PDA

View Full Version : Aiming and Sniping



Brendan
2009-11-06, 06:28 PM
It struck me as odd that if you spend ten rounds getting all the bits set up and pointed right at that chink in the enemy's neckplate, you have the exact same chance of hitting as when you spend one round pointing the crossbow in the general direction of his head. I think that you should get a reward for spending time aiming and preparing to kill.
aimed shot
-for each two rounds you spend aiming, you get a plus one to hit. This applies to crits. You find a way to get that bolt in the jugular.
-ranged weapon
-dex 13 or above to use
-proficient with weapon
you take a +5 for spots with everything in a 10 foot line ahead of you, but a -3 for all out of that area.
-If you stop for whatever reason (guard sneaking up and you made a good listen check) you lose a +3 every round, and if you move, even a 5 foot step, it is lost entirely.
-The enemy can move, but cannot run.
-If they can see you, they are entitled to a reflex save equal to 10+dex+time spent aiming.
-You take a -1 on all other checks involving noticing anything outside your sights.
-the shot gains a plus 2 if you have some sort of looking glass mounted onto the weapon. It takes a DC 12 craft (weaponsmithing) check to mount it. Failing by 2 or less makes the bonus be +1 instead.

This idea would let a quiet and stealthy assassin more effective than it's hasty and aggressive counterpart. You need no feat to do this.

Altair_the_Vexed
2009-11-07, 06:28 AM
In d20 modern, where aiming on a target is more common due to the dead-shot sniper trope in cinema, you need to take a feat to gain bonuses from aiming.
(http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/modern/smack/featorder.html#deadaim)

Dead Aim

Prerequisite: Wisdom 13, Far Shot.

Benefit: Before making a ranged attack, the character may take a full-round action to line up your shot. This grants the character a +2 circumstance bonus on his or her next attack roll. Once the character begins aiming, he or she can’t move, even to take a 5-foot step, until after the character makes his or her next attack, or the benefit of the feat is lost.

Likewise, if the character’s concentration is disrupted or the character is attacked before his or her next action, the character loses the benefit of aiming.

I talked this over with friends who shoot for sport (both archery and firearms). Firearms benefit from long, careful aiming far more than arrows because of the speed of the projectile - the wind and movement of the target have less impact on the shot than with the relatively slow arrow or bolt.

If you want to apply a bonus for aiming, I'd say that it should not increase with multiple rounds (as conditions change from round to round).
I'd also say that anything you grant for free shouldn't be better than the feat above.
If you use the Dead Aim feat, make it stack with any free bonus you get.

Oh, and by the way - far more significant for sniping would be to create the ability to do Sneak Attack damage at longer range. I don't know if that's been done in any splatbooks....

Latronis
2009-11-07, 06:56 AM
In d20 modern, where aiming on a target is more common due to the dead-shot sniper trope in cinema, you need to take a feat to gain bonuses from aiming.
(http://www.systemreferencedocuments.org/resources/systems/pennpaper/modern/smack/featorder.html#deadaim)


I talked this over with friends who shoot for sport (both archery and firearms). Firearms benefit from long, careful aiming far more than arrows because of the speed of the projectile - the wind and movement of the target have less impact on the shot than with the relatively slow arrow or bolt.

If you want to apply a bonus for aiming, I'd say that it should not increase with multiple rounds (as conditions change from round to round).
I'd also say that anything you grant for free shouldn't be better than the feat above.
If you use the Dead Aim feat, make it stack with any free bonus you get.

Oh, and by the way - far more significant for sniping would be to create the ability to do Sneak Attack damage at longer range. I don't know if ts imhat's been done in any splatbooks....

Granted i don't know d20 modern overly well so im not sure what kinda ranges you are talking about here, but a full round action seems quite excessive unless you are talking about major ranges.

Mangles
2009-11-07, 07:25 AM
Your only meant to aim a rifle for so long, after that point you effectively have to start again. This is due to the need to breath mainly, which makes a huge difference. The army does something similar to aim, breath in, out, deep in, half out (so you have half full lungs at this point), hold, squeeze trigger, release, breath again (I forget the real wording), to get you to shoot properly in controlled circumstances. This should take no longer than 20 seconds total otherwise your wasting time and most consider this way to long even for controlled firing. You can only aim so much before the effect is lost. That being said the feat mentioned above is perfect for what you want if you want it in a realistic way.

Latronis
2009-11-07, 07:31 AM
3 seconds.

That's all it takes until you are talking about actual sniping at excessive ranges.

It should never take a trained soldier longer than 3 seconds to aim and fire with an assault rifle, and anytime over that doesn't benefit you any. So it's more like a standard action.

Mangles
2009-11-07, 07:41 AM
That wasn't a fire and run exercise, I'm talking down the line controlled fire, just showing the limits of what aiming can do for you. With the originally proposed feat you could aim for an hour to build up the bonuses.

Silverscale
2009-11-07, 08:59 AM
That wasn't a fire and run exercise, I'm talking down the line controlled fire, just showing the limits of what aiming can do for you. With the originally proposed feat you could aim for an hour to build up the bonuses.

Ok but if you're sitting there aiming for an hour your target will have moved even if it's just a head roll in his sleep, which changes the area you're aiming at. Not to mention in that same hour you could have been spotted and attacked multiple times. I'ld go with the feat and leave it at that. You can always give the feat to a class as a level bonus for flavor.

Debihuman
2009-11-07, 09:46 AM
It struck me as odd that if you spend ten rounds getting all the bits set up and pointed right at that chink in the enemy's neckplate, you have the exact same chance of hitting as when you spend one round pointing the crossbow in the general direction of his head. I think that you should get a reward for spending time aiming and preparing to kill.

Rather than importing stuff from D20 Modern, I would just add a +1 Circumstance bonus to the attack. I don't think this a situation that warrants another incredibly limited feat. I'd probably do this for any player who announced that he was taking time to aim and foregoing an attack round to do so. 10 rounds is far too long in standard D&D combat.

Debby

Solaris
2009-11-07, 05:32 PM
That wasn't a fire and run exercise, I'm talking down the line controlled fire, just showing the limits of what aiming can do for you. With the originally proposed feat you could aim for an hour to build up the bonuses.

So are we. At point-blank range (25 meters or less), a soldier is expected to not even have to aim to score a kill-shot. At 300 meters or less, a soldier is expected to be able to whack his target (though not necessarily a kill shot) with a total of one to three seconds to pick it out of the gallery, aim, and shoot. This is with a weapon that has a supposed maximum range of 600 feet - significantly less than it's actual effective operating range. I hit the 300-meter target roughly a quarter of the time, and I'm at most a 3rd, maybe 5th-level character in the game terms. I know I don't have the Far Shot feat, seeing as how I have worse at-range accuracy than the average soldier.

Snipers don't spend hours lining up the shot. They spend seconds lining up the shot. They spend hours waiting for the opportunity to line up the shot. At most, you could benefit from a full-round action beforehand - and I agree, it's not worth a feat.

Latronis
2009-11-08, 12:53 AM
Why not just let people spend a move action 'aiming' for a.. +2 circumstance bonus. (I don't think +1 is really worth it) And once you start getting into excessive ranges for more 'sniping' type action you could have them study a foe as full round action for the bonus and perhaps to critical threat as you originally seemed to want. And then i suppose you could use the sniping rules to stay hidden after the shot, but that can take some serious stealth investment to pull off.

Mando Knight
2009-11-08, 01:27 AM
Snipers don't spend hours lining up the shot. They spend seconds lining up the shot. They spend hours waiting for the opportunity to line up the shot. At most, you could benefit from a full-round action beforehand - and I agree, it's not worth a feat.

Indeed. Even in FPS-type games, the longest part of sniping is picking out the target that's in the right circumstances for sniping. If after finding a suitable target you're spending more than a couple of seconds lining up the shot, you're taking long enough that you're going to lose that opportunity.

Ashtagon
2009-11-08, 02:54 AM
Why not just let people spend a move action 'aiming' for a.. +2 circumstance bonus. (I don't think +1 is really worth it)...

Problem here is that this results in zero opportunity cost unless you have iterative attacks and a weapon that benefits from them.

Personally, I say a single full-round action gives a +2 bonus, no feat required.

Possible feat benefits would include:

* Increase to range at which you can use sneak attack damage bonus.
* Increase to critical hit threat range.
* Ability to gain cumulative bonuses over multiple rounds (both you and target would need to remain in your respective squares, or the cumulative bonus is lost).

Mando Knight
2009-11-08, 03:07 AM
Problem here is that this results in zero opportunity cost unless you have iterative attacks and a weapon that benefits from them.

...So... Archers can't have nice things?

Ashtagon
2009-11-08, 03:11 AM
...So... Archers can't have nice things?

I didn't say that.

I believe opportunity cost should be something that goes for everyone, archers, clerics, wizards, fighters. No discrimination.

As originally proposed (+2 attack roll and lose your move action), it is a no-brainer choice at BAB +1 to +5. Options that are strictly better than any other possible option are free powerups, and mess up game balance.