But if I do that, Body is quite less useful. It only adds half its rating to the damage boxes, and that's all.

So, a solution I see is making the number of boxes in the Damage Monitor [Body]+5 instead of [Body /2]+8. Same for Stun Monitor ([Willpower]+5) and Matrix Monitor ([System]+5).

Waddaya think about it?

Don't forget your hits on the to hit roll adding to the DV. And I would use armor as in the rules, so ballistic substract from projectile, impact from blunt and melee and half ballistic from special damage like fire or acid.

And hell, if you're ready to spend 58 build points (40 (troll) + 18 (90.000 orthoskin) ) just to be tough and hang around in armored jacket and helmet most of the time, then be invulnerable to bullets if that's your thing - you payed enough for that.

And you forget that, if you spend some more build points on your big bad troll's Body (say 65), you havea Body rating of 10, so with my house rule, you have 15 damage boxes on the top of that (instead of 13 in the old system). So yeah, if you spend 118 build points (more than a quarter of your starting stash), you won't mind bullets.

I have no problem with that. If I were to take a big bull, lace some kind of high-tech armor in its own skin, put a kevlar blanket on it, and then empty an entire uzi clip on him, I don't think it would mind. And a Troll is even bulkier than a bull, as I see it. No fall of logic here.

I don't see invulnerability to bullets as a gamebreaker either. After all, even with a Willpower rating of 6 (and that would cost you 65 more build points, if I'm not mistaken), that only gets you two hits average against a Mana Bolt - cast by a Magic 5, Sorcery 5 (combat spells +2) spellslinger, for example (four hits average). Without overcasting that gets you to cross 7 boxes on your Stun Damage Monitor. That means a -2 dice penalty on all your actions, and only 5 boxes left to cross for the next Mana Bolt.

Wow, I wrote a novel here. Thanks for pointing that out, but to me, that's not a problem.

Okay, your answer is "I'm happy with the rules as they are, and I don't find the extra roll to be a pain".

But the question was: "what are you thinking of using (Rating)+5 damage boxes instead of (rating/2)+8 if you're using the rule tweak on p. 69?"

Maybe I didn't make myself understood.

And again, it's not a matter of wether or not using this rule. I'm using it because I'd like to. I felt that Body (and Willpower) would be underused if I'd do so. I figured out a houserule that, IMHO, would fix that. I'm just asking if you think that would work.

Answering me "don't use this houserule" is missing the point a bit, isn't it?

I'm not saying that Body (and Willpower) is useless in general. I feel it could be far less useful if I use the quoted rules.

Do you think Body and Willpower are less usefull if I skip damage soak and simply deduct armor rating from DV? If that's the case, do you think making the number of boxes [Body]+5 instead of [Body /2]+8 would help?

I heard that. I agree, but that's not a problem for me. As I said, your Body 10, Will 6, level 3 Orthoskin Troll costs you 118 build points and 1.5 essence. For me, that's expensive enough to be bulletproof.

And that's not a houserule. That's an official rule tweak, since it's in the book, done by the game designers. I'm not *that* anal, mind you, but I heard some here are.

Well, since the Body of the recipient is augmented, so are his number of physical damage boxes. And, since they have more damage boxes, they are more resilient to damage. QOD.

Exempli gratia: with the "normal" system, the aforementionned Troll with a Bone Density Augmentation 4 would roll 22 dice to soak (5,5 hits on average) and have 15 damage boxes. With the "no roll soak" tweak and the "5+body boxes" houserule, he would soak the same (his damage rating, fixed) but would have 19 damage boxes. In both case, he would cost 16 BP (80.000 and 1,2 essence more, raising the BP cost to be that tough to 134 BP and 1,95 essence points.

That's just what I aim to fix: the fact that, if you use the rulestweak of p.69 regarding soak rolls, you lose a bit of Body effectiveness. By making damage boxes number more related to Body rating, it may be fixed.

You still also have to roll dice, and a bit better than average, to fully avoid Stun damage from even regular ammo Light Pistol that scored a single net success. That's 4+1=5DV. With 13 armour you'll average only a little more than 4 hits.

You certainly aren't immune to Stick-n-Shock in a holdout.

P.S. That weeping you hear is Baby Jesus.

Ah, right. I'm sooo looking forward to flamethrowers. At least forcing you to purchase enhancement too. Of course you do know you are just a begging for engulfing Fire/Water Elementals? Maybe you should invest in that fire resistance early? You don't have enough room on your armour to get a full 6 points? Aaaah too bad.

P.S. The Acid Wave casting magicians/Spirits of Man are waiting in the wings. As are the Ares Squirt guns.

I thought of that too, but I find the other method (the tiny house rule I presented) simplier while keeping more or less the same results. The actual variations of result I noticed between the two methods don't bother me so far, but I'd like to see if the people roaming around the biggest SR forum can point me out if I didn't notice other odd results my houserule might produce.

Thanks for the imput, though. I'm gonna ponder that.

Oh, and if my grammar and synthax is a bit odd at times, that's normal. I'm Belgian. We make funny sentences here, in Belgium.

The moral here is: you can get a tank if you want to - and if you pay for it - but there always be a punk out there with a antitank weapon.

And the GM don't have BP limits if he feels like it.

Waffles too!

Just to make it clear: I'm not houseruling Bone Density. You keep saying that, but that's not making it true.

I'm just using the house rule here. Bone Density gives you more Body. Body adds to damage boxes. Since my houserule adds more extra damage box per Body points, you get more boxes for your buck instead of adding your extra Body points to the soaking (since you're not soaking).

So, ANYTHING THAT ADDS A POINT TO YOUR BODY RATING ADDS A BOX OF DAMAGE ON YOUR CONDITION MONITOR, because TO FIGURE OUT YOUR NUMBER OF DAMAGE BOXES WITH THIS ONE HOUSERULE, YOU ADD 5 TO YOUR BODY RATING. See? Maybe it's more clear in caps. There's no more rule than that. I'm not SPECIFICALY houseruling Bone Density. Bone Density is "houseruled" per se since it adds points to body rating, and the houserule modifies the Body rating / Extra damage box ratio.

So, if ONLY ONE houserule is "a crapload stuff", yes, you're right, I'm houseruling a crapload of stuff. But I don't think that's the case here, and despite your repeating of "this rule suxxors!" I still plan to do it.

But that's not even the question.

What's the question? I wrote it three or four times in this thread. Find it. Read it. Provide an answer.

EDIT: okay, you did it. I'm sorry for assuming you didn't. Okay, you don't want to houserule your game, but between the two rules, you prefer dividing the total soak by 3. Thanks.

I'm not really doing it for the math. The goal here is reducing the number of dice rolls. My first experience with SR4 with me as a GM was that 3 rolls was too much for a gunshot*. Reducing the number of rolls to 2 seems small business, but it's a roll that happens everytime someone gets shot, and in my SR games, it happens a lot.


*To be honnest, I've been shellshocked by the Deadlands combat rules and, since then, I've become very sensitive towards shitloads of dice rolling while playing a combat scene.

Woohoo! Waffles!

If all Body does is add to damage boxes, then tougher people will take longer to fully recover with natural healing. Magical healing will be less proportionately effective.

If you're comfortable with that, then cool.

YOU MEAN I'M HAVING THIS ARGUMENT BECAUSE OF MY MISUNDERSTANDING OF THE RULES??? IT CAN'T BE!

:shake fist:

I just re-read the rules and crap, you're right about that So yeah, I must add that "every bonus die added by whatever mean, either temporarily or permanently, to any damage reduction test adds a relevant damage box instead". And you're right that two is begining to look like too many.

Well, Body's still rolled for healing tests. And it's already the case with the rules as written, since healing rules are basically a Hit/Damage box healed trade on a diceroll: the more damage boxes you have to heal, regardless of the maximum rating, the more success you need, IIRC.

So yeah, i'm cool with it.

I thought someone had mentioned there was, but i don't recall a direct quote and don't see anything specific about limits about ratings vs. the armour you are adding it to (it might has just been an assumption based on SR3).

However you are adding to the armor value so i was thinking that encumberance would become an issue. *shrug* You did have room before because Ortho doesn't count towards encumberance, nor does (i believe) being a troll, nor the bone augmentation (either way, for or against). But if you keep adding enhancements you'll start slowing yourself down eventually.

EDIT: I haven't looked that hard into this as i thought there was a limit anyway, so i figured you'd normally hit the matching armor value limit before you ran into encumberance issues.

Uh blakkie we are discussing the optionalk "Armor directly reduces damage, no damage resistance test" rule

which means that 13 ballisitc armor reduces 13DV so the light pistol is useless

not stick and shock? well he had non conductivity so you get 13/2 or 6 + 6 and get reduction of 12DV vs your gun

then go to flame with say fire retard 4? 10dv of flame gone he aint gonna be hurt by much

played a char like this in SR3 once... the party used to use him to hide behind

You know what? I think I nailed the problem here.

That's me having a problem with "too-much-rolls". As in: the GM. So I asked the players what they thought about it.

Two don't care, one thinks it's too much rolling and the other one thinks it's too much dice. So, we agreed to use the thingee to see how it turns out next game.

Now, I think the problem would be more accurately fixed if I'd go the "Buffy" way and roll only for "top runners" NPC. Other NPC would automaticaly score 1 hit every 3 dice rolled*.


Thanks you all for your imput.

*As I already stated in another thread, 1 hit for 4 dice seems a very harsh trade-off. In the same circumstances (no stress, no time limit), D20 allows to take 20. I'd still use the rule but a player can call on it any time, even in the middle of a firefight. If the situation is really without stress, danger or time limit, I'd give him one hit per three dice.