Just DMed my first game, and a couple of things confused me, or I just couldn't find them in the rulebook.

First off, what happens to a vehicle when it gets destroyed? We had an electric 3 wheeler get shot up by a guy with a scorpion machine pistol, and I would've felt a bit harsh having it explode in a giant fireball, killing the two runners inside. I basically just had it get wrecked. But are there any actual rules on this?

Second, a vehicle crashed later in the run, and the rules say "apply damage to the vehicle as though it rammed itself". Okay. But what damage do the characters inside have to resist? From reading the rules, it looks like they take the same damage as the car does. (for the Nightsky that crashed, it's 12P) But this seems very high - it's the same damage as you take if the car runs you over! I just rule zeroed it to say they just took 6P damage.

Anyone know for sure?

1) There are no rules for what happens when a vehicle takes lethal damage. Generally I'd just have it crash, but if they glitched on any of the soak tests I might make it start to smolder and risk detonation. If they critical glitched it would go off immediately upon destruction.

2) Per the rules you do have to soak the full damage. I would give bonus dice for the test though. Offhand giving them bonus dice equal to the vehicle's body (or perhaps half that) sounds like a good idea. I'd also give 2-4 bonus dice depending on where they were and how they were secured. The front seats most likely have air bags for +2 dice on a frontal collision. Side air bags could give +2 from the side. Being buckled in would be another couple of dice. Leaning out the window to shoot the people behind you would give a penalty.

Also, what happens to the vehicle would depends a lot on what destroyed it. If the car get's broken by a mob of gangers beating it with pipes, axes, stop signs, and disembodied cyberlimbs, then it'd just stop running and be banged up awfully bad. If it gets peppered by a squad of assault rifle wielding runners, it'd be smoking and possibly on fire, depenign on what kind of ammo they use and such. If it gets hit by an antivehicle missile, well...that goes without saying. Basically, I'd go with effects based on the type of damage done to it and how much overkill got put in. Barely destroying it would make it just stop running, while going way over is gonna give you Hollywood effects.

Anyone notice how much easier it is to survive a 60 kph crash in a dodge scoot than inside a citymaster? Unless my understanding of the crash rules are wrong, blowing a tred in a tank and hitting a wall basically equates to chunk salsa.

Yeah, I noticed that too. I think, however, that passengers get to add the vehicle's armor to their own, just as they would if they were attacked while inside the vehicle. It doesn't seem to say that that rule doesn't apply to ramming/crashing damage, unless I'm missing something, and in fact even mentions ramming under the same heading, simply saying it affects both vehicles and passengers.

Hmm, I just had a thought - when passengers are shot at while inside a vehicle, they get the armour value of the vehicle added to theirs to resist the damage. Perhaps this also applies to crashes? So if a normal person (body 3) crashes their nightsky at 60kph, and needs to resist 12P damage, they'd get the 10 armour from the nightsky added to their resistance roll, meaning they'll probably survive at least.

However, the rules say you use half impact armour to resist, so that puts us back to 8 dice... and this rule still doesn't change the fact that coming off a scooter at 200 kph will hurt you just as much as crashing your limo at 60, which is just plain stupid.

I feel a house rule coming on.

What about subtracting some multiple of the the armor and/or body value from the damage taken by the passengers? Crashing a scoot wouldn't protect you much, but you have to hit a wall going really fast to get hurt in a city master.

Aren't most car explosions caused by their fuel?

I was under the assumption that most vehicles in shadowrun ran off of electricity (mainly from batteries/city grids, if I remember correctly; if not, feel free to correct me). So most really wouldn't be in danger of exploding.

i would go with this:

you first check damage for the vehicle as normal, then you pass on any hits that goes beyond the vehicles condition monitor onto the passangers. logic behind that is that most vehicles are designed now to absorb the force generated in a impact by behaving like a acordian (or however its spelled).

optionaly you can have them resist any damage thats left after the vehicle have rolled to soak damage.

strangely, a flat out crash with a motorcycle can be less dangerus then in a car. reason for that is that if your wearing a proper helmet and clothes you can be trown of and slide along the road or whatever surface you land on. some nasty cuts and burns yes, but unless you hit a tree or something else massive your not going to risk much damage.

however, in a car there are all kinds of things to impact with, like say the car itself. its not the speed itself that kills you, its the sudden stop that do.

and when one vehicle hits another, i belive your supposed to use the body of the other vehicle as a base for what damage is done. so a scooter impacting a truck will use the truck body for calculating damage to the scooter, and the scooter body for calculating damage done to the truck.

the problem of the non-"vehicle vs vehicle" crash rule is that it makes no diffrence between driving of road and just stopping suddenly or driving of road into a tree or building.

allso, given that the chase rules do not use speed what so ever, you can declare that any crash happens at anywhere between 0 and the top speed of the vehicle.

Sorry for the thread necromancy, but I came up with a houserule for crashing vehicles.

I figured that the damage done is pretty much independent of armour, cause it's a case of being thrown into the inside of the vehicle and armouring the outside of the vehicle isn't going to make that any less painful. So damage is just based off speed. Here's the rule:

"When a car crashes, the occupants take damage based on the speed at which the vehicle crashed. The damage is 1 DV for every 10 meters per combat turn the vehicle was traveling, plus 3. Characters roll impact armour plus body to resist the damage. Damage is stun at speeds below 30 meters per combat turn, and physical above. As a rule of thumb, crashes start becoming lethal around the 75 meters per combat turn mark, depending on the victim.

If a vehicle is destroyed while moving, it requires a vehicle test from the driver, threshold 3, to avoid crashing the vehicle. Success means that the driver has managed to safely bring the vehicle to a halt. If a vehicle takes more than twice as many boxes of damage than it has, safely stopping is out of the question, and the vehicle crashes as above."

What do you guys think?

I think it's a start. Is this the case for a person who is seated but unrestrained? I will need modifiers for being properly restrained (either reduction in DV or bonus dice to resist damage), and I'd also like to see a condition for 'runners climbing around the back of a vehicle (such as a van) like jackasses, not seated/buckled/secured in any way, as 'runners often do.

I think we eventually houseruled that passengers resist the damage that was applied to the vehicle after the vehicle made it's resist. So if the vehicle faces a 12 DV ram/crash, but makes 6 successes, it only takes 6 damage and then the occupants then resist the 6P damage after that.

or if your "lucky", thrown thru a window and away from the vehicle...

hmm, it will be interesting to see if arsenal will elaborate on the base collision rules.

hmm, when did runners start to ride motorcycles with the proper gear on?