tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905109960063937368.post3621409115699584142..comments2023-12-16T04:56:28.691-06:00Comments on Alesmiter: Firearms in Fantasy Campaigns III - DamageRod Thompsonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/12824146866756155345noreply@blogger.comBlogger3125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905109960063937368.post-66625927993266101542019-06-12T20:32:14.416-05:002019-06-12T20:32:14.416-05:00A buddy of mine tried to tell me that a naval cann...A buddy of mine tried to tell me that a naval cannon would only do 9d6 damage.... I said "Yeah... In a 50 foot radius I guess... Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905109960063937368.post-8816118222759575642014-03-29T13:14:35.007-05:002014-03-29T13:14:35.007-05:00I'm glad you like the work and you've rais...I'm glad you like the work and you've raised a couple of interesting points. I hadn't thought through the knock down effect enough. I didn't take into account that with modern projectiles not all of the KE is transferred to the target. I can see three options - scrap it, make it apply only to weapons with heavy projectiles and lower velocities -such as muskets or change it from a physical effect to a save or lose a turn while you check to see if any important bits are missing effect. I can also see keeping it as it is for the Hollywood reason you mentioned - people have the idea that it happens and describing the effect as the player shoots the bad guy causing him to fly off the wall adds color.<br />IRT the minimum damage of modern weapons - (a) red shirts die, (b) guns are designed to kill and (c) a grazing shot really is a miss, isn't it ? None of which really address the point that not all of the KE is transferred to the target. I should revisit the table and change the rate at which it scales at higher energy levels.<br />If you want to model grazing shots, how about any attack roll between AC and AC+2 is a grazing shot doing 1d3 damage? Another option would be throw out the critical multiplier for firearms, do full damage only a natural 20, everything else is a graze.Rod Thompsonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12824146866756155345noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-1905109960063937368.post-68506622969285663152014-03-28T23:26:01.487-05:002014-03-28T23:26:01.487-05:00Wow, your charts are impressive. I too have been c...Wow, your charts are impressive. I too have been considering firearms in D&D. Though I do think you are overthinking damage a bit here. After a certain point, bullets with a greater KE just go through a bag of flesh at a greater speed and slightly bigger hole, and can go through things like plaster walls and have enough KE left over to enter a bag of flesh. (I read somewhere that an M16 can go through up to 6 suburban houses before the bullet stops.) So basically after a certain point additional KE will not do additional damage.<br /><br />Also from taking a few physics courses with gun force problems on the tests, knockback from being hit by a bullet is mostly a Hollywood thing. It is also partially psychological, because in the case of the Zulu wars, the Zulus had not encountered firearms before, so when hit by a bullet instead of falling down or back, they would just keep on fighting until they died because they had no expectation of what getting shot meant. But for cinematic effect knockback should probably be included.<br /><br /> An M1 Garand does a minimum of 9 hp. That means that for a 0 level human there is no such thing as a grazing shot or a flesh wound if hit, it's instant death or total miss. That doesn't seem to be very good simulation of reality. <br /><br />Though I have put much though into this, I have not come up with much better than what you have done. I originally though of doing damage as a scaled percentile of total hp. Which may work if the target's defense went up with it's skill level, but it doesn't in D&D. I ended up going with a concaconating roll. Roll one die and if you get the max number for the die, roll again and add the new roll to it. Repeat until you no longer get max, or you reach a limit that you may have set for that particular firearm. It's not perfect, smaller dies have a greater chance of getting the max number, the damage range skips numbers, but it does better model that getting hit by a bullet can do as little as a 1 hp graze up to craploads of damage that would make a high level character flinch when a gun goes off.<br /><br />Thoughts on the matter?Hradekhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/14953141319846423669noreply@blogger.com