I've often wondered about skills. A lot of your skill has to do with your equipment. For instance, I have never once bought a rifle that had the sights lined up. Close, but not quite. No matter what your skill is with that rifle, you won't hit a darn thing if the sights are messed up. Does this ever play into Multiverser, or is it just skill related?
On the other hand, take a rifle with a really good scope that is lined up perfectly, and a 1@1 would be able to drill Quarters at 100 yards all day long. The equipment would make that much of a difference. See what I mean?
True, but over the course of thousands of rounds - which is small for the average wannabe sniper - it probably all averages out anyway. Plus which, it is generally assumed that if you have the skill in using a weapon, knowing how to maintain it is par for the course. My grandfather taught me how to clean, load, unload, and store a rifle long before he ever taught me to fire one - it's a way of developing respect for your equipment, and few professional instructors would leave it out.
Plus which, from a game mechanics standpoint, you're inviting a crapton more math asking for Equipment Suitability Rating (or some such thing) as opposed to just assuming that, barring accident or malfeasance, your equipment works. (If your rifle has been sabotaged, or if you de-aligned your sights bludgeoning a sentry to death, that's something else entirely.)
A1, what I'd do is write this up, and try to include it as part of the notes on a weapons article.
I've seen other gun aficianado's complain about how inaccurate movies are on this topic, so it would be good to be accurate here. But in a way that warns the ref to ask his player something rather than in a way that makes a need for a new game mechanic.
Tad, I'm not exactly sure what you're saying there. What I was thinking is perhaps a sit mod against using the rifle for the first time. Perhaps a -10 penalty if you've never used the rifle before. If your first time using it is at the shooting range, you can undo the -10 sit mod because you would have the sights lined up after that. Likewise, a +10 sit mod if the rifle is really good. You steal a rifle from an expert marksman, you know it's lined up, so you get a +10 bonus on your shots. Just a thought.
The sit-mod for sight alignment sounds like the referee's discretion. You could argue that knowing to line up the sights (or, if you don't have time, knowing not to trust completely in sights you don't know are lined up) is part of the skill in firing the gun. You could also argue that an amateur wouldn't get as much benefit out of well-aligned sights as a professional, because his shots aren't precise enough for a slight misalignment to really make much difference outside of practice.
The scope, though, I'm sure about: that's a skill. It's actually a T6@1 Use Scope, because the lenses and so forth are precision tools, and precise tools like magnifying glasses and scalpels and laser sensors are level six. A successful roll with the scope gives you a significant bonus against penalties for range.
Something else along these lines. What about natural ability? I would say that Forrest Gump easily has 3@5 ability in Ping Pong. He didn't train for years and years, it just came to him. Is there a mechanic in the game for things like that? Just instantly being really good at something?
Now that's interesting. something along the lines of rolling GE every time you try a skill you've never attempted before to see if you have some natural ability for it? (roll a 3 and you're a savant, roll a 30 and you'll always be a hack).
I really don't like Forest Gump, but I would have to say that his ping-pong ability comes as a gift of whatever god favors him in that universe. It is possible to use a M15@4 skill to give someone a skill they didn't have, and it's not entirely out of the question for that to be an expert level skill.
It is not unreasonable to attach a negative sit-mod to a particular weapon, or to allow a player to use skill to overcome it. I can think of a potential example. E. R. Jones tells of going to carnival shooting galleries with his army friends--all professional or expert level with their rifles. The sites on such guns are intentionally misaligned, but these professionals would simply have one fire the first shot with a particular gun while another observed where that shot actually hit in relation to where it was aimed. The shooter then compensated for the offset by aiming relative to the target in the same degree of error. I would say that the process in game would be:
- Roll targeted skill check with penalty for sites; remember size penalty if target is small.
- Roll untargeted skill check to evaluate actual results.
- If successful, roll future skill checks unmodified, based on the successful evaluation of the weapon use; if failed, go back to step one.
And yes, there is a separate check for using the scope. If you succeed you get the bonus for using the scope, if you fail you don't, and if you botch, well, probably you are shooting in the wrong place.
--M. J. Young