Meat Shield, Stopping power! Options

[CoalHeart]

How powerful does a gunshot have to be to travel through it's target?


Lets just say we had a puny daisy eater mage, Minni the Magial standing behind Mongo the Metallic (Cybertroll) with all the +bod and armor cyber he can cram in him. A gunshot rings out aimed for Minni and nails Mongo the Metallic because he steps into the line of fire. How do I figure out if the bullet passes through Mongo the Metallic and can potentally damage Minni the Magical?


Would ExEx have no chance of passing through?
would APDS have a great chance of passing through?
would an arrow?
would a regular round?
would any of the other bullets?

[Austere Emancipa...]

EX-Ex would almost certainly not penetrate, unless it only hits someone in the side of the next, in the cheeck, hand, etc. Even then, it wouldn't be very dangerous to someone behind the target.

APDS rounds from any reasonable firearm will penetrate a metahuman being regardless of where they hit. When ware is involved, it depends on exactly what is inbetween. If the shot hits the troll in the middle of the chest, and he's got Titanium Bone Lacing and Dermal Sheath-3, then Light Pistol APDS might be stopped.

What do you consider a regular round? A FMJ/military ball 9mm parabellum round will easily penetrate a human, but might have slight trouble with a troll's bones. An expanding or fragmenting bullet from almost any weapon will not consistently penetrate a troll, from pistols they usually don't penetrate humans either, and aren't that dangerous in any case.

Arrows SUCK. I won't comment further...

What other kinds of bullets are there? AV is just APDS with a different name and more hype.

If you want, I can get more specific, but if you don't want to break out some better system for ammunition, there's no point.

For some indication of how much flesh bullets penetrate, look here. Any of those bullet types could be considered "regular", with FMJ being most common for military weapons and the JSPs etc for civilian small arms.

[Kagetenshi]

If two people are pressed up against each other cozy-like, and the arrow in question is sufficiently large and shot from a sufficiently powerful bow, it might penetrate both. However, the arrow isn't going to be passing completely through just about anyone, save maybe a Troll physad arrow to someone's neck.

~J

[Dogsoup]

How's this?
First guy's [armor+body+dermal armor] as a negative modifier to the PowLvl of the gunshot, sort of like when firing through barriers. Half this modifier for APDS as usual.

[Deep Blue]

Why do you say arrows suck? Have you ever fired a compound bow with a hunting broadhead at a chunk of wood? Serious damage. From a troll you could get a lot more damage. And crossbows are something else again -- a good heavy crossbow will punch through plate-mail. I remember reading somewhere that, back in the day, crossbows were considered 'un-sportsmanlike' because of their killer penetration. An arrow or bolt fired from a decent compound bow or crossbow will punch right through a person and into whatever (or whoever) is behind them.

[BitBasher]

Actually I use Armor*2 +body to determine blowthrough for ammo, because the bullet has to pass through BOTH sides of the armor (one entering and one exiting) and the person.

For EX and EXEX I halve the power of the round for penetration.
For APDS use 150% of the power for penetration.
For AV I double the power of the round for penetration.

round up.

This means against armored targets its not liekly there is going to be blowthrough.

[Zeel De Mort]

Regular (as in what SR calls regular) ammo would pass through most normal guys if they're unarmoured, and APDS certainly would. But remember that even a *fairly* light bullet-proof vest will stop a 9mm round in today's terms, and heavy stuff (e.g. heavy vest with ceramic plates (i.e. armour vest with plates in SR)) will stop a 7.62 rifle round. Assuming you're hit in the torso, of course.

So I guess what you'd have to do, when penetration matters, is fudge some way of deciding where the bullet lands on a person, even though they'll get their normal armour rating against it regardless. Not very realistic, but hey what else is new? :)

[nezumi]

This has been brought up before, the most accurate answer I would say is if the power of a single shot overcomes a barrier with a rating of 4(body)+2xArmor. This also means that if a gun can do it once, most likely it'll do it with every shot (nicely perforating your poor troll). Consider NOT having them go through if they do an exceptional amount of damage, saying instead the bullet fragmented or deflected inside of the body.

The quick way is if the shooter has a lot of successes, go ahead and hit the mage too.

The smart way is if the mage's player didn't buy you a beer at the end of last game, the bullet fragments and hits him twice.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Edit]Wow, I'm in a really bad mood today. Sorry. I'll be editing this into a bit more reasonable form...[/Edit]

[Req]

Bow/crossbow vs firearm - absolutely zero contest. By and large, arrows and bolts don't even hit very hard, they just happen to be pointy and they cut you. Then you bleed to death. But it's the pointy bits that do the damage, not the amount of energy they deliver. I'd be real surprised if you could get through any sort of remotely-modern armor with a crossbow.

Well, unless you Dikote™ it. :)

[Raygun]

There are rules for overpenetration on my site. Not an easy thing to make practical rules for.

[Adarael]

[Lilt]

I forget: Is it impact or ballistic armor that is used to reduce the damage from bows&similar?

[Kagetenshi]

Impact.

~J

[Lilt]

[Kagetenshi]