Enforce gun control.

I'll second that statement as well. Relying on body only to reflect the ability to wear armor and effectively move is not realistic. I personally have a better than average body (based on my size, nothing more) but my strength (especially for purposes of endurance) is probably on the low average side of the scale. Wearing armor will wear me out faster than any of my skinny friends with average strength simply because I have to wear more armor and carry my above average self around along with it.

Personally I would see armor, with the exception of FBA, using Body + Agi if anything other than just body. All it would really serve to do is make trolls and orcs even stronger for their BP cost than they already are.

Also, to one of the suggestions above, how can you possibly even consider adding recoil to the first shot? There is no recoil until AFTER it has been fired. Ergo the first bullet cannot be affected by it.

The problem is that there are very few areas which require personal strength, or even require actual strength at-all. I need to move that heavy object, do I? A mage can levitate it or summon a strong spirit to move it. It could be blasted through, or worked around, ETC. The enemy is grappleing me? Thank goodness I have shock frills or touch-range spells.

@X-Kalibur: Hmm. Having never fired a firearm, I'm no expert on this. What you say makes sense though, so I'll retract the suggestion for now.

Erm... Making strength more powerful/useful is the whole point of this. As both trolls and orcs get an equal or larger bonus to body than they do to strength, I don't see how this woudl make them more powerful. The one race it would make more powerful is Dwarves. Dwarves get a larger bonus to strength than they do body, but dwarves are so strong anyway (and strength is so useless) that I've never seen a non-melee dwarf put a point in strength. 3 is usually fine.

Well, that's covered already with the 'subject is physically imposing in some way' modifier, which maxxes at +3 dice. I suppose you could increase that cap slightly, or add direct mechanics for it, but as it stands I don't see why ultra-big muscles would be more of a bonus than some other displayed physical ability.

Also, I'd have said that size (more accurately a function of body and strength) was just-as or possibly more important than plain-old biceps. I mean look at cats who arch their backs to look bigger, or peacoks who have the big tail fans to frighten-off would-be attackers.

I would agree that having a recoil penalty prior to the first shot makes no sense at all. I think to penalize very low strength characters perhaps they should lose a dice because being physically underdeveloped makes it difficult to hold a gun steady, as an example I am a much better shot with a .22 rifle on a bench rest than prone or standing and using the encumbrance rules I'd probably have a 4 strength. I would also say that really low strength characters might get an additional recoil penalty, maybe +1 on the second shot as the gun bucks further off target.

Theoretically as soon as the bullet and the propellant gases start traveling forward inside the gun there is some recoil force acting on the weapon itself. However, the timeframe within which such a force would have to screw up your aim to affect the accuracy of the first shot is measured in microseconds.

Let's assume a 5" barrel from which a projectile will exit at 1200fps, and that the projectile will undergo constant acceleration within the barrel. The average velocity of the bullet within the barrel is then 600fps, so it clears the muzzle in ~0.0007 seconds. Even ignoring that the propellant and the projectile are still contained within the weapon at this point and the effect this has on any mechanical work the weapon does on its surroundings (like the shooter), how far do you figure the force of the recoil will manage to shift the muzzle before the bullet is well out of it?

That's a rhetorical question, BTW.

That's got nothing to do with recoil. With a long arm, even with no recoil whatsoever, firing from the shoulder with one hand on the grip and on on the fore end is the most accurate firing posture because it allows 3 points of contact to the weapon.

Other than saying "No."

I am with you on that. After all, why should low strength be punished this way. when all the other stats are not?

For example, I wouldn't give a char an extra penalty in social tests just because that chars happens to have low charisma, or an extra penalty on a toxin resistance roll because his body is low.


Changing melee damage to Str instead of Str/2 is a NO. This would really unbalance damage for chars with higher strength.

I agree with this position, if you're going to have an extreme high or low stat it needs to be cleared with the GM and it needs to make sense in character. Further if you take a 1 in a stat you should get disadvantages fot doing so, I don't think handing out a penalty to someone with 1 Strength trying to fire an Ares Predator that represents 20-25% of his total carrying capacity is unreasonable (Ok at the low end the carrying capacities get a little silly).

Bye
Thanee

If the carrying capacity is that silly, then going out of your way to house rule additional penalties related to it is pretty unreasonable. I could only ever be considered STR 2 by ruling out STR 1 as "crippled" or "adolescent", and I never had trouble with a 1kg handgun or a 3.5kg assault rifle.

I would have been in trouble if I had to fire a very heavy weapon (in the 7+kg range) from the shoulder without support, especially at long ranges -- fortunately the FDF standard LMG can't really be fired like that. Otherwise, well, keep in mind that the #1 weapon of choice of child soldiers everywhere is the 4.3kg empty AK-47.

Ok I was using 2kg or 2.5kg for the Predator (which may be wrong that was from memory) and the carrying capacity rules which state that you can lift and carry STR x 10kg without requiring any lifting test (which means that a loaded AK would account for 50% of your carrying capacity!). My understanding is that Carrying Capacity is representative of your total load carrying ability (so add up clothes, accessories, a backpack etc) meaning that to have a strength of 1 (ie only able to carry a grand total of about 22 pounds) is a catagory that most healthy adults don't fit in.

It's a case of bad rules inconsistency because at the low end which is described as weak a Person could only carry 10kg. However Maximum Unaugmented Strength means being able to carry 60kg or roughly 135lbs. However for all the weirdness at the extremes 3-4 work pretty well 30-40kg (66-88llbs) because the typical to slightly above average person probably could throw on a pack with 50-60lbs and go hiking. Carrying capacity also completely fails to account for load distribution, but that's a whole new subject.

However putting all those issues aside 10kg x Strength is the way the game was designed and given those parameters a 1 Strength character should in my opinion have more difficulty handling a 1-2kg Pistol than a 2 Strength character and the 1 Strength character may not be even able to use an assault rifle. My issue isn't so much the realism as it is the fact that I disapprove of dumpstats and I think that there should be consequences for building extremely min-maxed characters.

Yeah, it weighed something like that according the books. That, too, is unreasonable.

If you aren't looking for realism, then saying this is kinda pointles... but "STR 1" people can definitely fire most assault rifles and handguns just fine in the real world. If you can hold 2lbs relatively steady 2 feet in front of you, you won't have trouble with most long arms.

With firearms as heavy as those described in canon SR3 there might be trouble. Fortunately, as a general rule, people don't make guns that stupid. Like I said, though, I would've had trouble firing particularly heavy weapons from the shoulder without support, and I'm not going to say a STR 2 guy should realistically be able to fire a 15kg machine gun from the shoulder with perfect accuracy, but I really feel that sort of thing shouldn't need any specific rules.

The same was true in previous editions, although there were options to take geasa to offset magic loss and similar which I'm sure will come back in Street Magic. One of these was 'gesture', whereby mages would need to gesture to cast spells at full power. If the geas was broken mages could still use magic, albeit at a higher TN, so mages have never really needed to gesture in shadowrun.

@ornot: Strength can be used to overcome obstacles, but many characters don't need personal strength. IE: I can dump strength, but still rely on summoned spirits or levitate spells to overcome obstacles through 'strength'. A well-stocked, large, chest freezer would probably weigh 400KG or so and have an OR of 3. That's based on this big-looking freezer here. Casting levitate to move it would require a threashold of 6, thus a force 6 spell with DV 4. A good mage with the levitate spell (fairly common from my experience) could thus probably cast the spell, given a coupple of attempts, and take the drain on average. Once the spell is cast, however, moving the freezer should be much faster. That's only one character, and if there's a strong sammie around too (or two mages) then a mid-force earth spirit (or two) should be able to move it as well as the sammies.

@Shrike30: That situation strikes me as being somewhat contrived. Why would dragging the downed teammate out anyway draw less fire? If the answer is that the fire is purely astral then a levitate spell should suffice and couldn't be stopped from the astral alone.

The only situation I can think of where personal strength is needed more than anything else is if someone demands an arm-wrestle with the character in a social situation. I've never seen such a situation arise, however, and probably won't spring it on my current party who have an uber-strong troll (str 11?). Even then, I suspect any roll would be strength+body rather than pure strength.

Yeah I agree that in reality the average guy probably wouldn't have much difficulty with an M-16. I would imagine that most weapons procured by an army (US or or foreign) probably are looking for effective firepower in a lightweight frame that's easy to use (which pretty much describes none of the canon cannons). Most of the sport rifles I've fired (mostly .22) didn't require much strength to handle at all (and for tha matter probably weighed less than the canon predator). I won't go so far as to say I don't care about realism but I'm probably more willing than most around here to give some up for game playability or or balance. Still good to know about the reality of firearms though, for personal edification if nothing else.

So kill the weak and Might makes Right?

Great plan.

Next you can make the Sammies fight just magical threats.

I never really played SR before SR4 I was basing that off the noticing magic on page 168. I don't know that I like magic just being only concentration, but that is more a personal thing as I like there to be a ways to spot and then to restrain a mage with out knocking out or killing them.

As a side note it doesn't seem that a mage would be able to use a touch spell unless he breaks free of subduing since the act of touching requires a melee attack. He could then still drop a mana ball on his position and hope his grappler doesn't have any counter spelling available.

I was thinking more of balancing adventures/runs so that people have to be flexable and not completely specialized. Making a low str person have to run and there by make str checks doesn't seem too bad to me, it is after all something that they could have points in unlike a Sammy with magical threats.

oddly, the troll i play uses a bow, at my GM's recommendation. then after i told him that i do more damage with a single (javelin sized) arrow than an assault cannon, he capped damage at 8. then at 6. I still haven't actually USED it.

he's pretty much implied i won't be getting anything better weapon wise. And that is the GM's peroggative. And for the record, i don't actually approve of maxing out damage like that. When you make something like that, theres only one thing that character can do, and they'll be able to out perform everyone in the party by a disgusitng amount.

21P is equivilent to 9 kilos of rating 7 commercial explosives. At that point, you're using a arbalest or a ballista with pinpoint precision. Don't complain when "you take 2P of fire damage which you can easily resist, and oh yea, your bowstring snaps." slips from your gm's lips.


as for gymnastics: try not to get things too complicated. The logical conclusion would be "well, since it requires coorination, timing, agility, power and precision, you would average these 4-5 stats and add it to the skill". Gymnastics works off agility. Running works off strength. Its a fair trade.

Well, spotting is still possible even if they don't need to gesture. They can vary it from spell to spell, and if they don't gesture then they'll make-up for it in different ways, like chanting. if they choose not to gesture or chant, then they may just sit there looking constipated, grunting, and convulsing. Regardless, only concentration is needed to cast the spell but the spell as as easy or hard to notice as the noticing magic rules say it is.

Sadly, I don't think any mundane forces will ever be able to restrain a mage without knocking out or killing them. Even if the mage did need to gesture, he could still astrally project and summon a spirit to free him.

In 3rd edition MitS added the Magemask, a hood specifically designed to restrain spellcasters. Not only did it block LOS, I think it also had a high OR (it was hard to destroy with a powerbolt), and a white noise generator which gave +6 on magical TNs (probably -6 to magical dice pools under 4th edition) and meant that casters had to make a fairly tough willpower test to project. That was good, especially with the fact that casters couldn't summon when projecting in 3rd edition, but unless you had some form of awakened support then the mage could just project (most mages could do the will test given a coupple of attempts) and get help from friends.

You only need to make a melee attack if you need to touch an unwilling target. Cuddles the troll is most willing to touch you, in-fact that's part of the problem.

In any case, if the GM chooses that interpretation then the caster can still Mannabolt or Control Thoughts his assailant as long as he can see them. If he can't see his assailant then he can summon something.

Grapples are a fairly good way to take-out weak non-mage characters, however. They're one of the very few ways (bows are the other one) that damage can be based on strength rather than strength/2. Still, shock frills are a good way to defend against grapples, so any potential grapplers should really grab armor with the Nonconductivity modification.

@Dender: There's a troll with a bow in my game, but he's not used it yet. This is largely because it's too hard to transport stealthily. It is, after-all, probably somewhere between 8 and 10 feet long. That's easily less concealable than a sniper rifle, the ammunition is more expencive than sniper rifle ammo, and sniper rifles can choose to use more powerful ammunition if they wish to (such-as AV, EX-E, Flechette), the skill to use sniper-rifles is more versatile (it covers some full-auto and burst-fire weapons too, plus shotguns which allow for the use of the spread rules), and sniper rifles don't require a huge strength to use (how many BP/ did you spend boosting strength?). Perhaps point some of these factors out to your GM if you want him to change his tune.

And my counter-example was to show that the DM can throw very few situations at a party that require strength. The same could also be said about guns, no situations require them. I don't think that anyone would complain if a party was made without guns, making them 'dump-equipment' if you will, but as it stands strength is a fairly common dump-stat and some people don't like that by concept.