Within my understanding of the 4th ed rules the canister shot (or shotgun shot as the case may be) is resolved as a single attack with a rate of fire determined by the statistics of the weapon (often approximating 1 shot per projectile but not in all cases). In the setting the round was listed as having an effective rate of fire of 100 - I don't believe it said it contained 100 flechettes (I'll have to check that again). A ROF of 100 gives like a +9 or something to hit and its recoil number was like a 1 or 2 (I'd have to look it up as well). So a reasonable roll from someone with a 13 skill could easily hit with 5 projectiles doing 5 separate 1d-1imp hits. And soft armor without at least 12DR (4 vs imp attack) was only partially effective. All that is if it has range to spread. If it doesn't my interpretation of the rules says 100/2 times the base damage (1d-1) turned crushing with 100/2 times the DR (but the DR is still soft and still suffers Blunt Force Trauma equal to 1/5 the damage absorbed by the armor). That means on average 12.5 points of blunt trauma for the poor sucker hit. Granted he isn't bleeding to death, but Joe Average is probably not going to pass *both* the major wound stun check and the stay awake at negative hp check.
In the shotgun case it isn't *as* bad. With a listed ROF of 2x9 that is an effective ROF of 18. Thats probably only a +3 or +4 to hit and the recoil number isn't any better. So a reasonable skill of 13 on a reasonable roll will only hit with 2 or 3 separate 1D+1pi hits. And the soft armor will be much better at absorbing the Blunt Force Trauma (probably none unless your GM rounds 6 or 7 pi damage to a point of crushing BFT). However again if there isn't room to spread then it is a much uglier picture. (18/2(D+1) - 18/2(DR))/5. That is going to average 8 points of BFD assuming at least enough DR that it isn't going to penetrate. That's still a pretty bad deal for Joe Average. I'm pretty sure this is the way it is supposed to be handled, and looking at it I think it is pretty reasonable. A point blank shotgun blast to kevlar is not going to be pleasant and has every probability of being fatal - and a super high tech 20mm Gauss rifle firing flechette ammo isn't going to be any better for the recipient. All in all I found it to be pretty playable. My PC's were convinced that Centrum gear was way better than Homelines and were constantly grabbing equipment of the bodies of their enemies. The final boss in that campaign was finished off with one of these by a natural 4 to hit (no dodge all projectiles hit) with a 3 on the crit table roll (triple damage). But to be fair I did drop a PC on three separate occasions with one of these. Clint "David Scheidt" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent by: [EMAIL PROTECTED] 06/12/2006 12:41 PM Please respond to The GURPSnet mailing list <[email protected]> To To "The GURPSnet mailing list" <[email protected]> cc Subject Re: [gurps] Shotguns Caterpillar: Confidential Green Retain Until: 07/12/2006 Retention Category: G90 - General Matters/Administration On 6/12/06, Clinton N. Fell <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I've used the Centrum bee-hive round on PCs in flexible armor. I believe > each pellet (or flechete) is counted separately ..... unless they are > inside the minimum spreading range. At which point even obscene levels of > DR from the flexible armor will not keep a somewhat normal PC conscious > (alive maybe, conscious probably not). (50(D-1) - DR*50) = Unpleasant > Blunt Force Trauma. With the more sane ROF of buckshot it may not be so > bad, but the ROF 100 canister rounds were *really* ugly. > There's no reason that just because there's a hundred flechettes in the round, that it should be treated as 100 seperate attacks. That's one of the things that variable amount of damage covers. Roll a one for damage? You hit with just one of the sub-munitions. Roll a six? You hit with two or three of them. -- David Scheidt [EMAIL PROTECTED] _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l _______________________________________________ GurpsNet-L mailing list <[email protected]> http://mail.sjgames.com/mailman/listinfo/gurpsnet-l
