I'm wondering... shouldn't cover give more benefits?

I'm considering to double the modifiers (-4 dice for shooting someone in partial cover, and -8 for good cover).

It's still quite possible to hit, since you only roll Reaction to counter that, but at least it then offers reasonably good protection and a fair chance to avoid getting hit (which otherwise is next to impossible).

But when making a Called Shot to ignore armor, cover would also be ignored at the same time (and only the higher of the two penalties applies, i.e. shooting someone with an armor jacket behind good cover is still at -8 even with a Called Shot / if it's someone with full body armor + helmet, you cannot Call a Shot).

What do you think?

Bye
Thanee

It would make it nearly impossible to hit a target in cover for a character with Agility 3 and Ranged Combat Skill 3.

Yes, that's right, and I have realized this as well.

However, that's not usually where the game is played (6 dice), so it has not so much impact, I think.

The 12-20 dice shootists have basically no trouble at all to hit people behind full cover, on the other hand, as it stands now.

Not sure if there is a better way of implementing good cover to actually be good, but keep the low ratings in the game. Maybe someone has a good idea?

Another idea would be to have cover act as armor (no penalty to get hit, but big bonuses to damage resistance).

Bye
Thanee

Wouldn't it be possible to just reverse the mechanics? Cover modifiers gives bonus to reaction for dodge tests instead?

That's probably better than the armor bonus, yes. Good idea!

It still makes it hard to hit someone with low skill, but at least you still got your dice to roll.

Bye
Thanee

Another way could be to add cover to the treshold (something that seem never to be used in a combat situation) and give the defender a permanent cover since the attacker must roll X successes BEFORE he can gain any excess hits.

But the dodge seems most simple since people behind cover would have an even easier chance of dodging since it would be Reaction+Cover instead of just Reaction.

I really like the idea of using cover as a bonus on the reaction roll mainly because it lowers the number of glitches that cover causes. I'm always a little annoyed that the 8 dice shootist has a dramatically larger chance to glitch/critically glitch if his opponent is peaking from behind a wall or something. If the cover is a friend or an innocent bystander there is no problem figuring out what the glitch is, but it gets a little weird that people's guns jam or they drop things more when walls are involved.

It's a pretty good idea adding cover to the reaction roll, but it wouldn't work. It should still be harder to hit partialy visable non-moving objects and surprised characters, even though they don't roll to dodge. Sure you could still roll the cover dice, but in that situation it just makes more sense to subtract dice from the attack roll.

Well, that's just a matter of translation... you could also argue, that someone who actively dodges is just harder to hit and thus confers a penalty to the attack roll instead of a bonus to the dodge roll.

In the end, it's important that the mechanics work for what they do.

Giving automatic dice for the dodge roll should work well enough.
It's basically adding a dynamic threshold to the attack roll.

Bye
Thanee

You get there pretty fast, really.

Take an Agility of 5 (nothing outrageous with cyber/bioware), Smartlink, a modest Skill of 3 and a Specialization, and you got 12 dice already.

For a dedicated shootist, you get more into the realms of 18 dice.

Bye
Thanee

How does someone who's trained with weapons to a professional level (and is a specialist with the weapon being used), and who's gotten cyberwear that not only makes him agile but also makes him a better shot put into his body (or his sunglasses, for the link) not represent someone "seriously built" for shooting? We're not even getting into the ludicrous superhuman range here.

Street cops or security guards usually get to roll around with about 8 dice when they start shooting in my games, and that's a part of their day job. I'm not saying you can't blow waaaaay past 10, just that 11+ is where I start laughing when players deny their characters are combatants.

Your "average" proffessional has a skill of 3 and stats of 3. Read the skill ratings table to get an idea of it.

Now we add a smartlink and you got the 8D6 fo a proffessional shooter, then we add a reflex recorder for a total of 9D6.

Still, I'd think it would be better to add the cover modifier to the treshold so that someone shooting at someone in hard cover would have a treshold of 5 before they can get additional successes.

Threshhold 5? That's insane, dude!

Always remember that the guy behind the cover gets his Reaction to defend with. That can be worth a lot.

Yeah, threshold is worth three times as much as dice pool modifiers.


Well, FWIW, here's what I have written down for now:

Cover modifiers (p. 140-141) are split into soft and hard cover. For soft cover, the modifiers are halved. For hard cover, the modifiers are doubled and instead of reducing the attacker’s dice pool, they add to the defender’s dice pool.


If that appears to be too high in practice, I might turn it down some and use Threshold (1) and (2) respectively.

Bye
Thanee

The other advantage of adding to the defender's pool is that it reduces the chances of glitching for the defender. Rolling 3-5 dice for reaction, plus getting it reduced for being shot at multiple times, has caused more glitches than my group thinks is reasonable. Getting an extra 2-4 dice for the defender really helps to mitigate that.