Damage to objects? Options

[sorcel]

Anyone have rules of thumb for damage to objects?

For example:

1. A sammy accidently drops his Ares Predator IV off a roof. What's left when it hits the 'crete? SR4 gives rules for falling damage, but nothing for the *amount* of damage an item can take.

2. A hacker is unhappily caught in the blast radius of a High Explosive Grenade. How might one figure the odds of the hacker's uber-expensive commlink being roasted in the blast? Obviously we have rules for calculating damage to the person, but what about damage to the gear that person is carrying?

3. An katana-wielding adept tries to chop his opponent's shotgun in half. How should the defender roll his defense? Reaction + Dodge? What if, instead of a shotgun, the defender was holding a petunia? In other words, how would object hardness play into the equation? Some sort of Armor rating, maybe?

Of course, there's also the possibility that all this stuff is in the book and I'm just not seeing it... in which case, maybe point me to a page, or even a section?

Thanks!

-S

[James McMurray]

1) figure up a good barrier rating for the device and use the barrier rules, although in your example I'd just say the gun was trashed if the roof was higher than a story or two.

2) Unless there's a botch or critical botch no damage should be done to the gear. Mainly because it's too much of a hassle for too little return.

3) Again use the barrier rules. If it's a weapon I'd let them make opposed weapon rolls to determine if the gun was hit and what the base damage would be. Reaction + dodge for everything else.

[Austere Emancipa...]

I haven't got rules of thumb, but I think I can handle the examples.

[sorcel]

[Austere Emancipa...]

Sorry. I just feel such answers are necessary as long there are people out there who think katanas can actually slice through thick, hardened ferrous metal items.

There's no disarming rule in SR4? (I can't even remember if there's one in SR3.) Else James McMurray's advice seems about right.

[James McMurray]

There may be a disarming rules, I can't recall either. But this isn't exactly disarming. If there is a rule for it, use those rolls instead and then apply net hits as damage to the object.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Yep, that's exactly what I was thinking.

[Dragonscript]

What if you gave the object like a tiny or small drone? Just modify the rules a bit.

[James McMurray]

If it's a drone then it has stats, including armor and body. If it's really small I'd try to extrapolate the numbers.

IIRC the numbers given for breaking through a barrier are for creating a 1m x 1m hole, while the numbers given for penetrating the barrier are for making a tiny hole. If the damage dealt falls between the two levels a general idea of how hurt the object is can be had.

[sorcel]

[sorcel]

[James McMurray]

Weapon damaging capability vs. objects is handled in the barriers section. It looks like the Destroying Barriers section fits this situation best. I would modify the effective Structure Rating based on the size of the item. A few off the cuff and probaly horrible examples:

Stupid scientist A is holding a small ballistic glass beaker filled with a genetically engineered virus that can only kill him. Cocky Physad B thinks it would be funnier to break the vial instead of just hackign the poor scientist to bits. They make their rolls and the physad (after rolling for soak) deals 1 damage to the vial. Ballistic glass has a structure rating of 5, but that's for a 1m hole. A beaker is a tiny percentage of a 1m square, so the 1 damage is probably enough to break it.

Same scientist, instead its a gun and a clear armored glass beaker (hey, it holds his death, and he's a bit paranoid about it). This time the weapon's base damage is only 2 because it's a bullet vs. a barrier. Armored glass has a structure rating of 9, so I'd probably require at least 2 damage be dealt, which with a base 2DV vs. 16 armor is going to be tough to pull off.

For the rope example I'd give a major dice pool penalty to the shot, or perhaps increase the rope's effective armor and structure ratings to account for the difficulty of the shot.

[James McMurray]

Just looked at the called shot / disarm rules. I'd apply the -4 dice pool penalty to the attack, plus another -2 because you're not just trying to hit it well enough to break someone's grasp, you're trying to hit it well enough to break the object.

Situational modifiers might also come into play. For example, trying to sunder a CD held in someone's hand will be much harder than trying to do it to a baseball bat because there's a lot less area on a CD for you to hit.

[sorcel]

[James McMurray]

Sounds good, although that adept's katana will be ruined long before he'll cut that tree down. :)

[Nim]

The lack of rules for damaging non-barrier objects is a bit of a hole - it came up in a different thread in connection with there not being rules for attacking active foci via astral combat. I think you're right that the barrier rules can be adapted to it easily enough, but it'd be nice if they tossed in a paragraph or so on the subject..some guidelines on picking the right barrier/structure ratings, etc. Wouldn't take much. It could maybe even be snuch into the errata, since it's an amplification rather than a change.

[James McMurray]

Structure ratings might be a bit difficult to define, but barrier ratings are based on the item's material and usually easy to pull from the chart.

[Dread Polack]

To borrow a term from another RPG, I'll call this "sundering."

To sunder a held item, I'd call it a called shot with a penalty of -1 (a guitar case) to -4 (a pistol). Then, I'd have the attacker do damage to the object using the barrier rules. I'd try not to let it get any more complicated than that.

Doing enough damage could completely destroy the object. At the very least, I'd inflict a -1 dice pool penalty to the user of an object per point of damage done. Electronics could be disrupted, the barrel could get bent slightly, etc.

I think disarming can either be trying to finesse an object out of someone's hand, to simply trying to violently knocking it out of their hand, to inflicting enough pain on the hand/arm to get the holder to drop the item. I think sundering could either be easier or harder than disarming, depending on what the appropriate disarming technique is. Of course, in interest of simplicity, we just use the same disarming rules for all 3 techniques.

As for chopping a barrel off a shotgun- I think a monofiliment blade could do it. I also think a high-tech constructed katana could possibly do it.

Dread Polack

[James McMurray]

[Austere Emancipa...]

I agree that, assuming 1) leaps in material technology occur that are only barely imaginable today, with advances directly applicable to bladed melee weapons; 2) the shotgun is held in place so as to be completely immovable; 3) the person wielding the sword is extremely strong, and the sword is made very heavy yet insanely thin, a shotgun barrel could be chopped in half. It is also possible with the simple assumption that things don't have to make sense.

[Shrike30]

I've seen a Glock 21 that's survived being run over, dragged behind a car for a while, tossed off a roof, shot with a .22 (in the metal slide, not the polymer frame), and dropped out of an airplane into a field. Amusingly, the thing that interfered with it's ability to function the most wasn't the drop breaking the gun, but the sudden deceleration flattening the cases on all of the rounds on the downwards side of the magazine when it hit, causing every other round to fail to feed. A change of magazine would fix that problem.

Some guns can withstand incredible amounts of abuse. Others aren't built so hot... a big dent in the side of the reciever can cause the bolt to fail to cycle, or the barrel can be crushed by an impact. However, if the frame holds up to the impact (that is, the gun doesn't shatter it's stock or split the frame open on impact), most of the internals shouldn't move too much.

In other words, I wouldn't want to toss an AK-97 off a rooftop then have to use it afterwards, but I'd at least give it a try.

As for cutting a shotgun in half... sure, go for it. Just make sure the GM picks an appropriately high-strength material for the gun to be made out of.

[Austere Emancipa...]

Oh I'd have a lot more confidence in an AK-97's ability to withstand a drop from a roof than in a Predator's. :) An AK should handle it fine as long as it doesn't drop on it's barrel, who cares if the stock or the sights get busted.

[sorcel]

[sorcel]

[Edward]

Things get more confusing with the chop a gun with a sword.

Consider somebody with a clamor attacking a shotgun in somebody’s hand.

It is quit improbable that he will chop the gun in half (not braced and all that) but he could easily dent or bend the barrel, making the weapon useless.

What about spell verses weapon, my semi pacifist mage is not above power bolting enemies guns, or wrestling them away with a force 8 magic fingers spell, or at least I would not be if I had the foggiest idea how you would resolve such an action