One-shot KOs of pedestrians, Humanly impossible without augs/magic? Options

[Azralon]

Steven Siegal would be spinning in his futuristic 2070 grave. Which would be bad, unless Ares mounted him as a rotating museum display or something.

Feel free to correct my memory on the SR4 game rules, but it looks like a non-augmented, non-magical maximized human can't easily drop pedestrians in one punch anymore. Well, on average, anyway: it's not impossible, just improbable.

So your maximum human Agility is 6, and your maximum Unarmed Combat skill is 6. Let's say you buy Exceptional Attribute and Aptitude appropriately for 7 & 7. Then you buy some sort of Unarmed Combat specialization, and you're throwing 7 (Agility) + 9 (Skill) = 16 dice. Your strength is 6, of course, bringing your base damage to 3.

So on average you'll be making 5.33 hits on your Unarmed roll. Assuming your target has a 3 Reaction, that'll likely negate 1 net hit. So the target has 7 DV incoming. That won't even drop Aunt May.

Let's make it a called shot to the head, then, for a -4 pool penalty and +4 DV. That means you're rolling 12 dice, getting an average of 4 hits. Your target's average Reaction drops that to 3 hits, giving you a net DV offering of 3+3+4=10. Unfortunately your average human also has a 3 Body, which means on average 1 hit and therefore 9 boxes of Stun taken. This is one shy of the average human's 10 Stun capacity. He's still awake enough to cry (gurgle) for help.

Extending the Marvel comic book references, this means that Captain America will likely need two hits to lay out your average Joe (unless he spends Edge).

[Xenith]

Fist fights usually last a bit longer than 3 seconds, however. If someone is aware you're about to hit him... he generally tried to get outta the way. Its easily possible to KO someone... with your good roll or their bad roll.

Besides... some of us have better luck with rolls than others... :D

[Egon]

Well at least toddlers will stop dropping dead just because they fell off the mary-go-round.

soak 1D with a 1 body and a 2 cobat pool or DIE little billy.

[Wasabi]

So ambush them (Only Body to defend with) and use a point of Edge to 'sucker punch' them a good one.

That'll give 18dice*.33333=6 (plus 16/6=2.4*.333 from Edge) == 6.8, added to base 3 damage thats 9.8 damage or roughly 10. Then Body 3 reduces that by 1pt and they are at -3 dice penalty.

That assumes Edge 2, with Edge 6 (not quite human max) the damage output grows quite a bit thanks to the extra 4 dice that roll on average with the 1/6 chance of 6's an additional 1.5 levels for a whopping 11.3pts... watch out Aunt May!

If the ambusher also spent a point of Edge to get 1 extra Pass, the ambusher would double their damage output with a one-two punch. KAPOW! :-)

[Nikoli]

There is also the sucker punch. hit a target that isn't expecting it and they don't get to dodge. you are assumed to hit, those all they can now do is soak.

[Azralon]

Sucker punches are valid, and unfortunately get you an average of only +1 DV.

It's a pity that such a pinnacle of unmodified human has to either fight dirty or spend Edge to one-shot drop an unarmored, unskilled, and unremarkable human.

Kinda negates any ideas we had of a "lithe, unmodified martial artist" shadowrunner. Bruce Lee might have teh sk1llz but not t3h str3ngth. :(

Here's hoping that the martial arts rules will help offset that.

[Nikoli]

well, to be fair, the dragon would/should be considered a pre-awakening adept.

[hyzmarca]

Reasonably, a "sucker punch" should equl a 1-hit kill, rathar then a 1-hit knock out, if the attacker has the proper training. Well, not so much a punch as a neck-break, but one gets the idea.

SR melee combat rules have always lacked granularity. SR4 is no exception. It the melle rules were at all realistic, then it would turn into something resembling the madern day stage from Tenchu: The Wrath of Heaven. Ninja adepts would gods of death.

[Kagetenshi]

I'll add that it isn't even a single punch, it's whatever the unarmed combat master can throw in that timeframe. That may be a roundhouse to the head, about six punches in three seconds, a throw followed by a knee to the face with all of one's weight behind it, or any other combination that can take the appropriate amount of time (and there are quite a few, many very damaging). The inability to knock someone out with a single punch would be mildly off, but this is much worse than that.

~J

[Dogsoup]

4 Hits, Critical Success:
Player1 "-I want to knock this guy unconscious for 30-60 seconds."

If it was just some goon/random guy I'd allow it.

[hahnsoo]

Some notes (that may or may not help much):
Attacking from behind = Superior Position (+2 dice) (SR4, p 148)
Charging (running and attacking) = +2 dice

As far as taking someone down easily with Unarmed combat, the Subduing Combat rules on p152 are pretty powerful, especially if you have a decent strength. Reminds me a lot of the Metal Gear Solid-style subdual, actually. If you successfully get a grip on an opponent, you get the Superior Position bonus (+2 dice) AND opponent prone bonus (+3 dice) on your subsequent tests on him. Each time you use a Complex Action, you can inflict Stun damage equal to your Strength without having to roll, and the defender is pretty much helpless, especially if you have high enough net hits.

The easiest way, IMO, of knocking someone out cold with Unarmed combat is to use Shock Gloves, or a Shock hand. Not only do you inflict Stun damage at 6S (double the damage you would do if you were just Unarmed), but you have a chance of "zapping" them with the electricity damage.

[hobgoblin]

if one could KO a person as untrained with one blow without there being a whole lot of luck in the picture then i would guess cops and their training would be more or less redundant.

yes you can surprise someone and maybe knock them out of balance but a KO out of the blue is hitting a weak spot out of the shadows and maybe with a hard object, and then your just as likely to kill as just knock the person out.

personaly i would rather use something like chloroform over the nose and mouth, or maybe a throat grip to block the persons airways. and allways come from behind.

[mintcar]

This discussion reminds me of when the rest of the group is trying to knock out the mage in "The Gamers" :D . I think Dogsoup´s take on it is the most reasonable for this scenario.

(If it´s not grandma your trying to knock out, I would go for subdual for the safest unarmed silent take-down.)

[Squinky]

People don't ussaully get knocked out cold much in real life. They do, however, lay down in agony or just quit due to pain. Shadowrun dosen't represent this much, as most folks wouldn't keep fighting after some boxes of damage.

[hobgoblin]

well there was the professionality rating. ie, people would back out of the fight after taking x damage based on it. shadowrunners didnt back out tho :P

[mintcar]

[Squinky]

I've had my vision cloud up and even fell down for a minute, but never have been knocked out. Ever. It takes a lot.

[mintcar]

Yeah. I guess there was only one person who actually passed out that evening. But that blanked out vision and falling over gets you thinking "what if he´d actually put some force into that?"

Now the people who have actually been in real fights are shaking their heads at my blissful ignorance, right? :P

[hobgoblin]

martial arts and boxing (isnt it yet another martial art?) sounds far from untrained to me...

the question realy becomes, how long do you want the person to be out? so long that you can tie him up and stuff him in some closet, or out for the rest of the run? former should be easy, alltho i would guess you dont need to KO someone for that. latter is a whole diffrent story.

allso, i would belive that the person hitting his head on the sink was a major factor in him being out for so long. har objects and all that remeber?

im not saying it cant be done, the question is what kind of timeframe are we looking at for the person being out. and if you want him out but not dead, there are far more reliable methodes then hitting someone on the head.

[Gort]

Generally speaking, in the fist fights I've been in, people stop resisting due to pain or fear long before you batter them unconscious.

One thing I don't think SR or any RPG models very well is that hitting people with blunt objects doesn't just do "stun" damage that'll go away after ten minutes a box. Being bashed over the head KILLS people.

Incidentally, were there ever any rules for chloroform in SR?

[Rotbart van Dain...]

Most Clubs now do Physical Damage.

[mintcar]

I don´t think a KO should be concidered battering someone to unconsciousness. That´s why I think a critical success should be allowed to knock someone out for a few seconds under most circumstances (maybe not in battle though). If the one getting KO:ed already is injured they might go down for a longer time.

[Narmio]

There is a game mechanic to handle this. Knockdown. As soon as someone takes more boxes of damage than their body, they go down.

This doesn't say that it KOs them, but they aren't going to just get up on their next simple action without a really pressing reason to keep fighting. The average pedestrian certainly wouldn't. Do even four or five boxes of damage to a 3 Body pedestrian, and they're going to lie on the ground for a while moaning. Nine boxes of damage and I'd say they were staying down for quite a long time.

It's not a clean TKO like filling their stun track, but they are going to be on the ground and not moving, and are likely to be very pliable to things like being dragged into a cupboard and tied up, struggling weakly but not really continuing fighting.

Before the rules monkeys jump on me for this, remember it's not rules, it's the GM elaborating on the situation in order to make it more interesting and further the suspension of disbelief. I've been in games where the players shoot at Lone Star, who get up immediately after being shot. It wouldn't happen in reality, even if they soaked it to 4-5 boxes of stun.

[Kagetenshi]

A technical knockout (TKO) is awarded by a referee when, in his or her judgement, one boxer is too badly injured to continue. This is in contrast to a KO, where the boxer is actually unconscious.

By definition, a TKO will never coexist with a filled stun track.

~J

[mfb]

i'd say KO'ing an aware, defending opponent inside 3 seconds should be pretty tough, even for best-in-the-world unaugmented humans. an unaware opponent, sure, but not someone who knows what's coming and is trying to avoid it.