I don't know if there is an errata out on this yet, but this is starting to seem horribly broken. I was very glad to see the trauma damper go with SR4. It was total min-maxing for mages, and I know players that made it standard equipment for their mages and take a geas to offset the magic loss. Now it appears the platelet factory is taking its place. The description in the book says "Any time the user suffers 2 or more points of damage, the damage is instantly reduced by one point." It does not specify the damage must be physical! Sure this isn't quiet as bad as SR3's trauma damper. The mage will still have to take some damage, but with the remaining .8 essence they'll have to burn a hermetic could easily get a couple points of Damage Compensator and Cerebral Booster. That would almost allow said mage to cast fireballs (or other very high drain spells) with impunity.

In SR4, a Platelet Factory is just 3 extra body dice on average. It only works on real damage and it only works if it won't be enough to prevent you from taking damage. It's nice, even very nice, but nothing like broken. If a platelet factory does anything at all, then by defintion it isn't doing enough to make you not be losing.

-Frank

Spells cause a drain resistance test, not a damage resistance test. Drain <> damage if you want to rule it that way in your game

okay I didn't know there was a deference between drain and damage. That makes sense now. But is there an errata or something for the platelet factory that says it only effects physical damage? I know it SR3, that's how it was. I even played where it only effected wounds that would cause bleeding such as a bullet or a knife wound, but a burn or a fall would not count.

I think it's meant to affect stun in SR4. Critter regeneration heals stun when it never used to, heal spells heal stun when they never used to, so it wouldn't surprise me if a Platelet factory works on stun as well (minimises bruising?)

There's a big difference. Damage causes a damage resistance test, Drain causes a Drain resistance test, followed by you taking "unresisted damage". It's an open question as to whether a Platelet Factory would stop you from taking unresisted damage, but certainly a GM would be well within their rights to rule "no".

-Frank

Yeah, I can see no wording anywhere that suggests that the Platelet Factory doesn't reduce damage from drain as well as any other damage the character takes, resisted or not.

Personally, I might houserule it to only apply to physical damage, though...

On the one hand, the realism side of me wants the platelet factory to only apply to damage that causes bleeding: bullets and blades and the sort. Being shot by a lightning bolt doesn't strike me as something that fast clotting could protect you against.

On the other hand, that's a bit of micro-management for the game that I'd rather skip as a DM, both because it can bog the game down in determining whether the damage of a baseball bat to the gut involves internal bleeding, and because the players would be (understandably) annoyed if they spent a bunch of nuyen on the thing, only to die to non-bleeding damage and have it not do anything at all to help them.

Sure, I dont mind if your stupid enough to loose 1 pt magic and keep overcasting your spells to get 1 less pt of dammage, since the whole point is to take atleast 2 pts of DMG .. and get one less _physical_ dmg to get any use for the factory..

I think Nkari touched upon it well. If someone wants to burn that many BPs (or later karma and money) in order to take 1 box less of Physical, then let them have it.

Kinda like the "Lucky Human" debate: If someone wants to start with an 8 Edge then go ahead. Sure, that much Edge is extremely potent; but look at how much they spent to get it.

the factory only applys to physical damage not stun.

Stun is to represent mental disorientation/stress not any sort of physical damage which the factory deals with.

But then you read the description of the factory at page 339..

"Platelet factories increases the bodys abilites to handle dammage by accelerating the production of platelet's in the bone marrow, thus lessening the trauma from large wounds and quickly stopping bleeding."


Does the bold part sound like stun dammage to you ?

Real injuries possess elements of both Stun and Physical damage as Shadowrun defines them. Punch me in the face and you could split my lip, drawing blood. Hack at me with a broadsword and you'll leave bruising around the lacerations.

Shadowrun arbitrarily separates the two damage types so it won't take as long to recover from a right hook as it would a knife stab. It also lets people fall unconscious without also having to be on death's door.

For more realism, each weapon would have two damage codes: One for how much Stun it does and one for how much Physical it does. At some point you have to decide to reduce the "realism-enhancing paperwork" so it won't get in the way of your fun.

So Platelet Factory helps against Physical and not Stun. That's just the way it works.

Waiter, I'd like that pie a la mode, please.

I'll be damned, it does say just any kind of damage. I really need to empty my brain of all the SR3 stuff and stop skimming certain parts of SR4.

Yes, it is extremely difficult to use two different versions of rules and keep them separate in your head.

EDIT: I certainly couldn't purport to do it well. I purposely stopped openning my SR3 BBB some time back and avoid MitS, R3, etc. though i do peak from time to time such as looking in Critters recently to get an idea of what SR4 'shifters might look like.

Incidentally though the authors -might- have intended the Platelet Factory to only work on Physical damage. There are at least a few places where it seems like SR4 was written by someone that still had SR3 kicking around in their head, but forgot to put in some important bits down on the page.

The best example i can think of so far that has been confirmed is firearm recoil.