From: agreene@mta.ca
Subject: Re: Flintlocks vs. bows
Reply-To: agreene@mta.ca
Organization: Mount Allison U, Sackville, N.B. Canada 
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 22:33:14 GMT

Robert Link replies to my furious outrage:
>
>  Bows are supposed to be more damaging than early firearms.  The primary
>advantage of the firearms was that they required *much* less training to use
>and were cheaper to maintain.  For a king raising an army, this was an 
>important consideration; for a small group of highly skilled individuals (e.g.
>party of Storm Knights (TM)) this is not really a factor (and thus, you should
>see comparatively few Storm Knights toting flintlocks)

	While its good to see that SOMEONE is paying attention to me, this
isn't really the point I'm driving at.  BTW, I think that bows SHOULD be better
weapons than flintlocks.
>
>  Now, as for the fact that most pistols below tech 24 don't do anything 
>approaching realistic damage, that is a uniform problem throughout Torg. 
>Apparently, the designers had a very low opinion of both melee weapons (a 
>two handed sword should do more damage than any except a fully automatic
>firearm!) and small firearms (as you put it, they are, at most, inconvenient).
>
	Now you're hitting on the real issue at stake.  Most pistols are just
plain pathetic, especially if the target has any kind of armor at all.  They
should be deadly, feared, and yes, even RESPECTED.
     I'm sure you'd respect a .38 police revolver, if one was pointed at you
even though with only damage 14, (assuming you had an average 8 Toughness) on
the average shot you wouldn't even be wounded! ("It's just a scratch!")  For
that matter, you'd likely even respect a Flintlock!
	When watching adventure movies (after all, TORG is a Cinematic game)
there almost inevitably comes a scene when the protagonist and antagonist
are struggling for the gun (usually a PISTOL).  In Torg, many characters I know
would just grab a handy chair, or something else big, and bash the antagonist's
skull in.  All pistols should do enough damage (even when used by Ords) that
when the SK is confronted by someone with a loaded pistol aimed at him that he
should hesitate and not immediately attack.  While all good role-players would
do so, there is littl reason, as the rules stand, that the SK won't just
take the hit and close in on the adversary.
        Now I don't at all disagree with the heavy damage of automatic
rifles (though why they are so much higher than Sub-machine gunes totally
escapes me), but I just disagree with the HUGE gap between the damage 20+
rifles and the damage 15 pistols.  Now, high-powered, single-shot rifles
(like the M1 Garand) seem to be off track--they have great range but they
shouldn't do more damage (or even as much as...) a shotgun.  And from what
little I know of guns, a .357 Magnum or a .45 is supposed be be quite close
in stopping power to most single-shot rifles (they just don't have the range).

	BTW, do you really think that a two-handed sword should do more damage
than a Sub-machine gun?  This isn't a criticism at all--I have never been
hit by either, and I really don't know which would be more damaging...

>  My guess is that this was a deliberate move to make common weapons less 
>deadly for the PC's.  Unfortunately, this results in many players falling into
>the "Big Gun syndrome", where they feel that if they are using anything less
>than a minigun, then they are underarmed.
>
>-rpl
>
>Internet:		link@lcopt.physics.fsu.edu
>                                       
>"The time has come," the Walrus said, "to talk of many things:  Of shoes and
>ships and sealing wax, of cabbages and kings, of why the sea is boiling hot 
>and whether pigs have wings."
>

--Anthony Greene
-I can't believe Mobius is DEAD!!!

Newsgroups: alt.games.torg