Rewriting Canon, Been a long time coming. Options

[Arethusa]

Ok, so let's get one thing out of the way first: canon has many problems, but no section so glaringly problematic, so enourmously flawed, so ridiculously broken as the rules governing weapons. Everything from weapon concealability to capacity to damage to armor to recoil has been the subject of countless debates over realism and sanity. And it's about time someone did something.

Yes, I'm aware of Raygun's work. I like it very much, despite a few fairly minor disagreements. I'm also aware of Austere's work, to some degree, though much less so, given that he doesn't have a pretty website to host it or even any other sort of digital publication. But, in any case, I think there's another way to do it that preserves as much of canon as possible while still maintaining levels of internal consistency and realism that Mulvihill couldn't even dream of. And I'm giving it a shot, but I'd also like to get some opinions on what directions I should work in, as I'm not planning on only using this personally.

That said, if there's anything you'd like to see remedied as a piece of quasi/pseudo canon, do let me know. But, for now, one specific question:

Would you prefer to leave armor values as full body abstractions as they are currently (eg FFBA is 2/1 for a shirt while 4/1 for a full body suit), despite errata stating that body parts can be targeted to bypass armor, or would you prefer armor values by body region (eg arms, torso, head, etc)?

In any case, any comments, suggestions, or opinions on this are welcome. I'd definitely like some feedback on this, and it would be nice to know if there's anyone out there who'd actually give a damn about such a project.

[Austere Emancipa...]

While it's always extremely interesting to see what kind of discussions springs up about these issues, I must say that I am not as enthusiastic anymore. I certainly do give a damn, I give several, but I probably won't be posting any of those 10-page-messages. On the other hand, I don't think you really want me to anyway. :P

I'm disqualified from answering your first question, because I already use Hit Locations. Sorry. ;)

[Arethusa]

Hey, feel free to post the system you use for hit locations. Assuming I do go that direction, could use some direction in piecing together a system that works.

One addendum to what I did say: as much as I'd like to preserve canon as much as possible, I'm not opposed to new mechanics. Autofire, for example, could benefit from something that didn't work on the canon all-or-nothing approach, but I've yet to find something elegant enough to be worthwhile. Still, I'd very much like to hear any suggestions, and that goes for everything.

[Voran]

Called shots have always been the bane of pretty much any gaming system I've been played in. Heh, I remember the worst offense (though fun in small doses) are the called shots/crit-tables of gurps. "I am for the eyes! No armor!"

As for SR. I still feel that piece of errata about totally bypassing armor, did more harm than good. Anyhoo. I still like the idea of abstract full body applications, just for ease and 'speed' of combat.

However, for arguments sake, lets look at area specific protection/combat.

I'd change the modifiers for called shots. First off, I'd make calling a shot a simple action, not a free one. Next I'd vary the modifier (typically +4) based on the size of the area you're aiming for. I'm not sure, maybe another +1 or 2 for legs, an additional +2/+3 for arms, a huge modifier adjustment for hands/feet/head. Like another +4. So base, +4 for a called torso, +5 or 6 for a called leg, a plus +6 or 7 for a arm shot, and a whopping +8 for a head shot.

As for protection: Maybe a base rule that armored limbs have half the rating (round up) of the basic torso abstract. Security/Military grades maybe have same ratings regardless of location?

Dunno how to incorporate helmets for composite/piecemeal armors.

As for damage. I personally think its kinda cheesy for you to call a shot on a guy's arm, and manage to kill him with a roll. I'd say that there should be a 'damage cap' per area location based on weapon type. Maybe a called shot to a particular location can stage up its damage rating by one, but will never increase beyond that even if the attacker ends up rolling a bazillion successes on that limb shot. So its still possible to kill someone from total health with a limb shot if you're using a shotgun, but not going to happen using a heavy or light pistol.

More thoughts later, this is getting a bit long :)

[Nikoli]

Concerning auto-fire, to me the point os a fully automatic weapon was to compensate for a lack of truly immersive and extensive training (say, 9 months doing nothing but shooting the eyes out of life size targets 200 yds down range in a cross wind) this means to me that auto-fire should make it easier to hit your target, and do significant damage. not harder and do significant damage.
Does this make sam's more dangerous? Slightly as a professional shooter would use short controlled bursts in most situations.
Does this make the average street punk with an uzi more dangerous? Extremely since your average piece of street trash is barely above a civilian in terms of weapon use skill, this would compensate greatly for their lack of skill, which was the point in the design of the weapon.

[The Jopp]

What should be redesigned?

Autofire
I would like a complete overhaul on the auto-fire rules. Perhaps that you add 1D6 to your attack test for each bullet fired and reduce 1D6 per point of recoil. The amount of bullets fired on a 3 second combat turn should vary from weapon to weapon dependant upon the rpm of the weapon. Any weapon capable of FA should at least be able to fire 30 rounds per combat turn or a specified amount per combat phase.

The weapons shouldn’t gain any bonus to damage code or power for every three rounds fire but should instead be modified per the normal rules for staging. A character with a skill of SMG 6 firing a 30 round FA against a target would have a base damage of 6M and make the attack with 6+15 Dice. Let’s assume that the character has 5 points of RC which means that the amounts of D6’s are reduced by 5. Total amount of D6 for the attack is 6+15-5=16D6. Base damage 6M, Total damage 12D.

Weapons would make less damage but that also brings us to the second point, armor.

Armor Values

Abstract armor values are nice and all but I’d like a more realistic approach. A formfitting armor would cover the chest, arms, legs and possibly the head, this would also mean that instead of average armor values we would get lower armor values on specific locations. The layering rules are impossibly silly since the poor Lonestars can’t even MOVE due to their armor value. A hit location table would be nice.

Hitting the target
A different targeting system. Instead of the usual 4+ to hit the target I would like a base target number depending on where you aim.

Center mass: 4+ (Upper body, chest area)
Legs/arms: 6+ (Smartlink 2 reduce modifier by -1)
Head: 8+ (Smartlink reduce modifier by -2)
Tiny 9+ No further smartlink bonus ( eyes, mouth, ear )

[Arethusa]

I like the idea of calling a shot being a simple action, though I may make that optional. I do feel your modifiers are a bit much, though I'll have a look at the probabilities later and see what strikes me as reasonably realistic. Again, suggestions and comments are very welcome.

As for damage, was planning on dropping a damage level for arm shots, two points of power for limb shots, possibly increasing a damage level for upper torso, and adding two or three damage levels for head shots. That's very tentative, at the moment, however. Should also note that unlike soaking damage, if a damage level is to be dropped from light, two points of power would be droped instead.

I'll also need to rework the rules for deadly damage/incapacitation/bleeding to death, but in regards to a single pistol shot to the arm knocking you out, could just make tests going over deadly twice or three times as hard, but, again, I'd like to strike a balance between realism and playability.

[edit]

I'm certainly willing to overhaul the autofire rules, and, to some degree, I do like the idea of tossing on dice per round(s) fired, but past that, in your system, each round fired counteracts itself without recoil compensation. It also has some other probabalistic issues that I'm not comfortable with and don't find especially realistic. Still, that's not to say the concept is lost, but I don't like it as is. Completely dwarfing the effects of skill on a shooters ability is just one of the many issues I have with it.

As for rounds fired varying per weapon RPM, I'll consider adding it, but it's hard to keep that sort of thing elegant. Still, if I do decide to do this, it'll just be one more weaon stat, and a welcome way to differentiate weapons past concealabity, capacity, and damage rating. Would also add in max recoil values, while I'm at it. Any opinions?

I personally didn't really have any issues with the layering rules; cuold use some explanation in that area.

One last addendum: considering that an average person, 2 meters away from you with a pistols skill of, say, 3, is pointing a Predator at your head. His target number to his should simply not be 12. +8 for a headshot is getting to be a bit much, and I'd like to avoid rules for extremely close range, if possible. Since this is all being redesigned, no need to get byzantine.

[mfb]

the suppressive fire rules are fairly useable as-is, but one major change needs to be made: remove the TN mods for cover. suppressive fire should be able to be used for things like shooting at people on the other side of a wall, hiding in the bushes, etc.; as it stands, that's simply not possible. granted, suppression through a barrier will reduce the power of the attack, perhaps drastically, but it should still be possible. the whole damn point of spray-and-pray suppression is that you don't have to know exactly where your target is! if full darkness doesn't affect your ability to shoot someone, why should tall grass?

[Arethusa]

That certainly gets my approval, though I'd like a way to increase damage dealt with the suppression fire rules. As it is, you only sort of get this through staging, and I don't personally find it's effective enough to reflect what good suppressing fire's likely to do. Also, will be modifying it to allow for suppressing fire from semi automatic weapons. As usual, details later; comments now.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Dashifen]

[Clyde]

No one ever seems to have mentioned one area that I think causes a lot of problems in SR combat: the combat pool! The combat pool has always been the justification for putting insanely high target numbers (12, 13) into the system and for throwing out weapons that are way beyond anything that a normal person could stage. Consider: where else in the system do you ever roll against a target number of 10? Availability on some of the rare weapons? Resist a Force 10 Powerbolt?

The combat pool lets even a fairly mild starting character (weapon skill of 5, say) throw a 10 die attack, more than once per round!

Why not remove that pool and lower the target numbers in combat all around? You'd need to rework armor to a huge degree, but armor already needs work, right?

[Pistons]

[Dashifen]

[Chance359]

For called shots, I've always used Blackjack's system where the number of points you are trying to negate is the modifier. It's located at the bottom of the page. I feel it represents "finding the kinks" in armor fairly well, and doesn't require a major system overhall.

Blackjack's rule

As for suppression fire, I allow the application of the "lead-air" theory with any SA/BF/FA weapon, the number of rounds is determined by the player. Each die rolled represents 1 round fired, treating the resulting damage as a burst. The target number for this test is usually based on the size of the area that is being suppressed (4 for a 1 meter area, +1 for each additional meter), plus 1/2 lighting modifiers, standard range modifiers apply.

Example: Lemonhead is ambushing two rival gang member in an alley, since he didn't have time to bring his SMG, he;s forced to rely on his trusted colt manhunter. Knowing that he's not that attacking the gangers is more important than actually killing the, Lemonhead sneaks up to a dumpster 5 meters away from the gangers, stepping out from behind cover he begins firing 8 rounds into the first gangers space (1 meter). His target number is 6 (4 base + 2 for lighting) and he rolls 8 dice: 1,1,3,4,5,7,7,15 giving him 3 success or a 12S attack.

[Talia Invierno]

Bear in mind also that if you raise the acceptability and canon effectiveness of called shots (simple action or otherwise), the parallel change should be to remove a degree of injury abstraction.

If you have the option to shoot for the arm, with or without a damage cap, damage becomes to a much greater extent specific to that arm. While most of us, I suspect, had already been playing fast and loose with these concepts (and some have made extensive relevant charts ;) ), do you really want to get into canon details of how difficult it is to take an action with one arm v. generally, or even specific limitations of arm movement of a shattered ulna?

Do you really want to start looking at possible parallel damage tracks for different parts of the body?

[Austere Emancipa...]

[lspahn72]

Did anyone ever play the old Top Secret SI???? I have to say the the damage system there worked nice. The previous post broke it down nicely...One problem..

Does each area recieve a L, M, S or D wound??? and at what point is it disabled.

This is the only downfall that i can see...and how do y ou apply wound mods??

[Austere Emancipa...]

My take on how different locations get wounded is already explained a few posts back. Although it is not mentioned separately, Wound Modifiers work exactly like in canon with my system, and there is only one damage track.

[Hida Tsuzua]

One idea I've been toying with is to divide full-auto fire into bursts. From there, roll for each burst as if the character was firing that many bursts. If the character misses on of the bursts, all the later bursts miss. It's a bit chunky with all the rolling, but hey FA fire is relatively rare in Shadowrun and no new rules where made. The only question is to make the bursts 2 round or 3 round bursts. 3 rounds makes FA really deadly, but 2 round seems somewhat odd.

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Talia Invierno]

Just following up the earlier post, per question of suspended belief:

Called shots are something most often used by PCs against NPCs, if only because the GM isn't supposed to take the easy sniping potshots against the PCs (because the GM can always kill a character). Thus, introducing called shots makes a huge difference specifically to PCs: basically allowing a PC to target something specific to obtain an effect specific to that body part and cause "abstract" damage marked on the damage track as a whole while being able to ignore armour as a whole.

That inherent bias is another major reason why called shots introduced into the SR system in order to fix a "broken" abstract approach to causing damage probably should also take the equally abstract damage track into consideration. Let's face it: a broken, unusable arm to one of five team members is a much greater deal than the same broken, unusable arm to one of Renraku's standard security response team with backup on the way. Abstract damage helps the PCs proportionately more than it does the NPCs. By itself, this is not a problem ... but when cumulated with called shots?

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Talia Invierno]

Is it hijacking to question the original parameters of the original question?

I am guessing that your experience must be different from mine, Austere Emancipator: most of those with whom I have gamed would gleefully seize the opportunity to take a more damaging shot to the head, were such allowed. Then again, to some extent, the same re difference of experience can be said for everyone. Especially reading this board, I am beginning to doubt that any two people read the same core book ;)

[Austere Emancipa...]