0.50 It is the condensed curve the BRP uses that keeps the AP low. Realistically the APC would have about 50 times the AP of medieval plate armor for 400 AP, but BRP doesn't use a linear scale for damage so it has to compress the damage values for weapons to keep them in line. Actually I think it was done the other way around. That is, in order to keep the weapon damages in the ranges that they wanted, the had to scale down the APs to match. A .50 cal has 47 times the energy 466 times the momentum, and around 9 times the penetrating power of a .45 ACP, but only does twice the damage in BRP. That is a pretty tight curve. Doesn't leave much wiggle room. The do give HP for modern cars like a Taurus too. I'll admit the HP values are tough, since they seem the mix SIZ and other factors. I tired messing with a CON/Durability score for vehicles, but wound up needing negative value to get some CoC values to work out. I sort of want to try and make this as compatible as possible with the other BRP products so that it will be useful. Personally, I favor doing it by mass, which probably means SIZ in BRP terms. Since x2 mass is +8 SIZ in BRP (through most of the charts), that sort of limits things. The problem with double SIZ as hit points it that we have tanks with 180 hit pints, behind 70 point armor in a game where a 120mm AP round is doing around 20D6 damage. Since most of the mass IS the armor, then I think the APs should be higher than the HP, otherwise you are counting the Armor twice. For instance if a M1A2 tank masses 65 tons, but 40tons of that is armor, thenit is really a 20 ton (SIZ77) vehicle with 70 APs or armor (more against HEAT). So AP70/HP45 looked good. Nightshade has beens suggesting full SIZ for HP, maybe that might be a good option for miltary vehicles. But most of this is fitting in with the values given for weapons and armors in CoC. If the BRP book changes those values, then the math changes. BUt I'm really trying to plug in numbers that fit the valeus give in CoC. If we went with some older weapon damages, like the 1d8 for 9mm in CoC 1st edition, and the 3d6+6 for the .30 cal, I'd have a LOT more room to work in.

What is the penalty for mutiple parries? It is a fixed values like the -20% in SB1? Or it it based by weapon type.? I could see a light responsive weapon like a rapier being -10% and something heavier like an axe -30%.

Where did you get the 4d8 for the assault rifle? I was using the CoC damages that list the 5.56 rifles at 2d8, 7.62 rifles at 2d6+4, and .50 cal. rounds at 2d10+4 (although that might be a little higher since the damage was from a Barret instead of a M2). If I give the MM13 a higher AP rating that 20 it becomes completely resistant to .50 cal bullets, too. Realistically .50 caliber rounds will go into (if not through) a M113, partly becuase the MM13 was made with aluminum armor. I am planning on upping the damages or reducing the armor vs. AP rounds. Probably the former, otherwise rifle and pistol AP rounds becpoome too powerful. I do have a formula that matches the AP values given for steel plate, wood, and concrete given in the COC rulebook (and it matches the ballistic glass figures if you assume that the glass is sloped at around a 42 degree angle (a windshield). As for the impale chance, it had been decided to drop them against vehicles. Basically with the way the weapon damages are compressed in CoC if we allow impales then there is no way to make something vulnerable to .50 cal round without making it susceptible to rifle rounds. As for the low HP, that was because I used SIZ/2 as the base, to match up with CoC values (the only book that gives vehicle HP for BPR that I know of). The I used the HP per location mulitpliers from RQ3 when I did the hit locations. But I'd really like to know where you got the 4d8 from.

Already done. My primary sorucebook groups the firearms by time period. The peacemaker is from the 1873-1885 period, and prices are supposedly the price of that time period. So I think I can do up the weapons in sections. Do the 1973-86 era first, then do the 1860s era and bounce around from there. I figured I should get the the cartridge firearms done first, then worry about cap & ball.