Should guns be more deadly?

[dragonfett]

Something I had just thought of, shouldn't guns (the SDC variety, that is) do more damage? I mean, a bastard sword does the same damage as a Glock 17. Granted, they both could, in theory, kill someone in one hit, but I honestly think that guns should definitely do more damage, or at least be capable of doing, perhaps, triple or quadruple damage on a crit, or even have higher crit ranges.

[Damian Magecraft]

use the point blank rules presented in several different books as well as in the FAQ. that should make em more "deadly" than they already are.

[Killer Cyborg]

Something I had just thought of, shouldn't guns (the SDC variety, that is) do more damage? I mean, a bastard sword does the same damage as a Glock 17. Granted, they both could, in theory, kill someone in one hit, but I honestly think that guns should definitely do more damage, or at least be capable of doing, perhaps, triple or quadruple damage on a crit, or even have higher crit ranges.

Think about it for a moment, how it would work in the real world.
A Glock will put a nice hole in somebody, but run them through with that sword instead, in the same spot, and you're going to leave an even bigger hole.
Chop into them with the blade, and you're going to be able to cut them nearly in half on a good swing from a strong person.

It's not that guns should do more damage, it's that they should be more deadly.
Best way to do that, I think, is to have firearms bypass SDC (and use the Point Blank rules, as somebody already mentioned).

Of course, that leaves the issue that a bastard sword should do maybe more damage, enough to kill somebody on one good hit... but that's a different problem for a different day.

[dragonfett]

That's an outstanding idea, Killer Cyborg. About firearms bypassing SDC, that is. I think I will start trying that out in my games at home. Thanks for reading my mind and seeing what I was trying to say when I have a hard time figuring that out myself.

[drewkitty ~..~]

Something I had just thought of, shouldn't guns (the SDC variety, that is) do more damage? I mean, a bastard sword does the same damage as a Glock 17. Granted, they both could, in theory, kill someone in one hit, but I honestly think that guns should definitely do more damage, or at least be capable of doing, perhaps, triple or quadruple damage on a crit, or even have higher crit ranges.

Guns: Cannon on a ship.
Firearms: weapons that use gunpowder to shoot a projectile.

Should Firearms be more deadly in the PB game system?..... actually PB balances out the pros and cons pretty well for game play. So my answer to this question would be 'no'.
However, GM's can modify their games for added realism by adding in 'one-shot kills' areas like shooting at the head or the heart.

[dragonfett]

What about a shot through the lungs? Or something similar to that? The way that Hit Points are described, it would seem that a gun shot through the lungs or similar vital organ would do damage directly to Hit Points instead of SDC (or do minimal damage to SDC in addition to the damage to Hit Points).

And before anyone says anything that a sword through the lungs would have a similar effect, yes I know. But most swords are meant to be swung more than thrust into a person's body (thus the edge along the length of the blade). Yes, there are some swords that were meant more to thrust instead of swung. They do little actual damage to the body's structure, but can easily bypass the body's natural defenses against damage (i.e., ribs and skull and etc.) to cause tremendous damage to internal organs.

I guess the problem I really have is how PB decided to handle damage. I personally think that a critical hit should cause internal damage instead of bodily harm (HP vs. SDC) and that weapons that can more easily bypass the ribs and the like (rapiers, guns, knives, etc.) should have larger critical hit ranges than weapons that don't. Thoughts?

[Killer Cyborg]

That's an outstanding idea, Killer Cyborg. About firearms bypassing SDC, that is. I think I will start trying that out in my games at home. Thanks for reading my mind and seeing what I was trying to say when I have a hard time figuring that out myself.

I don't go around covertly installing mind-reading implants for nothing, you know.


Reading your other post, here's an idea...
Have certain weapons, generally piercing weapons like rapiers and bullets, have a chance of bypassing SDC instead of making it automatic.
You could do this by weapon, or by weapon type.
Something like:
Pistols- bypass SDC on a strike roll of 15+
Rifles- bypass SDC on a strike roll of 12+
Rapiers- bypass SDC on a strike roll of 17+
Etc.

I don't know whether the strike numbers needed would be better off as natural rolls or modified rolls, it depends on how easy you want it to be overall. And the numbers above were just tossed out to give a general idea; no real thought was put into them.
For firearms you might want to have differences based on caliber, too.

[jedi078]

Something I had just thought of, shouldn't guns (the SDC variety, that is) do more damage? I mean, a bastard sword does the same damage as a Glock 17. Granted, they both could, in theory, kill someone in one hit, but I honestly think that guns should definitely do more damage, or at least be capable of doing, perhaps, triple or quadruple damage on a crit, or even have higher crit ranges.

I have fires do half there damage to SDC and half damage to hit points. This IMHO makes guns pretty darn deadly.

[Shorty Lickens]

Guns are already pretty darn dangerous to everyone except Juicers, and even then emptying an uzi on him will probably result in death.
Nope, they are fine. Remember the whole point of people in P.A. times developing and using MDC materials was to make old-fashioned weaponry a non-issue.

[Cybermancer]

Something I had just thought of, shouldn't guns (the SDC variety, that is) do more damage? I mean, a bastard sword does the same damage as a Glock 17. Granted, they both could, in theory, kill someone in one hit, but I honestly think that guns should definitely do more damage, or at least be capable of doing, perhaps, triple or quadruple damage on a crit, or even have higher crit ranges.

Guns: Cannon on a ship.
Firearms: weapons that use gunpowder to shoot a projectile.

This nitpick is only partially correct.

It refers to military parlance and while it is true that the cannons on a ship are considered guns (in military parlance), so are artillery pieces, tank cannons, tank destroyer cannons, machineguns and so on. This is done primarily to differntiate between small arms and pretty much everything else.

Military parlance is not the definition of the word. It is only part of the full definition and how the word is properly used in a military environment. Outside that environment it is perfectly acceptable and correct to use the word gun to refer to small arms, air-guns, grease guns and all manner of other meanings of the word gun.

[Jefffar]

Rules in the Compendium of Modern Weapons made firearms so devastating that we actually stopped playing modern games for a while. The characters were incapacitated first hit more often than not.

[Killer Cyborg]

Rules in the Compendium of Modern Weapons made firearms so devastating that we actually stopped playing modern games for a while. The characters were incapacitated first hit more often than not.

Nice!

[dragonfett]

I will have to check them out then. Do you know what pages they were on?

[Aaryq]

2D6 9mm and a Long Sword. Okay, now you shoot someone with a 9mm. Just 1 shot. You have a .38" hole in the front and depending on your ammo, assuming you go through and through you have a .45" exiting. Now take your long sword. You slice upwards cutting from the belly to the shoulder. Look down, to see what I'm talking about and put that in inches. Unless your 9mm hits the CNS, the bad guy's gonna keep going for a while. With your Long Sword, he's gonna drop a HELL OF A LOT FASTER from blood loss...in the end, a wound that big will cause you to bleed out quite quickly. Getting shot isn't like in the movies. You don't get shot and die. I have many a friend who have been shot and guess what, they're still alive. It's all about CNS.

[dragonfett]

I honestly would imagine that a .38" hole in the lung would make most people drop as well, or at least force them to make a save vs. pain or something every round to try to function with penalties. And a shot through the stomach can't be good for your body, with all of that acid pouring out of the holes. And IIRC, a gun shot through the liver kills in 20 mins or so. I never tried to say that getting shot was like the movies, but I really don't feel the standard rules don't convey just how painful and debilitating getting shot is either.

[Cybermancer]

Being shot is not just a matter of having a hole put through your body. Depending on the ballistics and nature of the round, a whole lot of other things are happening as well. I'll use 9mm as an example although other rounds have different characteristics.

First a few characteristics of a 9mmX19mm Parabellum round.

The round has a flat trajectory (which means it flies pretty straight-doesn't drop as much as other rounds) and relatively low recoil. This means it's a relatively easy round to learn to shoot. Less time is required to train on it to achieve proficiency. It can travel at velocities between 1050 and 1300 feet per second (this begins dropping as soon as the round leaves the barrel-thus less energy is delivered the further away a target is from the shooter). At 25 yards/meters, which is a pretty good shooting range for pistols, the bullet is usually still travelling at over 1000ft per second.

The round can be packed with anywhere between 115 and 147 grains. Grains being the measurment for the smokeless powder loaded into the cartridge. Usually, the higher the grain count, the more energy is produced.

Depending on the round used, the energy delivered can vary between 320ft pounds and 470ft pounds. Remember that this energy isn't spread out over a foot area but concentrated on the size of the bullet. PSI can vary widely between 266 and 680.

After impact, the round will usually expand. That expansion can vary between .3 and .7 inches and doesn't include hollow points or rounds specifically designed to expand after impact.

Again, depending on the type of 9mm round used, penetration into ballistic gel can vary between 8-24 inches. Average is around a foot. And that's assuming it doesn't do something fun like hit a bone. Look down at your body. How much of that area could something go through without hitting a bone? More on that later.

What happens when you're shot?

There is a transfer of kinetic energy (I've showned the energy on the 9mm above).
There is penetration.
Then there's what happens after the bullet hits and penetrates.
First of all, bullets are fired out of rifled barrels. So they're spinning when they hit you. So it's not just a matter of the round going straight through. It's going spin into the target like a high speed drill. And it's going to tumble. That means that it doesn't come out of you the way it came in. It will actually bounce around inside you.

If it hits a bone, with the energies involved, it will break or shatter that bone. It may continue straight or it may tumble around some more, causing more tissue damage.
Another thing that happens is that after impact, that bullet starts to deform. Mostly what it does is expand which is why bullet wounds are bigger on the exit than on the entrance. Some rounds, like hollow points, are designed to take advantage of this.
Rounds may also fragment, breaking up into other, smaller pieces. Some of those pieces may leave the body or they may not.

So the bullet is spinning when it hits you, bounces around inside of you a bit, expanding as it does so and breaks any bones it hits. A 9mm will probably leave the body after it wreaks all that havok, but then again parts of it may stay behind, causing additional problems.

I know a guy who was shot through the leg with a 9mm round after it richocheted off the ground. Luckily it was a richochet and lost energy before it hit him. Luck was also with him in that it totally missed the bone. He was a case where all that happened was the round put a hole through him. But he's memorable precisely because that is all that happened to him. As for his luck, he contends that if he was lucky at all, he wouldn't have been shot in the first place.

All of these conditions exist in varying degrees for every round. The 9mm, being a relatively small, high velocity round has more of a tendency to shoot straight through people than other rounds but it still experiences all of the above in the process.

On a crunch note:
The original Mechanoids game rated the 9mm at 3D6 damage.
At that time, there was no SDC for characters so at first level you had a total of 4D6 hp (3D6 from P.E. and 1D6 for hp at first level).
The loss of 1D6 damage for the round plus the addition of SDC for characters has reduced the deadliness of the 9mm in the Palladium system over the years. The fact there has been a tendency towards SDC inflation for characters further increases this divide. It may not be as 'realistic' but it does increase character survivability. So I guess it depends on what you want out of your game. If you want a more realistic and fatal game, then have firearms bypass S.D.C. and maybe add 1D6 to all calibers. If you want characters to survive more than one gunfight, then perhaps consider leaving things as they are and ignore the inconsistancies.

[Killer Cyborg]

Human beings are 90% water.
Bullets carry a lot of energy.
In addition to the hole, there's a kind of splash effect known as hydrostatic shock.

[dragonfett]

I looked over some of the rules in the Compendium of Moder Weapons and was impressed. I will alter them a little to use in my games, but I felt they provided me a good base line.

[Jefffar]

Another thought. Since SDC represent s the bumping and bruising you can take before taking serious injury and HP represent the serious injury you can take before you die, why not have all lethal weapons (guns, swords, clubs, etc) do damage straight to HP?

Unarmed melee attacks, falls and attacks with less than lethal weapons (ie rubber bullets, whips) would do damage to SDC as normal.

[Cybermancer]

Another thought. Since SDC represent s the bumping and bruising you can take before taking serious injury and HP represent the serious injury you can take before you die, why not have all lethal weapons (guns, swords, clubs, etc) do damage straight to HP?

Unarmed melee attacks, falls and attacks with less than lethal weapons (ie rubber bullets, whips) would do damage to SDC as normal.

I've been thinking about (but haven't implemented) this idea lately. It makes a lot of sense in my opinion.
If one were to use this option, than body armor could allow for attacks from lethal weapons to SDC damage to represent the bruising that usually occurs from impacts.

[dragonfett]

Another thought. Since SDC represent s the bumping and bruising you can take before taking serious injury and HP represent the serious injury you can take before you die, why not have all lethal weapons (guns, swords, clubs, etc) do damage straight to HP?

Unarmed melee attacks, falls and attacks with less than lethal weapons (ie rubber bullets, whips) would do damage to SDC as normal.

What about this? Lethal attacks do their normal damage to the armor in SDC if the roll is under the AR, or to the character's SDC if it is over the AR. Once the SDC of the armor has been depleted, any attack under the AR deals normal damage to the character's SDC, and directly to the character's HP if it is over the armor's AR. And perhaps the AR of the ruined armor could get lowered for the state that it is in.

The reason I say that the attacks still deal damage only to the character's SDC is because I feel that while the armor may be in shreds, there is at least enough of it there to prevent the attacks from damaging the character's internal organs.

[Neorealist]

Another thought. Since SDC represent s the bumping and bruising you can take before taking serious injury and HP represent the serious injury you can take before you die, why not have all lethal weapons (guns, swords, clubs, etc) do damage straight to HP?

From a pure game-play balance perspective, because that would make a game of normally reasonably survivable combat extremely lethal? Realism is all well and good and does have it's place don't get me wrong here; but one does kind of get tired of filling in new character sheets after a while, eh?

Not to mention people do survive gunshot wounds, knives, clubs and the like all the time, and also die from round house kick-related (or similar) trauma from time to time too. Who is to say what is lethal to a given person vs what is not? (taking attacks that are obviously intended to be nonlethal like foam or nerf bats out of the equation anyway).

[dragonfett]

Not to mention people do survive gunshot wounds, knives, clubs and the like all the time, and also die from round house kick-related (or similar) trauma from time to time too. Who is to say what is lethal to a given person vs what is not? (taking attacks that are obviously intended to be nonlethal like foam or nerf bats out of the equation anyway).

Leave Chuck Norris out of this!

[Jefffar]

Another thought. Since SDC represent s the bumping and bruising you can take before taking serious injury and HP represent the serious injury you can take before you die, why not have all lethal weapons (guns, swords, clubs, etc) do damage straight to HP?

From a pure game-play balance perspective, because that would make a game of normally reasonably survivable combat extremely lethal? Realism is all well and good and does have it's place don't get me wrong here; but one does kind of get tired of filling in new character sheets after a while, eh?

Not to mention people do survive gunshot wounds, knives, clubs and the like all the time, and also die from round house kick-related (or similar) trauma from time to time too. Who is to say what is lethal to a given person vs what is not? (taking attacks that are obviously intended to be nonlethal like foam or nerf bats out of the equation anyway).

Well the OP was looking for ways to make the game a tad more lethal and this definitely does it. However it is important to point out that the bad guys would have the same restriction and, as they tend to have less hit points, would actually come out worse than the heroes.

In regards to the round house kick, there is already a mechanic for death blows (depends on the game book, but one of the ones I rather liked was double damage direct to HP) to cover those instances in which an individual does get killed by one well placed boot to the head.

[Beatmeclever]

Want to make the game deadlier? Do away with SDC and Hit Points. These two ideas are what make PCs heroes and not just fodder for the bad guys. It is odd that a 9mm, which will do the same amount of damage to a person regardless of how experienced they are (an odd idea to say the least), does less and less damage by comparison (think: 3d6 vs 24 HP and 35 SDC vs 3d6 vs 54 HP and 162 SDC). What will really matter from a gunshot wound is whether or not you have the ability to continue to function after the shot. You do not get this as you get older; you do not have this because you are younger; this is a toughness thing - not something you can develop something that you either have or you don't. I have seen the biggest, toughest men felled by a flesh wound while the little, scrawny guy continued to function with three holes in him. If you really want your characters to die easier, try this:

All damage goes straight to PE. Every time a character gets hit (by any kind of weapon - not just firearms damage) he loses 1d4 points of PE. Add to this that with each hit the player rolls 1d20 to roll under his current PE score. Failing at this roll and the character dies. Succeeding, the character can continue to function with certain penalties. When PE reaches 75% starting score: all Skill and Attribute checks are reduced 50%. At 50%: all Skill and Attribute checks are reduced 80%. At 25%: Character is virtually incapacitated and moves at a speed of 3, Skill and Attribute checks are reduced 95%.

Remember, with each wound that breaks the skin (gunshots, slashes, stabs, etc.) the character is bleeding - use the blood loss rules given elsewhere.

Now, stand there trading fire with your opponent and see how long you last. Now, your characters can die really fast and the players will be forced to learn how to avoid combat rather than seeking it out. right before we switched to my home-brew system, my group tried something similar to this. Combat became a last resort option and when the characters were attacked they went for cover first then looked to either return fire from there or evade and escape. Have fun!

[Killer Cyborg]

Hm.
I don't know for sure, but I'd expect that a person who has been shot a dozen times and survived will deal better with a nonlethal gunshot wound than somebody who has never really been injured before.

[Beatmeclever]

Hm.
I don't know for sure, but I'd expect that a person who has been shot a dozen times and survived will deal better with a nonlethal gunshot wound than somebody who has never really been injured before.

This is where RPGs deviate from reality just enough to make action movies seem weak. Go up a few post again and click on the Hydrostatic shock link.

Depending on the nature and location of the dozen shots, you could be right. However, you could also be horribly wrong! I have had four "nonlethal" gunshot wounds (non-combat) and I am a fully functioning person; a long lost friend of mine took just one "nonlethal" gunshot wound and he is confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. The difference: my wounds were to extremities and shallow penetration, his was through his spinal cord. To make matters worse, I was only an E-3 at the time; he was E-7. (So much for having higher level and hit points/SDC.)

All I was saying was that gunshots should be deadly when you hit.

What I didn't mention was that my rules also make it harder to hit unless you have settled in for the aimed shot. A running gun battle most often turns into a waste of bullets, but you keep shooting in the hopes of getting the lucky hit. If you don't agree don't use the rules I gave - I no longer do.

S'all

[dragonfett]

That's why a RL fire fight could last for minutes on end, not seconds. Look at the example of the guys who robbed a California Bank in full Ballistic Armor. They stood there for like nearly an hour, IIRC, getting hit in the bullet proof vest, and they fired back and only had hit a hand full of cops (and those were more in the initial moments of the police responding. They had used a SWAT van to extract at least one of the cops that were shot). Shooting targets on a shooting range is completely different from shooting at a target that is heavily armored and shoots back. I think that there should be like some horror factor that you have to roll against in combat when under heavy fire from guns.

[Shorty Lickens]

That's why a RL fire fight could last for minutes on end, not seconds. Look at the example of the guys who robbed a California Bank in full Ballistic Armor. They stood there for like nearly an hour, IIRC, getting hit in the bullet proof vest, and they fired back and only had hit a hand full of cops (and those were more in the initial moments of the police responding. They had used a SWAT van to extract at least one of the cops that were shot). Shooting targets on a shooting range is completely different from shooting at a target that is heavily armored and shoots back. I think that there should be like some horror factor that you have to roll against in combat when under heavy fire from guns.

If the cops had 308's or 30-06's that would not have been an issue.

[dragonfett]

If the cops had 308's or 30-06's that would not have been an issue.

How many police departments actually have those available to issue to their police officers? Not to mention, I am pretty sure there are probably policies against using those types of calibers on civilians.

[Jefffar]

IIRC they were finally brought down with .223s. Also the body armours they had were actually penetrated multiple times, it's just that the individual wounds didn't do enough to bring 'em down. The one died of blood loss after somebody shot up his legs and the other put his own pistol to his head.

SWAT does have these sorts of weapons (.223s and .308s) and have sanction to use them under the same circumstances as all police officers have sanction to use their weapons. Also, after this event a lot of departments looked at what sort of ordinance they should have with their officers. A few departments increased the issue of rifles to their patrol units.

[Killer Cyborg]

Hm.
I don't know for sure, but I'd expect that a person who has been shot a dozen times and survived will deal better with a nonlethal gunshot wound than somebody who has never really been injured before.

This is where RPGs deviate from reality just enough to make action movies seem weak. Go up a few post again and click on the Hydrostatic shock link.

The one I posted?
Read it already.

Depending on the nature and location of the dozen shots, you could be right. However, you could also be horribly wrong! I have had four "nonlethal" gunshot wounds (non-combat) and I am a fully functioning person; a long lost friend of mine took just one "nonlethal" gunshot wound and he is confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. The difference: my wounds were to extremities and shallow penetration, his was through his spinal cord. To make matters worse, I was only an E-3 at the time; he was E-7. (So much for having higher level and hit points/SDC.)

All I was saying was that gunshots should be deadly when you hit.

And I've been agreeing with you.
My only point is that there is a decent reason for high level people to be able to withstand the damage better than newbs.
Naturally, if the shot is to a critical area, that doesn't apply, but damage doesn't really work that way in Palladium.
In real life, you could deliver fatal damage with 1 SDC worth, if you hit the right spot.
Personally, in the game I've been picking at creating, gunshot wounds do relatively low damage, but require a kind of savings throw against lethal damage, and the toughest person on the planet could potentially killed by a .22 to the leg if he's really unlucky. Also, every wound can potentially leave scars and/or permanent effects.
But since Palladium doesn't really take permanent damage into account, none of that really matters here.
All we have to work with are HP and SDC, and it's perfectly plausible that people who are higher level actually would have more chance of surviving wounds better than people who have never experienced that kind of trauma.
It's not necessarily a HUGE chance, but still significant to a point.
If you want to drop the HP increase to +1 per level instead of +1d6, that's cool.
But keeping HP exactly the same doesn't make as much sense as having some kind of increase.

Also, rank isn't exactly the same as level. You could have a 15th level Grunt, or a 1st level Military Specialist or Commando.
You could have a 15th level Private who just never got promoted, or you could have a 1st level Sgt. who got promoted early.
And there's the difference in damage.
Say you were each hit with assault rifle rounds inflicting 6d6 damage, the damage roll on you was closer to 6, and it sounds like his was closer to 36 (and/or maybe a crit to boot).
Granted, as I said before, Palladium doesn't really deal with permanent damage, so the in-game effects wouldn't be the same. But there is some kind of correlation between the two.

What I didn't mention was that my rules also make it harder to hit unless you have settled in for the aimed shot. A running gun battle most often turns into a waste of bullets, but you keep shooting in the hopes of getting the lucky hit.

Make sense to me.

[Beatmeclever]

Spoiler:

Hm.
I don't know for sure, but I'd expect that a person who has been shot a dozen times and survived will deal better with a nonlethal gunshot wound than somebody who has never really been injured before.

This is where RPGs deviate from reality just enough to make action movies seem weak. Go up a few post again and click on the Hydrostatic shock link.

The one I posted?
Read it already.

Depending on the nature and location of the dozen shots, you could be right. However, you could also be horribly wrong! I have had four "nonlethal" gunshot wounds (non-combat) and I am a fully functioning person; a long lost friend of mine took just one "nonlethal" gunshot wound and he is confined to a wheelchair for the remainder of his life. The difference: my wounds were to extremities and shallow penetration, his was through his spinal cord. To make matters worse, I was only an E-3 at the time; he was E-7. (So much for having higher level and hit points/SDC.)

All I was saying was that gunshots should be deadly when you hit.

And I've been agreeing with you.
My only point is that there is a decent reason for high level people to be able to withstand the damage better than newbs.
Naturally, if the shot is to a critical area, that doesn't apply, but damage doesn't really work that way in Palladium.
In real life, you could deliver fatal damage with 1 SDC worth, if you hit the right spot.
Personally, in the game I've been picking at creating, gunshot wounds do relatively low damage, but require a kind of savings throw against lethal damage, and the toughest person on the planet could potentially killed by a .22 to the leg if he's really unlucky. Also, every wound can potentially leave scars and/or permanent effects.
But since Palladium doesn't really take permanent damage into account, none of that really matters here.
All we have to work with are HP and SDC, and it's perfectly plausible that people who are higher level actually would have more chance of surviving wounds better than people who have never experienced that kind of trauma.
It's not necessarily a HUGE chance, but still significant to a point.
If you want to drop the HP increase to +1 per level instead of +1d6, that's cool.
But keeping HP exactly the same doesn't make as much sense as having some kind of increase.

Also, rank isn't exactly the same as level. You could have a 15th level Grunt, or a 1st level Military Specialist or Commando.
You could have a 15th level Private who just never got promoted, or you could have a 1st level Sgt. who got promoted early.
And there's the difference in damage.
Say you were each hit with assault rifle rounds inflicting 6d6 damage, the damage roll on you was closer to 6, and it sounds like his was closer to 36 (and/or maybe a crit to boot).
Granted, as I said before, Palladium doesn't really deal with permanent damage, so the in-game effects wouldn't be the same. But there is some kind of correlation between the two.

What I didn't mention was that my rules also make it harder to hit unless you have settled in for the aimed shot. A running gun battle most often turns into a waste of bullets, but you keep shooting in the hopes of getting the lucky hit.

Make sense to me.

True on all counts. As for the rank not mattering so much, it has more to do with how I have always regarded gaining rank with gaining experience. You would have to get bust back to be low ranked and high level. It is just my own misconception, I guess.

I think the damage problem is why I have been moving away from systems that use HP/SDC. What is needed, then, is a system that allows for low damage-high lethality vs high damage-low lethality and permanent effects.

Perhaps damage codes a la old Shadowrun or wound status a la Cyberpunk? Maybe something akin to WEG Star Wars of old?

Could be fun to play with.

[Killer Cyborg]

I think the damage problem is why I have been moving away from systems that use HP/SDC. What is needed, then, is a system that allows for low damage-high lethality vs high damage-low lethality and permanent effects.

Perhaps damage codes a la old Shadowrun or wound status a la Cyberpunk? Maybe something akin to WEG Star Wars of old?

Could be fun to play with.

Not familiar enough with those games to say, but most wound systems I've seen don't cut it either.

You might want to check out Palladium's own Recon.
Not the best system, but no hit points or SDC; damage is taken directly from Endurance (IIRC).

Ideally, you could come up with a system where each shot has a chance to lower any combination of attributes until the wound heals, or even permanently.
But you'd probably need a computer to make it playable.

[dragonfett]

But that is an inherent problem with any RPG that imposes a minimum damage for a hit, no matter how many penalties to damage the attackers take. In D&D 3.x, a common house cat could kill a low level mage in just a couple of hits (in D&D 3.x, any creature that makes a successful attack roll deals a minimum damage of 1, and cats have like -4 or -5 to damage and roll like a 1d2 or 1d3 for it IIRC. And mages already got sucky hit points with a d4 for their hit die. Not to mention that mages were never known for having high constitution scores, which determined if you got bonus HP or had negative HP. So a level 1 Wizard with a constitution score of 4 could get killed by a newborn kitten in one hit. I mean that is just even more horrendous than what PB worked out!)

[GaredBattlespike]

Greetings!

I just wanted to say that SD weapons are (partly because of Power Creep in SDC for almost every OCC/RCC out there) really underpowered.

Here is the math behind my statement:

Two people, both from Palladium made worlds...

#1) "Guy" the Athlete - A Human Male, Aged 20 Years, from Survivor/Ordinary Person OCC.
Guy has a total of 1 Level with 25 HP's (from a PE of 21) and 37 SDC.

#2) "Granny" a Human Female, Aged 87 Years. Granny has a toatal of 3 Levels (Having Lived so long brings some experience) of Ordinary Person with 16 HP's (from a PE of 6) and a mere 4 SDC.

Let's look at how much SD is need to actually kill each one:

Guy is up first and has a total of 62 SDC/HP combined PLUS his 21 PE! This means a GRAND TOTAL of 83 HP's/SDC to actually KILL.

Granny is up next with a toal of 20 HP's/SDC combined PLUS her 6 PE for a GRAND TOTAL of 26 HP's/SDC to actually KILL.

Now we look at SDC weapons:

A Longsword does (depending on Game World's listed stats) from 1D8 to 2D6 SD! Let's use the DR values as we are using DR Characters. So a Longsword does 2D6 SD. The average Damage = 7 SD per hit, excluding PS bonuses.

Next is a .44 or .45 Pistol. Again we'll use DR values. I believe that this weapon does 4D6 SD per hit, thus an average of 14 SD per hit.

EXAMPLE # 1)
Guy is attacked by a whacko using a Longsword with only a 13 PS- so no bonuses to Damage. Each hit will (for this example) never Crit, and only cause average Damage(7 SD). This will take the whacko 9 Hits just to DROP Guy! Not Dead yet, just at -1 HP's! Another 3 hits will be needed to ensure that poor Guy does not live to make a Save Vs Coma/Death! That is 12 HITS with a Longsword to KILL a well Stated Level 1 PC!!! It's "ONLY" 5 to DROP him(70 SD, Vs his 62) and 1 more too KILL him with the .45 Pistol.
This is why I feel that SDC weapons are nerfed. It takes 6 darn hits from a .45 !?!?! Are you kidding me?!?!?! Yes you CAN survive that IRL, but come on! How COMMON is that? How often do we hear on the news that someone took "ONLY" 2-3 gunshots from a .38 or even a .22 and still died before reaching a Hospital? Not in the Megaverse(unless they we Critically hit, OR the attacker has DEATH BLOW)! Goodness! EMT's across the world WISH it were true that it takes 4 maybe 6 hits to kill someone!

Now let's see how Granny does from the same whacko; Granny needs 20 SDC to DROP her and 6 more to KILL her. This works out to;
3 hits with the sword to DROP her and 1 more to KILL her! Tough old lady!!! The .45 needs 2 to KILL (14 SD/Hit X 2 =28 SD, Vs her 26 to-kill Total)! This makes more sense, as I can see that even an old lady MIGHT survive 1 Center of Body Mass hit from a .45! But Guy needed 5 just to be "DROPPED/STOPPED"!!! Just to drive home the point: An Uzi does 1D4 (X 10) SD per long burst, for an average of 20-30 SD per hit. This means that while Granny is toast from 1 Burst, Guy need 2-3 (20 SD+20 SD+30 SD =70 SDC Vs his 62)on AVERAGE just to be DROPPED, and ANOTHER BURST to KILL him !!!

This is why I feel that SDC weapons are underpowered in the Megaverse.

Thank You ,and Good Gaming, GaredBattlespike

[Cinos]

To me, it's not the relative lethality of Firearms vs Blades in the game, both can kill someone pretty fast in and out of game, and I think they are properly reflected enough for game play. Where it fails is the non-damage elements of weapons. When you get shot, it's more than having a hole in you and it inhibiting your body. There's shock, the impact, blood loss and intense pain from the fact a fast moving bit of metal just shattered your rib, or that bit of sharp iron just left a foot long gash on your shoulders. And those are not reflected very well in normal game play (of almost any game). To me, a fight should be going down hill after a person get's hit directly, I know many fights that are lost because a person was hit first and started degrading from that fact sooner then their opponent.

Sadly, this does not always make for a good game, so it's more left to GM's to try and balance the reality vs the fantasy level in their game to avoid instantly losing fights from a single bad roll, to keep good game play, as it's a very fine line to walk.

[Damian Magecraft]

To me, it's not the relative lethality of Firearms vs Blades in the game, both can kill someone pretty fast in and out of game, and I think they are properly reflected enough for game play. Where it fails is the non-damage elements of weapons. When you get shot, it's more than having a hole in you and it inhibiting your body. There's shock, the impact, blood loss and intense pain from the fact a fast moving bit of metal just shattered your rib, or that bit of sharp iron just left a foot long gash on your shoulders. And those are not reflected very well in normal game play (of almost any game). To me, a fight should be going down hill after a person get's hit directly, I know many fights that are lost because a person was hit first and started degrading from that fact sooner then their opponent.

Sadly, this does not always make for a good game, so it's more left to GM's to try and balance the reality vs the fantasy level in their game to avoid instantly losing fights from a single bad roll, to keep good game play, as it's a very fine line to walk.

true but...
most games (not just palladium) are geared towards a "cinematic" style of play (copying hollywood physics more than reality.)

[Cinos]

Aye, As noted, super real rules don't a good game make for all, same is true of movies.

[Killer Cyborg]

Aye, As noted, super real rules don't a good game make for all, same is true of movies.

Depends on what you're into.

[Cinos]

Aye, As noted, super real rules don't a good game make for all, same is true of movies.

Depends on what you're into.

To quote myself again "For All"

[Spinachcat]

Usually the more realistic the combat system the quicker characters die. These lethal RPG systems generally utilize simpler, quicker character generation systems.

Absolutely.

In RuneQuest & Call of Cthulhu, you roll 3D6 for CON and CON = HP. A sword does 1D8 and a great spear does 1D12. Guns do 1D6 to 1D12.

In Traveller, you roll 2D6 for STR, DEX, END and when you suffer damage, you take it to one of the three stats, then overflow goes to the next. If one stat is zero, you are wounded, two stats unconscious and you die when all three go to zero. Pistols do 3D6.

All these systems have very fast chargen and Combat is highly discouraged because its so lethal and you will be making new characters pretty often.

Palladium has a long, involved chargen so added lethality is a negative to the game...unless you modified chargen to make it much, much quicker.