Game level, Why must it be street? Options

[DTFarstar]

*sigh* I keep feeling like I should comment here, but Khadim and Frank have covered all the points I would make, and quite ably I might add. It makes me glad to see you both posting actively again. If only DocFunk would come back as well, I could be truly happy for DS.

Anyway, I just wanted to chime in agreeing with Khadim and Frank and to let you guys know someone appreciates the contribution and is watching trying to help.

Chris

[martindv]

[mfb]

[Crusher Bob]

I'll have to come down more on Cain's side of this argument, mostly because SR4 allows characters to be so far beyond maximum human ability.

For example:
We have pedestrian defaulting from agility to shoot you, and rolling 2 dice.
We compare her to, say, Carlos Hathcock, rolling 15 dice (AGL 6, Longarm 7, Specialty +2)
Gunny Hathcock is 14 dice better than the pedestrian.

Now, we compare, the munched out elven gun-bunny adept (Agl 12, Skill 10, specialty 2) + a smart link, giving him 26 dice.
This puts him at 12 dice over Gunny Hathcock.

So when this guy shoots, he makes Hathcock looks like a pedestrian defaulting to agility in comparison.

Now, consider such a difficult shot, that even Hathcock would hard trouble doing it, with around -12 dice in penalties. He's got two dice left over, and basically no one else in the world could do that shot.

The gun-bunny, doing the same shot has 14 dice left over. So basically he shoots as well as as Hathcock when he is holding the gun to your head.

Next, we'll consider a shot that Hathcock couldn't make, even on hit luckiest day (we'll ignore the problems with the longshot test and just assume edge add dice. We'll assume Hatchcock is quite lucky and give him an edge of 6. This means that he finds shot impossible at penalties of -20. The gun bunny still has 6 dice left over, he can do this shot quite easily.

Once you get beyond human ability, you can't rely on common sense to tell you what you can or can't do. Sure no human can punch through an inch of armor steel, but can superman? You have to rely on the rules to tell you what you can and can't do, and the SR4 rules say that once you get 20+ dice in a skill, you can do a whole lot.

The skill levels available in SR4 seem to fit better into exalted where you get results like "Convince the hostile crowd at your execution to overrun the guards, set you free, and become the fanatically loyal core of your liberating army" are par for the course.

[martindv]

That's probably why the Attribute+Skill vs. Fixed TN mechanic is used in Exalted.

[Cthulhudreams]

[Kyoto Kid]

...tried to hit Hesty in the face once, didn't work...retired character when she bacame another nameless minion.

[toturi]

[Cain]

[Glyph]

[Cthulhudreams]

Nah, you can burn permanent edge to bust out of that, what could possibly go wrong? (Also: I was being stupid to demonstrate the absurdities of this argument. I will indeed ramp up the stupid in this post.)

On a more serious note, the main thrust of my argument was that letting those stupid longshots exists is the same as allowing you to shoot at things when you don't even have to know if any possible target exists or not, nor where it is.

For example, longshot on an buttoned up APC. If you look at a M113 - a pretty standard APC, vietnam era, you've seen it on the news - if the APC is buttoned up (and its a later model without firing ports), it is not possible to see if there is a driver, or a passenger, or indeed anyone else in the vehicle. It is NBC sealed, though it may just use overpressure so possibly not airtight, but it is certainly LOS obscuring. In the world of shadowrun, there does not even need to be anyone in the vehicle to drive it either so movement does not imply the existence of a driver, or if you extend the 'rigger' rigging it to be the 'driver' they do not have to be on the same continent.

Thus we are presented with two absurdist situations:

If a rigger using AR to control the APC like a radio controlled car in australia does not count as the driver of an APC in America, then you are allowing Mr Lucky to take longshots against abstract concepts (specifically, a component of his conceptual model of how APCs work) without any proof of a particular instantiation. I'd suggest you get right on shooting platonic concepts and internet memes, particularly lolcats.

If the rigger does count as the driver, Mr lucky aim at the american based APC, take the shot which will then complete a transatlantic crossing and hits the rigger in a hermetically sealed concrete bunker right in the face, in less than 3 seconds!

(there's probably a third case, in which the GM lets him do it if it really does have a driver, and doesn't if it doesn't. But in that case your gun has just turned into a magical divining rod, and you just need to wander around with your pistol taking longshots at the point at which you can start a hugely profitable mine with no risk or something else equally silly.)

Of course the logical conclusion is the GM to ban the shot as discretion is specifically invoked for this particular rule, but that option seems prohibited?

[mfb]

[Cthulhudreams]

No, shooting through the window of an armoured limo is not particularly fantastic, but just extremely difficult. I'm not sure people would be crying so hard about that. But shooting through the armour of an APC with a pistol at a target you cannot see or know if it exists is an extremely wacky edge case.

[mfb]

no, it's not a wacky edge case. a wacky edge case is one that's incredibly unlikely to ever come up in a campaign--a pregnant woman surviving a fall out of an airplane without a parachute, for instance. shooting at someone you can't see, through vehicle armor or not, is neither wacky nor an edge case.

[Cthulhudreams]

I didn't say merely 'you cannot see' they might have just ducked behind cover, and the long shot can be easily rationalized as 'well you wing him with a lucky shot before he ducks away' or something I'm not even sure I care (for example the sniping the guy in the boat with the HMG case, cool, nice trick, whatever, I'd probably let the PCs do that, though it is a bit stupid.)

I did say 'you cannot see, nor do you know if it exists' which is a really important difference. A contrasting example: Guy ducks behind an armored barrier and you longshot him. Okay, likely to come up in a game, don't mind the lucky shot, whatever.

Taking the same shot 10 minutes later against 'the guy who ducked behind the barricade' not okay - you have no idea where he is, this is completely absurd (is any player ever going to do that? ever?) and a wacky edge case.

[mfb]

it's still not a wacky edge case. people do it in real life all the time. it's called 'searching fire'. you shoot at a spot you suspect a bad guy might be in. if he falls over and dies, or shoots back, then you found him. if not, you haven't (or maybe he's just really cool under fire).

[Cthulhudreams]

Called shots are described as 'specifically aiming at vulnerable points of a target' ie not searching fire in any way, because searching fire is a series of gunshots in a pattern in an attempt to route out a hostile position.

Taking the long shot mechanic as used here to enable a really specific called shot and then rebranding as searching fire is being a bit generous. Searching fire is most closely matched to suppressive fire and we both know it, or potentially blind fire through a barrier, which we are also doing here, but only in combination with highly specific called shots.

So no, longshots are not the best mechanical fit for searching fire, and if someone is using searching fire they need another mechanic.

[Fuchs]

In the M113 case, the sniper would shoot at the location where the driver would be sitting if he was in there. I'd probably allow for a (military knowledge: Vehicles) roll to determine if the sniper knows where the driver would sit, if he could know such a thing (like, if all M113 of one series had driver controls moved to the center of the vehicle when they were upgraded to rigger controls). If he hits well enough, then he'd hit where the driver would be sitting if he's there. He'd not suddenly hit a driver sitting in the central area if he aimed at the left forward area.

For searching fire, I usually just roll a die for random chance.

[Cthulhudreams]

yeah but suddenly hitting someone of whom you have no idea of their position of existence is indeed being discussed, not shooting a particularly point in space and hoping that is occupied.

Edit: Another arbitary way to look at it.

A boeing 747 simulator encased in a 10 foot thick hollow sphere of concrete. inside are two pilots at two sets of controls who are taking successive turns to train on the simulator, but who are physically a distance apart.

Some people (cain) are saying that Mr lucky can pick up a gun, and without knowing where either person is, or that there are two of them, or who is controlling the simulator at the moment declare he is shooting the person who is currently controlling the simulator and hit him despite the solid sphere of concrete.

Other people (me) are disagreeing.

[mfb]

Cthulhudreams, you responded to my post, so my assumption was that you were responding to what i said rather than continuing your own argument in the guise of a response. i see now that this is not the case.

in the case of shooting at the 'driver' of a rigged vehicle, the logical option would be to assume that the player is shooting at the spot that a driver who was physically driving the vehicle would be sitting. the character would be perfectly free to take that shot, and if he rolled well, he would put a bullet right through the spot the driver would be sitting if said driver were physically present in the vehicle. your option would require the GM to throw out both common sense and the rules, since the range of a pistol is somewhat less than the distance between the US and Australia. the longshot rules do not allow for exceeding the range of a weapon.

as for my point, it stands--attempting to shoot at a target you can't see, through vehicle armor or not, is hardly a wacky edge case that should require careful GM consideration.

[FrankTrollman]

[mfb]

Cain's basic complaint, which people keep derailing, is that Edge makes the unimaginably impossible easy. i would add that you don't even need Edge for that in SR4, but that's a whole 'nother argument.

[FrankTrollman]

[Cain]

mfb has it essentially correct. People are getting too caught up in the minutae of the example, and missing the forest for the trees. Everyone else seems to be ignoring The Shot Heard Round the Barrens example, which is mechanically more difficult, yet only one person has made a halfhearted complaint about it. I'd think more people would notice the fact that it's easier to shoot down a Citymaster than it is to make an extended-range shot, under essentially the same conditions.

The whole point is, after a certain point (which is easy to get to) you may as well pile on the penalties for extra effect, since they don't affect your chance of success. The called shot is just an easy excuse to put a -20 modifier into the example; the technically-legal armor bypass is just a nifty bonus. As I understand it, mfb's point is that you don't even need to go that far to break the system; someone throwing around 20-30 dice can do that on a regular basis.

EDIT:

[hyzmarca]