Revisit

Talking with FuzzyGeff about the odds of hitting with that snubby in GURPS.

He mentioned that you get about a 10% chance to hit per shot at 6 or less.

He'd automatically done the PC math in his head and decided that since there's no chance of hitting with the full RoF to not fire the two extra rounds that are mathematically guaranteed to miss.

Looking at the numbers again, I realize that I forgot the additional -1 for firing a gun double action.

So a 5 or less, or almost half the chance to hit at 4.630% instead of 9.259% of 6 or less!

However, in Real-World™ the untrained fire at full rate of fire... but they're NPC's so, yeah.

So how does a typical PC fare at 7 yards?

First off, they typically run much higher DX and spend actual points on skills.  A skill of DX+2 on top of a DX of 12 or more is pretty reasonable.

Starting with a skill of 14, -1 for double action, -3 for range at 7-yards the PC has a 50-50 change to hit with the first round with a 10 or less and has an actual chance to connect with a second .357 Magnum pill on a 5 or less (4.630%).

It gets even better with the +P and it's Rcl 2 with a 10 or less (50.000%) for one, 8 or less (25.926%) for two and 6 or less for (9.259%) for three.

Yes, the PC has twice the chance of landing three rounds with .38 Special +P than two rounds of .357 Magnum.

FuzzyGeff is correct, though, no PC is going to waste that third shot from his Magnum.