Bonuses When Using Optics and Scopes

[Jack Burton]

Sorry if I'm repeating a past question. The search feature didn't turn up what I was looking for. I have 3 separate questions:

1. Is there a bonus for someone using a scope for an aimed shot in HU2 or BtS2?
I can't find it in the either book. I even looked in the RUE book, but got more confused, which leads me to question #2.

2. What's the bonus for an aimed shot?
RUE (pg. 361) and BtS2 (pg. 167) state that an aimed shot gives a +2 bonus and counts as 2 melee attacks (with W.P for that weapon).
HU2 (pg. 75) states that an aimed shot gives a +3 bonus and only counts as 1 melee attack (with W.P for that weapon).
I know they're different games, but I see people reference rules for other Palladium games so often and so interchangeably, it makes me think it's OK to do that.... Except, until it's not.

3. IF there's a bonus for using a scope when taking an aimed shot, is there a bonus for using an optic such as a red dot sight or holographic weapons sight (Aimpoint and EOTech come to mind) when just firing a regular, non-aimed shot? (I say "regular" because it isn't shooting wild, but then again, it's not taking an aimed shot, either)
Anyone who's used red dot or HWS optics knows that it takes less time to acquire your target than if you use the iron sights. The first time I shot an AR equipped with an EOTech 512, I was stunned. I called it "cheat mode." At the time, many of us believed that the widespread and continued use of these devices would cripple the marksmanship skills of shooters at large because these devices were such a revolutionary leap ahead of iron sights. To draw a comparison, it was like using ink and a quill to write with and then someone putting a ball point pen in your hand! The widespread use of red dot sights and HWSs came about after most of the Palladium games were written, so I get it if there is no mention of them. To point something out, though, many people don't even use iron sights anymore, myself included. Every rifle I own has back-up iron sights in case the optic goes down, of course (except the PS-90, which my model doesn't come with them!).

[Fell]

1. Is there a bonus for someone using a scope for an aimed shot in HU2 or BtS2?

Universal game rules. So if you want to use a rule from different book you should be able to. Example: use the Aimed Shot rule from RUE for your HU2 game.

2. What's the bonus for an aimed shot?
Chaos Earth has the +3 rule like HU2.

RUE (pg. 361) and BtS2 (pg. 167) state that an aimed shot gives a +2 bonus and counts as 2 melee attacks (with W.P for that weapon).

My thought: RUE was published in 2005 a few years after Chaos Earth Book. Not sure, but HU2 was 1999?

I’d go RUE.



Just my 2 cents.

Dan

[Zer0 Kay]

And now Mr. Downer...

I've always found it strange that scopes didn't modify anything. The aimed bonuses can be achieved with iron sight and if going strictly by the RAW the range doesnt matter. Any rules dealing with scopes to actually make them worth while, especially to justify the wide variety of scope types and magnifications, would have to be house rules. There wasnt even an attempt to do that in the contemporary weapon book.

[eliakon]

There are a small number of scopes and sights in the game.
They generally give a bonus to strike, sometimes on aimed shots sometimes in general.

As for which rule to use...
If you are playing HU2 I would use the HU2 rules. Each game has slightly different rules that are only compatible on the most general level.
The HU2 rules are to allow for more wild cinematic daring do and thus allow snap aimed shots. This allows for shooting guns out of hands, and cutting bow strings and all the other stuff you see in the comics.
Rifts tends to be a bit more gritty and thus uses a different approach to combat.

[Jack Burton]

Does anyone know where in HU the rules exist for scopes?

[Zer0 Kay]

Does anyone know where in HU the rules exist for scopes?

Heyyyyyy wait a second Moder Weapons Book Guy... you should come up with rules. Develop them play test them. Why go with a 3 x flip out magnifier and a holographic sight instead of a normal 3 x? Why go iron instead of no mag holo or a reflex sight? Why would a fix mag scope on a raised offset be better than an adjustable scope? What kind of scopes/sights work together? What kind absolutely can not?

Not to mention making sure that people understand that it isnt just the size of a bullet that matters (i.e. a DEagle's .50 call is far inferior to the .50 call the M107 uses partially due to the platform but mostly due to the differences between the bullets.

Oh and of course some people need to be educated on the difference between an assault rifle, the non existence of the mythical scary "assault style" rifle, and that an AR-15 in .223 with a collapsible stock, pistol grip and even a forward grip is less dangerous than a fixed stock, rifle gripped Browning BAR ShortTrac in .308. And by dangerous I mean more power not that either bullet or rifle walk around with an intent to harm all by themselves.

[Jack Burton]

Does anyone know where in HU the rules exist for scopes?

Heyyyyyy wait a second Moder Weapons Book Guy... you should come up with rules. Develop them play test them. Why go with a 3 x flip out magnifier and a holographic sight instead of a normal 3 x? Why go iron instead of no mag holo or a reflex sight? Why would a fix mag scope on a raised offset be better than an adjustable scope? What kind of scopes/sights work together? What kind absolutely can not?

Not to mention making sure that people understand that it isnt just the size of a bullet that matters (i.e. a DEagle's .50 call is far inferior to the .50 call the M107 uses partially due to the platform but mostly due to the differences between the bullets.

Oh and of course some people need to be educated on the difference between an assault rifle, the non existence of the mythical scary "assault style" rifle, and that an AR-15 in .223 with a collapsible stock, pistol grip and even a forward grip is less dangerous than a fixed stock, rifle gripped Browning BAR ShortTrac in .308. And by dangerous I mean more power not that either bullet or rifle walk around with an intent to harm all by themselves.

You see where I'm going with this! I'm asking a lot of questions because if I suggest any rules for optics, I want to make sure I'm not including something in my Rifter/sourcebook submission that isn't already written somewhere else or worse, contradicts already established rules. The difficulty lies in the fact that I'm developing rules meant for the games I play, which are HU and BtS, but as we all know, rules that exist in only one genre are routinely applied in all the others. Since I don't play Rifts, I find myself at a disadvantage because rules, creatures, weapons, etc. exist there that are applied everywhere else. Soooo, I'm just doing my homework now before I say (or write) something stupid. I do that enough as it is!

[Zer0 Kay]

Does anyone know where in HU the rules exist for scopes?

Heyyyyyy wait a second Moder Weapons Book Guy... you should come up with rules. Develop them play test them. Why go with a 3 x flip out magnifier and a holographic sight instead of a normal 3 x? Why go iron instead of no mag holo or a reflex sight? Why would a fix mag scope on a raised offset be better than an adjustable scope? What kind of scopes/sights work together? What kind absolutely can not?

Not to mention making sure that people understand that it isnt just the size of a bullet that matters (i.e. a DEagle's .50 call is far inferior to the .50 call the M107 uses partially due to the platform but mostly due to the differences between the bullets.

Oh and of course some people need to be educated on the difference between an assault rifle, the non existence of the mythical scary "assault style" rifle, and that an AR-15 in .223 with a collapsible stock, pistol grip and even a forward grip is less dangerous than a fixed stock, rifle gripped Browning BAR ShortTrac in .308. And by dangerous I mean more power not that either bullet or rifle walk around with an intent to harm all by themselves.

You see where I'm going with this! I'm asking a lot of questions because if I suggest any rules for optics, I want to make sure I'm not including something in my Rifter/sourcebook submission that isn't already written somewhere else or worse, contradicts already established rules. The difficulty lies in the fact that I'm developing rules meant for the games I play, which are HU and BtS, but as we all know, rules that exist in only one genre are routinely applied in all the others. Since I don't play Rifts, I find myself at a disadvantage because rules, creatures, weapons, etc. exist there that are applied everywhere else. Soooo, I'm just doing my homework now before I say (or write) something stupid. I do that enough as it is!

:knowing smirk: would that include... pull over?
Seriously though, I can help you out with direct e-mails when I get unpacked in my new place. Right now all my books are in boxes. Most scopes have no bonuses. There is also an issue with giving stats out on the forums. Most of the bonuses from optics come from laser sights and targeting suites heck the new scope that Taya Kyle just won the American Sniper competition with would probably only grant a +2 in PB even though it allowed a moderately trained civilian (granted it was by her husband soooo who knows how "moderately" he really trained her) to defeat, outperform, trash, demolish, freaking demolish a world champion

Kyle hit 100 percent of her shots, while her opponent NRA World Shooting Champion Bruce Piatt managed to hit 58.6 percent of his targets. Her aggregated score was 10,140 points, while Piatt’s score was 3,080 points, according to a news release.

[eliakon]

As far as I know...
There are no "rules for scopes" as such. As in there is no specific rule about scopes in general.
This is because there are basically no rules on firearm combat beyond a small list of bonus/penalties and the aimed shot, called shot, and aimed called shot.
There are however several different scopes in the game. These tend to give a specific bonus to shots when mounted on a weapon.
And yes, these rules are utterly cinematic and not 'realistic' in the least... but since the entire combat system isn't the least bit realistic that isn't a surprise.

As the player of a sniper character I have been learning a great deal about how the rules for firearms work (or don't work) in the game.
And yes, one of the things that is missing are scopes... and what you can DO with them.
There are so many things that could (and frankly should) be added to the system (such as perception rolls for being able to locate certain things to aim at them in the first place... I can't tell you how many times people just say "I aim at their heart/eye/jugular/kneecap/whatever" and feel that they should simply take a -2 or 3 to hit... while only taking 2-3 seconds to line up said shot)

[dragonfett]

A house rule that I had started working on approached the issue of why we use scopes in real life. Since an object will appear smaller the further away it is from the observer it is, it is harder to hit. To mimic this, if we go off of the Shrink Power from HU2, something that is 6 inches (or appears to be about 6 inches due to distance from the observer), then attackers will suffer a -6 to hit the target. A 6' tall human would therefore appear to be roughly 6 inches at a distance of roughly 120' (the formula for angular distance is 2arctan (size/2distance) = Angular Size). Similarly, SAMAS at 8' tall appear to be 6" at roughly 160', UAR-1's at about 390', Spider Skull Walkers at about 570, and so forth. I computed a couple things for viewing it from the front and also from the side. Here is a link to a Google Sheet that I made with the calculations already done: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1sRha6TvwZyzJpc2kEVJdmCSx55KP3knfaRCymZgMcQw/edit?usp=sharing

[dragonfett]

And to continue my earlier thought, the penalties wouldn't start applying until the target's profile was less than 6', and to figure out how often the penalty would apply, find the difference between when the target appears 6' and 6", then divide by 6 (so in the human example every 20' from the target the attacker is, a culminative -1 to the strike roll is applied).

And if you think -6 to hit a human at 120 feet is excessive, adjust the penalty to what you feel to be reasonable and use that number to divide the distance of the 6' profile to the 6" profile.

Edit: I didn't have the opportunity to finish this post earlier so here is the rest.

To be perfectly honest, I feel that the -6 to hit a 6" target is a tad bit on the excessive side, but I am going with that since the only reference that I have been able to find concerning difficulty hitting small targets came from the Shrink power (Major category) in HU2, so that was why I started with that (although to be perfectly honest those penalties probably also were given under the assumption that the target with the Shrink power already was at range from the person/thing attacking them).

This is where scopes truly become relevant is that the distance to the target is divided by the scopes power/magnification (1.5, 2, 2.5, 3, etc.) for an effective range. So going back to a human at 120' from a shooter, let's say that the shooter has a ranged weapon with a x2 power scope, that would make his effective distance only 60', cutting the attack penalty in half.

Is it perfect? No, but it at least addresses the issue that it's harder to hit a target the further away you are from it.