The look, the feel..., The look of guns? Options

[Siege]

Oh really?

What are the Vegas requirements of a CCW?

-Siege

Edit: Oh, I may end up as a detention officer. :grinbig:

[BitBasher]

[Coyote Mage]

[Zazen]

[Austere Emancipa...]

I must admit that when I first handled the Browning HP, I couldn't help feeling it was far too small to be a real weapon. It just felt like a toy. Before that, I hadn't fired anything smaller than a (bulky, 3.5kg empty) assault rifle, and the only pistol replicas I had played around with were a USP9 and a Desert Eagle.

[Bigity]

After shooting my PT-111, I have to say, I think Light Pistols get a bad rap in Shadowrun.

[Austere Emancipa...]

And if you owned a Walther PP in .25ACP, you'd think Light Pistols in Shadowrun are way overpowered. ;)

[Bigity]

Heh, well the PT-111 does fire 9mm rounds, so I guess It could almost be classified higher :)

[Austere Emancipa...]

Seriously speaking, after the gazillion threads on RL examples of SR weapons, it is very difficult to draw a conclusion other than that Light Pistols average pretty close to 9x19 (or .38Spl or somewhere around those parts) while Heavies average closer to .41 Remington Magnum. If only there were Medium Pistols at 6-7M. Or if Lights were simply 6M and Hold-Outs 6L. But that's another rant altogether.

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Jul 13 2004, 04:54 PM

[The Grifter]

I don't think light pistols are under-powered in SR. Granted, I agree there should be a medium pistol category, tho. Example, someone shoots you with a light pistol. Doesn't start off very critical, the damage needs to be staged up for a decent amount of damage, right? Which is simulating a real life scenario. Unless the shooter put a good shot center-mass into you, or scored a lucky head shot, that round by itself is still going to wound you, but it's effect isn't going to be as great as a heavy pistol. Even if the shooter only hits you in a non-vital area, say with a .357 magnum, the penetration and tissue damage is going to be significantly greater than if he had hit you in the same place with say, a .25 caliber. Which is why Heavy Pistols start out with a higher base damage code. At least, this is how I interpreted it. Comments?

[Cursedsoul]

What about adding another damage level? There'd be Glancing, light, moderate, serious, deadly.

Glancing would perhaps require 3 or 4 successes to stage up, the rest would be normal. Glancing would be treated initially as a light wound, filling in 1 box.

Maybe you could increase the condition meter by 1/2 and boot up every damage level a few boxes? Might be something like:

Deadly: 15 boxes
Serious: 8 Boxes
Moderate: 5 boxes
Light: 3 boxes
Glancing: 1 box

[edit: forgot the condition monitor suggestion [/edit]

Condition monitor would go something as follows

0 = healthy
1-4 = +1TN
5-7 = +2TN
8-10 = +3TN
11-14 = +4TN
15+ = Unconscious, possibly dead.

The condition monitor could read grazed, lightly wounded, moderately wounded, seriously wounded, critically wounded, deadly wounded or something.

In this case, treat glancing to stage up as normal.

If you want to keep the ability to take three moderates and a light (the former light that would deal 1 box) before kicking the bucket, simply boost the condition monitor to 16 and add a box to Deadly, keep the rest the same.

You wouldn't have to change the damage codes of the weapons, just make Holdouts deal glancing damage and perhaps boot the power to 6.

It would make heavy pistols more damaging, make light pistols actually worth using, and well, continue the fine tradition of making HOs a last resort/hidden surprise (a HO filled with capsule rounds would be formidable. neurostun would still deal a lot of stun, the damage loss wouldn't matter really because the weapon already sucks)

[Arethusa]

[otomik]

I agree that way to much thought has been wasted on this subject.
Consider that the pistols were originally designed with variable staging 1st edition damage codes where light pistols kicked ass, then Firepower TM ammo was added to balance things.
Then when second edition came along it introduced uniform stagging of damage so that nerfed the light and holdout pistols. The new way that armor works (to avoid obscene amounts of dice rolling) combined with the fact that heavy pistols now do 9M instead of 6M, well thats when things really swung into heavy pistols favor. FASA had a quality control problem and game balance suffered. They're dead now, survival of the fittest i guess, they will be missed (ps I'm playing Spycraft now).

[Austere Emancipa...]

Having fiddled with Power, Damage (Level) and Hit Location rules at work lately, I can't believe SR designers haven't made use of some of the goodness you can get with the multiple-figure damage system.

For example, assume that a .32 ACP did 6M and .30 Carbine did 9M with solid bullets. Both will reliably penetrate deep enough to damage vitals and will crush a hole of similar size -- a bit over 7mm vs a bit under 8mm, perhaps. Not that big a difference in damage caused, either in RL terms comparing the holes put in human-shaped gelatin blocks or comparing 6M and 9M in SR.

Now assume that a JHP drops Power by 2 and raises DL by one -- 4S vs 7S for .32ACP vs .30 Carbine JHPs. The .30 Carbine JHPs can still reliably get deep enough to damage vitals even against big and burly opponents at disadvantageous engagement angles, and will poke a hole closer to 12mm in diameter. The .32 ACP JHP will poke a similarly large hole, but will not penetrate deep enough in many cases, leading to non-lethal wounds especially against large foes, such as Trolls. Trolls who, incidentally, are likely to laugh off a 4S, at least compared to a 6M, in SR.

[Note: The above is hypothetical, I do not suggest you use 6M as the Damage Code of a .32ACP weapon nor -2Power/+1DL for any sort of expanding bullets.]

Now introduce some minor fiddling with Staging to allow damage caused to be in boxes always instead of levels (a .357 Magnum might do 9-3 instead of 9M), and one you've got one geek occupied for a very long time, browsing through Guns&Ammo and Firearms Tactical, filling in strange tables and smiling in a disturbing way.

This post has been edited by Austere Emancipator: Jul 14 2004, 04:34 AM

[Siege]

Feh.

Of course, in SR no child will ever die at the hands of another child by accidental shooting.

Worst he gets is a 9M, barring a pretty high Quickness and some damned lucky rolls.

</rant>

-Siege

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Siege]

Actually, I thought about something like that too.

I ended up applying it as a standard to the weapon.

A 9M weapon is actually (5 +1d6)M damage code.

When ya shoot, roll your d6 and figure out the new damage.

I doubt it would work on a practical level, but it made for an interesting conceptual discussion.

If you wanted to be really nasty, randomly modify the damage code - a "heavy" handgun does (5+1d6) Power and a d6 Damge Code:

1: Light
2-3: Moderate
4-5: Serious
6: Deadly

Of course, if you think combat took a long time before...:grinbig:

-Siege

[Kagetenshi]

[Siege]

[Neon Tiger]

About fixing them Light and Holdout Pistols, maybe giving them +2 Power? Thus making Holdouts 6L and Light Pistols(and machine pistols, too) 8L. They still wouldn't be too powerfull, IMHO. Of course, I know barely anything about firearms, so... well... whatever. :(

[mfb]

i personally don't think any firearm (barring a few freaks and oddities) should have a damage level lower than M. it's just obscene.

[Arethusa]

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Cursedsoul]

Why not make it based on the skill of the user?

Assuming we keep the canon 10 box system, you could randomly add power and damage level formulaically or a word like that. Have a minimum Power/Damage and then randomly roll to add the rest.

As an example: Heavy pistol deals 9M now. Modify the system so it deals 6L base, then you add (0.5xweapon skill)D3 to power and (weapon skill/3)D3 to damage level or something. Round down.

So say you have pistols 4 and shmucko has pistols 2. Both of you are firing heavy pistols in a totally open plain with normal ammo.

You shoot and the power is now 6+(2d3) while your DL is now +1D3 for a range of 8-11 power and L-D wound.

He shoots but is at 6+(1d3) power and gets no damage level increase.

You can also institute damage level caps. The base damage level without any modifiers cannot exceed <blank>.

You could simply apply -3power/-1DL to all weapons as they presently stand and add in random luck and allow the skilled user a bigger advantage over the weenie. Just because that shotgun deals a S wound by default doesn't mean the panicky civilian can use it to any real effect.

Anyways, just off the top of my head the small arms table would look something like this:

HO = 1L
LP = 3L
HP = 6L
MP = 3L
SMG = 3L
Rifle = 4M
AR = 5L
SG = 7M

Say you have a skill of 6 with the weapon you're firing, that HO's 1L is now 4-10/L-D

Like I said before I suggest you cap the damage you can do simply using your own abilities. Probably M for hold outs, light pistols, and machine pistols, serious for heavies, SMGs, ARs, and no cap for the rest.

Same sort of thing could be applied to melee.

I dunno, as it stands right now this probably sucks, but its just an idea.

[Austere Emancipa...]

The problem there is one which is often run into in combat house rule threads: double gains from high skill. You already do more damage with a high skill, because you score more successes. This would lead to low-skilled people sucking even more, and high-skilled characters kicking ass more than ever.

Not to mention that it's not even very logical. If you don't hit any better, why should you do more damage? It just doesn't make sense that a lucky, almost accidental (single success @ TN 27) by a character with Pistols-12 would be even deadlier than a perfect hit (6 successes @ TN 2) by a character with Pistols-3.

My suggestion is keep the dice rolls, but forget about skill level.