Heya.

I'm trying to convert the firearm damage codes to a more realistic standard, basing everything off of calibre and so on. Now I can't just wander off to a firing range or the like, so I need some help here working out a few odds and sods.

Between myself and my host of army friends, we're relatively happy with the pistol and rifle calibre of weaponry, but we have no exprience with shotguns. Between common sense, old Cthuhlu damage codes and wikipedia I've made a start on it, but I have no idea how accurate or realistic any of the shotgun codes are.

Anyway, if someone with more knowledge than myself could take a look over the list below, I'd be grateful. If you have anything to say/add about any of the firearms, then feel free, general input is great anyway.

I'm not sure if any other mods I'm putting in to the system are important right now, as I hungover and not thinking on a bigger scale, so I'll just past them and see where we get.

Oh yeah and I haven't got to choke settings yet, but I'm working it out in my head.

Anyway, thanks for any help in advance.



Pistol - 9mm - 4P
Pistol - 10mm - 5P -1AP
Pistol - .357 - 7P -2AP
Pistol - .50 - 8P -4AP

SMG - 9mm - 4P
SMG - 10mm - 5P -1AP

Carbine - 5.56mm - 6P -5AP
Carbine - 7.62mm - 8P -6AP

AR - 5.56mm - 6P -5AP
AR - 7.62mm - 8P -6AP

Sport Rifle - 7.62mm - 8P -6AP
Sport Rifle - 12.7mm - 12P -8AP

Sniper Rifle - 5.56mm - 6P -5AP
Sniper Rifle - 7.62mm - 8P -6AP
Sniper Rifle - 12.7mm - 12P -8AP
Sniper Rifle - 14.5mm - 15P -12AP

LMG - 5.56mm - 6P -5AP
LMG - 7.62mm - 8P -6AP
MMG - 12.7mm - 12P -8AP
HMG - 14.5mm - 15P -12AP

Shotgun - 10 bore - 10P +4AP
Shotgun - 16 bore - 12P +6AP
Shotgun - 20 bore - 14P +8AP
Shotgun - 28 bore - 16P +12AP
Shotgun - Slug -

Shotgun Bore Range

Short : Standard
Medium : -2P, +3AP
Long : -4P, +6AP
Extreme : -6P, +9AP



- Baat

Edit : Just wanted to add. I know a lot of the codes for calibre are repeated all the way along, but a couple of members of our group have no knowledge of firearms at all, so it's for their convience.

What is it with guys needing reality in a fantasy game? Most people asking for such rules have never even seen a gun IRL. But seeing you tables I take it you have helluva experience with fireamrs, so whatever.

Btw, you should add realistic rules for body armor, too.

Hi and thanks for the helpful reply

But yes, we're working on rules for body armours, but it's at an early stage yet and requires another trip to the pub at least.

If you're actually interested (I assume by your post, that you're not), then I'll post them once they're done.




- Baat

I know diddely squat about firearms, but some of the damage codes seem a bit extreme. I certainly wouldn't want to be hit by a heavy machine gun, but is it really an effectively 100% instant kill? I'll buy it for a sniper, because each round is saimed, but I'd expect a lot of glancing wounds from machine guns.

The problem with accurately modeling firearms in Shadowrun is the inherent granularity of the game. SR1-SR3 were more capable of modeling firearms accurately due to the existence of floating target numbers adding an extra level of detail. If you want a greater ability to describe the effects of firearms (which I for one don't think is necessary), utilizing or rather injecting a floating target number in SR4 may be one potential way of doing it, utilizing thresholds for special effects, or going the route you have gone. In reality the difference in calibers are nowhere near as important as shot placement. I will kill someone as effectively with a .38 as I would with a 10mm, in the grand scheme of things the round is secondary to what you hit. The system as it stands offers some variation amongst firearms, but ultimately follows what I said. How well you hit, in other words the skills of the user are going to determine success far more than what gun you are using in a particular category. Other problems you will face is having to retool body armor, and beyond that accept a much higher level of character death based on what you have presented so far (even if you upgrade armor this problem will most likely remain).

^This^

.17 Hornet or .22 LR can kill you just as dead as .45 auto.

So larger shotguns cause less damage but have substantially better armor penetration? That makes no sense on a variety of levels.

The biggest issue with those damage codes is that they totally screw up the armor system. You'd have to revise in armor ratings in light of them. They also create must-have weapons in all classes (except shotgun due to the AP silliness). No one is ever going to pick a pistol smaller than .50 and no one is ever going to pick a rifle smaller than 12.7mm

Heh, this is looking more like SR3, where big guns have a damage code of "good luck, chummer" My question is: are you making these rules just for realism's sake, or have you actually played and found that SR4 isn't deadly enough? Because if so, I think you might be doing it wrong.

no, as a matter of fact, you wouldn't want to be hit by a machinegun.

Depends on who swings it.

A 14.5mm MMG doesn't need to literally hit you to kill you. A super sonic round of that calibre as a near miss could kill you. As far as I understand it (never used one).

Edit : To say, I didn't write up the higher calibre weapon damages.



Well. The size of the bore is the number of balls within each shell. The more balls, the smaller they are. Thus a lesser amount of large balls would penetrate armour better, but do less overal damage to the victim. That's my understanding of how bore rounds work from wikipedia. Yet I have no real idea, thus asking for someone who knows what they're talking about to post.

The damage codes are otherwise fine - for my group - armour needs a slight adjustment, in terms of how it's penetrated, but nothing too major. Regardless, these are for my group and see below.



Yes. I'm half and half between SR3 and SR4 to be honest, as far as combat goes anyway. In SR3, we used Rayguns firearm rules, so no, it's not deadly nor realistic enough for us right now.



- Baat

1) A round of any size and speed will not hurt you unless you are actually hit. The near miss myth is easily debunked by looking at the holes on a paper target at a range. The holes are exactly the size of the projectile, there is no shockwave. If there was the holes would be much larger.
2) A shotgun using buckshot does not have great penetration at all. Buckshot is used principally because it spreads, making it easier to hit, and because it creates a ton of small wounds in an unarmored target, which makes for a real big mess. Against an armored target use a slug or sabot round you will have a better chance of inflicting real damage.

And yes I do know what I am talking about.

Hence the + sign before the AP. That's not -AP. Great anyway, if you wouldn't mind, can you please then write up what you think shotguns should be slug/shot.



- Baat

So, you know absolutely nothing about shotguns and you couldn't be bothered to so much as check Wikipedia, am I understanding you correctly?

The gauge of a shotgun is not directly related to the number of pellets fired or the size of those pellets. Those are determined entirely by the shell, though the bore limits shell size.

The gauge (bore) of a shotgun is the multiplicative inverse of the weight in pounds of the largest lead sphere that the barrel can accommodate. A 10 gauge can accommodate a single 1/10 pound lead sphere, for example. The exception to this is .410, which is caliber measured in inches.

I'd recommend having each group of weapons use the same caliber: Light pistols are all 5.7mm or 9 mm, heavy are all .40 or .45, etc. It comes in handy when you have them doing the Resident Evil thing of scrounging ammo from the dead.


I'm not familiar with the 14.5. I'd say a 7.62 is a MMG and a 12.7 is a HMG.


I'd keep it simple, use 12, 20, and .410 gauge shotguns (in order of biggest to smallest), and have the biggest do the most damage. (Personally, I hate shotguns IRL and I would never use one.)

Hey there and thanks.

7.62 is the standard eastern round. The AK-47, for example, uses the 7.62mm round. It's possible that some MMGs will use the 7.62mm however, so I will adjust that, but some will also be classified as "light" in SR.

I might well try for those simple shotgun ranges, I just read on Wiki that the ones I listed were the most popular, so I started there. My problem really is that I have no personal idea what kinda of damage the different bore shotguns do. What I originally wrote for them is pretty much complete guess work going on an exprience of nothing.

Thus need the help with the shotguns.

I mean, simple information would help. For example, at short ranges with a "normal" hit, will a 12 bore shotgun kill a man outright? What about a .410 bore then, etc etc.



- Baat

Edit : Oh. Forgot to add. 14.5mm is also known as .50, which you maybe more familiar with.

First off, if you really care about "Realism. Realism...the all-pervasive element in modern American cinematic vision..." then pistol and SMG rounds ARE NOT AP. I'm sorry, but low-velocity rounds like those from handguns work like driving a dowel through whatever they hit and this means that the big, fatter dowel hurts more. Bigger bullets and more energy means that it deals more damage to tissue but it's still not designed to actually penetrate armor through anything but brute force over a relatively wide area.

Second, nobody makes a 10mm SMG anymore. Heck, 10mm pistols aren't really made too much anymore.

Third, the 10mm cartridge is basically a .357 magnum power level cartridge firing a bigger, heavier bullet.

Fourth, the 5.7 x 28 FN and 4.6mm x 30mm H&K are basically AP 9mm energy level rounds. Not quite as nice as full-on APDS (which are only made for rifle calibers, btw) so I would put them at around Damage 4 AP -2.5 so round it off depending on how you feel about it.

Fifth, 00 buckshot has a per-pellet energy of a 9mm round. So while there is a fair-to-middlin' chance of multiple hits, the individual damages and ability to penetrate armor shouldn't really exceed that of a light pistol if you really want "realism".

Sixth, here's a version of the first chart as I would do it for ease of use:

Light Pistols (think .32 and .380 ACP) - 4P
Medium Pistols (think 9mm Luger and .45 ACP) - 5P
Heavy Pistols (think "Magnum" pistol calibers) - 6P
Light Rifles (think ARs) - 6P AP-1
Medium Rifles (think light sniper rifles, battle rifles and GPMGs) - 7P AP -2
Heavy Rifles (think Magnum rifle calibers) - 8P AP-2
Heavy Machineguns (.50 BMG, .51 Russian, and 14.5mm) - 9P AP-3
Light Cannon (ala Panther) - 10P AP-5

The hell it is.

1.0 caliber = 1 inch = 25,4mm --> .50 = 12,7mm

Yeah. Realism ftw and all that. I dislike hollywood shoot outs and so does my group. Only heavy calibre pistol and SMG rounds are *slightly* armour piercing on my current charts, of course all weapons vary from others (take the Five-Seven for example). The armour modifications that we're making will solve much of that mess however, but taking the current physical->stun damage to other levels and cancelling most of any damage should the weapon calibre not be enough for the armour, such as Kevlar Type 3 (or whatever it's called these days).

10mm is the basic calibre we sorted decided the Ares Predator is, as it's a very large pistol (by looking at the artistic impression size). So 5P -1 is kinda standard there anyway.

Noted on 10mm SMGs. Although if you assume the Predator is 10mm, I'm sure Ares would have knocked a few more out. Not sure anyway, I will have a think about it.

Ammunition isn't something I've/we've touched on majorly yet, I've only just done the odd few changes, such as fletchette (+2P, +4AP).

00 buckshot. Okay, I have no idea what that means, as I said, I know absolutely nothing about shotguns or their ammunition, so you may need to enlighten here to be honest. Thing is though, if each pellet has the damage and penetration of a light pistol, then a 10 bore with 10 pellets would be doing absolutely insane damage, no? I mean, can you note give me a rough damage, as you'd see it? I have 10P +2AP for a 10 bore, too high? Too low? Because I really have no idea.

One last thing. Oddly enough, my first personal rewrite up (without outside help/influence) of the firearm changes is a lot closer to yours, believe it or not. The AP is all a lot higher mind.

Assault Rifle : 5P -5AP
Sport Rifle : 6P -3AP
LMG : 8P -6 AP
MMG : 9P -8 AP
HMG : 10P -10AP

The theory goes that... if a HMG will quite nicely go through the engine block of a humvee.. uh... body armour is going to do what exactly?

Anyway, thanks for the input, appreicated.



- Baat

Stop the bullet? Just a thought...

The way I was taught is that the guage is equal to the number of lead ball the size of the inside of the barrel that equal one pound. ie. 10 balls the size of the barrel equal a 10 guage, 12 balls a 12 guage and so on, exept for the .410.

I have personally owned and hunted with a double barrel 10 gauge, pump 12 in 3 1/2 inch mag, 20 guage pump, .410 pump and several single shots ranging from 12 - .410.

The 10 guage came in a weight of 14 pounds and nearly 5 and half feet in length. Also the largest legal shotgun guage to hunt with in the USA.


My 12 guage which I still use, with 3 1/2 inch mag shells is nearly the equal to that old 10 but alot lighter and more mobile not to mention up to 5 rounds compared to 2.

As for the different sizes of pellets. In lead shot it goes 000 = triple ought buck, 00 = double ought buck, 0 = buckshot, then they start getting smaller. 1, 2, 4, 6, 7.5, 9, 12. The larger the number the smaller the shot. 12 is also called lead dust, great for blowing doors off their hinges but useless in combat farther than 7 - 10 yards. In steel and other non-lead shells, the 000 are replaced with TTT.

Standard RL combat loads are either 000 or 00 buck, slugs, sabot slugs or fletchetts. Their are also some exotic rounds out there.

Drangonsbreath is basically a shot shell loaded with black powder instead of lead shot creating a conical flame to shoot out the barrel for a few yards.

Bolo rounds are lead balls conected together with piano wire. As the shot passes through the air, the friction causes the wire to expand creating a deadly bolo. It will not catch someone running away from you, it will remove their legs, arms or head instead.

Shreader rounds are basically shells loaded with steel carpet tacks. Naisty on people and on the gun. Would not use any type of choke tube on this one.

Well... a bit to exessive I'd say. Shadowrun, as a RPG uses more or less abstract rules...and it is good that way. For the guns...I've seen a lot of (imaginary-) people being torn apart by guns in SR, I do not think they need more punch. Also a lot ist possible in matters of Body armor today... who knows what's up in 60 years. The same goes for guns but it seems the balance of it turns out to be...well just like the rules say it does. (at least in the SR setting).

*shrug* I know the M240 is a MMG that does.



Probably. I've never hit anyone with it, but a 00 buckshot load for a 12 gauge is like 8 or 9 .38 caliber rounds -- they're going to have a bad day.



Hrm. The M2 machine gun we use at work is 12.7mm.

Flechettes were tested in Vietnam in shotguns and were found to be TEH SUXOR. No real knock-down power at all and the small holes would take a while to make them bleed out as they would largely self-seal due to their minuscule size. Flechettes worked great in cannon, just not smallarms. Why they made it back into SR is a complete mystery to me...

The most common combat load for the SEALs in The 'Nam was #4 buckshot (26 pellets per round) and a duckbill choke that turned the shot pattern from a circle to a horizontal oval. Their Ithaca shotties really tore the VC up, I hear.

Dragonsbreath also adds some white phosphorous and/or magnesium to the mix there. They're a great firestarter but ruin the barrels in fairly short order.

Bolo rounds are in interesting gimmick that some putz thought up but have the approximate real-world combat value of those little couch pillows your SO insists you have for looks despite you simply tossing them off whenever you take a nap. Sure, they might be useful for something but if faced with an enemy with an assault rifle coming around the corner, you will wish you had something better.

I see shredder rounds as I see flechette rounds. Yeah, they exist if you look hard enough. Sure, they will certainly kill someone if you hit them in an important spot. Do they really do it better than the old standbys? Not even a little bit.

Winchester Super-X 12ga. 00 Buck shells apparently range from 9 pellets to 18 pellets. But, there is no such thing as a guaranteed 1-hit-kill weapon. It is always possible for the person shot to survive and it is even possible for a person to keep fighting. That's why, in a self-defense situation, you always keep shooting until the the target falls and stops moving, no matter what sort of weapon you are using.

There really isn't a good way to do shotguns realistically w/o getting into insane amounts of detail. I'm thinking (without even a tiny bit of playtest, mind you) that you could treat each success as another damage test vs a base damage of 4P or something. The wider spread of the shot could be treated as reducing their effective Reaction as one less, I guess.

Example: Your PC has had an unfortunate run-in at a local watering hole with a few 'Weeners (and we all hates them 'Weeners). He's doing pretty good for himself in this fist-fight but it turns out that the barkeep is a tad confused as to what's what and gives our (anti) hero the good news with the sawed-off she keeps behind the counter. Scoring three overall successes due to a combination of bad luck, surprise, and the -1 Reaction, our hero takes three wounds resisted at a 4P. Each is compared to armor and toughness rolls individually.

Sigh.

I'm too old and tired to keep hashing this stuff out, but it looks like I'm the only original gun nut left.

I'll direct you here to what I wrote when I had much more energy.

Other quick notes:

Firearms are not magic deathwands. Plenty of people have survived multiple center of mass hits with full power rifle rounds. Small arms should not have great base damage, people can take a surprising amount of shooting before they need to go have a lie down. Making all your weapons do something silly like 12(-6) means that even shot to a non imporant area like the arm will still blow you into bloody chunks. Nothing short of explosive cannon rounds (23+ mm) should do that to people. (Is it possible to survive hits from lighter cannon rounds like 20mm Oerlikon? Best to err in the favour of the PCs survival, I'd say).

7.62 x 51mm (7.62 NATO) is a different animal from 7.62x39 mm (7.62 Soviet) but is pretty close to 7.62x54mm (7.62R).

14.5mm is a very heavy machine gun round mostly used by light Soviet/Russian armored vehicles.

Trying to stat shotgun rounds is just about the dumbest thing ever if you really think about it. If you want RL examples it would be hard to factor all of the little variables that might matter into what shotguns can actually do. So do you have a damage code that drops down per so many meters? How much more effective is armor at a distance? What will the spread look like? Which shell should I load now? To many factors to try to stat RL shotgun damage and put it into the Shadowrun universe. Keep the rules simple, sigh deeply, and leave it at that.

Honestly one thing I would have loved to see in shotgun round is rocksalt rounds, or white phosphorous rounds. If you put a round into an unarmored or lightly armored foe it would cause a heavy penalty to all of their actions for rocksalt rounds and some kind of damage over time for the white phosphorous rounds.

I haven't seen this idea posted for statting shotguns posted on Dumpshock yet: a shotgun spits multiple small projectiles so why not just use burst fire rules with varying numbers of rounds based on the choke setting?

Say, maybe six rounds for narrow spread, four for moderate and two for wide. Use stats for a light pistol and with the extra DV from the 'burst' not applying to the armor penetration test the gun seems to be in the right ballpark as far as firepower and penetration are concerned. It also mirrors reality significantly better.

Actual burst fire with this rule makes my brain explode, however, so I'm not really sure what to think of it. Just use the simplest solution and keep adding to the burst modifier? Seems like half-assing it to me.

Anyway, as far as which bores to use, just stick with the twelve. Twenty is significantly weaker and really only exists for people who don't like twelve's recoil. .410 can be modeled just fine by sticking flechette ammo into a heavy pistol.


I just thought I should say that I really enjoyed reading those and intend to play around with them. The vehicle armor section in particular was quite interesting and gave me a few ideas of my own which I will post if anything comes of them. Very nice work.

The point is, IRL machine guns are not classified by caliber but by use. Here in Germany the 7.62x51 MG3 is used in two roles - carried around by infantry using a bipod for stabilization (classification: LMG) or used semi-stationary as point defense (on a tripod) or mounted in/on a vehicle (using a pintle-mount or stabilised mount), classified as an HMG.
To this day I do not know how a "Medium" MG is defined...

The US military classifies a machinegun by it's intended use:
A LMG shares ammunition with the current main infantry rifle and is crewed by a single soldier (like the SAW, RPD and RPK).
A MMG or GPMG is still portable by a single soldier but it is typically crewed by two soldiers. It tends to fire a heavier round that is not compatible with the current infantry rifle (like the M60 and M240).
A HMG is not considered man-portable and is typically used in static defense and as a mounted weapon. It fires a round that is much heavier and would probably severely injure an infantryman who had a basic rifle that fired these rounds (like the M2 and Kord 12.7).

Nope, won't even slow it much.

Despite what EVERY game shows, wearing body armor that doesn't actually stop the bad guys bullets doesn't actually help much, if at all. There was a Marine Corps study that showed that guys who were wearing flack vests died at a higher rate when struck by AK-47s (which goes right through the vest) than those who were not. The PI suggested that the main effect of the flack vest was to cause the bullet to destabilize and flip end-for-end inside the targets body, which doesn't normally happen with 7.62x39.

Somewhere between 12.5 and 40mm cannon you reach a point where personal body armor (even if you could walk in it) won't help even if it does stop the round. The momentum transfer is so huge that it will shatter your bones and tear off limbs.

Now you assume that the development of body armor does not progress until 2070. Even today I would not consider a flak vest body armor, not against actual weapons that is, but that's just me.

Everything has a purpose. You have the choice of being 10 feet from an M67 frag grenade wearing either flack vest and helmet, or t-shirt and jeans. Which would you chose?

That may be true, but if hit with a M2 .50 cal. ANYWHERE, I'm pretty sure that you will stop fighting. It is near instant death with any body shot, it amputates any limb it hits, and the head is red misted.

Many people will stop fighting if hit with a .22 LR anywhere. Maybe even most.

Regarding body armor, up until recently, body armor was only intended to protect from fragmentation from grenades, mortars, etc. The tech just wasn't light enough yet, and most casualties were from shrapnel anyway. (anyone know if GW1-era body armor was intended to stop rifle bullets?)

I think body armor tech will overtake weapons tech eventually, as in the next 20 years or so. Ballistic materials keep getting better, while projectile weapons are still limited by the human in the equation. Even if you use a railgun instead of gunpowder, propelling an X gram bullet to Y velocity will generate Z units of force as recoil.

I expect we will see a return to battle rifles as armor gets better, but someday when a vest as comfortable as police body armor can stop a 7.62AP round, what then? Deploy Barret sniper rifles as infantry weapons? If you are still dealing with 160lb infantrymen, you have a problem.

Ahh...yes. The old "Flak jackets don't stop bullets so they suck!" argument. This would be the case if the reality of warfare is that most wounds come from direct fire. This is not the case, however, so flak jackets saved more soldiers than those self-same soldiers realize.
The real facts point to 75-80% of wounds and lethalities in modern (WWI on) warfare being from explosions and fragments caused by those explosions. You don't believe me? Look up the causes of the vast majority wounds in WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Iraq.

No, the point of the study was to look at the effects of people wearing armor that was overmatched by the threat, as there was a school of thought that suggested that it reduced the severity of wounds. The answer is that it achieves nothing useful at best.

The interesting issue from a game design point of view is that this means that the traditional approach of any armor offering SOME protection from an attack is wrong. Armor either offers a great deal of protection (if the armor isn't overmatched by the attack) or it offers NO protection.

Quite correct.

Of course, just because armor won't stop a bullet doesn't mean that it won't protect you from a whole list of other nastiness that could have taken you out instead. Example, ballistic vests have saved more people in car crashes than from bullets by several orders of magnitude. Another example, many Vietnam vets were taken into field hospitals with AK wounds and a flak vest full of enough fragments to kill them several times over that didn't hurt them at all.

That makes sense, up to a point. I think it largely reflects the vast difference in energy between pistol/SMG bullets and fragments, and rifle bullets.

1) A bullet does essentially the same damage to you whether it leaves your body at 10fps or 1000fps.

2) A bullet needs a certain amount of energy to bore a hole through you.

3) If your armor cannot stop a bullet, or reduce the bullet's energy below the amount in #2, it isn't helping you.

HOWEVER, psychophipps point is dead on. We really are fragile bags of blood, compared to our technology.

Hello.

Sorry for the massively long delay in the reply. I'm juggling a shit ton of things right now, work and life aside, it includes three seperate RPGs (argh) which I'm DMing. Anyway!

The earlier post by psychophipps about making shotgun damage a combination of mutliple light pistol hits is a good one, but far too much rolling, which SR4 (compared to SR3) suffers from already. Which is unfortunate really, because it makes sense, but thanks for that.

Crusher Bob. Thanks for your replies and the link, very helpful and I like your material a great deal and have decided to randomly dismiss the arguments from me players right now (mostly due to balance anyway). However I STILL lack shotgun damage codes.

If anyone here has a clue about shotguns at all, I would still love a write up of what they thought was realstic for them. Bit of a shame DS seems these days, old school you'd get a ton of crap you didn't even understand before you even hit "post" =)

Anyway, I rewrote the tables, modelled after Crusher Bobs write up (which I like, because it provides minimal balance -> almost had two fatalties in two sessions, keyword *almost* 9P ftw). Have a look and comment if you feel like it, I'l be listening/preparing to comment. I did read what everyone said, so nothing is worthless, as it were.

Note : My shotgun damages and slug ranges are still based completely on absolutely zero exprience, any kind of information would be appreicated/ I noticed a lot of people comment yada yada yada and not provide a single statistic, kinda makes me think they don't know the guns or game.

Anyway, thanks for any help.


Expanding Rounds +1P +2AP
Armour Piercing Rounds -1P -4AP

Silencer -1P


Pistol - 9mm - 4P
Pistol - 10mm - 5P -1AP
Pistol - .357 - 6P -2AP

SMG - 9mm - 4P
SMG - 10mm - 5P -1AP

Carbine - 5.56mm - 5P -5AP
Carbine - 7.62mm - 6P -6AP

AR - 5.56mm - 5P -5AP
BR - 7.62mm - 6P -6AP

Sport Rifle - 7.62mm - 6P -6AP
Sport Rifle - 12.7mm - 8P -12AP

Sniper Rifle - 5.56mm - 5P -5AP
Sniper Rifle - 7.62mm - 6P -6AP
Sniper Rifle - 12.7mm - 8P -12AP

LMG - 5.56mm - 5P -5AP
LMG - 7.62mm - 6P -6AP
MMG - 12.7mm - 8P -12AP
HMG - 14.5mm - 10P -16AP

Shotgun - 10 bore - 8P +0AP
Shotgun - 12 bore - 9P +4AP
Shotgun - 16 bore - 10P +8AP
Shotgun - 20 bore - 11P +12AP
Shotgun - 28 bore - 12P +16AP
Shotgun - Slug - 6P -4AP
Short : Standard -5M
Medium : -2P, +3AP -10M
Long : -4P, +6AP -15M
Extreme : -6P, +9AP -25M

LAW - 35P -315AP (note)

Fragmentation Grenades - 12P +6AP -1/meter
Offensive Grenades - 10P +0AP -2/meter
Concussion Grenades - 10S +0AP -2/meter

40mm Dual Purpose
Vehicle Direct Hit - 9P -36AP
Personel - 10P +6AP -1/meter

25mm Dual Purpose
Vehicle Direct Hit - 8P -27AP
Personel - 10P +6AP -1/meter








- Baatorian

Your shotgun damage is backwards. The 'gauge' is a measure of how many lead (erm, it's a bit late here, it's lead isn't it?) balls that will fit down the bore that are needed to make 1 pound. So the smaller the gauge, the the larger the bore.

For comparison:
10 gauge 19.7 mm
12 gauge 18.5 mm
20 gauge 15.63 mm
28 gauge 13.97 mm

.410 ~10.40 mm (note, not gauge, but .41 inch in caliber)

Basically all shotguns made today are in 12 gauge, 20 gauge, or .410.

12 gauge is what everyone uses, 20 gauge is for young'uns and ladies, and .410 is for shooting snakes, 'possum, and similar vermin.

In general, if someone has a 10 gauge gun these days, they probably got if from the pappy or grandpappy (unless they are Fortune, who had
to trade out his old shootin' iron from one that uses that new fangled smokeless powder ). (A slight exaggeration, you can probably still buy some newly made 10 gauge guns, but the 12 gauge 3 1/2" specs have finally done it in.)

Also not that there is a very big difference between birdshot and buckshot, The Box 'o Truth has plenty of simple demonstrations, with pictures.

Also, if you have no idea of what shotgun spreads are like, a reasonably good rule of thumb is one inch of spread per yard. So if you fire at someone across the street with your shotgun (maybe 8 yards) you can expect your spread to be around 8-9 inches across. It's actually a bit wider than that, but the math for 1 inche per yard is much easier to remember.

Suppressors haven't directly slowed down bullets since WW2. They are frequently used with subsonic ammo, though. Subsonic ammo uses less powder to reduce velocity to around 1000 feet per second. The speed of sound at sea level is roughly 1100fps.

Pistol/SMG rounds are only a little faster than sound. Thus, they don't lose much power as subsonic ammo. -1P is a decent approximation.

AR/Rifle/LMG rounds are much faster, in the Mach 2.5-3 range. When these rounds are used as subsonic ammo, they give up a huge amount of energy. A 5.56mm subsonic round would have performance somewhere between the .25ACP, and the .380ACP. Not exactly impressive. 7.62mm subsonic would be similar to 9mm pistol performance. So, you are looking at holdout-light pistol performance out of your Ares Alpha...

For this reason, I believe subsonic ammo is mainly used for pistol-class weapons, and not often for rifle-class weapons. You just lose too much effectiveness.

However, a suppressed rifle with full power ammo is still very useful.

The special case for this (rare enough that it can reasonably be ignored) are rounds like the American SSK Whisper and the Russian SP-5/SP-6. These use extremely heavy bullets at subsonic velocities. Even then, you are looking at heavy pistol performance.

Unless you're using the heavier 147gr sub-sonic ammo for a 9mm or are shooting a slower round like a .45ACP and .45GAP (both of which are sub-sonic). These rounds are proving to be more than adequate in both expansion and penetration when compared to standard 9mm rounds from modern ammunition suppliers.

Yet another reason to keep the old warhorse in the race.

Easy bit first.

Ed_209a : The silencer adjustment is based off of Crusher Bob's work, not mine. However there's an additional point here. Silencers are great tools, infact, good enough to never not use one. So this adjustment does one of two things (realism aside) in that, firstly it makes people consider when they use silencers, rather than always using them and secondly, gives a nice little advantage to certain weapons with built in silencers/supressors.

Crusher Bob.

Thanks for the reply again. I think, I have got the guns the right way around, as you describe (although yeah, I did expand the gauges largely). Let me try to explain my thinking as to how I did the damage codes however.

The 10 and 12 bore at the most powerful shotguns on the list I wrote (but they do the least damage wtf!?). From reading Wikipedia and perhaps from some posts here, I came to these conclussions.

The lower the gauge, the more damage it does, because it represents a smaller amount of "largers" balls, where as say a 28 bore has many "tiny" balls. Thus against unarmoured opponents, the smaller balls would literally rip them to shreds, as each ball would penetrate their flesh and the large bore (with less balls), wouldn't cause as much damage overal, even though the holes are slightly larger.

However, as soon as armour is thrown in to the mix, the larger bores actually beginning to do more damage (8P+0AP -> 9P+4AP works as 1 bought success +1 dice). Because the larger bores are much better at penetrating armours.

So

10 bore = 8P straight damage
20 bore = 11P +12 AP (which works out to 7P with bought successes for people in armour)

I may however skip the 10 bore, start straight on the 12 bore and adjust damages accordingly to work, because at current the 12 bore would work out slightly less effective than a 20 bore against an armoured targetted. Maybe I'll add an additional +2 AP per step up.

That was my theory anyway.



- Baatorian

I hope I didn't sound overly critical of your work, Baatorian. I certainly didn't mean "do it like this or you are stupid!" I meant it as an optional rule for groups who want a little more technical accuracy. -1DV certainly doesn't break the game.

I agree fully about the utility of suppressors. I would have several except for the expense of owning them legally. Incidentally, suppressors have a bad rap in the US, because "only murderers and terrorists use them". Finland has a much better "suppressor culture". There, they look at it as a way to hunt or target shoot with out bothering your neighbors as much. Polite, eh?


You might think about the gauge as the cargo capacity of the round. A larger bore can hold more powder and throw more lead, whether one slug, or a handful of pellets. All shotguns can fire buckshot, all shotguns can fire bird shot.

The size of the shot fired out of a shotgun is independent of its gauge.

The smallest types of shot are called 'birdshot' and the larger types of shot called 'buckshot'. The gauge of the shotgun mostly determines the amount of shot of a particular size that will fit into a single shell.

You'll shoot a small birds (dove, quail) with #8 shot or so (around .09 inches in diameter), you'll shoot at bigger birds (ducks, geese, turkey) with around #4 shot (around .13" in diameter).

for deer, the popular load is mostly #00 buck which is .33 inches in diameter, though some people prefer #4 buck (different from #4 shot) which is .24 inches in diameter.

Here's some rough estimates of the number of pellets in common shotgun loads:

20 gauge:
#8 (~.09 inch diameter, small birds) ~500 pellets
#4 (~.13 inch diameter, bigger birds) ~165 pellets

#3 buck (.25 inch) 20 pellets

12 gauge:
#8 (~.09 inch diameter, small birds) ~640 pellets
#4 (~.13 inch diameter, bigger birds) ~215 pellets

#4 buck (.24 inch diameter) 27 pellets
#00 buck: (.33 inch diameter) 9 pellets

This is assuming lead shot; steel shot has different numbers of pellets.
Steel shot changes things some, since the steel balls are lighter; the loadings are different.

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#8 shot out of a 12 gauge would probably so something like 3P (+6)
#4 shot something like 3P (+4)

In general, a 9mm pistol (4P) is going to be better at killing unarmored targets, since the birdshot will not reliably penetrate deep enough into the body to threaten vital organs, large blood vessels, etc. In addition, even very heavy clothing (like motorcycle leathers) can provide a real penetration challenge for birdshot.

The #4 buck and #00 buck would be about the same damage, around 8P (+3)

For a 20 gauge, reducing the damage by 1P probably is OK, buckshot out of a 20 gauge would be around 7P (+3), the birdshot damage probably staying around the same.

One thing to keep in mind is that modern silencers, and thus those found in SR, are no longer crappy. They actually increase accuracy and muzzle velocity as they're basically a longer barrel and the worlds best muzzle crown in one handy, dandy unit. This said, suppressors (the true name of silencers regardless of size and caliber) are seeing a dramatic increase in police and military use for the last five or so years. Heck, the new Marine sniper rifle comes OEM with a top mounted optics rail and a Surefire muzzle brake/suppressor mount and many also come with a Surefire can (suppressor).
If you've ever fired a rifle (or pistol for that matter) in an enclosed space then you know intimately why SWAT and other tactical teams engaging targets in urban terrain see suppressors as being the frickin' shiznit. Add to it the fact that a modern M4 can weighs about a pound, has a shot-life of over 10,000 rounds, only adds four inches to overall length with diminished muzzle flash, reduces muzzle blast in enclosed spaces, enhanced (yes, you're reading it correctly) accuracy, and dramatically increases your units stealth, and you can see why it will actually probably be rare for a SR assault rifle/carbine to not have an integral or attached suppressor if used by anyone even halfway serious.

Interesting stuff.

I wonder what happened to Hullbreach and Raygun? Those are the 'gun nuts' I remember best from when I first joined DS. Glad to see we still have Crusherbob! (Thanks for sticking about Uncle Bob )

In my gaming experience no one bothers with shotguns anyway, and most people exclusively use heavy pistols for their concealment value, pulling out drone mounted LMGs when hiding is no longer important. I also don't think they much need an increase in their damage rating, since the gun bunny street sam almost always manages one shot one kill due to a silly dice pool - and my now legendary at the table bad luck with dice (I have managed a critical glitch on 12 dice more than once).

Still, more power to you folk working to make realistic rules. One of these days I'll run a much grittier street level campaign, and will probably find them very handy.