It may be time to refine and define the question(s) better. It may also be time to move this to its own thread.
1) A review. In discussing possible design sequences for BRP it was put forward by me that firearms have anomolies compared to other games that rely on RW data and not on the needs of the designers. Specifically that pistols are overpowered compared to rifles and that damage done by other long arms seems to follow no rhyme or reason.
2) Point made that it is within current pistols' game capabilities to supply a major wound that will stop a human target.
2a) Point made that in BRP it is hard to kill humans with pistols in the game at least in one shot.
3) First thing to decide- Is the goal to kill (bring to 0 HP) or stop (render incapacitated) a human target? RW data looks at stopping a target. Shot at, stopped, and still living is the norm in armed conflicts. This is because there are many ways targets are stopped. Physical force, pain, psychological stresses, and disorientation are some of them.
I would opt for stopping a human target to be the reality check here.
It has been pointed out that as in real estate the primary concern in wound ballistics is location, location, location.
However even this is not as straight forward as we would like (is anything as complex as this ever straight forward?).
The concensus in the wound ballistics community appears to be that stopping a human can happen several ways.
Disorientation by the firing of the gun. Bright flash and loud noise actually stunning a person and rendering them incapable of action for a time.
Pain from an otherwise non-life threatening wound causing the target to be incapable of continuing. No structural damage (ie to organs, arteries or bones), just pain.
Damage to the body resulting in bleeding or loss of pumping efficiency. Deprived of freshly oxygenated blood the target will faint soon and then bleed out.
Damage to the central nervous system that results in unconciousness, paralysis, or death. Bullets stretch and pull on surrounding tissue creating temporary cavitation. A bullet does not have to hit the spine for instance to jar it hard enough to affect the spinal cord.
Bullet/body interaction are complex but I think that what needs to be modeled are targets' reactions to having small bits of metal forced through their body at high speed.
We see examples where round after round is fired into a target to no avail.
Apparently the rounds are not hitting organs,arteries, bones, or the CNS. In game terms the targets HP need to be ablated.
We see examples where an underpowered round drops a target. Apparently it did affect organs, arteries, bones, or the CNS. Currently we can not get this result in BRP/CoC.
I am currently working out a system where the target takes the HP damage but rolls d20 vs CON or HP in a location to avoid being dropped by damage to the CNS, which is after all a distributed system. I chose CON as a representation of the toughness of the tissues and to link it to the target. Same idea can be applied to determining damage to organs, bones, and arteries by rolling d20 vs POW which would determine bleeding. I am working out simple modifiers for hit location (currently limb, torso, and head) as well as the amount of damage to those locations modifying the roll (limb- none, torso- damage).
A point of damage from a .22 to a limb is very survivable. Roll vs CON to continue to act.
A 5 point shot to the torso. Roll d20 vs CON-5 to avoid incapacitation
A point of damage from a .22 to the head. Roll vs the HP in the head (CON/3 if you don't want to use hit location HP). If you make it no incapacitation. If you fail you drop and go unconcious.
If that is to complex then you could abstract the ability of firearms to incapacitate by rolling d100 vs 5x(POW-damage).
Success- take HP damage.
Fail- take damage and incapacitated.
Fumble- Take damage, incapacitated, and bleeding.
Use POW because hitting the CNS is more luck than anything else at this level of resolution.
Oh yeah do this for each round that hits. Multiple shots gve multiple chances for incapacitation.
I need to run some numbers on this stuff to see how it performs. It should allow pistols to be effective at stopping a human target with out requiring them to be overpowered in relation to other weapons.
Joseph Paul