Snatching Guns Off Enemies, "Gimme da wepan!" Options

[JakeSpeed]

A street punk pulls a Colt Manhunter from his belt and pushes it against your forehead.

"Okay chummer, you've fragged me off so I'm gonna slot you. No offense." He snarls.

But this snot-nosed kid doesn't realise that you're a street samurai with wired reflexes 2. Without giving it much thought you snatch the gun from his hand and slap his face for being insolent.


Okay, here's my question:

Forgetting the fact that you'd have probably dropped this kid before the gun's barrel had cleared his belt how would you deal with such a situation i.e. a gun to the head?

Both making a reflex check seems obvious, but what about modifiers or suitable skill checks? What do you guys normally do?

[Ronin Soul]

It depends on how the character describes it IMO.

One example that happened in a game was the Adept who instead of grabbing the gun actually did a full backflip kick, kicking the gun out of the guard's hand and landing a couple of feet back so he could unleash some big time arse-whupping of his own. I made that an athletics check at TN 8 but I gave him a two dice bonus for an excellent descrpition. Note that the guard had the gun about six inches away from the character's face. The character won initiative and the description of the action was good.

Another example was a guy who grabbed the ganger's arm just above the elbow, twist-threw him, grabbing the gun as the ganger (understandably) loosened his grip on it. That was an Unarmed Combat attack at TN 6 (Ganger's skill +2) with a 1 dice bonus.

Basically it can be done if the character has initiative over the opponent. In other words if the character is acting before the opponent. In the example given by JakeSpeed I'm guessing the character wins initiative. This means he can make an attempt and the ganger can do squat about it, gun to the head or otherwise. If the opponent has a delayed action then it is an opposed Reaction test.

Remember however that I like the dramatic. If the description is evocative I allow it even if it is technically harder than something I wouldn't allow because it's boring.

[grendel]

It's a reaction test, with the samurai at a target number of 4 and the ganger at a target number of 2 (he's ready for the samurai to make a move) or 4 if some distraction is used (the samurai's backup pulls his own weapon). Piece of cake for anyone running wired 2 against an unmodified ganger.

[Dim Sum]

[FONT=Times][COLOR=red] Actually, both counter-terrorist military and police units like SWAT conducted reaction tests over a decade ago when looking into refining their takedown / raid procedures.

The test had one basic scenario with several variations (depending on the factors being studied): an armed man, A, held a gun on an unarmed man, B.

In the first variation, A held the gun to B's head with the barrel in contact with B's head. The study found that in over 90% of the time, B was able to swat (okay, okay, bad pun) the weapon aside and engage A in hand-to-hand. B simply did not have time to pull the trigger before A acted.

In the second variation, A held the gun on B but stood roughly a foot away from B. In just over 40% of the time, B was able to move to engage A before A pulled the trigger.

In both the above variations, B was facing A. Basically, the tests found that a reasonably fit person with sufficient willpower to overcome his fear (facing an armed man shoving a barrel between his eyes) could (if trained) act before the gunman would have time to shoot. In other variations, the units tested angles, facings, etc., etc., and the study led to changes being made to tactical procedures to what we know today.

Don't ask for the name of the studies conducted - I can't remember. A friend of mine undergoing the training mentioned it a long time ago. Trivia aside, however, I'd apply a modifier to reaction tests that is relevant to the situation.

[booklord]

A lot of people here are a lot nicer GMs than me.

I consider a gun to the samurai's head as a delayed action. Ruh-Roh. That means whenever the samurai attempts to make a move, the guy with the gun can say "I'm taking my delayed action" and fire the gun.

That's the bad news.

Now the good news. Silly guy with gun is standing too close. The samurai has a chance to slap the gun away. Which means Melee Combat! The guy with the gun rolls his "gun" skill vs. the samurai's "melee" combat skill. If the guy with gun gets more successes he shoots the samurai in the head. If the samurai gets more successes the guy misses. ( I have a house rule that the defender can only use Full Defense option in melee combat ). If the guy missed then on the Samurai's next action which happens right now he can use his melee combat skill to either disarm or disable or eliminate this guy.

Target Modifiers
-- I tend to determine Target Modifiers quickly during gameplay. So I might miss an appropirate one. I may even make one or two up if I feel they're appropriate.

The samurai
Base Melee Target Number
( reach does not apply )
+ Any Wound modifiers
+2 If the guy is standing behind him and the Samurai can't see him. ( possibly reduced if the samurai has blind fighting skill or ability)
(Some weapons such as whip are of limited use in this scenario. (Think about it) Appropriate modifiers would apply. )

The guy with the gun
Point Blank Range target number
( smart gun or laser sight modifiers do not apply do to extreme close range )
( He has a free Called because he actually has the gun to the samurai's head )
+ Any Wound Modifiers
+2 Range weapon in Melee

----------------------------------------------------------------
Things get a little worse ( or better ) depending on the characters if the guy is standing one or more feet away.

Target Modifiers

Samurai Same as before except....
I'd probably give a +1 modifier for each 1/2 meter the guy is standing away from the samurai. ( This modifier would not apply to Combat Pool Dodge dice ) only the melee skill dice. ( This modifier is just to show the difficulty imposed on suddenly attacking someone who already has his gun trained on you )
Penalty for not being able to see the guy would be doubled to +4. ( again blind fighting could lower that )

The guy with the gun Same as before except.....
smart gun or laser sight modifiers do apply. ( but only for this action )
Called shot is no longer free. He'd have to take the Target modifier or just aim for the center of the target.

[DigitalMage]

[Kesh]

I beleive the Israeli Armed Forces unique hand-to-hand combat training includes maneuvers for disarming an attacker and taking their gun (or at least, forcing them to drop it). I've seen a couple clips on documentaries, and it's quite impressive.

[booklord]

[grendel]

Your example breaks down, though, because you're assuming that the combat turn begins with the ganger. If he has a chance to hold an action, that means we're inside combat turn timing already, which means the samurai needs to be able to hold actions, to dodge, and to have full access to his combat pool. Not to mention the fact that now that we're inside the combat turn, the samurai can either wait and roll intiative again, allowing the ganger to hold his action over into the next round but forcing him to act within his iniative phase or lose his held action, or he can drop out of combat turn timing and reset the scenario to a surprise action as stipulated on p. 108 of SR3.

The worse thing in the world anyone could do would be to press their weapon against you. Not only does it bring them clearly inside the lethal radius of hand to hand combat, it lets you know exactly where the weapon is. You would be surprised how quickly you can get clear of a weapon's muzzle when it's pressed against you. The attacker might still get a shot off, but the most it's going to do is deafen you due to proximity.

[Clipwing]

What do people think if the gun to a person's head happened to be a smartgun? Since it would be mentally linked and the person holding the gun could fire it "at the speed of thought", would the rules talked about be any different? Perhaps just Intelligence dice being used rather than Reaction... Though I think I would use the Reaction opposed test with a +4 modifier (+2 for a non-smartgun) for the snatcher...

[Zazen]

[Sunday_Gamer]

Allow me to borrow a page from the Hero System.

Covering someone: If you have an action in which you can fire, and choose instead to "cover" someone, be it from 5-10 feet away or point blank, once you're covered, you're covered, you twitch, he shoots.

So how does one get out?

1) If the shooter is distracted off his target, the whole thing is called off. A door opening quickly, breaking glass, sudden noise whatever, he stops paying attention to his target, he loses his advantage and it's time to play the reflex game.

2) a character who is MUCH faster than his cover, can opt for a straight reflex move, hoping to catch the guy off guard with his speed. Then I go with the flexes check again, but add bonuses to the guy covering (+2 or so) so the covered better actually BE faster, he's gonna need it.

Note that if the covered also has a held action, he'd better use it to stop the guy from putting a gun to his head, know what I mean chummer?

That's the way I run it.

Note also that a gun to your head is a called shot for purposes of damage.
Note that most body armor doesn't have a helmet.

There is a truer adaptation of the Hero System rules that makes the covered actually roll his attack, and hold it, giving the coverer a "feel" for how well he has his target.

Like the scene in The untouchables, Garcia "knew" he had his target, he covered him, rolled as assload of successes and with a smirk, announced "I got him".

One great advantage of this rule is to create tension between PCs and powerful NPCs without actually having to start letting the bullets fly.

I've gotten some great scenes out of my SRers running into a rival group. Because they cover each other and then they start talking, as the conversation progresses, people are covering each other, moving slowly to break someone elses cover by putting an object between them, rolling again to improve their current covering, there's an entire chess game that's precisely like a firefight, but no one is getting shot, and since everyone knows (or have strong indication at least) of how well everyone in the little game is doing, it affects the entire dynamics... well it's a whole lot of very cool scenes, usually.

:eek: :eek:

You know, I never really stopped and thought about it before but I REALLY like these rules, they make for some great scenes in which your PCs can square off against each other or NPCs in a testosterone laden environment without anyone getting shot.

Sunday.

[booklord]

[kevyn668]

[Clipwing]

[booklord]

[Herald of Verjig...]

An internally smartlinked gun allows firing through the smartlink if the mechanics of the firing process make it possible. There is a gun customization option "remove trigger" that makes it only useable by the smartlinked.

[Zazen]

[booklord]

In my previous example.....

[grendel]

[Zazen]

[booklord]

[Herald of Verjig...]

If he just stood there, probably not. I would give him a cance if his first action was to drop and roll, or otherwise make a big sudder movement out of the line of fire. So, dropping prone, drawing his gun, and shooting a cop in the knee would be a valid initiative pass. The drop disrupts the shots that the cops had, and might lead to partial cover.

Of course, a quickdraw holster in the right place, and he could get off two shots before most unaugmented would be able to react. If the cops have smartlink and their guns have the internal hadware, their reaction time to fire would be decreased to almost nil, meaning they get to shoot first except in the most extreme cases.

[grendel]

[booklord]