Canon Revision Project: Combat Mechanics, thread 2, I will lose you if you don't lose me. Options

[Arethusa]

Canon Revision Project: Combat Mechanics, thread 2
Here we go again.

For those of you who have no idea what this is about, visit the last thread. This is an attempt to rewrite canon to fix the glaringly unrealistic, horribly broken, and enourmously wrong elements in the Shadowrun system. Though I originally had gotten into this simply planning to rewrite the guns to make them internally consistent, it soon turned into a project to fix Shadowrun's incontrovertible mess of broken combat mechanics. This project may go further; certainly, not absolutely everything is wrong with the Shadowrun system, but there are many things beyond combat needing work, from cyberware (eg 0.75 essence radios, cyberlimbs, mnemonic enhancer) to magic to small, miscellaneous rules (eg the difference between physical and visual searches). But, for now, the focus is on rewriting the combat mechanics to something realistic but still playable— and still faithful to the saner elements in canon.

The project's still going, and I'm still working on nailing down the issues that need to be tackled. But, first, to avoid repetition of issues already discussed (and some relatively solved):

Armor, Called Shots, and Hit Locations: I will be subdividing armor into specific bodily locations with separate values for each area. FFBA will no longer give 4 points of ballistic across the whole body with a full suit.

As for specific subdivisions, I haven't nailed down how many or where. Probably something along the lines of Torso/Legs/Arms/Head being +2/+3/+4/+5, though I'm considering +1/+2/+3/+5 or even leaving head at +4. With a comprehensive table of modifiers for vision and combat conditions— and a GM to make use of them— these could really be sufficient to make headshots largely ineffective in combat without being unnecessarily impossible. Each area hit will have its own set of effects for staging and power, and crippling hits to limbs will double the penalty to all actions taken solely with that limb and incur a 1.5x wound modifier penalty to actions involving that limb. No limb hit can do more than Deadly damage (Deadly being effectively hitting an artery or taking off a limb).

On normal attacks, will be using a 2d6 system rolled for each attack to determine where the shot lands, and it'll probably be similar to Raygun's setup. Yes, 3d6 offers more fine tuning, but in the context of this project, elegance is something of a necessity. Still, may change my mind on that.

Armor layering will likely be done per body region, but otherwise kept mechanically identical to canon. Body will be used to calculate how much armor you can wear effectively, not Quickness. Lastly, I'll be changing the mechanics to cause armor to impede movement from the start; you should not be walking around with an absolute minimum of armor at all times unless you decide that the tradeoffs are worth it.

Lastly, overall body armor will be calculated per some simple formula I've yet to devise, and will be used mainly for explosions, getting hit by cars, etc.

Auto Fire: I still have no idea where this is going. At present, the viable suggested systems have largely come down to two: Austere's system of breaking down autofire into bursts and Dashifen's system of hitting with all bullets up to the highest roll. To best honest, I have a number of issues here with pretty much every system I've seen, and how this is going to be handled is very much up in the air in my mind.

Semi Auto and Burst Fire: Basically, treat weapon skill as a pool that refreshes at the beginning of each Simple Action; per Simple Action, go ahead and fire as many shots as you can distribute pool to. Normal combat pool and recoil rules still apply. Credit to Person 404 for working on this with me.

Weapon ROF: Initially, I was opposed to factoring this in past a max number of rounds per 3 second interval, but I've really ended up changing my mind on this one. Weapon ROF in rounds per minute will be (naturally) divided by 20 to get rounds per 3 seconds, and this will then be further divided by the number of combat phases a combatant gets to determine the number of rounds he or she can fire per combat phase. In order to keep things sensible and acceptably streamlined, all of this will be calculated ahead of time and provided as part of the weapon's stats. If you want to run 1.5 or 1 second combat turns, I'm afraid you'll have to divide things further yourself, though that's obviously not very hard.

Weapon Recoil: Weapon recoil will probably be capped at Austere's suggestion of 4 + (3 * Weapon Recoil Modifier). eg assault rifles incur +1 recoil per shot, maxing out recoil at +7; a battle rifle or MMG incurs +2 recoil per shot, maxing out at 10. An HMG would incur +3 per shot, maxing out at 13. Firing on SA removes the base +4. Also, weapon attachments won't all factor straight into RC as per canon. Attachments like vertical foregrips will probably lower max recoil and max aiming actions by 1 or 2; attachments like bipods would lower max recoil and recoil generated per shot, depending on the weapon. All of this is still fairly malleable, however.

Additionally, I'll be using something similar to Raygun's RC by Reaction table, and I'll be using Strength based RC to feed right into recoil caps.

Also, expect GV4 and shock pads and all related silliness to go into the corner and shoot itself.

Ammunition: There will be seven types of ammunition: Light, Medium, and Heavy Pistol, Shotgun, and Light, Medium, and Heavy Rifle. Hell of a lot simpler than gigantic mess of different types. I won't be naming calibers, but for those who really are interested, Light Pistol will perform something in the vicinity of .22LR; Medium Pistol, 9mmP; Heavy Pistol, .357SIG, 10mmAuto, or .45ACP; Shotgun, 3" 12ga.; Light Rifle, 5.56x45mm NATO or 6.8mmSPC; Medium Rifle, 7.62x51mm NATO; Heavy, .50BMG. There will, of course, be guns firing custom ammunition types, but they'll be relatively uncommon.

I'm also curious if anyone would like to see shotguns broken down into Light, Medium, and Heavy variants, analogous to real life's 20, 12, and 10 gauges. All the other ammunition types get it, so I don't really see it being that much of an overcomplication, but I'm curious if anyone really cares one way or the other.

Rifles will get a 0.75 armor modifier, lowered to either 0.25 or 0.5 with AP (haven't decided which). I believe that this is pretty close to what Raygun uses, and it's simple enough to fit into the scope of this project. Hey, I love 3 part damage codes, but not here. I'm not sure where to go with pistol rounds (in terms of AP), at the moment. As for all other ammunition types, expect something realistic and an end to the silliness of flechette ammunition.

CQB and Weapon Handling: <=15m, all pistols receive -1TN; SMGs and carbines are the baseline, receiving +0TN; all full size rifles receive +1TN (I wanted to differentiate between carbines and full size rifles, but +2 is just too much); an LMG would receive +2TN; MMGs would receive +3TN; HMGs and heavy weapons, +4 and beyond. At <=5m, all CQB bonuses and penalties are doubled, and lighting, recoil, and called shot modifiers are halved, rounded up. Alternatively, could change the distances to 10m and 1m, respectively, but I think that may be fairly useless.

Shotguns: Completely ditching variable choke and it's area of effect swath of 2D. Thanks to Austere for the following numbers:

• -1 TN to hit at Short and Medium range; -2 at Long; -3 at Extreme
• Laser sights, reflex sights, and Smartlinks all give -1 TN (max of -1).
• Damage stages down at -2 Power/-1 Damage Level per range category. May consider -1 Power instead; I'm not sure if this makes shotguns too weak.
• Apply either double Ballistic or double Impact if the target as more than 1 point of either (ie at least 2, barring something completely weird).

Launch/Heavy Weapons: Will be increasing the power of most launch weapons and making most of them antivehicular (with possibly a couple exceptions; after all, the real life RPG-7 is basically an antipersonnel weapon). Also will be adding something along the lines of HIWS (as seen at Blackwater), mostly because it rocks.

Speed in Melee: Will probably be running with either a combination of Lime's system of requiring a simple action to counter attack and my system of Speed Reach or just Speed Reach. Either way, do not discuss this here. There's already a thread. Credit to Person 404 and another guy who's probably not going to post here for some time for putting together Speed Reach with me.

Explosives: Credit to Austere on these suggestions:

• Blast radius: -2/m
• Compared against 1x barrier rating
• Commercial Explosives (eg Semtex, TNT) are rating 6; C4 is rating 7; C12 is rating 10

To some degree, I wonder if these figures are lethal enough (100+ kilos of C4 needed to punch a meter wide hole through a reenforced cement wall), but for now, I'm ok with them. And factoring in each Demolitions success giving +25% Power, they might just be dangerous enough.

Could use some suggestions for rules on shaped charges, though there's the possibility that leaving Demolitions to handle this per successes does it well enough currently, albeit at an abstract level.

As for thermobaric explosives (again, thanks to Austere):

• Constant damage code blast radius: Rating * (kg/10) ^ 0.5
• Blast radius beyond this: -2/m
• Damage code: (Rating * 2)D
• Cost/Availability: (Rating ^ 2 * 3)¥ / Rating * 2, 7 days
• Minimum rating 2; maximum rating 6

Also, will have rules for improvised, cheap explosives. Specifically, fertilizer-based explosives at Rating 4 and its purified cousin, ammonium nitrate, at Rating 5. 20¥/kg for the former, 35¥/kg for the latter. Both quite accessible, easily detectible, and, if I can work out simple rules for it, fairly unstable.

Grenades: I'm either going with setting grenades at 15S (minigrenades at 12S) and enforcing the optional staging rules (numbers courtesy of Austere) or going with two separate damage ratings of 10S(f) (-1/m) and 6S (-2/m), one for shrapnel and one for concussion, respectively. Not entirely sure on this one.

Also, Austere: was the 12S meant to reflect the 40mm or 20mm platform? I'm pretty much ditching 20mm and high capacity underbarrel grenade launchers, but I'm not not removing 20mm entirely.

Skills: I'll definitely be rewriting the canon table of skills in order to keep the level of division consistent. No more Sorcery.

Fatigue: Unless there's interest and acceptance for an additional damage track for fatigue (resistable by Body and Willpower, healed with rest)— and do let me know if there is— I'll be going with Austere's system: