Howdy all! I.... have nothing to say this week! Really! Sorry. Plum's got a gun! Sing "Elves With Guns" by the Gorillaz or something.
I saw the D&D movie! It was... fine! It started out rough but got considerably better. At its worst, it's about a 3/10. At its best, it's about an 8/10. So let's even it out at a 6/10. Fine. Too safe and predictable. If they take more risks and turn up the acting direction a little bit, they could have a solid franchise. Like... They need to nail "The Mummy" level of action/comedy to really get there.
Next up is Mario movie!! That releases tonight-- the night you read it anyway. Maybe I'll have... thoughts on it???? Next week??? oooooh, cliffhanger.
Yay, new strip! Two things I wanted to comment on:
1) Am I blind or is there a missing word bubble/sentence? After having said she has never head a gun in her life, we go to the next panel and either we have Syd's "It's the exact same!" or we have "A bow and arrow are the exact same as a rifle."
2) Ah, the joy's of video game RPGs simplifying the situation! XD Sort-of-Story Time! Share how a game (video game, tabletop RPG, etc) handles the bow and arrow versus a rifle!
To no one's surprise, I'll start with GURPS. Skills in GURPS can be one of four difficulties: Easy, Average, Hard, and Very Hard. Each Skill is associated with one of the four core Attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, or Health) or two secondary Attributes (Perception and Will, which both start out equal to your Intelligence). Your Skill Level (proficiency) is determined by how many Character Points you've invested, the Skill's difficulty, as well as the relevant Attribute. You sometimes can attempt a Skill without proper training, so long as you know a related Skill from which it defaults or the Skill is such that you can reasonably guess at how to do it as a side effect of your background.
The Bow Skill is DX/A, meaning an Average Difficulty Skill based on Dexterity. 1 CP invested in it means you'd know it at the DX-1 level, 2 CP means you'd know it at DX, 4 for DX+1, and from that point each further 4 CP means another +1 to Skill. Meanwhile, the Rifle would use Guns (Rifle), and that's a DX/Easy Skill. This just means that 1 CP buys it at DX level, 2 at DX+1, 4 at DX+3, and every 4 CP after that raises it by another +1. There's no default between the two.
All is not lost, though. Guns (Rifle) defaults to DX-4. A normal human has DX 10. Now, we're talking about an elf, and an individual could have a higher or lower score than that whether they're an elf or a human... but we'll go with that default so we have a starting point. A Skill level of 6 in GURPS is quite poor! GURPS has you roll 3d6, trying to roll at or below the target number. So a 6 gives around a 9.3% chance of hitting... and GURPS also has Active Defenses. If your target knows you're trying to hit it, they can try to defend (usually by getting out of the way with a Dodge). So you'll be hitting less than 1 out of 10 shots. Ouch!
I thought you said all hope was not lost! I'll get to that, but there's one more downside to range combat we'll need to cover: sive/range/speed. GURPS has a table that explains the penalties you'll face for how far away your target is and how fast they're moving. "Moving" in this case wouldn't refer to just any old motion, but how fast they're traveling. So a monkey throwing a temper tantrum is unlikely to count as "moving" in this case. Taking the art literally, it is at most six feet (2 meters) away, so Speed/Range penalty is... 0. It also looks to be between 3 feet and 6 feet tall (1 meter and 2 meters), so the Size Modifier is... also 0. Now it is time to aim!
Combat Turns in GURPS are 1 second long. One second of Aiming gives you a bonus equal the the weapon's Accuracy (Acc). You can get a further +1 for aiming for another second, or a +2 on top of the Acc if you aim for three or more seconds. I'm just going to use the Assault Carbine, 5.56mm stats as a reference. Its Acc is 4. So, even if her effective Skill is 6, aiming for three seconds (combat rounds are usually longer outside of GURPS anyway), she can reach an effective Skill of 12 to hit that monkey. That's a 74.1% chance to hit. I'm not sure if the monkey is even paying attention, and I don't have time to calculate its Dodge right now, so we're going to say it isn't paying attention. XD
The other important thing is how much damage is being done. I didn't worry about how much better someone trained with a bow would be at hitting the target, because an average adult human (ST 10) firing a long bow does 1d imp for damage (1d6 impaling, which means the damage rolled is doubled after subtracting for armor). The rifle is doing 4d+2 pi ("pi" means "piercing"; roll 4d6, subtract for armor, multiply by 1). Even without the multiplier, you're talking a maximum of 12 damage versus a maximum of 26.
Again, no time to look up the monkey, but a normal human in GURPS has 10 HP. At 0 HP or less (took 10+ damage), you roll against HT each second combat round (second) to avoid passing out. At -1xHP, you roll against HT (once) to avoid dying from your injuries. Then again at -2xHP, -3xHP, and -4xHP. At -5xHP, death is automatic. For that average, 10 HP human these death thresholds are hit after taking 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 points of damage, respectively. So a lucky shot can probably kill the monkey with one hit using the rifle. Still in a hurry, so no time to calculate "average" damage for 4d6+2... but I'm assuming half a minute of shooting at the monkey (because we're taking time to aim) means a dead monkey. XD Probably less.
2) This is the most information I've ever gotten on something I didn't ask for, and I'm very happy you were inspired to do the GURPS math on my shoot-a-monkey page 😆
1) He knows she uses a bow! So, "I've never used a gun before," --> "It's the exact same! (As using a bow)"
This is CLASSIC RPG World right here. One character doesn't understand something in universe, and another answers it with video game logic. It worked in page one, and it works in page 724.
"Losing a bow is like losing your family. And I **sniff** lost my bow. **Sniff Sniff**."
"Yea, I can't relate to that."
Bet their arrows are made from normal trees. Human trees. Gross. Meanwhile their elven bows are made from elven trees grown from elven dirt and elven water and it expels elven CO2.
- Can't see his face
- Leading peons
- Attracted to elves
- Time Travel exists
Oh shi-
Galgarion is Syd from the future confirmed
He killed his own family and relentlessly tormented himself in the current timeline only to grow into the bitter person who does those things
At the end of the day, a weapon is just a combat mechanic you equip to a slot. If bows/arrows and guns use all the same mechanics but just have an exclusion clause that prevents equipping one or the other to a certain character; if you can get around that (like say, mid-battle weapon-swapping), then you're solid.
1) Am I blind or is there a missing word bubble/sentence? After having said she has never head a gun in her life, we go to the next panel and either we have Syd's "It's the exact same!" or we have "A bow and arrow are the exact same as a rifle."
2) Ah, the joy's of video game RPGs simplifying the situation! XD Sort-of-Story Time! Share how a game (video game, tabletop RPG, etc) handles the bow and arrow versus a rifle!
To no one's surprise, I'll start with GURPS. Skills in GURPS can be one of four difficulties: Easy, Average, Hard, and Very Hard. Each Skill is associated with one of the four core Attributes (Strength, Dexterity, Intelligence, or Health) or two secondary Attributes (Perception and Will, which both start out equal to your Intelligence). Your Skill Level (proficiency) is determined by how many Character Points you've invested, the Skill's difficulty, as well as the relevant Attribute. You sometimes can attempt a Skill without proper training, so long as you know a related Skill from which it defaults or the Skill is such that you can reasonably guess at how to do it as a side effect of your background.
The Bow Skill is DX/A, meaning an Average Difficulty Skill based on Dexterity. 1 CP invested in it means you'd know it at the DX-1 level, 2 CP means you'd know it at DX, 4 for DX+1, and from that point each further 4 CP means another +1 to Skill. Meanwhile, the Rifle would use Guns (Rifle), and that's a DX/Easy Skill. This just means that 1 CP buys it at DX level, 2 at DX+1, 4 at DX+3, and every 4 CP after that raises it by another +1. There's no default between the two.
All is not lost, though. Guns (Rifle) defaults to DX-4. A normal human has DX 10. Now, we're talking about an elf, and an individual could have a higher or lower score than that whether they're an elf or a human... but we'll go with that default so we have a starting point. A Skill level of 6 in GURPS is quite poor! GURPS has you roll 3d6, trying to roll at or below the target number. So a 6 gives around a 9.3% chance of hitting... and GURPS also has Active Defenses. If your target knows you're trying to hit it, they can try to defend (usually by getting out of the way with a Dodge). So you'll be hitting less than 1 out of 10 shots. Ouch!
I thought you said all hope was not lost! I'll get to that, but there's one more downside to range combat we'll need to cover: sive/range/speed. GURPS has a table that explains the penalties you'll face for how far away your target is and how fast they're moving. "Moving" in this case wouldn't refer to just any old motion, but how fast they're traveling. So a monkey throwing a temper tantrum is unlikely to count as "moving" in this case. Taking the art literally, it is at most six feet (2 meters) away, so Speed/Range penalty is... 0. It also looks to be between 3 feet and 6 feet tall (1 meter and 2 meters), so the Size Modifier is... also 0. Now it is time to aim!
Combat Turns in GURPS are 1 second long. One second of Aiming gives you a bonus equal the the weapon's Accuracy (Acc). You can get a further +1 for aiming for another second, or a +2 on top of the Acc if you aim for three or more seconds. I'm just going to use the Assault Carbine, 5.56mm stats as a reference. Its Acc is 4. So, even if her effective Skill is 6, aiming for three seconds (combat rounds are usually longer outside of GURPS anyway), she can reach an effective Skill of 12 to hit that monkey. That's a 74.1% chance to hit. I'm not sure if the monkey is even paying attention, and I don't have time to calculate its Dodge right now, so we're going to say it isn't paying attention. XD
The other important thing is how much damage is being done. I didn't worry about how much better someone trained with a bow would be at hitting the target, because an average adult human (ST 10) firing a long bow does 1d imp for damage (1d6 impaling, which means the damage rolled is doubled after subtracting for armor). The rifle is doing 4d+2 pi ("pi" means "piercing"; roll 4d6, subtract for armor, multiply by 1). Even without the multiplier, you're talking a maximum of 12 damage versus a maximum of 26.
Again, no time to look up the monkey, but a normal human in GURPS has 10 HP. At 0 HP or less (took 10+ damage), you roll against HT each second combat round (second) to avoid passing out. At -1xHP, you roll against HT (once) to avoid dying from your injuries. Then again at -2xHP, -3xHP, and -4xHP. At -5xHP, death is automatic. For that average, 10 HP human these death thresholds are hit after taking 20, 30, 40, 50, and 60 points of damage, respectively. So a lucky shot can probably kill the monkey with one hit using the rifle. Still in a hurry, so no time to calculate "average" damage for 4d6+2... but I'm assuming half a minute of shooting at the monkey (because we're taking time to aim) means a dead monkey. XD Probably less.
1) He knows she uses a bow! So, "I've never used a gun before," --> "It's the exact same! (As using a bow)"
Yes, Otaku likes speaking about Otaku in the 3rd person, sometimes. XP
"Yea, I can't relate to that."
Bet their arrows are made from normal trees. Human trees. Gross. Meanwhile their elven bows are made from elven trees grown from elven dirt and elven water and it expels elven CO2.
- Leading peons
- Attracted to elves
- Time Travel exists
Oh shi-
Galgarion is Syd from the future confirmed
He killed his own family and relentlessly tormented himself in the current timeline only to grow into the bitter person who does those things