From hlair.dumpshock.com

In the SR2 to SR3 section

I'm not with my books now, but I recall Deadlier Overdamage is after the combat rules, along with healing rules.

SR3 p126, and it is an optional rule!

Thx guys, just what I was looking for, our GM likes to go with this kind of thing! Makes combat lots of fun!

you need so many sucesss to kill an undamaged person ainstantly its still pretty heinously unlikely. You need net sucesses equal to 2x their body AFTER it was staged to deadly and the power of the attack has to be their body x 1.5 or higher IIRC.

Heh.

I dunno -- I find that the easy death of the Cthulhu system makes the whole experience more interesting.

You're more aware of just how easy it is to die and you adjust your game play accordingly.

Which can be dull for the "I wanna be an airborne ranger!" crew, or amazingly exciting to realize that a shot, never mind several, can plant you six feet under. Once they're done scraping you off the scenery.

Although it does tend to lend itself moreso to an X-files investigation sort of game and not a running gun battle that SR can devolve into.

-Siege

cyberpunk originaly had very realistic combat rules but was toned down in 2020 as people didnt like the character turnover. and in that game combat is still deadly for anyone but a full borg or a highly wired solo...

I don't personally have a big problem with a moderate fatality rate, sometimes char gen is the most fun part of a game for me. However, that only goes so far, I like to see how my chars play out, I do get pretty mad if I don't get a chance, or have just spent hours making a char with backstory and skills, and then he gets offed and I have to make a new one for the next session.
Sometimes killing PCs is okay, but at the same time GMs that are out to do it ruin the fun of playing your new Char.

Force 10!? Is that all you've got?

Actually one of my players had a force 18 powerball once.

I asked what people were doing for three months of downtime and he said he was learning some spells. He had plenty of magical contacts and whatnot, so I just asked if he'd paid the required cash and karma and made his learning rolls. He said yes. I looked at his barely legible list, saw a few small ones and a force 8 powerball, and said ok.

Later on he casted it and totally took me by surprise, showing me the barely visible 1 in front of the 8. I said "uhh, ok, I'll talk to you about that later" and let him cast it. He wasn't really very smart about it, though, since it ended up hitting half the team and knocking his ass out. After the game I asked him how he'd managed to roll a 36 to learn it, then explained that he has to roll dice to learn spells (for like the fifth time) and told him not to do that again.

Then, thinking of the fun rping that had resulted from all of the healing and replacing gear (one teammate had even lost magic because of it), I let him keep the spell.

Haha, that's like a tiny magical nuke. Wow.

Tips and Tricks of Taking Out Shadowrunners

Tip 1:

Geek the mage.

Tip 2:

Geek the silly looking guy wearing the blinders being pushed to the front of the SR team.

Tip 3:

Always remember, buying ammo is cheaper than paying medical bills.

-Siege

Well, back to topic... which was, if I remember correctly, about deadly overflow damage. We sometime used the following rules:

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As veteran Shadowrun players are all too aware, a literal interpretation of rules means that a healthy, unwounded character may not be killed by a single wound, even if that wound is caused by something like skydiving without a parachute, taking an anti-vehicular missile in the chest, eating a tactical nuclear warhead, etc.
Most GM's use the common-sense workaround; here's a way of introducing instant death into the campaign, without throwing game balance out of whack or slowing play one little bit.
When a character takes a deadly wound fails to get ANY successes resisting it, that character is dead. Not dying, just stone- cold dead. (Note -- particularly nasty GM's can say the character is suffering the JFK effect instead -- technically alive, but incapable of being revived without an act of God.)
Example: Timmy Target is about to pay for some things he said about Sammy Sniper's momma. From his perch in a skyscraper, Sammy puts a round from an MA2100 (with a base damage of 14S) into Timmy's chest. Sammy rolls 11 successes (Sammy's good at his job).
Timmy, unarmored fool that he is, gets to roll his 3 body dice against the attack. Timmy rolls a 3, a 4, and . . . a 17! The 10 net successes are more than enough to push the damage into the deadly range, but since lucky (?) Timmy got himself 1 success, he is not dead, just dying, as the rules state.
Two months later, Timmy gets out of the hospital, fully recovered. And Sammy's waiting for him. This time, Sammy gets a mere 8 successes. For the resistance roll, Timmy gets a 9, a 2, and . . . uh-oh . . . a 5. Timmy has rolled no successes against a deadly wound.
Timmy is now dead, and is going to stay that way, regardless of what Sherman the Shaman does for him. Looks like we need another Timmy.
I like this rule for several reasons:
• No extra dice rolling
• Fair to PC's and NPC's
• Occasionally forces PC's to make a really wrenching decision (remember, you CAN permanently expend a point from your Karma Pool to buy an automatic success *evil laughter*)
Though GM's should still enforce the "common sense" rule, and may choose to announce that to get that automatic success, you have to burn MORE karma, depending on the strength of whatever's nailing you. (i.e., burn two points to live through falling out of a jetliner, four to suck that missile, and twice as many karma points as you actually have available to endure that nuke.)

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By the way, I just found this from the 'net sometime, and I'm not taking any credits for writing this.

Oh my God! You killed Timmy! You bastard!

Actually, whoever did this is wrong.

Indeed. Their only option would be HoG.
edit: or Hooper-Nelson it down to something possibly doable.

~J

I have absolutely no idea.

~J

The Hooper-Nelson Rule. SR3 p. 248.
If allowed by GM, a player can lower the target number for a particularly difficult test (recommended 12+) by permanently burning Karma Pool dice. Each die burned lowers the TN by 1. A TN can not be lowered below 8 with this option.

I came close to using this one time, when I wanted to resist 17D instead of 18D from a nearby 4Kg C12 explosion, but I talked the GM into having an intervening tree lower the power rating of the blast by 1. I figured I was twice as likely to make a resistance roll of 17 than of 18.

We knew the rule; it's the rule's namesake that escapes us.

~J

It sounds more like two people. Hooper and Nelson. The plot thinkens!

Possibly Jim Nelson and Fred Hooper. Illustrators for a great number of SR books.

They must have suggested it, or something.

Let us not forget, that in SR, Hoop is terminology for Ass, as in "Saved my hoop!"

They are listed as part of the "Cool Brigade", above Playtesters, on page 5 or SR3.