Realistic firearms damage in RPGs, with a funny quote Options

[Wounded Ronin]

So, I've been reading up on the 1986 FBI Miami shootout because I'd brought it up on a thread on the other forum. On a website I'd linked to there was a funny quote:

http://www.thegunzone.com/11april86b.html

An adversary gets hit square in the head with a 158-grain +P, and he isn't stopped, you are having a bad day! McNeill, Mireles and Hanlon had bad days… only Grogan and Dove had worse ones. In light of this information, perhaps John Hall's "ammo failure" assessment has some merit… but then as a war veteran chum with more than three dozen confirmed kills continually asserts, "the more I see of this stuff, the more I'm convinced that nothing hand-held is absolutely reliable."

I think that hitpoints or damage boxes is probably "wrong" compared to a system in which each time you were hit by incoming fire, there would be a random chance that it would kill you or incapacitate you in some way, and that these probabilities would increase with each consecutive hit on you, but that otherwise they'd have no immediate drastic impact.

(You'd still bleed to death after a number of minutes.)

There would be more record keeping than in most current RPG systems as I imagine you'd need a "physical debilitation" track as well as a "systemic shock and trauma" track, but all in all it would allow for more realistic firefights and more realistic first aid, too. Maybe more detailed first aid skills. According to something someone posted a long time ago on the Bear's Pit, the first aid they teach you in the military for gunshot wounds is a bit different than normal civilian first aid where all you do is press down and stop the bleeding.

(Why do they keep all the cool stuff from normal civilians like me? What if I want to know how to perform first aid for a gunshot wound? What if I want to know how to apply a tourniquet and stabilize someone in an emergency?)

[hyzmarca]

It's mathematically possible, but difficult to accomplish well with physical dice. A realistic system would probably work best with a computerized autoroller.

The most realistic way to go about it would be to have the player pick an intended point of impact on the target and have the autoroller produce a deviation from the desired trajectory based on character skill, and then use the actual trajectory and a mathmatical model of the target to produce the actual trajectory of the bullet through the target's body using extremely expensive ballistics modeling software, and then output the damage caused. That, however, would be very expensive.

Less realistic, would be to go the FATAL route and assign values to every possible injury and roll for it, but that gets annoying after a while.

[Zaranthan]

I'll be honest. I've never found fault with d20's rationalization of hp representing everything from raw badassery to pure luck. You can only get hit in the forearm so many times before you get a claymore through your sternum. Telling players that they've received "only a flesh wound" never stuck me as unusual, since they didn't drop their weapons or fall to the ground clutching their hamstrings.

[Mercer]

There was a Western RPG (I want to say it was "Aces and Eights", although it might have been something with "Devil" in the title) that had a target of a gunfighter and a transparent plotting grid. The player put the center of the grid on the intended point of impact and then his roll to hit was plotted on the grid. So it was entirely possible to aim for your opponent's leg and accidentally hit him in the head, and so on.

[Bob Lord of Evil]

I think that hitpoints or damage boxes is probably "wrong" compared to a system in which each time you were hit by incoming fire, there would be a random chance that it would kill you or incapacitate you in some way, and that these probabilities would increase with each consecutive hit on you, but that otherwise they'd have no immediate drastic impact.

(You'd still bleed to death after a number of minutes.)

Each layer of complexity translates into significant drag on play. The perfect balance, depends on the player's preference...from Pheonix Command to Amber and all points between.

Bleeding to death can vary vastly...a groin hit that severes one of the Iliac arteries, the loss of blood pressure can drop a person almost instantly. What drugs do they have in their system can also be a huge wildcard. Bullets can do strange things once they enter a body. There are a LOT of variables in play, which explains why there are so many different approaches to combat. Which is why, I tend to flinch a little when I read that X has produced a realistic combat system.

[nezumi]

(Why do they keep all the cool stuff from normal civilians like me? What if I want to know how to perform first aid for a gunshot wound? What if I want to know how to apply a tourniquet and stabilize someone in an emergency?)

Can't help you much with your first question, but I can with this one...

The manuals on military first aid are available, for free, if you look for them. I've read a few. The difference between Grunt's First Aid and Civilian First Aid is a grunt is trained to do it while under fire, with a medic almost immediately available, and specialized tools in his pack. The grunt's goal is to keep himself and his squad safe, then spend as little time (and put himself at as little risk) possible to get the injured man to safety and stabilize him, so the medic can do his job. A civilian's goal is usually to stabilize the person, without the right tools immediately available, but without concerns of getting shot, until help can arrive (which may be hours or days).

There are courses that teach military first aid, although unfortunately I'm not aware of any on my side of the Mississippi. Western Rifle Shooter's Club teaches one every few months somewhere in the midwest you can check out.

[Byron]

Just something real quick, while, personally, I really wish there were better ways to do damage, like limb damage and such, but, to be honest, any system that is THAT realistic would be so complex it would bog down the game to the point where combat would be unenjoyable. (is that a word?)

[Wounded Ronin]

Can't help you much with your first question, but I can with this one...

The manuals on military first aid are available, for free, if you look for them. I've read a few. The difference between Grunt's First Aid and Civilian First Aid is a grunt is trained to do it while under fire, with a medic almost immediately available, and specialized tools in his pack. The grunt's goal is to keep himself and his squad safe, then spend as little time (and put himself at as little risk) possible to get the injured man to safety and stabilize him, so the medic can do his job. A civilian's goal is usually to stabilize the person, without the right tools immediately available, but without concerns of getting shot, until help can arrive (which may be hours or days).

There are courses that teach military first aid, although unfortunately I'm not aware of any on my side of the Mississippi. Western Rifle Shooter's Club teaches one every few months somewhere in the midwest you can check out.

Unfortunately I can't find the post anymore, because apparently the search function on the Bear's Pit sucks, but basically someone was saying how for typical bullet wounds you'd have to stop the bleeding differently than normal basically because of greater odds of significant internal bleeding where simply applying pressure from the outside wouldn't be effective.

If "military first aid" is the usual term used to describe the stuff, though, that means I am now empowered to Google search it...

[nezumi]

I have never read anything like that in the 'grunt's introduction to not dying' book I read somewhere. The instructions there are 'watch out for trouble, slap on the patch, get the guy back to safety, call the medic' (or something along those lines). I don't think a grunt in the field has any more chance of dealing with extreme internal bleeding than I do. Combat medics, of course, are a different question.

[sunnyside]

As a side note Deadlands had something like that. Actually they were fairly clever about it. It's hard to track stuff like what wound is where, along with some other stuff, so the character sheet is set up so you add or move paperclips on it to keep track of everything.

Though they also had "wind" which represented shock and such I suppose. So if you had minor wounds all over and got punched a couple times you'd tend to fall over and generally be useless. However it was fairly easy to get your wind back resting.

[Thanee]

Well, if you are looking for realistic firearms rules, take a look at Phoenix Command (if you can find it anywhere, it's quite old). It is meant to be quite realistic.

Bye
Thanee