The power of Chaotic World and Heavy Weapons Options

[Mugzug]

I am sure many of you have read the Confusion, Mass Confusion, Chaos, and Chaotic world spells before. For those who haven't this is the basic idea.

After rolling resistance checks opposed to sorcery as per normal rules, the net successes on sorcery impose a penalty on the target. Each success raises the target's target numbers on all tests by +1 (limited by force of course).

The spell is described as confusing and scrambling senses. I imagine this would make all skill checks, and tests much more difficult. This is by all means a potent spell, with a high drain. Yet there is one byproduct according to the rules that to me seems unintentional.

One of my players last session asked if this spell would apply modifiers to the TN's of a damage resistance check. My gut instinct was no way. According to the flavor of the spell it merely effects your senses, not how tough your meat is. It should have no impact on how well your dermal armor is, or how well a vehicle takes a shot. I could see it working for a stunball though since that is a spell resistance check.

My ruling was no. He showed me the rules, which strictly in a rules-lawyery sense actually support his argument. So I said odds or evens. He chose evens, the die rolled 3. The argument was over, but I promised to take it to dump shock for public consumption.

It is my belief the intention of this spell was not to impact damage resistance checks at all, but instead skill checks. I could however possibly see it effecting the TN's on combat pool dice used since that is a conscious effort on the player's part to avoid damage.


My other issue involves humans wielding heavy weapons while standing. One of my players envisioned himself basically as Rambo with heavy weapons fired from the hip since day one. I so kindly informed him on day one that he would be risking being knocked down (as per CC rules pg 99) since he does not meet the requirements of being a troll or the high body/str scores needed.

He obliged for the moment, and dutifully would fall prone with his trusty bipod. Then this session he was using a HMG with a tripod. During one encounter he managed to find himself landing in a jungle river with 1 combat turn to go before he was completely submerged in water (with a weapon that doesn't function in it). So he could not deploy his tripod and go full auto since he was at a lack of turns. Instead he fired it point blank at an awakened crocodile.

At this point I had him roll his checks to see if he took a light stun wound or got knocked down. His outcry was tremendous to say the least. As fate would have it though, his character was hardy enough to endure the trials of firing a HMG without being prone.

Later that session when he got ambushed, he had to put the tripod down. Of course that meant he could not fire full auto unless he fired it from the hip. This again brought out his outcry. I dutifully stuck to the rules.

His side of the issue is fairly easy to explain. He told me that he feels as if FASA/FANPRO are forcing heavy weapons wielders to be trolls due to that rule. He doesn't like gyrostabilizers because of the penalties. He does know about bioware to increasing his strength (he meets body requirements already), but refuses to take that. Additionally he tried to say that the rule is 'optional' and should not be used. I showed him how it is 'advanced' and is currently being used in game as said on day one.


Anyone have any advice on how to handle either situation? I am trying to remain true to the intentions of the game system here, while keeping the realism to a playable level.

[Velocity]

[Leviathan]

Well, I can see a bit of an argument for imposing the TN modifiers to damage resistance tests/body tests etc. A decent chunk of a body test is 'steeling' yourself against the coming blow, the reflexive tightening of your muscles to try and protect yourself from part of the impact. If your mind is clouded and you never realise that there is an attack coming, then you're likely to just take the full force of the effect with no compensation.
I guess it depends on whether you rule that combat pool is the SR rules equivalent of this steeling yourself.

[Bearclaw]

Having fired an HMG in real life (the Browning .50 cal) I don't think the rules impose enough penalties. I've mounted the 150 pound weapon on it's 60 pound tri-pod, then dropped 50 pound sand bags on each leg, and after 100 rounds or so, you must replace the sandbags because they've fallen off and the aim has gotten very squirrely.
You CANNOT mount an HMG on a Jeep. I promise, it will knock it on two wheels every time you fire, and if you try to shoot on the move it will flip it over. On the back of a HMMMWV which ways 5700 pounds empty, the recoil rocks the entire vehicle, but you can still drive.
The idea of anyone firing such a weapon by hand is just stupid. Assuming you could hold and aim the 150 pound weapon, the recoil would literally kill you.

[toturi]

I think I'd allow the illusion spells to affect damage resistance tests, since by the book, they should. However, since even wound modifiers do not affect damage resistance tests, you could house rule that it doesn't.

[Aku]

but hey, it's a game, and for some people, the idea of having a chain gun at your hip, holding it with two hands, is an attractive idea, so there are rules for it, so atleast the GM has some semblance of what it might take in this pseduo real world.

[Velocity]

[Cray74]

[Velocity]

[Mugzug]

I have fire HMG's, and a lot of similar weaponry in training maneuvers before so I know a lot about this situation. That is basically the only thing that tends to allow my GM rulings to work. Whenever they say "But my under barrel grenade launcher should be able to go down a 60 meter corridor in an urban building without hitting the ceiling", i get to speak from experience. My favorite was when they thought a thick jungle wasn't so thick as that a tiger could not sneak up right into pouncing distance on you (it pounced, it hurt, they bled). It has without a doubt worked to my advantage, and has helped tremendously with this HMG issue.

As far as my players, they are all very mature. Objections may be strenuous at times, but it never goes into immaturity (that is when big nasty fire breathing dragons materialize out of thin air and attack). Some just do not understand the finer complexities of the reality of firing heavy weaponry. After all, not everyone should know about it!

With future technology in the next 50 years, we have assumed there are some advances. I stated that there is a finite number of advances, and in order to fire it from a hip they will need to 'pay' for them (buy enhancements, karma to upgrade + working out at a gym, technology via a gyroscopic stabilizer).

I think the underlying issue is that the heavy weapons player is the sort that likes Shadowrun for all of the cyberpunk elements, but not the magic and fantasy elements. You could say come 2060 he'd be a humanis sympathizer. So he doesn't like the fact that only 'trolls' do not have to compensate otherwise while a human cannot. I've explained the rules, and he does abide by them. Of course he complains though, and was wondering if I had any other options to accommodate him.

I did just notice there is a cyber-arm gyromount that works for any weapon up to a light machine gun. I'll have to point that out to him next session.

[Cain]

[Mugzug]

I was thinking along similiar lines Cain, but I didn't feel too confident in that arguement since it didn't seem too explicit. That was where my gut feeling's basis was coming from. Thanks Grand Master of run-fu!

[Crusher Bob]

There are specific exceptions to TN mods for damage and drain resistance.

Drain resistnace is only modified by things which explicitly modify it (sustained spells, totem modifiers, stacked casting iirc).

Damage resistance is never TN modified (unless they threw in something later that does it).

[Austere Emancipa...]

Like many others in this thread, I've fired a HMG. Apparently, my experiences were slightly different from some of you -- the weapon was on a heavy tripod with about 150-200lbs of rocks holding it down, and the tripod didn't move backwards at all through the hundreds of rounds that were fired through it. It did kick upwards, but you could do accurate 2 to 3 round bursts with it at 500 meters. This was the Russian NSV.

[Mugzug]

Austere: That was very informative. I might just allow that bit about firing from the hip with an LMG only, since I have done that with a SAW before without any problems. The only major issue then would be accuracy for uncompensated recoil.

My idea is simple. Just triple uncompensated recoil penalties unless a cyberarm gyromount is used only for LMG's. For changing targets increase the penalty to +4 (maybe +3?) for each new 'target.' That way it'd make sense. A 3 round burst, could be accurate. A 6-10 round burst would just be a wild mess.

Now to check for recoil comp he can max out on.

He has 6 str: 1 RC
Say he has a gasvent 4: 4 RC
Hip brace: 1 RC

6 RC, that is about 2 targets without recoil comp penalties. It seems fair enough to me, but does anyone else have any suggestions?

[hyzmarca]

[Austere Emancipa...]

(Let's forget for a moment that Bearclaw was clearly using HMG and M2HB interchangeably...) You wouldn't consider the archetypical HMG to count as a HMG in SR terms? Why has the classification of cannons suddenly changed in the 6th world? Right now, as you probably know, if it has a bore diameter of 20mm or more it is no longer an MG but either an AGL or an autocannon. Likewise, why have the classifications of types of machineguns, Light, Medium and Heavy, changed in the 6th world after being static since their inventions?

How do you then justify that shotguns and average sporting rifles do as much or more damage as 12.7x99mm MGs, and can even equal 30mm "HMGs"? What about the massive jump from a 30mm "HMG" doing 10S to a 30mm autocannon (or however large you think those are) doing 20D? Do you think it's reasonable that all sniper rifles are far more powerful than 30mm "HMGs"? Admittedly HMGs are already underpowered compared to other firearms in SR3 (just as LMGs are overpowered), but that's hardly a reason to make that unbalance even worse.

[Bearclaw]

[toturi]

Cain, the argument can go one way or the other. There is no specific modifiers mentioned in the Damage Resistance Tests but that doesn't mean that the Damage Resistance Tests may not be modified at all. So you may say generally DR tests are not modified(the general case) but since the illusion spells say all TN, they apply (the specific case).

[Cain]

The problem is that just about every other test mentions something like: "Modify as appropriate", and proceed to give a list of sample modifiers. Only Damage Resistance tests list a fixed TN, with the rogue exception of Drain Resistance tests. So, the general ruling (most tests) is that they are modified, while the specific rules on Damage Resistance tests aren't.

But, if he wants to get really technical about it: The exact wording doesn't just say "to all tests"; it says: "to all tests from the distraction." This alone implies that the modifier only applies to things that can be distracted, which mostly excludes Damage Resistance tests.

But that's not all! If you look on page 182, under the Sorcery Test section, it says "if the caster is distracted due to injury modifers or other conditions"-- clearly stating that Injury modifiers are a distraction modifier. Since Injury modifiers don't apply to Damage Resistance tests, it follows that all distraction modifiers don't, either-- Injury modifiers are about as serious of a modifier as it gets, and if a more serious modifer doesn't apply, then the lesser ones generally don't, either.

So, we have the specific-vs-general example, the implication example, and the more serious/less serious example. That's plenty to back up a GM call.

[Crusher Bob]

The reports I've seen of firing teh M2 mounted on the jeeps said that it 'wasn't very good for the jeep, important things came loose', it probably wan't very accurate either, but when your have 10 M2 jeeps in your company, well alot can be forgiven when you have 10 highly mobile HMGs on call.

The M2 is highly accurate in single shot mode, because of its heavy weight and long barrel. It was quite often used for very long range sniper fire. The previous record for 'longest range sniper kill' was made with an M2...

[Fortune]

The rules do state that Illusion-type spells are not supposed to, and in themselves can not, directly cause harm. In my opinion lowering Resistance rolls comes close enough to directly causing harm that it would be a no-no.

[toturi]

[Austere Emancipa...]

[Lindt]