Forum Replies Created
Cal_LousI have never managed to understand why people seem so sure that guns are just astoundingly more lethal than knives.
The rules allow for guns doing massive amounts of damage.
the idea that there is no way for a gun to only do a little damage, or even that it is only 1% is just far too ridiculous to be believed. A shot in the arm is not significantly more devasting than a knife wound to the same spot. guns frequently only wound someone. much more so than some people seem to believe. As it is the firearms rules swing the statistical damage much more realistically than the rules for knives/ melee weaponry, perhaps erring on the side of excess, to appease peoples need to see awesome lethality in guns. Guns kill people, this is true, but so do knives. The fact that someone cant die from one stab unless the attacker is obsessed with knife fighting and rolls a match is much more unrealistic than the firearms rules.
People often get shot and live, or at least don’t die instantly the way increasing the damage would imply.
dying later due to blood loss/etc shouldn’t be dealt with by fiddling with the minimum damage, but by fiddling with the healing rules/ aftereffects of damage rules.
If the qualm is that a total novice deserves a better than 1% chance of killing someone (since OUACOWA does max damage), and don’t think increasing this while lowering the chance of a minor wound to 1% isn’t a tinch ridiculous, then separate the to hit roll from the damage roll (although apply the same shifts to each roll) that way a total novice still has little chance of hitting, but he can now do loads of damage more reliably. It doesn’t quite match that only pro’s get only kill shots, but its closer to the threat level you seem to yearn.
Cal_Loussomeone with a firearms skill of twenty can do more damage. Apart from OUACOWAs, which do max damage, there is also focus shifts, and called shots. As for realism, it is surprising how varied peoples beliefs are as to the lethality of firearms. Personally I don’t quite agree with you as to their awesome lethality level, as people can and do survive fairly severe looking gunshots. Shock and the like are just as likely with swords and things which (though rarer) are as likely to kill you if your attacked by them. Plus your average person is going to hit the ground screaming for mommy after twenty points of damage, and is dead by fifty, so letting anything not 100% guaranteed lethal have a minimum damage of fifty is a fairly bad idea.
If you really wanted you could instigate rules about taking more damage in subsequent rounds due to bleeding out/etc, which would better reflect the reality of the situation, but makes things a bit more complicated book keeping wise.
say any single bullet wound dealing out at least half(/one quarter/whatever) of your Wounds results in you losing the sum of the firearms roll (rather than the total) every subsequent round till you get medical treatment. That would give guns the awesome lethality your looking for, while not making them completely game destroying.
Personally I like the gun rules as they are, but to each his own.