 Dude, armor sucks. |
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 Mar 28 2006, 12:02 AM
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#76
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Great Dragon  Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222  |
I agree that in many situations that would be a good way of describing the Stun damage track. It doesn't help the nonpenetrating ballistic injury problem any, but works fine for many other scenarios. :) Oh, and in case you're like me and don't get the History Channel, you can always check out the Medal of Honor citations. Lots of folks with lethal injuries pulling off some crazy shit. |
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Mar 28 2006, 12:22 AM
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#77
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 135 Joined: 27-February 06 Member No.: 8,313 |
Well, yeah, they spent Edge to invoke Dead Man's Trigger. What on earth does anything done by anyone with a lethal wound have to do with Stun damage? |
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Mar 28 2006, 12:40 AM
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#78
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
ehh... Dead Man's Trigger only works for one action, doesn't it?
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Mar 28 2006, 12:43 AM
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#79
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
It has a whole lot to do with the sub-thread that started somewhere around Geekkake's pain message, and with how simply being in lots of pain, or being massively injured, doesn't necessarily have anything to do with your ability to function.
mfb: Maybe it's some sort of extended action to command several company-level combat assaults from the front over some 48 hours. |
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Mar 28 2006, 12:53 AM
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#80
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 135 Joined: 27-February 06 Member No.: 8,313 |
Or maybe the game doesn't perfectly model everything that real people can do.
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Mar 28 2006, 01:02 AM
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#81
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
true. however, if it's possible to model more accurate behavior, especially without increasing complexity... if you don't want to make armor overly effective, you could just allow armor to automatically buy hits. -1 DV for 4 points of armor.
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Mar 28 2006, 01:03 AM
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#82
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,283 Joined: 17-May 05 Member No.: 7,398 |
I don't remember anything saying that you fall unconscious at a full Physical track, just that you start dying.
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Mar 28 2006, 01:04 AM
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#83
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
page 53, under "Unconsciousness". mentions both physical and stun tracks.
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Mar 28 2006, 01:33 AM
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#84
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Dragon Group: Members Posts: 4,589 Joined: 28-November 05 Member No.: 8,019 |
I just got done reading the last three pages of that thread... holy shit. And is it just me, or has Critias quieted down his rants lately? And what would I have to do to be banned? I mean, if Creepwood didn't get banned, then I guess there isn't any harm in starting up another Desert Flame War.
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Mar 28 2006, 02:09 AM
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#85
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 475 Joined: 13-March 06 From: dusty Mexican borderlands Member No.: 8,372 |
I have to disagree with my comments not involving non-penetrating bullet wounds. In fact, I think it's particularly relevant. Like I said in my pain post, getting your ribs broken hurts. A lot. At the risk of pulling the usual Internet tough guy act, I'm pretty good with pain, because I was an active kid and had the tendency to fall out of trees and break limbs. Not to mention sports injuries. Breaking something hurts like a bastard. But as mfb mentioned, it usually hurts less the day of the injury. This is largely due to adrenaline. Allow me an anecdote. I'm drinking, and as such, prone to lengthy anecdotes. There is a point, trust me. When I get in the aforementioned car accident, I hit a stone wall in a late model Lancer (this was around 2003) going about 40. I was a passenger, in front. I remember the wall approaching very fast, a half-second of impact. Then I was out. The next thing I remember is opening my eyes, and seeing dust everywhere. I can't breathe. The headlights are still on, but the hood is much, much higher than it should be. Turned out, it accordian'd in, as most modern cars do. There were weird lights everywhere, which turned out to be police cruisers. God knows how long I'd been out, and I didn't care, because I couldn't breathe. I pushed the airbag down, off my chest, and opened the door, promptly spilling out like a liquid onto the gravel beneath, not even able to gasp for breath. Slowly, face on the pavement, I could hear the driver crying and begging the cops to check on me (they wouldn't, more on that later). I was completely incapacitated. I have no idea how long it took me to move from no breath, to minute, painful breaths, to functional, painful breathing. And frankly, I had no idea what was going on. That gives you an idea of the impact involved, and the chest, lung, and diaphram effects of a 40 mph collision in a non-armored vehicle. To make a long, long story short, the cops weren't interested in helping anyone. I directly asked them to call an ambulance for my very obvious breathing issue, and the driver was bleeding substantially from her head while crying uncontrollably. The cops were more interested in if anyone was drinking. They didn't call an ambulance. They found some weed in the car (which hadn't been smoked prior to the accident), took the driver in, and told me to ride with the tow driver. I asked again for an ambulance, they refused. I later found out this was illegal, but both the driver and I had accepted our insurance settlements, the insurance companies told us we couldn't sue at that point - use that for corporate ruthlessness in the future. Two miles down the road, about 20 miles from my house, the tow truck driver told me the tow would cost a few hundred bucks. I informed him it wasn't my car, and I certainly didn't have that kind of money on me. I couldn't even time him, he kicked me out of the cab of the tow so fast. I have no idea where I am, my ribs are broken, my knee (which was fucked to begin with) is seriously messed up. I walk a half mile to a Circle K, in the middle of the night in the ghetto. I call a cab, and sit inside the Circle K, thanks to the kindness of the current clerk, staring blindly at the ground until the cab arrives. I gave my address, and passed out in the back. Just like that. The cab driver had a Hell of a time waking me up once we'd reached my house. I went inside, called my girlfriend (who my friend and I were supposed to pick up), and sat on the couch in the dark, shaking from an adrenaline hangover. I was still shaking when she found me. ... I regard the above story as 5-7 points of Stun damage. Confusion and pain, but adrenaline and willpower can keep you moving for awhile. As long as the exertion isn't too great. Get home, just get home. If you want realism, that's about as realistic as I can provide you, given that it really happened. You can push through substantial Stun damage, but you're fucked later. How does this relate to non-penetrating bullet wounds? The damage is about the same, for a person. Catching rounds in a vest causes broken ribs and contusions just like mine all the time. They're designed to keep you alive, not make you comfortable being shot. So you're alive. But trust me, you wish you weren't. Some folks don't wanna play this out, and that's fine with me. But without pain, momentary weakness, confusion, and other effects of damage, you're not being realistic. The frailty of the human form is realism. So don't bullshit people about "realism" when you're unwilling to have your character react to a 4 Stun intercepted bullet to the chest with dropping to all fours, hacking up a lung for a little while. |
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Mar 28 2006, 02:20 AM
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#86
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
dude, that's simply not realistic in a hell of a lot of cases. Level III vest against a 9mm parabellum, in the middle of a firefight? no, you're probably not going to go down and hack up a lung; you're certainly not going to see broken ribs. a long burst from a 9mm uzi? sure, you might get the breath knocked out of you. i'm still going to say that you probably won't see any ribs cracking, though i couldn't tell you for sure.
bullets simply don't hit hard enough to have the effects you're describing. every action has an equal and opposite reaction, remember? if the impact of a bullet could crack your ribs after being spread out by a good vest, it would certainly shatter the much-more-fragile bones of your hand through the receiver when you fired the bullet. i'll agree that taking S stun should probably slow you down pretty hard--but given that it should, taking hits on your vest shouldn't be resulting in S stun damage in the first place. also, not everybody responds to pain the same way--they don't even respond to pain the same way every time, within individuals. personally, i think SR3's knockdown rules simulated response to damage not-badly. if you take damage, you have a chance of going down, with more damage making it harder to stay up. and when you go down, it can be tough to get back up. if SR4's work similarly, you might consider using them, or modifying them so that they do work that way. [edited slightly to clarify my position] |
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Mar 28 2006, 02:26 AM
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#87
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Shadowrun Setting Nerd Group: Banned Posts: 3,632 Joined: 28-June 05 From: Pissing on pedestrians from my electronic ivory tower. Member No.: 7,473 |
Crit has been quiet in general, so don' t read too much into it. |
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Mar 28 2006, 03:46 AM
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#88
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Chicago Survivor Group: Dumpshocked Posts: 5,079 Joined: 28-January 04 From: Canton, GA Member No.: 6,033 |
I will point out that there is a world of difference in firing a gun and being the poor SOB that catches the round, vest or not. As far as the physics of the projectile are concerned. When you fire a round properly, ther is no gap between you, the weapon, and the round, save for the very small space from the pin to the charge. but aside from that little hole in an otherwise unbroken chain. The force never impacts you, it passes through you because as a whole you are relatively 'solid' as far as the force concerned. Take a 12-gauge shotgun, hold it properly and fire downrange at your target, you feel the force, but it does not harm you. Now, hold the butt of the stock away from your body a half inch or so and fire the weapon again, notice the drastic difference. Now, imagine all of that kinetic force compressed to a, miniscule in comparison, surface area striking you. The force is magnified because it isn't spread out and you sure as anything are not bracing to be shot.
That is the main difference, brace properly and you might get sore after a few dozen rounds if you aren't used to it, brace improperly and you could dislocate a shoulder as the weapon slams into your impossible to prepare shoulder repeatedly. Body armor helps spread the force out to a manageable area, but you still are being impacted, it will still hurt. I've heard stories of police officers and soldiers who caught a round in the vest and had a cracked rib. They were sore, they were aching, but they were alive because of it. The only time to worry is when it doesn't hurt like hell. |
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Mar 28 2006, 03:59 AM
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#89
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
it depends on what kind of vest you've got. i'd bet most of those cracked ribs were behind II-A or II armor, rather than III-A or III. i'm assuming that III-A and III are ~rating 4 in SR4. if you were wearing rating 2 armor, sure, i can see cracked ribs from a handgun round. but at rating 4 or so, a hit from a handgun shouldn't be slowing you down much at all.
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Mar 28 2006, 11:06 AM
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#90
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
Rating III is the lighter rigid armor standard. If you got hit in a plate with a 9x19mm in the heat of a battle there's a very good chance you'd never notice, and you'd be unlikely to get any sort of bruise.
Could you share one of those stories? If you remember anything about the stories I could track them down, and I'd finally have one solid example of this happening. So far I'm looking through the Kevlar Survivors' Club in vain -- I can't find anything there but "superficial backface signature contusion". |
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Mar 28 2006, 04:45 PM
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#91
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 914 Joined: 26-August 05 From: Louisville, KY (Well, Memphis, IN technically but you won't know where that is.) Member No.: 7,626 |
The question is not "can you crack a rib when getting shot wearing body armor" it is "what kind of round does it take to crack a rib when getting shot wearing body armor?" Shotguns and hunting rifles will leave marks left and right on armored targets. But the thread started discussion heavy pistols and body armor. 9mm? No way. The force isn't great enough once it gets distributed by armor over just a square inch or two. .35/70 BFG pistol? Maybe. There's a lot of energy with a tiny cross-section so it's almost an APDS already. |
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Mar 28 2006, 05:00 PM
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#92
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 475 Joined: 13-March 06 From: dusty Mexican borderlands Member No.: 8,372 |
Upon reading some of the entries in the Kevlar Survivor's Club (nice find, Austere Emancipator!), handguns generally appear to produce "superficial backface signature contusions", which means, of course, light to medium bruising. Which makes sense. Rifles, however, appear to create "significant backface signature injury", which sounds more like a cracked rib to me and really nasty, deep bruising that hurts like a bastard. Of course, whether that would be relevant in combat or not is up to the Stun track. [edit]: Just read some of the shotgun portion, and it seems like shot is pretty easily shrugged off by an armored individual, as reflected in the rules. The examples I've read so far aren't point-blank, certainly, which would be more significant, and I haven't seen any examples of someone getting hit my slugs, which I'd imagine would also be more damaging. So there you have it. Watch out for rifles. This post has been edited by Geekkake: Mar 28 2006, 05:07 PM |
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Mar 28 2006, 05:09 PM
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#93
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
Some amazing stories in the KSC. For example, several instances of assault and hunting rifle shots being stopped by flexible body armor. Among these I found the first one which might suggest a broken bone or other serious internal injury -- a close range .308 rifle shot to the lower back of an officer wearing only flexible blody armor which resulted in him being "hospitalized for a significant backface signature injury".
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Mar 28 2006, 05:44 PM
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#94
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 101 Joined: 29-October 05 Member No.: 7,908 |
If you read the fluff, you'd believe that. If you played previous incarnations of SR you'd believe that. But in SR4 the flechette rules just don't work that way. They are, bluntly put, the uber bullet. Even against a target in full body armor, you are more likely to do more damage with plain buckshot than a normal slug so long as you have the narrowest choke. And it makes me want to cry because I was raised on the old system of doubling impact armor against flechette. It is worse for using flechette in the place of normal small arm rounds. With shotguns there is a 3 point AP difference. With other guns the difference is merely 2 AP. In those cases flechette rounds are mathematically never worse than a normal bullets, without the use of edge. Even against cars, barriers, etc... I've seen two interpretations of flechette rounds. #1 is the old SR convention. #2 is the kind I've read about in some post-cyberpunk fiction literature where flechette is a kind of wonder bullet even against armored personel. I am fine with either. Really. I just don't like the mixed message I get when the fluff text comes from #1, but the rules seem to model #2. This post has been edited by Red: Mar 28 2006, 06:08 PM |
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Mar 28 2006, 05:55 PM
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#95
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Moving Target Group: Members Posts: 475 Joined: 13-March 06 From: dusty Mexican borderlands Member No.: 8,372 |
That's pretty simple to house-rule, though: double impact against flechette. |
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Mar 28 2006, 06:11 PM
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#96
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Target Group: Members Posts: 63 Joined: 21-October 04 Member No.: 6,778 |
I'm going to run my game using the default flechette rules and see how things fare.
I too am used to the old flechette rules indicating that they were basically useless against armor (in other words, just about everybody who you'd go up against). But I'm willing to accept that by 2070, somebody might have designed better flechette bullets that do a decent job of penetrating armor a little bit better while still remaining just as lethal as they were before when it came to hitting flesh. I figure that if there is such thing as EX Explosive ammo, flechettes in their new incarnation ain't no thang. |
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Mar 28 2006, 06:37 PM
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#97
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Great Dragon Group: Members Posts: 5,889 Joined: 3-August 03 From: A CPI rank 1 country Member No.: 5,222 |
Yeah, usually if you get hit with a rifle and all you've got is flexible body armor, you're fucked. I am really surprised of how many times close range rifle shots have been defeated by vests without rigid plates. Generally speaking, such armor is of very little use against rifles, not because of backface deformation but because it just doesn't stop the projectiles. I couldn't find a single mention of a rifle shot hitting rigid armor on the page, though. I would imagine that with non-fragmenting rifle plates the blunt trauma would be minimal. With shattering plates, I have no idea, although the fact that no NIJ rigid armor standard has limits for backface signature implies that it's not a problem. Most of the mentions of shotgun hits in the KSC seem to be of birdshot, which is considered a very poor for hunting humans. When it's a 12G with buckshot, most victims were hospitalized because of pellets that hit areas not covered by armor. Slugs might cause more serious nonpenetrating injuries, but most should be stopped by common armor vests. |
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Apr 2 2006, 11:03 AM
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#98
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Running Target Group: Members Posts: 1,405 Joined: 23-February 04 From: Honolulu, HI Member No.: 6,099 |
I was thinking along the lines of the North Hollywood incident back in 97. While the 2 gunman were so geared up in armor that they definately had movement penalties, they fired a thousand plus rounds, and were likely hit by what, hundreds themselves before someone got a lucky headshot on one, and the other apparently killed himself.
Essentially, they had no dodge abilities, since they couldn't move very well, which meant their absorption capabilities were off the chart compared to the damage output abilities of police forces. So armor must have had some serious deduction of stun type dmg, or they would have gotten KO'd much earlier right? |
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Apr 2 2006, 12:30 PM
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#99
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Immortal Elf Group: Members Posts: 11,410 Joined: 1-October 03 From: Pittsburgh Member No.: 5,670 |
indeed.
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Apr 2 2006, 03:18 PM
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#100
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panda! Group: Members Posts: 10,331 Joined: 8-March 02 From: north of central europe Member No.: 2,242 |
or they just rolled very good on their damage resistance :P
another option is that the armor they used crossed into the border of hardend armor, kinda like the critter power... we have yet to see the SR4 version of the cannon companion military armor... |
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