House Rules, Ammo questions Options

[Angelstandings]

@Serbitor

Your ammo rules are better balanced than RAW as far as I can see.

And you're right, it's not possible to add in your modified stun conversion rule into *that* particular chart. But I can see the intended effect.

I prefer mine better :D But your houserule is obviously a step in the right direction. I could make another chart, which would consider your stun damage conversion rule... But it would be a lot more complicated, and based on the number of replies I got from my chart (none, unless you count private mails, then I got 2) -- no one will bother even looking at it. Math scares people.

I find it interesting that we both, quite independently, doubled the impact armor vs Flechette ammo. That is really the only way, mathematically, to make something worse vs. armored targets. Which is why I went with halving ballistic armor vs. APDS -- because it scales correctly that way instead of a mere +- AP.

EDIT: Also, I recognize that -1 AR = 1/3 DV (in most cases), and while I'm not particularly pleased with it, I don't see a reason to complicate matters further by trying to apply them in different ways (although I understand that is what the OP was asking for). I Just balanced the ammo taking that mathematical fact into consideration -- something the developers seem to have missed.

[Serbitar]

I just made a calc sheet to compare the differences, get it here:

http://www.serbitar.de/stuff/ammocheck.ods

for those who dont have openoffice or excel:

http://www.serbitar.de/stuff/ammocheck1.jpg
http://www.serbitar.de/stuff/ammocheck2.jpg
http://www.serbitar.de/stuff/ammocheck3.jpg
http://www.serbitar.de/stuff/ammocheck4.jpg

note that I changed exex in my houserules from +2/+1 to +2/+2

[Brahm]

@Serbitar, I've got an older version of Excel which apparently doesn't open Open Office files. Could you export it, I'm curious about the calculations and was thinking about expanding it past just simple average calcs.

[Angelstandings]

[Brahm]

[Angelstandings]

Sure, it removes/adds the same amount, but that amount becomes more and more meaningless as the armor improves -- which is the main reason the ammo types aren't balanced in the first place.

That can be solved by doubling or halving the armor -- nothing else would be as elegant.

I guess it all comes down to how effective to you want armor piercing ammo, and how inneffective you want flechette ammo, to be against high armor targets. If the answer to both is "not very" then pay no attention to me.

[Brahm]

[Serbitar]

[Brahm]

[Serbitar]

http://www.serbitar.de/stuff/ammocheck.xls
http://www.serbitar.de/stuff/ammocheck.ods

Found a small mistake, upgraded to version 1.1

Btw: I can easily add errorbars to my averages. Deviation of one die is 2.5. The standard deviation of x dice is sqrt(sum i=1..x i²). The number of dice is easily calculated (body+amor-ap). Voila, error bars. (though, they might be not very much gaussian with such small numbers)

But the -5 or even the -4 in RAW does not work without my additional rule of physical to stun conversion. Without it, its simply linear and pretty much useless.

[Angelstandings]

[Serbitar]

I think halving armour is not a good idea, because at some point the armor piercing capabilities should stop. Thats why I prefer a fixed number.

No ammo type should be that much better than others.

BTW: With reducing exex to +2/+2 and introducing my new penetration system I can punch apds back to 0/-4 again. Ill add that to my 1.5 Version of SHP. (SHP had another penetration, which is conversion from physical to stun, which halved the damage after resistance when it was converted to stun previously)

[Brahm]

[Brahm]

[Serbitar]

I like the "all or nothing" simply because thats what happens with armour penetration. If it penetrates, you are screwed, if it doesnt, you are quite save.

And, as a design desicion, I dont want people to get stunned by pistol fire. The stun damage should be much much lower than physical damage.

My system achieves both of that, plus, every ammo type has its use (maybe with exception of ex, wich is allways worse than exex, but that is supposed to be so and balanced by cost and availability)

[Brahm]

[Krotiez]

[Austere Emancipa...]

It's difficult to say for certain just how serious the blunt trauma from small arm projectiles stopped by flexible body armor tends to be. The only real statistic I'm aware of is that there are no reported fatalities when a person has been shot in a ballistic panel by a firearm that the armor in question was rated to protect against.

Considering how many thousand cases of bullets stopped by body armor in US police departments alone there are, you could say it's very unlikely that you would sustain critical injuries from non-penetrating hits. Broken ribs, internal bleeding, etc. are certainly possible, but any projectile stopped by armor is an order of magnitude more benign than one that isn't stopped.

There are reports of being people being stunned after getting non-penetrating hits to body armor, and there are as many or more reports of people not even realizing they were hit until afterwards. From what I understand, the canon penetration mechanic in SR4 makes non-penetrating hits far more effective in taking someone out of the battle than such hits would be IRL.

[Brahm]

The canon penetration rules means that it is common that you can bring down someone wearing armor at about the same speed if your damage before soak of Body + Armor is slightly below the Armor rating as if it is slightly above the Armor rating. You still do less boxes of damage with the lighter attack. But because Body is easier to have at elevated levels through cyber/bio and metahum choice, often the character will have fewer Stun boxes (8+Will/2) than Physical boxes (8+Bod/2). This is exagerated in cyber/bio Trolls, who could have as many as 16 Physical boxes, and at the very most 11 Stun boxes. Although in some characters, such as Dwarf Mages, the reverse can easily be true. Just not to the same extent because 12 is the maximum Stun boxes of any Metahuman, and 9 is the minimum Physical boxes.

I see a few of problems with converting entirely to Stun, whether you halve or not, and why I instead see splitting between Stun and Physical as a good idea.

- Cracked or broken ribs, possibily leading to a punctured lung, and such. I know SR, or pretty much any game, gets icky when you try to sort actual injuries into Physical or Stun. But that sure points in the direction of Physical. But with the extra bruising as Stun.

- Getting hit by a Narrow three round burst. The armor may stop a particular round of the three reducing it to mostly stun-like damage, but either of the others might catch the target where the armor is not.

- Armor is abstract, especially with the partial pieces. I'm trying to abstract the hit, not match up a weapon with a given rated piece of armor.

- If the DV is below the armor rating you have no chance of dieing unless you were literally a walking tank with somthing like rating 20+ armor and Glitched your soak. But since Full Body Armor with Helmet Ballistic Shield falls short of that, the chances of Gitching that are miniscule, and to be able to even move with that much armor on you have to have a pretty good Body. It is safe to assume nobody is going to die from a DV that fell below their armor rating.


Clarification and Refinement Of My Suggestion, All Rolled Into One

The boxes of damage are split in half between Physical and Stun before the soak roll, on an odd number of damage boxes the extra box is assigned to Stun. When the soak is rolled the target chooses for each hit on the soak roll whether to subtact a box of damage from Physical or Stun.

This means that with a good soak roll you might take no Physical damage. But if you fail to soak then you took the hit hard and something snapped or was pummeled very hard and is bleeding, or you caught a hit at least partially outside the armour protected area.

EDIT Or if you are a Troll and are afraid of falling asleep during a gun battle you are in you can avoid Stun damage by leading with your face to take some of the damage as Physical boxesthat you'll ask the team mage or medic to sort out for you later. 8) Of course as a Troll, especially if you have good armor, you are usually going to be soaking noticably more boxes of damage overall. So definately staying up longer if you have the good sense to find a bit of cover.

[Krotiez]

[Deadjester]

I know for my group we think AP and DV should be kept seperate in effect and we are wroking on a combat formula within the present game system to try and reflect that without changeing the rest of the book.

One of the issues we have is stun. Is it really needed in its present form? Does it really enhance the game that much or just add more dice to roll and take up time that could be used doing other things?

For now we are not using stun from gun fire. We are just using stun for things that require it such stun weapons, spells and explosions, etc. Otherwise stun just seems to much of a issue at the moment.

We may add it in later but for now it is as I have said above.

Deadjester

[Brahm]

Just forget the Stun conversion altogether is probably not the worst idea. Yes SR4 is more lethal. But the people least able to soak gunshot damage are the people least able to wear enough armor to convert it to Stun.

[Shrike30]

Dividing stun from gunfire (that's been reduced from physical to stun) in half seems to be working out okay. While it'll put a player eventually, it certainly helps with the "passing out from your armor stopping bullets" problem somewhat.

I'm currently rounding that division up (5 points of reduced-to-stun, old school, becomes 3 points of stun in my rules). I might try rounding it down in the future.

[Brahm]

Sounds more like a "getting shot" problem to me.

[Azralon]