I found it. It's in the Advanced combat section, so they're optional rules. Basically, only people with str/bod 8 or higher can wield heavy weapons without a gyromount, and anybody using a heavy weapon takes stun equal to half the damage rating (and can be knocked down), which isn't really that big of a deal.

You should add if they do so in the aforementioned manner, to be clear. Users of mounted heavy weapons never suffer stun, even with this ridiculous rule.

As I said, use a gyromount and your worries are gone.

@Apathy's Alternate Rules: You do klnow that in SR4 the defnder cannot damage the attacker right?

That would be a good reason for me to have called it a house rule then, ne?

This mechanism was in your summary of RAW as well.

Emphasis mine.

The wording in Arsenal suggests that it happens regardless of whether you're wearing a gyromount or not.

"However" links the second sentence to the first so we should still be in the same case. I also understand the "he is carrying" as referring to the use of "carry" in the first sentence. But I see where you came from.

Funny thing: the devs only did the minimal work to adapt these rules to SR4, so this wording comes from SR3. Has anybody seen it that way before?

Fair enough. I didn't state who was attacking in my scenario, and my description of events is only accurate if EE is attacking TT. Not strickly speaking wrong, but definitely unclear and poorly worded on my part. The spirit of the post still stands as written, however. Having only the attacker able to do damage means that it just takes twice as many passes for one guy or the other to get knocked out.

I'm just glad I still play SR3 where Strength is a VERY useful stat!!!!

Could you refresh my memory? Whay is Strength a particularly useful stat in SR3?

As with many of the others, I love this house rule idea. However, the character should suffer the -1 penalty for every 4 AV points over the limit, if you want to keep the penalty severity on the same scale as the rule as written.

The following example illustrates the reason:

Bob has Strength 2 and Body 3. With your house rule, he can wear up to 10 total AV from armor without penalty ((2 + 3) x 2 = 10). He can wear an armor vest without penalty (6 Ballistic + 4 Impact = 10 total AV). If he puts on a helmet (+2 Ballistic, +2 Impact, for a total of 4 more AV), that puts his total AV at 14, which incurs a -2 penalty since that's 2 increments of 2 over his limit of 10.

With the rule as written, Bob can normally wear armor with Ballistic AV of 6 or less and Impact AV of 6 or less due to his Body of 3 (3 x 2 = 6). If he wears an armor vest (Ballistic 6, Impact 4), he incurs no penalty. If he then adds a helmet (+2 Ballistic, +2 Impact, for a total AV of Ballistic 8 and Impact 6), he incurs a -1 penalty due to being 1 increment of 2 over his limit of 6. Thus, Bob suffers twice the penalty with your house rule.

With your house rule, if you instead applied a -1 penalty per 4 AV over the limit, then Bob can wear the armor vest and the helmet and suffer only a -1 penalty (14 total AV, which is 1 increment of 4 over his limit of 10), which would put the house rule back in line with the rule as written.

if you have 6 strength, in unarmed you will do 6 moderate stun... minus an average impact armour of say 3 and your target numbers are 3 for body tests. Get that strength up and the body test goes up - thus very quickly it plays a vital role in damage in unarmed. In melee you get all sorts of bonuses from the weapon so a katana is +3 moderate physical. So, a street sam (or a troll) with strenth 12 is going to do 15 moderate with a katana... hmmmm 12's to resist... that some seriously DEAD peons.

Likewise, with a low strength character in melee, the only way to compensate is with a high skill to get enough successes to make it hard for the defending character to resist.

e.g.

AA has Strength 2 and unarmed 10, versus BB whou has Strength 6 and unarmed 4. AA rolls 10 dice and scores an average of 5 successes. BB gets an average of 2 making a net 3 successes. BB takes 2 Serious stun (staged up by succeses). He thus needs six 2's to take no damage.
In an unfortuntate turn of events should BB score net successes of just 1, then AA has to get four 6's to take no damage.

Out with combat, strength runs the same way as usual by determining the distance of a bow and thrown weapons as well as the obvious carrying capacity.

Also every melee skill is a strength based skill and thus if your strength is high, the karma cost to get your melee skill up to the level of your strength is less.

Its a decent rule if used intelligently. Yes, a minigun should need a gyromount. A grenade launcher not so much.

Depending on how the game designer decides to define the attributes strength can easily encompass the agility portion of unarmed combat. Add in ideas of some types of muscle control and its not far fetched that strength is the melee combat stat. When you narrowly define strength as the I lift crap stat it becomes worthless. If you write the fluff of a stat correctly you can justify balanced stats in the rules.

In SR4 the fluff of strength makes it the I lift crap stat, the rules make it mostly a dump stat and yet it still costs the same as every other stat. If stats don't even come close in power you really need differing costs for each stat. If the stats are mostly balanced then sure go with SR4's everything is 10BP or stat X 5 in karma.

It was never meant to be used on grenade launchers: in SR3, grenade and missile launchers were separated from heavy weapons. As I said previously, the devs pulled the less work they could to adapt this to SR4. So they kept the wording and did not check that the meaning of words had changed.

If a line has to be drawn somewhere, one could use the same classification as for vehicle weapons: weapons that need a gyro and weapons that need a reinforced mount are the same. It makes sense and it's easy to remember.

With the exception of "Whips", which is linked to Agility.

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That optional rule affect also carrying them..so say Goodbye!! your Ares Alpha (Do you remember
that underbarrel grenade launcher??!) it is good thing that is OPTIONAL rule.. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif) Especially the pistol-sized MGL-6 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/rotfl.gif) (IMG:style_emoticons/default/silly.gif)
While you as a GM should discourage people walking around with an assault cannon in each hand, it should be by an environment that reacts to someone running down the street with military grade weaponry not through dubious game mechanics.

Gm can always say: Assault Cannons are not available..even with restricted gear quality..
PC's choices of weapons and equipment are always under Gm's approval rule..

That's one way of doing it. I thought more along the lines of calling in a squadron of attack choppers and asking politely to drop the weapons.

Funny thing about assault cannons: the fluff always describes them as having incredible recoil, but since they tend to be SS, there are no recoil rules that cover them. The recoil compensation from the gyromount technically isn't needed.

BF Assault Cannon FTW. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif)

(IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) FA Assault Cannon (IMG:style_emoticons/default/love.gif) Same Slot Cost. Add a personalized Grip, and a shock pad and a gyromount.
One Long Burst or two short ones while Running without penalty! Full Bursts are at -2 while standing.

I was under the impression, from the wording, that SS could only be modded to BF, and SA to FA. Also, 6 slots per weapon... and either BF or FA would be 4 of those slots.

Still, scary.

The damage and possible knockdown from the optional rules are also physical consequences of recoil.