Firearms Options

[l33tpenguin]

First, what book contains more fire arms, like the cannon companion from v3, if any?

Second, to what extent do you allow your players to modify their weapons, given that they have or hire someone that has, the appropriate skills? In reality, it isn't overly difficult to convert a semi automatic weapon to a fully automatic one. What if I wanted a Predator IV in full auto? What about modifying a pistol to include recoil compensation, since there are real pistols with gas vented recoil compensation?

This kinda brings me to a nit pick about weapons in most rpgs. I wish firearms were handled on a more realistic term for damage. A handgun that fires a 9mm round will inflict basically the same amount of damage as any other weapon firing the same 9mm round. What the different weapon will effect will be rate of fire, accuracy, durability, etc.
A list of fire arms would include name, caliber, rate of fire, accuracy
A sublist would include capacity of clips available.
A list of ammunition would include name, damage, effective range, effectiveness against armor

Beretta 92, 9mm, semi auto
-standard magazine 9 rounds
Glock 18, 9mm, full auto
-standard magazine 9 rounds
-extended magazine 20 rounds

Ares Predator IV, 45 cal, semi auto
-standard magazine 9 rounds
-extended magazine 15 rounds (-1 con)
Glock 23, 45 cal, semi auto
-standard magazine 7 rounds
Colt Python, 45 cal, semi auto
cylinder 6 rounds

9mm Damage X, Effective Range Y, -1 vs armor
45 cal. Damage X, Effective Range Y, +2 vs armor
etc.

Any thoughts? how much would you let players modify their weapons? and when do we get more guns?

[jklst14]

New firearms and rules for modifying them will be in the upcoming supplement, Arsenal which is slated for holiday release later this year. Until then, you'd have to house rule it.

As for firearms and realism, if you do a search, you'll find many, many threads here on Dumpshock that discuss those issues in detail.

[l33tpenguin]

[Fortune]

Check out this site by Raygun. I know it's for SR3, but it should give you some ideas at least. :)

[Ol' Scratch]

While I understand your desires, you just have to accept that this is a game based on abstracts for the most part. Firearms don't deserve to be any more realistic and highly detailed than any other item in the game despite your personal expertise in a given field.

For instance, there's a lot of subtle and not-so-subtle differences between a Toledo Longsword and a Fencing Sabre, yet both use the same generic rules for "Sword" and even the same weapon skill. So why should firearms get special treatment when almost everything else in the game works similarly to how they do?

For me, just using a variant name works just fine. Example: "Colt Python (Ruger Super Warhawk)" is exactly the same as "Toledo Longsword (Sword)" or "Ford Americar (Mercury Comet)."

[l33tpenguin]

[Ol' Scratch]

[Begby]

[sunnyside]

Well I'd just refer you to the cannon companion, which covers a lot of that. You could, of course, simply listen to what the players say they're doing, but they tend to casually leave things, like drawbacks, out.

I think SR deliberatly tries to avoid being too explicit with firearms. If you think DS threads on firearms are bad the ones by people talking about real life get worse. (sometimes we get a taste of that).

Also SR4 is particularily tricky because of the low granularity of damage. +2 DV corresponds to going up to a whole different class of weapon typically.

If you want to houserule stuff I would suggest adding factors that might not be so good. Otherwise you'll wind up with guns that are a lot better and mess with game balance. For example you could add "accurcacy" as a modifier to rolls but additionally add "max hits" to a firearm. The latter becuase if your firearm shoots foot wide groups at 100 yards from a locked bench you aren't going to be hitting someone in the eye at that range regardless of the cyber in your system (edge would probably let you bypass that limit).
By adding max hits you now have something your players can improve, but you effectivly made guns a little worse before they made them better.

[kzt]

My personal bias is to reduce the damage of pistols about 2 points (so holdout, MPs & light does 2, heavy does 3), keep the damage of assault rifles and LMGs at 6P, increase the damage of rifles and MMGs to 8P and HMGs to 12P. But I've never actually done this, as it also needs doing armor hit locations, which is a pain and I haven't found a pain free (enough) system to do this.

In terms of trying to come up with clever gun distinctions and models, they are pointless. At the scale SR is trying to simulate a Beretta M9 and a Glock 19 are the same other then magazine capacity. In the real world it tends to be personal preference and long-term durability that you really see differences, and I doubt that you really care that the Beretta frames tend to break at about 25,000 rounds while glocks don't.

For that matter, a .45, .40 and 9mm are close enough that you can't distinguish them in SR terms. They are all heavy pistols. It's .380, .25 and .22 that are light pistol calibers, if you want to think of it that way.

There are modifications you can make to pistols to make them really cool and spiffy. Go to an IPSC shoot some Saturday morning you will see people pull way cool pistols out of cases. They are called race guns, and using their assorted optical sights, compensators and assorted doohickeys they can shoot astonishingly well. Then they will lock them back up and shove a stock Glock in a belt holster before they get in their car and drive home.

Race guns are delicate and expensive toys used in competition, not what rational people would carry around with them for self-defense. And while a grand master IPSC shooter does indeed shoot measurably better with his race gun than without it, he can still shoot vastly better without it than an average shooter can with the experts race gun.

A factory stock gun doesn't have delicate parts that result in the gun going click instead of bang at an important moment. I'd let someone have a gun that allowed them to shoot a little better or draw a little qucker, but every time they drew it I'd roll to see how it worked this time, or if it had fallen out of his skeletonized super quick-draw holster while he was rolling around on the floor with some punk.

And the magazine sizes in the original post are about 50% too small vs reality.

[l33tpenguin]

Yes, I know the numbers were too low, they were just used as places holders since I didn't do any detailed research.

I don't know if I would change damage all that much. Getting hit with a 45 cal. round from a hand gun is usually more deadly than a .223 rem rifle round. The 45 is going to mushroom and do more damage while the 223 is going to just go right through the target. HOWEVER, a 223 is also going to be far more effective against armor. 9mm has been show to penetrate body armor better than 45 as well, even though it isn't as 'powerful' of a round. Against soft targets, though, the 45 has the upper hand.

[psychophipps]

[kzt]

[Whipstitch]

Erm, yeah, I have to agree with psycho on that one. High velocity rounds tear themselves apart pretty damn fast once they meet meaningful resistance because it's damn hard to make anything that can resist those kind of forces. And if it's a body causing that resistance, it's pretty much goodnight Gracie. Over penetration isn't -that- big of a deal with such weapons either. The reason rifles are a safety concern and not allowed for hunting in some populated areas is more about their effective range than anything else. A typical hunting round generally isn't going to tear through some deer and nail some poor hunter on the other side of the field (mostly because the round may exit the victim, but there's very little of the round left at this point, most of it's torn up and expended its energy on the victim), but you could very well end up hitting someone you can hardly even see if you miss. I don't know crap about -actually using- handguns and couldn't comment on .45s though. I only have personal experience with the weapons used to routinely kill innocent li'l woodland critters.

[psychophipps]

[l33tpenguin]

[kzt]

The problem is that the system doesn't allow much variation without creating a super weapon. Which, I'd argue, is what the predator IV is. It's a supergun, shooting bullets that do as much damage as an short barreled AK, but with armor piercing.

It's also absurd. To make something absurd any more effective would be insane from a game balance point of view.

Other note, pistols should all have negative AP ratings. Pistols suck at putting holes in hard, tough objects. It's just the nature of pistol cartridges and bullets. (The exception are insanities like the various AR and AK "pistols" and monstrous handguns for hunting dangerous game.) That's one of the reason why I feel need the hit location system that I can't yet make work, so you can shoot people where their armor doesn't work.

[TheOneRonin]

I've managed to put together a spreadsheet of firearms for Shadowrun that, IMHO, does modern calibers and terminal ballistics justice (within the framework of 4th Ed rules). I'd be more than happy to share with anyone who is interested, though the info does have a few caveats:

1. I have "caliberized" most Shadowrun specific firearms and listed them along with their real world counterparts. Not everyone will agree with my selections, so just be prepared.

2. I have made some significant changes to the damage/AP codes for the different weapons. They do, however, remain largely consistent when comparing the same caliber ammunition when fired from different platforms.

3. The change in damage and ap ratings necessitated an overhaul of the armor ratings as presented in the BBB. I used the NIJ Body Army white paper for guidance. For these firearms to work as intended in a Shadowrun game, you'll need the armor rules too.

4. These rules have been field tested several times by my players. Although they work for my group, they won't always work for yours.


Once I get the files hosted, I would be more than happy to answer any questions about the stats I chose and how I came to those conclusions.

[MaxHunter]

Well, I haven't tinkered around much with damage values and other stats, but I am using some hard and fast pseudocaliber rules just to add a little more depth into my game. So far my players are loving it, so here's the buzz.

SMGs and Heavy Pistols may share ammo

Hold outs, Light pistols, machine pistols and similar guns share ammo.

Rifles share ammo according to damage value, same as shotguns

Assault rifles can share ammo only among themselves.

Additionally, some guns, like the Superwarhawk, Ak 97 or the Sakura Fubuki use different calibers and can't really share within their class. However, in some combat environments it pays off to have the same kind of gun that the opposition has, in order to "liberate" ammo from bodies.

In a current game, a group of runners are in the middle of the Yucatán conflict. Both the rebels and the Aztlán forces use AKs. Three runners are packing FN-HARs and an Alpha, they really must conserve ammo because in the jungle they won't be able to get new clips. [and they lost some of the XX clips when the Aztlaners napalmed their campsite]
A couple of them are carrying Aks and are having a much easier time. Also, I asked them all to roll armorer [2] after a week or so, if they failed their rifles had become dirty and more unreliable [basically gained the Gremlins 2 quality], hits reducing the penalty. Of course, the threshold for the Ak was less, because the gun is well known for its reliability. Maybe I am a fan of Aks! Anyway these rulings are working just fine, sound sufficiently realistic for our game, are not so complex as to require any bookeeping and have added lots of new dimensions into the game.

Cheers,

Max

Now I would like to do something like that for concealability...

[eidolon]

[Cursedsoul]

I think he might be getting at the need for a system that allows you to potentially hit someone where their armor doesn't count and vice versa.

For someone with an Armor Vest they aren't getting any protection in the arms, legs, and head which means that simply getting hit could result in getting tagged in the arm or something and thus you'd have no armor protecting you.

Called shots are there for intentionally bypassing armor/aiming at a critical location so you can make it a certainty (if you hit) that you rob them of their armor or hit'em where it's least effective or gonna hurt the most if it penetrates.

That being said, a hit location system is rather hard to hammer out because I think it's implied that an unaimed shot is aiming center mass because that's the easiest thing to hit, at least if the target is standing still. A guy walking/running/ducking/diving/dodging/weaving/etc reduces the chance of that happening so...yeah. Still going to be the most likely area you'll get hit, but the probability drops a fair amount I should think.

I think a hit location system could be relatively easy to do if someone is walking into a suppressive fire zone because the whole point of that is to make sure you keep your head down and make it a very bad idea if you don't. You could simply roll a d6 and call it maybe 1-2 is a limb, 3-4 is a torso, and 5-6 is a headshot, or maybe 1 is a limb, 2-5 is a body shot, and 6 is one in the brainbox.

I suppose the same could potentially be said for grenade shrapnel (or just shrapnel in general) but then things start getting way too complicated I think because it's not just bullets it's the shockwaves and whatnot that result from a grenade being detonated that come into play.

While I don't have much experience in-game at all, I think it'd just overcomplicate things. Combat already has things like cover and visibility to keep track of that this could slow things down a bit further.

[Ed_209a]

Regarding ammo compatibility, I bet the security/military field uses the ammunition Ares tells them to.

I can see Ares (or some other AAA) just monopolizing ammo production to the point that you either use 10mmA (for Ares) in your heavy pistol, or you handload.

Speaking of the AK series, I have always pictured the AK97 as the AK100-series, just re-engineered to be smartgun-friendly.

I also think that the AK47 will be alive and well in 2050, made in the machine-shop equivalents of street doc clinics, on cheap CNC machines.

[Eleazar]

[Cursedsoul]

[eidolon]

I suppose that, like a lot of things in RPGs, it all comes down to how comfortable you are with the level of abstraction used.