GM use of snipers

This is why ambush mechanics should be disassociated from general perception skills (even though I think perception skills are generally dumb).

Yeah that’s bullshit. DM should have only clipped a PC so that it becomes apparent to the players that a sniper is about, and basically started a tense encounter ala

Sounds like the GM was tired of your shit and nuked the game.

Absolutely that DM (no standard damage roll), and an example of the issues called shots can introduce

>People saying "That GM" to a fucking sniper

If you get hit by a sniper, you fucking die. You have to flank him and stay out of his line of sight.

Not only is your GM that guy, but he's also seems like the kind of dude who watched American Sniper and thinks that snipers are badasses who can smell your scent from 500 yards and can jump 10ft to 360 no-scope you with a perfect headshot.

If he's going for this 'realism' vibe then he forgot about the part where the sniper would have had to track you down while running away (with you having a couple hundred feet head start), find a vantage point, adjust his sights, get setup, then carefully position himself to fire at you from such a long distance.

Also random insta-deaths that serve no purpose is also stupid.

GM basically did a "rocks fall, you die" - only justified it with a sniper.

That's very nice Timmy, but there's no reason to treat it differently than getting shot at by another similar rifle.

Snipers can actually be a pretty awesome challenge for a party to have to overcome, IF your GM is competent. OP's GM is more than a bit of a faggot, but just because a faggot GM cocks up the idea doesn't mean that it isn't a viable setup.

it was actually pretty awesome in Only War when the ad-hoc squad our characters were leading were crossing an overpass in a Hive world and one of the characters noticed the light reflecting off of the sniper's scope right as a lasbolt took the face off of one of our mooks.

Characters were at a very real risk of dying and Guardsmen are a precious resource when you're in the middle of an engagement in a Hive city, and it was honestly pretty cool when set up as a puzzle with deadly consequences rather than a normal combat encounter.

Aside from the fact that the players have no way of knowing where his line of sight is or if there is even a sniper nearby. The GM has a lot of freedom in arbitrarily declaring that the sniper can freely move through buildings and across rooftops and take his time setting up his rifle where the PCs will be.

In a battlefield situation, that's one thing, but if you're just doing urban investigation in a city, it's about as engaging as having a player get hit by a drunk driver because they didn't notice the car acting strangely.

It's probably OP or his party's fault they got sniped. They probably pissed off the wrong people and so they sent a sniper after them. Otherwise, they'd have no reason to kill them.

It's about as much fun as save or die, but without a good warning. So not fun at all.

If there's absolutely no reason for players to expect a sniper in the situation, have him miss or hit an allied NPC. Just splatter their brains all over, and players are going to take cover for sure.

Legitimate but bad I’d say. I’ve used enemy snipers and had them used on me by GMs, and it’s hard to make it good.

PCs doing the sniping is commonplace, and there can be a lot of fun leading up to the actual shot and aftermath, but all we see with an enemy sniper is a big fat probably lethal chunk of damage.

Of course we can make it fun with hints and detective work and countersniping or maybe paying the sniper off or making the hit nonproductive or throwing child soldiers at the problem or any of a million things. Now you have a scenario with high stakes and a well defined goal.

You could get approval from a player to splat his current character, then all bets are off but the others have been warned.

Most fun I’ve had with a sniper (well, acting as a marksman) was in a firefight, players have ducked into an alley, one sticks an improvised mirror out. Then they all RP beautifully as the character with the mirror realizes something is wrong with the damn thing and the others realize the medic is already down and that’s a 20mm traumatic amputation.

It was Cyberpunk so all went well.

I always put my initial hit from an unexpected sniper on the toughest dude on his most heavily armored spot.

Basically fudge my roll so that he takes a small amount of damage but remains in the fight, and let it play out from there.

Wouldn't use one.
Or alternatively, first shot is a very near miss so they get the chance to try and take cover rathe than just getting rekt.

Beyond that, police should presumably also be hunting the sniper so the players could listen in on police channels or something.

Just making the players roll to save or die against an attack they can neither see, hear or defend against is absolute shit DMing

I guess I can sort of see a desire for realism etc the GM might be going for.

That said I’d always have some clues first so the players were never totally helpless.

Nothing quite as obvious as IRA Sniper at Work signs but wide open spaces that look too good to be true in a war zone or something.

I ran a sniper NPC assassin once as an encounter and that was an interesting turn of events.
The team was made up of an uneasy alliance of a hunter and two werewolves.
Werewolf got shot by silver bullet since the assassin was out to kill the werwolves because he was hired to take them out, the hunter was just in the way.
Sniper fucks up the werewolf and the other gets him away as the hunter draws fire.
Hunter is able to get into a blind spot and try and get up on the sniper since he rolled a really good spot and saw the glint on his scope.
Werewolf was able to get away with the other werewolf and I made them roll to save his life.
Eventually the werewolf made the cumulative rolls to save him but then he annouces he died last round, she goes in to a killing rage.
Hunter sneaks up on the assassin and takes him hostage, interrogates him and decides that now the assassin works for him, the assassin agrees to save his life and is allowed to leave.
Hunter takes the rifle from his and notices the killing rampage going on by the other werewolf and kills her with the assassins gun.

This is a matter of if they deserve it.

If they legit did something to cause this, say blowing up a mob building, then this is fine.
If the GM is doing it for fun, it's an issue.

That's pretty shitty, there's much better ways to handle having an enemy sniper on play. In part by opening up by wounding a party member at least.

Shit GM.
Just have the sniper fumble their first shot and either graze one of the PCs or hit something behind them. There's a lot of shit to throw off your aim in a city.

Your GM is a cunt. I've used snipers in nWoD and that sort of bullshit has never happened. Plus in oWoD if you're playing Vampire, it's a headshot only that'd really inconvenience you.

Snipers should always be at Very Hard difficulty and usually they always got the drop on the party. The problem is the players ran away in a city and somehow the sniper was easily able to transport his gear, locate the party, and find a new sniping spot twice.

It's hard for me to be sympathetic though because if players were sniping an NPC they'd do the exact same thing as the DM sniper.

>Your GM is a cunt. I've used snipers in nWoD and that sort of bullshit has never happened. Plus in oWoD if you're playing Vampire, it's a headshot only that'd really inconvenience you.

It's only easy to kill mortals in CofD with a sniper. It's hard to even kill a mortal with a sniper in WoD, you'll just leave them partially maimed more often than not.

When it comes to Snipers, I have the rule: Unless the players are walking into a preprepared killing ground, which will be signposted by allied dead bodies and flags, then the Sniper is making a "cold shot" first, maximum difficulty as the sniper figures out what the wind is like.

IRL, snipers rarely hit on the first shot, and our NPC sniper isn't a player character

>sniper hits their mark all three times first shot
>at a distance where you can't tell where the shot is coming from despite being PCs
>twice he cleanly hit marks that were explicitly expecting sniper fire
>twice it's a straight instant kill shot to the head
>sniper tracks the PCs, transports his equipment, scopes out his shot, makes a clear shot, and makes a clean getaway three times in an URBAN ENVIRONMENT without leaving a fucking trace for the PCs, or even taking very long
Sounds like someone's GM has a bad case of the "I don't understand something but I'm putting it in my game and calling it realism"s.

I did what's in the OP after one of the characters launched a grenade into a cafe, unprovoked.

I regret it. But I don't, not really.

>maximum difficulty as the sniper figures out what the wind is like.
Look at a flag or pick up a pinch of dust. Do math. This shit isn't hard. I'm legally fucking blind and I could tag a walking target in the chest from 400 yards with elevation and surprise on my side.

The first shot must miss or kill a npc.
Or wound a PC, and the others got to take him to cover, etc.
Otherwise, it is a gratuitous execution of a player.
A GM who does what you describe failed at his first duty.
Build a story with game mechanics.

You fuckery fucker fucked. How can you say you have such a great aim and still you missed the point?

>There wasn't another game after that one. Because nobody wanted to show up. We did get into a fun argument with the GM though.
This line answers your question. If the only one having fun is the GM, then it's That GM regardless of other factors.

There are ways you can make a 'sniper encounter' work for your game, but its generally accepted that they should be a challenge to overcome rather than a straight up fight.

While running a game of Delta Green, I included an antagonist from the book as a response to the players overt methods. This antagonist was a black ops government assassin, but his character description 'slug' included the words "sadistic psychopath". So, rather than have him line up a shot and take them down one by one, he spent most of the session fucking with them during the investigation... stuff like sneaking into their motel room and leaving a bullet on the nightstand, setting painful but non-lethal traps, etc. The players were anxious about when he would get around to actually trying to kill them, but when they did, they were prepared.

as an encounter the players arent aware of, they're in combat

I too saw Jack Reacher!

The point isn't realism, it's conveyance.

Unless you're playing Paranoia, TTRPGs aren't video games that you can brute-force your way past over the ever increasing piles of your failures.

If you're running a zombie apocalypse game and you describe an area where numerous bodies are on the ground, dead dead, all with headshots, then yes, stupid players that walk into the killzone probably deserve to die. But randomly walking through a city and a player bites it without any warning? That's just the GM being arbitrary.

I know MUH TACTICOOL "REALISM" is pretty big here, but there is a limit to that.

If you're gonna snipe the PCs, you must signpost it first, unless you want people walking out of your game for being arbitrary.

If you absolutely must make a sniper encounter that you didn't prep the PCs for, have the sniper shoot to wound. Then you can put the players in a dilemma as the ones in cover have to see if they can get to their friend before he bleeds out, with the sniper using that to as a lure. That's a dramatic puzzle, not the just the GM being a dick.

Have them miss the first shot or hit an NPC, and make figuring out the sniper's location only a middling difficulty roll.
Getting to and killing the sniper without getting hit would be the goal of the encounter, of course.

After a long day of work your shadowrunner is ready to retire to their house.

>You arrive outside of your house.
"I investigate, does anything look awry"
>Nope
"Well then, I walk up the steps and open the door-"
>Stop right there. As you open the door several live grenades fall out.
"What? I go to jump-"
>And you take..... lets see, 5 grenades....30 physical damage. Great job dying dickmuffin.

I'd give the targeted player two rolls for luck/equivalent stat, one to see if the sniper somehow misses and one to see if the bullet doesn't cause major damage.

Definitely that GM. Seriously, why the fuck would you do that?

>these guys are having fun with their characters.
>better straight up murder them out of the blue.

AHAHHAHAHAHA YOU FORGOT TO CHECK FOR TRAPS

Why would I, this is my own keep

10d8 POISON DAMAGE XDDDD

I would screw with the damage that the sniper does (assuming that as GM I don't roll in the open) so that its first shot incapacitates or takes the first PC to very low health. The shot would be loud since suppressors are not silencers, they just make thing bearably loud, not silent. The players would then know the general location of the sniper. I would probably try my best to incapacitate or lay low another PC with a second shot so that the players now have a dilemma: They know about where the sniper is, but they have injured teammates who are bleeding to death (maybe use an NPC here so it's not taking too many party members) and the sniper is not going to stick around. They have a lot of options, a lot of room for action, and a lot of room for failure by their own actions. Honestly, the safest people are now the the ones who are bleeding on the ground, at least they might get picked up by NPC paramedics before they bleed out.

Bad GM.

So you should play your characters like retards as a GM?

what the fuck are you even talking about? How is none of these scenarios not reasonable to happen.

Unless of course your that guy or played video games.

I tell my players that every tool the players have are also available to the enemy. If the players can ambush and one-shot an enemy in one turn, that can happen to them too.

In shadowrun, I'd drop some hints first that someone is doing legwork on the party, so the party has a chance to find out who's coming after them and possibly set up a counter-ambush, but if the ignore the warning or fail the checks, the assassin starts moving. He will of course need to make all the checks necessary to make it to his sniping nest, at which he'll stay until he has a clean shot. The place he chooses will depend on how good info he had on the party and the general area. A sniper wouldn't necessary be shooting off the top of a building where it's hard to bail out if the gig goes south, for example.

But if the stars align and he has a clear shot on the party, then it's perception roll time. If they fail, the sniper will take a shot, and if he does enough damage, he will kill a player. Naturally, he'll be subject to all the normal rules and penalties that would also apply to players.

His next action would depend on the success of his opening shot, and the party's reaction. It's completely possible that he'll bail after shooting just once to reduce chances of his own capture/injury.

Pushing an NPC on the party just to have then sniped is fucking dumb unless the party is invested in the character. Could work if they were supposed to protect him, for example.

Laser dot on target is so retarded I won't even discuss it.

Sniper missing just because is also unrealistic and babying the party.

Crippling is okay only if it's an intentional called shot or the sniper fumbles (bad roll)

Party sneaking up on one sniper is too transparent, and also depends heavily on the party decisions. Why would a sniper just be laying there without hearing their approach? Why hasn't he put up traps?

And snipers absolutely do go for the head if the shot is feasible. While a centre mass shot will put someone down, a headshot will put them down more reliably after factoring in armour.

And a bullet hitting plates doesn't knock you down, although your reaction to the shot might.

>How should you handle a sniper?
Go track down and play (or just watch video, you lazy mofo) of The End fight from MGS3, and/or the Quiet fight from MGS5. Take note of all the little details that make it work. The Metal Gear games were far from perfect, but they handled this exact thing really well. Also maybe just go watch Enemy At The Gates or something.

The keys are:
1) Let the players know they are in a fight. Either blow up an NPC, or hit a player but have it be non-fatal (roll if you want, but fudge the result). Making the sniper miss the first shot only works if it's a generic goon with a rifle... a badass enemy NPC that specializes in snipering would not be expected to miss his first shot (it's lame).

2) Treat the rest just like any conflict... a series of challenges, with continuously escalating stakes. After the first shot, everyone dives for cover. What happens next? How do they handle it. It the sniper is good, any mistake is going to be potentially fatal.

3) Slow down time. These sorts of encounters happen over typically very short timeframes where every move and second is critical. So stretch out your actions and slow down the gameplay as much as you can. Focus on the minutiae. Nothing is easy (or free action) when you're being shot at.

Theron?

>And snipers absolutely do go for the head if the shot is feasible. While a centre mass shot will put someone down, a headshot will put them down more reliably after factoring in armour.

I bet you think silencers make gunshots sound like "twip" too.

>This is why ambush mechanics should be disassociated from general perception skills (even though I think perception skills are generally dumb).
Well with something like this you just handle it the other way round. Assume the sniper is not a moron, so there's no perception roll BEFORE the first shot. But afterward, players can roll perception to try to determine where the shot came from.

Rolling Per for ambush is more like for somebody diving out of an alcove with a knife, where you'd actually have a chance to notice him before he moved and react.

>I bet you think silencers make gunshots sound like "twip" too.
It's more of a "fwip" actually. Or a "fwooop" for shotgun silencers.

*ducks*

Dome shots are absolutely a thing, it's just that most people who snipe are aiming at targets who they know aren't armoured.

Suppressors make more like a *keeesht* sound.

Why not use a laser sight if the sniper can't find a scope?

A sniper missing is realistic as it gets. You do know how difficult it is to be a sniper? How much math is involved? And the fact the sniper managed to hit three out of three times? Also unrealistic? RPG's are unrealistic to begin with. I never played World of darkness but I bet you that you can find dozens of unrealistic things just to smooth out gameplay not even counting fun factor.

Crippling is a common tactic used by snipers to lure out the other party members. If you kill the guy they will run for cover. If you shoot the leg the party will go behind cover with a good chance of once of them cracking and try to save their buddy and the sniper can go for another shot. If the guy decides to not go for cover and pick up their friend right away that's another easy shot.

I never said about anything of not putting up traps when sneaking up on the sniper. Hell give him a spotter also. And it is possible to sneak up and lets say that he does hear you and run. You can give a clue that a sniper is around by having a couple of used sniper bullets left behind.

And they do go for body shots as it's more reliable to go for a body shot. Around the chest area. Also OP didn't say anything about chest plates.

No, sorry.

Worth a shot. Happy Shadowrunning chum!

The issue is the binary nature of it.

So A we make the rolls do something on a scale.

I'll use D&D terminology as everyone knows it.

>Players make their perception checks.
>DC 10 = you notice a potential sniper , he could be in three different locations in this area (rooftop of hospital, hotel room building , carpark )
>DC 15 narrows it down to two options.
>DC 20 they pinpoint his location

If they fail entirely they don't know where he is but can still guess based on the surroundings and he gets to fire his shot.

I'd have the shot itself have a tiny chance to instantly make someone go to 0 hp unconscious but not outright kill them as the players could try to stabilise etc. ( Say a crit followed by a critical confirmation) Otherwise it would deal a good chunk of damage( 25-50% hp per shot) but not outright kill the target.

I'd in any case after the first shot roll intiative for everyone and have them act in the scenario. With the sniper acting too and GTFO if they come too close. With obvious smoke bombs , tripwires etc.

He'd then be a persistent thing they'd be scared of but also dealable with potentially.

...

In Vampire you could have one player suddenly get a premonition of feeling that they're watching the party with ill intent from far away, if the players react to the danger then a shot explodes next to one of their heads and they hunker down, if they don't figure it out someone takes a serious but non lethal shot and everyone has to figure out how to proceed

I didn't think you'd have an argument, nice to see I wasn't wrong.

If they fail perception, first shot injures someone. Probably have the sniper land a hit on an arm or a leg to complicate the fight for that player. Have the sniper take a couple more shots then relocate and make it a game of cat and mouse between players and antagonist. If it's a sort of big deal antagonist I'd make a session out of it by throwing npcs mooks around the map to make the hunt a little more interesting. Never kill a player on a surprise attack, but injury is fair game.

I doubt you could hit anything at 100 yards, let alone anything moving at 100 yards.

Kraut?

Shit's fair. PCs need to man up.

DM should have had an unimportant npc with you who gets hit and dies. Then you track the sniper and use some cool tactical movement to find it, approach it, and kill it.

I can see this working in a one-shot where you have multiple characters or something (tomb of horrors style character funnel or w.e) but not a real campaign.

Nein.

>first shot should be a missed "warning" shot
>if someone needs to die from the first shot, kill the DMPC or a non-relevant NPC
>every other shot is if it's a hit a normal hit but never a deadly headshot

Maybe they hear the sniper's gun ring out in the distance but they don't know what's going on exactly.. they get a knowledge check to identify it as a gun shot, a sniper rifle, maybe even the exact type and distance if they have an expert in the party. After that they can carefully move along avoiding open areas and lines of sight from where they think the sniper is located.

In the game 'this war of mine' there's a town with a sniper. Graffiti on the walls points towards an opening and says "sniper" to warn other citizens to avoid the area. You can time your running with the shots to get through the area carefully, but if you're hit you get seriously injured.

GM could have made a cool challenge based around this sniper idea, but instead he fucked over the party and ruined the campaign.

Did you ever find out from the GM what exactly he was hoping would happen or what he thought the players would do when they started getting picked off by snipers? I'm curious to know what was going through his mind when he fucked up this bad.

>>first shot should be a missed "warning" shot
Do you play with manchildren?
>if someone needs to die from the first shot, kill the DMPC or a non-relevant NPC
I'm starting to think you are playing with manchildren.
>every other shot is if it's a hit a normal hit but never a deadly headshot
Oh, I think it's you who's the manchild.

Found the GM.

yea why become invested in your character when you could just have it fucking die randomly

I feel like the people defending "That DM" using this sniper shit are the ones that play sniper classes in video games or play PUBG and use the Mini 14 exclusively.

Sniper not shooting like a retard and GM not babying the targets doesn't mean there won't be other warning signs. Rumours, bodies laying around, known associates of target, etc. If the group just stumbles in blindly or ignore warning signs, they are either taking a calculated risk which can fuck them over, or they are retards who should be educated on what can happen if you aren't careful or do your homework.

Step 1, don't it isn't fun.
Step 2, open up with killing a mission critical npc, like an extraction target or something.
Then run the remainder of the encounter like a very lethal and slow chase. To more abstractly represent the sprinting to cover, and repositioning.
Then end it with the sniper killing themselves, because they know what happens to captured snipers, and to suck any remaining enjoyment out of it.

>wah players should never be severely disadvantaged in a fictional world!
You sound like a shitty player who encounters a dragon at level one then whines when he dies because he attacked it thinking the DM wouldn't have killed you when the obviously solution was to simply hide or bargain your way out.
OPs party probably had options available to them such as hide out in a building then put on disguises or something they didn't take. Instead they just ran away and assumed they lost the sniper.

Wow, didn't realize the thread I started just to vent would still be around.

>Did you ever find out from the GM what exactly he was hoping would happen or what he thought the players would do when they started getting picked off by snipers? I'm curious to know what was going through his mind when he fucked up this bad.

Not really. During the argument I mentioned, be basically said the response was justified due to our actions.

Our actions of investigating the paranormal, I guess. Because up to that point, we never got into a fight or anything like that. It was mostly investigative and interview work.

>killing a bunch of investigators with a sniper, a very highly-trained one that doesn't miss
>they don't know you're coming, so you have surprise as well
>not just using some disposable local muscle to stage a 'robbery gone wrong', or some other 'wrong place wrong time' kind of accident

this is like fumigating a your home for a housefly

Snipers are for tension, you're proposing mental retarded baby baddies that actually emphasis how useless they are to the players.
Like if every sniper they run into *to introduce the concept* is missing, being snuck up on accidentally, or having giant "IM HERE COME KILL ME LOOK HOW STEALTHY I AMA HURRRRRRRRR" beams coming off them, then you're not building any tension. If fact, if you have your snipers act that incompetently, you'll just piss them off more as a result when the snipers finally decide to actually be a threat.

You speak as if snipers on every rooftop should ever be a thing in every game that has rifles and scopes in them.

He in no way implied that.

I mean, I'm not saying they should be incompetent but at least give the players hints as to what's about to hit them. Foreshadowing is important.

>Start 1st encounter with a "warning" shot - a shot that hits and kills an npc, or hits a player without killing them, or nearly hits a player but misses because of some fluke (ie they bent down to pic up a penny)

>Have the sniper leg it after that, if players find the sniper nest they might get clues as to their identity

>Have some evidence show that players are being "hunted" by the sniper, that this was not a one-off

>Setup a cat-and-mouse game with the players, the sniper is hunting them and will attack them at certain times if they find out the players will be there. Players have to be careful where they go and what they do, while attempting to figure out the snipers identity/where they will attack next

That's how I'd do it if I ever ran a VtM game again

You know, if you took that away from my post, maybe you do need a giant neon sign over enemy snipers just so it might actually get through to you.
You're also advocating (like a lot of people in this thread sadly) to fudge shots because you can't design an encounter on its own merits using the rules of the system you play.
You know how you foreshadow things? Fucking reconnaissance. Maybe describe the warzone like a warzone and not a fun time bounce castle. Have intel mention snipers operating in the area if you want to be on the nose about it, or maybe. Just maybe. If your players cannot handle bog standard battlefield conditions, maybe you should try a different system/setting rather than trying to pretend.

You have this unhealthy misconception and obsession with snipers. Most of them are just decent shots up in an ideal place to shoot with a rifle and scope - not unlike just regular hunters.

So of course it's conceivable some of them would fuck up.

The GM in OP sent a super-elite Olympic class shooter at the party right off the bat, it sounds like. And the players didn't sound like experienced soldiers or anyone who would ordinarily expect to be exposed to sniper fire.

In sum: You are wrong, wrong, wrong. But you argue the point because you've put this mystical image of snipers in your head up on a pedestal. Tell me, do you play Call of Duty or some similar game that prominently features such a 'class'?

I actually agree, but, that opening shotvisnt gonna be fatal in most systems barring very good rolling. Rather, like you said set the scene and hope your party isn't retarded

precisely this. this is how you handle a sniper.

>The GM in OP sent a super-elite Olympic class shooter at the party right off the bat, it sounds like.
Olympic shooters fucking suck.

>I should be allowed to kill my player characters instantly with no warning or ability to stop it

What's your brain damage slugger?

John?

Wow, I've never had someone put this many words in my mouth, I'm almost full to bursting. No more please, daddy no.

Wasn't the perception/awareness check a warning though?

Name three things the player could have done in response to an awareness check with no other information supplied.