[X] My Assistant

[Kyoto Kid]

....WR, good points & this also applies (if not more) to melee. This is why the Short One (#102) has her Fists (Killing Hands w/Elemental Strike), Survival knives, and her Katana. Not every fight will be out in the open or a big warehouse.

This is also why I feel why the Dodge skill is still useful, for if in tight quarters (such as a lift or crowded room with a lot of obstacles) Gymnastics ain't going to do you much good.

[TheOneRonin]

KK, I'm guessing you are replying to me since I didn't find any posts by Wounded Ronin in this thread.

Man, one of us is going to have to change our name to stop the confusion. ;-)


Back on topic...KK, you are dead on. To me, part of the fun in table-top RPGs is trying to gather enough intel to anticipate which tools will serve you best in any given situation. A rule system should give value to almost all choices, depending upon the circumstances, and one choice shouldn't be universally better than another.

[The Jopp]

A simple solution to simulate the efficiency of a given weapon at different ranges how about a dicepool modifier?

The regular range modifier is (if i remember) 0/-1/-2/-3. Perhaps a modifier per weapon type should add or retract from this.

A shoulder fired weapon like a regular sports rifle/sniper rifle should perhaps get a -1 at short range and a +1 to long range. The problem is also that "short" range of said weapons can be rather long range. Pistols for example are easier to wield in close confinements and should perhaps gain a +1 at short and a -1 at long range. SMG's could have a binus at short/medium but more severe modifiers due to being innacurate at longer range.

Perhaps something like this?
Pistols: Short:+2 / Extreme: -2
SMG: Short:+1 / Extreme: -1
Assault Rifles: Short: -1 / Medium: +1
Rifles: Short: -2 / Extreme: +2
Shotguns: Short: +2 / Extreme: -2

Situational modifiers
Attacker fighting in cramped quarters: -1
Attacker using cumbersome weapon: -1

For example, a phanter cannon is large, loud, long and weights a ton (not literally) and weilding it might not be so easy.

Using the phanter cannon inside a cramped area (albeit giving cover) will make it troublesome moving about and aiming the weapon.

The above modifiers would then add to the regular range modifiers so a pistol shooting at extreme range would have a -4 instead of 3 and a bonus of +1D6 at short range.

This would most likely make people choose a weapon that suits the situation instead of lugging around the heaviest weapon they can find, and make smaller weapons a bit more favourable over heavy guns.

[kzt]

[TheOneRonin]

[Whipstitch]

My experience indicates that giving situational modifiers for guns doesn't really modify what guns people take into battle simply because you'd have to penalize pretty heavily before branching out into more than one firearm skill and dragging a second gun around is worth the points. Skills are damned expensive and once you can shoot someone well enough to get the job done in most situations there's little reason to take on another skill since you're not really gaining anything that lets you serve an appreciably different function. On the bright side, once you lower the cost of knowing how to use multiple firearms, a lot of people end up bringing appropriate weapons to the table just on sheer principle. Most people want to do what makes the most sense, it's just that sometimes games seem to punish them for it.

[The Jopp]

[kzt]

The whole skill table in the book is bad joke. You should buy one point of skill (so you are not defaulting) and buy up the attribute instead until you run out of points for attributes. Only then should you even think of buying more skills.

[Whipstitch]

No offense, but I think the skill table is pretty irrelevant. The li'l fluff chart giving you an idea of what skills ratings are common doesn't mean crap because the RAW rarely supports it on a systemic level and most importantly for the purposes of this discussion, it doesn't address the fact that knowing multiple firearm skills is usually a ticket straight to redundancy. Thanks to the way burst fire modes operate automatics and heavy weapons like LMGs and Assault rifles offer far more damage potential than long arms at short ranges through narrow bursts and offer comparable accuracy at long range thanks to wide bursts up until 800 and 550 meters respectively, so sniper rifles really only come into their own at extreme ranges LMGs can't even attempt (and even then they've got competition from HMGs and Panther Cannons). So again, knowing the full group offers some mild advantages in some scenarios, but that doesn't change the fact that it really is rather expensive as well as redundant since each skill just kills people in a slightly different manner in lieu of real diversity. Again, the only real effect I've seen from lowering the cost of firearms and the close combat groups in my games is that I see people bringing a wider variety of (but still roughly equivalent) tools into play more often. Certainly there isn't any more dice or overpowered characters being brought into play; if anything the dice pools end up being smaller as Samurai have less incentive to just go ahead and scoop up 6 automatics. I'm personally fine with all the weapons performing similarly since shadowrun is a goofy setting that learned everything it knows about firearms from John Woo and Chuck Norris films, but in exchange I don't think players should have to keep paying points for knowing the same song in a slightly different arrangement, and lowering the costs seems to be the quickest way towards gaining the appearance of diversity, which frankly, is all I'm really interested in.

This post has been edited by Whipstitch: Jan 22 2008, 08:51 PM

[Shrike30]

[Whipstitch]

Alternatively you can just ignore the stupid table that indicates that trained professionals with three skill can only buy a single success. I really don't understand why people hold the table so sancrosanct. How useful a dicepool of six is varies pretty widely from task to task in the shadowrun world. Equipment modifiers and varying thresholds and the like can go a fair bit towards equalizing things at certain ranges but in exchange they often trivialize easier tasks. At the end of the day you're a lot better off trying to figure out how many dice PCs and NPCs need to be to consistently perform the tasks you plan on them doing rather than consulting the silly table.

[Mercer]

[Whipstitch]

Yeah, I agree with the gist of what you're saying in theory, but the darn 10 bps is just too much of a sticking point for me. I think it's rather notable that there's a few other skill groups out there that contain 4 skills yet Firearms only contains 3. For example, at least with the Stealth group you get some demonstrably different skills; you get to sneak around, pick pocket, palm hold outs, shake pursuers and even impersonate body language, so each skill can broaden your role in appreciable ways; you can't just grab impersonation and say "Well, it's just as good as Palming 3/4s of the time". Compare that to Firearms, which only covers three skills that fill roughly the same role and doesn't even really offer comprehensive mastery of all things boomstick, and I think it's fairly reasonable to throw the guy in my group playing an armorer/weapon specialist PC who lovingly packs his own shells (he thinks caseless lacks "soul") a bone.

[Crusher Bob]

A quick fix might be adding the heavy weapons skill to the firearms group, since you need heavy weapons to use machine guns, grenade launchers, and similar small arms.

[Fuchs]

During military service, we rarely shot our assault rifles at full auto. We trained in aimed semi-automatic fire mostly, some rapid aimed semi-automatic fire, double-taps and the three-round-burst mode. Firing the HMG (M2 .50 BMG) was done in short bursts, our sarge went ballistic when one fired a quarter to half of one belt (105 rounds in one belt I think) in one burst once.

Granted, I was in mechanised artillery, not infantry.

[Cardul]

[Fortune]

[Cardul]

[Ryu]

But they have!

Common Modular Cyberware Plug-In in combination with a Monofilament-Chainsaw.

[Fortune]

And yes, before anyone bitches, I know it is not technically a 'metaphor'. I just couldn't think of better wording at the time. :P :D

[TheOneRonin]

[Mercer]

If he was being engaged from 100 meters away, wouldn't he still be fucked?

Granted, in the urban sprawl of SR, where more fights take place in gas station bathrooms than wide open spaces, this is less of an issue, but its one of the main reason my sammie owns a sport rifle. (I would agree that range in SR should probably be a little bit more punishing. Personally, I would go with -6 at Extreme Range, with Vision Mag reducing that by its rating, so the best you can have is -3 dice. But that's not the meeting we're having right now.)

Instead of changing the skills, I'd be more inclined to change how the weapons apply to them. For an Assault Rifle, fired in BF or FA it'd be the Automatics skill, fired in SA it'd be Longarms. Machine Pistols fired in SA are Light Pistols, fired in BF or FA, their Automatics. But I haven't really thought about this for very long, so it might just cause more problems. (Also, I apologize if anyone has already mentioned this, but I joined late.)

[Critias]

That's how an old CP:2020 supplement (Hardwired, based on the novel of the same name) did it.

You had Long Guns (rifles, assault rifles, and shotguns fired in semi-auto or slower), Pistols (anything one handed, pretty much, fired semi-auto or slower), and Automatics (anything fired in burst or full auto). Voila. That was it.

[Wounded Ronin]

[Whipstitch]