I have found a community that kicks butt! Options

[Raavek]

I don't know about the rules of this forum, but I decided to leave the word "ass" out of the title of this post, but I'll say it again. This community kicks ass.

I have had a ton of people send me IMs saying they would be more than happy to help me out with my session, which is MUCH appreciated. Only problem is, we didn't really get started Saturday. So far my group consists of 4 other players and myself. Last saturday they came over, and I let them all know my rule where I was going to not use resourced as first is now nullified, they were scouring the book, learning rules and whatnot.

I went out and photocopied some important charts and whatnot out of the book, plus the pre-made characters to test run this week/weekend. I also printed off one of the missions that I found online. Since I am new to this, I kind of did an eenie-meenie-minee-mo on it and just nabbed one. Looks like it might be a decent mission to playtest. I am going to have them run this mission (which they can get a total of 7 karma off of if everything goes right) and let them carry over all karma they get with using the premades in this mission to their actual characters.

But I do have a dessenter in the group. He argues minus dice to your total dicepool doesn't make sense.

(I think he is still stuck in Vampire mode; in Vampire, you have a difficulty system with d10 dice. Roll 5 dice, dif 7, all 7,8,9,10 are hits, anything below don't count, all 1s negate a die) He states that the dice modifiers don't make sense for people who don't min max, and he cited the rules for full auto as an example. He states that just to pop off a full auto, that is -9 dice right there, minus any further factors.

His reasoning this doesn't make sense is this: He relates it to why real life terrorists use fully automatics. He says that terrorists arn't normally formally trained, so they throw AKs at them, using the logic AK-47s spit out more bullets, thus making it easier to hit something. He says keep in mind the level the book says is professional is 3, so taking that plus 3 agility = 6, minus just the -9 dice, and you are left with just 1 dice to roll with with a fully automatic hellstorm.

Now, granted, I've fired a fully automatic weapon in FA more before, and yeah, they are a pain to handle. If you spray and pray, I think 1 dice reflects this pretty accurately. I personally like the way the game operates, but he seems to think that it isn't balanced. He also states you have a pretty high chance of rolling a glitch with just 1 dice, which you do. I told him if you critical glitch on a 1 dice roll, I would be a bit more lenient with the outcome of a glitch. For example, if you have 10 dice to roll with, and you critical glitch, man luck really doesn't like you today, and something extremely bad happens (IE gun exploding, innocents shot, something REALLY bad). With 1 dice roll, i would chalk that more up to chance. (gun jam, maybe shoot a team mate if they are being stupid and running near the area of fire)

I am at work now, and I will post a bit more here in a few minutes...to be continued

[Nightwalker450]

Welcome to Dumpshock (also my favorite time killer at work)

Its a -9 from recoil. Recoil Compensators pick this up. Also if you do a full burst its -9 to your defenders dicepool, so as long as you have a few dice to roll you're usually way ahead of them. If you are exceptionally skill, or have a significant amount of this recoil compensated it'll do +9 DV (which wipes out most things pretty easily).

But there's always cover fire, which doesn't suffer any -9, and allows you a chance to hit everyone within a 20 meter wide area. And everyone inside can just roll edge + Reaction.

So the FA attacks are actually pretty well balanced.

[Speed Wraith]

Ah, OWoD, eh? NWoD system uses negative dice penalties, as did the first edition of OWoD, IIRC...

Terrorists don't use Kalashnakovs because of the RoF, they use them because they bought them dirt cheap twenty years ago and they were handed down through the generations (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

[imperialus]

That's also before factoring in any sort of recoil comp though. Add a Gas Vent III and a shoulder stock (most assault rifles already have these) and you're rolling 5 dice. Full auto is rarely used to target an individual. It's something you use if you see a head pop up in a window and want to force him to keep his head down, maybe hit him if you're lucky.

My dad works in the middle east (Yemin) and he's seen the effect that AK's have. These are in the hands of folks that grew up with them so they are probably pretty familiar with how they work. Even then though when the tribes fight there are rarely that many casualties, excepting unusual circumstances. I think that 'terrorists' are probably better trained than your friend assumes. If anything full auto actually suggests poor formal training. If you actually want to hit something then you're going to be trained to fire short, accurate bursts not flip to full auto. I'm not 100% sure but hasn't the US military removed the full auto selector from their M-16s?

[Bearclaw]

Terrorists and other rabble use the AK on full auto because no one ever taught them right. There's a reason why the M16A2 doesn't even do full auto.

Anyway, welcome and good luck with your campaign.

[Raavek]

Bah stuck on a stupid issue at work, but a quick reply:

That was my logic too. I rarely see trained soldiers actually doing fully automatic fire, and almost always doing singleshot and burst type firing. You might be able to spit more bullets out, but how accurate? I also told him about the recoil modifier, and he brought up the rule of heavy weapons doubling recoild, so I countered with "I'd like to see you fire a fully automatic 50cal death machine without any mounts"

Bah back to work, I wanna jump into this convo

[Adarael]

I'd like to see someone try to fire a 50 cal without mounting it on something, PERIOD.

[CircuitBoyBlue]

First of all, you can, as already mentioned, do suppressive fire. Second, you can do wide bursts. Yes, you still take the -9, but the other guy gets a -9 to dodge, as well. So it kind of reduces the intensity of a firefight by putting everybody's Dice Pools at a much lower number, which generally shakes out to lots of bullets flying around and few people actually dying. Terrorists love this, because in a situation where everybody's operating at full capacity, the untrained terrorist is at somewhat of a disadvantage against a trained squad of counter-terrorists. Third, terrorists love things that are flashy and make lots of noise. If you fire an AK-47 on full auto into the air, most civilians are going to think: "oh my god! These guys are armed to the teeth and mean business!" while the professionals brought in to stop you are going to recognize it for what it is: mostly harmless posturing by untrained radicals. Both reactions are what the typical terrorist is going for. The civilians are suitably impressed/scared, and the cops know that they don't absolutely need to put a bullet in your skull right this instant (which they could do if they wanted, but will try to avoid). Now, go in with a tiny little pistol and put it to someone's head instead of just firing in the air, and it's a radically different scenario.

Anyway, those are just some of the reasons I imagine revolutionaries and terrorists love AK-47s. That, and it looks cool.

[Moon-Hawk]

Welcome to Dumpshock.
If you want to represent the unskilled terrorist using full-auto to hit something, that's better represented by the suppressive fire rules.
Alternately, they could be using full auto to make three 3-round bursts. The first one might actually hit something, and the second two are there because, as others have said, no one taught them how to handle an assault rifle properly. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
There are many, many ways I can count off the top of my head to represent "goin' all full-auto on some punk". Full burst, three short bursts, long burst plus short burst, short burst plus long burst, and suppressive fire. If you do wide vs narrow bursts, that brings the number of permutations up to...um...19 different ways? I think. Anyway, the point is, there are many, many crunchy ways to represent the fluff of shooting lots of bullets at someone. In any given situation, many of them will be bad, a few will be comparable, and maybe one or two show up as optimal. There being more than one crunchy way to accomplish the same action may bother some people, but IMO this is a feature of the system, not a bug.
The fluff is: "untrained terrorist fires AK47 on full auto", your player is choosing a sub-optimal way of representing that will the rules. Several of those other options will give better results, and depending on the situation some of those options will have him doing better than if he were firing single shots.
The 10-shot full burst option is for people who have a lot of recoil compensation and are either trying to hit Shifty McDodge with a wide burst or maybe drop a single high-body/armor (non-hardened) enemy, like a Troll with dermal plating, security armor, and an armor spell (who might just shrug off each of 3 short bursts) with a narrow burst.

[imperialus]

Also for the record, it is entirely possible to build a character who uses full auto. It isn't even that hard. A cyberarm gyromount, nice gas vents and some other recoil comp lets you fire off a lot of very accurate rounds. One of my favorite recent PC's was a combat hacker who used a machine pistol as his primary weapon. He could keep pace damage wise with other PC's who had bigger guns but at the same time he didn't need to lug around an Ares Alpha either.

You just need to build a PC with that in mind.

[Muspellsheimr]

I have never fired fully automatic weapons myself, but have spoken to people who have (including one of my martial arts instructors - also a retired police officer) and the general consensus is, if the choice is SA, BF, or FA, they hope the enemy is using FA. Shadowrun reflects this fairly well, making it very difficult to target with FA, but if you are good enough / have enough compensation, it can be deadly. It's primary use however is for suppressive fire.

As for the guy complaining, tell him to accept the rules or get out (IMG:style_emoticons/default/devil.gif)

[Raavek]

It is hard to play the devils advocate here when I agree with what you all are saying, but he would respond with "They would at least be able to hit at least some of the time." Well, yeah, with 1 dice you can do that.

One thing I do notice is this, if you aim a fully automatic weapon at something, the first bullet will probably go where you aim at, now for the rest, well that is iffy. Is there any rule that reflects the first bullet having a higher chance at hitting its mark than the rest of the bullets?

[Speed Wraith]

Sure, you get an aim bonus for a Take Aim action (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif) Seriously, the rules don't say that it only applies to single shots.

[vladski]

Raavek,

Cool! It sounds like you have a darn good handle on the game. As for your "dissenter" I would tell him "Hey, let's jsut learn and play the game as is. See how everything goes." If he persists and it really drags down the game, at some point I would stop inviting him to hte session. Now, if this is all post-game chitter, then it's no big deal. All of us like to sit and discuss the rules. Otherwise, Dumpshock would jsut be a place to post... I don't know what... links to pictures of adorable kittens? (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Also, I think you'll discover that most of the time Full Auto is not something most characters ever do. Honestly, I can't think of a single time any PC in my games has EVER let off a stream of full auto. Obviously, other's milage will vary here.

I think your decision to run them all on Sample characters for the first go is a wise one. They'll have a much better idea of the character they really want to be when they create them. Carrying over h te karma is good in my book too. Also, I like the forethought you've put in handling Critical Glitches. A good GM takes in all the factors before taking action. A good GM usually isn't trying to kill his player's characters. It's much more rewarding to play a character over many sessions and let them grow and develop and become "real" people. You know they have when the players start sitting around and reminiscing about "Remember that time when Lefty..." It's at that point it's time to kill him. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/ork.gif)

Vlad

[Speed Wraith]

Also, I think you'll discover that most of the time Full Auto is not something most characters ever do. Honestly, I can't think of a single time any PC in my games has EVER let off a stream of full auto. Obviously, other's milage will vary here.

Once, that I can think of, in SR2 while playing Missing Blood. That was more of a reactionary thing than thinking in terms of practicality. Other than that, I'm excited to see my players use suppression fire, but I'm not expecting them to FA without investing in a gyromount or using a vehicle-mounted LMG...

[CircuitBoyBlue]

The SR rules abstract individual shot. Basically, there's no such thing in Shadowrun as an individual shot within an automatic burst. You are not firing 10 bullets, you are firing 1 full auto burst, which just happens to take up 10 bullets. I've seen people experiment with more detailed run-downs of what each bullet is doing, but it's never worked out well, because there was too much math involved, and it slowed everything down to the point where the combat was not enjoyable. And combat is supposed to be enjoyable.

[kigmatzomat]

AK's are common weapons for two design reasons.

1. Anatoly Kalashnikov's design can be built by anyone with a tool and die shop. He knew what soviet tolerances were like (horrible) and made a gun that would function even with parts that weren't perfect.

2. The AK is designed to be operate when (or more appropriately, despite) being in the hands of people who are either untrained/unmotivated/incompetent at weapon maintenance.

Thanks to the Soviets sharing the AK designs with everyone and anyone pre-internet, every 2nd world nation and some 3rd world nations can assemble working AKs. And because the AK is solid enough to soak up abuse and has sufficiently lax tolerances, it will work for a long time despite the poor maintenance it tends to receive. Between the two, the guns are cheap, cheap, cheap. Same goes for ammo.

[Aaron]

His reasoning this doesn't make sense is this: He relates it to why real life terrorists use fully automatics. He says that terrorists arn't normally formally trained, so they throw AKs at them, using the logic AK-47s spit out more bullets, thus making it easier to hit something. He says keep in mind the level the book says is professional is 3, so taking that plus 3 agility = 6, minus just the -9 dice, and you are left with just 1 dice to roll with with a fully automatic hellstorm.

I believe what he is describing and you very accurately describe as "spray and pray" is actually called "suppressive fire" in your hymnal. With a fully automatic burst like that, you're actually trying to put all of the bullets into the target, which takes a lot more training.

[SprainOgre]

Ahh, Dumpshock at work. It's a sanity saver. I'm glad I stumbled into here recently too...

[Speed Wraith]

Yeah, on a slow day like this it is (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[Raavek]

Yeah and I think he is just being stubborn. (we were arguing a lot that night anyways)

I can't not allow him to play, cause him and I have been really close friends for the past 6 years, but out of all of my friends, and he might be able to say the same for me, him and I don't see eye to eye the most. And I wouldn't call it arguing, more like debating.

Suppressive fire makes sense. That was pretty much what my friend was talking about. I was trying to explain how hard it would be to plug someone with 10 rounds at 40m. He was talking basically about spray and praying.

OH! And before I forget, someone linked a .PDF file on my other thread of this sheet you can fill out for your ranged weapons, and it lays out exactly what you do for a combat round. Is there any .PDF like that for melee and for magic? I was sorta kind of grasping combat until i read that sheet and it made a crapload of sense after that. Maybe it is the way my head operates, but when I can plug in numbers and go step by step like that, I really start to get it then lol.

[vladski]

Yeah and I think he is just being stubborn. (we were arguing a lot that night anyways)

I can't not allow him to play, cause him and I have been really close friends for the past 6 years, but out of all of my friends, and he might be able to say the same for me, him and I don't see eye to eye the most. And I wouldn't call it arguing, more like debating.

Suppressive fire makes sense. That was pretty much what my friend was talking about. I was trying to explain how hard it would be to plug someone with 10 rounds at 40m. He was talking basically about spray and praying.

OH! And before I forget, someone linked a .PDF file on my other thread of this sheet you can fill out for your ranged weapons, and it lays out exactly what you do for a combat round. Is there any .PDF like that for melee and for magic? I was sorta kind of grasping combat until i read that sheet and it made a crapload of sense after that. Maybe it is the way my head operates, but when I can plug in numbers and go step by step like that, I really start to get it then lol.

Yeah, I know how it goes with "friends." You can't jsut give them the boot because they can be asses. It's a shame that people can't be more easy going about stuff. Bickering rarely is "fun."

As far as the cheat sheets, I think I downloaded some when I first changed over to SR4. I am thinking they might have been Knasser's. I'll go see if I can find them and see if htey have a referral URL in them.

Vlad

[vladski]

OKay! I found them!

There was no identifier in the text of the files, but when I checked out the properties of the PDFs, it said the author was Aaron. I did a quick member search and his website was on his profile. They were created by Aaron from here on Dumpshock and are hosted on his website HERE.

Simply download the file for "Cheat Sheets." A description and link to them is on the front page of his website. There's sheets for :

Melee
Ranged Combat
Drone Combat
Astral Combat
Indirect Combat Spell
Defense
Sorcery
Summoning
Banishing
Matrix and Nodes
and assorted Grunt and NPC record sheets


Vlad

[Matsci]

Yeah and I think he is just being stubborn. (we were arguing a lot that night anyways)

I can't not allow him to play, cause him and I have been really close friends for the past 6 years, but out of all of my friends, and he might be able to say the same for me, him and I don't see eye to eye the most. And I wouldn't call it arguing, more like debating.

Suppressive fire makes sense. That was pretty much what my friend was talking about. I was trying to explain how hard it would be to plug someone with 10 rounds at 40m. He was talking basically about spray and praying.

OH! And before I forget, someone linked a .PDF file on my other thread of this sheet you can fill out for your ranged weapons, and it lays out exactly what you do for a combat round. Is there any .PDF like that for melee and for magic? I was sorta kind of grasping combat until i read that sheet and it made a crapload of sense after that. Maybe it is the way my head operates, but when I can plug in numbers and go step by step like that, I really start to get it then lol.

You mean The Shadowrun Cheatsheets?

[bjorn]

Also, I think you'll discover that most of the time Full Auto is not something most characters ever do. Honestly, I can't think of a single time any PC in my games has EVER let off a stream of full auto. Obviously, other's milage will vary here.

Vlad

I've only seen it done twice, and both times were by me controlling my Lynx with a LMG. The first time I was just try out the rules and I found that they weren't that good (for a off-the-shelf Lynx) and then 2nd time it was to protect my team mates because to get to them, all the NPCs had to run through the hail of bullets.