Improbable Aiming Skills/Tabletop Games
Examples of Improbable Aiming Skills in Tabletop Games include:
Tabletop RPG
- Zen Archery and Zen Marksmanship in GURPS divide range penalties by 3 when used successfully. The Precision Aiming technique is meant to be a more realistic version, taking much longer to do and requiring special equipment for a more modest gain.
- The Deadlands spell Kentucky Windage removes all penalties to the target number. Called shot to the head, shooting from the hip, watching the target in a shaving mirror while your back is turned? No problem!
- Exalted: load enough points into Archery and learn enough relevant Charms, and you can reasonably shoot an arrow through a keyhole on the other side of the country. Mind you, this is small potatoes given that one martial arts combo allows you to destroy the world in one mountaintop kung fu move.
- In Aberrant, all Novas with Mega-Dexterity have improbable aiming skills, but those that take the "Accuracy" enhancement are even better. They get three bonus dice for any aimed attack, in addition to the bonuses they get for having Mega-Dexterity in the first place. It has to be a pretty tricky shot for such a Nova to miss.
War Games
- Warhammer 40,000
- Imperial Assassins are all trained to a ridiculous degree, each and every one of them qualifying as a superior shot to the best master-snipers in the galaxy by the time they are ready to be sent on actual missions. And then there's the specialist sniper school of Assassins, the Vindicare Temple, where the end goal is an entire army of guys who shoot like everyone else on this page. They specialise in making headshots through active forcefields, at ranges of multiple kilometres, just to silence one recidivist governor or heretical demagogue before he can do enough harm to require an intervention in force.
- On tabletop, the Vindicare Assassin has the ability, unique among all people in the 40k universe, to specifically single out a specific target in an enemy squad.
- In stories, they do ridiculous stuff, like one shot per kill from a pistol while jumping from building to building. Or head shot at fighter pilot while swinging from a small balloon rapidly ascending in a light breeze (The Samos Sanction).
- There is a Warhammer 40k comic that has a Vindicare assassin successfully making a headshot on an unaware standing target with a sniper-scoped anti-vehicle rifle... while several miles away in lateral distance and also while at several miles of altitude, while free-falling through the air, in the middle of a High-Altitude Low-Opening parachute jump. The assassin's internal monologue lampshades that he isn't even finding this shot particularly difficult; apparently this kind of thing is a boring routine day at the office for Vindicare assassins.
- The Eldar Exarch skill Crack Shot eliminates enemies' benefit from cover, to the point that Maugan Ra has close to a 50% chance per shot of killing a Space Marine in a fortified bunker.
- Imperial Assassins are all trained to a ridiculous degree, each and every one of them qualifying as a superior shot to the best master-snipers in the galaxy by the time they are ready to be sent on actual missions. And then there's the specialist sniper school of Assassins, the Vindicare Temple, where the end goal is an entire army of guys who shoot like everyone else on this page. They specialise in making headshots through active forcefields, at ranges of multiple kilometres, just to silence one recidivist governor or heretical demagogue before he can do enough harm to require an intervention in force.
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