More on Buckshot

Yesterday I wrote about buckshot rules and got one very long comment. So long that I felt it merited its own post in response.

First, when developing these rules, I sat down with a gun enthusiast who’s been in real firefights. I used a lot of what I was told and therefore may not be able to back up some of this with anything other than “an expert told me”. Where possible, I did find information online that people can look at. See the end of the post for source links.

At close range, that’s literally antitank damage. 6d10 is as much as a Militech RPG-A. Buckshot doesn’t explode, of course, but 10d10 will essentially vaporize an unarmored target on an average roll. I don’t mean kill, either. 55-odd damage is past mortal 6.

It’s possible that an RPG-A isn’t doing enough damage given plastic explosive is doing 8d10. That’s what I was using as a guideline. And within 10 feet, the larger shot calibers are apparently that nasty. Now it’s possible my expert was thinking of the modern C-4, where Cyberpunk 2020 posits a more advanced “C-6″ version. However, without the stats for C-4 or any idea how much more damage C-6 is doing, we did our best.

Buckshot will not vaporize a target but yes, it should kill it at close range. Period. It won’t vaporize because at 12 feet, the spread is only 2.5 inches. This shot then penetrated 7 boards of 5/8″ sheet rock. I have no problem believing it would penetrate Kevlar.

It should kill it because once it’s entered the body cavity, it will spread and ricochet. Here’s an image from the ballistic gelatin test.

Armor Degradation

This is a topic I think we should see in more games, including fantasy. If someone punches a hole in armor, is it still effective? Can you repair it? How effective is the damaged armor?

Image via Wikipedia

Well, first, does your game use armor class or soak? If you have armor points that soak damage, this will be much easier to implement. If armor class, it’s going to take more bookkeeping.

For games with armor points that soak damage, every time a hole is punched in the armor, subtract an armor point. In my game this means that every time the bad guys do enough damage to do even one point to a player, the armor is degraded by one point because kevlar is less effective at continuing to soak damage the more often it’s hit. Punch holes in it and you’re going to start having real problems.

If you use armor class, you might degrade the AC rating by 1 every time 5 or 10 hits. Since armor class doesn’t directly soak damage and affects the chance to hit a given target, this one is harder to determine effectively and you’ll have to play around with the numbers a bit to find the best balance.

Can the armor be repaired

If it’s steel or leather or some other natural material, likely. If it’s kevlar, not so much. Kevlar can be patched with fiberglass in some cases when applied to a hard surface but kevlar armor is not repairable and will simply degrade over time. The same will likely be true of other modern materials such as the much-anticipated spider-silk fabrics.