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> One more condition monitor..., Yup, endless debate
The Jopp
post Dec 16 2003, 01:37 PM
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I actually enjoy the simple basics of Shadowrun with stun damage and physical damage, but I have ONE problem. For convenience all stun damage has been grouped in one place, the Mental Damage monitor.

Ok, so what annoys me then?

Here’s an example. Joe Runner tags his target for extraction, a corp scientist, and tags him with a capsule round containing a sedative.

Let’s assume that the target has NO armor and takes a M stun from the actual hit from the bullet and takes a nasty fall giving him another box of L stun. Now the target must resist D stun from the sedative. The target manages to stage down the D damage to S and has now taken M+S (Stun) which accumulates to a D stun. According to all rules he should become unconscious and that really bugs me. Why?

Well, the first hit is blunt trauma which will hurt like hell and give the target some problem due to the pain, pain which also includes a release of endorphins and adrenalin, making him more alert. The second effect is a drug making him more woozy, designed to make him sleep or impede his motor functions or hopefully knock him out cold.

Ok, so he is in PAIN and his movement is sluggish and his head feels like it is filled with cotton, but fall asleep? No, to me he would be very close to being disabled with a Mental Stun and a Physical Stun.

So, here’s my little solution (or gameplay impeder, take your pick).

Add a new condition monitor for Physical Stun so we have three of them

Mental Stun
Physical Stun
Physical

What is what then?

Ok, I’ll keep it short.

Mental stun
Mental stun includes Mana spells that causes Stun damage like “Stunbolt, Stunball” etc. It also includes any kind of drug causing stun damage. Physical stun damage will turn to physical damage when it goes over Deadly damage. If Mental Stun reaches “Deadly” the character will become unconscious.

Physical stun
Physical stun includes bashing someones head in with a baseball bat, fist, gel round etc. It also includes Physical Manipulation spells like “Clout”. Physical stun damage will turn to physical damage when it goes over Deadly damage. If Physical Stun reaches “Deadly” the character will become unconscious.

Physical Damage
Physical damage takes care of overflow damage from either stun monitor and also keeps score of your gunshot wounds, knife stabbings, chopped off limbs and the like.

What do you think? Is there any oddities that could be improved? Should Mental Stun be bale to translate into physical damage like the physical stun?
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Shockwave_IIc
post Dec 16 2003, 01:46 PM
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I agree that there something up with it, but IMO it's only minor. Though i do have issues with trolls swinging baseball bats and not breaking any bones unless he totally overstages the damage.

But i tend to run with only simple changes to the rules.
(Not thinking straight, hungry.)
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6thDragon
post Dec 16 2003, 02:54 PM
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Sounds good, except I would think damaged caused by drugs should fit under physical stun, and any damage caused to riggers and deckers (Dumpshock) should fit under the mental stun.
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The Jopp
post Dec 16 2003, 03:00 PM
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Ah, good point, missed those. Drain, Dumpshock (no, not the forum) and ASIST backlash (???) are considered MENTAL STUN damage but I'd like to keep drugs under MENTAL since the "PHYSICAL" stun is more about blunt trauma (blunt objects, concussions from grenades, gel rounds etc) while drugs could be something like sedative not causing any physical damage to the body unless overdosed.

EDIT

Perhaps I should clarify, drugs causing STUN damage will be MENTAL stun and drugs causing PHYSICAL (not stun, but physical) will cause physical damage since drugs can also be poisons and other less forgiving compounds...
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Jason Farlander
post Dec 17 2003, 05:05 AM
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I've been considering something similar for completely different reasons. My personal annoyance with the current damage system involves the inability to heal stun damage. So... magic can turn you to stone, create a roaring inferno out of nothing, and bring you from the brink of death to full health... but it can't heal a bruise?

In the end, I decided against a three-bar system because I think its unnecessarily complex and actually hurts players in the end by piling on additional TN modifiers.... to solve my problem with magical healing, I simply made it such that a single success on a heal or treat spell will heal a number of boxes of stun damage equal to the force of the spell, with remaining successes on the sorcery test being applied to physical damage as normal... with the stipulation that stun damage caused by drain can not be magically healed (mages would keep a separate tally of the stun damage due to drain)

This, however, does not solve your problem.

If you're going to split up the stun bar to reflect physical and mental stun, I would recommend that, rather than try to spell out on a case-by-case basis whether a given damage source is physical or mental, you should simply state that stun damage resisted by willpower is mental stun, while stun damage resisted by body is physical stun. You should also switch the resistance of sedatives from a body to a willpower test, possibly with a modification to the difficulty of the resistance test equal to the difference between the power of the drug and the body attribute of the victim.

There might be some drugs that would cause physical stun instead of mental stun (botulism toxin, for example, induces a physical incapacity for muscular movement rather than any mental sluggishness)... so differentiation would need to be made between those.

Furthermore, the "stunbolt" and "stunball" spells would have to be split up, as even mana-based spells are clearly capable of physical damage (manabolt/ball). So now you would have a mental stunball (sleep) and a physical stunball ("bruise" or something).

Overflow is tricky. I would recommend having both stun bars overflow into physical damage, as overdosing someone on a sedative can easily kill them -- and this would not be addressed if mental stun overflowed into physical stun.

All in all, I don't really know if its worthwhile... which is largely why I decided not to do it.
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6thDragon
post Dec 18 2003, 04:26 PM
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Another thing you would have to consider. Would both stun condition monitors heal at the same rate? I would think that a bruise should heal slower, but then you'd have to make the whole system even more complex.
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