Game mechanics - Shooting a moving man

[Korto]

This is for trying to work out game mechanics for a role-playing system I'm (supposedly) working on.

Assuming an average, trained, competent user, armed with an assault rifle with iron sights, firing a snap-shot from a standing position (up to the shoulder, shooting in good stance but without taking time to aim) at a man in clear terrain without any cover.

What is a good estimate of his chance of hitting the man when he's:
1) Running across the shooter's vision (from left to right, or right to left)
2) Standing still

At (a) Close range (5 metres); (b) Medium range (20 metres); (c) Long range (100 metres)

I'll happily take the best guesses of people who actually shoot.
I'll also accept corrections about what such a shooter would consider short, medium, and long range.

[TheFeniX]

With a good rifle:
Hitting a stationary man-sized target with irons at any range up to 100 meters should be fairly easy for a competent shooter. I would expect them to at least put a majority of bullets into a 3-4" grouping, which is more (less) than enough to consistently hit a man-sized target.

Perpendicular movement makes things much harder. Hitting a runner in a dead-sprint at 100 yards, with any optics, is a craps shoot. <20 meters is much more believable to consistently hit a target. However, what you have to remember is that a person's side profile is much smaller than their front profile. So just looking a video of some guy hitting a sideways moving silhouette isn't indicative of his ability to hit something half as wide. Also of note, people moving over terrain tend to do so more erratically than an Olympic runner.

Trap vs Skeet shooting would be a good example of the difference. It's a lot easier to get "up underneath" a moving target than leading it when it's coming across your field of vision. This is due to changes in stance and positioning for moving horizontally compared to moving vertically. Also of note, the weapon and your arms block your vision.

In the 5 meter range, I don't see how a rifle wouldn't be decidedly accurate in either case.

As for gameplay, I assume this for some table-top system? Some give a flat-modifier for movement on part of the defender. Others make the distinction between parrellel and perpendicular movement. Moving directly toward your attacker means no modifier, but perpendicular usually means a substantial one.

If you care to test this in a simulated environment: There's more than enough cheap/free FPS to try your hand at this. The Sniper Elite series has enough shooting galleries in of itself. Hitting Nazis sprinting for cover is as fun as it is difficult. Range only adds to this difficulty, but I've not messed too much with irons in that game.

[Balrog]

Take the following for what it's worth:
Sniper

According to the United States Army, the average soldier will hit a man-sized target 10 percent of the time at 300 meters using the M16A2 rifle. Graduates of the U.S. Army sniper school are expected to achieve 90 percent first-round hits at 600 meters, using the M24 Sniper Weapon System (SWS).

Looking at the cited sources (such as they are) don't say whether the man-sized target is running, but I doubt it.

[Korto]

As for gameplay, I assume this for some table-top system?

Yeah, I'm mucking around trying to create one; I'm looking at using 3d6 + skill +/- modifers v target, so I'm looking for some benchmarks for chances to hit, and work from there.
I know for a game total accuracy isn't essential, but I'd prefer to have some numbers that people who do that kind of thing in real life wouldn't just laugh at.

Balrog: I'd personally doubt he was running too. I couldn't imagine hitting a running man at 300m with anything other than high explosive.
The M16A2 number's interesting, but also doesn't tell me if the 10% was with aiming or not.

[Zwinmar]

Ehhh..a moving target would be very difficult but should be marginally doable out at the 500 yard line. With a SAW? much easier. Keep in mind that at 500 yards a 6 foot target looks like a small postage stamp, I hit 8/10, though I must point out that it was stationary, with the M16A2 with iron sights while prone.

[Gunhead]

What's the skill spread? If you're using 3d6+skill you're dealing with an average roll of 10 + skill. Is attribute calculated directly to skill level?
How long approximately is one combat round, i.e how long the attacker has to aim and fire his weapon? What other modifiers come into play? Does the defender roll some kind of defensive roll or not?
When designing RPG combat, you are always compromising between playability and realism level. My advice is to skew the system towards playability which means faster resolution (Hitting / damage / effect) because otherwise combat just takes too long. The other important thing is to have modifiers have an effect so combat actions are intuitive even to people who don't know the system all that well, i.e taking cover makes you harder to hit, aiming improves your chances of hitting, effect of range.
The time allotted to a round where the character takes action(s) is pretty much tied to the level of abstraction you're going with. For example, if a combat round is 1s, there's not a lot you can do in that time, drop for cover or raise weapon and fire it towards an enemy for example, if it's 5s, you could take a firing stance or brace your weapon or find target range etc.

-Gunhead

[Korto]

"Skill", as I put it here, is attribute (Dexterity + Instinct in this case) plus actual training, although the weighting between the two parts I haven't quite decided yet. I'm inclined to give more weight to training, since I prefer randomly-rolled attributes.

I'm not wanting to use 'combat rounds', instead using a continuous time wheel, where every action takes different amounts of time. Pulling a gun and shooting will take the amount of time it takes to pull a gun and shoot. If people want to take extra actions, such as aim or brace their weapon, they can take extra time to do so, but they may be sacrificing first shot.

I agree that fun is more important than true-to-life, but I want to know what true-to-life is first, and then work back towards fun from there.

[Gunhead]

I'd need some additional info on the "time wheel" concept before being able to comment on that. Anyway, you're really asking about what ranges a competent shooter will hit a torso sized target reliably. So here's a rough guide to combat ranges assuming "sufficient" time to raise and aim a weapon.
I'm using fairly generic examples here and will follow up with some RL stuff too.

Pistols 25m is pretty much where you can expect consistently hit a target, this can extend up to about 50m but this requires the use of heavier calibers like .357magnum, .44magnum etc. Some silhouette shooters shoot targets at even longer ranges but I'm sticking to the baseline examples here.

Shotguns are about the same as pistols. Depending on the ammunition, choke etc. the range is usually a bit better than pistols. This is a wide category but I tend to keep my estimates pretty conservative so lets say anything over 75m is pretty damn hard.

Submachineguns / carbines 100-150m again depending on the type. SMGs using pistol ammunition do benefit from longer barrels and better sights and some carbines use assault rifle ammunition for more velocity and flatter trajectory.

Assault rifles 150-250m, again depending on the type. With proper sights you can get up to maybe 300-400m but at that range the hitting power is already diminished and flight time of the bullet is starting to affect accuracy.

Hunting rifles etc. 600-800 with proper sights. I'm assuming your basic 7.62x51 ammunition and similar weapons. Past 300m it's really hard to see what you're shooting at so telescopic sights and so on are really needed to get those hits at these ranges.

I'm excluding stuff like machineguns and heavier sniper rifles because those work a bit differently and we can get to those later.

Okay some RL stuff too. Aiming too will hamper your accuracy eventually. Your eyes get tired and you start to loose focus so aiming will improve accuracy only so much.
Range dictates the engagement. When ranges are shorter, action tends to be faster because time required to acquire a target reduces. I.e at 50m assault rifles are point and shoot weapons. They hit what they're being pointed at. At longer ranges you need to know how far the enemy is and adjust sights / aim because if you're shooting at a man who is at 150m but your sights are set to 300m, you'll most likely send your bullets flying over him.
Bullets fly in an arc and you're trying to cross the path of the bullet with the intended target.

That's all I got for now, hope this helps. I've done fair amount of work on RPG firearms combat and it's a tricky subject to balance correctly.

-Gunhead

[Korto]

Thanks.
Would you be able to quantify what you mean by "consistently"? Approximately 60%? 75%? 95%?

The combat time system is a bit like Exalted's. I'm a bit leery of describing some of my own ideas online in case I've accidentally stumbled upon something brilliant and it gets stolen, so I'll describe Exalted instead.
Imagine an analogue clock face with 1 to 6 on it; these time units are called 'ticks', and there's also a 'tick counter' to show what's the current tick.
Two guys fighting, one has a dagger (spd 3), and the other a sword (spd 5), and they both start simultaneously. Both attack, the dagger acts first, on tick three, so when the tick counter is moved to 3, it's his attack. After the attack is carried out, the dagger decides he'll attack again; as it's now the third tick, this next attack will be on the 6th tick. The tick counter moves along till it reaches 5, where the sword attacks. The sword decides, after his attack, to use a magical artifact instead, which has a speed of four, which means (as there's 6 ticks to this clock-face) that'll happen on tick 3. The counter moves to 6, the dagger attacks again, and after the attack decides to keep on attacking with the dagger. This means it will also be attacking on tick 3. When the counter reaches three, both the dagger and artifact are used, and the two blokes kill each other because I'm ending this here.

[Simon_Jester]

Hm. Sounds like keeping track of timing is going to be complicated. First edition D&D had something sort of like that as I recall.

Ehhh..a moving target would be very difficult but should be marginally doable out at the 500 yard line. With a SAW? much easier. Keep in mind that at 500 yards a 6 foot target looks like a small postage stamp, I hit 8/10, though I must point out that it was stationary, with the M16A2 with iron sights while prone.

For reference to those who don't know, a SAW is a Squad Automatic Weapon- a light machine gun, in other words. If you want to hit a running man-sized target with a machine gun, you have the considerable advantage of being able to send twenty or thirty bullets downrange in a few seconds- if one of them doesn't hit the guy, the others probably will.

Automatic weapons mounted on rests and mounts in general are very dangerous, which is why World War One ended up the way it did. People aiming ordinary rifles, even automatic rifles, are a lot less accurate at extreme range.

[Zwinmar]

Don't forget the concept of walking the rounds onto target. I have hit area targets a full kilometer away with a SAW using that technique. I have seen the same thing done with the .50 Cal M2 Machine Gun out to a mile away. Carlos Hathcock mounted a 10 power scope on one and hit a target at 2500 yards during the Vietnam war.

Walking rounds on target consists of watching the impact of the rounds hitting dirt and then connecting that trail to the target.

On to your ranges for 'assault' rifles: In general, they are way to short for a skilled marksman. It is not just about the sights, it is also about knowing the ballistic characteristics of the rounds fired, windage, and the elevation of the shot (you have to aim differently to shoot up or down hill), as well as the condition of the rifle. Depending on the rifle used you may also have to take into consideration air temperature, it is, after all, a projectile being propelled through the air.

As for shotguns, it all depends on what type of barrel and what type of ammo used. Hitting at 230 yards with slugs. Different types of Shotgun ammo

[Gunhead]

When I say consistently I mean 75% of the time before taking into account effects of movement, cover, obscurement and other negative effects to accuracy. This gives you a baseline upon which you can start calculating improved skill or lack of, bonuses for sights, stance and those negative effects.

One of the key things to remember is system granularity, what the system can take into account and what it cannot. We are giving number values
to items and abilities to gauge how good is their performance and compare which one is better.
In example, a system like Phoenix Command is incredibly detailed. Each weapon has it's unique stat line and it measures actions in 1/4 second impulses. It's also pretty useless as RPG combat system because firearms combat is all it does and the only times I've seen it work well(ish) was with a laptop, full table of terrain, miniatures and ready made rulers for range determination. Not something you can whip up on the spot when your PCs bust into a drug den and start blasting away.

Ignore outliers. Every singular incident referenced in this thread is worth fuck all when building a system. Yea I've seen some amazing stuff performed with guns, that doesn't mean you should build your system to be able to model them. I used lean on a lot more to my own experience with guns, till I realized that's not the way to do it because I couldn't peg myself with the system I was building consistently. I've fired lots of different guns and first hand knowledge of guns is good to have, but when you're building a system, first and foremost look what the statistics say and then peg your zero point. After it's all said and done, if your system can replicate what Hathcock did, good for you I guess and if not I guarantee your players won't know or care if the system you made gives logical results and keeps the action intense.

-Gunhead

[Korto]

Hm. Sounds like keeping track of timing is going to be complicated. First edition D&D had something sort of like that as I recall

Meh, it's pretty simple, so I probably explained it badly. There's this little clockface on the table, and you move your counter on it to when your next action is. I made a bit of a meal of it, really.
Of course, that's the Exalted system. My system at the moment is...oh. A bit more complicated. Oh yeah...Well, that's what play-testing's for.

Looking at that average of a US soldier hitting 10% at 300m, and comparing it to Zwinmar's 80% at 500 yards, braced and prone, obviously aiming, then unless we assume Zwinmar's some kind of absolute legend (possible), I'm tending to believe the average infantryman is standing (and snap-shooting?).

On to your ranges for 'assault' rifles: In general, they are way to short for a skilled marksman.

Do you have suggestions? I'm looking at Short, Medium, Long, and Extreme distances.
My intention is to have the distance descriptor be independent of the weapon carried, that is, someone at X may be described as being long-range regardless of if you're carrying a pistol or a hunting rifle, but the pistol would have a far larger penalty for the range than the rifle. This will also directly affect the damage being done.

Well, I've got some interesting numbers here, that I'll be looking at. If anyone's got any more, please post. The more data points, the better.

[Simon_Jester]

Training pays off enormously with rifle marksmanship, and as I recall Zwinmar is something of a gun enthusiast and served in the Marines, who make a Big Deal out of rifle marksmanship.

I have never fired a rifle; take me out to the range and I'd be lucky to hit the ground with the bullets, it'd be that bad.

Put me through the rifle training course used in basic infantry instruction and I'm sure I wouldn't be hopeless- but I'd probably be mediocre; they don't spend THAT much time practicing shooting.

Compare that to someone who has spent an hour or two a week practicing his marksmanship for a few decades, who uses more accurate long range rifles (either military sniper or civilian hunting), rather than the medium range ones used by the Army... and there's going to be another big gap.

And only then beyond that do you get to sharpshooters who are in any way legendary, or even 'particularly good' by global standards.

On to your ranges for 'assault' rifles: In general, they are way to short for a skilled marksman.

Yeah.

[The following is more for others' benefit, since I'm sure you know it already]

Basically, rifles were fairly long up through the World Wars, at which point every army independently reached three conclusions. One, most of their conscript soldiers couldn't hit the broad side of a barn, so it was pointless to hand long range accurate rifles to anyone except specifically trained marksmen. Two, long range warfare in the open where that kind of marksmanship was possible tended to be dominated by armored vehicles and artillery. Three, infantry combat tended to take place in relatively cramped areas or under conditions where volume of fire counted for more than accuracy.

So they made infantry rifles more like submachine guns, though without going to the full extreme of using a low-velocity pistol cartridge.

[Zwinmar]

Here is a link for what Marines have to do just to graduate bootcamp. Note I am a triple award Rifle Expert so I am ok at shooting, no scout-sniper though. Will note that in the picture there the recruit seems to have an ACOG scope while I only had the regular iron sights.

Anyways, for us I would guess something like this for the M16A2 with iron sights:
0-100 short range, I would use point blank as it seems that close
101-200 medium
201-300 long
500+ extreme

Though really I am inclined so say short range would be from 0 to 200.
Max effective range on a point target is 550 meters, area target 800 meters, and max range 3,600 meters

[Cykeisme]

I know you're intending to design a completely new system, thus presumably one that is based on precepts that are not necessarily based on existing systems that came before it, but just pointing out a conceptual notion that (as far as I know) is used in most game systems simulating personal-level combat..

Typically, the chances of successfully hitting a target in most games are intended to simulate attacking a person who is aware of you, and is aware that you are about to attack it. Therefore, the attack success check in its "unmodified" state usually simulates attacking someone who is moving and at least making some effort to be a slightly harder target than usual.
A target who is not yet aware of your presence and/or intent to attack, or is somehow unable to move (due to unconsciousness or being physically bound, say, with ropes) will then have a modifier that increases your odds of successfully landing the attack.
I reckon this is to reduce bookkeeping, since the most common situation is one where the target is aware of its attacker. So I'm not certain if applying a modifier for a moving target is necessary, rather than having the "base" calculation be for a moving target, and applying a bonus to a stationary target.
Aside from that, will you have different penalties for a target running perpendicular to the shooter's line of sight, compared to if the target was running straight towards/away from the shooter?


That said, based on the original question, it looks like you're aiming for a much higher level of verisimilitude, simulating real life more accurately than most game systems.
In that case, there's something else to consider.

I have read that the odds of a successful first-shot hit hinges largely on the shooter's state of mind and experience with combat situations. For example, even police officers that have qualified on marksmanship proficiency tests with their duty weapons have been known to fire large numbers of shots with very poor accuracy when they actually come into a situation where they are forced to fire at a criminal.
Thus, you might want to have a "combat experience" statistic of some sort that applies a significant bonus or penalty to odds of attaining hits with a firearm. Even in similar lighting conditions against a similarly sized target (paper outline or actual human being) at similar ranges, the observed frequency of hits can vary vastly when under stress.

[Korto]

Yeah, I'm wanting to try and design my own system, and if it's good enough, maybe one day it'll be commercial. I don't actually expect that, but if there's to be any chance of it, I can't just re-write someone else's work, and I can't talk in any depth about any of my (hopefully) original ideas on the internet.
The principal I'm trying to use for Realism v Playability is to try and find out what's real first, and then work back to playable, till I achieve Fun.
So I need some good numbers that I can extrapolate from. For instance, what is the chance of someone hitting with a rifle when shooting without taking time to aim? (Actually stopping to aim is very rare in the games I've been in.) Fucked if I know.

The information I've gotten in this thread so far isn't as good as I hoped, but better than I expected.

Some kind of stress mechanic would be good, if I can make it easy to use. It's something I've been thinking about, as I would like to be able to simulate being 'pinned under fire', something that happens in real life, but I've never seen it in RPGs. I've got some ideas, but you don't want too much finicky shit in the middle of a fight.

About combat ranges, I'm looking at using a system of generic encounter ranges instead of weapon-specific, based off significant points about that distance. For instance, 'Close Range' is the distance where a man with a knife drawn can kill a man with pistol holstered, which from internet sources is 21 feet. That's basically 6 metres, so I'll call 'Close' range 6 metres and less. (I said five metres in the OP, but things move on.)
The next range bracket might be where an unaimed pistol is still accurate and lethal, then unaimed rifle. Something like that. Then every weapon would have its own range modifiers for the different distances.
I like the thought of the ref being able to say "The man jumps out from behind cover, firing!" "How far is he?" "Close range"

[Zwinmar]

Well, there are other methods of aiming besides looking down the sights. For room clearing we were taught to place the index finger of our offhand so that where it points our barrel also points. This is of course while short stocking the 16, works even better with a shotgun.

[TheFeniX]

I have never fired a rifle; take me out to the range and I'd be lucky to hit the ground with the bullets, it'd be that bad.

If you're a reasonably competent person, I could have you drilling bullseyes at 100 yards with a decent rifle within maybe an hour. They are really that easy to use. Up until I decided to take my dad's rifle to the range to sight it, the only other rifle I had bothered with was a .22LR. Sure, I had a lot of pistol experience, but the differences in accuracy are pretty high up there because rifles are a lot more forgiving.

Hitting paper at 100 yards was nothing.

Put me through the rifle training course used in basic infantry instruction and I'm sure I wouldn't be hopeless- but I'd probably be mediocre; they don't spend THAT much time practicing shooting.

You'd be able to consistently put bullets on target, provide you could see said target.

Shooting guns is all about basics. The more basics you know and the better you follow them, the more accurate of a shooter you are. However, as mentioned in this thread: accuracy takes a nose dive when pressure mounts. I can draw my M&P and drill steel targets at 10-30 yards. 18 rounds, rapid fire, I won't miss once, maybe throwing 1-2 low. It's actually stupidly easy to do that. Years of practice just ensures you do automatically what a novice shooter does step-by-step so they can remember it. They have to think about it, I don't.

Now, have someone stand behind me with a buzzer and say "shooter, are you ready? BZZP" and until I shot a few matches, my accuracy would suffer considerably.

Now imagine there's no buzzer and the targets are shooting back at you. Worse than that, there could be and likely are other targets you can't see looking to shoot you.

The problem with novice shooters is they consistently forget basics. Every time we go to the range, my wife starts "milking the trigger" again and pulls her bullets consistently low-left. Once I correct her, she's back to drilling center-mass because it's really not that hard to do. With a rifle, it's even easier since the gun itself acts as a stabilizer.

Top Shot seems to always bring in some kind of "outsider." They got border patrol, retired special forces.... and some kid (twice, I recall, a kid working in Information Technology). The kids do great, one even took the whole thing, even though they lacked the experience and many weapons they'd hadn't even touched.

And that's really because shooting isn't hard. However, in an actual firefight, I'd rather have the retired law enforcement/military guys on my side, especially the guys who have seen combat. This is why I never really fell in love with a Gun Skill in many games. As much shit as the D&D proficiency system gets, it actually makes a lot of sense in combat. Your experience dealing with deadly situations generally means more than your ability to shoot straight. At some point, you can't shoot anymore straight.

Now, if those skills mean you can fire faster, engage more targets in a shorter amount of time, whatever, that makes sense. But in pure accuracy? That's not a hard skill to master.

[Simon_Jester]

Huh. That's an interesting point- that combat experience (which RPGs usually express as 'level') matters more than technical proficiency because technical proficiency is so easy to obtain.

To use fantasy examples, take two men, Man A has trained extensively with an axe; Man B has trained with swords and has mastered only the rudiments of axe-fighting. However, Man B has consistently, repeatably gone out into the wilderness armed with a sword and killed giants, demonic beasts, and other assorted horrors. Man A has stayed in the castle courtyard practicing.

In a straight fight with axes between the two men... honestly my money's on Man B.

...

While we're on the subject, I'm reminded of musketry drill in the 19th century and earlier. As noted, under combat conditions stress causes people to screw up the drill, despite extensive practice. Archaeologists have found muskets that had been loaded with dozens of charges and bullets, indicating that some soldiers, under combat conditions, repeatedly followed the loading drill, but forgot to pull the trigger. They sure weren't hitting any targets downrange.

Other soldiers would use the ramrod to push the loaded bullet and powder down into the gun, and then pull the trigger without extracting it, thus throwing away the tool they needed to reload!

So yes, I can see your argument that technical proficiency with firearms isn't the issue in determining how accurately and effectively people hit their targets. It's combat experience and ability to actually use that proficiency while under stress.

[TheFeniX]

Huh. That's an interesting point- that combat experience (which RPGs usually express as 'level') matters more than technical proficiency because technical proficiency is so easy to obtain.

Melee combat has it's own problems as physical strength, stamina, or just size factors in heavily. This is many times a non-issue with a firearm, or can even be a detriment. The Mountain from GoT and his size is a huge plus in a melee fight. His size just makes him a bigger target in a gun fight.

In a straight fight with axes between the two men... honestly my money's on Man B.

I would say yes, but also because the more experienced fighter is much more likely to just react better to both the expected and unexpected. In a feeling out process by man A, Man B might think "I've seen this shit before" and just bull-rush his opponent, get inside the effective range of the axe, and just just head-butting his opponent. Or biting him. Or slamming his head against a tree.

Or he just gives ground to a superior opponent and lets the guy tire himself out. Knowing your own limitations is a huge part of building combat experience.

So yes, I can see your argument that technical proficiency with firearms isn't the issue in determining how accurately and effectively people hit their targets. It's combat experience and ability to actually use that proficiency while under stress.

I recall watching interviews with WWII vets who would keep empty clips on their belt. They would then throw these on the ground, simulating the PING when a Garand ejects it's empty clip and shoot any enemies that popped their head up while trying take advantage. I somehow doubt they taught that in Basic.

One of my Shadowrunners shamelessly ripped this off. He used to carry deactivated grenades to toss at enemies in cover, then shoot them as they dove away from the impact zone. My GM was so pissed when I ruined this epic fist-fight scene he was building up to. Knowing we were going through a metal detector, I pushed him hard enough to admit the gift shop in the building we entered sold baseballs, so I bought a few and rubbed black camo-paint over them. So shit goes down, I throw it, the "Mr. Badass Physad" guy fails the perception check, and Shelly (our Street Sam) gets a free kick to the head on a downed opponent (he dove for cover) instantly knocking him unconscious.

So, I was like "GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLL!"

[Simon_Jester]

Huh. That's an interesting point- that combat experience (which RPGs usually express as 'level') matters more than technical proficiency because technical proficiency is so easy to obtain.

Melee combat has it's own problems as physical strength, stamina, or just size factors in heavily. This is many times a non-issue with a firearm, or can even be a detriment. The Mountain from GoT and his size is a huge plus in a melee fight. His size just makes him a bigger target in a gun fight.

Well yeah, but size and stamina and so on are also usually tracked separately from depth of combat experience, at least for player characters.

In a straight fight with axes between the two men... honestly my money's on Man B.

I would say yes, but also because the more experienced fighter is much more likely to just react better to both the expected and unexpected. In a feeling out process by man A, Man B might think "I've seen this shit before" and just bull-rush his opponent, get inside the effective range of the axe, and just just head-butting his opponent. Or biting him. Or slamming his head against a tree.

Or he just gives ground to a superior opponent and lets the guy tire himself out. Knowing your own limitations is a huge part of building combat experience.

That's pretty much what I was getting at.

So yes, I can see your argument that technical proficiency with firearms isn't the issue in determining how accurately and effectively people hit their targets. It's combat experience and ability to actually use that proficiency while under stress.

I recall watching interviews with WWII vets who would keep empty clips on their belt. They would then throw these on the ground, simulating the PING when a Garand ejects it's empty clip and shoot any enemies that popped their head up while trying take advantage. I somehow doubt they taught that in Basic.

One of my Shadowrunners shamelessly ripped this off. He used to carry deactivated grenades to toss at enemies in cover, then shoot them as they dove away from the impact zone. My GM was so pissed when I ruined this epic fist-fight scene he was building up to. Knowing we were going through a metal detector, I pushed him hard enough to admit the gift shop in the building we entered sold baseballs, so I bought a few and rubbed black camo-paint over them. So shit goes down, I throw it, the "Mr. Badass Physad" guy fails the perception check, and Shelly (our Street Sam) gets a free kick to the head on a downed opponent (he dove for cover) instantly knocking him unconscious.

So, I was like "GOOOOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAALLLLLLLLLLLL!"

This honestly sounds more like taking advantage of the reflexes of enemy veterans, really. Because you're exploiting ingrained reflexes that normally ensure battlefield survival (strike when the enemy has to reload, take cover when a grenade comes knocking), and using the predictable response. On a rookie it wouldn't work, because a rookie would either not react to the grenade at all, or react in an unpredictable and less exploitable way.

[TheFeniX]

Well yeah, but size and stamina and so on are also usually tracked separately from depth of combat experience, at least for player characters.

Yea, it's always nagged me. Aside from body-builders, you're unlikely to find a person with high strength who lacks dexterity or endurance, even though a lot of systems like to show them as mutually exclusive. The act of putting on that kind of muscle leads to development of the other too. I can't think of a system off-hand where strength and size is taken into account for melee combat at the level it should be. More emphasis is put on the skill itself, when using your size advantage is a skill in of itself.

Shadowrun handled it via "Professional Ratings" for NPCs, but always assumed even the greenest of Shadowrunning PCs would fight on to the bitter end if required. I guess at some point you can't get too bogged down in die rolls.

That's pretty much what I was getting at.

My choice of conjunction there was wrong. Should have use "and" instead of "but." "But" (ha!) systems usually leave the actual experience of tactics to the discretion of the player rather than skills. And I think this is a part of the system you can't really correct, so instead "level" or "experience" just means more Hit points or skill points or whatever. But what really makes veterans of combat dangerous is their reactions in quickly dealing with stressful and unpredictable situations. Not something you can really put a die-roll to.

This honestly sounds more like taking advantage of the reflexes of enemy veterans, really. Because you're exploiting ingrained reflexes that normally ensure battlefield survival (strike when the enemy has to reload, take cover when a grenade comes knocking), and using the predictable response. On a rookie it wouldn't work, because a rookie would either not react to the grenade at all, or react in an unpredictable and less exploitable way.

Fair enough.

[Simon_Jester]

Well yeah, but size and stamina and so on are also usually tracked separately from depth of combat experience, at least for player characters.

Yea, it's always nagged me. Aside from body-builders, you're unlikely to find a person with high strength who lacks dexterity or endurance, even though a lot of systems like to show them as mutually exclusive. The act of putting on that kind of muscle leads to development of the other too. I can't think of a system off-hand where strength and size is taken into account for melee combat at the level it should be. More emphasis is put on the skill itself, when using your size advantage is a skill in of itself.

Well, various physical stats are strictly uncorrelated in most systems, but there's a general balance in that characters seriously intended for physical action tend to excel in multiple such stats, while characters intended to mostly use their minds instead of their muscles excel in multiple mental stats.

It's not wrong to nitpick this issue, but I do think it's at least a partial solution to the observation that physical aptitude (size, strength, coordination, and training) and actual combat experience are fundamentally different things. The guy with strength and agility towards the high end of the human envelope already has major statistical advantages in hand to hand combat. And they are already tracked mostly separately from the degree to which combat experience makes him a cunning, resourceful, and deadly killer.

That's pretty much what I was getting at.

My choice of conjunction there was wrong. Should have use "and" instead of "but." "But" (ha!) systems usually leave the actual experience of tactics to the discretion of the player rather than skills. And I think this is a part of the system you can't really correct, so instead "level" or "experience" just means more Hit points or skill points or whatever. But what really makes veterans of combat dangerous is their reactions in quickly dealing with stressful and unpredictable situations. Not something you can really put a die-roll to.

Agreed- but as you've alluded to, we can't really model that in statistical terms for a role-playing game. Because that's a game where if you don't want your character to break down screaming and be ineffectual, they usually won't, or shouldn't.

The closest you can really come is to give them high hit points (which, if you go back to the original Gygaxian intent, are meant to model abstract resistance to being killed, not the ability to survive being impaled repeatedly with swords or anything like that), high probability of hitting effectively, and the like.

One interesting RPG system I saw for stuff like this was Godlike, a brutally realistic "superheroes in WWII" game from around 2000-05 or so. But it kind of faded into obscurity.

[Cykeisme]

Some kind of stress mechanic would be good, if I can make it easy to use. It's something I've been thinking about, as I would like to be able to simulate being 'pinned under fire', something that happens in real life, but I've never seen it in RPGs. I've got some ideas, but you don't want too much finicky shit in the middle of a fight.

There's quite a few RPGs where suppressing fire and pinning are portrayed.

Off the top of my head, the Warhammer 40k RPG line by Fantasy Flight Games (including Dark Heresy, Deathwatch, Only War and Black Crusade) have it, though since the 40k universe's main portrayal is the tabletop wargame (which has "pinning"), it's no surprise that the RPGs in the same setting will have it for thematic congruity.

Yea, it's always nagged me. Aside from body-builders, you're unlikely to find a person with high strength who lacks dexterity or endurance, even though a lot of systems like to show them as mutually exclusive. The act of putting on that kind of muscle leads to development of the other too.

Bodybuilders tend to have decent endurance; what they're lacking is what's often referred to as "functional strength". The time spent on isolation exercises to perfect the aesthetics for their muscles means that their nervous systems aren't as able to perform coordinated contractions to do the kind of things you'd expect to be useful in combat (which itself can be roughly simulated with a low Agility or Dexterity attribute, but the over-specialization extends to being disproportionately poor at "strength" actions like Olympic lifts and strongman-style feats, despite strength of individual muscles).
Of course, that doesn't rule out training combat-related skills up separately in addition to resistance strength training, but nevertheless, your point still stands; bodybuilders demonstrate that "Strength" and "Dexterity" are separate attributes.