[RMS]

I'm not into ultra detailed rules, so this will go beyond my interest level quickly, but I'll add some comments here.

Originally Posted by Rurik

I was referring to with the COC rules. A .22 is not going to kill anyone with decent HP in the game, which is to me unrealistic. If you underpower handguns even more, as Joseph Paul suggests, you would be moving farther from reality. That's why I go on to mention the .22 to heart and brain. I'm pretty sure we are on the same page here.

It should be virtually impossible to kill someone with a .22. Your shots to the eye or heart are both going to result in bleeding out over some time before death for an adult human.* As long as an impale can lead to serious damage you're fine. In fact, I'd say that a .22 round, especially a short, should have a very hard time even disabling a limb from a shot. They hurt like hell and can be very dangerous if you get hit in the right place of course, but aren't going to be fatal for anything larger than 20-30 lbs in general...and even those you need to hit square. If you don't nail a rabbit between the eyes with a .22, there's a very good chance it'll get away.

* Though to be fair, even a high powered rifle should generally result in a wound that bleeds out over some time. It's pretty darn hard to outright kill someone with a single bullet. Massive bloodloss that can't be fixed with first aid is what kills most of the time and it takes some time: minutes to hours.

Rifles actually over-penetrate, but have so much MORE energy even the fraction that is transferred to the target does massive tissue damage. Personally, I think mass matters more than velocity in damage (again favoring rifles), but that is subjective. That is why I think it is OK to give the .45 ACP higher damage than the 9mm. Personally I think the CoC damage values are good.

Pure kinetic energy based formulas are flawed. I look back at Aftermath! which did the same thing. .25ACPs couldn't hurt a fly and no one could possibly survive a high powered rifle - which is wrong. The reason people like them (formulas based on energy) is they can be accurately measured and calculated (though how come games that do this don't adjust damage dramatically with range as the velocity drops is beyond me). You come up with formulas that try to account for the other variables (range, target composition, mass, gravity, etc) but ultimately you are just arbitrarily assigning values in complex formulas - which is really not that different than arbitrarily assigning a value of say, 1d10+2 to a .45 ACP.

Damage is done through kinetic energy transfer. That's basic physics, but I suspect different from what you're saying. However, that isn't really the issue from what I see. The issue is that angle and location of the bullet are more important than the specific weapon/bullet used, so if you want "realistic" make all missile weapons have extremely wide ranges of damage. They should all be able to deliver a single point of damage, so don't use any set "adds" to them. Instead use bigger dice for more powerful weapons, so potential maximum damage increases but minimum damage doesn't change.

Having said that, I could also see an argument for making them all 2 dice so that the extremes are rarer and the average damage is more set. I still like one die, as of now.