Firearm-rules in BRP

[Trifletraxor]

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

Some alternate rules for the wiki on the way?

[Atgxtg]

Interesting, but I7d say use POW or CHA to continue acting rather than CON. It really isn't so much a question of your health, but of you determination.

CON would be used to survive or heal from the injury.

What I7d like to use is a delayed fatality/bleed to death rule. Something like a injury will inflict another point of general HP damage every (CON-DMG) minutes. Or maybe use a DMG vs. CON of resistance chart.

DMG Result
CS=1hp/SR
SS=1hp/MR
Sucess=1hp/MIN
Fail=1hp/hour
Fumble= 1hp/day

Successful treatment will stabilize the wound and stop HP loss.


In the real world, pretty much no one drops dead when they get shot, but everyone dies if they don't treat the wound. Maybe we could apply a modfier to the roll to treat the wound making it harder to stabilize more serious injuries?


BTW, while we are discussing injury. How about we swipe the HEaling Rate rules from Pendragon, where character heal (STR+CON)/10 HP per week? That way healthy character would heal faster than small sickly ones? It always bugged me that the guy with an 18 CON took just as long to heal from a 3 point injury as the guy with a 6 CON.

[Trifletraxor]

Originally Posted by Atgxtg

Interesting, but I7d say use POW or CHA to continue acting rather than CON. It really isn't so much a question of your health, but of you determination.

...

BTW, while we are discussing injury. How about we swipe the HEaling Rate rules from Pendragon, where character heal (STR+CON)/10 HP per week? That way healthy character would heal faster than small sickly ones? It always bugged me that the guy with an 18 CON took just as long to heal from a 3 point injury as the guy with a 6 CON.

I like both those suggestions!

SGL.

[badcat]

Not impressed.

[Sorloc]

It would be Self-Discipline to continue, not CON. Some very non-physical people have survived debilitating wounds and continued to act as was needed in the circumstances, only to succumb from those wounds once the crisis was past. It's called shock, and it can take hours to set in, and it can be fatal.

[Joseph Paul]

Originally Posted by badcat

Not impressed.

Not worried about it.

[Joseph Paul]

Atgxtg- I think I wrote poorly for the first example. I was thinking in terms of CON to survive a round to a limb affecting the CNS. Obviously it isn't a great chance but there is research that records shock waves impacting and disrupting or damaging the brain from shots to limbs.

I like some of your ideas but I think that your chart needs to be turned the other way in the interests of PC survivability and just roll vs 5x CON.

CS=1hp/day
SS=1hp/hour
Sucess=1hp/MIN
Fail=1hp/MR
Fumble= 1hp/SR

[Atgxtg]

I think I prefer Damage vs CON on resistance chart rather than straight CONx5%, since a more devatating injury should be more lethal.

BTW, I looked over the CoC 5th eidition damage rules, and I have to argree with Joseph Paul, they are outta whack. First edition damages were better. While the .45 vs 9mm thing is debatable (although it does cause a problem with armor, since anything that will stop a 9mm WILL STOP a .45), but I can't accept that a .44Mag is doing the same damage as a 5.56 round, and only 1 point less that a Browning .30 cal.

IT looks like the CoC tables stressed bullet diameter a bit too much.

I messed around with 3G and the CoC damage scale, and used a nonlinear progression for damage (roughly based on the square root of the rounds ability to penetrate) and came up with:

Round CoC(Revised)
.22 1D6(2D3)
.25 1D6(1D6-)
.32 1D8(1D6)
.38 1D10(1D6+)
.38S -- (1D8)
9mm 1D10(1D8)
.357M 1D8+1D4(2D4)
.45 1D10+2(2D3 or 1D8)
.44M 2D6+2(1D10)
.22LR --(1D6+2)
.30car 2D6+2(1D6+1D4)
.30-06 2D6+4(1D10+2)
Barrett M82 (.50cal) 2D10+4(1D10+1D8)

5.56N 2D8(2D6)
7.62R 2D6+1(1D10+2)
7.62N --(1D10+2)


BTW, If we use that "survival roll" thing I came up with, then we can give the .45 the lower damage roll (2D3), but apply a +3 modifier to it's damage for the survival roll, and for "stun/shock" roll.. This would keep it's stopping power while giving it a lower penetration ability.

[badcat]

You are joking, right?

[Joseph Paul]

Originally Posted by badcat

You are joking, right?

Do you have a critique more insightful than that?