Parachuting Skill, Has anybody used this? Options

[Moon-Hawk]

Okay, I think we've beaten the HALO issue into submission.
This still doesn't get around the problem of a skill that has very little use.
I have an idea, but before I even say it I want to say: I am not saying that parachuting does not require skill. I know it requires skill. What I'm saying is that, in the game of Shadowrun, it is not relevant enough to have the same cost as a skill like Pistols or Hacking.
What about this? Make it some sort of athletics test. I don't know what kind, someone who knows more about this sort of thing should help with this bit. But an athletics type test of some kind; but a preexisting and useful skill. The parachuting test has a big ugly penalty attached. Make a fairly inexpensive positive quality: "Knows how to parachute" that removes the big ugly penalty and lets them use the preexisting and otherwise useful skill without a penalty.
This way, you might actually get situations where a team of runners says, "Okay guys, parachuting on this run would be really cool. We're all going to take a week, go to parachuting camp or whatever, we'll all spend 10 karma and learn to parachute" rather than expecting everyone to cough up a small fortune in karma to learn a whole new skill that is otherwise completely useless.
Thoughts? What skill would this be? Ummmmm, jumping? :-) What would the penalty be? -4 harsh enough?

[eidolon]

Actually, for the characters in the game I referenced that didn't have the direct skill "parachiting" (or whatever we named it), it was just an athletics test. I believe I did it using the defaulting rules though, but that was a nod to the player that had spent skill points specifically on the skill.

[kzt]

[Slithery D]

Parachuting should really only involve two types of tests - controlling your descent if you've got the right kind of chute, and bonus dice for some sort of damage test when you land. The latter would be the speciality taken by most airborne troops, you just get chucked out and left to drift. All you really care about is how to do the landing and minimize twisting or breaking anything. It also explains why Body is the linked attribute.

[eidolon]

[Rooks]

Reason its not taken much is just the cost to get something up in the air is at least 106k for one person or 164k if you wanna bring friends

[Drraagh]

This is why I tended to go for a tattooed flying spell on my character if I needed an aerial assault. Makes you a moving target, harder to hit, and you can also use it to escape.

[Lagomorph]

[Slithery D]

Only if you're wearing a cape.

[kzt]

[G.NOME]

Forget the capes. When are we going to see an SR4 jet pack!?

[Critias]

I wasn't aware the Parachuting skill existed (I always assumed it was linked to Athletics in some way, which my character has very high) until after a character of mine jumped out of a plane in a solo game in SR3. It's a pretty shitty skill, really -- when you need it nothing else will do, but it comes up so rarely in your average Shadowrun game that it's normally a waste to invest points into.

The GM let me roll the Tir Ghost parachute packer's skill as a complimentary test to my own "default to Body, isn't this fun" skill check. That, plus a very very lucky soak roll on my part, meant I only did the entirety of that solo job with a Light wound from the get-go. Yeah, it was great.

[SL James]

You're not a real shadowrunner until you can perform a HALO jump and live.

[Crusher Bob]

Nah, you're not a real runner until you can jump jump out fo the airplane without a chute, use your massive karma pool to just ignore hitting the ground at ~100mph, then pick yourself up out of the crater and go on to complete the mission.

[Eryk the Red]

Not that I expect my players to do much parachuting, but this makes me curious anyway. I figure, if someone were to make a jump, I would require 2 tests, first Agility + Parachuting (+ the parachute/glider/whatever's Handling) to determine accuracy, then a second Body + Parachuting (+ any safety gear that makes sense) to resist getting hurt in the landing. How would anyone run that second roll? It seems simplest to make it a damage resistance roll, probably at some set value based on how fast the parachute descends. What'd be good? DV 3? 4? more? I'd probably make it stun, or physical if they glitch. Just throwing ideas around.

[imperialus]

not since 2nd ed. Had to do an extration on an unwilling target who was in a board meeting on the 97th floor of an office building. Managed to get passed security until the troll sam was just outside the door to the board room posing as a janitor at which point he threw a parachute on kicked the door in charged across the room and didn't even slow down as he snagged the excec, slapped a stun patch on him and barreled through the window. He even had enough time to turn around and take a picture of the stunned faces of the other board members with his eye cam just before he jumped. Definatly one of the more dramatic runs we'd ever done.

[hyzmarca]

I would only require a damage resistance roll on a glitch or a failure but I can't see any way to make the DV not arbitrary. On a critical glitch they resist the full falling damage, of course. If one caps falling damage at 225 meters (by SR rules one reaches terminal velocity at 225 meters and therefore should not have to worry about falling a greater distance) that would be 110 boxes of damage. If he has good impact armor and uses edge then it should work out.

[kzt]

Emphasis on "good"! :spin:

[Lebo77]

[Konsaki]

I'm pretty sure 110 points of damage is a little more than just ONE point of edge...

[hyzmarca]

Well, the character could burn a point of Edge on the HoG, thus avoiding death and taking other nasty reprecussions; or the character could spend edge on the damage resistance test (thus making the success possible, albeit unlikely) and then burn a point of edge to achieve a critical success (since it is possible to both burn and spend edge on one action in some interpertations) and thus come away without a scratch.

Or, you could just become an adept, initiate and raise magic 21 times, and spend all of your PPs on Freefall, thus allowing you to land from such a jump with only 2DV to resist.



Of course, if you want to go the resistance route a Troll Adept with Mystic Armor 12, A force 12 quickened armor spell, Full Body Armor with Helmet, Gymnastics 10, Body 15, and Edge 7 would have 34/2 + 10 + 15 + 7 = 49 exploding dice and 14 Physical boxes. He'd only need 97 successes, which means only 48 6s are necessary.

[fistandantilus4....]