All to often I have a situation come up where someone is drawn down on another person, more often than not a Lone Star Cop drawn down on a Shadowrunner, in the typical "Freeze, don't move!" situation.

I am wondering what the rule you guys use for this situation is, if the Runner decides to do something. Does he have a chance to out manuever the "ready" Cop?

Also...

A similiar situation, when people have delayed actions over countless rounds, and then 1 char steps out into the open, and a NPC chooses to fire, and another PC chooses to fire at him, etc... etc... etc... how do you play that out?

Thanks...

- DgrenJ

The cop scenario works fine with the delay action rules.

Delaying over multiple turns: I would have everyone wanting to act on that pass roll initiative again, and discard the numbers after that IP passes. Alternatively you could use a faster method of comparing reaction scores and only requiring rolloffs on ties.

I call for Reaction tests in those circumstances. Winner goes first.

I'd call for initiative before the cop pulled his gun, although that can be tricky and gives the players advance warning.

If the cop already has his gun out and the 'runner has not, call for initiative. Should the cop win the initiative he'd probably hold his action and interrupt the 'runner if they do anything he doesn't like. If the 'runner wins then pulling a gun is only a simmple action, or free if he passes a quickdraw test.

As for multiple delayed actions, that shouldn't be a problem, since a character can only have one action held at a time. If the character's next action comes up he has to use or lose the held action. As for multiple characters holding actions I'd say it goes in order of the initiative they originally rolled.

eg. runner 1 init 14
runner 2 init 7
NPC 1 init 12
NPC 2 init 10

Runner 1 and both NPCs hold their action. Runner 2 goes to shoot NPC 1.
NPC 2 declares that he wants to use his action to shoot runner 2.
runner 1 declares he wants to use his action to shoot NPC 2.
NPC 1 declares he wants to use his action to shoot runner 1.

Order that stuff happens:
Runner 1 shoots NPC 2
NPC 1 shoots runner 1
NPC 2 shoots runner 2 (unless he was too badly hurt and his initiative dropped to less than 7)
Runner 2 shoots NPC 1

I would have the guy holding the gun a free shot. After all, why would any Lone Star officer offer the "freeze or I shoot" option if 9 times out of 10 the shadowrunner he has got the drop on will go faster.

It's not as if I am being harsh on my players, they know exactly what could happen.

I don't think the Star have to deal with runners all that often. If they did, who would be a Star officer? You just get geeked by professional criminals everyday!

I feel the initiative rules cover this. If the cop has his gun out, he can shoot with two simple actions. The runner, even if he does win the initiative still has to use one to draw his gun.

Having a weapon out and ready to fir should probably count as an ambush situation. IIRC that's worth 6 dice.

meh... It's only really surprise or ambush if the victim doesn't know he's about to be attacked.

The Star officer has already foregone surprise by shouting a warning. The officer doesn't need to spend an action drawing his gun, but that's about it.

I would use delaying actions for the Star officer, and require quickdraw on the part of the runner. Alternatively, competing reaction tests (since they're both delaying actions indefinitely otherwise) plus the runner still has his quickdraw test.

Surprise Test works for me, invoking that part of the rules that you cannot 'fail' the roll because you expected the Surprise for both parties. The cop(s) would have a good bonus though : +3 (if they'd rather hope he'll freeze) to +6 (if they'd rather hope he doesn't),

Can you delay a Simple action that you haven't used or do you have to delay the entire Complex action?

"Freeze, or i'll shoot" (free) + Take Aim (Simple) + Delay just in case this guy goes for a gun (Delayed Simple). He gets a perception or surprise or whatever and if he wins he get to Shoot (Simple). Can I do that?

Jim Cirillo was a police detective working in New York City's Robbery division a couple of decades ago when they started getting a rash of robbery-homicides... people would stick up a convenience store, a pizza parlor, a liquor store, take the money from the register, then shoot the attendant and leave. He recounted the first time he ever fired on a suspect in a book he later wrote on the subject of handguns and ammunition.

On realizing that the person at the register was, in fact, robbing the store, Cirillo stepped out from behind a display case and shouted something along the lines of "Police! Drop the weapon!" He made it about as far as "Poli-" when the suspect started moving and shooting at him. Cirillo returned fire and killed the suspect.

During the subsequent investigation of the shooting, Cirillo was asked by one of the people on the board if he had identified himself as a police officer, and if he'd ordered the suspect to drop his weapon. His response was "Yes, but I'm not sure if he heard me over all the gunfire."

LOL!

One of my other favorite RPGs has a combat maneuver called "covered."

You make a normal attack roll with a penalty. If you succeed, you have the oponent "covered" with your weapon. If I was going to use this in SR, I'd run it this way:

Make an attack at -2. Count your hits. If you succeed, your opponent is covered. Feel free to issue commands to your target ("drop it or I shoot!"). At that point after that, assuming you or your target take no other action, you can chose to simply hit the oppenent for free. The defender is considered to be in whatever defensive position he was in when you hit with the cover maneuver. That is, if he was surprised, he get's no defensive roll. If he was not dodging, he doesn't get to roll his dodge.

If that doesn't work for you- you could allow them to dodge if they weren't surprised, or to roll straight Reaction if they were surprised.

What do you think of that?

Dread Polack

Damn you DP, that rule is brilliant.

Well, credit where credit is due- I stole it from the HERO system/ Champions.

Dread Polack

i like that. I ran into a situation the other night where two things bugged me.

1) I was told by a PC that you couldn't hold part of an action (just a Simple)

2) My Lone Star swat team (Just two guys left) had a PC 'covered'. He was half way up a flight of stairs and they had their gun pointed at him and at least a SImple action each left to shoot him if he moved. He had begun up the stairs and had rolled a crappy Perception roll (a tie between their Infiltration and his Perception) so I decided to atleast give him a gut feeling something was wrong, no specifics. He looked around some more with another Simple action and saw his cloaked enemies down the steps. By this time all his actions were spent so they had him by the balls. I thought.

At the time combat had occupied most of the session and I wasn't in the mood to further slow things down by digging through the rulebook. He ended up darting the rest of the way up the stairs and behind cover before they got to do anything. It urked me something fierce but i was trying to move things along. I was going with number 1 being corrrect and wasn't in the mood to press the obvious.

First, number 1 is worng, isn't it?
Second, I think i'm going to introduce that covering manuver. That would have been very appropriate in this case.

You don't need to introduce a covering maneuver. Holding an action covers this adequately.

The minute you start shooting at someone, you're not covering him anymore... you're shooting him.

The problem is the combination of a Held Action and Surprise - or how much do you want the players to be able to respond. Can they make a break in time ? Or could they even dodge ?

DP's covering rule, while still being essentially a modified Held Action the way he designed it, is a way to solve this ... or at least inspired an idea how to handle it

Covering (Optional Rule)

Rule :

Make a normal attack roll at a -2 penalty. Count any hits. If you rolled any, the target is now covered. Feel free to issue commands to your target ("drop it or I shoot!"). You can release the shot at any time.
If the target tries to act, make a Surprise Test, adding any hits of the covering test and +3 (you hope for the target to drop it) to +6 (you hope he doesn’t) Dice. You also add the hits of the covering test to your first Initiative (both score and dice). If a tie occurs on the Initiative roll, the covering party goes first.

Example :

Franky BeatCop (REA 4, INI 7, Firearms Pool of 9) notices a suspicious person lurking near a warehouse. He sneaks up on him unnoticed and announces his presence, gun drawn. He rolls 6 Dice (9 – 2 (covering) – 1 (it’s pretty dark)), rolling 3 hits.
Joe Shadowrunner (REA 6, INI 11) does not feel like answering questions and tries to run. As he was more concerned with the warehouse’s architecture as with his surroundings seemingly, he’s potentially surprised.
So Franky rolls 11 Dice (4 (REA) + 3 (Covering hits) + 4 (he’s not too keen on producing a corpse)), scoring 4 hits. Joe rolls 6 Dice (REA), scoring 2 hits – he’s caught with his pants down.
For the first Initiative, Franky would use an effective INI score of 10 (7 (INI) + 3 (Covering hits)) vs. Joe’s 11 and will go first unless Joe has a higher score than him.
If Joe wins, he better be lucky choosing a random direction to run and make a getaway.

This should make it a fair challenge ...

Samaels Ghost: They can most definitely take full actions. Perhaps your friend was confusing delay with readied actions in d20 systems.

Eh, I meant "you CAN'T hold just a simple."
not "you can ONLY hold just a simple"

and he's never played D&D. Thinks it's too nerdy. To which I usually respond "You play Shadowrun"

You don't hold a specific action, you just choose to go later in the turn. When you do decide to go you can take whatever actions would normally be available to you.

I think the point is you hold an action, and an action can consist of 2 simple actions or one complex action and of course your free action.

I think your player was correct in that a character can't take part of an action and hold the rest. But then I'm at work and don't have my RAW with me, so I could be wrong. I would ask, in this situation, why the SWAT members, who had already been fired upon, didn't just blow the perp away?

If he meant you can't take part of an action and hold the rest then e's definitely right and I misunderstood the question.

If you've got a character in your sights and he's not moving around much (that is, diving, dodging, whatever... the "if he moves, you lose your aim" bit is too strict for my interpretation), you Take Aim until you're as accurate as you're going to get. Then, wait until your next action is about to come up, and right before it does, yell "Lone Star! Drop the weapon!" with the free action you haven't used yet. If he starts to flip out (that is, you didn't Surprise him and he's engaging or fleeing), shoot him. Otherwise, Hold your action and keep the gun on him.

@ornot: He hadn;t shot at them yet. The team had been setup and the swat was part of the ambush.

@James McMurray : I guess I have to roll with that if that's the general concensus. I'm not sure if I like that. It seems as if, at least in the situation I described, that it doesn't seem fair. You should be able to hold back from shooting someone until they do something that you deem ahead of time as unacceptable (kinda like setting a trigger: If he moves he gets it). So long as you're sure I'll keep that in mind. Thanks.

It just didn't seem to make ANY sense that the guys had a beat on him and the PC ran all the way up the stairs and to cover before they could do so much as blink stupidly. I'm all for action movie type playing.

In a movie, however, the hero would have waited for one guard to get close and took him as a human shield, blasted the other guy with his recently owned buddy's gun, and then continued on towards his objective after obtaining a guard uniform, disposing of the bodies and getting new, cool weapons. IMO, at least. The PC wasn't very creative that night. I would have probably given him bonuses if he decided to go the super-cool route. I usualy give +2 for awesome or just say the character did it. Makes for some awesome gameplay but requires the players to provide more input. Actually, that's the way it should be, IMO.

It doesn't make sense, but that's the way the delaying rules work because you can't actually interrupt someone once they've strated moving. We've house ruled that you can because we're used to the D&D style of readying actions and it just makes more sense to us.

I'll have to bring that up to them. I'm accustomed to D&D's readied actions as well.

Or try out the rule I posted somewhat earlier in this threat. It' designed to combine the best aspects of Held Actions and Surprise Tests.

Yes, that's Shameless Self-Promotion™.

@Samaels Ghost: From your description of the SWAT team being only two people left, I assumed the rest had been killed. My bad. As far as holding back from shooting someone bear in mind that a combat turn is only 3 seconds long or thereabouts. That doesn't leave long to hang about before shooting.

You can't break your action up into little bits as that would be very complicated, but equally in game time, people aren't just taking turns. If your player had multiple IPs, remember that he can still only move the same distance other people can. You just have to divide the total distance a character is able to go by the number of IPs you are using.

Consequently, unless he was very close to cover, there is little reason why they SWAT guys couldn't shoot at him before he made it on the next combat turn (albeit with the target running modifier), for all that they've forfeited one of their simple actions from the last turn.

I hope this makes sense.

yep, thanks