I don't want to give a lot of details, but this is going to be for an astral quest. While the adventure is still a ways off, I'm trying to get ready ahead of time and hammer out logistical issues. The flintlocks will be smoothbore using spherical rounds, so I plan on having a reduction in accuracy as well. Ballistic armor won't even be an issue.

awwww...

And now you see why I don't want to go into any details.

pretty please?
with on top?

That would depend on whether the shot penetrated or not as well. If the shotgun slug went through the force of it wouldn't knock someone down as it doesn't transfer all its energy to the target. If that target was armored OTOH and the slug couldn't penetrate is reflected or otherwise lodges in target the amount of force transfered to the target is considerably greater. Think of it this way: F= ma. the force of a slug impacting a target is roughly equal to that of the weapon's recoil. In your advantage as the firer of course is the fact that you're braced with a nice stock to spread out the force. Body armor also works by spreading out the force. Ok here's the fun part. Place your gun butt against your belly and discharge it. Sits you on your ass don't it. Its the whole theory behind the sandbag rounds the police use. While the force is spread out it transfers more. It's designed to knock you on your butt.

But hey, I'm no expert.

I've also read of some of the horrifying injuries that musket rounds often inflicted upon the ranks of soldiers who stood up to them. In addition to the primary impact wounds of the musket balls, the impacts would often send shards of the victims bones flying to cause injury in those ranked nearby. Sherman was right, war is Hell.

Or, more likely, it's designed to cause significant non-lethal blunt trauma. Just like the police won't hit you with a nightstick just to get you on your butt, they won't fire sandbag rounds at you to get you on your butt. In SR terms, the Stun damage is the point, not the Knockdown.

And in your disadvantage as the firer is the fact that the recoil force of the gun is significantly more powerful than the kinetic energy possessed by the bullet when it hits the target. I don't know exactly how large that difference is "on average", but I do know that several things make the recoil more energetic than the bullet hit. The gases escaping at the muzzle are one major reason.

And neither am I, for sure. I'm just louder than average, and don't mind Googling.

Wow. That seems pretty weird. I know nothing of the subject, so it's certainly possible as far as I'm concerned. It's just that bone shards would suck at penetrating human flesh, and they'd have to do that just to get out of the original target. In any case, firearms against tight ranks are about as lethal as anything gets -- for example, I always crack up when some moron claims military forces fired indiscriminately at a mob, with 3 dead and 7 wounded. That's one shot for 1 killed and 2 wounded, plus 2 dead and 5 wounded from the following stampede.

Wrong. Recoil is only slightly greater due to the escaping gasses. Most of that kick is still in the bullet. the gases going out is not significant enough to make the recoil Contain too much more energy. In fact you dont feel alot because you are a hell of alot more massive than that bullet. You move a bit no mater what. And that bullet has a rather significant speed. Any thing stoping compleatly that is going 1000 m/s is going to transfer a hell of a lot of kinetic energy.
Thank god for physics class

So do those gases. Not-so-suprisingly, they move about as fast... And as far as weight is concerned, a quick Google-ing gave an average powder weight for 5.56x45mm loadings at ~25gr, while the bullet is ~50-60gr. Assuming all that powder escapes through the muzzle at the same velocity as the bullet, that's 40% extra recoil right there.

[Edit]Also, try playing around with this recoil calculator. The powder weight seems to make a huge difference.[/Edit]

This bit I just didn't get. If you move a bit no matter what, then that's because of momentum (because momentum is what's going to be preserved) -- but the mass of the bullet is much more significant a factor in momentum than it is in energy.

You're not. Col. Hiram Berdan's US Sharpshooter regiments pulled of some impressive stuff during the Civil War. They even used scopes, way back then. Coincidentally, Berdan was also the guy who invented the brass-cased centerfire cartridge that militaries still use today.

True. Armor will displace nearly all of that energy over a wider area of your body. But armor wasn't really a variable in the argument. At least not until now.

Well, if you leave out the facts that gun has mass and mechanical systems absorb, redirect and delay that energy over time (recoiling spring-loaded bolts, muzzle brakes and such, depending on the gun), you're probably right. Otherwise, the stock, really only having about four times the frontal surface area of the slug itself, would probably penetrate your shoulder.

There are a lot of factors in determining that. For the most part, it certainly wouldn't be comfortable, but it would be very unlikely to literally "sit you on your ass" without some fault in your balance or psychological reaction to pain. I've gone on record in saying that shooting 3" magnum slugs from a pump action tends to hurt after only a few rounds. They do knock you around. But never have they ever literally made me fall down from physical force alone.

No no no. Beanbags are designed to make people who aren't very determined in doing what they're doing think twice about it and move away from the area of the person doing the shooting. As Aus suggested, blunt trauma like that hurts, but is less likely to be lethal. Being shot at also tends to be pretty scary to the person looking down the bore. But a beanbag will not physically knock a person down without their help. There's simply not enough energy to do that. I promise.

That sounds incredibly unlikely to me. File under myth.

No, you're wrong. Recoil is significantly greater the more powder you use. The propellant has mass, too. You're converting, say, 50 grains of smokeless powder into 50 grains of gases, which escape a barrel somewere between 3,880 and 4,010 fps (according to the US Army Ballistics Research Lab and the book Understanding Firearm Ballistics by Robert A. Rinker). Quite a bit of chemical energy converted into both motion and heat. This is why a projectile with comperable ballistics will recoil significantly more if black powder is in relation to smokless powder. The charge weighs more.

I'm not talking about being braced for a shot. I'm talking about standing there like your average person on an average day in the park admiring the view, being hit totally unaware. Bullet impact alone is extremely unlikely to knock you down. You may fall regardless. But that is not due solely to the impact. Not even mostly to the impact.

People have a lot of misconceptions about firearms having the ability to physically knock a person down, mostly because it happens contantly in movies and TV. It's called acting. Dramatization. And from it we learn that an shotgun will "put you on your ass" when the truth is that unless you take a significant hit to central nervous tissue or supporting skeletal structure (and that has to be one pretty massive hit) the only thing that is likely to make you even move immediately in any significant way is YOU. Evasion resulting in a lack of balance (or intentionally dropping to evade), severely broken bones that are in the process of holding you up, psychological reaction to pain, or a hit to the central nervous system. That's about it. The truth is that the cause of falling is almost never the impact itself, but the person's reaction to it. Same goes for game animals and I've seen that in action plenty of times.

Recoil from a shotgun, even with heavy slugs, is very unlikely to "put you on your ass" unless you have absolutely no idea what you're doing. If you're unlucky enough to be on the business end, the impact of a 437 grain slug is certainly more likely to throw you off balance than say, a 62 grain 5.56mm bullet. Inertia. The heavier object has more of it, and with that, more momentum. Which is why the medicine ball is more likely to knock you down.

I don't know about probable, but it's certainly possible. It depends on how you're moving, a what angle you're hit, etc... Lots of variables.

In the case of the Brown Bess, more. Having roughly the same ballistic properties as a modern 2 3/4" slug load, the Bess will actually recoil more compared to a shotgun of the same weight due to the fact that a black powder charge is used to acheive those ballistics.

Which is my point exactly. Who has any idea what they're doing when they get hit with a bullet? I'm not arguing with you on the fact that in most cases a bullet doesn't have the force to knock someone down, but to say it has absolutely nothing to do with it is a little implausible. In my experience 12ga 3" HP slugs have the power to knock over a refrigerator. A blast at short range with a buckshot load was enough to tear the door off. (Boredom and guns should never mix) Damage to an old car was equivelent to a sledgehammer strike. (buckshot again)

Appologies if I'm wrong, I'm just making the call from personal observation. Not really the most scientific meathod employed here of course, but hey. Take it where it comes from.

I guess it's a good thing I never said that, then. What I'm saying is that bullet impact usually has very little to do with knocking a person down, certainly far less than popular media leads us to believe. But of course, the heavier the projectile, the more effect it will have.

Some, sure. Again, lots of variables. I would say that it is probably more likely to thoroughly penetrate said refrigerator, but I haven't shot at any refrigerators with shotguns lately to verify that in any way.

Completely? That I have a difficult time believing, but it's not like you've given a detailed description of the circumstances or anything. If you say so.

Along with total penetration of the outer body metal, I would go along with that analogy.

Well, I guess if you've seen it with your own eyes, you're probably not wrong.

From everything I've done and read, I find it extremely unlikely that impact alone from almost any man-portable firearm is likely to literally knock your average human being to the ground. Certain circumstances will certainly magnify the effects if impact and may cause a person to fall, but the impact itself is usually only a very small part of that. That's all I'm saying.

While a 12 gauge slug may knock over a refrigerator, a human being isn't going to react the same way. Flesh is far more pliable and will give more than the metal and plastic of a refrigerator. Raygun is right in the fact that it's not the force of the shot energy that typically drops someone, but the shock and damage.

You should see what my freinds 10 gauge does.

Now, I agree that getting hit with one of these weapons, armored or not, is going to seriously frag with you. The shock of impact will make you stumble, loose balance and /or fall down. It won't pick people up and throw them 30 feet like in the movies thou.

I'd chalk this up to practice -- remember that many of these marksmen used their muskets (and later, rifles) nearly every day, hunting and whatnot. A large amount of practice can make for some scary skills.

Example: archery. For you or me, the "effective" range of a bow and arrow might be 50-60 yards (though, I am by no means good anymore, and have a less than 20% change of hitting anything farther than 40 yards, esp. not something moving). For those who used it every day (such as the Mongols), however, the marksmanship was scary. Several hundred yard hits, versus small targets (birds in flight, small flags, etc) were common and expected. Freeeeaky. (Let's jsut say that I'm jealous. )

On renaissance-era pistols and accuracy... my friend (who has this as one of his hobbies) notes that the range at which you had a good chance of NOT being hit by a pistol was about ... 15-20 feet. Think from one side of your living room to the other. The balls were round, and had no rifled barrels; if you've ever played paintball, you know that this leads to some serious wacky-path effects. Dunno if anyone had mentioned that, but thought i'd throw it into the fray.

On damage ... anything with a high damage code, I'd say. Remember that a lot of the pistols made up for low fire rate with LARGE calibers. .40, .50, even higher, were common; I think that they should have at least the same power as a light pistol, but probably higher. Come to think of it, you might try basing your damage off of a shotgun slug: usually not rifled, and is a similar amountof lead (though, it's not a ball...).

Roomsweeper's 9S (or 9M if using slugs, I think, right?); I'd really think that the roomsweeper's not firing large bore slugs, though, so I'd lower the power but raise the base code to S still for those .50 and .60 cal flintlocks..

The way SR has divided pistols, some modern pistols of .40-ish caliber (like .40S&W) would probably be considered light pistols. Quite possibly .45ACP would also be "Light". Not to mention that the diameter of the bullet alone does not really tell you much about the terminal ballistics.

Can anyone guesstimate the projectile weights and muzzle velocities on early (17th century) flintlocks?

That, of course, depends completely on what kind of bullets you use. I'm sure you could get a glaser-type .30-06 bullet which would not over-penetrate except in extreme cases. Don't most hunting loads for such calibers have bullets which expand significantly? If you compare the beginning caliber with the expanded caliber, I bet the modern ones expand way more. Muzzleloaders simply have larger calibers to begin with.

Only if you're planning on eating it.

Otherwise Black Talons can be fun for the whole family.

-Siege

I doubt a full lead ball or even a full lead conical bullet will manage nearly as much expansion as that. "Bullet technology" has, after all, advanced quite a bit since the 17th century. Or the 19th century, for that matter.

modern bullets use pure lead with copper jacketing so they dont deform when leaving the barrel. This limits the amount of expansion that they can have.

now, older weapons use all lead, no jacket.

45.70 full jacket round goes right through a watermelon with cracking of the fruit.
45.70 soft ball (all lead) throws peices of the watermelon 10 ft into the air, and out the back.

Not all modern bullets use pure lead (and even those that say "lead" probably aren't all lead, thanks mcb). Not all use copper jacketing. AFAIK, they use jacketing to protect the barrel. I have never heard of bullets deforming when they leave the barrel. Jacketed Hollow Points, for example, expand just fine.

Full Metal Jacketed rounds usually do not expand significantly, this is true. Full Metal Jacketed rounds are not commonly used for hunting, again AFAIK. The whole point of the discussion was that if expansion is what you want, then modern technology will allow a lot more of it than people could ever wish for in the 17th century.

Look, for example, at these tables. Compare the "Expansion" numbers to the original bullet diameter, ie ~0.354". Consider the fact that all those bullets are Jacketed Hollow Points.

That's pretty much what I expected, about what you get with pistol-caliber JHPs. I assume conical full lead bullets manage significantly less than that? And I should think there are even better expanding bullet types these days than just your run-of-the-mill JHP.

maybe so but the huge gape in damage codes from light to heavy pistols means that the heavy pistol category would be filled with nothing but desert eagles in .50ae and .500 s&w revolvers. that might suite you just fine if you run the anime-style campaign where no respectable big-eyed small-mouthed 15-year-old schoolgirl would carry anything less than a masamune shirow-designed .454 casull 1911.

hey raygun check this out
http://www.guncrafterindustries.com/model_1.htm

flintlocks are similar to shotguns (large caliber, heavy and relatively slow bullets, often unrifled)
damaging power for a flintlock should be no better than a shotgun's damage. weapon range should also be similar to shotgun (100 meters?).

Yeah. Beat ya to it.

Seen this yet? Piston-operated M4. Pretty cool...

Unfortunately, I run a game where there is no such thing as Heavy Pistols or Light Pistols. Just pistols.

I wasn't trying to suggest that the .40S&Ws and .45ACPs would have to be considered "Light". My point was that just because something fires bullets of a large diameter doesn't mean it should be considered "Heavy" either.

The only pre-19th century flintlock we've seen any real data on is the 18th century Brown Bess (600gr .73" ball @ 1300fps), and that could certainly be considered Serious damage at a respectable Power (7-9). That's an almost exact match of a 12G-3" 1-3/8oz slug's ballistics at the muzzle, I think.

I'm still interested in whatever actual data people have on the performance of even earlier firearms, or smaller flintlocks from the same era as the Brown Bess.

.380ACP-ish?

Based on that, I'd give 18th century pistols 5M, 0-3/4-8/9-15/16-25.