What, 25% more? Most weapons are under 2000 so I don't see that as too big a factor. Hell, you pay that much a premium to get a left-handed guitar these days.

For the argument that there would be a problem due to getting in ammo for the VHP in the army, well, how many types of ammo are already in use? 9mm pistol, .45 ACP, SMG ammo (may be the same as pistol ammo), P90 ammo, assault rifle ammo, sniper rifle ammo (various calibers), LMG, MMG, HMG, and so on.
So, I would say it would not be a problem to get VHP ammo in a military unit.

For the argument that they would issue them with MGs or PACs, well, that is fine, as long as you are in the field, with long sight lines. Once you get them into built up areas, they will need another weapon (their back up weapon?)

Special forces would probably love to have a pistol with extreme stopping power for close quarters combat, be the wielder a troll, or heavily augmented human, orc or elf.
Bodyguards would love to have that same stopping power, one shot take down, even if the target is a car (tis why I asked if it could cause problems to the engine block of a vehicle) that is trying to run down their client.

For a comparison of today, do you really need an assault rifle to go hunting, bamby hunting? No, but there is a large number of assault rifles that have been sold so that their owners could go hunting if they so wanted. It is partly status symbol, partly self-defence. If you could effectively wield bigger guns, then more people would own them.

The only argument that I have heard against VHP that had me pause a bit, was the one about game balance. Which is why I originally said that I couldn't see barrel attachements for VHP, to treat them like heavy weapons, so no nifty silencer. No silencer, massive noise everytime it is shot, most likely having the report automatically upgraded to HTR response, fast mage astral scouting, and in general, a higher and faster response all around, due to the fact that either trolls or augmented humand, ork or elves involved (responders are probably praying that it not be augmented trolls).

Will I go out and immediately create these? No.
I will look at it if a player asks, or if I come up with a good plot line for them, or someone else does all the work and I can lift their efforts into my world.

The P-90 isn't part of the use arsenal? I thought it was, which is why I included it, as it is a different caliber than the usual 5.56, it is a 5.7. As well, there is a pistol that uses that ammo, the FN Five-seveN. Is that not also part of the US arsenal?

Again, I was under the impression that the 45 ACP pistol was still part of the US arsenal as well.

Don't the Marines use a 30-06 sniper rifle? or am I confusing them with someone else?

Neither the FN F-N or P90 are even type classified for the US military AFAIK, let alone in use in significant amounts. I cannot rule out the possibility that lone US servicemen, especially as part of special operation forces, might personally make use of those weapons, but they are not part of the US Army inventory.

.45 ACP handguns are in use by the US Marine Corps (the MEU(SOC) pistols) and some other special forces units (M1911s, Mk 23 Mod 0s). Someone can check the other procurement budgets (I can't connect to finance.hq.navy.mil at the moment for some reason), but .45 ACP doesn't appear in the US Army procurement budgets at all between 2005 and 2009.

Obviously there are small arms in other calibers in use in the US Armed Forces -- shotguns, .22 LR special purpose weapons, and .300 Winchester Magnum sniper rifles, for example -- but the numbers are so small that I felt limiting my above message to the "major small arms" was not misleading. "Special purpose weapons", like the VHP would be if it ever did come into any kind of use by militaries, would simply fall outside the ammo standardization systems, and would only see use by special operations forces when there is an overriding need for one and no pre-existing weapon system would fill the role as well.

Well until very recently (from a historical standpoint) it wasn't uncommon for troops to provide some of ther own weapons and ammo. A great example of this is that in WW2 while the Germans were issued the Luger, many chose to purchase and use Mausers instead.

In the American Civil War (or the War of Northern Agression for you southern types) there are several examples of wealthy officers to nearly bankrupting themselves to outfit their units with the latest and most advanced weapons availible.

I have an uncle who actually had his girlfreind mail him his shotgun while he was in Viet Nam.

There has been talk in some circles nowadays about allowing troops to provide their own sidearms if they choose, but I (sadly) think its just wishful thinking.

Ammo standardization doesn't really hurt the VHP because a VHP could use standard rifle or machine gun ammo.

One problem with implementing this in SR3 is that rifle ammo is less able to pierce armor than pistol ammo is due to game balance decisions, meaning that putting rifle cartridges into a pistol will make it less effective rather than more effective. The better solution is a very heavy rifle which uses heavy pistol ammo.

Now you're just getting into an even smaller fringe. Sure, maybe there are officers in the US army today who pack their own personal .50AE DEagles as a sidearm, but if there are more than a handful I'd be very, very surprised.

You're clutching at ever smaller straws Knasser.

And X-Kaliber, if you don't think a 25% premium is a big deal, then you can send some of your extraneous wealth my way; I take paypal.

I think you hit the nail on the head with that one Knasser!

The other point to be made here is that when your arming yourself for defense, you don't take 'just enough' you take the biggest baddest thing you can use effectively.

For me, in day to day life, this is a compact .45. For a Troll in 2070, this might very well be a cut-down assault rifle or a custom ultra-heavy pistol.

Why would a troll pack a standard heavy pistol with oversized grips when he can use a much more powerful weapon?

Hmmm..
..There's VHPs in various films - Hellboy's pistol, for instance.

I'm sure I remember a Troll Pistol from my SR games [a big pistol, firing shotgun rounds]..
..But maybe that was something I put together for PC enjoyment !!


Synner667

I'd like to point out that body armor/armored drones and big critters are separate issues that one relatively compact handheld firearm is not likely to solve even at very close range. For armored targets, you want high velocity projectiles with a small frontal area, while against trolls and such you want very heavy bullets that crush as large a hole as possible. The only way to get both is absolutely massive, extremely dense, hardened core bullets at high velocities -- basically large caliber magnum rifles -- and those just don't make sense for human-sized combatants out of what is still basically a handgun.

Right now, 7.62x51mm rifles are better weapons against armored targets than any production handgun, including monstrosities like the .460 and .500 S&W revolvers. If armor gets harder, the obvious counter is to tune up long arms -- not handguns, which are by their nature far less capable of dealing with armor. It's also not very likely to run into very heavily armored targets at extremely close quarters, so there's not much call for a particularly compact, powerful armor piercing weapon. So militaries will mostly keep going in the direction they're moving in now: high velocity ammunition with extremely hard and dense, probably subcaliber cores for all rifle-caliber weapons, and let handguns be crap against armor.

The one use I can think of for VHPs in a military is for units that may be forced to engage big critters (trolls etc.) in close quarters, and are big and strong enough themselves to handle handguns in the .440 Cor-Bon - .500 S&W range without trouble. This would allow them to carry both a long-range, accurate, potentially effective armor piercing weapon, like a battle rifle in 7.62x51mm or similar, and the VHP, and be capable of engaging a wide variety of targets in different conditions without having to carry two or more long guns.

For trolls in the military, I think the first thing they'd do is outfit M2HB HMGs with rifle stocks and grips and wield those as battle rifles. Should they be forced to engage in CQB, I suppose handguns or shortened carbines in hefty calibers would come in handy -- but I don't see those happening other than as custom pieces one at a time or in very small numbers unless some military actually had a whole lot of trolls, which is unlikely for most conventional national militaries.

All new handguns designs for trolls, if they came about, would most likely be driven solely by private demand, just all handguns beyond .45 ACP are in the real world.

[Edit].44 Remington Magnum, benchmark, rather large and deep holes, poor performance against any kind of armor:
240gr bullet at 1400fps with 21 grains of propellant from a 3lb gun = 15.9ft-lbs of recoil energy at 18.5fps.

.500 S&W, seriously big and seriously deep holes (has been successfully used for hunting elephants), will penetrate soft body armor ca. 2007 but largely useless against rigid body or vehicle armor:
440gr bullet at 1650fps with 42grs of propellant from a 4.5lb gun = 50.6ft-lbs of recoil energy at 26.9fps.

.338 Lapua Magnum, big and deep holes, will penetrate any body armor ca. 2007, can threaten any light AFVs with dedicated AP rounds:
250gr bullet at 2750fps with 95grs of propellant from a hypothetical 4.5lb VHP = 92.3 ft-lbs @ 36.3fps

.416 Weatherby Magnum, holes as big and deep as .500 S&W with solid projectiles, will penetrate armor at least as well as .338 Lapua:
400gr @ 2400fps w/ 115grs from a hypothetical 5lb VHP = 132ft-lbs @ 41.2fps

So to get good armor penetration along with serious wounding potential against troll-sized critters from a handgun, you'd be getting recoil around twice as hefty as on a .500 S&W revolver. To get wounding potential as good as the most powerful handgun calibers along with good armor penetration, you're looking at recoil close to three times as bad. Plus once you get to that point, your "handgun" is so large that any handling advantage in close quarters is negated anyway, so might as well go for a long range armor piercing rifle and a separate close range, big critter slaying weapon when necessary.[/Edit]

If you intend for them to do as much damage as Sniper Rifles do in canon SR (either 3rd or 4th edition, I think), then absolutely yes, along with the damage dealing effects from Cannon Companion or something similar. To get that kind of ballistics from a compact handgun you need a ridiculously powerful cartridge, and that means absolutely punishing recoil.

If you just want to make them do about as much damage as a shotguns while making them very heavy and bulky for handguns, just double recoil is perhaps enough. As long as all the other potential balancing factors are there.

The problem is "heavy weapons recoil" is sort of silly anyway because of how recoil is calculated. If you're firing an SS weapon (which these pistols would likely be), you'd never suffer recoil anyway. Remember also that "heavy weapons recoil" only doubles uncompensated recoil, so if you have a single point of recoil compensation, you still don't suffer any ill-effects. The only point that it becomes a problem is if you're using the "sawed-off assault rifle" suggested earlier.

1) Don't allow recoil compensation on these guns. Problem solved.

2) In SR3, 12S Heavy Weapon without a gyro stabilization unit (and no, a cyberarm one doesn't count) = ouch. That's 6L Stun for every shot fired, and with double recoil you also need 2 successes on a TN 6 knockdown test not to fall on your ass. A 10S Heavy Weapon is just about bearable if you've got a very high Body, but beyond that it gets really harsh.

Ok, I've already countered your arguments, but since you summarised your arguments, here's my summarised counters:

A newborn troll has a body of 6, which is better than most adult human athletes.
With six times the disease resistance of newborn humans and elves, infant mortality rates for trolls should be 1/6 that of humans and elves in similar conditions, 1/3 that of dwarves, and 2/3 that of orks. All things being equal, troll children have the greatest potential survivability in adverse conditions.
Heck, a troll kid is highly likely to survive being mauled by a lion, stabbed with a combat knife, or shot point-blank with a light pistol.
That is one of the reasons that trolls are so scary. They can survive in conditions that would devastate a human population.

Of course, there will be infant mortality amongst trolls, even in posh affluent neighborhoods. The laws of probability demand it. Even so, the per-capita troll infant mortality rate in a given area will be far lower than the per-capita infant mortality rate of any other race in that area.

While I might disagree with some of your exact numbers, I completely agree with your overall point, hyzmarca.

Ok it seems like we are talking about different things here. We already have heavy pistol sizes for humans. I was thinking of a VHP as using rifle rounds and not pistol rounds. The guns would be very solid and heavy. They might be more uncommon but the rifle rounds would be normally available. Only a trolls and heavily cybered would be able to fire something with that kind of recoil.

back to topic, for VHP... how about the good old contender line?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thompson_Center_Arms
Granted it's not a semi automatic pistol.

Trolls are usually born from troll parents and usually goblinize from human parents. Sometimes trolls goblinize from troll parents but the are never born from human parents, which should be a relief to human women everywhere. I don't believe that the human pelivs is wide enough to make that work.

Convenient late-term miscarriages and suspicious SIDs cases are generally reserved for Elves and Dwarves.

that's what I thought. Ah well, SIDS then for elves and dwarves... and well, the kids who goblinize, I guess they're still learning their new bodies so they might 'accidently' fall down those stairs and break their necks...

I thought that goblinization occurred either at birth or at puberty. Your not going to have them pop up at 4. (though that might be funny )

oh no, I meant when they hit puberty too. you know, take the kid out for fishing and such and they happen to drown in 3' of water for some reason... yikes. ok, enough of these bad evil thoughts about evil parents who can't handle their children being metas.

Ok again. In, to my knowledge, each SR system the biggest handgun does MORE damage than a full length rifle. MORE not LESS.

Therefore SR handgun manufacturers already went past "chambering rifle rounds in handguns" and kept going. In fact, since in each SR chopping down a rifle to SMG length reduces the damage code to that of an SMG (go on look up the AK carbine), it means that whatever they have in handguns now has to squint to see back to the time of only having rifle rounds in those chambers. Similarly the biggest handguns do more damage than the biggest shotguns reduced to handgun lengths (At least in SR3 in the cannon companion).

If you want something for trolls/sammies let them have a shotgun that's sawed down to only a 14 inch barrel. To my knowledge in real life that still gives you nearly all the power from the shotgun. Going much shorter starts eating in to velocity. But a troll should be able to hide a ~16 inch weapon on their person. Just remember to reduce the range.

And don't forget to add house rules for the recoil those "regular" heavies should have. SR lets a toddler fire a ten gauge without a penalty because it makes it easy on book keeping. But if your players want bigger guns make them realize the ones they have aren't .22's. Or even .50's probably.

EDIT: Just remembered when my little brother first fired a shotgun. He didn't snug it up sufficiantly against his shoulder and didn't spread out his legs right. The results were hilarious!

SR4 Ares Predator 15 round detachable magazine, 5P damage -1AP, Semi automatic.
SR4 Super Warhawk 6 round Cylinder, 6P damage -2AP, Single Shot, may not mount a silencer.
SR4 Ruger 100 5 round internal magazine, 7P Damage -1AP, Semi-automatic
SR4 Remington 990 8 round internal magazine, 7P Damage -1AP (for slugs), Semi automatic.
SR4 Ares Alpha 32 Round detachable magazine, 6P damage -1AP integral 2 points of recoil compensation, Semi automatic, burst fire, and full auto capable.

Where was the Heavy Pistol out performing the rifle again? Nowhere.

3rd edition:

Ares Pred 9M
Super Warhawk 10M
AK-97 8M
HK227 (SMG) 7M
Remington 750 7S

So a predator has a bigger round than an AK or an SMG, but presumably around the same size or smaller than a hunting rifle.