Gaming

My enthusiasm for gaming dropped precipitously after dealing with Chris Underwood (a known asshole) last September.

I really stopped paying attention to the forums about GURPS.

Recently I went to peek again.

There's a thread about the new edition of High Tech where someone complains that .40 S&W does more damage than .45 ACP in the new rules (2d+2 pi+ for the .40 and 2d pi+ for the .45). .40 S&W does NOT do more damage than .45 ACP. In fact it falls almost perfectly halfway between .45 ACP and 9mm Parabellum.

The rules gods began posting justifications for the anachronism. The main argument is that the author developed a consistent system for determining damage and since GURPS only allows for two bullet size modifiers (pi+ for x1.5 damage and pi++ for x2 damage) and since pi+ begins at .40 caliber then we are just going to have errors like this. A well respected poster suggests that there really should be a x1.2 damage step to account for .40 S&W's actual behavior. The rules gods say this is too complicated, or is unneeded extra complication.

Essentially the rules gods have chosen; "It's wrong, but is wrong consistently," as an argument. The older values were not debated, it seems that the system developed by the author didn't account for the previous fiat stats being reasonably accurate and creating a system that generated numbers that matched them. Oh, the 3e values gave .40 S&W and .45 ACP identical damage (2d+ cr which would be 2d pi+ in 4e) and different ranges (150/1900 vs 175/1700). Not quite right, but nobody was complaining.

Other posters have justified .40 S&W as being a TL newer than .45 ACP, so it deserves more damage. Perhaps it does "deserve" more damage from being a more recently developed round, but it doesn't actually DO more damage. The TL advance in this round has more to do with getting the cartridge packaged smaller than could have been done with a .40 cal round in the previous TL. The authors stats for the .45 GAP match the .45 ACP, which it should. .45 GAP is two TL newer than .45 ACP and is much more compact for the same velocities with the same bullets.

I tend to wish for the x1.2 damage step but accept that the damage rules are very coarse and when rounding things can get strange around the break points.

One thing the new system allows for is .357 SIG bullets getting the same damage as .357 Magnum rounds of the same weight and velocity.