Your character offends the noble by addressing him by the wrong title and he thus challenges you to a duel at high noon.
The rules are as such. No weapons, armor, items, gear, magic, or psychics, EXCEPT regular mundane revolvers provided by a neutral third party.
Your character and the noble meet in the square before high noon. They each take 50 paces from each other. When the clock strikes noon, the first to headshot the other in the forehead wins the duel.
Can your character win the duel? How do you rule the duel?
What happens if neither shoots the other in the head? Do we just keep trying until one of us bleeds out or manages to shoot the other in the pre-arranged bodypart?
Tie.
Both fix bayonets and charge.
Historically, if you both miss then you call it a draw and everyone just goes home.
Historically if you just shoot. You miss you suck. You got hit you suck. You hit the other guy you win. Whether or not you die actually wasn't the point.
I'll accept the duel but refuse those terms and use weapons, armor, items, gear, magic AND psychics. The noble can either take it or leave it. If he leaves it I'll call him by another wrong title and imply he's a coward for avoiding real combat, though.
Not your call, that's what seconds are for
No second of mine would've accepted those terms. This is clearly a craven noble's attempt to avoid a genuine fight, and I'll have no part of it.
>the first to headshot the other in the forehead wins the duel
that's not a trial, that's an execution
>he thus challenges you to a duel at high noon.
>The rules are as such
STOP RIGHT THERE! The covenants of dueling are clear: the challenged chooses both the weapon and the venue. The challenger may only choose their distance. If you have a next time, get a proper second.
The gentleman chooses whips atop the foreyard of a three-masted schooner!
As the challenged party I assert my right to choose the weapons and tell him we'll be dueling with magic.
>revolver
There's a reason those were made with front loaders - because they are unreliable pieces of shit.
They weren't meant to result in the death of a party in most cases.
Western revolver duel was only slighty less worse and often had the people running around and fanning after the first shot
And that's why he's a rogue's scholar
Twain was always a sophist skumbag, wouldn't surprise me.
Receive weapon, and when noon strikes time stop, teleport myself out, teleport random bystander in, and gib him on the spot. Let noble have his victory, I will take the weapon to reverse engineer for my own purposes.
>Go along.
>Deliberately aim wide when aiming.
>We both fire and miss.
>Then, the grudge is settled, and we go inside and resume reasonable chat.
>As is convention. Petty duels like that were rarely to the death. It was more bluster, the high society way of showing you're a hard man.
>Failing this, dodge and evade by timing and defensive motion until he needs to reload, then sprint over to him while firing and smack his lights out, bare knuckle.
>Decree that since he's out cold in a bloody mess, he cannot continue, and that I've won.
Makes no sense, you don't duel someone who is socially beneath you, that's dishonoring.
If someone who is beneath you slights you, you ask your knaves to beat him up.
wait, doesn’t the challenged party choose the weapon?
I thought one party issues a duel and the other chooses whether to use swords or pistols or whatever, so a skilled duelist can’t go around bullying people
I think it changes depending on where and when in history you're looking.
...
As for pistol duels I know they were actually pretty easily survivable. For a long while infection killed more then the initial gun shot, had to get lucky for an honest kill shot. In a pitched fight a shot was angled alot more breaking ranks by disabling soldiers for the bayonet charge.
And that was for rifles which could have more powder and had a longer barrel which to apply the forces on the shot. That and the fact the gun being heavier meant the stronger forces involved didn't snap a bone of yours. (Early guns as we know them were very guess and check). So pistol shots in the dueling era were alot weaker from all this.
This wasn't a battle it was a planned event also. So your not rolling around in the mud and blood of other people. You could literally pay a doctor to be waiting by.
This all comes together to mean alot of pistol duelist could actually get alot of duel losses along side the wins under their belt. It was about "honor" not straight up killing. So bam you take the shot and honor satisfied.
I can't recall exactly but I think it was president Jackson who was known for dueling. They made it illegal to duel specifically so he would stop going around Washington doing it. He had a name like rattle balls as they said you could hear him coming from all the musket balls in him.
>He had a name like rattle balls as they said you could hear him coming from all the musket balls in him.
kek
One of my players actually set this sort of thing up once. Flintlock pistols, at medium range (I think twenty paces?), and we were using a system with a very real chance of him dying.
Won the duel, other guy was nearly killed (took the ball to the torso but did manage to stabilise), honour was satisfied.
As the GM I was shitting bricks about how it could have gone if he'd failed.
Either of my last two PCs (both Sharpshooters) would have been the party's choice to do something like this although the gunslinging artificer would have been much more reluctant than the evil ranger, who wouldn't have given a frick about the rules and whistled for his horse to trample the noble during the count and gain him advantage from Mounted Combat. The artificer would have tried to cheat too just more subtly, assuming he was given an opportunity to "inspect" the revolver.
My character has so much HP he'll survive a headshot. Or ten. Sorry, Noble, you can't win.
Ask for a comprehensive list of relevant local law and judicial record regarding such laws. Also bring up the fact I'm a gnome-spider mutant hybrid with 4 arms and 4 legs so 50 paces for me might not be a suitable dueling range. But whatever even if I can't simply decline the duel I'll just have to shoot this dipshit dead. Possibly with a "stray" bullet if he tries to be a coward about it and stand on the side lines while some one else does the dirty work for him.
My character has never touched a gun
Feeblemind. I am too powerful for some aristocratic nobody to talk back to me. If any discontent arises, I will remind everyone present I can kill them all with the snap of a singer. Further objections will be followed by a practical demonstration upon the objectors.
All you need to do is mention an obscene pricetag and you will sound like Bartleby Dresden
After we turn and being the 50 paces I cast gate and place one directly infront of me and another directly behind me so that I pass through the gate and come out at a smooth 180 degrees walking directly behind the noble in question, trailing him by about 10 paces.
I level my pistol at the back of his skull can count out the remaining 40 paces.
Not only does that break the rules of the duel but makes us check the math.
>Walk to the 50 pace line
>Breath weapon the son of a b***h to disorient him
>Use mithril wings as ballistic shields
>Rush the sonuvabitch
>Pistolwhip the frick out of him till he's unconscious.
My character isn't about to randomly kill some dumbass who was stupid enough to try to challenge him to a thing he's never done before, with a bunch of dumb extra rules, and expect him to not find a loophole.
The solution involves nothing but innate abilities and the weapon specified and if his second doesn't agree with this conclusion, well, my character's still a half dragon with a fully loaded revolver who suddenly finds himself embroiled in a disagreement about what does or does not constitute cheating...
>Breath weapon the son of a b***h to disorient him
>Use mithril wings as ballistic shields
Nobody is going to challenge some homosexual fursona to a duel, they'll just kill you outright.
First of all, like has been pointed out, the challenged chooses the weapons and terms.
If my character MUST abide those dumb rules, he'd just... not. You spin around at the first pace, shoot the moron in the back of the head, then deal with the second. Then fade into obscurity and leave the planet. Fair dueling is for suckers.
The better rules are ten paces each instead, and to first blood. Easier to shoot, less risk of death, both parties can aim for non-lethal shots to save face, it's a win-win. Should you actually WANT to have an excuse to kill the challenger, you can still aim for the head.
From a purely mechanical standpoint, even in the dumb long-range setup, he's got about a 50/50 to make that shot, and is almost guaranteed take his turn first.
I unironically just got done playing the Gurps 80 point gunman meme
Initiative then pistol skill for the shot. Alternatively, highest PP guest first but shot accuracy is pistol skill.
Non of this PP bonus to firearms. Miss me on that bullshit!
My character just kills the noble there on the spot. Honor is for morons and fair fights are for cowards.
>some noble
>addressing an emperor without so much as a "By your leave."
This is either a declaration of war (for which the nation's royal family, who are our friends, should be informed so he can be chastised), or grounds for him to be stripped of his title, his lands and his family name. Either way, his duel isn't happening.
In all honesty?
>Stand like an idiot on purpose just to flex on him
>Get shot in the head, survive because he is literally nigh unkillable
>Throw the gun at him hard enough to break his neck
He is completely moronic and would probably have died several decades ago if his durability wasn't literally inhuman
As the challenged party I have choice of a weapon. I say rifles at 500. And I recommend you take wide stance so I won't accidentally nick femoral artery while I shoot your nuts off.
She is a wily little devil with a huge tolerance for pain and can climb any sort of obstacles as easily as stairs. She is adept in using revolvers, though mainly paper cartridge ones. Her aim is held back by her slow speed, however, she is human. She uses tools and tactics to make up for deficiencies. Upon taking fifty steps, she shoots the nearest pedestrian nowhere near the noble duelist.
I don't know who wins but that the people are not going to like the noble's games after they see what can happen during them, and that's a victory for her.
I don't need to win the duel. The offended party will be dead before then under mysterious circumstances with no link to me.
huh... first off, that sounds like an odious and blatant abuse of power and before the duel takes placew, I send missive to the nearest higher authority that, for one, an authority figure is risking his life for a minute slight in decorum and has challenged the infringant to a duel to the death. as a stranger in these lands, I wish not to upset the balance of power if it were to come to me managing to land a killing blow to the noble in question. I hereby request assistance for this noble does not know the extent of my ability with firearms and he seems to either be completely unaware of my abilities, or something more sinister is at hand, such as actively having a Deathwish.
I sleight-of-hand in some snakeshot rounds into the gun as we begin our paces. The noble may shoot me, but very unlikely to hit me anywhere that counts if he's full of pellets and quickly bleeding out if one doesnt hit his head.