One idea that I'm considering is having Stun Damage degrade against Armor in a similar manner as Physical Damage, in order to encourage the use of lethal attacks.

However, I'm unsure whether simply having the Stun Damage cut in half is better for Game Balance or if I'd be better off having Stun Damage degrade to nothing.

Thanks

I dont quite understand what you are asking about...

Stun damage caused by physical attacks are already resistable by armor, what type of armor depends on the attack.

I also dont understand why you want to force your characters to use letal damage. It's a choice of the players to use non-lethal tactics and if that's what they want to do, just let them. It always allows you to use a bad guy later in your game, since they didnt kill him/her.

I'm sorry, but if I was your player, I would resent the fact that you were trying to force me to use letal tactics and would continue to use non-letal out of spite.

Basically the way I understand RAW, non-lethal attacks are actively encouraged for a number of reasons.

(1) Stun attacks focus all of their damage on a single Track, while Physical damage are likely to spilt between both Tracks against armored foes.

(2) Most of the baddies Stun Track is going to be shorter then their Physical Track.

(3) In many cases the non-lethal rounds are in my opinion simply better then their lethal counterparts, if I remember correctly Stick-n-Shock and Gel Rounds both use Impact Armor, which is going to be lower, plus they have added 'perks', as elemental Damage, Stink-n-Shock halfs Impact Armor and Gel Rounds have almost certain Knockback. (Although to be fair Gel Rounds aren't as bad now that their +2 DV has been taken away, but behand hand they were simply insane.)


So I don't see my rule as trying to 'force' my players to use Lethal attacks so much as trying to even the two options in order to give them a choice bases purely by RP, and not one option being hands-down better then the other. (Which is why I'm asking people's opinion as I'm not sure my way is the best way to achieve my goals.)

both the pain editor and the adrenal pump allow you to ignore the effects of stun damage. stim patches allow you to partially ignore stun damage. if you wish to make physical damage more viable, then i suppose you could always make stim patches more effective and more common.

possibly introduce a new combat drug which has effects similar to either type of 'ware.

Yeah the problem now is non-lethal is more effective then lethal in taking down 90% of all foes. Trying to go non-lethal should provide and extra challange,

I thought about this for an idea when your stun track goes full you make body+will power check with a threshold equal to the number of boxs of over flow each round.

So if you have a stun track of 10 and have taken 13 stun damage the threshold is 3. This will delay a guy collapsing from stun damage. They can remain conscious even if the stun track and overflow box are completely filled as long as they continue to make the check.
Things such as stim patchs would give a bonus equal to there rating on the roll.

Another idea is to first nerf the gel rounds +2 AR and it doesn't add to damage. Then if the modified damage doesn't execde the targets armor it deals no damage. Just like physical can be split into stun.
So an armor jacket 8/6 plus helmet 1/2 and the armor bonus from the gell round. Gives and impact of 10. So you'd need to sore at least 5 hits with a standard aries predator.


The next step would be to make nonconductive more common on armor.
If corp security guards have rating six nonconductivity as standard armor stick and shock stops being as effective.

Doesn't the BBB say that enemies other than prime runners are supposed to have a single damage track?

First if you're set on your course I would do half damage not full negation. That's pretty brutal.

It's true that SR possibly gives non lethal damage an edge, possibly because in theory your player characters aren't supposed to be murder fiends and this tilts them away from that.

In SR2/3 this was balanced because stim patches actually temporarily removed all stun damage, and there was autoinjector cyberware for pretty cheap. Meaning some people would be immune and regardless personael could be on their feet quickly. And of course drones and the like aren't bothered by the drugs, and all the stunn weaponry can't even punch through light cover like cubicle wall (back when cover modifiers were more brutal).

I suppose now I can see a need to tone it down.

Givin the choice between lethal and non-lethal methods of fighting.
The non-lethal is supposed to be more difficult.
Shadowrunners should choose non-lethal methods because they don't want to kill anyone not because its more effective at taking out enemies then lethal.

Lets look at two anime characters, Vash and Kenshin both extremly powerful individuals. One of the greatest challanges they faced during a fight was defeating thier enemy with out killing them. Fights never became eaiser by use of non-lethal methods they became more difficult.

I don't really want to track 2 numbers for each of the 30+ grunts in my lonestar patrol .

I think the grunt rules are a good way to keep confrontations fast with large number of enemies. I use it as a kind of realism tool, a mere dozen gangers wouldn't engage the group of runners, two dozens might. I don't even use group edge. But that's just personal preference, one might as well use exact rules and a few less grunts.

As it stands in shadowrun its eaiser to knock them out with stun then to kill them with lethal methods.
Don't give me any that the dangers of leaving them alive crap. That is irrlevent as if thats a worry you can kill them at your leasure after you render them unconcious.

An enemy is defeated when they can't move anylonger be they unconcious from stun, dead, or unconcious from physical. At that point the party can move on or shoot them in head.

If using non-lethal methods was more effective then using lethal methods then why would the corp security use lethal rounds on the runners. Why not use the more effective non-lethal stuff. After all once thier unconcious we can kill them anyway.

My beef with it is not about killing vs non killing. Its about ease of defeating. It should be easier to kill them out right then to knock them out with stun.

When my street samurai loads in his stick and shock it should be because he has decided NOT to kill this foe.
Not because he knows the stick and shock will knock out his enemies more quickly then his EXEX. As I said if he wants them dead he can still kill them after knocking them out with stun.

Serbtiar had a document of house rules that I borrowed from regarding altering the drain of stun spells and the statistics of stick-and-shock ammo. Besides these two instances, do you have any problems with non-lethal attacks?

Well its been a bit since I looked at the stats, but in a game where I actually got to play for a change I remember that our Decker who used a Taser had a higher 'kill count' then anyone else, if you didn't count the fact that a poorly placed Fireball my character cast set the place on fire and burnt down an entire city block.

The ironic thing is, my house rule wouldn't really affect the Stun Bolt spell, for some reason every Mage that I've played or GMed for seldom used it opting for Manabolt and the Indirect Elemental Spells. (But then again almost every Mage build that I've seen has been tweaked to excell in handling Drain.)