Quote from: dragoner;724611The FBI report cites it as a myth.  /shrug

It's been argued about a lot.  Essentially, there's a lot of post-GSW cellular disruption that could be attributed to it, but I don't think that it's a short term concern any more than the secondary wounding from twisting the knife in a stab wound is a concern.  There's just a level of detail you don't need to get into.

Quote from: Panzerkraken;724612My only addition from a physics perspective is that the knife has the additional energy of moving the arm of the wielder, and that energy is part of what would be transferred.

Also, from a damage perspective, you can't just use the overall weight of the weapon/projectile, you have to take into account the surface area of the contact and the relative density/resistance of the object/person it's striking.

When you get into the damage as it relates to a person, it becomes more of a concern of WHERE you hit.  Anything with the capability to penetrate flesh to a depth of about 4 inches can kill you dead instantly, with no bone protection.  (this is just about any firearm from .22 FMJ up).  The advantage to larger, heavier rounds is carry distance and bone penetration, which makes it easier to hit those areas (in the sense that larger wound cavities mans you don't have to be as absolutely precise).

Oh yeah I'm absolutely not saying those numbers aren't crude and incomplete, but on the balance I think there are plenty of grounds to have seperate damage stats for knives, pikes, and pistols.

Quote from: Panzerkraken;724613It's been argued about a lot.  Essentially, there's a lot of post-GSW cellular disruption that could be attributed to it, but I don't think that it's a short term concern any more than the secondary wounding from twisting the knife in a stab wound is a concern.  There's just a level of detail you don't need to get into.

Bringing up 'hydrostatic shock' is a surefire way to start a flamewar on basically any gun forum.

There's considerable debate on whether it even exists.

I've really enjoyed the gunplay in Deadlands so far for Savage Worlds. The fact that any shot with enough aces can kill you is also fairly realistic. 50 Fathoms had guns, but with poor reload time (shot and gunpowder so that it took 2 rounds to reload to fire again). Being able to soak damage rolls or bennie the vigor roll to see if you survive takes some of the lethalness out of the system for the good guys, but with some bad rerolls, it can be deadly. Wyn Copperstone died and became a Harrowed so far in
our Deadlands The Flood game (6 sessions in and he died in session 4 and came back from the dead)

We all remember in 50 Fathoms when So Cai (a red man ninja assassin) died. A musketeer wild card aimed a gun at the back of his head at near point blank range with a called shot and blew him away.

In Deadlands, the samurai only survived a close range double barrel shotgun attack because of his armor. Three wounds and barely survived the combat. Charging dudes with shotguns when you have a katana ain't the best plan. Especially with the damage shotguns can do at close range in Savage Worlds. (The shotgun starts at 3d6 then degrades to 2d6 at medium range and 1d6 at long range, simulating its devastating close range nature and poor medium and long range capabilities in SW).

All the various guns have their own little quirks to them, that keep them from being same-y like that. For example Double Tap with a Colt Peacemaker for +1 attack and damage but expending 2 rounds of ammo. Or the way the system handles automatic fire such as suppression and fully automatic fire or fanning the hammer on a revolver. Lots of gun options, but pretty simple once you learn the rules of the individual weapons that you have on you, since carry capacity is very limited in SW, you won't be carrying a ton of weapons.

I also like the simple TN 4 to hit/TN 8 to raise system. +/- modifiers of course.

Quote from: Panzerkraken;724613It's been argued about a lot.

I know, essentially though, I am going to stick with what the report says, esp as it agrees with the physics I learned ME degree. Too many of the arguments seem spurious, as well as I have been down the road of explaining scientific principles and have someone look at me as I am speaking Chinese; then I just say it is "magic voodoo". :banghead:

Quote from: The Traveller;724614Oh yeah I'm absolutely not saying those numbers aren't crude and incomplete, but on the balance I think there are plenty of grounds to have seperate damage stats for knives, pikes, and pistols.

Knives and pikes are arguable to me, they're functionally the same thing from a damage perspective (chunk of sharp/pointy metal inserted into the body by human mechanical motion), but the behavior of a bullet is different enough to matter.

Specifically, when I deal with any of the 3 in my phoenix: apocalypse game, they're all treated the same way on the damage chart (since they're all stabbing wounds) so they're rolled on the location chart, checked for penetration, and then assessed against the chart for the damage to the subject, which could range from a 5 point glance hit up through a 100,000 point injury to the heart to an auto-dead result.

Quote from: dragoner;724623I have been down the road of explaining scientific principles and have someone look at me as I am speaking Chinese; then I just say it is "magic voodoo". :banghead:

I've been down that same road.

Huge segments of the population are happy to view technology as a series of "black boxes" that take X and do Y to it and so produce Z as output without ever knowing the fundamentals of the "black box" and its operations.

Quote from: dragoner;724623I know, essentially though, I am going to stick with what the report says, esp as it agrees with the physics I learned ME degree.

Can you walk us through what the report has to say about knife wounds there.

Quote from: Panzerkraken;724631Knives and pikes are arguable to me, they're functionally the same thing from a damage perspective (chunk of sharp/pointy metal inserted into the body by human mechanical motion)

Eh I don't know. The pike is a much larger heavier weapon used with two hands, that extra mass has to count for something. Also it's natural to put the weight of the body into a pike strike, you pretty much have to in order to do anything with it, a knife not so much.

Quote from: jeff37923;724640I've been down that same road.

Huge segments of the population are happy to view technology as a series of "black boxes" that take X and do Y to it and so produce Z as output without ever knowing the fundamentals of the "black box" and its operations.

Totally. One of my friends coined a term perfectly from when there was a traffic jam we were in, a car stalled in front of us, and when we went to help the driver push it to the side of the road, she rolled down the window and said:

"It just stopped."

Quote from: The Traveller;724641Can you walk us through what the report has to say about knife wounds there.

Okay.

Quote from: The Traveller;724641Can you walk us through what the report has to say about knife wounds there.

Okay.

Stopping power, extent of physical tissue damage, and lethality, are very different things.

I can't really comment on stopping power with much authority, because all my experience with injury is with treating it, not dealing and thankfully not receiving it, and I have zero actual combat training. But I tend to think of stopping power as a property of concussive or concussive-penetrating trauma such as fisticuffs, bludgeons and firearms, and while kinetic energy is not the only factor, I surmise that it's definitely an important one.

Anatomic location of injury is a huge, huge factor. A high-energy GSW from an assault weapon (the heavily armed segment of the local crime scene seems to favor the 5.56mm AR-15, but of course, the bad old AK-47 doesn't trail far behind) can blast half a liver to smithereens before people realize they've been shot, and I don't think it's too much of a stretch to imagine that they won't stop functioning until hypovolemic shock from massive blood loss sets in (anything from a few seconds to a few minutes).

The same weapon inflicting a GSW to a limb can shatter bone and even result in traumatic amputation (we often saw them coming in dangling on a little strip of skin and ligament), with less bleeding and less immediate risk of death, but a lot more pain and immediate functional and psychological impact.

On the other hand, slit a man's femoral artery and watch him bleed to death on a similar (or even faster) time scale, with minimal "quantitative" direct tissue damage. The same goes for a blunt or penetrating injury to the skull; the exact mass of tissue killed by the attack is irrelevant when a big enough hematoma will push your swollen brain against its respiratory centers in the medulla oblongata and kill you just as dead as tearing your heart out.

Of course, it'd be a bitch to model these things with any degree of practicality or sanity in a RPG. I'm super fine with hit points for entertainment purposes.

Quote from: BedrockBrendan;724595Because combat that is larger than life, free of real world consequences and not terribly realistic is fun. Just like action movies are fun. In some games, like investigations or political campaigns, gritty and unfin combat can work well, but for others you want that action style combat.

At a certain point action movies become ridiculous... ersatz superhero movies like Crank. I guess that's why I like horror and investigative games so much.
Still, mountain climbing and deep sea diving can be complex and dangerous... but there's not much play acting centering on those and game rules often come down to a single roll... no obsessing over minutae of equipment.
Do any RPGs resolve entire combats in a single roll? 'You all die', or 'some of you die, some of them die, and the rest run away or go to hospital', or 'they all die'?

Quote from: slayride35;724620I've really enjoyed the gunplay in Deadlands so far for Savage Worlds. The fact that any shot with enough aces can kill you is also fairly realistic.

In our multi-year campaign of Deadlands only one PC ever died... and that was mine, solely because I refused to expend the chips to avoid the shot/resurrect him. Maybe our GM was pulling his punches, in fact that seems likely... he must have vastly over-inflated the number of chips we were getting. As it played nothing about that game seemed 'realistic'.

Quote from: dragoner;724623I know, essentially though, I am going to stick with what the report says, esp as it agrees with the physics I learned ME degree. Too many of the arguments seem spurious, as well as I have been down the road of explaining scientific principles and have someone look at me as I am speaking Chinese; then I just say it is "magic voodoo". :banghead:

Google will return some recent studies from gunned down pigs that shows organ and brain damage away from the wound.  The idea I think is to see if similar damage is done to soldiers severely wounded by gunfire who survived only due to medical intervention and have mental issues long after physical recovery.

It's not a "shoot you in the hand and your heart explodes" type of pressure though, although even wounds that are not life threatening can cause shock and unconsciousness.

Quote from: slayride35;724620For example Double Tap with a Colt Peacemaker for +1 attack and damage but expending 2 rounds of ammo.

Seems like the right thread for pedantry...

You can't double tap with a single-action revolver without fanning the hammer.

Quote from: Simlasa;724671At a certain point action movies become ridiculous... ersatz superhero movies like Crank. I guess that's why I like horror and investigative games so much.
Still, mountain climbing and deep sea diving can be complex and dangerous... but there's not much play acting centering on those and game rules often come down to a single roll... no obsessing over minutae of equipment.

This is why i said for investigative and political adventures, gritty realism works. But i wouldn't dismiss action, given how many people like it. Sure it may be unrealistic, and after a while seem silly, but i can honestly watch three action movies for every drama I view. I just find them more entertaining overall. With RPGs my interest ins split about fifty-fifty regarding action oriented games. Sometimes i want systems where you play james bond, sometimes i want systems where gun fights are substantially more dangerous and quick.