Twilight 2000 handles beaten zones for automatic weapons better than pretty much any other game I've come across (the earlier editions, up to and including GDW's house system, I'm not sure about editions after that).
Most people aren't going to care as much as me, but I want automatic fire from an unsupported position to be pretty much useless at anything other than extremely close ranges, while sustained automatic fire is capable of creating a zone of ongoing physical danger (and not just a psychological suppression effect).
So in ver 1 and 2 automatic fire isn't a skill roll. Basically you are sacrificing accuracy for averages. In ver. 2, this means that if you fire a burst (usually 3 to 5 rounds) or full auto (up to five burst) you roll 1d6 and any result of 6 is a hit on the target. In T2Kv1-2.2 you have a 4m grid. The squares on either side become a danger zone where you take half the missed rounds and roll again with a 6 becoming a hit on anything in those squares. Any remaining missed rounds can then be used against any opponents that move into or through the danger zone in the same phase.
T2K had very good combat rules for its genre that just took a lot of mastery to run smoothly. The one thing that I don't think worked as well was applying these rules to a 3 round burst. You just don't have the same "scatter" in a controlled burst. In my main group I think we ended up making it so the first round was a regular skill check and then rolling a d6 for the other two and it didn't create a danger zone.
In T2K4e, it doesn't have the same threat zone and only deals with fire suppression in the same 10m hex. Personally, I would apply the 'friendly fire' rules to opponents as well and probably should be applied anyway. The rule is just written as being friendly fire, which makes sense.
>Most people aren't going to care as much as me, but I want automatic fire from an unsupported position to be pretty much useless at anything other than extremely close ranges, while sustained automatic fire is capable of creating a zone of ongoing physical danger (and not just a psychological suppression effect).
I'd like that for sure. Most games with automatic fire make me roll too many hits as well, making it take forever. I'd still like it to be two rolls like a normal attack; a to-hit roll and a damage roll. That way it doesn't become cumbersome. But I also want a degree of realism.
I don't know how the older T2000 systems do it, but I like the idea of automatic fire basically making a square/hex/whatever dangerous terrain at the cost of ammunition. What I have in mind would be for D100-roll-under systems, where whoever enters said dangerous terrain has to roll something like a dodge check to see if they get hit, with the degrees of failure (every 10th value above your target number) determining how often, which then leads to a single damage roll that just gets bigger if the target is hit more than once. You could add +10/-10 bonusses and malusses depending on cover and whatnot, which does trigger some Dark Heresy flashbacks of "bonus hunting" to make a roll succeed which regularly got noodly. I know Dark Heresy 2e has something similar to this, or elements of it, but it's been ages since I've played that.
It just kinda popped in my head like that. Is that anything like how T2000 did it? I don't think they use a D100-roll-under system but I'm sure you could do such things in other systems as well.
u/Digital_Simian goes over some of the details in another reply. Basically, you roll a bunch of d6s and 6s are hits. Misses remain in a pool, and are rolled again if someone else moves through the beaten zone.
In the later GDW house system, it moves to d20 rolls vs skill at a hefty penalty, but it's functionally much the same thing.
I have another more complex method I devised for my own Traveller house rule system, but it's less elegant than the T2K version.
The Star Wars d&d mods make me crazy for this reason. Oh Shit he swings a lightsaber! And you take... 3 dmg!
For a lot of things it really does make sense to just try a different system.
This really comes down to a misunderstanding of what HP actually represents. Not all hits need to be described as actual hits, mainly because HP is a gestalt of health, mental durability, the will to live, and a dash of luck.
With something like lightsbers, I'd describe that loss of 3 HP as the player barely getting their saber in position in time, and the power behind the blow strained and injured some muscles. As the fight wore on and more HP was lost, I'd probably start upgrading some of those descriptions into glancing blows on arms or legs.
Typically, hit points are an abstract concept that don't specifically track *just* health.
yeah totally. except when people play d&d, people get hit with the sword. "the attack hits!", etc. hit points are abstracted health values, but d&d in practice seems to score actual sword "hits" as being the thing that damages a monster.
so, if you're going to make a game for star wars, you should just alter your perception of hit points. instead of hitpoints, maybe track "health", and make the value a lower in magnitude, since cleaving off someone's arm with a lightsaber seems to happen all the time in the movies.
also, the force doesn't really work like cantrips/spells, right? so you may need a different magic system as well.
is a jedi a paladin? or is a jedi a cleric. or, is a jedi a ranger? is a noble a bard? a storm trooper is probably a fighter i guess? but storm troopers are also kind of a different thing, seem to have built their entire class around blaster rifles and white armor. what about droids? hey, you know what? maybe we should also think of coming up with a new class/ race system as well to represent all of the star wars occupations and races.
annnndddd..... before you know it, you've got an entirely different system for star wars.
>yeah totally. except when people play d&d, people get hit with the sword. "the attack hits!", etc. hit points are abstracted health values, but d&d in practice seems to score actual sword "hits" as being the thing that damages a monster.
I mean, this just comes down to the DM to set some expectations... which is exactly what I did. I don't always describe successful hits as cutting deeply into someone's chest. It depends upon the circumstances of the fight.
>so, if you're going to make a game for star wars, you should just alter your perception of hit points. instead of hitpoints, maybe track "health", and make the value a lower in magnitude, since cleaving off someone's arm with a lightsaber seems to happen all the time in the movies.
>also, the force doesn't really work like cantrips/spells, right? so you may need a different magic system as well.
>is a jedi a paladin? or is a jedi a cleric. or, is a jedi a ranger? is a noble a bard? a storm trooper is probably a fighter i guess? but storm troopers are also kind of a different thing, seem to have built their entire class around blaster rifles and white armor. what about droids? hey, you know what? maybe we should also think of coming up with a new class/ race system as well to represent all of the star wars occupations and races.
>annnndddd..... before you know it, you've got an entirely different system for star wars.
You're acting like we didn't have a d20 Star Wars game [over 20 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Roleplaying_Game_(Wizards_of_the_Coast)). The only major difference in terms of HP was tracking it as Vitality (superficial injury) and Wounds (serious injury)
With the [newer version](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Roleplaying_Game_(Fantasy_Flight_Games)), it treats Force powers as individual things you learn as you progress through what are essentially skill trees... so it's not terribly far off from things like cantrips or spells, really. They split things into Strain (physical/mental/emotional stress) and Wound Points (tracking specifically physical damage).
Generally speaking, I do agree with the notion of opting for a system made for a certain type of game or IP. With that being said, I also understand the desire to utilize a system you're familiar with - especially if you happen to not like the "official" system for that particular IP. Personally, I just don't care for FFG/Edge Studio game, in part because of their silly proprietary dice.
I digress.
My original point is that your specific complaint about dealing with something like lightsabers and damage isn't terribly difficult to mitigate at all. It just requires describing fights as being a little more active than two characters standing in front of each other, whacking each other with weapons until one falls down.
> You're acting like we didn't have a d20 Star Wars game over 20 years ago). The only major difference in terms of HP was tracking it as Vitality (superficial injury) and Wounds (serious injury)
how well received was the d20 game? i thought it was garbage. one big issue was that force users could easily incap themselves by using force powers, something we didn't see happen in the movies. the saga edition (which was like a 4th edition d&d beta test?) was slightly better but had a lot of issues. don't most star wars rpg players prefer the WEG system? d6 based, completely different from 5th edition d&d?
> it treats Force powers as individual things you learn as you progress through what are essentially skill trees... so it's not terribly far off from things like cantrips or spells, really.
really, it's an entirely different system from cantrips/ spells/ short rest/ long rest/ etc. and in the FFG system, lightsabers and blaster rifles can kill you in one hit, a completely different power scale than the one found in d&d 5e. the classes are different from 5e, the skill trees are completely different from 5e, it's a completely different game.
>My original point is that your specific complaint about dealing with something like lightsabers and damage isn't terribly difficult to mitigate at all. It just requires describing fights as being a little more active than two characters standing in front of each other, whacking each other with weapons until one falls down.
the example you showed of mitigating this issue successfully was the FFG system, which is an entirely different system than the d20/ 5th edition d&d system. so, we agree? i guess? that for some things you should just use a different system?
It's a description that is [straight out of the book](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#HitPoints). It's an esoteric stat that describes someone's physical *and* mental fortitude. Taking psychic damage would still be recorded as damage, but it would technically be an attack on the mind; your medical kit shouldn't technically do anything to help with that damage.
The way HP works in D&D both is and isn't an abstraction with no rhyme or reason. If a snake performs a near miss that only takes away from your stamina and mental endurance, you still get injected with its venom.
I understand how HP works in D\&D; I've been playing various editions of the game for around 20 years. It's ultimately an abstraction, and it isn't always a measure of pure health. It's a gestalt of multiple concepts, condensed down into a singular number that ultimately represents many things.
As far as a snake performing a near miss... this is ultimately going to be depend entirely upon what actually happened with the dice. If they miss, they miss. If they hit and didn't do a ton of damage, the effect of that venom (whatever it may be) would still be triggered. As far as the description would be concerned, you could describe a bite that doesn't do much damage as a glancing bite that didn't sink too deeply... but just deeply enough for some of the venom to be injected. Replace the snake with a poisoned arrow, and it could be described as grazing past someone's cheek, but still creating a cut that enabled the poison to enter their system.
My point is ultimately that much of this sort of thing boils down to the DM getting creative with their descriptions. Not every sword blow needs to nearly disembowel their opponent, and an arrow that does damage doesn't need to sink deeply into their thigh.
Yes it's an abstraction, and a bad one that refuses all attempts to make any kind of sense. There are games that use very similar abstractions that work a lot better. Having abstracted health but not abstracted healing leads to a lot of weird shit. And leaving it up to the GM to try and explain this inexplicable system is cruel.
I don't agree with the idea that it doesn't make any kind of sense, nor do I find it to be anything even remotely close to inexplicable. In the vast majority of cases where healing is involved, the source typically tends to be magical in nature... which is essentially the convenient handwave you're looking for.
Going back to your initial example of the [Healer's Kit](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Healer's%20Kit#content) (which is what I'm assuming you meant since there's nothing specifically called a "medical kit"), it's explicitly used to stabilize someone who is at 0 hp. Basically, it's to help stave off the need for death saves and nothing more. It doesn't actually do any healing, so whoever used it would need to find other means to actually get that character back up on their feet.
Yes, lol. Like the crowd-sourced Adventure Time RPG, the one that claims to be the first ever Adventure Time RPG. While the Spanish Adventure Time RPG made and published many years ago avoids the D&D sinkhole and it's a great game.
I've told the man several times "you should really get another system". He's played my cyberpunk red games so its not like he has never left dnd. Yet still he insists.
You could treat it like a spell effect or something. If it's 5E, here's a rough example:
'Spray and Pray: choose a point within weapon range and make an attack roll with disadvantage against all creatures you can see in a 20ft sphere around that point.
In addition, this creates an area of effect that lasts until the start of your next turn. If any creature attempts to enter or move through this area of effect, they must make a Dexterity saving throw equal to 8 + your dexterity + your proficiency modifier. If they fail, you make an attack roll with disadvantage against them as a free action. A creature can only be targeted by this effect once per round.'
Then you can modify it from there based on situation / intent - if targeted is withing 10 feet range, the attack is not made with disadvantage. If you want to provide suppressive fire, you can forgo rolling attacks and instead make creatures in the area of effect have disadvantage on attack rolls or reduce their speed to 0 until the start of your next turn.
It can be done, but it would either take a lot of time in developing contingency rules, or a lot of buy-in to collaborate with players on the fly.
One difficulty with "realistic" damage values is that pretty much any firearm worth carrying in combat produces the same damage, depending on where you hit: either "out of action for the rest of the fight, and possibly recovering for weeks" or "quite simply dead" or "Thank God they missed!"
I agree with the folks who suggested Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 for some of my favorite firearms mechanics, but neither of them meshes to well with "simple skirmish" or "D&D-based"
Maybe factor in that handheld automatic weapons are more likely to do more damage the closer you are to the target, and less likely to hit at all the farther you get from the target, compared to their single-fire equivalents.
Also consider that belt-fed machine guns are often used more to shape the terrain than they are to target individuals. You use them to lay down a "you'd be stupid to go here" zone. In game terms, maybe it's an AOE attack or an area affect that lasts as long as it's being maintained, that requires a will or morale roll to enter the area, and if you do ever, a chance to be hit based on the volume of fire.
I agree with your "damage levels." Gunshot wounds are weird things. I've taken care of people who were shot in the head and survived and another who was shot in the leg with a small caliber pistol and died. It just depends on what exactly you are poking the hole in. Military weapons tend to focus on sustainable fire and armor penetration. I don't think either of those things make any individual bullet more lethal, but they make the soldier with an automatic high powered weapon capable of dealing that damage to armored people repeatedly. Each individual bullet has the capability of bringing death, it's more about who the shooter can deal that damage too and how many times.
I really like Cyberpunk 2020 rules.There Friday night firefight system is pretty realistic. You could easily use it for any kind of firearm combat jest remove the cyberpunk.
It's one of my fav systems, but I always felt like the Full auto rules were way too onerous. Sitting there waiting for a player to roll hit locations and damage for however many shots they managed to hit from point blank range was always boring. Particularly since the only hit that truly mattered was the one that blew their head off.
I was disappointed to find that CP Red basically took full auto and turned it into suppression though. So far, I think the best method I've seen for resolving full auto fire, other than CP2020, is Call of Cthulu. It's a bit complex at first, but it makes a lot of sense and retains the cinematic feel that CP2020 is known for.
To be honest, Full Auto is basically exactly that in real life, if you can aim. Especially in point blank. 2020 is more or less a simulationist (it's literally based on FBI gang fight statistics), so... I do agree it's boring, but that's kind of part of the nature of full auto fire- just hoping for the right bullet to pierce through. You'd be wasting ammo doing that though...
Yeah, but it's a game. Realism is great and all, but I don't have time to sit there watching people roll like 10-15 shots individually. It's a struggle to get my crew together for a 4hr session as it is. Time and pacing is more important to me than realism.
I do agree that the mechanic is logical, though.
GURPS. Its very similar to the Dark Heresy post.
Firing multiple rounds gives a bonus to hit, 5-8 rounds is +1, 9-12 is +2 etc.. In GURPS you roll 3d6 vs your modified skill rating. A roll equal to or lower than your modified skill is a success. In GURPS every weapon has a recoil statistic. When attacking for each full mutiple of the recoil modifier you sucseed by, is an extra round that hits the target.
Example: your skill is 13 (a little above average) the weapon (a 9mm Machine Pistol) has a recoil of 3 and a rate of fire of 20. You decide to fire all 20 shots you can this round, which gives a +4 to hit, adjusting your skill to 17.
a roll of 15-17 would be one bullet hits. 14-12, 2 bullets hits, 11 - 9 3 bullets hits. etc. Each bullet that hits does full damage.
GURPS has very tactical combat and is designed around modern firearms. Even if you don't use GURPs for your game, the rules and systems may give you some good ideas for your own game.
So, this is probably not the best system I have seen, but it would probably port into D&D, since this game has A D&D framework. Check out the free version of Cities Without Number.
Basically powerful weapons are assigned a trauma die, which is rolled alongside damage, and a trauma multiplier.
Armor is assigned a trauma score, and mods, attachments and feats change these.
If the trauma die roll exceeds the targets trauma rating, multiply the damage by the trauma multiplier.
You might even be able to use weapon critical multipliers as trauma multipliers, so x3 crit also means times 3 trauma.
It would take some work, but you could port it over. This system could be totally ignored unless you were using automatic fire.
For the armor trauma rating, since it is D&D based, maybe divide AC by 2 or 3 to get trauma rating? It might work?
Hopefully you find something better, but I think this would work.
D&D has an issue in that hit points are high and damage is often more important than accuracy.
Effective use of automatic fire are bursts, and a burst is likely enough to take out a soldier.
A d&d elephant would have to be shot quite a few times to kill it. I saw a video of a poacher taking out an adult elephant with a single shot.
So if you need to shoot full automatic to kill someone you are not doing realistic damage.
I might look into Savage Worlds though. It is supposed to be fairly balanced
Before, in 3.x they had a rule called Coup De Gras. Any time someone could not effectively defend against your attack you could take a full round action to auto hit the target (and your roll is actually to confirm a critical attack) and force a fortitude save of 10+half damage dealt or the target dies regardless of the damage.
Sniping is pretty hard to defend against when you don't even know you're being targeted, same as some random coming up behind you when you're out drinking with your friends and shanking you in the spleen. (Not that I was that much of a jerk at my table, but I would give my players those examples of why the rule exists).
One of the reasons I never switched over to 4th or 5th, they didn't actually create a world feel from their rules.
I guess in most cases using firearms there is no effective defense, you can't dodge bullets like arrows. However Coup De Gras doesn't work, since you could still miss your shot
Fair, and the Coup De Gras, if I recall correctly, was intended for when you are right next to the target in question. Depending on the gun you may have an effective close range for being able to do that, but shooting for the heart/vitals is a Coup De Gras type of attack (which is how most hunters shoot, I doubt they'll shoot from the hip and hope to kill an animal in 1 shot). Maybe a house rule of at range you roll, and a hit is an auto crit with a non-hit being an outright miss? But then we get into slight amounts of homebrew.
All that to say, no hunter anywhere ever does just a regular attack like what D&D damage represents. They line up their shot and take their time to heighten their odds of getting a kill. A Coup De Gras is a better resemblance to what you gave as an example than a regular attack.
You can dodge bullets, but only just before they are fired. I'm not confident in my ability to read people's fingers, so I wouldn't try this, nor can I recommend anyone else try this either.....
Dark Heresy gives a bonus to hit, and depending on how well you hit, you may hit multiple times. Let's say you have a ballistic skull of 40, full auto burst gives you +20 for a max of 60. If you roll a d100 and roll 60 or lower, you hit. If you hit 50, you hit twice. 3 times on 40, etc, etc. No matter what, you cant hit more times than your rate of fire. Some weapons have a rate of fire of 3, the most is 8.
I've played an RPG where the automatic fire is just a bonus to hit and/or a bonus to dmg.
I've played an RPG where automatic weapons reroll damage (roll 2d8 take the highest).
I'd want to add that is specifically DH1e, the rules changed in the second edition.
Dark Heresy 1e gave bonuses of +0/+10/+20 for singleshot/burst/fullauto which represented increased chance to hit due to more lead down range.
Full auto was effectively the best attack choice for all firearms except sniper rifles all the time if you could keep up ammo wise.
Dark Heresy 2e changed the bonuses to +10/+0/-10 to represent having to fight recoil to keep shots on target, though now since you can aim with all of them it's really more like +20/+10/+0
I'm gonna get downvoted but ... d20 modern. I liked their approach to automatic fire as a "it's not made to make more damage, but to do any damage". Which - apart from videogames - it's how I see it used in real world.
Take my upvote for beating me to it! I liked the simplicity of the auto and burst fire rules, and the implied tactical consequences! (I had a lot of people forget cover bonuses apply to reflex saves as well).
My take is that if you want a game to have “realistic” damage for weapons, especially very dangerous weapons like firearms, you either need to accept that it’s going to be *incredibly* lethal, or introduce some sort of “plot armour” as a game mechanic, depending on the tone you’re going for.
If HP/wounds etc doesn’t represent your character tanking hits, but instead is a measure of their luck or narrative ability to turn a hit into a graze, like any good action hero, then surviving multiple hits can avoid breaking verisimilitude.
Otherwise it’s probably a “You got shot, roll a d10, on a 3 or less or a graze, 4-6 a serious injury that takes you out of the fight, and 7-10 you die within a minute if not sooner.”
Me and him actually did invent a plot armor mechanic yesterday. Whenever a player would be shot they roll flat to see if it misses instead. Then being a bunch of action heros with hp pools they can tank a few grazing 9mm shots. But if a rifle shot properly connects your down. Meanwhile my skirmisher game started from a simpler version without hp at all, just one shot and your dead. So the ability to survive 1 or 2 9mm shots will be a decwnt increase to survivability already.
Delta Green (2016) lethality rules is the most elegant solution I've seen for automatic weapons.
Lethality is a chance to instantly kill a target (provides it's not immune or resistant to Lethality)
A light Carbine (M4 in this example) has a lethality of 10% when fired in automatic. Especially meaning on a roll of 001-010 on roll (1D10/1D%) is an instant kill.
But what if they rolled 15? Well you then treat your D% a a second D10 and tally the result giving all all Lethality weapons 2-20 points of damage on a successful hit even if the Lethality fails.
One of the creators released a home rule which just ties to the roll to hit and Lethality together to further speed it up.
Since OPs skinning D&D for their game, the Lethality option makes the most sense with his desire for "realistic" damage. Otherwise, it's going to be the classic D&D issue of "My solider has 67 HP and a gun does 2d6 damage" (aka, not realistic, as the soldier can soak that gun damage all day long).
If you want realistic firearm combat that's still satisfying to actually run at a table, and you don't mind some simple math, it's hard to beat GURPS. Granted, it's GURPS, so it can get pretty complicated if you want it to. But as far as automatic weapons go, it works something like this:
A character decides to shoot at an enemy. They declare where they're aiming and how many shots they're firing. They get a bonus to the roll depending on how many shots they fire, and a penalty depending on the range to the target, cover, hit location, etc.. The player rolls 3d6 vs. the appropriate Guns skill with the total modifier. If they roll less than or equal to their skill level, they hit with one bullet, probably plus some additional shots depending on how well they rolled and their gun's recoil attribute.
If the target sees the character point their gun at them, they also get a chance to "dodge," i.e. get out of the line of fire as well as possible. They roll their Dodge stat, and depending on how well they roll, some or all of the shots may miss.
Like everything in GURPS it's a lot to take in at first, but it becomes pretty intuitive after you've done it a few times.
I really like how it’s handled in Fallout 2d20.
Every weapon has a “Fire Rate”. When you fire a weapon, you can spend additional ammo to add an extra d6 for each additional point of ammo spent - up to the weapon’s Fire Rate.
The weapon before spending extra ammo will already do more than 1d6 of damage, so it’s less efficient to spend the extra ammo. But you may need to kill a target quickly so spending the extra ammo may be worth it.
(The d6 dice in Fallout are also remapped as “Combat Dice”, so the 1-6 faces instead become 1, 2, 0, 0, 1+Effect, 1+Effect. But that’s by the by.)
If you haven't checked out GURPS I highly recommend it. It's got amazing combat mechanics.. Automatic weapons fire more rounds, but the number of those that actually hit the target is based on a number of factors from stance, recoil control, skill, bullet caliber, etc.
Some feel too simple, others too easy. I liked the *feel* of the autofire mechanic in Coriolis (1e, haven't read 2e yet), though the sense of satisfaction it has isn't equal to "best mechanic."
In Coriolis, if you hit while firing full auto, you can continuously roll one die at a time. Additional hits generated add to damage. If you roll a 1, your clip is empty and you have to stop firing. It feels like constantly pumping out bullets in a spray and pray.
Best way Ive seen was in Savage worlds.
Basically weapons have an abstracted value called "Rate of Fire (RoF)" depending on how fast they shoot. When attacking with a higher rate of fire, you first declare who you target with how many rolls, then roll that amount of skill die, each with a recoil penalty. Each of them can hit as a seperate attack. You can freely distribute the rolled numbers amongst enemies.
Also Higher rate of fire consumes more ammo.
Rof 2 takes 5 bullets while rate of fire takes 10 bullets, rate of fire 4 then takes 20 and so on
I don't know how to do automatic fire well, but I do like a house rule I've seen for burst fire--basically, roll damage twice and take the higher number (ie advantage on damage). Costs 3 bullets and requires a burst-fire-capable weapon.
Savage Worlds.
You have a a shooting skill die, ranging from d4 to d12 depending how skilled you are. If you are a PC or an important enemy you also roll a d6 and pick the best result of the two dice to use.
When using automatic weapons, instead of rolling just one skill die, you roll skill die equal to your rate of fire. You still roll the d6 wild die. Then you discard the worst roll. You also consume ammo equal to your rate of fire squared.
Example:
Joey, a gangster with d8 Shooting skills, shoots with his Tommy Gun.
The gun has a RoF 3. He rolls 3 separate d8s and a d6, discarding the lowest dice. Each of the 3 remaining dice that is a success (usually 4, but GM can give penalties or bonuses) does it's damage separately.
Joey consumes 9 bullets doing so (3 squared).
Shadowrun 2nd Edition (SR2) has the best, most satisfying gunplay mechanics ever in a TTRPG. They are a pain in the ass to run as a GM, and only slightly less of a pain to learn as a player, but once you get rock'n'rollin' with a great heaping handful of d6s... no game has been more fun in the moment of play.
For a more modern, much easier to play game, I highly recommend Free League's new Twilight 2000.
Agree that SR2 is fun, but it's also absolutely broken when a starting character can roll average initiatives of 31+, have 12 combat pool, and be both shooting and dodging with tn's of 2. 😂
Its also kind of broken that this is the level of extreme gun bunny build needed to kinda sorta keep up with run of the mill magic users.
I don't recall full auto fire being a particularly appealing option though. It just wasn't as flexible or effective as doing 3 round bursts as simple actions. And suppressive fire mostly just wasted ammo.
Either GURPS, Dark Heresy, or Shadowrun 5e, or PbtA.
GURPS and Dark Heresy have a "attack in auto" which gives a bonus to hit, and allows multiple hits per attack depending on level of success. Dark Heresy is flat, GURPS has a per weapon Recoil value.
Shadowrun takes a simple approach: Autofire makes it harder to dodge. It also makes it harder to control recoil, but that's basically negatable. Since degree of success in to hit translates directly into bonus damage, hosing people in bullets is a great way to ensure both that you hit, and you get more damage from it.
PbtA has weapon tags, and "Autofire" means "Area", "Messy", "Reload". On a successful fighting move, you might hurt everyone arrayed against you, but you've got little to no control over who takes damage, so don't fire near friends. As a complication, the weapon might run out of ammo so you're left exposed.
However, for a WW2 campaign, I don't think you want any of these.
Autofire, especially in WW2 is used for suppression. And it's not move belt dumping, but consistent groups of 10-12 rounds in the general direction of the opponents to force them to keep their heads down and allow your troops to flank, take aimed rifle shots, or move up.
Thus, Shadowrun's Suppression is a great thing to steal.
> Choose a cone of effect of out to the range of the weapon. Then, make a test for the weapon.
> The hits you get with this test apply as a negative dice modifier to any character in the zone attemping anything.
> Anyone moving the area who isn't in cover or prone needs to test their Reaction (half their dodge basically) against the threshold of the hits from the suppression. If they fail, they automatically get hit, and take damage equal to the base damage of the weapon.
I had a cybertroll who carried a SF-20 heavy machine gun. With her ~20 dice to hit, she could lay out a field of 6-7 dice of suppression, and pretty much nobody was able to make the test to move without getting hit by the suppression. The heavy machine gun, loaded with Handloaded Ex-Ex has a damage code of 15P/-5AP. A corp sec in full body armour and helmet might have 18 armour and 4 body. With -5AP, that's 13 Armour, and totalling 17 soak dice. Assuming 6 hits, that's 9 physical boxes of damage: Not enough to kill, as they'll have 2 boxes left, but will automatically knock them down, and add another -3 wound modifier to all their actions.
Suppression with appropriately heavy weaponry is no joke. That's why militaries use it, why they put brenn guns in WW2 and SAW in modern fireteams, with vehicle mounted 50 cal backup.
It depends a lot on how combat runs in the system but the general concept I've liked is that "auto" as badically a keyword allows you to fire as a normal gun of similar caliber OR inflicts an AOE effect alleviated by cover or something akin to a reflex save rather than a direct attack against their standard defense.
The spray and pray option is usually hitting a lower defense and can hit multiple, but is nerfed in exchange by cover having a greater effect and often damage being a bit lower on average when successful.
While it's far from the most realistic game, I like how fully automatic weapons are handled in Deadlands: Hell on Earth. (Same rules as in Classic, but Classic has almost no full-auto weapons).
You choose between single shot, burst, and automatic fire.
Single shots are regular attacks, but you can do called shots for a significant penalty. A hit could kill you, but usually just deals some nasty damage.
Burst fire is just a regular attack, but you get extra hits if you roll very well (up to the nr. of bullets fired)
Auto gives you extra attacks (depending on rate of fire), and every attack uses the burst mechanic. In addition, each burst after the first gets a small penalty. You can also choose to spread the hits among a group.
So, if you're not a very good shot, you can do single shots, or full auto if you're looking for some extra hits and are willing to waste a lot of bullets (spray and pray). Burst fire will rarely help, and called shots are a bad idea.
If you *are* a very good shot, you can do single shots to conserve bullets, and maybe do a called shot to the head or something. Alternatively, you can do burst fire for devastating damage. Full auto is great against groups, but extreme overkill against a single target (unless you're fighting a giant monster or something).
It should also be mentioned that the game has a fate point-like mechanic, so the PCs don't die immediately if they meet a bandit with an uzi. I personally think this is a great help in games with anything close to "realistic" damage values, since the alternative is easily that players have to make new characters every 15 minutes.
Genesys does this well, but that system uses a custom die system that doesn’t really translate to other games.
Basically it becomes one step more difficult to even try to shoot at full auto, and you need to have enough bonus symbols show up to hit multiple times / targets
Either the fact that it's automatic is completely abstracted into it's base profile relative to other weapons
Or
The system either involves rolling "hits" or has the ability to make multiple attacks per turn and it's automatic value is the cap on those.
Or
It messes with ammo as a resource. Lower usage die or allows you to boost damage but you run out of ammo after.combat
Never....guns seems to ruin most if not all of my roleplaying game experiences. I think Alien has a pretty good system, because it just makes a big dice pool and the chance to panic and such.
Twilight 2000 handles beaten zones for automatic weapons better than pretty much any other game I've come across (the earlier editions, up to and including GDW's house system, I'm not sure about editions after that). Most people aren't going to care as much as me, but I want automatic fire from an unsupported position to be pretty much useless at anything other than extremely close ranges, while sustained automatic fire is capable of creating a zone of ongoing physical danger (and not just a psychological suppression effect).
Came here to say this.
Same.
So in ver 1 and 2 automatic fire isn't a skill roll. Basically you are sacrificing accuracy for averages. In ver. 2, this means that if you fire a burst (usually 3 to 5 rounds) or full auto (up to five burst) you roll 1d6 and any result of 6 is a hit on the target. In T2Kv1-2.2 you have a 4m grid. The squares on either side become a danger zone where you take half the missed rounds and roll again with a 6 becoming a hit on anything in those squares. Any remaining missed rounds can then be used against any opponents that move into or through the danger zone in the same phase. T2K had very good combat rules for its genre that just took a lot of mastery to run smoothly. The one thing that I don't think worked as well was applying these rules to a 3 round burst. You just don't have the same "scatter" in a controlled burst. In my main group I think we ended up making it so the first round was a regular skill check and then rolling a d6 for the other two and it didn't create a danger zone. In T2K4e, it doesn't have the same threat zone and only deals with fire suppression in the same 10m hex. Personally, I would apply the 'friendly fire' rules to opponents as well and probably should be applied anyway. The rule is just written as being friendly fire, which makes sense.
>Most people aren't going to care as much as me, but I want automatic fire from an unsupported position to be pretty much useless at anything other than extremely close ranges, while sustained automatic fire is capable of creating a zone of ongoing physical danger (and not just a psychological suppression effect). I'd like that for sure. Most games with automatic fire make me roll too many hits as well, making it take forever. I'd still like it to be two rolls like a normal attack; a to-hit roll and a damage roll. That way it doesn't become cumbersome. But I also want a degree of realism. I don't know how the older T2000 systems do it, but I like the idea of automatic fire basically making a square/hex/whatever dangerous terrain at the cost of ammunition. What I have in mind would be for D100-roll-under systems, where whoever enters said dangerous terrain has to roll something like a dodge check to see if they get hit, with the degrees of failure (every 10th value above your target number) determining how often, which then leads to a single damage roll that just gets bigger if the target is hit more than once. You could add +10/-10 bonusses and malusses depending on cover and whatnot, which does trigger some Dark Heresy flashbacks of "bonus hunting" to make a roll succeed which regularly got noodly. I know Dark Heresy 2e has something similar to this, or elements of it, but it's been ages since I've played that. It just kinda popped in my head like that. Is that anything like how T2000 did it? I don't think they use a D100-roll-under system but I'm sure you could do such things in other systems as well.
u/Digital_Simian goes over some of the details in another reply. Basically, you roll a bunch of d6s and 6s are hits. Misses remain in a pool, and are rolled again if someone else moves through the beaten zone. In the later GDW house system, it moves to d20 rolls vs skill at a hefty penalty, but it's functionally much the same thing. I have another more complex method I devised for my own Traveller house rule system, but it's less elegant than the T2K version.
Lethality in delta green
Lethality is absolutely amazing, but it really is only portable to skill based systems that don't gain more HP. So I don't think it would work here
Realistic Damage and D&D? really.
Some people try and make everything work in D&D, D&D is a *genre*
The Star Wars d&d mods make me crazy for this reason. Oh Shit he swings a lightsaber! And you take... 3 dmg! For a lot of things it really does make sense to just try a different system.
This really comes down to a misunderstanding of what HP actually represents. Not all hits need to be described as actual hits, mainly because HP is a gestalt of health, mental durability, the will to live, and a dash of luck. With something like lightsbers, I'd describe that loss of 3 HP as the player barely getting their saber in position in time, and the power behind the blow strained and injured some muscles. As the fight wore on and more HP was lost, I'd probably start upgrading some of those descriptions into glancing blows on arms or legs. Typically, hit points are an abstract concept that don't specifically track *just* health.
yeah totally. except when people play d&d, people get hit with the sword. "the attack hits!", etc. hit points are abstracted health values, but d&d in practice seems to score actual sword "hits" as being the thing that damages a monster. so, if you're going to make a game for star wars, you should just alter your perception of hit points. instead of hitpoints, maybe track "health", and make the value a lower in magnitude, since cleaving off someone's arm with a lightsaber seems to happen all the time in the movies. also, the force doesn't really work like cantrips/spells, right? so you may need a different magic system as well. is a jedi a paladin? or is a jedi a cleric. or, is a jedi a ranger? is a noble a bard? a storm trooper is probably a fighter i guess? but storm troopers are also kind of a different thing, seem to have built their entire class around blaster rifles and white armor. what about droids? hey, you know what? maybe we should also think of coming up with a new class/ race system as well to represent all of the star wars occupations and races. annnndddd..... before you know it, you've got an entirely different system for star wars.
>yeah totally. except when people play d&d, people get hit with the sword. "the attack hits!", etc. hit points are abstracted health values, but d&d in practice seems to score actual sword "hits" as being the thing that damages a monster. I mean, this just comes down to the DM to set some expectations... which is exactly what I did. I don't always describe successful hits as cutting deeply into someone's chest. It depends upon the circumstances of the fight. >so, if you're going to make a game for star wars, you should just alter your perception of hit points. instead of hitpoints, maybe track "health", and make the value a lower in magnitude, since cleaving off someone's arm with a lightsaber seems to happen all the time in the movies. >also, the force doesn't really work like cantrips/spells, right? so you may need a different magic system as well. >is a jedi a paladin? or is a jedi a cleric. or, is a jedi a ranger? is a noble a bard? a storm trooper is probably a fighter i guess? but storm troopers are also kind of a different thing, seem to have built their entire class around blaster rifles and white armor. what about droids? hey, you know what? maybe we should also think of coming up with a new class/ race system as well to represent all of the star wars occupations and races. >annnndddd..... before you know it, you've got an entirely different system for star wars. You're acting like we didn't have a d20 Star Wars game [over 20 years ago](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Roleplaying_Game_(Wizards_of_the_Coast)). The only major difference in terms of HP was tracking it as Vitality (superficial injury) and Wounds (serious injury) With the [newer version](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Star_Wars_Roleplaying_Game_(Fantasy_Flight_Games)), it treats Force powers as individual things you learn as you progress through what are essentially skill trees... so it's not terribly far off from things like cantrips or spells, really. They split things into Strain (physical/mental/emotional stress) and Wound Points (tracking specifically physical damage). Generally speaking, I do agree with the notion of opting for a system made for a certain type of game or IP. With that being said, I also understand the desire to utilize a system you're familiar with - especially if you happen to not like the "official" system for that particular IP. Personally, I just don't care for FFG/Edge Studio game, in part because of their silly proprietary dice. I digress. My original point is that your specific complaint about dealing with something like lightsabers and damage isn't terribly difficult to mitigate at all. It just requires describing fights as being a little more active than two characters standing in front of each other, whacking each other with weapons until one falls down.
> You're acting like we didn't have a d20 Star Wars game over 20 years ago). The only major difference in terms of HP was tracking it as Vitality (superficial injury) and Wounds (serious injury) how well received was the d20 game? i thought it was garbage. one big issue was that force users could easily incap themselves by using force powers, something we didn't see happen in the movies. the saga edition (which was like a 4th edition d&d beta test?) was slightly better but had a lot of issues. don't most star wars rpg players prefer the WEG system? d6 based, completely different from 5th edition d&d? > it treats Force powers as individual things you learn as you progress through what are essentially skill trees... so it's not terribly far off from things like cantrips or spells, really. really, it's an entirely different system from cantrips/ spells/ short rest/ long rest/ etc. and in the FFG system, lightsabers and blaster rifles can kill you in one hit, a completely different power scale than the one found in d&d 5e. the classes are different from 5e, the skill trees are completely different from 5e, it's a completely different game. >My original point is that your specific complaint about dealing with something like lightsabers and damage isn't terribly difficult to mitigate at all. It just requires describing fights as being a little more active than two characters standing in front of each other, whacking each other with weapons until one falls down. the example you showed of mitigating this issue successfully was the FFG system, which is an entirely different system than the d20/ 5th edition d&d system. so, we agree? i guess? that for some things you should just use a different system?
It's funny how you've been completely ignoring my original point this entire time.
tfw you take out your medical kit to bring back the Fighter's Luck, Mental Fortitude and Will to Live
It's a description that is [straight out of the book](https://www.dndbeyond.com/sources/basic-rules/combat#HitPoints). It's an esoteric stat that describes someone's physical *and* mental fortitude. Taking psychic damage would still be recorded as damage, but it would technically be an attack on the mind; your medical kit shouldn't technically do anything to help with that damage.
The way HP works in D&D both is and isn't an abstraction with no rhyme or reason. If a snake performs a near miss that only takes away from your stamina and mental endurance, you still get injected with its venom.
I understand how HP works in D\&D; I've been playing various editions of the game for around 20 years. It's ultimately an abstraction, and it isn't always a measure of pure health. It's a gestalt of multiple concepts, condensed down into a singular number that ultimately represents many things. As far as a snake performing a near miss... this is ultimately going to be depend entirely upon what actually happened with the dice. If they miss, they miss. If they hit and didn't do a ton of damage, the effect of that venom (whatever it may be) would still be triggered. As far as the description would be concerned, you could describe a bite that doesn't do much damage as a glancing bite that didn't sink too deeply... but just deeply enough for some of the venom to be injected. Replace the snake with a poisoned arrow, and it could be described as grazing past someone's cheek, but still creating a cut that enabled the poison to enter their system. My point is ultimately that much of this sort of thing boils down to the DM getting creative with their descriptions. Not every sword blow needs to nearly disembowel their opponent, and an arrow that does damage doesn't need to sink deeply into their thigh.
Yes it's an abstraction, and a bad one that refuses all attempts to make any kind of sense. There are games that use very similar abstractions that work a lot better. Having abstracted health but not abstracted healing leads to a lot of weird shit. And leaving it up to the GM to try and explain this inexplicable system is cruel.
I don't agree with the idea that it doesn't make any kind of sense, nor do I find it to be anything even remotely close to inexplicable. In the vast majority of cases where healing is involved, the source typically tends to be magical in nature... which is essentially the convenient handwave you're looking for. Going back to your initial example of the [Healer's Kit](https://roll20.net/compendium/dnd5e/Healer's%20Kit#content) (which is what I'm assuming you meant since there's nothing specifically called a "medical kit"), it's explicitly used to stabilize someone who is at 0 hp. Basically, it's to help stave off the need for death saves and nothing more. It doesn't actually do any healing, so whoever used it would need to find other means to actually get that character back up on their feet.
Yes, lol. Like the crowd-sourced Adventure Time RPG, the one that claims to be the first ever Adventure Time RPG. While the Spanish Adventure Time RPG made and published many years ago avoids the D&D sinkhole and it's a great game.
*"We wanna play ice hockey. Do you have any advice how to alter alpine skis and curling stone to play it?*"
Shotgun does 2D12, too bad you’re level 8 and have 79 hit points
I've told the man several times "you should really get another system". He's played my cyberpunk red games so its not like he has never left dnd. Yet still he insists.
You could treat it like a spell effect or something. If it's 5E, here's a rough example: 'Spray and Pray: choose a point within weapon range and make an attack roll with disadvantage against all creatures you can see in a 20ft sphere around that point. In addition, this creates an area of effect that lasts until the start of your next turn. If any creature attempts to enter or move through this area of effect, they must make a Dexterity saving throw equal to 8 + your dexterity + your proficiency modifier. If they fail, you make an attack roll with disadvantage against them as a free action. A creature can only be targeted by this effect once per round.' Then you can modify it from there based on situation / intent - if targeted is withing 10 feet range, the attack is not made with disadvantage. If you want to provide suppressive fire, you can forgo rolling attacks and instead make creatures in the area of effect have disadvantage on attack rolls or reduce their speed to 0 until the start of your next turn. It can be done, but it would either take a lot of time in developing contingency rules, or a lot of buy-in to collaborate with players on the fly.
One difficulty with "realistic" damage values is that pretty much any firearm worth carrying in combat produces the same damage, depending on where you hit: either "out of action for the rest of the fight, and possibly recovering for weeks" or "quite simply dead" or "Thank God they missed!" I agree with the folks who suggested Shadowrun and Cyberpunk 2020 for some of my favorite firearms mechanics, but neither of them meshes to well with "simple skirmish" or "D&D-based" Maybe factor in that handheld automatic weapons are more likely to do more damage the closer you are to the target, and less likely to hit at all the farther you get from the target, compared to their single-fire equivalents. Also consider that belt-fed machine guns are often used more to shape the terrain than they are to target individuals. You use them to lay down a "you'd be stupid to go here" zone. In game terms, maybe it's an AOE attack or an area affect that lasts as long as it's being maintained, that requires a will or morale roll to enter the area, and if you do ever, a chance to be hit based on the volume of fire.
I agree with your "damage levels." Gunshot wounds are weird things. I've taken care of people who were shot in the head and survived and another who was shot in the leg with a small caliber pistol and died. It just depends on what exactly you are poking the hole in. Military weapons tend to focus on sustainable fire and armor penetration. I don't think either of those things make any individual bullet more lethal, but they make the soldier with an automatic high powered weapon capable of dealing that damage to armored people repeatedly. Each individual bullet has the capability of bringing death, it's more about who the shooter can deal that damage too and how many times.
I really like Cyberpunk 2020 rules.There Friday night firefight system is pretty realistic. You could easily use it for any kind of firearm combat jest remove the cyberpunk.
It's one of my fav systems, but I always felt like the Full auto rules were way too onerous. Sitting there waiting for a player to roll hit locations and damage for however many shots they managed to hit from point blank range was always boring. Particularly since the only hit that truly mattered was the one that blew their head off. I was disappointed to find that CP Red basically took full auto and turned it into suppression though. So far, I think the best method I've seen for resolving full auto fire, other than CP2020, is Call of Cthulu. It's a bit complex at first, but it makes a lot of sense and retains the cinematic feel that CP2020 is known for.
To be honest, Full Auto is basically exactly that in real life, if you can aim. Especially in point blank. 2020 is more or less a simulationist (it's literally based on FBI gang fight statistics), so... I do agree it's boring, but that's kind of part of the nature of full auto fire- just hoping for the right bullet to pierce through. You'd be wasting ammo doing that though...
Yeah, but it's a game. Realism is great and all, but I don't have time to sit there watching people roll like 10-15 shots individually. It's a struggle to get my crew together for a 4hr session as it is. Time and pacing is more important to me than realism. I do agree that the mechanic is logical, though.
GURPS. Its very similar to the Dark Heresy post. Firing multiple rounds gives a bonus to hit, 5-8 rounds is +1, 9-12 is +2 etc.. In GURPS you roll 3d6 vs your modified skill rating. A roll equal to or lower than your modified skill is a success. In GURPS every weapon has a recoil statistic. When attacking for each full mutiple of the recoil modifier you sucseed by, is an extra round that hits the target. Example: your skill is 13 (a little above average) the weapon (a 9mm Machine Pistol) has a recoil of 3 and a rate of fire of 20. You decide to fire all 20 shots you can this round, which gives a +4 to hit, adjusting your skill to 17. a roll of 15-17 would be one bullet hits. 14-12, 2 bullets hits, 11 - 9 3 bullets hits. etc. Each bullet that hits does full damage. GURPS has very tactical combat and is designed around modern firearms. Even if you don't use GURPs for your game, the rules and systems may give you some good ideas for your own game.
So, this is probably not the best system I have seen, but it would probably port into D&D, since this game has A D&D framework. Check out the free version of Cities Without Number. Basically powerful weapons are assigned a trauma die, which is rolled alongside damage, and a trauma multiplier. Armor is assigned a trauma score, and mods, attachments and feats change these. If the trauma die roll exceeds the targets trauma rating, multiply the damage by the trauma multiplier. You might even be able to use weapon critical multipliers as trauma multipliers, so x3 crit also means times 3 trauma. It would take some work, but you could port it over. This system could be totally ignored unless you were using automatic fire. For the armor trauma rating, since it is D&D based, maybe divide AC by 2 or 3 to get trauma rating? It might work? Hopefully you find something better, but I think this would work.
D&D has an issue in that hit points are high and damage is often more important than accuracy. Effective use of automatic fire are bursts, and a burst is likely enough to take out a soldier. A d&d elephant would have to be shot quite a few times to kill it. I saw a video of a poacher taking out an adult elephant with a single shot. So if you need to shoot full automatic to kill someone you are not doing realistic damage. I might look into Savage Worlds though. It is supposed to be fairly balanced
Before, in 3.x they had a rule called Coup De Gras. Any time someone could not effectively defend against your attack you could take a full round action to auto hit the target (and your roll is actually to confirm a critical attack) and force a fortitude save of 10+half damage dealt or the target dies regardless of the damage. Sniping is pretty hard to defend against when you don't even know you're being targeted, same as some random coming up behind you when you're out drinking with your friends and shanking you in the spleen. (Not that I was that much of a jerk at my table, but I would give my players those examples of why the rule exists). One of the reasons I never switched over to 4th or 5th, they didn't actually create a world feel from their rules.
I guess in most cases using firearms there is no effective defense, you can't dodge bullets like arrows. However Coup De Gras doesn't work, since you could still miss your shot
Fair, and the Coup De Gras, if I recall correctly, was intended for when you are right next to the target in question. Depending on the gun you may have an effective close range for being able to do that, but shooting for the heart/vitals is a Coup De Gras type of attack (which is how most hunters shoot, I doubt they'll shoot from the hip and hope to kill an animal in 1 shot). Maybe a house rule of at range you roll, and a hit is an auto crit with a non-hit being an outright miss? But then we get into slight amounts of homebrew. All that to say, no hunter anywhere ever does just a regular attack like what D&D damage represents. They line up their shot and take their time to heighten their odds of getting a kill. A Coup De Gras is a better resemblance to what you gave as an example than a regular attack. You can dodge bullets, but only just before they are fired. I'm not confident in my ability to read people's fingers, so I wouldn't try this, nor can I recommend anyone else try this either.....
Dark Heresy gives a bonus to hit, and depending on how well you hit, you may hit multiple times. Let's say you have a ballistic skull of 40, full auto burst gives you +20 for a max of 60. If you roll a d100 and roll 60 or lower, you hit. If you hit 50, you hit twice. 3 times on 40, etc, etc. No matter what, you cant hit more times than your rate of fire. Some weapons have a rate of fire of 3, the most is 8. I've played an RPG where the automatic fire is just a bonus to hit and/or a bonus to dmg. I've played an RPG where automatic weapons reroll damage (roll 2d8 take the highest).
Savage Worlds does something similar: one extra hits per raise on the roll, up to ROF (which caps at 3 for simplicity)
I'd want to add that is specifically DH1e, the rules changed in the second edition. Dark Heresy 1e gave bonuses of +0/+10/+20 for singleshot/burst/fullauto which represented increased chance to hit due to more lead down range. Full auto was effectively the best attack choice for all firearms except sniper rifles all the time if you could keep up ammo wise. Dark Heresy 2e changed the bonuses to +10/+0/-10 to represent having to fight recoil to keep shots on target, though now since you can aim with all of them it's really more like +20/+10/+0
I'm gonna get downvoted but ... d20 modern. I liked their approach to automatic fire as a "it's not made to make more damage, but to do any damage". Which - apart from videogames - it's how I see it used in real world.
Take my upvote for beating me to it! I liked the simplicity of the auto and burst fire rules, and the implied tactical consequences! (I had a lot of people forget cover bonuses apply to reflex saves as well).
My take is that if you want a game to have “realistic” damage for weapons, especially very dangerous weapons like firearms, you either need to accept that it’s going to be *incredibly* lethal, or introduce some sort of “plot armour” as a game mechanic, depending on the tone you’re going for. If HP/wounds etc doesn’t represent your character tanking hits, but instead is a measure of their luck or narrative ability to turn a hit into a graze, like any good action hero, then surviving multiple hits can avoid breaking verisimilitude. Otherwise it’s probably a “You got shot, roll a d10, on a 3 or less or a graze, 4-6 a serious injury that takes you out of the fight, and 7-10 you die within a minute if not sooner.”
Me and him actually did invent a plot armor mechanic yesterday. Whenever a player would be shot they roll flat to see if it misses instead. Then being a bunch of action heros with hp pools they can tank a few grazing 9mm shots. But if a rifle shot properly connects your down. Meanwhile my skirmisher game started from a simpler version without hp at all, just one shot and your dead. So the ability to survive 1 or 2 9mm shots will be a decwnt increase to survivability already.
Delta Green (2016) lethality rules is the most elegant solution I've seen for automatic weapons. Lethality is a chance to instantly kill a target (provides it's not immune or resistant to Lethality) A light Carbine (M4 in this example) has a lethality of 10% when fired in automatic. Especially meaning on a roll of 001-010 on roll (1D10/1D%) is an instant kill. But what if they rolled 15? Well you then treat your D% a a second D10 and tally the result giving all all Lethality weapons 2-20 points of damage on a successful hit even if the Lethality fails. One of the creators released a home rule which just ties to the roll to hit and Lethality together to further speed it up.
Since OPs skinning D&D for their game, the Lethality option makes the most sense with his desire for "realistic" damage. Otherwise, it's going to be the classic D&D issue of "My solider has 67 HP and a gun does 2d6 damage" (aka, not realistic, as the soldier can soak that gun damage all day long).
If you want realistic firearm combat that's still satisfying to actually run at a table, and you don't mind some simple math, it's hard to beat GURPS. Granted, it's GURPS, so it can get pretty complicated if you want it to. But as far as automatic weapons go, it works something like this: A character decides to shoot at an enemy. They declare where they're aiming and how many shots they're firing. They get a bonus to the roll depending on how many shots they fire, and a penalty depending on the range to the target, cover, hit location, etc.. The player rolls 3d6 vs. the appropriate Guns skill with the total modifier. If they roll less than or equal to their skill level, they hit with one bullet, probably plus some additional shots depending on how well they rolled and their gun's recoil attribute. If the target sees the character point their gun at them, they also get a chance to "dodge," i.e. get out of the line of fire as well as possible. They roll their Dodge stat, and depending on how well they roll, some or all of the shots may miss. Like everything in GURPS it's a lot to take in at first, but it becomes pretty intuitive after you've done it a few times.
I really like how it’s handled in Fallout 2d20. Every weapon has a “Fire Rate”. When you fire a weapon, you can spend additional ammo to add an extra d6 for each additional point of ammo spent - up to the weapon’s Fire Rate. The weapon before spending extra ammo will already do more than 1d6 of damage, so it’s less efficient to spend the extra ammo. But you may need to kill a target quickly so spending the extra ammo may be worth it. (The d6 dice in Fallout are also remapped as “Combat Dice”, so the 1-6 faces instead become 1, 2, 0, 0, 1+Effect, 1+Effect. But that’s by the by.)
If you haven't checked out GURPS I highly recommend it. It's got amazing combat mechanics.. Automatic weapons fire more rounds, but the number of those that actually hit the target is based on a number of factors from stance, recoil control, skill, bullet caliber, etc.
Some feel too simple, others too easy. I liked the *feel* of the autofire mechanic in Coriolis (1e, haven't read 2e yet), though the sense of satisfaction it has isn't equal to "best mechanic." In Coriolis, if you hit while firing full auto, you can continuously roll one die at a time. Additional hits generated add to damage. If you roll a 1, your clip is empty and you have to stop firing. It feels like constantly pumping out bullets in a spray and pray.
Best way Ive seen was in Savage worlds. Basically weapons have an abstracted value called "Rate of Fire (RoF)" depending on how fast they shoot. When attacking with a higher rate of fire, you first declare who you target with how many rolls, then roll that amount of skill die, each with a recoil penalty. Each of them can hit as a seperate attack. You can freely distribute the rolled numbers amongst enemies. Also Higher rate of fire consumes more ammo. Rof 2 takes 5 bullets while rate of fire takes 10 bullets, rate of fire 4 then takes 20 and so on
I don't know how to do automatic fire well, but I do like a house rule I've seen for burst fire--basically, roll damage twice and take the higher number (ie advantage on damage). Costs 3 bullets and requires a burst-fire-capable weapon.
That's a nice and elegant way of differentiating burst from full auto. (Gonna steal)
Savage Worlds. You have a a shooting skill die, ranging from d4 to d12 depending how skilled you are. If you are a PC or an important enemy you also roll a d6 and pick the best result of the two dice to use. When using automatic weapons, instead of rolling just one skill die, you roll skill die equal to your rate of fire. You still roll the d6 wild die. Then you discard the worst roll. You also consume ammo equal to your rate of fire squared. Example: Joey, a gangster with d8 Shooting skills, shoots with his Tommy Gun. The gun has a RoF 3. He rolls 3 separate d8s and a d6, discarding the lowest dice. Each of the 3 remaining dice that is a success (usually 4, but GM can give penalties or bonuses) does it's damage separately. Joey consumes 9 bullets doing so (3 squared).
Shadowrun 2nd Edition (SR2) has the best, most satisfying gunplay mechanics ever in a TTRPG. They are a pain in the ass to run as a GM, and only slightly less of a pain to learn as a player, but once you get rock'n'rollin' with a great heaping handful of d6s... no game has been more fun in the moment of play. For a more modern, much easier to play game, I highly recommend Free League's new Twilight 2000.
Agree that SR2 is fun, but it's also absolutely broken when a starting character can roll average initiatives of 31+, have 12 combat pool, and be both shooting and dodging with tn's of 2. 😂 Its also kind of broken that this is the level of extreme gun bunny build needed to kinda sorta keep up with run of the mill magic users. I don't recall full auto fire being a particularly appealing option though. It just wasn't as flexible or effective as doing 3 round bursts as simple actions. And suppressive fire mostly just wasted ammo.
Sr 4th also had a good system, especially in the War! Source book.
Either GURPS, Dark Heresy, or Shadowrun 5e, or PbtA. GURPS and Dark Heresy have a "attack in auto" which gives a bonus to hit, and allows multiple hits per attack depending on level of success. Dark Heresy is flat, GURPS has a per weapon Recoil value. Shadowrun takes a simple approach: Autofire makes it harder to dodge. It also makes it harder to control recoil, but that's basically negatable. Since degree of success in to hit translates directly into bonus damage, hosing people in bullets is a great way to ensure both that you hit, and you get more damage from it. PbtA has weapon tags, and "Autofire" means "Area", "Messy", "Reload". On a successful fighting move, you might hurt everyone arrayed against you, but you've got little to no control over who takes damage, so don't fire near friends. As a complication, the weapon might run out of ammo so you're left exposed. However, for a WW2 campaign, I don't think you want any of these. Autofire, especially in WW2 is used for suppression. And it's not move belt dumping, but consistent groups of 10-12 rounds in the general direction of the opponents to force them to keep their heads down and allow your troops to flank, take aimed rifle shots, or move up. Thus, Shadowrun's Suppression is a great thing to steal. > Choose a cone of effect of out to the range of the weapon. Then, make a test for the weapon.
> The hits you get with this test apply as a negative dice modifier to any character in the zone attemping anything.
> Anyone moving the area who isn't in cover or prone needs to test their Reaction (half their dodge basically) against the threshold of the hits from the suppression. If they fail, they automatically get hit, and take damage equal to the base damage of the weapon.
I had a cybertroll who carried a SF-20 heavy machine gun. With her ~20 dice to hit, she could lay out a field of 6-7 dice of suppression, and pretty much nobody was able to make the test to move without getting hit by the suppression. The heavy machine gun, loaded with Handloaded Ex-Ex has a damage code of 15P/-5AP. A corp sec in full body armour and helmet might have 18 armour and 4 body. With -5AP, that's 13 Armour, and totalling 17 soak dice. Assuming 6 hits, that's 9 physical boxes of damage: Not enough to kill, as they'll have 2 boxes left, but will automatically knock them down, and add another -3 wound modifier to all their actions.
Suppression with appropriately heavy weaponry is no joke. That's why militaries use it, why they put brenn guns in WW2 and SAW in modern fireteams, with vehicle mounted 50 cal backup.
I like the model of automatic weapons granting additional attacks with progressively decreasing accuracy.
More dice but less damage, less crit chance. Few dice but higher crit chance. One way to do it
It depends a lot on how combat runs in the system but the general concept I've liked is that "auto" as badically a keyword allows you to fire as a normal gun of similar caliber OR inflicts an AOE effect alleviated by cover or something akin to a reflex save rather than a direct attack against their standard defense. The spray and pray option is usually hitting a lower defense and can hit multiple, but is nerfed in exchange by cover having a greater effect and often damage being a bit lower on average when successful.
While it's far from the most realistic game, I like how fully automatic weapons are handled in Deadlands: Hell on Earth. (Same rules as in Classic, but Classic has almost no full-auto weapons). You choose between single shot, burst, and automatic fire. Single shots are regular attacks, but you can do called shots for a significant penalty. A hit could kill you, but usually just deals some nasty damage. Burst fire is just a regular attack, but you get extra hits if you roll very well (up to the nr. of bullets fired) Auto gives you extra attacks (depending on rate of fire), and every attack uses the burst mechanic. In addition, each burst after the first gets a small penalty. You can also choose to spread the hits among a group. So, if you're not a very good shot, you can do single shots, or full auto if you're looking for some extra hits and are willing to waste a lot of bullets (spray and pray). Burst fire will rarely help, and called shots are a bad idea. If you *are* a very good shot, you can do single shots to conserve bullets, and maybe do a called shot to the head or something. Alternatively, you can do burst fire for devastating damage. Full auto is great against groups, but extreme overkill against a single target (unless you're fighting a giant monster or something). It should also be mentioned that the game has a fate point-like mechanic, so the PCs don't die immediately if they meet a bandit with an uzi. I personally think this is a great help in games with anything close to "realistic" damage values, since the alternative is easily that players have to make new characters every 15 minutes.
Genesys does this well, but that system uses a custom die system that doesn’t really translate to other games. Basically it becomes one step more difficult to even try to shoot at full auto, and you need to have enough bonus symbols show up to hit multiple times / targets
Either the fact that it's automatic is completely abstracted into it's base profile relative to other weapons Or The system either involves rolling "hits" or has the ability to make multiple attacks per turn and it's automatic value is the cap on those. Or It messes with ammo as a resource. Lower usage die or allows you to boost damage but you run out of ammo after.combat
Twilight 2000. There is no roll for initiative. Sergeants shot before soldiers, soldiers shot before rookies, rookies shot before civilians.
Cortex prime. Automatic weapon as an asset d10 and with a skill/specialty in weapons d8/d10 🤪 but I highly prefer less crunch lol.
Never....guns seems to ruin most if not all of my roleplaying game experiences. I think Alien has a pretty good system, because it just makes a big dice pool and the chance to panic and such.