I'm asking this question on all 3 forums, cuz I cannot find the answer anywhere. I can find that the Silencer cuts the range in half, but I don't know the number to halve. I figured with all the assassins here, I might find an answer.

I have no idea what the rules say since I have never seen a rule about it.

But in real life you would have no trouble hearing a large caliber sniper rifle at around a kilometre. Should be able to hear a 9mm pistol at least a couple of hundred metres.

At least that´s how far I could hear them whem I was in the army or practicing on the range.

Fenrisnorth said:

Differant breaks on the end of a weapon can also increase or decrease the sound made. A silencer should not only cut the range in half, but also the intensity and frequency of the sound making it hard to determine it was a gun shot to someone with an untrained ear.

It would probably come down to perception test modifiers. Anything (i have completely brainfarted on the term for solid, non-bolt/energy weapon) fired at extreme range with a silencer type device would have a -30/-40 to hear. -20/-30 at long range, -10 at short, 0 at point blank.

I am not sure how a muffle type device would work on a energy weapon.

IMO, any bolter weapon should not be able to have a silencer (even if some are allowed? I can't recall right now) as that goes directly against the purpose and nature of them.

Needlers and dart type weapons, should be completely silent at long range, with a -20 at short/point blank.

Don't forget to add penalties for things like obstructing terrain/walls other noises, etc.

What about las guns? Any opinions out there? The book says they make a sound like a whip. In real life lasers are awfully silent, however. I never fancied my lasguns to go PEW or to make any noise at all actually. However, in games like DoW you can clearly see IG las guns firing through the air, which is also not true of real lasers.

Do las guns use actual lasers? Any canon info out there?

Well, speaking complete averages here, a gunshot is typically in the 120 - 160+ decibel range. Again, typically a handgun can be heard for about a mile in an urban environment during the day and double that during the night or other times when the ambient noise level is lower. After a quick search, I have a list of Db levels for comparisons which might help with picturing it:

• Rustling Leaves 10 dB
• Whisper 20 dB
• Normal Conversation 60 dB
• Busy Street Traffic 70 dB
• Vacuum Cleaner 80 dB
• Large Orchestra 98 dB
• Walkman at Maximum Level 100 dB
• Front Rows of Rock Concert 110 dB
• Ambulance Siren (Threshold of Pain) 130 dB
• Military Jet Takeoff 140 dB

Keep in mind that dB isn't a measure of how loud a sound is, just how intense the peak of the sound pressure wave is. It doesn't, however, measure the peaks duration, which goes a long way in determining how loud something sounds to a listener. DB, is a measure of how intense a sound is, not how loud, but that dose help in determining how far a sound could travel..

@Asgard4tw, I think you might need to lower the penalties/raise the bonuses to hearing a silenced weapon. With current technology, silenced weapons have an effective dB range of 117 dB - 145 dB. Most save for the most oblivious will notice that going off a few meters from them ;-)

Oh, here's a neat youtube video of a Beretta being fired unsuppressed then suppressed.

There's also a silenced Uzi being fired (not very silent at all...) and a few others and they just don't have the zip like the movies like to give them.

Would 10x weapon's range be a good benchmark for how far you could test to hear an unsilenced weapon?

@Graver, I'm glad someone knows things about silencers.

RE: Las weapons. I was told by my friend (who has read a fair number of the imperial guard 40k novels), that the las guns in those books fire a ball or bolt of energy, like a bullet. It also is far from silent. But i know what you mean, i have been confused about them as well having played all the Dawn of War games so far, listening to and watching the little thrumming pew-pew-pews.

Graver said:

Graver said:

This is decent if you want a realistic breakdown of supressors in this game.

Note however that a large difference exists in the ammunition used and the speed of the bullet. Bullets often travels faster than sound, creating a "sonic boom" which I beleive can be heard in the video above both with and without the supressor.

Subsonic ammunition travels slower through the air, and thus the loudest sound heard is the click of the hammer and the cycling of the bullets. Here is a video with .22 cal Walther (a potential assassin weapon, but very low firepower).

But in any case since the DH rules are more cinematic than realistic to begin with I see no problem with having silencers work like in movies where you can't hear the shots of an Autogun being fired 100 meters away (Terminator 2, original Assault on Presinct 13 etc.), and that you can shoot a guy in an apartment with a silenced pistol withoit the neighbours hearing anything. In fact the rules saying that you "half the range" is actually alot more realistic than this, even if there is no listed range for actually hearing the shot. The only RPG I know with such rules is the Twilight 2000 expansion called MERC(enary) 2000. This had listed audible range for rifles, pistols (both supressed and not), jetplanes, shouts and a guard dog's bark. Very useful for a game based on often covert missions.

In most games however it may be expedient to just do it by feeling. If you think the sound should be automatic to detect at a certain range it is, and having a silencer will halve this range.

As for Lasguns I reccomend to forget everything about RL lasers...Lasguns are clearly fantasy science-fiction and thus need not obey the laws of physics anymore than Warp travel, Psychic powers and Daemons.

The crack of a Lasgun is loud, but not as loud as gunshots. I would estimate it is something akin to (realisticly) supressed gunshots. This also pretty much clears why there are no silencers for Las weapons, they don't need em. And gives them another advantage they sorely need.

@ Letri: Not really. A pistol can be heard longer than 300 meters away, and a rifle longer than 1km. I think for most purposes I think you can assume that everyone in the general vicinity will hear the shots. If fired in a Hive it will not go as far as if fired on an open battlefield, but there are probably enough people close by to hear it. With a supressor alot will not recognize the sound though, although neighbours will definitely get suspicous if you shoot in an apartment or house.

From lexicanum.com

"The lasgun uses the same basic technology and operates along the same lines as other las weapons, emitting a beam of focused light. The high amount of energy in the beam causes the immediate surface area of a target to be vaporized in a small explosion. "

isaiah said:

Well that does not really answer anything definite regarding sound. After all, a car's engine is also making several small explosions, but is hardly the noise level of gunshots.

I don't think how far away you can hear a Lasshot was something the designers of either 40k or DH thought much about.

isaiah said:

This is the shots effect on impact, not the firing of the weapon. And depending on how far the target is, this could be along way from the person firing the weapon since we are talking a lasgun. The best indication that a laser was shot would probably be if it had coherent light like we see in the movies, though this doesn't have to be the case.

Modern lasers are by definition coherent, collimated beams of light. They deliver energy to a very small area and usually vaporize what they're impacting. However, in real life (which I should probably ignore), lasers do not make explosions, unless they're imparting energy onto some sort of incendiary or explosive. Basically, things that are struck by high-power lasers are boiled off/evaporated.

Now, I'm pretty okay with saying the gun makes some noise, because whatever mechanism is delivering a metric butt-ton of wattage to the beam isn't specified. Currently, IRL, we have gas lasers and diode lasers. Laser pointers are diode lasers and in theory you could make one that could burn through things at a distance with a larger power source and a high-power laser diode.

However, all of this is moot if Asgard4tw's source is more "canon" than lexicanum. I'll probably just ask my DM.

unfortunately what ur all forgetting is that this is 38k yrs in the future where the tech level went right up (too high with AI) then came back down to random levels so it is entirely feasible that a laser in 40k can only be created by making a whip sound and also that this sound can be silenced somewhat with more expensive weapons and also that silencers for solid projectile weapons could have some amazing tech in them (that happens to be relatively cheap) that makes them a lot quieter and that normally the SP weps are either usually really loud or usually really quiet

sorry to throw a spanner in the works

Friend of the Dork said:

The "High Tech" supplement for GURPS also has a guideline table on how far away weapons can be heard. However, this is again a system which strives for a more realistic approach, which may not suit 40k rpg.

The old GW narrative wargame Inquisitor had rules for what distances you could hear weapons and situational modifiers for such (e.g. being distracted by someone else autofiring next to you). They are freely available at http://www.games-workshop.com/gws/content/article.jsp?aId=4900004

Sorry to necrothread, but I have an additional question that goes hand in hand with the subject matter:

What effect, if any, does the use of a Stummer have on the sound of gunfire? A stummer/silencer combo would be quite potent, I think.

Nice catch, I'd call it a total silencing effect. Or at least a Hellish test to detect it at 70 m, with a reduced difficulty of one step per 10m closer.

Letrii said:

To be honest, it doesn't really depend so much on the firearm as the background noise levels and environment. The '1km in the day in urban areas and twice that at night' thing is a pretty good rule of thumb. Out in the country you'd hear them further away than that, but a lot depends on wind, too. You could hear a rifle shot 20km away in the right conditions, or maybe not even from 200m away in a violent storm with gale winds carry the sound in the other direction.

Of course, it doesn't matter how far the weapon is away: If a supersonic round passes you, you'll hear them cracking past.

I suspect that you justify the sound of las-guns by the frazzling of air particles en route to the target. I assume the explosion on contact would be a steam explosion from the instant boiling of water in the body tissue. Remember that not even the lasers that we currently mount on board jumbo jets are as powerful as a 40k lasgun.

As others have said, suppressors drastically reduce the sound, but also disguise it. An untrained observer will not recognise the stimulus as a weapon.

Also: Even if a weapon is completely suppressed somehow, then you still have the sound of a pound or more of metal slamming backwards and forwards every time the weapon is fired. This gives well-suppressed weapon a distinctly metallic 'chunkachunka' sound, and there's no way of silencing that, short of having a weapon that is designed to be worked manually between shots (which still makes a noise to some degree).

I assume needlers are supposed to operate in complete silence, by their nature.

I'd be happy with a stummer being a very effective solution. Remember that it won't silence the crack of a supersonic bullet, nor the '*****' of an ejected round hitting a concrete floor if it landed outside the area of the stummer effect.

I had a thought why don't you use the weapons range to calculate how far you can hear a shot from the weapon and use the Table 7-8: Combat Difficulty Summary (Page: 198) to modify the Perception/Awareness Test at the distance the shot is fired from you for you to hear the shot go off.

For example say that I fire my Stub Revolver at a target with a single shot regardless of what range bracket the target is standing in, seeing as the sound is originating at the attacker and not the shoter. Well the Stub Revolver has a range of 30m. So starting from Point Blank range through Extreme range you get

Point blank range: 0-3m; +30 to Perception

Short range: (<3)-(>15m); +10 to Perception

Standard range: 15-60m; +0 to Perception

Long range: (<60)-(>90m); -10 to Perception

Extreme range: (90m)-(>120m); -30 to Perception

Impossible range: 120m+; No Perception test is allowed to hear the shot.

Now with a silencer attachment consider the Stub Revolvers range to be 15m instead of 30m for purpose of hearing and not for attacking the target.

Point blank range: 0-3m; +10 to Perception

Short range: (<3)-(>7.5m); -10 to Perception

Standard range: 7.5-30m; -20 to Perception

Long range: (<30)-(>45m); -40 to Perception

Extreme range: (45m)-(>60m); -50 to Perception

Impossible range: 60m+; No Perception test is allowed to hear the shot.

Note for weapons that are fired Semi-auto or Full-Auto use the +10 and +20 modifiers and add them to the range modifier for the Perception test. For example lets use an autogun since it can be fired on all three settings, single, semi-auto, and full-auto.

Single shot

Point blank range: 0-3m; +30 to Perception

Short range: (<3)-(>45m); +10 to Perception

Standard range: 45-180m; +0 to Perception

Long range: (<180)-(>270m); -10 to Perception

Extreme range: (270m)-(>360m); -30 to Perception

Impossible range: 360m+; No Perception test is allowed to hear the shot.

Semi-auto (+10)

Point blank range: 0-3m; +40 to Perception

Short range: (<3)-(>45m); +20 to Perception

Standard range: 45-180m; +10 to Perception

Long range: (<180)-(>270m); +0 to Perception

Extreme range: (270m)-(>360m); -20 to Perception

Impossible range: 360m+; No Perception test is allowed to hear the shot.

Full-auto (+20)

Point blank range: 0-3m; +50 to Perception

Short range: (<3)-(>45m); +30 to Perception

Standard range: 45-180m; +20 to Perception

Long range: (<180)-(>270m); +10 to Perception

Extreme range: (270m)-(>360m); -10 to Perception

Impossible range: 360m+; No Perception test is allowed to hear the shot.

Now I came up with this as I was reading Death Watch rule book and I just thought of it. I'm curious at what you guys think of this and if you guys think this would be reasonable. Now as I'm thinking about it now I don't know what you would do when it comes to weapons such as a Long-las with a large distance but if this does catch on either I'll come up with something or you guys will.

Actually... that could work pretty well! Nice one!

Thank you, I actually think this was kinda of the way it was suppose to be for someone to hear the shot, something simple and easy to apply.

I did something like this in my own game, but instead of having fixed ranges on how far it would be for the person to hear, I based it off the weapon's range. I imagine that the more powerful weapons with a longer range make a louder noise.

Ex.

Hunting Rifle - Point Blank (3 meters), Short range (75 meters), Standard (150 meters), Long Range (300 meters), Extreme Range (450 meters), Maximum Range (600 meters) (House Rule)

vs.

Hand Cannon - Point Blank (3 meters), Short Range (18 meters), Standard (35 meters), Long Range (70 meters), Extreme Range (105 meters), Maximum Range (140 meters)

If it works and you're happy with it, that's fine, but it's not very realistic. I know 40k doesn't reflect reality, but no chance at all to hear an unsuppressed pistol shot at 125 meters? That's ridiculous.

Gunshot decibel levels at the muzzle range from roughly 140 for a .22 short (very small, low power pistol cartridge) to around 170 for a .458 win mag (large high power rifle round used for African large dangerous game, an "elephant gun" round). Sound attenuation for a roughly "average" situation (20 deg C, 101Pa, 40$ humidity) is about 24 db per km for 3kHz, which is around the peak sound intensity frequency of a gunshot.

"Silencers" don't; suppressors only decrease the muzzle db level anywhere from 15-40db, depending on the quality of the suppressor involved. So that .22 short from earlier at the muzzle is still about 100 db, or roughly like standing 3 feet from a lawn mower or motorcycle. The primary benefit isn't sound decreasing, it's changing the "character" of the noise into something that doesn't really sound so much like a gunshot: a pistol round like a 9mm or .40S&W sounds like slamming a car door instead.

So, without coming up with charts and tables for every type of ammunition, you can say the "average" DH gunshot clocks in at around 150 db (110 silenced) which, pardon the pun, sounds about right. -24db per km, which is -2.4db per 100m. 150-2.4*dist=sound, easy enough, right?

Now the big part: what the sound is competing with, or how loud is the area the listener is standing in. Like I said, three feet from a motorcycle engine is around 100db. A crowded street is, on average, 90ish. A spoken conversation is 60-70. So if your sound level from above is equal to or less than the ambient noise level, I'd say that's about the point that the check is impossible since it blends in to everything else going on.

So, doing the math, If the listeners are standing on a crowded street 2500 meters away or further, no check. But if they're on a quiet street having a conversation, that's at 3300 meters. Going even further, whispered conversation is about 30db, so if the party is sneaking down an empty street whispering to each other, that turns into 5000m. Say half the distance is the +0 check (1250m for a crowded street, 1650m for just conversation, 2500m for empty street), half that is +10 (625/825/1250), half that is +20 (310/410/625), and half that is +30 (150/200/300). If you want to use RAW rather than working the math for silencers, go for it, though I'd suggest either the -20 or halving those ranges, otherwise you wind up with crazy results like people not hearing the gunshots that cut them down on an empty street at midnight (Fate Bringer max range is 160m, say a character has 35 Per, +20 for being 300m-150m, -20 for the silencer, that's roughly a 2 in 3 chance of not even knowing you're being shot at as your buddy dies next to you), even though you'd realistically hear the shots just fine.

Well, we certainly could calculate the Db level for each and every shot and compare it with the surrounding environment to see what sort of modifiers you would have on a case by case basis, but that seems like it is really overly complicated and would slow down combat drastically. Most times the players want you to come to a decision right away when it pertains to combat which should be flowing smoothly. I find a standardized system is more fair in the long run than throwing out numbers. It may not be accurate in the real world, but you need to be careful when trying to apply too much reality to an entirely fictional game with weapons that don't actually exist.