One of the amusing details of SR is professional ratings. The blurb on professional ratings tends to be buried deeply in the SR sourcebooks and is probably not going to be encountered on a first run through the book. Basically, professional ratings determine when a character loses their composure in a combat situation and stops fighting. All player characters by default are fully "professional" meaning that they will keep fighting as best they can until they take a D wound and are incapacitated but in theory most of the people you meet in the street are not combat professionals and will actually become incapacitated by wounds that aren't Deadly. Even street cops are theoretically not fully "professional"; only the most hard-bitten combatants are supposed to keep going like John Henry up until they take a D wound.

Of course, when it comes to chargen, nobody thinks that their player character should qualify as anything but fully elite professional. As far as I can remember there are no edges or flaws that tamper with your professional rating. So, all of your Troll Ganger archetypal PCs and your 14 year old ex-corp decker whizzes are inextricably super combat professionals who keep going like Ben Richards in the conclusion of "The Running Man".

Don't you think it should be possible to sacrifice levels of professionalism for extra build points? Not all characters are going to be stoic Rambo-like Delta Force snipers. Lots of people want to play reporters, talented runaways, otaku, etc. I think that they should be given the option to pee their pants and curl up in a ball after taking a M wound. I mean, I think we have the deepest possible philosophical imperative to implement CREEPWOODRUN!!!!

Okay, jokes aside, how about this?

A character may downgrade his or her professional rating from requring a D wound for incapacitation to an S, M, or L. Downgrading past S would probably be a bad idea but the option is there for philosophical reasons.

Each box of physical damage you sacrifice towards your incapacitation threshold nets you 2 build points. The GM may consider the following restriction: build points gained in this manner may only be spent on Knowledge skills and non-combat Active skills.

Should your character be incapacitated due to injury levels exceeding professional ratings it can mean any of the following:

1.) The character believes that he or she has been mortally wounded and so falls to the ground and plays the part. This kind of thing happens in real life; supposedly some people also jump backwards when shot with a handgun for the same reason. In this case the character's teammates may believe the character in question has been killed since it looks exactly like the real deal minus grotesque decapitation, etc.

2.) The character is overcome with fear and pain and freezes up on the spot. The character may not use any active skills, may not move independently, may not seek cover. He or she acts like a deer in the headlights and just hunches over a bit grabbing the injuries. Another character may attempt to usher the wounded character along in an effort to get him or her to safety. If this happens the pair moves at one half the normal movement rate of the injured character.

3.) The character behaves as per the Fear critter power but due to mental incapacitation may not use any active skills.

These conditions will persist until all obvious threats have been removed or the character is killed. If a character is injured sufficiently to invoke any of the above effects and gets into a new combat situation then the character will be too terrified to take part and will behave as in #2 above.

Thoughts? Comments?

this would probably work better as just a regular flaw. i'd make it the opposite of the Combat Monster flaw; at the first level, they must flee combat unless they make a Will (5) roll once they reach S damage; at the second level, M; at the third level, L. i'd leave the exact effects vague, because the reasons for fleeing can vary from character to character.

Neat idea. Maybe you should suggest it in the SR3R thread ;P But I agree it should be a regular flaw for ease of mechanics, no restrictions on what the points can be spent on. Also, the restrictions continue until the character has been healed back below the threshold. In other words, if the fellow is foolish enough to have the flaw up to Light wounds, he's basically a hypochondriac who, upon getting stabbed by a knife, will swear he's bleeding out, the room is spinning, etc. and will be unable to do anything productive until he sees a proper bandage or a shaman do his mojo.

I would also argue that this would apply to both physical AND stun, so people shot with a taser cry and swear they're going into arrest until sufficient time has passed to reduce stun back below the threshold.

It'd be fun having both this and Combat Monster at the same time... And you get more BPs, yay !

Personally, I wouldn't rule it, I would just let the players play it that way if their character is not a professional (or not dumb enough to keep on fighting with a D-1 wound).

An interesting idea. I might might say 1 build a box though. At that point figure you can take a serious and keep fighting. Besides, take a serious physical and a serious stun and you might as well run away. +6 to everything sucks!

Heheh, I remember that thread too, thanks fr the memories.

It does sound like it could be a good flaw, and pretty well balanced at that. The only issue i could see popping up is with the non combat twinks having a field day with it.


I could kind of see this going with a sort of Flashback for combative characters as well. Could make for good backstory. Or even Amnesia(have no idea WHY they freeze after a certain point.)

No no, it's the parajumping that gets left out. After all, there has to be a reasonable explanation for why the character is still alive.

~J

I really like this and have actually added it in to some of my games. Though typically it gets bought off before too long. Which seems fair. And I always use it for NPCs. Though I consider stun and physical damage to be very different in regards to panic.

By the way I wouldn't just consider this for SR3. It still makes sense in SR4, which also has "professional ratings". Up until now I'd just been using the number of boxes as with SR3 for effective wound levels, but that probably isn't fair to trolls.

So maybe "light" should be 10% of boxes full, medium 30% and serious 60%. Rounding up in each case. So to get a serious wound on someone with 14 boxes you'd need to have filled up 9 boxes.

Anyway once the threshold in physical is reached they have to make a "moderate" test with willpower. If they pass they will try and flee/hide/take cover/not advance depending on the situation. If they fail they fall down and go into shock and scream or whatnot until either someone grabs them and gets them moving or it becomes apperant that they are going to get far worse by staying where they are. At which point they will flee/hide as if they had passed.

From SR4 you could also add some kind of test if a % of the team goes down as in professional ratings.

Finally, at least for NPC I have them react to the sort of weapon that is being used around them or pointed at them. Plenty of guys are up for a good old fistfight in a bar, when you pull a knife some aren't interested anymore, a gun will get more to back down, a vindicator will probably get the whole bar to calm down.

For PCs I'd say they have to pass a willpower test to expose themselves to physical damage doing weapons fire that has a base damage equal to or higher than the number of boxes of damage it will take to get them to spaz out. If they fail they will only engage around cover or behind their other teammates. And if alone will attempt to avoid the situation.