Point Blank Range Options

[ShadoFall]

Wonder if someone could help me with some rules for resolving point blank range damage i've been looking but just cant seem to find anything anywhere thnks

[Arethusa]

There are no rules for it in canon.

[Austere Emancipa...]

I have never heard of anything about a "Point Blank Range", let alone why anything would do some sort of special damage in it: most things in Shadowrun do the same damage at all ranges. Exceptions are explosive devices such as grenades, and certain special weapons such as laser weapons.

What, exactly are you looking for? Rules concerning ranged combat with firearms in general? Rules for some sort of special weaponry?

[Nikoli]

Only time short range becomes really bad would be like using a rifle against an adjacent target (common sense there)

or target is within safe distance for greanade launcher/mortar fire.

[ShadoFall]

sorry guess i was a little vauge i know the short range rules go from 0 To what ever the short range is for a particular weapon. i've got a mage in the game i run that before long were gona hand over as a NPC i'll leave out the details. lets just say hes powerfull and turning really bad. hes recently developed a taste for using imporved invisibilty to slide up behind people and put the barrel no more then like a inch from the back of peoples head and blow thier brains out..

so im mainly looking for some options that might be a bit better for this type of scenario when dealing with damage and target numbers.

[Eyeless Blond]

Well if you want to just lower the TN to 2 and increase the power of the attack by 2 (or to make it even more effective increase the damage level by 1) to reflect muzzle gasses entering the wound

[BitBasher]

really there are absolutely no book rules for that, its all up to the GM. remember, NPC's can do that to him too. It's going to be obvious on cameras and such what happened.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Target Stationary: -1 TN, and Take Aim as much as possible. There's no way around the fact that you'll have to do the normal Ranged Combat test sequence.

Also, if the target does not notice the mage at all (remember that Invisibility doesn't fool smell, taste, touch or sound) he does not get a Surprise Test either and cannot use any Combat Pool to Dodge -- the target is really screwed.

As a justification for why it doesn't always end up in the mage blowing their brains out, remember that the guy can still move at an inopportune time. If the mage packs a decent weapon, there shouldn't be a problem.

[Arethusa]

There are no canon rules that deal with that. As a GM, just remove his target's brains and proclaim him dead. If you're interested in house rules, various people have various takes and various projects (including, for example, my own canon revision).

[Austere Emancipa...]

It should be plenty lethal if the mage has decent skill.

Heavy Pistol + Laser Sight + Skill 4. 4 base TN from Short Range. -1 TN from Target Stationary, -1 TN from Laser Sight, -2 TN from Take Aim, minimum TN of 2. Add 4 dice from Combat Pool to the attack test, and you're averaging 6 successes. Since the target can't Dodge and doesn't have access to Combat Pool, he's facing 9M with 6 successes with only his Body dice.

+2 Power from the gases isn't called for. You don't want to shoot the weapon from that close anyway, it's more accurate from several inches away. And the damage from the gases is rather insignificant compared to the bullet.

The TN will be 2 in most cases without any special ruling.

[Edit]Arethusa, what a shameless plug. :P[/Edit]

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Apr 22 2004, 11:44 PM

[Arethusa]

You ain't seen nothin' yet. Just you wait 'till I gets me a website.

[Austere Emancipa...]

That's what the Signature is for... ;)

[ShadoFall]

i'm not to worried about NPC doing the same to him. hes become a very powerfull character and instead of just retiring him and or killing him off me and the player sat down and created a nice little scenario where hes gona become the new big bad in our campaign.. so we arranged his abduction. hes been seriously mind fraged. and is bordering on psycopathic/blood magic... boy wont his team mates be surprised..

[Raygun]

[Arethusa]

Whoah, hey, wait, what did I say? I didn't say that.

[Raygun]

Eyeless Blond did. Aus didn't specify that in his reply to you.

[Arethusa]

Erm, I think you got me confused with Austere. He's the one you're quoting there.

Out of curiosity, would you still give that +1 if the weapon muzzle was not in contact with the target but was still very close? If so, how close would it have to be for that effect?

[Austere Emancipa...]

Yup, that was me. I've seen gunshot wounds from very close range (Go Rotten.Com), and I'm aware of the fact that the muzzle gases can do serious damage to the skin and other tissue on the surface. I'm not saying that isn't a serious issue in and of itself -- what I'm saying is that if you've got a bullet tumbling through you, it won't be that significant.

With a rifle I wouldn't mind the +1 Power, actually. At that point you might be dealing with some serious damage from the muzzle blast alone. With a pistol, I'd just stick with the base damage and think of the other ways to increase damage dealt. Even with the rifle, though, I'd like to have an adequate explanation of exactly why someone is pressing a barrel on the target -- a surefire way to be noticed, Invisibility or no.

[mfb]

i really, really like the idea of countering gunshots at close range with melee. it just brings all sorts of juicy ideas to mind, and it goes a long way towards explaining why you don't want to bring a gun to a knife fight. what do you think of giving larger weapons negative reach modifiers? like, a rifle might have -2 reach, so that using it in melee means that the target can counterattack at TN 2? SMGs would have -1 reach, and pistols 0 reach.

[Siege]

The only game system I know of that incorporated a "PBR" was CP2020 which dealt maximum damage at PBR.

Other than that, the idea of TN penalties for large weapons in close quarters has merit -- although to be fair, closing on a swordsman with a knife will ruin his day just as surely because the sword (axe, staff) still require some degree of distance (range) to operate effectively.

And while the M1 garand could do double damage as a blunt weapon, the M-16 and M-4 are not nearly as sturdy, especially with the amount of bells and whistles typically tacked on to modern, never mind futuristic weapons.

Sorry, rambling tonight.

-Siege

[Raygun]

Oops. I didn't realize I put the wrong name in the quote. I thought you were asking... Oh, nevermind.

[Arethusa]

This is somewhat related, but would firing a weapon with a low muzzle blast (low as in pistol, as opposed to a rifle or the biggest of the Desert Eagles) directly in contact with the target create a suppression effect, and if so, how significant?

[Dax]

I really don't think you need extra rules for it. In one of our games, someone managed to knock over a troll, place the SMG's against the poor slag's chest and squeezed the triggers until he got nothing but *clicks* coming out of the guns.

The damage was something like 38DDS. He insisted on calculating it out afterwords. :grinbig:

[Austere Emancipa...]

I tried to look for those pictures. They are all located on the Vatican.Rotten.Com server, which is laggy as hell and usually down. I find it extremely funny that a New York Emergency Room RN site links to Rotten.Com for pictures of various traumas...

I'm still quite sure that no professional, or anyone who knows how firearms work, would ever shoot someone with the barrel pressed against them, unless they have no choice. In the head, the muzzle blast might be powerful enough to do extensive damage on its own -- but the bullet will kill the guy anyway, and a gun pressed against the targets head is closer to him than it is to you. In the torso the muzzle blast wouldn't do more than surface damage, extensive surface damage but still just surface, and the same security issues remain.

Although, if you're damn good and wired to react at light speed, what the heck. Might as well go for the less stabile bullet and possible extra damage, no matter how slight, because there's no real risk.

[Raygun]