House Rules, Ammo questions Options

[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]

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Serbitar]

[Brahm]

[Deadjester]

I think the major problem is how resists actualy works in SR4.

Using body as they do as the resist factor is just plain incorrect and unrealisticly very limiting in nature.

In our old game the Troll in our group had a bigger body then a blue whale in their critters book. And if you did a whale correctly by their system and gave them some ungodly figure for a body attribute, you would suddenly find yourself in a situation where the whale could now resist anti shipping missiles with ease.

A whale should be able to soak up a ton of damage from a heavy pistol but NOT resist it.

Resisting damage due to armor and soaking damage due to mass and what not is two totaly different issues which are not properly repersented here which is why I think there are such issues with ammo, etc.

A Troll is tougher then a human and able to resist damage a little more do to his tough hide and would not be unrealistic to give him a small natural bonus that stacks with any amor that he chooses to wear. But his main power would be in the fact that his sheer massive size would enable him to soak up tons of more damage then any human could.

Why my group has been trying to work up a new combat formula to repersent this AND stay with in the rules for the most part as they have been written. Anyone with standard IQ will be able to easily adjust but you still want it where they can just go in the book at any given moment and look up stuff without worrying about what has been changed overly.

When we are done, we will have a errata sheet to hand out and just start playing.

But we are seperating penetration from damage and since the chars wont be able to resist as well as they use to for the higher end bodies, we are giving them more boxes to soak up hits. Basicly 10 + Body att.

People with small bodies will be able to soak up less hits then a big troll, but now you don't have to die constantly cause every one wants to bring a rocket launcher or a mini nuke to take out the Troll and take you out as just a by product.

But the idea of using body as a resist is just crazy and limits what you can do with creatures and machines because of its two fold effect. A attack coptor and a armored troop coptor might be armored the same but one is going to soak up hits better then other do to size and bullets just plain passing through empty space or into cargo or troops even. And a critical hit is just that, no matter what size it is, a nasty hit is a nasty hit.

When we think we may have a decent formula, I will post it later for review.

Or I can post the test formulas if people are interested and don't feel like waiting for us to finish testing it.

[Serbitar]

[Brahm]

[Serbitar]

strange, when I punch in:

DV: 10 AP: -2 Nethits: 1
(standard grenade)
vs:
ballistic: 9 Impact: 7 Body: 10
(troll with armour jacket)

with: flechette (+2 DV/+Impact = fragmentation grenade)

I get an average (and average means trading 3:1 not 4:1) of 5.66 physical for the troll.
(DV = 10(grenade)+2(flechette) +1 (nethits) = 13; armour = 7 (impact)-2(grenade)+7(flechette) = 12; DV > armour = no conversion; body 10;
13-22/3 = 5.66)


now with the helmet and against the rocket:

DV: 14 AP: -3 Nethits: 1
(standard rocket)
vs.
ballistic: 11 impact:9 Body: 10

with: flechette (+2 DV/+Impact = fragmentation rocket)

Iget 8.66 physical.
(DV = 14(rocket)+2(flechette) +1 (nethits) = 17; armour = 9 (impact)-3(grenade)+9(flechette) = 15; DV > armour = no conversion; body 10;
17-25/3 = 8.66)

Trolls, don't rocket jump !

Brahm, please do your math again.
I think the results fit very well to the fact, that an extremely tough troll with very god armour is hit by something that is supposed to perform poor against armour.

[Brahm]

Why are you adding 1 net hit? For grenades, missles, and rockets you add the net hits, if any, left after scatter is calculated. So I guess he should wear the helmet just incase he accidentally makes a good attack roll and a low scatter roll. That way he need not sweat unless he rolls three five net successes after scatter.

EDIT Not that the scatter rules are really designed for aiming at your feet. But I think that FanPro can be somewhat forgiven for not covering that because it would be plain insanity to do that. Right? :rotfl:

Incidentally for Quake rocket jumping you normally jump, so you should also calculate with a -1 DV if they succeed at a Jump (2) test. ;)

Of course you also just demonstrated another quirk of your rules. Grenades doing little to no stun damage or lots of Physical damage hinging on a single point of armor rating or extra net hits on lobbing the grenade.

[Serbitar]

Another quirk? Thats the only "quirk" and, as I said, intended by design desicion.

The difference in the grenade example between impact 7 and impact 8 is: 5.66 physical to 2.33 stun. Perfectly acceptable.

But I think you have maid your point. Every further posting would be repetetive.

[Azralon]

I'm going to break this down in multiple posts for ease of reading.

[Azralon]

[Brahm]

[Azralon]

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Moon-Hawk]

[Austere Emancipa...]

(Kinetic energy has even less to do with knocking people down with small arms than momentum does...)

[Azralon]

[Azralon]