Well, yeah, having a black-and-blue butt is probably only a few boxes of stun damage. I'm still not seeing the issue here. The damage is necessarily abstract, but once you've taken so much stun damage that your track is filled, we're talking about enormous amounts of pain and trauma, as well as exhaustion. It may be temporary, but it'll put you on your ass.

Taking 9 boxes of stun damage isn't taking one shotgun blast to the chest, or being in one car accident, unless it's very well-placed. If you're heavily armored, it's more like taking three to six shots, and I don't have any problem with repeated shotgun blasts taking someone out of the fight, even if it doesn't kill them.

Because I've actively searched for accounts of such damage on several occasions, and have never found anything. The accounts I have found only describe minor bruises. [Edit]Seems the one account of a broken rib/collapsed lung was caused by a penetrating injury to a spot which was not at all covered by the officer's vest.[/Edit]

Theoretically, life-threatening injury could happen. Sources more knowledgeable than me mention laceration of organs as a result of broken ribs as a possibility that people should be aware of. And, given enough time, even the tiniest of internal injuries can be life-threatening. However, I think it's rather telling that if you try to Google up broken ribs that have punctured lungs as a result of a bullet hitting body armor, the majority of the search results are fan fiction and short stories.

That black-and-blue butt is far more serious an injury than 3-6 average shots that have been defeated by body armor.

You can be sure I house rule these things in my games, and they wouldn't completely ruin the game for me even if I didn't. But someone claimed the particular rule was realistic, and that's what I had an issue with.

Although I guess I also have an issue with how a small number of minor injuries somehow add up to one serious injury, but in any system which tracks points of damage caused per attack that is almost unavoidable.

Interesting fact, actually the gloves make boxers hit harder (in terms of kinetik energy), since the hitters aren't in danger of breaking the bones in their hands, and don't have to pull their blows.

(and i am actually not sure if i made my point, damn foreign languages ).

Yes, but while I think we can all agree that a "sucking chest wound" definitely qualifies as "Physical" and moving upwards on the "incapacitating" scale, there's a large disconnect between various people in this discussion over what damage qualifies as stun, and whether it should affect your ability to act.

There is a little truth in that. Folklore tells, you can get unconscious by breaking a toe (your own, of course ).

My goodness that is a clusterfrag of a thread, I'm glad I didn't see that one last year. Oh man, I read the first page and then read the last two to see how far it devolved...

edit: And yeah, I don't want to play the screaming heap character either, that's just not fun. Yes, there's the realism stuff that people want in games. But is it really that fun? For me it's not, different strokes for different folks as they say.

I concur. A simple example of what you're saying can be found on, say, the History Channel. World War II footage. Total chaos, blood everywhere, you're surrounded by guys you said hi to on a boat an hour ago that are now screaming for their mommies and trying to hold their intestines in. What did most of those advancing soldiers do? Kept going, kept shooting, kept dying. Sure, some of them were no doubt huddled under cover, crying, but certainly not all of them, and I daresay, not even most of them.

That's an extreme example, because there were a lot more men, which bolsters a lot more courage than your average shadowrunner team of 4-6, but I submit that the bonds of that group, if they're been working together any significant length of time, my be just as strong.

I regard the Stun track thusly: Since it's based on your Willpower, I regard 8 Stun as the end of the line, as far as your body is concerned. Horrible pain, or total fatigue, or a combination of the two and more, and even adrenaline isn't keeping you up anymore. The only thing that's keeping you moving is sheer, grim determination. Kill the fucker. Or keep conscious long enough to crawl away under a dumpster and maybe survive another day. Or something else, depending on the character.

When the Stun track is full and the runner is incapacitated, it represents the total expediture of that part of your psyche that can keep your body active when everything else, including the body itself, is just trying to collapse into a heap of Jell-O. The PC, quite simply, can't take anymore. Everyone has their limits, and the PC has reached theirs. They collapse, unconscious, overwhelmed, or otherwise incapacitated and simply cannot continue, no matter the circumstances.

Interpreting the Stun track that way puts a lot of the complaints here into some degree of perspective, though, of course, a series of boxes can never adequately describe or represent a complicated human action, reaction, thought process, or heroic effort. For some, it will remain a series of boxes. YMMV. But I like it.

[edit]: As a side note, the description above certainly doesn't preclude the very strong possibility that a runner, faced with a very painful experience, such as being shot with or without armor, will not attempt to get away from the source of that pain as quickly as possible, even if it's just behind the nearest cover for a second to assess his wounds and collect himself before charging back into the fray. That's a very normal, very human reaction that isn't even remotely mitigated by training, experience, and a professional code.

In fact, I would even go so far to submit that the described is the very definition of the combat-hardened, professional warrior versus the amateur, or the coward. The professional is the guy that, after checking his wounds and maybe even taking a moment to try to plug the new hole in his arm, will continue to do the job. The amateur or the coward will flee the scene, or hide indefinitely and pray that no one finds him and finishes him off.

Standing out in the middle of your opponents' fields of fire isn't "professional", or "badass". It's stupid.

I finally got around to clicking that link and holy cow I nearly fell out of my chair laughing so damn hard!

Otherwise, yeah, I agree: Shadowrunners are Shadowrunners because they are precisely the sort of people who can get shot at (or just plain shot) and keep going. It's why corporations are willing to spill so much cash for their services. Shadowrun isn't about roleplaying Joe Schmoe off the street. You're roleplaying professional mercenary.

I agree that in many situations that would be a good way of describing the Stun damage track. It doesn't help the nonpenetrating ballistic injury problem any, but works fine for many other scenarios.

Oh, and in case you're like me and don't get the History Channel, you can always check out the Medal of Honor citations. Lots of folks with lethal injuries pulling off some crazy shit.

Well, yeah, they spent Edge to invoke Dead Man's Trigger.

What on earth does anything done by anyone with a lethal wound have to do with Stun damage?

I have to disagree with my comments not involving non-penetrating bullet wounds. In fact, I think it's particularly relevant. Like I said in my pain post, getting your ribs broken hurts. A lot. At the risk of pulling the usual Internet tough guy act, I'm pretty good with pain, because I was an active kid and had the tendency to fall out of trees and break limbs. Not to mention sports injuries. Breaking something hurts like a bastard. But as mfb mentioned, it usually hurts less the day of the injury. This is largely due to adrenaline.

Allow me an anecdote. I'm drinking, and as such, prone to lengthy anecdotes. There is a point, trust me.

When I get in the aforementioned car accident, I hit a stone wall in a late model Lancer (this was around 2003) going about 40. I was a passenger, in front. I remember the wall approaching very fast, a half-second of impact. Then I was out. The next thing I remember is opening my eyes, and seeing dust everywhere. I can't breathe. The headlights are still on, but the hood is much, much higher than it should be. Turned out, it accordian'd in, as most modern cars do. There were weird lights everywhere, which turned out to be police cruisers. God knows how long I'd been out, and I didn't care, because I couldn't breathe. I pushed the airbag down, off my chest, and opened the door, promptly spilling out like a liquid onto the gravel beneath, not even able to gasp for breath. Slowly, face on the pavement, I could hear the driver crying and begging the cops to check on me (they wouldn't, more on that later). I was completely incapacitated. I have no idea how long it took me to move from no breath, to minute, painful breaths, to functional, painful breathing. And frankly, I had no idea what was going on.

That gives you an idea of the impact involved, and the chest, lung, and diaphram effects of a 40 mph collision in a non-armored vehicle. To make a long, long story short, the cops weren't interested in helping anyone. I directly asked them to call an ambulance for my very obvious breathing issue, and the driver was bleeding substantially from her head while crying uncontrollably. The cops were more interested in if anyone was drinking. They didn't call an ambulance. They found some weed in the car (which hadn't been smoked prior to the accident), took the driver in, and told me to ride with the tow driver. I asked again for an ambulance, they refused. I later found out this was illegal, but both the driver and I had accepted our insurance settlements, the insurance companies told us we couldn't sue at that point - use that for corporate ruthlessness in the future.

Two miles down the road, about 20 miles from my house, the tow truck driver told me the tow would cost a few hundred bucks. I informed him it wasn't my car, and I certainly didn't have that kind of money on me. I couldn't even time him, he kicked me out of the cab of the tow so fast. I have no idea where I am, my ribs are broken, my knee (which was fucked to begin with) is seriously messed up. I walk a half mile to a Circle K, in the middle of the night in the ghetto. I call a cab, and sit inside the Circle K, thanks to the kindness of the current clerk, staring blindly at the ground until the cab arrives.

I gave my address, and passed out in the back. Just like that. The cab driver had a Hell of a time waking me up once we'd reached my house. I went inside, called my girlfriend (who my friend and I were supposed to pick up), and sat on the couch in the dark, shaking from an adrenaline hangover. I was still shaking when she found me.

...

I regard the above story as 5-7 points of Stun damage. Confusion and pain, but adrenaline and willpower can keep you moving for awhile. As long as the exertion isn't too great. Get home, just get home. If you want realism, that's about as realistic as I can provide you, given that it really happened. You can push through substantial Stun damage, but you're fucked later.

How does this relate to non-penetrating bullet wounds? The damage is about the same, for a person. Catching rounds in a vest causes broken ribs and contusions just like mine all the time. They're designed to keep you alive, not make you comfortable being shot. So you're alive. But trust me, you wish you weren't.

Some folks don't wanna play this out, and that's fine with me. But without pain, momentary weakness, confusion, and other effects of damage, you're not being realistic. The frailty of the human form is realism.

So don't bullshit people about "realism" when you're unwilling to have your character react to a 4 Stun intercepted bullet to the chest with dropping to all fours, hacking up a lung for a little while.

Crit has been quiet in general, so don' t read too much into it.

Could you share one of those stories? If you remember anything about the stories I could track them down, and I'd finally have one solid example of this happening. So far I'm looking through the Kevlar Survivors' Club in vain -- I can't find anything there but "superficial backface signature contusion".

The question is not "can you crack a rib when getting shot wearing body armor" it is "what kind of round does it take to crack a rib when getting shot wearing body armor?" Shotguns and hunting rifles will leave marks left and right on armored targets.

But the thread started discussion heavy pistols and body armor. 9mm? No way. The force isn't great enough once it gets distributed by armor over just a square inch or two. .35/70 BFG pistol? Maybe. There's a lot of energy with a tiny cross-section so it's almost an APDS already.

Upon reading some of the entries in the Kevlar Survivor's Club (nice find, Austere Emancipator!), handguns generally appear to produce "superficial backface signature contusions", which means, of course, light to medium bruising. Which makes sense.

Rifles, however, appear to create "significant backface signature injury", which sounds more like a cracked rib to me and really nasty, deep bruising that hurts like a bastard. Of course, whether that would be relevant in combat or not is up to the Stun track.

[edit]: Just read some of the shotgun portion, and it seems like shot is pretty easily shrugged off by an armored individual, as reflected in the rules. The examples I've read so far aren't point-blank, certainly, which would be more significant, and I haven't seen any examples of someone getting hit my slugs, which I'd imagine would also be more damaging.

So there you have it. Watch out for rifles.

If you read the fluff, you'd believe that. If you played previous incarnations of SR you'd believe that. But in SR4 the flechette rules just don't work that way. They are, bluntly put, the uber bullet. Even against a target in full body armor, you are more likely to do more damage with plain buckshot than a normal slug so long as you have the narrowest choke. And it makes me want to cry because I was raised on the old system of doubling impact armor against flechette.

It is worse for using flechette in the place of normal small arm rounds. With shotguns there is a 3 point AP difference. With other guns the difference is merely 2 AP. In those cases flechette rounds are mathematically never worse than a normal bullets, without the use of edge. Even against cars, barriers, etc...

I've seen two interpretations of flechette rounds. #1 is the old SR convention. #2 is the kind I've read about in some post-cyberpunk fiction literature where flechette is a kind of wonder bullet even against armored personel. I am fine with either. Really. I just don't like the mixed message I get when the fluff text comes from #1, but the rules seem to model #2.

That's pretty simple to house-rule, though: double impact against flechette.

Yeah, usually if you get hit with a rifle and all you've got is flexible body armor, you're fucked. I am really surprised of how many times close range rifle shots have been defeated by vests without rigid plates. Generally speaking, such armor is of very little use against rifles, not because of backface deformation but because it just doesn't stop the projectiles.

I couldn't find a single mention of a rifle shot hitting rigid armor on the page, though. I would imagine that with non-fragmenting rifle plates the blunt trauma would be minimal. With shattering plates, I have no idea, although the fact that no NIJ rigid armor standard has limits for backface signature implies that it's not a problem.

Most of the mentions of shotgun hits in the KSC seem to be of birdshot, which is considered a very poor for hunting humans. When it's a 12G with buckshot, most victims were hospitalized because of pellets that hit areas not covered by armor. Slugs might cause more serious nonpenetrating injuries, but most should be stopped by common armor vests.