What, are you trying to say you are not wrong in your assertion of this supposed effeciency? You gave an example of where you suggest it exists, I even tilt the example more to your favour, and I still show that the effeciency you speak of typically does not exist in a meaningful way outside of situations where the damage is so outclassed by the armor that they are nearly immune to physical attack.

EDIT Until you arm their opponents with firepower that either wipes out the team, or the team defeats the opponents, loot the fallen, and raise the ante another notch. Monty Haul, not just a gameshow anymore.

In short, just like with fragmentation grendes and rockets, you are rebuilding a problem that SR4 helped addressed. Heavily armored, high Body targets that can wade through combat unscathed.

Shorter yet.
You.
Are.
Wrong.

Not just fragmentation weapons.

Pretty much everything up until you start creating a lot of PC deaths. By making a sharper break and closing the gap between no harm and death you make it harder for the GM to create a challenge and threaten the team with weapons while not killing them. Even when the GM finds the lower end of weapon threat zone the margin of error has shrunk where it is more likely that a bad die roll will kill the character.

EDIT I guess we need to work that into your marketing slogan. APDS and Rocket Jumping for everyone!

Here is to hoping.

It was meant ironic. I just forgot some smileys.

You seem to overlook, that burstfire (nor other modifiers, but net hits) isn't calculated if you compare modified damage value to modified armor rating.

Page 140, Compare Armor defines modified damage value as base damage value + net hits, and modified armor value as armor value modified by weapons AP.
And that's what is compared. Other modifiers don't apply, neither if you are determining the physical->stun conversion, nor if you check for the penetration of vehicular armor or the hardened armor critter power. It's always modified damage value against modified armor value. The rest comes in, if you determine how much damage you have to soak.

Ammunition, btw. as per page 312 modifies the weapons stats directly. So ammo determines the base damage.

I was thinking more along the lines of a Wide Burst which increases the odds of larger number of net hits, including hitting at all, anytime the shooter has more dice than the target.

That is an odd quirk of the ranged combat that I dislike. Spreading out the rounds over a larger area helps penetration, when normally having a very tight cluster of multiple hits would improve the chance of penetrating the armor because of damage to it by a prior round. Of course though there is no armor degredation either, so I guess that shouldn't be too surprising.

I thought narrow bursts are the only modification to DV that is explicitly excluded from that comparison? It is somewhat debatable how that works with Hardened Armor, but that is out of scope here.


If the shooters are using Narrow bursts it should push the towards Stun the reason for a Knockout from 2 hits. Unfortunately it also increases the chance of straight out kill from a single P damage hit because that is now doing a minimum of 12P and they only have an 11 Physical box track. You'd need to use the actual numbers underlying those color charts in numeric detail to see if the net change swings towards Stun or Physical. Same for the change in the chances of the first two successful shots ending up as Stun or Physical.

It will also increase the chances of taking the target unconscious in two successful shots. Not sure whether it increases the overall odds of succeeding in a knockdown per a given number of actions spent shooting because it is also going to lower the chance of hitting at all.

At best it might lead to the conversion to Stun being equally effective in bringing the target down, whichever way, as oppose to having all the damage remain as Physical. Though I am guessing not given the sizable obstruction of that goal there is from the possibility of having the damage split out over the two tracks.


Keep in mind that while this example, although perhaps not the most favorable situation for the effectiveness of the Stun conversion to knock someone out, is likely about as favorable as you are going to see in practice. Also if someone is toddling around with a 1 or 2 Willpower, 12 Body monster with 16 points of armor I will shed not a single tear if two hits from a Panther Assault Cannon knocks him out on the Stun track. Which it likely won't. But at least forcing him to resist the 11 Stun damage there is a chance it will do something to him. Resisting 6 Stun is no real challenge at all, explicitly so if the GM lets him buy resisting hits at 1:4.

Ah yes. My apologies then.

Indeed, that is strange. And i haven't thought about that until now....
I will have to think that through (and discuss it with my group).

Let me explain my thoughts on this. It is true, that narrow bursts are explicitly excluded. But then again, it is only written so for narrow bursts in burst fire mode. Narrow long bursts or narrow full bursts don't mention that they don't count at all. I assumed, that it wouldn't be in the spirit of the rules, and so, in my games, they don't count either.
Everywhere where DV vs. Armor is compared, it mentiones "modified armor value" and "modified damage value" (that's the case on p. 158 "Vehicle Armor" and p.288 "Hardened Armor"), so i looked for a definition of those terms, which i found on page 140, Compare Armor. That is the only place, that defines those two. And i found it a simple and elegant solution, by not calculating other factors in. Unfortunately, no other rule exists, that confirms or denies my POV on this. So a debate would most likely end in a bunch of personal POVs thrown at each other until a flame war erupts . So i would likely point out the option, and call it a GM descision.

On the rest i agree. While i, on the same time, see Serbitars point, in my personal experience, it doesn't unbalance the game (so far). But i thank S. for bringing this possible deficiency to my notice. As i thank you for the wide burst issue.
But my idea of game balance mustn't fit with anybody else on this, so i mostly keep out of those discussions, while following them with interest looking for eventual solutions and sometimes even commiting one .

While there has been a little hostility back and forth, I appreciate attempts to maintain the conversation to the topic at hand. Remember, debate the rules and not the flaws of the other members of the forum.

I'm sure Serbitar is aware that feedback, even negative or hostile feedback that isn't wanted, is part of the package whenever you publish something (especially something relating to a topic that others are passionate about). I hope that Serbitar is able to take some of that feedback in stride and maybe even see that some of those people are questioning his decisions because they want to help improve the quality of his product rather than create competing products.

Serbitar, thanks for your work. I'm sticking with the RAW for most everything, but it's always nice to see someone else's thoughts. I also concur that tastefully sized links in your signature, a single post in the Community Projects forum, and maybe a small website or mailing list for your more dedicated users would be the best way to handle future updates to your product.

Thanks

- I am not GMing at the momment, and through 5 sessions my current character has not yet fired a weapon or even drawn a weapon. Nor thrown a punch. So designating firm house rules are not an immediate priority for me, although my GM has suggested entirely removing Dodge skill so I'm currently mulling that over. Initially I am not in favor of just removing it entirely, although it doesn't really affect my character directly because Slim doesn't have the skill. He has already changed Smartlink to improve Initiative, but I'm not sure how that works because Slim doesn't have that either.

- I think that the requirement for house rules is mostly overstated. My tendancy is to first determine if the precieved problem exists at all or if the solutions to the problem already exists in RAW. I actively fight kneejerk reactions to fix something with a house rule. My first reaction to the Stun damage conversion was indeed also OMFG, they are so screwing Trolls. Then I looked closer, setting aside the initial emotional response. When a more thorough analysis was applied the illusion of that problem fell away.

- I would not have a package of Sebitars magnitude simply because I see little to no need for many of the changes he lists. Smaller is typically better. Easier to implement, easier for players to learn and track what is different from RAW, and the parts tend to be less dependant on each other so partial implementation is easier. All issues I take with Sebitar's rules package.

- I also did state that of any change to RAW it would make more sense to convert only 1/2 the damage to Stun and leave the remainder as Physical. Which boxes are removed by the resisting roll hits would be up to the player making the resisting roll. I am not convinced that would be enough of an improvement in results to justify the hassle of a house rule involving a slightly more complicated proccess.

- I have already posted my current thoughts on the ammo situation. I do not agree that APDS is currently without use, but its cost and Availability are not in line with ExEx. Also in the situations where it is most useful it does not have a clear enough advantage over ExEx to justify having both on hand. ExEx covers off adequately the situation where you would use APDS, and is superior is so many more.

It is buried in another thread, and I've reflected and tweaked it a bit since, so I'll repost here. Keep in mind that part of my goal is to have a solid niche for each class of ammunition, and that those niches line up approximately with their RealLife niche.

I am not crazy about the complexity of the buckshot rules relative to the other ammo, although in fairness they do replace a short section in the ranged combat chapter that is about equally muddled itself. I also have a tweak for the Gel rounds in mind, but I'm not sure of it yet. I currently have not firmed up what to do with Stick'nShock, although there are a few ideas tumbling in my head. Mostly related to shortening ranges and making damage roughly dependant on caliber size. Not certain about the fragmentation explosives yet, I still have to make sure those numbers come down in the best spot. I am cautious of weaking them too much, and at this point I have slightly weakened them.

I also haven't set down availability or costs. As a GM I tend to just wing those and gouge the PCs for all they will bear. Plus each class of ammunition is intended to have merits without relying on costs. It has been my experience that relying heavily on money to give incentive ultimately fails without using cost differences of orders of magnitude.

EDIT

The depleted uranium discussion referenced in there can be found spread around in here. http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...opic=11675&st=0
Abandon all hope ye tortured souls that dare enter.

I found the idea interesting. Looking back to the past of SR, I'm not sure it is that desirable to have characters that are normally getting 2 Complex Actions or 4 Simple Actions before others get to act at all. But I haven't really looked at it any closer than noting that it could use rewording so it is clear how it works with the Delay action that normally allows any character to act within any of the 4 Initiatve Passes, and how it interacts with spending a point of Edge to go first.

I thought that everyone had their first IP, then those with a second action would have their second IP, etc. So even if you are uncybered you get to act right after the cybered up monster had their first IP.

HERO works on a staggered system. So the guy with 3 IP might get to act twice before the guy with 1 IP even moves, then the slow guy moves, then the cyber monster finishes his last action. More complication and something that is not really nescessary IMO, though it does model wired up characters a little bit better so I can see why a lot of people would like it.

In SR2 I had a intiative house rule based losely on the Champions/HERO initiative table. Worked very well.

Anyways... in SR4 it's technically even possible, that the 1 IP character acts *before* the 3 IP character (in the first IP). The 1 IP actually could even have the higher initiative value (not very likely, tho ).

Bye
Thanee

Speaking of Flechette... I also thought, that something like doubling the Impact Armor would work right to model the lack of armor penetration. A simple plus doesn't cut it there, it should be a factor.

Bye
Thanee

The Shadowrun idea of what flechette does seems to be based solely on the extremely dubious text in Neuromancer surrounding Molly's weapon.

Flechette actually penetrates personal armor reasonably well because the projectiles have a small cross-section versus their mass. It just does crappy damage, even to unarmored targets. The SR bonus to DV is pure insanity.

The benefit of flechette is that it improves your ability to hit the target because shortly after exiting the muzzle it spreads out into a scatter pattern like buckshot. But unlike buckshot that pattern then becomes mostly stable out to the end of it's effective range, which is typically at least 2 to 3 times further than buckshot.

I assumed this too, although truth is I never even considered the matter. I just took all Narrow bursts, short, long, and full, to act the same way.

There are three things that are getting mixed together. First is whether or not the RAW conversion to Stun rules gives a large boost to effectiveness in knocking down an armored target. My post was showing that it does not where Serbitar assumed it did. What it does do is give some diminishing returns in improvement for taking your armor out to and past the point where nearly all damage becomes Stun. You still gain benefit from that extra armor, it just isn't quite as much.

The second thing is Serbitar's remedy for that precieved problem. A remedy which I find far worse than the Stun conversion and even worse that simply removing the Stun conversion altogether and keeping Physical damage as Physical damage. He halves the damage boxes when the Stun is converted. Unfortunately the effect of this is making the target immune or nearly immune until the point where the armor rating is breeched. In the example the target would be resisting only 4 or 5 boxes Stun boxes with 14 dice. It would be rare that they would take more than 2 boxes of stun, often only 1 or even none. Until they took Physical damage, when they would likely be unconcious and dead or dieing within in two strikes. For even more heavily armored targets it gets much worse as they will usually become immune to the Stun and breeching the armor rating becomes much rarer.

Serbitar's responce when this is pointed out is to have the shooter load out APDS. Unfortunately this creates an extremely deadly situation back down with the moderately armored characters. A character wearing an armored vest is not only taking Physical damage, but has 5 of his 6 armor dice taken away. So he is left resisting 7 or more boxes of damage with 1 armor die and his Body. Even if he has 3 or 4 Body, after the second successful strike there is a good chance his teammates won't even have a chance to stablize his body. Even with Edge the situation is bleak because he doesn't have many dice to leverage the exploding 6's of making the resist roll with the Edge dice included.

The third thing is the ammo and explosives DV/AP modifiers, which I haven't really posted much about in this thread other than to post up my own current working list in response to Chaos Kingpin.

Post Script

To Serbitar's credit it appears he has dropped the -5 AP for APDS his last version had back down to the -4 AP RAW. I had lambasted the -5 AP as exagerating a problem already in the RAW where APDS turns even small sidearms armor penetrating marvels. Not sure why he dropped it back to -4 AP, I didn't notice him say anywhere. I did notice also that he upped the AP to +2 for ExEx.

Thanks for the hint.

The 5 might still be subject to tweaking. I took 5 because it matches the cost of spells for mages. Any reason why it should be different? A mage has even much more flexibility and more special fields (summoning, astral space) so spells aren't that important for a mage as complex forms are for a technomancer. Thus spells should even be more expensive than complex forms.
10 Karma per complex form is definately too expensive, and other numbers seem too odd for me.
Note, that I have increased the cost for Technomancers to balance it a little.
I think I will have to calculate a little more to fully judge this change.

The "limited by skill number" points does not really affect a lot of skills. Especially most of the agility skills are "skill uncritical". And I dont want the super high agility elf to be as effective as he is in RAW.
And furthermore, I kind of want attributes to be expensive and less changeable than skills. It just kind of feels right that way (see the explanation in SHP I gave).

Thanks for the feedback.

Thanks for the statement. I've never heared of the HERO system. The whole thing was worked out by two others and me in the German SR forums. Seems like good ideas alwayscome up multiple times.

Thanks.

No, I am adding Impact. The halving thing was changed from 1.4 to 1.5, after some feedback from some guy in this forum (forgot the name, sorry). The result is mostly the same, so your criticismis unaffected.

My response was to use normal ammo, not flechette. Furthermore, everybody can see himself how things change by looking at my ammocheck.xls.

That was done after your first comment from 1.3 to 1.4. Though, since then, you are always criticising the same point, which I already said is intentionally so. Thats why I consider your feedback unwanted.

-of course this could be done. A troll would have to pay 90 Karma to go from strength 8 to 10, though. Same for body. At least for me, thats not acceptable.

- well rolling GMs are amatter of superstition. My calculations are not based on superstition

- rigger use agility for gunnery test and reaction for driving test, while jumped in under RAW. Both are physical attributes, though he is in the matrix and has no physical attributes. So it IS a change.

- illegal cyberware is marked with F. If you have it, you are either a military person, or a criminal. Nothing changes that.

- the average SAM in my calculations has agility 6, skill 5, smartgun, specialization for his weapon = 15 dice. the average target has reaction 5 (if not 4). = 10 net dice. the average situation has a modifier of 2. = 8 net dice. statistically he can sacrifice 4 of them and still hit with more than 70% probability.
Low level example: agility 3, skill 3, smartgun vs reaction 3. modifier 2 = 3 net dice. statistically it is better to sacrifice 1 die and try to hit with the 2 net dice.
Conclusion: in 80% of the cases it is better to at least trade 1 die for 1 DV. This makes combat MUCH more dangerous and punishes those who do NOT know of this rule, or do not use it. Using this rule becomes the standard, not the exception.

Of course the average ratings are subject to personal power level.

Furthermore,as you can read in lots of threads in this forum, vehicle armour gets totally unbalanced (=useless) by this rule in RAW, especially in the case of drones.

Thanks for your input.

Most of the rules in my package arent critical,and are mostly donce, because it was easy to adjust them a little. But at least StickNShock, the +1DV/die, and the agility monster are very serious problems.

Somebody with agility 8 (no problem with cyberware, very cheap), smartgun, specialization, StickNshock, a reflex recorder and the +1DV/die rule is simply much better (and no, this is no one-trick-pony, thats a pretty standard character) than those who do not max agility, do not use the DV rule and do not use StickNshock. And I do not want to punish those for making believable characters.

Here's the original from a thread about two years old:

Your house rules propose:

I would honestly rather see:

I dislike the 3rd initiative pass occuring first because pretty much every character expecting to see combat has 3 IP. If you want to keep mundanes slower, you might consider going with:

Now you have three tiers of acting. You have the mundane 1 IP which is at a disadvantage, you have the normal augmented 2 and 3 IP which are similar in terms of power level (3 IP still has a clear advantage over 2 IP), and then you have the super fast 4 IP. This has a lot of advantages, including giving combat characters a real reason to lust over that 4 IP.

On the other stuff, if I were going to start house ruling things, I'd probably start with the rigger attribute things. It's kind of silly to have those things based on physical attributes. There should really be a "matrix attributes" table like they do with the astral. In fact, I don't see why you shouldn't just use the Astral Attributes table on p184 while in the Matrix as well.

I also like the concept of a system where character creation and advancement are more closely tied together, however I'm not sure I like your system enough to go with it. Here's hoping that they put out a karma-type system in one of the future books.

Curious, last time I can see you mentioning it and the APDS AP is. http://forums.dumpshock.com/index.php?show...=75#entry357439

The magnitude of the problem you are creating isn't quite as large, but it is still there because it instead is giving up to a 60% boost dice in the resist pool instead of the firm 100% in damage to resist.

All this continuing to try address a problem in the RAW that does not exist in any significant way. Where it does exist it is putting a slight diminishing returns on large amounts of armor roughly in the low-teens and up, meaning it isn't actually a problem but a solution helping to curtain a power spiral.

This is not about flechette only. It is a problem with regular ammo, and you have suggested using APDS to remedy it. Although ironically you have now given the same face to the problem with your flechette by changing to the same + Impact. I guess now you have them rolling triple Impact when the flechette DV is at or below double -2 the Impact rating?

I don't recall mentioning the -5 for a while. Did you mention that you had changed the AP of APDS? See my link above.

Unfortunately many of the same the criticisms are still quite applicable. But there has been some progress, even if you would rather not acknowledge it.

You shouldn't be so quick to pronounce that.

How about cutting the stuff that doesn't need to be there then, the stuff that makes unnessasary changes? A great start would be the change in the multiplier from 3 karma to 5 karma for Attributes, although the Combat: Damage section would certainly be easier because you just cut the 4 paragraphs.

I'm not sure how much of your justification text clutter you removed already, but I do still see sizable portions. It certainly makes trying to figure out what has changed difficult, and it makes it more difficult to deploy.

Look two posts beyond that. Thats where I made the desicion.

The rest is Brahm-turning-in-circles clutter. I wont comment that.

Rule changes are marked with bold and a dot before it. Everybody with eyes can easily spot them. And Im not going to cut any justification text, as well as I wont cut anything that I think is a good addition to the package. You can go ahead and compile your personal version if you feel the need to. Ill even provide you with a .doc file if you cant copy from .pdf.

But you might be glad to hear that Im going to introduce relevancy ratings for each rule in one of the next updates.

Ah, missed it because there was no mention of APDS. But you didn't change the drop to a fixed number? At least that would be a bit better than the doubled and tripled armor because it wouldn't go so far in the wrong way.

Strange, it looks to me a lot more like you clinging to your patently misleading superstitious mathematics.

You just did comment.

You are suggesting people should go through the PDF, copy the text, paste, and reformat? Doesn't that sort of defeat the purpose of putting it into the PDF?

Not really, this is about helping you help others.

As opposed to weighing them down with what appears to be nearly 7 extra pages of justification text and extra rules based on suspect logic and erroneous conclusions. The justification text could be put somewhere else out of the way since they are not actually part of the rules themselves. Even save a tree or three in case someone actually uses the rules and prints them out.

Consider me your selfappointed editor. Sure some writers may not want an editor, but they can be the ones that could most sorely use one. http://www.signalstation.com/archives/001190.html

I think I've decided that I like this one best (EDIT: Now with better labels):

How you read it is thus, the rows are established by your number of IP. Thus, if you have two IP, you'd get the - x - x row. The columns are segments of time. You go through them from left to right.

So, let's say you've got two characters, one with IP 1 and one with IP 2. During combat, you'd go through four initiative passes. First pass, no one has an x, so no one acts. Second pass, the one with IP 2 has an x and gets to act. Then you're on pass 3 and the character with IP 1 gets to act. Finally, pass 4 where the character with IP 2 gets to act again.

If two characters both have xs, you go off initiative scores.

Yep. The chart was originally presented as part of a discussion of rules changes from SR2 to SR3. In SR2, a character with an initiative of 31 would act three times before a character with an intiative of 10. SR3 changed it to be that everyone would act and then you go on with diminishing numbers of actions. Taking the editions, you'd have this (for four actions, though in older editions there could be more than 4):

SR2:

SR3 & SR4 RAW:

As you can see, the version I was throwing around is somewhere between the two versions. I don't think I'll be playing with this as a house rule, but I throw it out there because Serbitar proposes something similar in his rules package.

Edge would be a perfect equalizer for allowing movement on the chart, as well, if you were to use it.

No way I'd play it because it is way too close to the SR2 model. SR3 might have pushed it a touch hard the other way, but allowing someone 3 actions before another character acts means a death sentence or bordom to the 1 IP character, depending on whether he is on the winning or losing side.

Having only 1 IP, and even 2 IP alreadys puts you at a serious disadvantage because the Dodge penalties increase for each time you are attacked until you get to act. Pushing off the ability to get a shot or spell off or take cover until other people get multiple actions strikes me as piling on.

Stop, drop, and roll!

There is another thing, this 1 IP character does he effectively have his movement rate cut by 50%, can he start walking 2 Passes before he has his Complex Action, or once he does get going in the 3rd Pass does he move twice as fast as the 4 IP characters and 50% faster than 2 and 3 IP characters?

The first is truely brutal. The last seems to toss out the window this notion of Realism. The middle isn't a whole lot better, but it is the least screw over the 1 IP guy option.

I'd use that rule if I hated my mages, Technomancers, and anyone that hadn't tweaked out their character such as many VR riggers when they aren't driving. I'd also use it in a game where I wanted to either tweak out NPCs or have them be punching bags for the tweaked characters while the players of the non-tweaked characters were busy in the kitchen fixing up vittles. Welcome to SR2?

BTW even if the 1 IP character managed to ambush the higher IP characters the higher IP characters would likely be long gone or heavily fortified before the 1 IP character got to act. That is assuming that you would force the 4 IP to take 3 actions of not attacking the ambushing character.

Thats what I've been saying for days . . .

Then you got the wrong impression. But the deeper I dig, the more questions that come up. The only good news I found so far I how you see implementing flat out denying the higher IP actions during an ambushing.

Perhaps this would be tolerable in a high powered game where 1 IP was very rare, and those 1 IP were backdrop characters, less than fodder. It doesn't really matter as much because the 4 IP character is only going 1 for sure, and likely 2 actions ahead first.

So I guess where it isn't making as much difference is where I could see it being ok. Short of that Butterblume summed it up the best.

Sure, but you've been parroting a lot of things for days that make little or no sense.

Or go the opposite extreme, where 4IP characters either sacrificed 83% or more of their available resourced to reaction-enhancing 'ware, or have accumulated enough karma that in the old days they'd have karma pools of 20 or more. In this direction 4IP characters would be terrifying monsters, inspiring the mage's level of "Geek that guy first!" mentality. Which is, well, where Shadowrun seems to be already. How many characters are there that can get that magic 4th IP without essentially crippling every other aspect of their character?

TinkerGnome's got a good point that surprise and ambushes would need to be changed as well to properly implement this rule. I think it's viable, but it would need a bit more serious discussion before it could ever be properly implemented. Another possible path to take is to just take the HERO system outline above and remove the last two rows. This would add in a virtual fifth pass, but more evenly space out actions, ergo:

In this case the guy with four IPs would certainly go twice, but definately not three times, before the 1IP guy would get to act.

Anyway, it's all theory at this point; none of this is official, so it's not like you're "forced" to implement anything.