OK, I just have one thought on how to better screw over the players when playing 3rd edition, and I'd like to ask you guys if you think it's a good way of doing things or not.

Do you think it would be a good idea to make people declare 2 simple actions at the same time before they can see the result of their first simple action?

So it wouldn't be, "I shoot him with my Predator, I see he went down, so I shoot the next guy." You'd have to make a decision ahead of time whether to shoot twice at the same guy or once at two guys.

What would be the point of doing this?

1.) It would make combat a bit more like wargaming since in wargaming you often are required to declare a bunch of actions before seeing how they are resolved. It means you need to be a little bit more conscious about probabilities and such as you play.

2.) It would help crack the unusually flawless efficiency that SR characters sometimes exhibit in the heat of combat.

3.) I imagine it would be a bit more realistic. Using two simple actions with an automatic would be a bit more like double tapping someone, where the two shots are in and of themselves a reflex you train to make extra sure the guy you're targeting is down.

4.) It would also make for more unpredictable and dramatic death since every time someone took a D wound from the first shot but had been targed for two shots he or she could easily be instantly killed by the second shot. As a GM that would give me more freedom to say things like, "$name's head explodes with your second shot spraying brains that look like spaghetti on the back wall" because the individual in question would be dead. Not just having a D wound and subsequently being ignored by everyone. As it stands if people pick and chose their targets with simple actions with super barely D wound inflicting efficiency I have to refrain from verbally gibbing anyone.

What do you think?

I've done it before (back during SR2), but it seemed to encourage grenades and iniative pumping more than anything else.

I've been toying with this idea. If I were to implement it, and I might (at the very least I think I'm going to start enforcing the fact that airburst grenades explode at the end of the character's pass) I'd probably at least allow them to abort their second action after observing their first.

~J

Well, grenades *should* be highly effective. And if we use SR 3 style initiative it would dilute the effect of initiative pumping, wouldn't it?

Don't you take penalties for shooting at multiple targets in a pass? We take that to apply to both simple actions in our group, and try to get people to declare both actions in advance so we can calculate all bonuses/penalties etc. This lets people move before or after shooting, but still apply movement penalties to all shots shots, etc.

This makes me think the standard rules make you declare the entire pass, but I don't have a rulebook in front of me to check.

We're not the best about enforcing it though

I agree on a realism perspective, grenades pretty much rule the field. Worse, they make horrible defensive weapons from a collateral stand point.

It's a fair point in any case if you don't necessarily want combats to be pretty much one sided one way or the other. I guess it's a question of what you want in your game.

The way I see it if the PCs are going to successfully ambush a squad with grenade launchers they should have an excellent chance of wiping that squad out as that's the power of good planning and tactics. On the other hand, though, the enemies may have air support, artillery support, or just overwhelming numbers and control of the terrain. I think anyone would agree that turnabout is fair play when the squads call in for their artillery support.

smoke gernades are fairly common. you can find em at some paintball games. flashbang, the swat team uses those. still fairly common stuff.

when you get into explosive gernades... i would agree that the regular manufactured type are a bit hard to get. but a homemade gernade is evry possible. I can see some guy with the skills putting together explosives with short timed fuses, and selling them as gernades. duct tape and nails, makes for some good shrapnel.

best thing to remember, SR has many factors making weapons more availibe than in the real world.

By canon, wearing a submachine gun while walking down the street in Vegas will not get you a second look by law enforcement. I think we can assume grenades aren't too high on the priority list, especially considering their tiny threat radii (must have been a redesign).

~J

On the other hand, carrying a walking stick will get you fined.

The cops don't care about guns, but Reach plus Friends in Melee, now that's something to be afraid of.

~J

For what it's worth, SR4 requires actions to be declared before resolving any of them. It works well for my group (and makes the gameplay a little smoother).

If you tend to have players watch for people going down, then swapping to the next target, there's an easy fix if you don't want to do it the "declare - resolve" way... when the NPC gets hit, he goes down. Down, however, does not always mean dead, or even out of the fight, and PCs sometimes learn that lesson when they catch a shotgun blast in the flank.

Yeah, but in SR4 you should have a sensor package looking out for that.

Hey, that's what Perception checks are for. You want to tell me what kind of sensor package most PCs carry that would tell the difference between a guard who got killed and fell to the ground behind a low wall, and one who got hit hard and fell down behind a low wall?

It's not like a gunfight is the kind of place where you can make hundredth of a second decisions about "is he still alive or has he just not fallen over yet?" I'm personally a fan of the declare-resolve method.

While enforcing the actions first helps, I've found that straining the use of combat pool is generally more effective. Whenever someone takes a shot at the character, make him decide how much combat pool he wants to use to dodge if any, he doesn't know if its going to hit. having a dozen shots taken at you will drain the pool fairly quickly.

for a non-adept with 12+skill this would move the combat to being primarily offensive to a defensive one. Show the characters how to use cover effectively to save combat pool.

also when it comes time when your surrounded by guards.... you generally think twice about moving to the open, seeing as how you can't dodge only the ones that hit.

also remember that guards could have a few points of combat pool too, I usually assign them average attributes so 2-4 CP depending on effectiveness.

I wasn't aware motion sensors worked through walls, Aliens-style. Cool...

Not really. If they're trying to move past where he fell down, they'll enter his field of view. Even if he does stick his head back up, if it's done on his pass, the best they can do is pull out a Free Action kept in reserve to try and get out of the way.

It's probably not a question of taking a dive on purpose. If getting hit doesn't make you fall down, then falling down voluntarily is pretty unlikely.

It's almost impossible to tell whether or how badly this guy is injured as he falls down. It takes about 1.5-2 seconds for him to move after the impact -- nowhere near fast enough for the shooter to figure out he's uninjured in one Initiative Pass.

Seeing through walls is great, but detecting breathing, heartbeat, etc., are pretty useless if you have to immediately figure out if someone is out of the fight. The human body may well continue these functions for several CTs after most fatal hits.

It's worked iun my group and would continue to work now. The problem is that you don't neccessarily know if you knocked them down because they're dead or because they suffered knockdown from the force of the blow. Some people put an extra round into you just incase.

For instance, it happened in a game I was running at GenCon a while back. A guy popped up out of full cover to shoot through a window. He took a couple shots then got hit fairly hard and knocked down but without taking a lot of actual damage. When his ass came around again he surprised everyone by popping back up to toss in a grenade because they all assume dht down = dead.

I am completely with the OP on this one. It makes no sense to just roll damage secretly and give the players only a vague description of what was done to the npc. Or just point out that any players abusing ooc information to determine their characters actions will be penalized in an old-school method that may or may not involve a falling mountain or a time warping bus.

Instead lets just add more rules to bog things down. I love the concept of declaring your entire action phase beforehand but why stop there? Since your average turn of combat is supposed to simulate three seconds of real life one can realistically assume that most people will not be able to process what is happening all around them fast enough to react. So any characters with logic/intelligence scores less than three have to declare their actions for both this round and the next. This includes free actions. Those more intellectually swift characters with higher than three in those stats must still declare this every other turn, however if they succeed in a composure test they can change the free action of the next round. Of course that composure test should be made with the proper negative modifiers for stress and being under fire.

I like it. Done.

Wait, though—sure smart people are smart, but shouldn't they also have to make a Quickness test to see if they physically can change actions? And moving at that speed, I think there should be a Body test to make sure they don't strain anything. Plus a Willpower roll to not piss their pants in fear. Also, you should probably lie to your players a lot to make sure no one has 720-degree vision.

~J

I've seen a number of systems that have the players declare their actions in ascending Initiative order, and then they're resolved in descending Initiative order. People can change up their actions if what they were going to do becomes inappropriate (the object they were going to grab is destroyed by a rocket) but usually take a penalty for doing so.

Asking players to declare 2 actions sometimes (sometimes, because complex actions eat their whole pass) is really not going to "bog down gameplay." In execution, I've found it usually speeds up combat, because the player is not asked to reassess his tactical situation between short bursts.

I don't have to house-rule anything. I play SR4, where it works like this as per RAW

It's probably player-dependent. My guys take a bit to decide on something, but telling them they have to decide on two somethings with the same logic process really doesn't take much more effort. Usually, it breaks down to "shoot the guy twice, shoot two different targets, or shoot and do something else..."

In my games I told my players that doing a damage asessment of your shot counted as a simple action (Observe or observe in detail) this really stopped the I shoot then decide what to shoot next play quite a bit.

That's probably a valid approach per RAW. I give my players a decent description of what happens (as the die roll is made behind my screen) and go on with life.