Now it's a fairly commonly held fact that a combat character needs high skills with weapons or spells. It's obvious, and it makes sense.

However, that is only one part of the equation.

Other important aspects of a combat character are their ability to dodge attacks and soak damage, along with their initiative.

So, how important is each aspect to a combat-focused character? Is a high enough weapon skill the be-all and end-all? Is an all-rounder the way to go? or how about just maxing out initiative and dodge plus throwing enough points into the other areas to be competent?

thats what 3 of my 4 SR5 Chars are working on (the 4th is a Supporter/Buff/Healer) not getting hit and dishing out lots of damage is a good way to be combat effective.
to be effective in a second Area is also a boon for the Group (one Char will become an outdoor scout, one will be Rigger/Teamdriver and the third I don't know yet but I've got time to develop them they're just at the beginning of their career (10,15 and 30 ,35 Karma so far )

HokaHow
Medicineman

Might be fair to suggest that "not dying" is the first priority, really.

Initiative dice and above average skills are so far what's proving effective at my table. I've got one player that's been consistently in the high teens, and another in the low twenties, and in one round of combat during the last session the two of them alone took out three opponents that quickly ran out of dice to dodge with.

Application of skill also helps. From the above, the faster one is not all that skilled in Intimidation, yet he knows right when to apply that skill for a mess of extra dice for 'convincing' the opposition to just give it up.

I agree, but importantly, not the only priority

In our game 2 of the players both made Ork characters who's primary focus was soaking damage. They each rolled something over 25 dice for soaking and didn't take penalties to actions until they were nearly dead. The problem was this cost them so much that they weren't very good on the offensive. They never won initiative, so they always got shot first (which they didn't mind). One of them beat a samurai assassin guy in a melee just through attrition - staying alive long enough to get lucky and land a couple of hits, soaking up sword blows. They weren't great as the team's only Sams though. Doesn't look like they'll be around too long now though

That's kind of my point with this thread. Any one element in a vacuum does not make a combat character. I don't care that you have 30 dice with every weapon ever invented, you've only got 3 body and 8+1d6 initiative. That's not going to cut it.

Actually, that's an interesting question: How does a character with a 'Decent' dice pool in each part of the equation (Offence, Dodge, Soak, Initiative) stack up against a character who's decided to excel in one or two areas at the expense of others?

If those two areas are longarms and stealth probably not well.

I haven't played enough characters to say, but I'm really pleased with my most recent (and only in SR5) attempt at a decent Sammie.

Sheet:


Soak of 17 (plus one automatic for PFacs)
18 Dice with his primary (ARs)
Initiative 11+2D6
15 Dice Unarmed doing 11P damage

He's also pretty easy to upgrade a little in ways I didn't do for character reasons. Eg. He has no smartlink, and is wearing an armour vest instead of an armourjack (3 soak) because of the mission we're in.

edit: There's a few other areas that would be cut if you were going min-maxed super sam, like his Biotech, Influence and Electronics groups, and a couple of his lower skills. He's, I think, quite well rounded.

I've played SR1 through SR4, but not SR5 yet. Through all the earlier editions, among deadly shooters and magicians, going first was the most important.

The absolute necessity for speed has been somewhat lessened (IMO) by the prevalence of Edge to overrule initiative rolls, but also because you're limited to the attacks you can make (for better or worse), which to an extent limits the damage your "first strike" Sammie types get to do. Base damage is higher than base armor, so folks tend to be more glass cannony in my experience, making survivability a little more important to combat effectiveness; in a one-on-one fight the way to do that is to go first and kill the other motherfragger, but most of the time 'runners are outnumbered, so just going first doesn't cut it any more (you need to have a gimmick for durability/longevity, too).

I think first and foremost you need to know that you are in a fight. Stealth and other methods of screwing with the other guy's perception can quite effectively remove the advantage of speed and Edge in initiative. Once you know you are in a fight, you got to know where the other guy is. If you do not know where to shoot, you can spray and may God help you.

I tend to agree with Toturi that perception is an absolute must. Surprise is a killer in any edition of Shadowrun.


I realize I haven't played as much SR5 as others, but I haven't seen anybody go down in one shot yet, PC or NPC. Everyone that's dropped has been a result of multiple hits. Being outnumbered and caught in a crossfire is dangerous, but I'm still not seeing the increased lethality, even though base damage has gone up. I blame some of this on Limits-- unless you spend Edge, there's a hard limit on how much damage you can do-- but even on Edged shots I haven't seen a one-hit takedown.

That said, a higher initiative not only means more attacks, it means more defense dice. If you have to use an active defense, a higher initiative means you can do so more often, and possibly even still act if you rolled high enough. Since IME multiple attacks is what kills, I'd lean towards initiative being the most important factor.


In theory? Higher initiative and offense will cream him. Even if their offense and defense are relatively equal, the "decent" character is likely to take damage, which means wound penalties. In turn, that means he can't return fire as effectively. If the attacker has both a higher initiative and a higher offense, theoretically that means he'll not just go first, he'll overwhelm the decent character's defense, and either drop him or saddle him with enough penalties that the counterattack will be easy to avoid, even assuming a weaker dodge/soak.

Tactics, tactics, tactics.

The best Attributes and Skills in the world mean jack if you don't know how to apply them. The world's best marksman can be killed by the world's worst shot because some weapons don't need to be aimed. The world's most indestructible damage sponge can be defeated by the weakest of non-combatants simply by getting locked in a sturdy room and thus neutralized. The deadliest of street samurais can't manage to kill the sickliest of the frail if they're on the wrong side of bulletproof glass. Every strength has a counter, every weakness a protection.

~Umi

We had a PC go down in 1 shot, and another who'd also have gone down in 1 shot if not for the barrier our mage had in place. Granted we're talking about Himori (now Hanna) and Darkblade (now Darkraider), AKA the two worst built combat specialists to ever run the shadows, but even so there are incidents of it happening within the last two days. Not impossible, in other words.

A counterattack on our specialist with full auto means that even with wound penalties he's not going to be dodging, and with a low soak pool he's likely to be looking worse at the end of the first exchange than the generalist.

Then he kills the generalist in the start of action phase two before the generalist has a chance to take him down.

Yes, tactics matter a great deal. Things like cover and lighting can dramatically improve your chances of surviving a fight.

That said, I'm still having issues with lethality. Case in point: An Ares Predator has an Accuracy of 7. That means, if the opponent completely fails to dodge, he's taking a maximum of 15 damage. Which is a lot, but builds mentioned in this thread have 25 soak dice. It's not unlikely that they'll survive the shot, and turn around and shoot back.

I'm not saying it's impossible, just that I have yet to actually see it happen. It's actually a little frustrating, because I haven't even been able to drop mooks in one hit, and some really tough customers have survived really nasty attacks. In the first Missions module, we had a war of attrition going with the sniper. He hit the sample street sam three times, and he was still fighting; I hit him with an Edged shot for 16 successes and he still got away.

Given a generalist? Unless you're built for full-auto (specialized, in other words) you're going to have a problem dealing with escalating recoil modifiers. Yeah, the other guy isn't going to have much Dodge dice left, but you're also not as likely to do a lot of damage, because you won't have a lot of net successes.

Now, if you're specialized in full-auto, that's a different story. Initiative + Full Auto sounds like a nasty combination.

Unless the damage is enough to change the initiative order




I aren't really sure where your problem is with the system though. A game system where armoured targets are routinely one-shotted with pistols isn't really all that playable (or realistic, given the pistol wound death statistics someone quoted a couple of weeks ago). Fair enough, you haven't seen anyone one-shotted yet, but the numbers clearly show that it can and will happen. I think it happens often enough. If you're one-shotting opponents then they can one-shot you. An assault rifle rolled to limit would do 18 damage. Average successes on 24 soak dice (which is high) is 8, leaving 10 damage - a full wound track for most people.

By all the things that can matter, that will go wrong and you didn’t had the karma or nyuen for.
8 Points of Edge.
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Have a minimum initiative of 12.
Have 3 Edge or more.
Have a range attack with 12 dices or more with dmg + ap of 10 or more.
Have willpower of 4 or more.
Have Reaction plus Intuition of 10 or more.
Have 14 points of Armor or more.
Have 11 hitboxes or more.
Know a competent healer you can trust with your life and is available for you.

edit:
1. This way you always have 2 initiative passes an can compensate 1 injurie.
2. Experience ... 1 is a no go and 2 is often 1 to short.
3. 12 attack dices are a sure thing to hit a defenseless target and with an average roll of 4 hits you have a good chance to beat the standard goonie.
4. 4 is a good and affordable number for willpower. It helps again Magic and is good for full defense.
5. This way you can calculate with 3 hits on your defense roll and compensate difficulties.
6. So you get stun and not physical damage. In combination with Stims, is that a good way to keep rolling/running.
7. This way you can soak a lucky hit.
8. No matter how good or lucky at one point you will need one.

Untrue. You are also talking about the need to have the best Attributes and Skills in the world, although from a different direction. The applicable Attribute to a Tactical Knowledge Skill are one of the skill sets that are essential.

I'm not talking character Knowledge Skills, I'm talking player mentality.

Your character is supposed to be a career criminal, but many players don't have the experience or knowledge to know how to act that way and succeed. Consequently we end up with players who build their characters to fight harder instead of smarter - they pump up their character's skills and attributes to make up for their own lack of criminal cleverness. They essentially brute force any problems they find by throwing more dice at them, rather than finding ways to not have to hurl so many cubes around instead.

In reality, Shadowrunners wouldn't be world class skilled individuals (because then you could just get into a legitimate job without risking life and limb), they'd be mid level schmoes who take every advantage they can get and know when to fight and when not to. A realistic Shadowrunner should have non-optimal stats, and should succeed almost entirely by making better choices than the next guy.

~Umi

You should be.

The player may or may not have the skills to act the part, but if the character does not have the skills, then he should not have the ability to do whatever he is doing. In essense, he should not and cannot find ways to not have hurl so many cubes around instead, because the ability to make better choices is an aspect of the character and not the player. To not roll dice (or as much dice) in one area, he should be able to roll dice in another because that is in effect making a test to see if the character has the mental acumen to finesse his way around the situation.

This attitude is hopelessly unrealistic. By that logic, we must force all characters of Logic 1/2 characters to play like idiots, all characters who don't specifically have high tactical skills to make bad combat decisions and so on. You'd need detailed tables describing exactly how smart you're allowed to play it with low logic and/or tactical skills. "Oh, you want to flank them? Sorry you only have logic 2 and tactics 2, so you are only allowed to make frontal assaults". Or perhaps a table based on hits allowing you to make tactical decisions.

Equally by the same logic, any time a player did something dumb, the ref would have to be "NOPE! Hold up! Making a logic + tactics test!" "Aha, six hits, your PC is too smart to do that, so try something else".

The entire game would then bog down into "mother-may-I", as any smart play had to be confirmed by the ref as acceptable. Which is just silly. It might make some vague sense on paper (not much, but some), but in an actual game? I don't think so. It's one thing to RP it a bit. It's another to rules-lawyer at length (using rules which don't even exist!) about how smart players are allowed to play.

It's clearly not intended to played the way you suggest, either, given Run and Gun (and perhaps even SR5 itself, I forget) contains detailed instructions on how to play smart, but doesn't say "A character will need X and Y to play this smart" or "A character will need Z hits to choose to do this".

Also, as you say yourself "The Zeroth Law: Thou shalt have fun." - Limiting characters from making sound tactical decisions simply because they don't have the right stat + skill is not fun. It's "mother-may-I".

Yay.


Not so much this, though if somebody has a Logic of 1 and a middling intuition, they shouldn't be coming out with complex assault plans, large words, and fonts of information about the world. That's just bad roleplaying. Is the guy with 1 charisma and no social skills playing as a charming but awkward scamp? Bad roleplaying. That's the equivalent of the 1 Str decker picking up a sword, spending no edge, and 1 shotting a full-health cybered-up Troll tank. All of those are broken, but on tables that "ignore stats" the last one is the only one that won't be ignored.

(4e) I've played characters taking into account both stats and skills; a Black Magic tradition "shaman" elf with soft-capped Charisma and no social skills that was charming, but often put her foot in her mouth (on purpose). Decker with mid-to-low willpower that let himself be pressured into things he wasn't comfortable with (wouldn't work as well in 5e due to Willpower as a defense). It's not that hard to take those things into consideration, and then curse yourself for not having the stats to back up making good recommendations that you, the player, would know about.

In my opinion, if you've got the right to ignore stats that are weak on your character, then I have the right to ignore stats that are weak on my character, regardless of the stat. That's fair and equitable, even if it means a Bod 1 sickling gets to ignore the full auto burst of your guns.

i just make sure my dude is able to be both fast enough and competent to chop off the hands of any hacker messing with my expensive ware, and able to get the frag away if i can't do it w/out a team

Agree completely with the "tactics" mentioned above. If they're firing back, you've already screwed up somewhere.

I find most gamers are what I call "McDojang Meanies". They see some cheesy anime meanie-heads on the boob tube and think that's where nasty ends. Kicking someone in the nads is the nastiest thing they can imagine. I'm a curb-stomping, ball crushing, eye-poking, bite their fucking nose off kind of nasty. I purposefully fight when it suits me and fade away when it doesn't. Axe murder while they're asleep? Shiiiit, that's where my nastiness meter starts, it only gets worse from there.

It is roleplaying your character. Do you allow someone who has very good real life pistol skills to make the shot without a roll? If you choose to make a stupid character, then please roleplay the stupid character with no tactical skill as a stupid character with no tactical skill.

I do not limit the character from making sound tactical decisions. The character should have sound tactical skills to make sound tactical decisions. Otherwise, no roleplay karma.

100% agreement from me. I'm a big-time tactical fighter and I always play characters with at least decent perception skills. Playing Bulldog, an uneducated Ork ganger with the perception skill of "I got nuttin" was a real pain at first. Everyone is looking at me for tactical advice and I'm just giving them a blank look and "I got nuttin" even though I was about popping my seams trying to tell them to flank or something.

The thing is, I was complaining about the other side of the equation - when a player has the tactical sense of an uneducated ganger, but they know that if they throw enough dice at something it will die and their lack of tactics won't matter.

I don't see very many players who make Logic 1 characters and then control the battlefield like a modern day Napoleon or Alexander the Great. But I see plenty of players who max out their Agility and Weapon skill on their elite badass cyborg ninja assassins, and then just bust in the front door because they rely on dice instead of the brains their characters realistically should have. I've even seen characters with fully appropriate Knowledge skills who just decided they'd rather bumrush a group of Red Samurai with a combat axe than do anything remotely tactical. Because dice.

~Umi

Xykon's Law - There exists, in any confrontation, a level of force against which no amount of strategy or tactics can prevail. The full quote (emphasis added):

"Hey, you know what really gets under my skin? Proverbially, of course? A century of wizards looking down their damn noses at me. Energy Drain! I know people think I'm stupid. Because I'm not a wizard. Because I get bored easily. Because I have no interest in strategy or tactics or contingency planning. Energy Drain! But see, I've learned a lot over the years since I died. A lot more than I learned during my life. And now I see that planning doesn't matter. Strategy doesn't matter. Only two things matter: Force in as great a concentration as you can manage, and style. And in a pinch, style can slide. Energy Drain! In any battle, there's always a level of force against which no tactics can succeed. For example, all I need to do is keep smacking you with Energy Drains, and soon you won't be able to cast any of your fancy spells at all. Energy Drain! Because yes, I am a sorceror - and this magic is in my bones, not cribbed off of "Magic for Dummies." And I can keep casting the same friggin' spell at you until you roll over and die. You can have your finely-crafted watch - give me the sledgehammer to the face any day. ENERGY DRAIN!"

Edit: as a side note, it's a GM's responsibility not to invoke Xykon's law, even (especially) in the face of power gamers. In fact, a GM should always have tactics/strategy that can deal with a power gamer, otherwise they'll never learn.

100% agreement again. This is where the "15+ dice or you're a chump!" concept comes in. I guarantee I can take a bunch of 8 to 9 dice characters and burn half the damn city down.

As some folks here know, I never got into D&D, but I just went and looked up Energy Drain, and boy does it sound stupidly powerful, and the lingering effects are pretty much bullshit in a jar.

That said, you know how you beat Energy Drain? Employ superior numbers. Or be able to consistently avoid the "ranged touch attack" (should really be called something else, but whatever). Or catch the sorceror by surprise in an ambush. Or obstruct the sorceror's ability to move and prevent the Somatic component of the spell. Or obstruct the sorceror's ability to speak and prevent the Verbal component of the spell. Or employ some form of Spell Resistance. Or break line of sight. Or any of countless other ways of dealing with the problem than just trying to rush headlong into it.

It really kind of destroys his argument. He suggests some thing are just so powerful that tactics won't help you - and for an example of this, he uses a spell that can be tactically defeated in quite a number of ways.

Or perhaps some of them would be more appropriately called strategic choices? Choosing not to fight, for example, is probably more strategy than tactics. But the point stands. Your enemy only has an advantage in certain circumstances - if you don't want them to have that advantage anymore, change the circumstances. It's that simple.

~Umi

Part of the problem is speed of play. In systems where mooks go down in one hit, the action flows better and things are more cinematic. Even in Shadowrun, a few mooks or a couple of ghouls aren't a serious threat; they're more meant to wear you down until the boss shows up. And if you tell me the system was designed so you can't one-shot the big bad guy, I'm fine with that.

However, clearing a room full of mooks is only fun for so long, then it becomes a chore. The longer the battle goes on, the less fun it becomes. Also, I only have so much time to game these days; where I play Missions, we only have the room for four hours, so we have to compact a lot of things if we want to get done in time. One game dragged into three sessions, with most of that because of one combat. It wasn't a particularly challenging combat, but because we couldn't clear the opposition fast enough, it took hours of real time.

Now, I believe you that the math says it can and will happen. I understand that this is just my experience, and everyone's is different. That said, I greatly prefer fast and cinematic combat, and quickly dropping mooks is a big part of that.

I was agreeing with the statement that "if they throw enough dice at something it will die and their lack of tactics won't matter". Because tactics is in a way simply throwing dice at the problem from another angle.

I would suggest that the GM advise the player that his character thinks that rushing in is silly. Sometimes though rushing in is a tactical necessity or a gambit. I recall in a few occasions Napoleon mounted full frontal assaults, gambling that the enemy was complacent about their defenses.

To put things in perspective, Xykon had a nigh endless army of goblin-kind, including one particularly high-level cleric-cum-avatar of Gruummsh(sp?). He's a high-level sorcerer, so he has many spells and doesn't need to prep them, and he's a lich, so he has level-drain-by-touch and blanket immunity against the most common control effects and negative energy. And he's right, that, given sufficient force, you can win against strategy through attrition.

You can also beat most strategies by overwhelming force in the form of nuking the enemy until you can look down the crater and see hell.
Sometimes the only winning move is not to play.

I think I've stated before, that in a war of escalation, the GM holds all of the cards. "I do not like violence... *one-hit kills most powerful enemy* I find it to be so tedious and uninteresting..."

What skills are those, though? I can't see any in the SR5 rulebook (am I missing something?). It seems like it would be trivial to put "Tactics 4" (which would justify just about any tactical decision) as one of your Knowledge skills, but all that does is make characters more same-y.

If someone wants to RP a character who makes bad tactical decisions, great, but it's really not throwing dice from another angle because SR5 does not have a mechanically active tactics skill.

Yup. The only winning move is not to play.

Yet SR5 has Knowledge skills and I think tactical knowledge fits quite comfortably under Knowledge skills. I think that Tactics 4 is precisely what is called for.

In previous editions, there are canon characters with various tactical knowledge skills.

I use them...

I've had characters with Corp Sec Procedures, Lone Star Procedures, Corporate Law, etc. These provide a reason to know things that can lead to tactics. If you listen to the Gamer's Tavern Game Table podcasts, you'll note they employ these sorts of skills to gain information to plan ahead. When the officer is already pointing his gun at you, it's too late. It's also helpful to be able to identify when a cop is going off-rez (or, more likely in this case, on-rez) to pursue you; it's a crack in the armor or a red light flashing. If you ever have a character saying "Would the X do Y?" you should be responding, "what's you're skill rating in that knowledge?" and THEN determine if they should have to roll or not.

Edit:
As an example, say your runners burst into a room and start painting with lead. The five CorpSec guards are safe behind cover, and take their initiative to leave the room through a solid-looking automatic door. Normal corpsec procedures would be to stay and fight, and try to contain the threat. Normal people might be a bit offput, especially because now they can call for help, but they technically had fair numbers and reason to stay. Normal people might also think of themselves as badass for chasing away corpsec like a BOSS! But somebody with Knowledge: Corpsec Procedures would see this as a major red flag, and someone with specific knowledge of this corp's M.O. would know they need to evac the room immediately to avoid gas/nanites/whatever.

I totally agree with all this, by the way. That's proper knowledge skills being properly used. It's not "Your character cannot decide to flank them unless you want to lose Karma because he's dumb" (even animals flank...) nor is "Your character cannot work as part of a bounding fire team because he doesn't have X points in Y knowledge skill I just decided he needed!" (even though I was using bounding fire age 10 in computer games, which I'm pretty sure most 'runners would have access to).



They're not active skills and do not give you a bonus in combat, though. So my point stands (re: not "throwing more dice from another angle"). You might roll one to get the ref to give you a hint, but you don't NEED to roll one in order to, say, make the decision to use bounding fire - or any other in-combat tactic. You might RP derping it a bit that's RP. Particularly as the SR book itself explains many tactics to players in the hopes that they learn to use them, as does Run & Gun. If you needed a skill to use those, one or both of those books would definitely say so.

And if the player whose character did not have that skill came to the same conclusion without the GM telling him, should the GM then disallow the player to act based on that conclusion?

Would not normally disallow, afterall if a enemy force pulls back there is usually a good reason, be it they are regrouping/something ELSE is in there with you (oops, escaped lab experiment-hate those) or etc.... Pulling an evac when the getting is good is rarely a bad idea so if they act with some sense of self preservation or any reasonable response given the situation that is not a problem

Now if they go 'Right, the guards just withdrew so we got 10 seconds until they start lobbing tear gas so everyone get in the corner and put on a gasmask/wet rag or such and get ready to ambush the security guys when they charge back in (or some other SOP tidbit normally only accessible to a knowledge skill), then you may want to gently remind them of what they may or may not know or just change the response slightly.

It happens pretty often in our games. Figure 4-5 DV soaked so you only need to scale up to 14-15 to do it. Ruger super warhawk with the right ammo, 4 net hits and you are there. Assault rifles take even less net hits. It isn't more lethal outside things like grenades, but it isn't less lethal IMO than previous editions except for combat spells. But maybe we define mooks differently than your group does. I see 3 body, 9 armor as a mook with 6-8 dice on defense. Slap on ork and troll and its a tough mook, so i don't expect those to go down in 1 pass though once we use the bigger guns like assault rifles and shot guns they still do fairly often.

I understand the math, and I understand the theory: the game is supposed to be more lethal. (Excepting combat spells, of course, one-shotting with a combat spell looks fairly difficult.) And I'm having no trouble injuring enemies.

My problem is in taking them down. I'm in an official Missions campaign, so the mooks are book-standard; the GM is a good one, so she isn't cheating. But because we can't drop enemies in one action, combats drag on. Part of this is math: Limits restrict how much damage we can do, but don't affect their soak/dodge dice. Another part is design: you can only shoot once per action, so actual damage output is halved. But ultimately, I don't know why it always takes multiple hits to take down even the weakest enemy. It is an issue, though, and why I don't agree that SR5 is actually more lethal.

It is not that you will lose karma, it is you will not get roleplay karma because you are not roleplaying. In SR4, I'd ask the player to roll his tactical skill, if he does not have any, then he can default to the better of logic or intuition. Now, if you are Logic 1 and Intuition 1, then I am really sorry you chose to create such a character but want to play him in an uncharacteristic manner. Heck, I'd even allow the player to use Edge if he wants. A "above normal" (Logic or Intuition 4) person should get a success about half the time if he defaults.

You do not need a skill check to use those tactics. But if you chose to use those tactics in spite of your not having any skill in tactics, then you are likely not roleplaying.

Disclaimer: I haven't read the SR5 rules. Forgive me if this is an obvious question.

So, in SR5 the devices that cause damage (weapons) come with limits, but the devices that prevent damage (armour) do not?

You are correct, sir.

Rolling to reduce damage has never had any sort of limiting factor or modifier beyond straight dice bonuses or reductions.

Meanwhile, the "limit" of a firearm is in fact the weapon's "accuracy". Some guns are more precise than others, which has the net effect that even the world's best marksman can't shoot more accurately than their weapon will physically allow. The "Accuracy" limit is how the system chooses to abstract that limitation. Amor, naturally, has no such restriction.

~Umi

The issue I have with this theory is the question, "Who determines what the mechanical accuracy limitation is?" Plenty of good shooters out there will regularly hit a target with a Glock 19 (pretty much the direct equivalent of a Light Pistol) at 100+ meters. Plenty of Hugh Jass critters got capped down by a .357 Magnum when the new cartridge was developed back in the 1930s, many of which are considered by most folks only able to be effectively hunted by fairly powerful hunting rifles today with better ballistic knowledge, better knowledge of terminal performance, better materials science, and far superior optic technology.

So CGL has basically slapped some random limitation that makes pretty much zero sense because critters that can't be one-shotted by a heavy pistol have been repeated one-shotted by an equivalent weapon. They have also decided that the internal logic for this limitation is due to a handwaved "can't be more accurate" when plenty of shooters can rather easily demonstrate that they can shoot far farther than this supposed mechanical accuracy limit IRL.

Oops?