Ok This is kind of a follow on thread to my one about spirits.

You see our little prankster (well call him Tag) needs a bit of a back up plan for when he painting the side of a building (still 140 floors up appox 500m) So i was thinking a LALO parachute, for the purpose's (if need or for fun) of base jumping off of said building. (I'm one of these people that has to have to character actually able to do his/ her chosen hobby)

So i decidded to have a reread of the parachuting rules. I have discovered that Tag is looking at Tn's of 12+ to just OPEN his chute let alone not hit any buildings on the way down! ( 6 (10-4 (for 400m opening) +2 LALO, +4 Tight terrain, not including any weather effects)

Is it me or does that just seem a little on the high side?

Now granted i haven't done any parachuting myself so i might be suffering from the effects of hollywoodism. But if not how good (ie skill lvl) do you have to be to be able to base jump! (Let alone as good as swoop from drop zone).

And as a side note. Again is it me or is 30kgs a bit on the heavy side for a LALO parachute?

Hmm... it does seem like it's insanely hard to pull off a HALO jump. Inside the city parachuting is nigh on impossible, from the looks of it, as well.

Considering the types of wind currents you normally get in a city with big buildings, though, I can't say it's not realistic.

I can tell you parachutes are fraggin heavy I thought that 30kgs were pretty heavy for modern day stuff. I thought materials were lighter now, I know that they were this heavy back in World War II, its one of the reasons it was so dangerous for a parachuter to drop into a warzone, nobody thought to take a look at the type of terrain that these boys were jumping into, light marshes so to speak. And there was death of a lot of the parachuters, not even to mention the amount of death that was around from enemy guns.

Take a look at this webpage and give it a skim for BASE jumping.

Eeek!

As for the safety of such an expedition, I have no idea and I couldn't begin to compare it to standard chute jumping, HALO or whathaveyou.

-Siege

personally, i think that the parachuting roll should be made by the packer, with the parachuter's roll being used to reduce scatter, the same way you handle grenades.

I would think parachuting from a plane makes it harder to get in between buildings and such than jumping from the inside the building area.

I would remove the tight terrain modifier unless they jump from much higher than the surrounding cityscape. Also, the HALO penalty could be reduced by one with every two successes on a Base Jumping (4) knowledge skill test.

Well i've just been to a fw sites and found out a few RL details about base jumping.

Bridge day is an event held once a year, were people jump from a bridge (na? really?) 876ft high (appox 265.45 m) a rock dropped from this height takes 8.8 secs to hit the water below.
The longest you can fall before opening your chute is 7 sec, 1.8 secs for your chute to slow your desent enough as to not break your legs. but for safty i'll go with a free fall time of 3 secs (one combat turn) so at the end of that combat turn you have fallen (According to Scomp pg 46) 40+80+120meters or 240 meters.

So if i have this right (and i might not) You have 25.45 meters for your parachute to open AND slow your fall!?!? Yeah right...

Oh and the Tn's for the bridge day jump?
Lets see. 10- (25.45/100) so 10 then
plus +2 for low Altitude
plus +1 for opening below minmum safe opening
plus +2 for restricted LZ (a 30m diameter) Sorry did i not mention that?

So Tn's of 15. And the odds of getting that with a skill of 6 is..... 1.85% if my maths is correct.

So what skill level are you needing just to be able to jump at bridge day!?!?

[Edit] rechecked the maths[/EDIT]

Shockwave, BASE jumping is a little more involved than a freefall jump and organisers usually do not allow inexperienced jumpers to take part (I'd love to do it but I'm still way shy of the number of jumps most organisers require before I'd be permitted to take part). Maybe someone on DSF who has actually made a BASE jump will be able to enlighten you further but from what I know, I'd say you're quite on the money with the TNs you calculated - bear in mind, the TNs are for both SAFELY maneuvering BEFORE and AFTER you deploy your chute in Tight Terrain.

@ Dim sum, I don't doubt it's more difficult. And i Also found out that your needing 150 freefall jumps before they will let you.

But the Tn's of 14 is for restricted terrain not Tight, thats Tn's of 16.

Now i'm not saying that base jumping is easy, but Tn's of 10+ is rated at nearly impossible (with any regulaterity) but these are 15+!! to have an 66% chance of getting those without reroll your needing a skill of 36!!

Now sorry but THAT is too high. Something is wrong.

[Edit] rechecked the maths(again)[/Edit]

The parachuting TN's have always been a little on the high side. IIRC, none of the writers had much if any experience so the author - I forget who it was - basically had to use a couple documentaries and research when writing the rules. If you think they're too high, just sit down with the GM and house-rule them to something more to your liking.

Adapt the grenade rules to the parachuting rules. It may well be that you want to keep the parachuting TNs as they are, but simply require successes to reduce scatter. A result of all 1s indicates a mishap like a non-functional chute.

Not a bad call, TinkerGnome. I like it.

if you break the roll down into two parts, you should definitely be using the skill of the parachute packer for the first part (getting the chute to open correctly), rather than the skill of the guy going the jump. there's not much can screw up on, when it comes to yanking ripcords; it's all about how much attention to detail was put into packing the parachute into the bag. if the chute was packed poorly, no amount of skill on the part of the parachutist is going to save him; if it was packed correctly, no amount of incompetenct on the part of the parachutist is going to kill him.

that said, the idea of rolling the parachutist's skill to reduce grenade-style scatter is brilliant. glad i thought of it!

You don't even have to add new rules for successes, actually. The only change you need to make is that 0 successes means you land with full scatter and with full damage potential. Successes can be used to reduce either of those

In 2002, 750 people jumped off of the 876' New River Gorge Bridge during Bride Day. There were two sprained ankles.

Using the Shadowrun rules and giving every jumper a skill of 8 in BASE jumping, and allowing for ideal conditions (immediately attempting to open the chute and no restricted terrain or weather), we would get a Target Number of 10 just for the chute to open.

This would mean the chute only opens 50.15% of the time.

i.e. 373 dead BASE jumpers during the first set of jumps on Bridge Day.

Since the average base jumper jumps 1-4 times during the day, the death toll would be even higher.

Even if each of those failed jumpers blew 6 karma pool to save their accellerating hoops, 55 of them wouldn't even get their chutes open during the first jump.

Of those that did get their chutes open, almost none of them would have had enough remaining successes to get anywhere near the landing zone or prevent landing injury.

IMO, the rules need our help. We have GM fudged it in the past, but our characters are scared to initiate any plan involving parachuting because it seems so deadly for even the most experienced jumper.

So anychance of some one coming up with a new set of rules (of a sort).

I ask you people, because i don't like redoing rules when it's my character thats going to be involved.


OT, why do my threads always burn out quickly, 12hrs of fast replys then nadda.

To be honest, I might not have responded had I not somehow missed the excellent solutions posted by T-Gnome, Dim-Sum and others.

I do still wonder if mods to the target numbers aren't still in order somehow. Even if we allow 0 successes to just be a higher scatter and higher chance of injury I would like my players to at least have a fair chance of landing inside a security fence.

Bah, he'd have to be moving pretty fast to land inside the fence.

Maybe behind it, but inside? Ouch.

-Siege

Thanks

~J

But when the rules are clearly wrong/ lacking you have to start looking else where. To get an idea on how difficult things like that are you look up real world referenes.

But then you have a bit of a problem with a little bit of realism in your games. Note i said little bit.

Beside as the rules stand the skill is so not worth taking.

I agree completely, actually.

I liked MFB's suggestion for having the packer make a test to set the 'chute up properly. You could then base some of the conditional TNs on how the packer packed the 'chute. If he prepared it for one of these BASE jumps, then you could elimate that particular mod. But if you try to use it anywhere else, you not only have to add that conditional mod, but you have to add in the one the packer originally planned for, too.

But then again, that just makes using a 'chute packed for some other occassion for a different one suicidal at best. I don't know enough about parachuting to really offer any sound suggestions, sadly. But I really did like MFB's suggestion. It makes a lot of sense to me.

Well, it would not be the first time that Fanpro/Fasa has some Problems with numbers.

Just use the skill like any other skill. Roll it against TN 2 + modifiers, given by the game master, depending on the situation, and just estimate the result depending on the number of successes. Real-world parachute situations should rarely have an TN above 6-8.

SYL

Perhaps I should clarify my position:

When the rules ain't broke gamewise, them being unrealistic doesn't provide grounds to fix them.

When they are broke, I have no problem with people trying to find solutions that aren't broke that happen to be realistic. Just remember that first and foremost the goal is to find rules that work, rather than rules that are realistic.

~J

Consider also Cave Jumping: Photo or Article

ok since no one else is going to do it, here's my first try.

Packing the chute.
Parachuting (Packing) 4 (hehe just invented a new Specialization)
+2 Tn's if packing a none standard chute (ie Halo or Lalo)
Base time 1 hour sucess's can either be used to reduce this (by dividing the base time) or to make the chute open smoother.

No success indicates that the chute was not packed properly and that the lines are tangled (deep poopoo)

A result of all 1's means that the chute doesn't depoly at all. the chance's are you will be hitting the ground at 120MPH (160Mpt) Can you say hand of god.

This test Should be taken by the GM, because you won't know how well you did till you pull that cord.

It takes 3 secs for the chute to depoly fully, minus one sec per success that is assigned to make the chute open more smoothly.
If you hit the ground during this time resist 8S please impact helps at half value.

To Untangle the lines while falling is a Parachute(packing) 4 test (i believe that knowing how to pack a chute would help in untangleing one)
Modifiers +2 for being scared drekless, minus 1 per success on a willpower 6 test.

[EDIT]
Ooops forgot!!

Base time 30secs (10 Combat turns), it then takes a further 3 Secs for the chute to depoly. hitting the ground during the untangling time is not good (see falling rules SComp pg46, but remember Terminal Velocity is 160Mpt), during the 3 Secs for the chute to open is 8 Serious as above[/EDIT]

Thats the start. I'll come back with the landing and on target part at a later time.

Any comments??

8S? So it doesn't matter if I'm falling off a ten-foot platform or at terminal velocity, just as long as I pull that cord I'm resisting 8S?

~J

Well i came up with this figure from 2 angles. The first being Landing with a fully depolyed chute is 4M (I have to work off something, right?)
And jumpers have landed and suffered broken Leg(s) because the chute hadn't deployed properly. A broken leg is a Serious wound (at least in my eyes) and the power of 8 seemed like a good figure.

In realtion to jumping off a "ten foot platform" your not falling fast or long enough for the chute to help. This is nothing more then my opinion and (un)educated guess work at solving the problem. you need to have free fallen for at least 3 Sec for chutes to work, but again this is my opinion. Nothing more.

Why not scrap the 10- base TN and set it at 4 for base jumping? Then add modifiers like LALO terrain?

Oh, I'm not arguing that the chute would help at 10 feet. I'm just saying that according to your rules the act of trying to use the parachute without enough clearance automatically sets the damage irrespective of distance fallen.

~J

Because the terrian your falling into shouldn't effect whether or not the chute opens. Hence why MFB suggested the 2 part test.

@Kage
What i've put is only a suggestion. You don't have to use it, it's not like i'm writing canon. Feel free to come up with something better.

I'm not going to use it at all. Thus far no one has ever come into a situation involving parachuting. I'm just poking your rules at the weak points so that if you continue to refine them they'll come out without those weak points, because it's almost certain that someone else down the line will poke at them once you implement them.

~J

Well how detailed do they have to be? Too much detail can spoil/ slow down a game. I was just going for easy, quick rules that were better then the ones in CC.

Besides commonsense does have to come into it. If i had a player trying to abuse the rules (these or other ones) They would get a "haha ya funny" Which is also one pf the reason why i didn't want to come up with the rules myself, because it's for a character concept I have.

And seriously you've never been in a game where someone has wanted to parachute??

Nope. Currently the only use of Parachuting I've encountered was in some backstory I wrote.

~J

I have to say I don't really bother sticking exactly to the rules for everything, including parachuting. I think Shockwave is right that the rules need tweaking and while I like MFB's idea of a packing test, I don't think it needs a separate skill but could be another specialisation (apologies, MFB, if that is what you suggested as I vaguely remember a suggestion for a new skill only).

I tend to break down parachuting into two phases as I've mentioned before: before and after deploying the chute. Anyone else here who's jumped before will tell you that it's not all that easy to maintain a correct posture in freefall so skill is involved there to position yourself for chute deployment. After that, it takes skill to guide your descent to the desired location.

For base jumping, I'd eliminate the more of the before-deployment modifiers since the jumper clutches the drogue chute in his hand, anyway, and almost always let's it go immediately or very shortly after jumping (depending on the height from which they jump).

I use a base TN of 4 usually and tack on TN mods as I feel are appropriate and most times, the TNs work out in the 7-9 range because the PCs are trying something other than a straightforward freefall jump in ideal conditions.