Almost TPK

[kcdusk]

Warsaw had been nuked, but the reality hit harder than expected. This was destruction.

Five soldiers amble along a road in the drizzling rain, approaching what would have been the central business district. Shrubs and weeds are reclaiming the road and pavement, there was no sign of human activity after the firestorm that racked this part of the city almost 12 months earlier.

Hills of rubble obscured visibility. But a sniper located on the 3rd floor of a 4 story building tracked the soldiers progress through her scope. As the group moved into what would be "medium" range, using V2.2 ruleset the following happened;

The sniper took an action round to make an aimed shot with her Russian made SVD semi-auto sniper rifle. In the following action round ...

... The first shot is fired (aimed). Hit. Killed.

Same action round using semi-auto the second (quick) shot is fired. Hit. Kill.

Third shot fired. Recoil is starting to add up, but. Hit. Killed.

Fourth shot. Hit. The solders helmet rolls across the road, his rifle falls out of reach as he hits the ground stunned, confused and badly injured in the middle of an exposed street.

Fifth shot fired (semi-auto remember) and flies high and wide (due to recoil accumulation). The lone remaining un-injured soldier dives for hard cover. Laying prone and out of site, his mind racing how he can assist his fallen friend.


One action round. 5 seconds and five shots result in an almost total-party-kill. Could this happen in your game, with how you play the rules?

[Raellus]

I don't think so. I mean, I suppose it's possible, assuming that the shooter is extremely lucky, but the scenario as described is highly implausible.

Sometimes, rules have to take a back seat to referee common sense and judgment. I'd rule that the sniper would have to make minor adjustments- in other words, re-point her weapon, at the very least- in order to engage each new target in turn. That takes time. During that time, the folks under fire would be reacting- scattering, diving for cover, etc. Combat is not turn-based in real life, and the standard rules don't take that into effect. This is where common sense and referee judgment should really come into play, IMHO.

[swaghauler]

Originally Posted by kcdusk

Warsaw had been nuked, but the reality hit harder than expected. This was destruction.

Five soldiers amble along a road in the drizzling rain, approaching what would have been the central business district. Shrubs and weeds are reclaiming the road and pavement, there was no sign of human activity after the firestorm that racked this part of the city almost 12 months earlier.

Hills of rubble obscured visibility. But a sniper located on the 3rd floor of a 4 story building tracked the soldiers progress through her scope. As the group moved into what would be "medium" range, using V2.2 ruleset the following happened;

The sniper took an action round to make an aimed shot with her Russian made SVD semi-auto sniper rifle. In the following action round ...

... The first shot is fired (aimed). Hit. Killed.

Same action round using semi-auto the second (quick) shot is fired. Hit. Kill.

Third shot fired. Recoil is starting to add up, but. Hit. Killed.

Fourth shot. Hit. The solders helmet rolls across the road, his rifle falls out of reach as he hits the ground stunned, confused and badly injured in the middle of an exposed street.

Fifth shot fired (semi-auto remember) and flies high and wide (due to recoil accumulation). The lone remaining un-injured soldier dives for hard cover. Laying prone and out of site, his mind racing how he can assist his fallen friend.


One action round. 5 seconds and five shots result in an almost total-party-kill. Could this happen in your game, with how you play the rules?

Probably not. The issue here is TIME. The original initiative system is somewhat "broken" in the way it treats activity OVER time. Let's look at the performance of this sniper in a "real world" time frame. Assuming that ALL of the shots were taken at a ROUGHLY average range of between 100m and 150m by a reasonably competent shot, the time required for each "snap" shot in a real-world setting would be about 2.5 seconds... or more than TWO combat rounds for ALL FIVE SHOTS. GDW's "mistake" is assuming that ALL shots take EXACTLY the same to fire AND travel to the target. This simply isn't true.

The quick fix using the RAW initiative system is to give everyone a number of actions based on their Initiative Score. I'd give the players pistol rounds/spent brass, checkers pieces, or poker chips which they then hand back as they perform various actions during the round. Each ACTION represents ONE SECOND'S WORTH OF ACTIVITY. Each INITIATIVE STEP (the 1 thru 6 steps you count down) represents ONE SECOND OF TIME. Everyone who has an Initiative EQUAL TO OR HIGHER THAN the current Step can surrender a token and act. All participants act through the current Step BEFORE you move to the next lower Step. In essence, EACH STEP BECOMES A "MINI ROUND" to perform ONE ACTION. This means that your high Initiative Characters may get one or two Actions and then they will be "swapping fire" with any lower Initiative participants. No longer will they be "gods among men" dropping five guys with gunfire before anyone else can react.

Once you begin to consider each Initiative Step as an "element of time," you may want certain Actions to take MULTIPLE Steps to complete. The reload of a pistol for example. Most people can speed reload (ie drop the empty mag on the ground) a pistol in about 3 Seconds/Steps. A good pistol shooter can do it in 2 Seconds/Steps and a MASTER Pistol Shooter in IPSC/IDPA can reload in ONE SECOND/STEP.
In my own system, I rule it takes 1 Second/Step per Range Band to make a Snap Shot (double this for Aimed Shots). In other words;
- 1 Second/Initiative Step for an attack at Short Range.
- 2 Seconds/Initiative Steps for a Medium Range attack.
- 3 Seconds/Initiative Steps for a Long Range attack.
- 4 Seconds/Initiative Steps for an Extreme Range attack.

This takes into account the time it takes to aim, fire and for the bullet to travel to the target. For instance, that SVD has an 800 meter per second flight time so a shot at 100 meters would take 0.12 Seconds to reach that distance. One-Tenth of a Second is a "perceptible length of time" to most humans (ie the shooter can "perceive" the delay between the shot and the hit).

Treating EACH STEP as a mini-round will also help with Autofire. As I have posted here on several occasions I figure ROF by dividing a weapon's cyclic rate by 100. Thus an AK (600rpm) has a ROF of 6. This is the MAXIMUM number of bullets that weapon can fire in a SINGLE INITIATIVE STEP. It represents 6/10th of a second of actual (real-world) fire. It is much easier to roll 5 or 6 dice per Step than 25 or 30 once per round.

Randomizing Initiative:

I'm a fan of random turn/round based Initiative systems and I now use a system we tested some months ago for Twilight. We roll 1D6 and add the Initiative SCORE to it. We then DIVIDE by 2 ROUNDING UP to get a "randomized" score from 1 to 6 (occasionally 7 for REALLY high scores). This is the Initiative Score/Actions for that character or NPC for that round. We then give the player that number of poker chips for his activity.

If you want to see more of my initiative system, just search the posting Thoughts on Initiative by AdmLee. I have a lot of it posted there, especially the time in seconds for a number of actions.

[Adm.Lee]

Originally Posted by kcdusk

One action round. 5 seconds and five shots result in an almost total-party-kill. Could this happen in your game, with how you play the rules?

Almost, with lucky dice. But I note in v2 (and I think in v1, too) a character is limited to engaging no more than 3 targets per round, no matter the ROF. It's in the section labelled "Automatic Fire", but as a referee, I'd extend that to semi-auto fire, too.

[Cdnwolf]

That's where the tick system from TWL2013 system made more sense. Also something about the recoil bugged me but I don't have the books in front of me.

Okay first shot Recoil of 4.
Second shot recoil of 8
Third recoil of 12
Fourth recoil of 16
Fifth recoil of 20.

So unless it was a female Bulgarian weightlifter with a strength of 10 your third shot on will be hitting some drastic penalties.


Firing Range Difficulties
Range
Short Aimed: Average Quick: Difficult
Medium Aimed: Difficult Quick: Formidable
Long Aimed: Formidable Quick: Impossible
Extreme Aimed:Impossible Quick: Not Allowed

So say a strength of 6 and Rifle skill 8

First shot 8 or less to hit.
Second shot Skill is half for quick shot plus recoil so 4 minus 2 (recoil) = 2 to hit
Third shot 4 minus 6 (recoil) 1 needed to hit (An unmodified roll of 1 in a direct fire task is an automatic hit, regardless of skill, asset, or the difficulty of the shot.)
Fourth and fifth shot same


Correct me if I am doing this wrong.

[kcdusk]

Nah, i think your all right. I wasn't comfortable with the outcome and wanted to see how others would handle it.

[stg58fal]

Originally Posted by Cdnwolf

That's where the tick system from TWL2013 system made more sense.

Yes. I rather like the T2K13 system. Someone with a 1911 or Glock 17 *should* be able to get several shots off before someone with an M240 can even get the weapon on target.

And they'd better hope they put the machinegunner down before he gets a burst off.

It irks me when games make swinging a battleaxe take just as long as slashing with a dagger. I understand why they do it, but IMO it merely encourages players to take the biggest, most powerful weapons. If you can get off the same number of shots, with the same chance of hitting (due to taking the time to aim), with an M9 as you can with a 30mm autocannon, there's very little reason to take anything other than the autocannon (because let's face it, most gaming groups stick to the "FFS, just be reasonable" method of dealing with encumbrance, rather than taking the time to calculate the weight of each round, magazine, belt, etc. Except maybe first edition T2K players...). Not that I blame them, mind you. I don't want to take the time to crunch the numbers as a player or a GM. I've been playing a game in a setting that the GM cooked up using Fantasy Flight's Star Wars system, and the guy in our group that throws daggers as his primary attack and is agile and fast gets to act just as many times as the robot that's roughly the size of a Volkswagen beetle and uses a heavy machinegun. They can move the same amount, too.

[unkated]

Originally Posted by kcdusk

[I]
The sniper took an action round to make an aimed shot with her Russian made SVD semi-auto sniper rifle. In the following action round ...

... The first shot is fired (aimed). Hit. Killed.

Same action round using semi-auto the second (quick) shot is fired. Hit. Kill.

Third shot fired. Recoil is starting to add up, but. Hit. Killed.

Fourth shot. Hit. The solders helmet rolls across the road, his rifle falls out of reach as he hits the ground stunned, confused and badly injured in the middle of an exposed street.

Fifth shot fired (semi-auto remember) and flies high and wide (due to recoil accumulation). The lone remaining un-injured soldier dives for hard cover. Laying prone and out of site, his mind racing how he can assist his fallen friend.


One action round. 5 seconds and five shots result in an almost total-party-kill. Could this happen in your game, with how you play the rules?

Among other issues, I'd have required something like "I take 1 head shot at each man in the column" to be declared first; then I'd probably subtract a shot for each switching of targets. And another if the answer to "do you check to see if you hit?" is a yes.

Then you get to the mechanics, which don't look good, but that was already covered.

Uncle Ted