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The Dresden Files => DFRPG => Topic started by: HumAnnoyd on August 12, 2010, 10:01:11 PM

Title: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: HumAnnoyd on August 12, 2010, 10:01:11 PM
So I was trying to come up with some more stunts for a Spec Ops type character and this came to mind:

Double Tap (-1) Add 3 to the damage of a Guns attack on a successful hit, once per scene, for a fate point. This stacks with any other damage-increasing stunts for Guns.

It is obviously based on the Fists Stunt Lethal Weapon but does it become too powerful since a gun already adds damage?  Should the extra damage be lowered to 2 or even 1?  What do you guys think?
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: JosephKell on August 12, 2010, 10:33:30 PM
It is a valid stunt.

It is based on Killer Blow.  But even Killer Blow is kind of weak.

I will break this type of stunt down.
1.  It is a stunt, so that is -1 refresh.
2.  It requires a fate point to get +3 effect (which can be invoked on an aspect for +2 effort which can convert to shifts of effect anyway).
3.  It is once per scene.

It is basically a "once per scene aspect that can't be compelled."  If you already have 2 or 3 aspects that can be invoked for face punching, then I guess it is a decent stunt (you still give up a fate point each scenario for it) that can be used once per scene when you are sure you are going to hit away.

Reminders:
Effort = Skill + Roll (+ aspects)
Effect = Effort - Difficulty.

Another way to phrase Double Tap could be:
Attack with Guns at -1 but you gain +3 effect on success.  This stunt uses twice the number of bullets.

I know +3 effect seems huge for a -1, but that -1 negates one of the effect bonuses.  So it really is -1 to hit for +2 net damage.

I would take that stunt over the fate point powered one.
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: Deadmanwalking on August 13, 2010, 03:25:01 PM
What he said.

If you really want an FP powered version, make it +4 damage instead. It needs it to be worth it. That's what I do with Killing Blow.
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: Remy Sinclair on August 13, 2010, 04:54:01 PM
There are a lot of really cool Gun Stunts in Evil Hat's Spirit of the Century game, which I own. When Dresden was in the works Evil Hat said this game was the prototype to the system they will be using for Dresden Files.

I would list the descriptions but I am afraid the Admin would not like that because it would violate copyright. I can at least give you the names and page numbers, I also removed the ones that are in the Dresden Game already. It is up to you as the GM if these should be in your game and get the book, which I think is a good idea.

Aiming
Ammunition
Draw
Firepower
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: wyvern on August 13, 2010, 05:02:25 PM
SotC is (sans some examples) available online (http://www.faterpg.com/dl/sotc-srd.html).  ...Of course, your page numbers help not at all with looking stuff up in the online version, but at least it's got an index!
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: Remy Sinclair on August 13, 2010, 05:20:36 PM
Quote from: wyvern on August 13, 2010, 05:02:25 PM
SotC is (sans some examples) available online (http://www.faterpg.com/dl/sotc-srd.html).  ...Of course, your page numbers help not at all with looking stuff up in the online version, but at least it's got an index!

Well all I have is the book but what makes the PDF so different? My Dresden Files PDFs match my Book Numbers so it should do the same for Spirit of the Century if not sorry for the PDF people.
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: wyvern on August 13, 2010, 05:26:34 PM
It's not a pdf; that's what makes it different.  :-P

However, I did not mean to disparage your inclusion of page numbers at all, and my apologies if it sounded like I was.  Page numbers are good and useful things.  Mostly I just wanted to make known that there *was* an online version; the bit on page numbers was an offhand comment meant to be more along the lines of funny than anything else.
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: HumAnnoyd on August 13, 2010, 08:40:23 PM
Interesting.  I thought this might be considered too powerful but I am getting the opposite reaction.  I do have SotC and it inspired me to come up with the stunt.   ;D

A net +2 without spending a FP is pretty nice.  Maybe that would be the way to go. 
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: JosephKell on August 13, 2010, 08:52:32 PM
Well, remember it is -1 on the attack, then if successful +3 effect.

If you just wanted to give effect on a gun (which are usually in the range of Weapon:2 or Weapon:3 to begin with), I would make it just +1 effect (with no attack penalty).

Or +2 under a specific circumstance.

Although, if you want to be technical, Double Tap (in real life) isn't about more damage, but a better chance of hitting at least once (the shock of getting hit tends to disable most amateur gunmen).  So you could say double tap lets you do Guns + 1, but it uses two bullets and can only be attempted with an autoloader gun (revolves, breach loader, and bolt action weapons need not apply).  But I would also say it can't be combined with a spray attack (if you had such a stunt or were using an automatic capable weapon in automatic mode).

Using 2 bullets doesn't seem like much of a cost for +1 on Guns, but it doesn't seem any less strict than Sanya's "I use Russian guns at +1" stunt.

You may say "What if both bullets hit?"  Well that could just be a really good fudge roll (+2 or more on 4dF could be both bullets hitting).  Excess Effort (a.k.a. Effect) converts to physical stress.
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: HumAnnoyd on August 13, 2010, 09:46:33 PM
I get it.  And I thought double tap was just a very good way to drop nearly any target.  Except a Troll maybe.   ;D
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: Kodiakc on August 16, 2010, 08:33:14 PM
for Trolls i would go for  the Failure Drill

2 shots to the chest and 1 well aimed shot to the head  ;D
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: Belial666 on August 16, 2010, 09:38:47 PM
At which time the troll/ogre will move up to you, punch you twice through the chest and rip off your head. Unless you're using specialized bullets or really big guns, trolls and ogres tend to be mostly bulletproof; armor 2 and a 10-box stress track means they could take a dozen bullets from the average gun with very well-aimed shots 4 shifts over their own defense roll (i.e. shots to the face) before they go down.


Oh, and here is my version of Double-Tap;

Double-Tap;
If you succesfully shoot your target with a gun and deal stress, you can take advantage of their momentary pause to shoot them again before they can dodge; sacrifice your next action to do another attack on the same target at +1 to your guns roll.
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: HumAnnoyd on August 16, 2010, 09:50:35 PM
Quote
Double-Tap;
If you succesfully shoot your target with a gun and deal stress, you can take advantage of their momentary pause to shoot them again before they can dodge; sacrifice your next action to do another attack on the same target at +1 to your guns roll.

Hmm.  That actually makes more sense.  I was kind of looking for a way to make a lowly gun toating human more of a threat in the damage department.  Great thing about this game is that there are nearly half a dozen ways to deal with the concept of this stunt and all of them are perfectly valid.  I love that.
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: Kodiakc on August 17, 2010, 12:52:17 AM
Actually the Failure Drill is a real Technique  ;D but wouldn't True Faith also work as well as/or oppose to specialized ammo and big guns?
just a thought.


Quote from: Belial666 on August 16, 2010, 09:38:47 PM
At which time the troll/ogre will move up to you, punch you twice through the chest and rip off your head. Unless you're using specialized bullets or really big guns, trolls and ogres tend to be mostly bulletproof; armor 2 and a 10-box stress track means they could take a dozen bullets from the average gun with very well-aimed shots 4 shifts over their own defense roll (i.e. shots to the face) before they go down.
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: Barrington on August 17, 2010, 03:51:35 PM
Quote
Hmm.  That actually makes more sense.  I was kind of looking for a way to make a lowly gun toating human more of a threat in the damage department. 

In order to do that, all you'd really need to do is get bullets that satisfy the catch. Trolls? Use iron bullets, or military steel-jacket rounds. Or, you could always just use bigger guns. Since the Expendables recently came out, I'll use an example from that. If you gave someone like Hendricks an AA12 with those Frag-12 grenade rounds, he'd be a threat to damn near anything. Sure, you'd need a hell of a lot of Resources and Contacts to get your hands on one, but since you're still at the character creation stage, that would be doable.
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: Belial666 on August 17, 2010, 06:38:41 PM
You are overstating the threat level a bit. Grenades are weapon 4. This means somebody with supernatural toughness could easily take 10 average shots before going down or 6 really well aimed shots from a grenade launcher. A lot better than the dozen shots to the face needed from a handgun. And someone with both supernatural toughness and speed and high athletics (black court masters anyone?) could take on a whole team of soldiers armed with grenade launchers and win.


Supernatural creatures are plenty tough. Unless you have their catch on hand, you need to be exceptionally well-trained in addition to having big weapons. Consider stunts for increasing your gun skill, increasing your damage and reducing your enemy's armor (precise shot, maybe?)
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: HumAnnoyd on August 17, 2010, 08:03:04 PM
Quote
Consider stunts for increasing your gun skill, increasing your damage and reducing your enemy's armor (precise shot, maybe?)

I hear yah.  That is exactly why I was playing around with this stunt.  I wanted to be able to do enough damage to hold my own in a supernatural battle while not being a True Believer.  Hence my initial proposal of doing an extra 3 damage. 
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: Barrington on August 17, 2010, 08:43:21 PM
Quote
You are overstating the threat level a bit. Grenades are weapon 4. This means somebody with supernatural toughness could easily take 10 average shots before going down or 6 really well aimed shots from a grenade launcher. A lot better than the dozen shots to the face needed from a handgun.

True to a point. It depends on what creature you're facing and what the gun rules for the full-auto grenade launcher would be. Something that pretty much every single person on this board forgets when weapons like this are mentioned (see the Heavy Weapons thread and the discussion about the GAU-8) is that these things are fully automatic. As in, firing several projectiles per second fully automatic. If you were going up against a Black Court Master, sure, it wouldn't do you a damn bit of good. But if, say, you were going up against a few werewolves, one or two RCVs, a couple of smaller fae. . . then it would put you on a much more even footing.

Now, it can be argued that something like that isn't necessary when you could just use a .45 with iron/silver/insert catch here bullets. That's absolutely true, but it's not the only option. Nor is making a new stunt to make said gun more powerful. I just wanted to point out that there are other ways to make himself even with the bad guys, if pistolero wasn't his style.

One final note. . . what the hell kind of campaign would have beginners (even Submerged beginners) going up against the likes of a sidhe troll or black court master? A bit of an edge is more than sufficient for the beginning of a game, when (Unless you have one INTERESTING story) you'll be fighting things that are just a bit more than human.
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: Belial666 on August 17, 2010, 08:48:23 PM
Near beginning of story for the first appearance of the Denarians (forgor book name) has Ursiel get the drop on Dresden.
Near beginning of Turn Coat has a Skinwalker get the drop on Dresden.

Trolls and Black Masters aren't that far-fetched for a submerged group. They might even be easier, all things considered.
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: zerogain on August 18, 2010, 01:29:49 AM
OK, so I just finished Proven Guilty again, and
(click to show/hide)
Murph is pounding gunfire into a supernatural creature, effectively distracting it so that Thomas can rip it to shreds.  Is she Maneuvering or is this a Stunt?  She does this a lot in the series, and appears to be very good at that "Martin Riggs Special" method of rapid accurate fire.  Descriptions or would anyone stunt this to allow her more damage?

Also think of some of her scenes in Changes
(click to show/hide)
. How would that look at the game table?
Title: Re: A new Gun Stunt
Post by: babel2uk on August 18, 2010, 09:12:08 AM
Quote from: zerogain on August 18, 2010, 01:29:49 AM
OK, so I just finished Proven Guilty again, and
(click to show/hide)
Murph is pounding gunfire into a supernatural creature, effectively distracting it so that Thomas can rip it to shreds.  Is she Maneuvering or is this a Stunt?

Also think of some of her scenes in Changes
(click to show/hide)
. How would that look at the game table?

Hmm, you could argue those examples either way. Originally I leaned towards a maneuver for the first and actual damage for the second. But on reflection I think it's probably a case of inflicting damage to cause a Consequence and passing the free tag onto the other person to assist their attack.

In the first example, if Murph was just pumping rounds into the air to distract the creature it would clearly be a maneuver - with the free tag passed to Thomas, but given the fact that the rounds are actually hitting it smacks more of a standard damage situation, maybe with the aid of a stunt to augment damage enough to ensure a consequence. You could of course say that in either case the ones hitting the creature are doing merely cosmetic damage, so it is a maneuver.