Hiding behind vehicle, How do you handle it? Options

[deek]

This has come up in my last few sessions and I haven't felt entirely comfortable with how I have ruled it.

Basically, we get into a gun fight and the grunts jump behind a parked vehicle. What I normally have been doing is applying the -1 penalty for attacking from cover and when targeted, giving them anything from partial to good cover (and sometimes blind fire, if they are not visible at all).

But based on all I can find, that grunt, 100% hidden, is only causing a -6 blind fire penalty to the attacker. Shouldn't a vehicles armor factor into this?

Reading the rules, you get that for "passengers" on/in the vehicle, but I don't see anything for hiding behind it.

Now, there are barrier rules to shoot through things, which an attacker would have to do to hit someone completely hidden behind a vehicle, but trying to use the structure/armor ratings there, seem a bit overkill when you already have body/armor ratings for a vehicle.

So, my question is, how are other GMs handling this?

[Zak]

Usually handwaving. (I know, it's bad. But it's convinient) If someone got total cover by a heavy object like a car or a newspaper stand I usually describe that the object gets worked up pretty bad and leave it at that.
In case of APDS and the like I reduce the damage by whatever feels right depending what part of the object gets hit (in case of a car that's between what a passenger gets up to doubling that value)

[DireRadiant]

Do one or the other. Shoot at the barrier to destroy it, then shoot the target, or shoot the target with penalties.

If you want to make it a single roll and add modifiers in addition to the blind fire you can do that as well, but then you are going to use your judgement for how much more difficult it is.

[eidolon]

If I were going to allow hitting a character hiding behind a vehicle, I'd treat it as firing through a barrier, using the vehicle's Armor as the barrier rating. Although technically you could say that the Armor would count twice (through the door, out the other door for example), that might be overkill. I'd have to look it over.

As far as it goes though, unless they're using anti-vehicular weapons, I'd probably just treat it as cover. Shooting from it gives you a -1, shooting at someone with cover gives you a -4, and ignore the blind fire rules when dealing with cover (as opposed to concealment), if something is 100% protected, you can't hit it. Move to a better position or use an area weapon.

These are just my half-baked thoughts at the moment though. If I were to look at the numbers and think about it some more, I might change parts of it.

[FriendoftheDork]

Well normal cars ain't gonna provide much cover, just mostly concealment. Thus -4 is the best I'd give for hiding behind a car.


If trying to ignore the cover I'd check damage against the vehicle's hardnened armor - if it penetrates you hit the target, but he still gets the vehicles armor in bonus dice on top of his own body+armor. The advantage would be to halve the penalty from above, and if someone was totally covered I'd appy blind fire as well.

Not that I bother to check EVERY shot, a shot from regular ammo predator is NOT going to penetrate concrete walls.

[JBlades]

Honestly, in RL, the only part of a normal car that provides "hard cover" is the engine block. Anything else is generally just concealment and maybe a light barrier. Armored cars are a different story, of course...

As for how someone ducked completely behind a car gets shot without the bullet passing through the car, the answer is probably "in the foot". :)

[JBlades]

Also keep in mind that cars are generally only complete(ish) cover for small to moderately sized humans. Orks and trolls, and maybe elves because of their height, will find crouching completely behind a car to be a bit tough. Most cars are lower than you think when trying to get your head completely below window height. SUVs are the way to go!

[Fortune]

[Mercer]

The other part of this is if people are hiding behind cars, if you shoot at them and the cover causes you to miss, some of those rounds are probably hitting the car. This doesn't matter so much if its just a car parked on a street, but if its the runner's car, or the car they're trying to steal, how much damage the car takes is important.

If the runners are trying to miss the vehicle but hit the people behind it, its not problem. The cover causes their rounds to go high (unless the glitch or crit glitch, the latter I might start calling a "clitch" due to a typo I just corrected). But if the enemy doesn't care and are just spraying the general vicinity of the car and hoping to hit the runners when they poke their heads out, then it would make sense to figure out what the rounds that are hitting the car are doing.

Resolve it as a base damage attack against the vehicle? Have the attackers make a second test? How do you represent that a stray round may have severed a fuel line, or something equally important?

[Fortune]

[Mercer]

GM fiat can seem... cheap in some situations. If you're blowing up the rigger's Eurocar Westwind (for the sheer perverse thrill of it), its nice to do it in a rules-supported way.

[lunchbox311]

what guns do to cars
http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/thebuickotruth.htm




what they do to everything else
http://www.theboxotruth.com/docs/theboxotruth.htm




I usually apply the good cover (-4) if you use a vheicle, and give the armor bonus if trying to fire through it.

I do agree though, if you are not participating in the combat and just hiding, i will give the attacker blind fire and the armor bonus.

[Cheops]

Wow...that was pretty eye opening. Sure blows the hell out of Hollywood huh?

[JBlades]

I saw stuff similar to the first link there when I was at the PD, hence my comments about the engine block being about the only thing on a car that stops a bullet.

Some cool stuff on that site, thanks!

[kzt]

Of course, in SR world the ultra-efficient lightweight cars are covered in armor that has no mass or performance impact and doesn't cost anything.

[Mercer]

I saw and interesting episode of Man, Moment and Machine on the History Channel that was about Bonnie and Clyde. At the time, law enforcement was using Thompson machine guns which fired a .45cal pistol round. Barrow was using a modified BAR, which fired a 30.06 rifle round. They mentioned that while the Thompson rounds tended not to penetrate, the BAR could easily shoot through vehicles (and this being the 30's, the vehicles were probably more sturdy than ones made today of lightweight plastic and metal).

I'd still like to see some sort of mechanic to determine how much damage a vehicle (or anything, I guess) takes from being shot through.

[Tarantula]

I'd call it thusly. -2 to -4 for partial to good cover, and they can shoot the grunt regularly. If -6 for total cover, they can shoot the grunt by attempting to shoot through the car, barrier rating is car body, armor is car's armor. If they succeed (with the -6 penalty for blind fire) then see if they make it through the car, if they do, the character takes the damage. If they don't, the car takes it.

If they miss, the miss the car and the person entirely.

[Sir_Psycho]

Of course you can still take pretty good cover behind the near impenetrable engine block.

[Mercer]

Part of the problem is that SR vehicles are like big lumps of clay, the Body and Armor rating is the same no matter where you shoot. Shooting through cars seems pretty academic anyway; if a Eurocar Westwind and a Mercury Comet both have Body 10's and Armor 6's, taking a -6 penalty to your attack to give your opponent a +16 to his Armor doesn't seem particularly helpful.

Which is fine with me. If you're packing something that can shoot through cars-- like the Newcomer punks robbing the liquor store at the beginning of Alien Nation--then it might matter, most of the time it won't. I guess mechanically its pretty similar to using a person as a meat shield; and incoming attack has to exceed their armor and body rating (my old group always used Body as barrier ratings, dating back to that run in Super Tuesday where we woke up in a lab being taken over by terrorists and had to fight our way out using mostly dead terrorists as shields). A troll and a Eurocar Westwind are pretty similar for shooting through purposes, it turns out.

I'd still like a relatively simple and neat mechanic for determining if rounds fired at someone behind cover damages the cover, for those times people hide behind valuable things. Maybe it'd just be on glitches and clitches, with a glitch being a base damage attack against the vehicle, and a crit glitch being more than that. (Staged up by the number of one's, or just double DV, something like that to represent the bullet or bullets hitting a crucial vehicle component, with the vehicle resisting as normal.)

[Falconer]

Just like kzt said. In shadowrun, armor is a fact of life. Even the clothes are armored... it makes sense that the transportation is going to be constructed out of some tough materials as well.

That's my take on things... so shooting through the car would be as shooting through a barrier. If they're hiding and partially exposed... that's what the called shot rules are for aren't they... As sated above... -6 attack, +16 damage resist, is a pretty poor option compared to just -4 target has heavy concealment. (-4 penalty to shoot at the portionts of him which aren't concealed).

[Thanee]

I think all (at least most) vehicles in the SR4 book also have an armor rating, so that's pretty much a given.

When shooting at someone fully concealed behind a car, I would give appropriate bonuses to armor and only allow it, if the shot is capable of penetrating the car's vehicle armor, of course.

Bye
Thanee

[Sir_Psycho]

Anyone ever shot a fuel tank in SR? How would it work?

And wouldn't you use Called Shots to (at least partially) bypass the cars body/armor eg. Shooting through the windscreen.