Weapon Damage

[Talavar]

How much damage would you rate the .50 Desert Eagle pistol as doing? A player of mine wants to acquire one, and I can't find stats for such a thing in my old copy of the Compendium of Contemporary Weapons.
A relatively recent Rifts book, Merc Ops, lists a .44 Magnum doing 6d6 SDC, so I'd guess a larger pistol would do some more damage, but I'm just looking for others thoughts. Also, what's the range on one of these, and the ammo capacity?

I don't want to start a debate on the real-world usefulness of these monstrously large handguns; I know they're actually fairly uncommon.

[asajosh]

How much damage would you rate the .50 Desert Eagle pistol as doing? A player of mine wants to acquire one, and I can't find stats for such a thing in my old copy of the Compendium of Contemporary Weapons.
A relatively recent Rifts book, Merc Ops, lists a .44 Magnum doing 6d6 SDC, so I'd guess a larger pistol would do some more damage, but I'm just looking for others thoughts. Also, what's the range on one of these, and the ammo capacity?

I don't want to start a debate on the real-world usefulness of these monstrously large handguns; I know they're actually fairly uncommon.

I think this this has been covered (might be in the FAQ). How does 6D6+3 SDC for a standard round sound?
Acording to Wikipedia ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desert_Eagle ) they have a max capacity of 7 rounds in the magazine (and I assume one in the chamber). As for range, not sure, maybe use the same as the .44 listed in Merc Ops.

[JTwig]

How much damage would you rate the .50 Desert Eagle pistol as doing? A player of mine wants to acquire one, and I can't find stats for such a thing in my old copy of the Compendium of Contemporary Weapons.
A relatively recent Rifts book, Merc Ops, lists a .44 Magnum doing 6d6 SDC, so I'd guess a larger pistol would do some more damage, but I'm just looking for others thoughts. Also, what's the range on one of these, and the ammo capacity?

I don't want to start a debate on the real-world usefulness of these monstrously large handguns; I know they're actually fairly uncommon.

According to Palladium it does 6d6, less than a the rifle round which does anywhere from 1d4x10 to 1d6x10 depending on what book you're reading. It explains that it does less because the pistol round is smaller than the rifle round. Don't ask me to say which book I read that in as I can't recall, but I would bet my life on the accuracy (well not really, since that would be an incredibly stupid and insignificant thing to bet something of such importance to me, but you get what I mean).

[SkyeFyre]

wasn't that in one of the weapon compendiums or something?

No unfortunately. They didn't include it in the compendium.

[lather]

Where are the nit picky ballistics experts?

[SkyeFyre]

Wow, thanks for the technical response. I found that actually quite educational

I've always said that it's done 7D6 in my games. Either that or 1D4x10.

[Rallan]

Now if they could just do something about the ridiculously low damage they've given bows compared to guns...

[GreenGhost]

Flakbait! I used to chat with you years ago in the PB Chatroom under my old "Redemption" login.

How've things been?

[Qev]

1) A .44 Mag shoots flatter (less ballistic arc) than a 50 AE. Flatter trajectory means increased accuracy between the muzzle and 50 yards as you can actually put the target in the sights.

How much difference in trajectory can there really be between 1400 and 1440 ft/sec? At 50 yards, that's only a difference in drop of like... much less than a quarter inch.

[dragon_blaze_99]

the stats for the Desert Eagle are in the HU GMG page 210

with a long explanation on the Damage and Cartridge of the gun.

[Rallan]

1) A .44 Mag shoots flatter (less ballistic arc) than a 50 AE. Flatter trajectory means increased accuracy between the muzzle and 50 yards as you can actually put the target in the sights.

How much difference in trajectory can there really be between 1400 and 1440 ft/sec? At 50 yards, that's only a difference in drop of like... much less than a quarter inch.

Let's see. The .44 mag would take 0.104666667 seconds to cover that distance. The .50 would take 0.107142857 seconds.

So in that distance the .44 will have dropped by about 5.3 centimetres (assuming you fired it horizontally), and the slightly slower .50 will have dropped about 5.6 centimetres. So the "flatter trajectory" is a difference of 3mm over about 45m. Drag probably plays a humungous role in bullet trajectories of course (an exit velocity of several hundred metres of a second means you're gonna see some serious deceleration due to wind resistance), so they'll probably take longer to cover the distance, which means they'll both drop more. But the difference in drop between the two is still gonna be negligable since there's only about a 1% difference in starting velocity between the two.

[lather]

Nit-picky ballistics expert reporting for duty, SAHR!

Well done. Thanks.

[GreenGhost]

Flakbait! I used to chat with you years ago in the PB Chatroom under my old "Redemption" login.

How've things been?

Old... How appropriate.

Back on topic, I'd have the Desert Eagle doing 1d6 more than the .44.

Funny, "Old Friend of Mine," all I heard was blah-blah-blah...