Firearm-rules in BRP

[Joseph Paul]

Nightshade- Yep those are problems. But I think that the science of wound ballistics is getting better. We may have a better understanding - I just need to find it.

Enpeze- Hmm, I admit that could have been written better. In short it has all of the sense in the world wrapped up in it. BRP has a gritty realistic feel to it. Creating rules sets that keep with that should be a primary consideration. However, any system in BRP will need to be able to function at the gritty level and at the heroic and cinematic level also with minimal differences. It is easier to simplify and distort a realistic system to those purposes than it is to try to get realistic results out of a system designed to be cinematic for instance. Realistic systems should be the default condition. I could see firearms in a cinematic system being reduced to just a couple of different types of weapons and damage resolution changed to fit the needs of the campaign. It was not a munchkin dream at all.

Badcat- You have missed the boat again. Since the BRPCore rules are already in place you must realize that it is too late for any changes. At best there may be some possibility of a more realistic set of firearms rules added as an option in a future release or for such to be posted and used by whoever agrees with them much the same way that the Perrin Conventions came into use for D&D. Since you are not interested in such changes wouldn't it be more productive for you to post on positive aspects of the game rather than complain about people having different visions of what BRP can encompass?

[Atgxtg]

Originally Posted by Rurik

Actually, I just had a prety radical idea on weapon damage. What if the Damage die was based on Skill (or adjusted to hit chance) and then adjusted up or down based on the weapon/round used. This would account for placement by having higher percentage shots likely to do more damage.

It might work best with exploding damage dice, so even low percentage shots could kill. Or have specials and criticals boost the damage die a number of steps (3 on a Special, 5 on a Crit for example).

Something like:
01-20% 1d4
21-40% 1d6
41-60% 1d8
61-75% 1d10
75-90% 2d6
91-100% 2d8
100%+ 2d10

That scale is for example, it needs work (more possible results).

I was thinking of something where either the number of dice varied by skill and or success level. So a good hit might be doing 3 or 4 dice damage, making a light weapon effective in skilled hands.

BTW, MAthematically it lloks like you are using about 1/10th the skill as the average damage modifer. THat matched up pretty well with the old chart from Strombringer, so you could use:

1D2
1D4
1D6
1D8
1D10
1D10+1D2 (or 2D6)
1D10+1D4 (or 1D8+1D6)
1D10+1D6 (or 2D8)
1D10+1D8
2D10
etc.

[Rurik]

Originally Posted by Simlasa

So if skill is the prime factor in damage... would some weapons give a negative modifier... like attacking someone with a pellet gun?

Absolutely. Something like:

Light Handgun, -2 steps
Medium Handgun, -1 step
Heavy Handgun, No change
Very Light Rifle (22LR) -1 (or 2, it's pretty damned weak)
Light Rifle, No Change
Medium Rifle +1 Step
Heavy Rifle +2 Steps

I used weapon classes for simplicity's sake. You could assign a value per round, or weapon, etc.

[Simlasa]

Sounds like an intriguing idea to me... makes me want to try it out!

[Atgxtg]

Strangely, this idea matches well with a BRP variant I am working on.
I was thinking of setting the damage bonus by Damage Class (DC) set atv (STR+SIZ)/5, and then adjusted by weapon. The damade die being about twice the DC, so a DC 5 attack does 1D10 and so on.

Weapons would give a shift up or down.

While my variant was using special and critical success to kick up the damage, there is nothing to prevent this for working with Rurik's idea. Basically for each 20% of skill or so could be worth a damage die shift.

IF we wanted more room to bounce up the damage dice, we could even go with HP=STR+SIZ instead of the average, allowing us to double most of the damages.

So if we wanted a broasdword that did 1D8+1 in RQ3, and we wanted to incoprate skill (with double normal HP), we could use:

[STR(10)+SIZ(13)]/5 =DC 5 (1D10)
Broadsword +0
50% Skill =+3 DC

=DC 8 for 1D10+1D6 or 2D8


Just an idea....

[Atgxtg]

I was looking at HARNMASTER last night and had another idea how to haandle damage.

What if you compared the levels of success and did the following:

Sucess vs. Success= Normal RQ damage
For each level of success the attack is above the parry roll another damage die.

If the defense exceeds the attack then the attack was parried, for no damage.

If the defense is 2 levels above the attack the defender can riposte.

That's the basic idea. I did up a little maxtrix with that and a few things like damaged attacker's weapon when parriny a miss, and increasing the damage as the defender's parry gets bewtter, fumbles, etc.


Anyone interested?

[Sorloc]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

I was looking at HARNMASTER last night and had another idea how to haandle damage.

What if you compared the levels of success and did the following:

Sucess vs. Success= Normal RQ damage
For each level of success the attack is above the parry roll another damage die.

If the defense exceeds the attack then the attack was parried, for no damage.

If the defense is 2 levels above the attack the defender can riposte.

That's the basic idea. I did up a little maxtrix with that and a few things like damaged attacker's weapon when parriny a miss, and increasing the damage as the defender's parry gets bewtter, fumbles, etc.


Anyone interested?

Keep going with that thought, then make the damage and damage types weapon-specific (slashing versus piercing versus crushing, etc), and you'll have RoleMaster.

In RM, the better your attack roll, the better the result. No roll of 65 on a 66% attack then roll max damage, nor is there a "Woo! I special impale! Double damage of... <roll> 1. Crap."


Chivalry & Sorcery has an interesting method involving a flat base damage for each weapon, then you modify that with defense and attack rolls.
Thus, with no defense, a broadsword will always do at least 6 damage, a knife will always do at least 4, etc. Your strength and weapon quality and roll and stuff can increase it, certain armors can reduce it, but a lot of the randomness is gone.

[drohem]

Originally Posted by Sorloc

Chivalry & Sorcery has an interesting method involving a flat base damage for each weapon, then you modify that with defense and attack rolls.
Thus, with no defense, a broadsword will always do at least 6 damage, a knife will always do at least 4, etc. Your strength and weapon quality and roll and stuff can increase it, certain armors can reduce it, but a lot of the randomness is gone.

4th edition Talislanta does this as well. Weapons do a fixed damage amount and this modified by the success of the attack, strength, weapon quality, or magic.

[Nightshade]

That's also more or less what True20 does, though there its tied with their "Toughness Save" concept.

[Atgxtg]

Sorloc,
I've got Rolemaster and C&S. While RM is interesting, I usually preferred the MERP version of the rules with simplified damage charts. There are actually quite a few RPGs that use the mnargin of success in determining the damage.

One of my favorites, was the method used in the Usagi Yojimbo RPG (Sanguine version). In that game combatants roll multiple dice (a die for stat, plus one or more dice for skill, and maybe some bonus dice). and compare results. High roll wins, but each additional die that beat the opponent's best die results in a critical. hHe winner can then pick critical effects, such as slash, stab, crush, disarm, impale, etc. that are determined mostly by weapon being used.

I am working on adapting this idea to RQ/BRP, with characters picking their critical from a list available to the weapon. For instance a sword could get slash and/or stab criticals. Mastery with a weapon will open up another possible critical or two.