Bullet
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| |
|---|---|
| Name | bullet |
| Appearance | bullet |
| Damage vs. small | 1d20 |
| Damage vs. large | 1d30 |
| To-hit bonus | +0 |
| Weapon skill | firearms |
| Size | one-handed |
| Base price | 5 zm (+10/positive enchant) |
| Weight | 1 |
| Material | iron |
A bullet is a projectile introduced in SLASH'EM. It is the ammunition used with most firearms.
Contents
Generation
Bullets do not generate randomly. They may occasionally be found in shops, but by far the most common source is members of the Yendorian army: all soldiers and lieutenants carry bullets, as do 50% of sergeants and captains.
Rogues may start with a pistol and a stack of bullets for it. Undead slayers will start with silver bullets instead.
Mechanics
Bullets fired from an appropriate firearm always mulch, even when they miss their target or are merely fired at a wall or floor. Bullets fired upwards from a firearm do not fall back on top of the firer's head.
When thrown without a launcher, bullets are not guaranteed to mulch, but still may do so. They also will not do their base damage, instead doing a small amount of strength-dependent damage. Wielding a bullet produces similar results.
Bullets on the floor or in monsters' inventories will be destroyed if they are subjected to a grenade explosion. This does not affect bullets in your inventory, though, even if a grenade you are carrying explodes.
Strategy
Bullets fired from a gun do a very high amount of base damage, higher than any other projectile or even melee weapon. Moreover, firearms such as assault rifles and submachine guns are capable of firing upwards of five bullets per player action, producing very impressive damage rates. However, due their always-mulching property, using bullets effectively requires careful planning and collection.
Origin
The term bullet refers to the projectile fired by a gun. However, the ammunition loaded into a modern firearm is almost always a cartridge: a single unit containing not only a bullet, but also propellant, primer, and a casing to help contain and direct the expanding gas of the gunshot. Cartridges greatly simplify the loading process, for before their invention, the gunner would be required to load each component separately. In modern colloquial usage, however, bullet and cartridge are often used interchangeably.
In real life, there are many mutually incompatible types of cartridges: the way that a character in SLASH'EM can load the same ammunition into a pistol as they would into a heavy machine gun is unrealistic.
Note that while modern scholars refer to small lead projectiles fired by slings as sling-bullets, that usage is modern: the term "bullet" originates from late-16th-century France, as a term for cannonball.
