In role playing games, should firearms damage decrease with range?, My thoughts after a lesson with a firearms instructor this morning Options

[Wounded Ronin]

So, this morning, I spent a few hours out in the desert with a firearms instructor training to hit targets 200-500 yards away with an AR.

The instructor explained to me a little bit about ballistics, various types of firearms, and effective firearms ranges. Since we are apparently both history buffs he also talked about the evolution of various weapon systems and tactical aids going back to the 2nd world war.

One point he explained to me was how in many cases while it may be possible to hit a person who is outside of your firearms effective range in many cases depending on what kind of round you're using, your round could have lost a lot of power by that point, and might not cause a deadly injury on the person you luckily manage to hit. For example, if you got freakishly lucky and somehow hit a person standing out at 500 yards with a 9mm handgun, the round might not hit him hard enough to really cause the kind of damage you want, that you might get if instead he were much closer.

If this is true, does it have implications for how firearm damage should work in role playing games? Should the damage code or rating of various weapons drop in role playing games as the targets approach the maximum range of the weapon?

Another issue he touched on was how some weapons are inherently more accurate than others. Even if you have a very high level of skill, you're always going to get a certain amount of displacement at certain ranges with certain weapons and ammunition. It will not be possible to have the same degree of success hitting a small target with precision if in one case you're using a weapon designed for that task and in another instance you're using a weapon that is inherently much less accurate. (In this case he was talking about the difference between using a SCAR-H and a basic AK 47 firing Russian ammo.)

How would you implement something like that in a role playing game? Perhaps the weapon with the greatest potential consistiency is more likely to scale damage up, or more likely to get a critical hit. A weapon with loose tolerances would have a very low chance of scaling damage up or getting a critical. This would reflect the reduced chance that a skilled operator can get a precise shot to the eyeball.

[Stahlseele]

No, too much micromanagement, too many useless CPU Cycles for the Algorythms, too much overhead traffic.

[CanRay]

I agree, too much micromanagement.

But, for a WWII story about how bullets depreciate in ability... I head of M1 Carbines shooting at people in frozen wet winter coats at 250-300 yards and the bullets bounced off.

[Critias]

If your goal is a realistic simulation of combat: Sure.

If your goal is a playable, fast-moving, game: Probably not.

[Kagetenshi]

No, not monotonically. IIRC certain classes of rounds suffer reductions to terminal ballistics at close range (round overpenetrates without tumbling).

~J

[Yerameyahu]

I simply assume that all the max ranges in SR4 are the max effective already.

[KarmaInferno]

After seeing that story about a US soldier in the Middle East one-shotting a sniper more than a mile away, which was more than twice the rated effective range of his firearm, I would say no.



-k

[Wounded Ronin]

After seeing that story about a US soldier in the Middle East one-shotting a sniper more than a mile away, which was more than twice the rated effective range of his firearm, I would say no.



-k

It was probably a 30 cal rifle.

[KarmaInferno]

I'm trying to locate the story, but I think it was a rifle normally rated to 800 meters, hitting a target 1600 to 1800 meters away. The sniper was on a building and had some other soldiers pinned down, and the soldier didn't have access to a better rifle to work with. So he aimed way high and to the left of the sniper, to compensate for bullet drop, spin, etc, and was hoping to just get the bugger to duck from the incoming lead.

He pulled the trigger once and the sniper dropped out of sight. Later when they got up to the sniper's position they found him dead with a nice center mass hit.



-k

[Yerameyahu]

Freak stories don't matter. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) Besides, I have no idea if those ratings are 'energy left to damage' or merely 'no more accuracy', or something else. The object is simplicity, and my suggestion is simple. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[KarmaInferno]

My point was, yes, at extreme range accuracy should be for shit, but damage probably shouldn't drop off all that much IF you can actually get the rounds on target.

I would hazard a guess that the range at which you get significant reduction in damage would be WAY outside the range you might possibly hit anyhow.



-k

[KarmaInferno]

I am also recalling stories about Russian soldiers in WW2 and a bit later, having to fight at ranges WAY outside their rifle's reach, aiming up into the air to get a parabolic trajectory so their rounds would go much further, having spotters tell them how far they were off by and walking the rounds closer like artillery.

Granted, this is more "old war stories" and hearsay, and I don't know if the rounds at that range would actually kill.



-k

[Yerameyahu]

Which is just silly. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I'm not saying anything about reality, but SR already has abstracted (but realistic-ish) ranges, and they're pretty generous at the outside end. Without using the magic SR optics, most people couldn't land Extreme-range shots anyway ("extreme range accuracy should be for shit"), but you get full damage if you do. So, again, my premise is that anything beyond Extreme is the (sharp, abstracted) cutoff point for 'energy left to damage'. More or less, simplified, for the game, etc. etc.

[Thanee]

If this is true...

This is, hopefully, not a serious question... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

...does it have implications for how firearm damage should work in role playing games? Should the damage code or rating of various weapons drop in role playing games as the targets approach the maximum range of the weapon?

In SR especially, it is pretty simple to do so. Just give all ranged weapons a -1 DV at long range and -2 DV at extreme range, for example.

How would you implement something like that in a role playing game?

Well SR has something like this in a very small scale (i.e. the Ares Alpha is more accurate than the AK-97, because it offers 2 points of free recoil compensation). Not exactly the same thing, of course, as it doesn't apply to single shots.

In some games, weapons actually give bonuses to the attack roll (i.e. accuracy).

In general, it is not important enough to bother with such fine details.

Bye
Thanee

[nezumi]

SR3 already reflects this. By adding to the TN penalty at ranges, it not only reduces the likelihood of hitting, but reduces the likely damage if it DOES hit. Imagine you got a roll of 3, 4, 5. At TN of 4, that's 2 successes, damage stages up. At moderate range (TN 5), that's only 1 success. Even though you hit, it's not as damaging.

Longer-range ammunition can be replicated by either reducing penalties for range by some percentage, a flat number (I believe the Smartlink 2 does this?) or by one range category (like scopes). In SR3, the bonus for scopes needs to be reworked anyway, since they basically eliminate the need for anything else, and they're quite unrealistic, but if you do fix scopes, this could work with minimal additional mechanics.

[Blade]

Some games somehow reflect this by having the damage scaled by the success margin. A shot at a longer distance is harder to pull, so the margin is low and so are the damages.

[hermit]

If you want firearms realism in Shadowrun, start by not making all weapons within a class compatible, munitions-wise.

That said, I'm seeing where the tedious management this requires adds anything enjoyable to the game.

[CanRay]

Or at least institute a caliber system so that only certain weapons are compatible.

A .45 ACP will work in a Colt M1911A1 or a Thompson M1 after all.

[Doc Chase]

I'm trying to locate the story, but I think it was a rifle normally rated to 800 meters, hitting a target 1600 to 1800 meters away. The sniper was on a building and had some other soldiers pinned down, and the soldier didn't have access to a better rifle to work with. So he aimed way high and to the left of the sniper, to compensate for bullet drop, spin, etc, and was hoping to just get the bugger to duck from the incoming lead.

He pulled the trigger once and the sniper dropped out of sight. Later when they got up to the sniper's position they found him dead with a nice center mass hit.



-k

I do believe that's an M-16, I recall those being rated out to 800m.

[Brazilian_Shinob...]

Play GURPS.
There are stats for weapons where from certain range the damage of the weapon falls to 1/2 its original damage until its maximum range.

[Mr. Mage]

I always figured that the idea of damage depreciation over longer ranges was extracted from a decrease in your dice pool at longer ranges. Since net hits adds to damage, fewer dice to roll usually means fewer extra hits.

[KarmaInferno]

Which is just silly. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) I'm not saying anything about reality, but SR already has abstracted (but realistic-ish) ranges, and they're pretty generous at the outside end. Without using the magic SR optics, most people couldn't land Extreme-range shots anyway ("extreme range accuracy should be for shit"), but you get full damage if you do. So, again, my premise is that anything beyond Extreme is the (sharp, abstracted) cutoff point for 'energy left to damage'. More or less, simplified, for the game, etc. etc.

The thing is, the point at which the kinetic energy of a round drops enough to justify less damage is, in real life, usually WAY WAY outside the effective range at which you might reasonably hit someone.

Soldiers and police get told this in training, that they have to be conscious of whatever is behind their target, because if that round doesn't hit their target it's going to hit SOMETHING.

The example I gave of the double range kill illustrates that. He scored what is really just a lucky shot. Yet at that massive range the bullet STILL had plenty enough kinetic force to one-shot kill it's target.

If SR weapon ranges were significantly better than current real-life weapon ranges, I might agree with you. But they're not. Most other "modern" to "near-future" games are similar - they also tend to model current weapon ranges.

The rules are "good enough" for most gameplay purposes. Most games don't really care about what happens to rounds fired if they miss and travel beyond the normal range limits.

You might, however, as an Evil GM tactic mess with your players with a news report about shots fired at a hospital, which happened to be a couple blocks behind where the runners had a firefight...




-k

[Yerameyahu]

Yes, and no. I think that if you added range categories beyond Extreme (where the bullet still has energy, but accuracy approaches impossible), they'd simply have such high penalties that it wouldn't matter. The zoom-to-negate-all rule would only be more broken (and unrealistic). (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) So, adding realism in one place would wreck it elsewhere. I feel like it balances. I agree that my explanation was unscientific, but it's really not meant to be.

[nezumi]

Although a simple mechanic for figuring out where misses (or overpenetrations) stop would indeed be handy. Maybe rework the suppressive fire rules to use the same mechanic.