"Question regarding percentile to hit" Topic

Hello everyone new member here, i wanted to get opinions on what you thought a basic civilian armed with a handgun at short/medium/long range would be, based on a percentile system. Iam not looking for a complicated formula just a basic opinion. I was thinking to hit something human size in the open would be 40%\35%\30%. What do you guys think.

Are you talking paper target? Moving target? Shooting back target?

I would think much lower than that for ahandgun unless they had specifically trained regularly in its use… even then a target range is a lot different than an actual combat!

I think that should be considerably lower, if firing at armed opponents.

Trained policemen usually do far worse than that.

Plus, it'll make your firefights a little longer, and more interesting, say 10%, 8%, and 5%.

If you want round numbers, and don't mind them being a little higher, go with 15%, 10%, and 5%.

Having never fired a gun before, I'd expect my chances of hitting anything in a firefight (except maybe myself) would be pretty close to nil… though I might be able to get the other guy to duck for a moment while I run away.

FWIW, from what I've read and from what I've experienced it takes a lot of rounds down range for anyone to be competent with a pistol particularly if the target is shooting back.Bear in mind range and a lot of other factors are involved. I would say 8/5/3.

You really don't want to know actual numbers because they make for a boring game. For a civilian, I'd start at maybe 10% or so for 0-6 feet, drop it in half for over 6-21 feet, and drop it in half again over 21 feet.

Police officers, who are trained and must qualify with their firearms hit their target from 10 to 40ish % depending on the dept. LA has had hit rates as high as 50% and some depts have had hit rates well below 17%. The average of the studies concludes that an officer will hit his target roughly 1/3 of the time, with low light, distance and being shot at in return dropping that number significantly.

yeah I was thinking 40%\35%\30% was probably too high for a basic dirtbag civilian armed with a small caliber firearm. I am looking at an untrained but not incomitant civilian with little to no firearm training shooting a couple rounds into a human size individual not moving very fast or taking advantage of terrain.
Maybe something like 10%/8%/4%/ makes a little sense for this kind of scenario.

I once heard a personal safety expert state that the best thing to do when confronted by a perp with a gun is to throw your wallet at their feet and run like hell in the other direction. He stated that:

A.) They want the money in the first place, so that's where their eyes will go.

B.) 95% of handgun shots by untrained shooters miss their target; distance and a little movement will almost guarantee they'll miss.

Combine those two facts and most perps won't even bother to take a shot.

(He also suggested yelling your lungs out as you ran; muggers hate attention.)

If you just want to keep it simple, use a d20. 18 or better is %15, 19 or better is 10%, and 20 is 5%. Basically, most of the time your civilian is simply going to miss.

But don't forget that a bullet always goes somewhere, so a bystander rule should apply on a miss.

Note that a rifle or shotgun is a different animal; both are a heck of a lot easier to aim and hit a target with than is a handgun.

Police use handguns to buy time until they can get to their shotgun.
Most police shoot-outs are within just a few feet, and even then they miss a lot (understandably so).
Anything more than about 10-15 feet, by the time you add movement, lighting etc – I would bet less than 10% hits – and most of them won't be disabling.

Most police shootings take place in less than three seconds, with fewer than three rounds fired total, and closer than six feet. Typically one out of three rounds hits someone. The agency I work for in their most recent shootout, two officers fired three rounds from about 15 feet and got two hits, one fatal. Suspect had a toy gun intending the be killed by the police according to his suicide note. I am a firearms instructor with the agency.

Mike Bunkermeister Creek
SGT Says police blog

Crikey. Reality for a civilian, even with some range time, would probably only hit with a 10% chance at anything over 10 yards!

In terms of game mechanics, how about:

point blank 50%
short 40%
medium 30%
long 20%

If a hit, roll with a 20% chance of it being a kill, and the rest being a hit that knocks something off their capability.

That gives you a decent chance of a hit, but not a huge chance of a kill.

Cheers
Jaz
revolutionaryroads.com – are you tabletop roads letting your games down?

Nope, waaaaay too high, unless you are assuming multiple shots per round, and lumping them all together.

Interestingly, in most gunfights at close range, it's actually harder to hit your target, the closer it is, and/or to be hit in close.

The reason for that is your degree of evasive movement in relation to the shooter is actually much greater at short range than at longer ranges, assuming you are moving laterally from the barrel of the weapon.

I've read accounts of both sides emptying their guns (6 – 15 shots each, depending upon the weapon types), and missing will all shots in close range gunfights.

The slightest movement of the gun barrel of a pistol greatly changes its impact point considerably, especially at anything other than pointblank range.

It is pretty hard to hit something with a handgun at any distance – especially if that something is moving – and for people without training, it would almost require bad luck to be hit

I am (I am told) a reasonable shot but I doubt I could hit 1 in 3 for a moving target at 50 feet or more – so 15, 10 and 5 seem fair to me

These really low hit rates might be more realistic, but I think you'll end up with a really boring game.

I agree with AGP here. You are designing a game. If I am playing said civilian and you tell me I hit 5% of the time with a handgun, I'll drop it for a baseball bat. If I have to reload a revolver 3 times to expect to get 1 hit, that's a game I'll pass on playing.

Now 40/30/20 depending on how you handle saves, damage, cover, etc. and I'll play.

A lot also depends on your time frame though if you're counting individual shots a turn must be measured in seconds.

If you're counting individual shots, turn times need to be measured in fractions of a second.

For more fun, make all move/shoot decisions in secret, then move everyone, then resolve shots. Why, yes, you did just shoot that dude in the back. You're thinking, "if he moves, I will shoot him." He moved by turning away from you, and in the half second it takes for your brain to process that, you've already pulled the trigger because of the "if he moves…" decision.

Check out Cyberpunk's Friday Night Firefight rules. I have a slight preference for CP3's rules, but either 2020 or CP3 will work (never read CP2013 rules).

I'd tend to go with 6 to hit on 1d6 for trained shootists using the weapons they've trained with, at ranges under ten metres.

A WW2 trial reported in WO 291/473, "Performance of bullet weapons", compared the service pistol with the Sten gun, firing at targets exposed for an average of five seconds at an average range of ten yards, and moving across the line of fire at 10 feet per second.

Hit rates were 12% firing the Sten from the hip, 8% firing the pistol from the hip, and 14% with aimed shots from the pistol. Shots per engagement averaged 16 for the Sten and 5 for the pistol (presumably the whole cylinder).

I don't understand why numerical innaccuracy or inflated lethality is supposed to make a game better, but I would have thought that it makes a less interesting game insofar as it reduces the number of tactical decisions a player has to make if they do not have to consider the question of reloading.

As to what happens when a bullet hits, I put forward a simple and, as far as the available data allows, numerically accurate bullet wounding procedure in "It's Only a Flesh Wound, Sarge" in The Nugget a while ago. If there's any interest I could re-jig the table in the article to text form and post it here.

All the best,

John.

Shooting at ZOMBIES reduce another 10%.

Mr. Salt,

Yes, please.

Thanks!

Right, if I've munged this up no more than average, the piece should appear here:

TMP link

Apologies for the spello in the title. I thought it best to start a new thread as the piece is quite long, and the OP did specifically ask about hitting.

All the best,

John.

John, I seem to remember a report, pre-D-day, of soldiers accuracy and finding, on average, a good rule of thumb was to take their range accuracy and divide by 10.

Talking of shooting from the hip, if trained properly, high degrees of accuracy can be achieved, especially using pistols where the shorter weapon helps instinctive shooting. These abilities could be used to further differentiate combatants, beyond the competency grading of old.

Personally, I used to shoot full bore pistols at 20 metres and could hit the target 10 out of 10, often in the 8-10 rings. however if guys, on both sides of my booth, were unloading Colt Dragoons or 357's the noise and smoke caused my accuracy to plummet.

"These really low hit rates might be more realistic, but I think you'll end up with a really boring game".

Actually no, it'll make it more cinematic, and epic.

Give them several shots per turn for rapid fire (say 3, for good measure), and perhaps a bonus, if they take the time to just aim well, and squeeze off one shot accurately – bonus is tied to firer training level.

Avalon Hill's old game "Gunslinger" covered these issues pretty well. I don't think it can be improved upon much.

Having fired, as a near-newbie, in succession, an MP-4, a Glock 9mm, a sawed-off shotgun, a "grease" gun and a Thompson, at a distance of about 20 ft., under the guidance of a trained FBI instructor, I can say that the MP-4 was the most accurate to shoot, the pistol the hardest to shoot, the shotgun was the easiest to shoot ("couldn't miss"), and the grease gun and the Tommy were the most fun to shoot.

As for the Glock, I fired three shots, carefully aiming each one, in a wide stance, sighting down the barrel. The instructor said I hit with all three (the paper target was already holed by others), but I'm pretty certain I didn't hit where I was aiming. Aiming for the nose, I think I hit the right ear, the upper left temple, and the right shoulder. Others were firing around me (including the two machine guns), but that didn't bother me. Of course, the target was paper, immobile, and "menaced" me only with his photographed gun, and I took my time aiming. That ain't a firefight. EDIT: I believe the pistol target was actually closer— maybe 15 ft or less.

I concur with what others say about a game, though. Either civilian characters need to have alternative methods of effectively contributing to combat, or the probabilities need to be "fudged" in their favor. Otherwise the fun factor of the game will be sucked out of it for many players, if the game's main play action centers around combat. (If combat is merely secondary or tertiary, then realistic shooting odds become acceptable or even important.)

Parzival, I must have shot over a thousand rounds before I got very good and if I was to do it today, thirty years later, I'd probably be back to hitting occasionally.

Pistols are tricky beasts to hit things with, and any deviation from the learned technique ends in failure. At my height of accuracy, able to shoot a .177 pellet, from a target pistol, at a Tic Tac box opening 15m away, I emptied a Ruger .22 magazine IIRC 10 rds at an indoor target at 20 metres. When I went to investigate my perforated target I viewed undamaged paper, not one round had hit! Took me ages to get a decent double tap, a lot trickier than the movies make out!!

As for missing is boring check this clip out, not for the squeamish though!

Spoiler alert: Climactic gunfight in the film 'The Way of the Gun'

YouTube link

If you have hit rates more than single or low double digit figures you have very quick combats which can be equally boring. It was my main complaint against Call of Cthulhu, once you got involved in gunfights the body count soared, and keeping characters alive required greater and greater inventiveness.

"These really low hit rates might be more realistic, but I think you'll end up with a really boring game".

Actually no, it'll make it more cinematic, and epic.

Give them several shots per turn for rapid fire (say 3, for good measure), and perhaps a bonus, if they take the time to just aim well, and squeeze off one shot accurately – bonus is tied to firer training level.

I've read accounts of both sides emptying their guns (6 – 15 shots each, depending upon the weapon types), and missing will all shots in close range gunfights.

The second quote of yours doesn't sound very epic, if that's the sort of thingyou're emulating. Using your numbers, my guy will have a less than even chance of hitting anything, assuming both shooter and target are in the open, right next to each other and not moving. It might be realistic, but a game where every second turn you end up doing nothing doesn't sound very epic.

Going back to the OP; are these civilians the "normal" level, or are they the bottom of the barrel? If I've got a couple of guys with an even or better than even chance of hitting, and a horde of hapless mooks, then that's probably fair enough. If my best guy will only hit someone every other turn, then no thanks.

The nature of the game makes a difference, too; if it's a convention participation game for multiple players, then they're going to want to be able to do something in their turn. If it's something for like-minded individuals, then you may all accept the more realistic odds.

edit: the last Warhammer RPG campaign I played in, I had a character with a base 20% chance of hitting something at optimum range. Aiming, shooting them in the back, etc, could bring that up to about 50%. It basically meant that my role in combats was to "I'll aim, then shoot that guy over there", turn after turn. More realistic than shooting three orcs at once like Legolas? Possibly, but not as much fun.

^^^And that is where "reality" or "simulation" (and I use those terms loosely)separates itself from "game." I played a game that had pretty realistic "to hit" numbers, which meant a lot of lead was flyin' but not many guys were dyin'. I understood what was being modelled but the guy I was playing against did not; he was VERY upset that multiple figures were missing their shots and casualties were light. He had a horrible experience and thought the game sucked. If you want to run the type of game that most people want to play, you need to disregard "the facts" so to speak.

This reminds me of Early War FOW games- tanks shoot at each other until one side gets bored and goes home.

"You really don't want to know actual numbers because they make for a boring game."

So true. I love it. That should be in the Designer's Notes of every wargame.

No, bad design makes for a boring game. Numerical accuracy only makes for a boring game when one side must inevitably thrash the pants off the other (although even that's not true with sufficient ingenuity -- I cite SPI's "Battle for Germany") or if the game designer can't do his job properly.

Nobody is saying that players should only be allowed one shot a turn. If you decide that 30 seconds, or a minute, is a reasonable length for a game turn, then the effect of each combat resolution might easily represent the effect of multiple shots. Any game designer worth his, umm, salt should be able to deal with this without producing horrific and uneccessary distortions of historical hitting rates if these are known. In any case, the idea that the existence of hit probabilities lower than 50% makes a game a bad one is one of the more ostentatiously fatuous that I've heard in a long time. On that basis, every game or set of rules I've ever played is a bad one.

Anyhow, here's an (old) idea for one-on-one gunfighting; let people pick their own hit probabilities. Each player in the duel picks a number between 1 and 100 -- this can conveniently be done by turning 2d10 to show the faces corresponding to your chosen number, and covering them with your hand. Both players reveal their chosen number simultaneously. The number chosen is your probability of hitting your opponent. Here's the twist; the duellist who chose the lower number shoots first.

Generalising this game to deal with truels and larger numbers of shooters is left as an exercise for the reader, as is including the effects of suppression from near-misses.

All the best,

John.

Reading this over, I have to ask:

John:
What part of the body is the 'thorax'? I thought that was specifically an insect/spider body part. If that is the chest area [Lordie, I hope so], Why do you think it took so few hits? Surface area is not the same as target size.

Bill

In gunfights, if the OK Corral is any indication of hit probability, then thirty-six pistol and rifle shots were fired between seven shooters, plus two shotgun blasts at a range of about twenty yards or less. Number of hits: six.

I read an account of a downed US pilot in Korea, emptying his .45 automatic at a Chinese patrol, at point blank range. He only escaped with his life because the Chinese soldiers, all unharmed, were so surprised and shocked.

The other thing to think about is cover. Reading the RM magazine, they have countless accounts of Marine patrols, exchanging gunfire with Taliban ambush teams and no one gets hurt. Then one or the other force, switches position and direction of fire and the casualties begin to mount up quickly.

I think there is an opportunity for umpires to give the vaguest of information about hit probabilities, whilst keeping the real ones to himself. Let the players work out the best tactics, the hard way!

John:
What part of the body is the 'thorax'? I thought that was specifically an insect/spider body part. If that is the chest area [Lordie, I hope so], Why do you think it took so few hits? Surface area is not the same as target size.

Upper chest, where the heart and lungs are. It's not a bugs-only word, why do you think we have 12 thoracic vertebrae?

link

Not civilians but provides some useful, interesting, and in my opinion surprising information.

While most people have heard about the one with three police officers firing a hundred rounds at the guy behind the SUV 20 feet away and only hitting the SUV seven times (and the guy none) such examples are remembered, apparently, precisely because they are so shockingly rare.

I suspect it's far more common than we know, but no one wants to talk about it.

Info from the big apple

link

Lord Ghee

Mako11- perhaps, but at least according to this one study Portland Police only missed with 40% of their shots over a multi-year period.

While those were with varied weapons in varied situations (I found the info on how much ammunition is used per policeman as well as accuracy increasing with the number of policeman interesting) I'm sure that, if you also note situations where civilians stopped dangerous criminals, accuracy for someone who is at all practiced is much higher than the numbers we've been stating (especially because in most of these situations you aren't dealing with a stationary target who wants to be hit).

For someone who is unpracticed I think the stated numbers are probably pretty good… though I might make accuracy pretty flat out until long range as short range can make it harder to hit in some ways.

For the game engine I designed, I had to put the basic "to hit" at 4+ on a D10, because anything less became "too lethal" for game play. Throw in shooting modifiers for cover and range and the chance for a hit drops more (but it is still there.) As in "real" life, cover is your friend…. :-)

To further follow up Zephyr1's comment, Infinity can pretty quickly devolve to very low p(Hit). BS12 (roll a 12 or lower on a d20), -3 for being in cover, -6 for being at long range. If you actually have some type of camo, you're unhittable (minimum camo modifier is a -3, for a total of -12).

But up close, the p(Hit) is much higher. Still BS12 and -3 for being in cover, but +3 for range.

Upper chest, where the heart and lungs are.

Thanks. Learn something new every day.

It's not a bugs-only word, why do you think we have 12 thoracic vertebrae?

Ooh, ooh, I know the answer to this one. To hold up our shoulders and head above our hips…