Skills Question

[svensson]

In several discussions we've talked about the availability of some fairly serious weaponry in the US during the Classic Twenties era.

The US didn't start regulating firearms nationwide until the bank-robbers of the 30's and fully automatic weapons were available to anyone who could afford them. This is one reason why the IRA worked so hard to establish itself in the US in the period.

Now, CoC7 has two skill slots for Firearms, Handguns and 'Firearms' [specifically for long guns, Rifles and Shotguns]. However, a great many men came back from World War One skilled with automatic firearms like the Chauchat, the BAR, and the Erma MP18 'Kugelspitze'. And that's not even getting into those who came back from the trenches skilled in machine guns, hand grenades, and grenade thrower mounts on rifles.

So my question is this: How does CoC7 handle advanced weaponry of this nature? Are they just write-in skills?

In one NPC over at Dhole House, there's an NPC pilot whose background specifically mentions being a military aviator but he has no MG skill. This is what got me thinking about this.

[coolAlias]

The CoC 7e Keeper Rulebook lists quite a few Firearm specializations, namely:

• Bow
• Handgun
• Heavy Weapons (e.g. grenade launchers)
• Flamethrower
• Machine Gun (used for automatic fire)
• Rifle/Shotgun (also used for single-round fire of automatic weapons such as assault rifles)
• Submachine Gun

See p64-65 for further details.

The standard 1920s character sheet only lists Handgun and Rifle/Shotgun as those are the most common, but does have a spare Firearms skill slot for a write-in.

For vehicle-mounted weapons, the rules are less clear (at least the rules I could find).

For those with an obvious corollary, such as a belt-fed Machine Gun on a truck, I'd just use the related Firearm skill; for others, I might use either the closest Firearm skill, such as Heavy Weapons for firing the main gun of a tank, or the corresponding Pilot or Drive skill, which I feel would be particularly fitting for handling aircraft combat.

Thrown weapons, including hand grenades, use the Throw skill.

Edited October 28, 2022 by coolAlias
Throw

[Escher_Projection]

Keeper's book has "Machine Gun" specialization for automatic fire from a bipod or tripod-mounted weapon.     An automatic rifle that wasn't deployed and used like that would actually use the "Submachine Gun" specialization when firing auto and not on single shot.  Given this, "Machine Gun" seems perfectly reasonable for something like a Lewis gun.

For an actual cannon, the weapons tables include a 120mm tank gun for the modern era (ala the 120mm L/44 main gun on an M1A2 Abrams) and associate it with the Artillery skill.  So, it would be reasonable to include large-bore vehicle cannon, not just field artillery or mortar tubes etc.

[svensson]

6 hours ago, Escher_Projection said:

Keeper's book has "Machine Gun" specialization for automatic fire from a bipod or tripod-mounted weapon.     An automatic rifle that wasn't deployed and used like that would actually use the "Submachine Gun" specialization when firing auto and not on single shot.  Given this, "Machine Gun" seems perfectly reasonable for something like a Lewis gun.

For an actual cannon, the weapons tables include a 120mm tank gun for the modern era (ala the 120mm L/44 main gun on an M1A2 Abrams) and associate it with the Artillery skill.  So, it would be reasonable to include large-bore vehicle cannon, not just field artillery or mortar tubes etc.

Former tanker here. I served on the first generation of Abrams way back in the 80s when Cold Warriors and other dinosaurs proudly walked the Earth😁 My version of the Abrams had the Rheinmetall rifled 105 gun, but the M1-IPs were already in the squadron [I served in an armored cavalry regiment] and the first M1A1s were just arriving.

I entirely agree with your assessment of vehicle mounted heavy weapons.

The danger with game systems that rely on skills rather than experience levels is that you can get entirely too detailed with table rules. You don't want get so granular with skills that you look like a college literature department...

[coolAlias]

2 hours ago, svensson said:

The danger with game systems that rely on skills rather than experience levels is that you can get entirely too detailed with table rules. You don't want get so granular with skills that you look like a college literature department...

Not only that, but the PCs quickly run out of skill points, so no one ever takes those niche skills anyway.

Yes, I could add Ride (Auto) for motorcycles and Ride (Bicycle), among other things, but how often would anyone ever make use of those in the standard 1920s setting? Probably never, or maybe once in a longer campaign.

Now, if it was set pretty much anywhere else in the world, those might be very useful skills to add, since bicycles and motorcylces/scooters are much more common modes of transportation elsewhere. And that's where skill-based systems shine - you can easily tailor the skill list to fit your exact setting and time period without changing much if anything about the rest of the game mechanics.