How do you Snipe a 36 hit point Cultist with a 1-10 Damage weapon? and shooting knees

AmericanBadass · #1 08-19-2002, 02:55 AM

Howdy Freaks!

I have a question about sniping in call of cthulhu D20.

How do you Snipe a character with 36 hit points with a 1D10 Damage weapon? Most snipers don't have to hit their targets 4 or 5 times to bring them down.

In Saturdays session i had characters who for a specific reason needed to take out a guy without killing him and immobilize his legs.

The guy (an Arab Shub-Terrorist) the characters needed for questioning had 36 hit points and was wearing a flack vest.
Anyway Agent Yuri wanted to shoot his knees out and then have the Swat guys bum-rush him.

How was I supposed to do this? The system doesn't allow for hit locations and according to what I have been told as of late the bullets don't actually hit or hurt until you whittle the target down to 10 or so hit points. Yuri armed with a MP5SD with a nightvision scope attempted to shoot this guys knees out.

He rolled (AC18-I adjusted the AC for the smallness of the target) and hit for 6 points. The 6 points as I determined it was a near miss. He fired again and hit for 3 more another near miss.

What the players saw was a guy dancing around and running away with 27 hit points and no take down. We ended up having to kill him.
This is a real problem...how should I resolve this?

If I had stayed with the Chaosium system this would have been no problem to bring this guy down. With Chaosiums hit location rules he would have 5 or 6 hit points to each leg. Yuri would have put him down with the first shot.

We tried to do this again using the D20 Subdual Rules and still ended up killing the target.

How do you snipe a character with more than 10 hit points and make it seem somewhat realistic?

Ian ORourke · #2 08-19-2002, 03:15 AM

I'm starting to think you are posting these things just to raise the same old hoary debates all the time

2nd Level RPGnetter · #3 08-19-2002, 03:18 AM

Your first mistake was giving a cultist 36 hit points...

AmericanBadass · #4 08-19-2002, 03:18 AM

I wish...
Thats neither here nor there...

I still would like to know how to resolve sniping?
and knee shooting or even better head shooting.

2nd Level RPGnetter · #5 08-19-2002, 03:18 AM

Simple answer - play a game with a more appropriate damage modelling system.

D20 is ok for epic fantasy where characters can wade through raging battles, dragon's fire, yadda yadda, guzzle some healing potions and party on.

It's not so good for games where a bullet to the head can kill you, helmet or no, ducking, cover and evasion nonwithstanding.

D20 and realistic really ought not to be used in the same sentence.

$0.02

poacher · #6 08-19-2002, 03:20 AM

Hummm...

I'm no D20 Guru, least a D20 defender... but I offer this: just have your character hit on a critical. Since he might have all those neat feats to increase the critical range, and any bonus the weapon might have, hitting on a critical might be what you're looking for.

Sure, by the rules you might not even do a single point of damage, but, then again, what you're trying to do is bring the baddy down.

And, as you said, using Chaosium's system would be better.

Ian ORourke · #7 08-19-2002, 03:21 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Peter
Your first mistake was giving a cultist 36 hit points...

I would tend to agree - but then I'd also disagree. One problem is he may have wanted the cultist to have a higher BAB - and as a result the cultist has more hit points.

I like a lot of D20, but sometimes the link of HP to BAB and level can cause issues. But then all systems have them.

AmericanBadass · #8 08-19-2002, 03:23 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Peter
Your first mistake was giving a cultist 36 hit points...

How so??

I hate level 1 thru 3 characters...with 2 measley feats they are just bowling pins incapable of doing anything skillwise or threatwise.

The typical cultist is 6th level in my current game which features one 10th level character and 2 8th level ones.

The game is not designed to be played at low levels.
Most of the feats in the game are unobtainable without at least a few levels above 5th.

2nd Level RPGnetter · #9 08-19-2002, 03:35 AM

It's a manufactured problem. If you wanted a higher attack bonus, give the cultist a higher dex (or strength, if he's going to be some kind of hand-to-hand fighting thug). Since experience isn't based on what "level" the bad guys are, you might as well give cultists a standard 6 hit points.

36 hit points is quite a lot- what is that, a 7th or 8th level character? At an average of 4.5 hit points per level, he'd have to be kind of tough. That type of character is the kind that (usually) has story immunity from simply getting sniped down in one shot. He steps out of the way at the last second, or something. Make your thugs 0-level like they were meant to be and you'll never have this problem.

Alternatively, the way you describe it seems kind of like it takes care of the problem. The sniper shoots and the swat team tackles the guy immediately afterwards. If they succeed, he's wounded and probably helpless. The next round someone can just coup-de-grace him or snap the cuffs on him or whatever.

Fade · #10 08-19-2002, 03:39 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by AmericanBadass

The typical cultist is 6th level in my current game...

THAT'S your problem. In D20 a 6th level characater is a mid-power hero. Combined with an 'action-movie' type ruleset you wouldn't expect heroes to be ignobly brought down by a single sniper shot with no chance to fight back. 'Mook' type cultists should be 2nd level or so, 3rd level tops. Give them more skill points if you think they need them. Leaving aside the question of the appropriateness of the D20 system for dark horror, I suggest you use one of the alternative HP systems floating around, like KenHood's Grim'n'Gritty. Then you could just rule that the cultist has no chance to dodge so the damage goes directly to wound points, bypassing HPs.