*sigh* I keep feeling like I should comment here, but Khadim and Frank have covered all the points I would make, and quite ably I might add. It makes me glad to see you both posting actively again. If only DocFunk would come back as well, I could be truly happy for DS.

Anyway, I just wanted to chime in agreeing with Khadim and Frank and to let you guys know someone appreciates the contribution and is watching trying to help.

Chris

I'll have to come down more on Cain's side of this argument, mostly because SR4 allows characters to be so far beyond maximum human ability.

For example:
We have pedestrian defaulting from agility to shoot you, and rolling 2 dice.
We compare her to, say, Carlos Hathcock, rolling 15 dice (AGL 6, Longarm 7, Specialty +2)
Gunny Hathcock is 14 dice better than the pedestrian.

Now, we compare, the munched out elven gun-bunny adept (Agl 12, Skill 10, specialty 2) + a smart link, giving him 26 dice.
This puts him at 12 dice over Gunny Hathcock.

So when this guy shoots, he makes Hathcock looks like a pedestrian defaulting to agility in comparison.

Now, consider such a difficult shot, that even Hathcock would hard trouble doing it, with around -12 dice in penalties. He's got two dice left over, and basically no one else in the world could do that shot.

The gun-bunny, doing the same shot has 14 dice left over. So basically he shoots as well as as Hathcock when he is holding the gun to your head.

Next, we'll consider a shot that Hathcock couldn't make, even on hit luckiest day (we'll ignore the problems with the longshot test and just assume edge add dice. We'll assume Hatchcock is quite lucky and give him an edge of 6. This means that he finds shot impossible at penalties of -20. The gun bunny still has 6 dice left over, he can do this shot quite easily.

Once you get beyond human ability, you can't rely on common sense to tell you what you can or can't do. Sure no human can punch through an inch of armor steel, but can superman? You have to rely on the rules to tell you what you can and can't do, and the SR4 rules say that once you get 20+ dice in a skill, you can do a whole lot.

The skill levels available in SR4 seem to fit better into exalted where you get results like "Convince the hostile crowd at your execution to overrun the guards, set you free, and become the fanatically loyal core of your liberating army" are par for the course.

That's probably why the Attribute+Skill vs. Fixed TN mechanic is used in Exalted.

...tried to hit Hesty in the face once, didn't work...retired character when she bacame another nameless minion.

Nah, you can burn permanent edge to bust out of that, what could possibly go wrong? (Also: I was being stupid to demonstrate the absurdities of this argument. I will indeed ramp up the stupid in this post.)

On a more serious note, the main thrust of my argument was that letting those stupid longshots exists is the same as allowing you to shoot at things when you don't even have to know if any possible target exists or not, nor where it is.

For example, longshot on an buttoned up APC. If you look at a M113 - a pretty standard APC, vietnam era, you've seen it on the news - if the APC is buttoned up (and its a later model without firing ports), it is not possible to see if there is a driver, or a passenger, or indeed anyone else in the vehicle. It is NBC sealed, though it may just use overpressure so possibly not airtight, but it is certainly LOS obscuring. In the world of shadowrun, there does not even need to be anyone in the vehicle to drive it either so movement does not imply the existence of a driver, or if you extend the 'rigger' rigging it to be the 'driver' they do not have to be on the same continent.

Thus we are presented with two absurdist situations:

If a rigger using AR to control the APC like a radio controlled car in australia does not count as the driver of an APC in America, then you are allowing Mr Lucky to take longshots against abstract concepts (specifically, a component of his conceptual model of how APCs work) without any proof of a particular instantiation. I'd suggest you get right on shooting platonic concepts and internet memes, particularly lolcats.

If the rigger does count as the driver, Mr lucky aim at the american based APC, take the shot which will then complete a transatlantic crossing and hits the rigger in a hermetically sealed concrete bunker right in the face, in less than 3 seconds!

(there's probably a third case, in which the GM lets him do it if it really does have a driver, and doesn't if it doesn't. But in that case your gun has just turned into a magical divining rod, and you just need to wander around with your pistol taking longshots at the point at which you can start a hugely profitable mine with no risk or something else equally silly.)

Of course the logical conclusion is the GM to ban the shot as discretion is specifically invoked for this particular rule, but that option seems prohibited?

No, shooting through the window of an armoured limo is not particularly fantastic, but just extremely difficult. I'm not sure people would be crying so hard about that. But shooting through the armour of an APC with a pistol at a target you cannot see or know if it exists is an extremely wacky edge case.

no, it's not a wacky edge case. a wacky edge case is one that's incredibly unlikely to ever come up in a campaign--a pregnant woman surviving a fall out of an airplane without a parachute, for instance. shooting at someone you can't see, through vehicle armor or not, is neither wacky nor an edge case.

I didn't say merely 'you cannot see' they might have just ducked behind cover, and the long shot can be easily rationalized as 'well you wing him with a lucky shot before he ducks away' or something I'm not even sure I care (for example the sniping the guy in the boat with the HMG case, cool, nice trick, whatever, I'd probably let the PCs do that, though it is a bit stupid.)

I did say 'you cannot see, nor do you know if it exists' which is a really important difference. A contrasting example: Guy ducks behind an armored barrier and you longshot him. Okay, likely to come up in a game, don't mind the lucky shot, whatever.

Taking the same shot 10 minutes later against 'the guy who ducked behind the barricade' not okay - you have no idea where he is, this is completely absurd (is any player ever going to do that? ever?) and a wacky edge case.

it's still not a wacky edge case. people do it in real life all the time. it's called 'searching fire'. you shoot at a spot you suspect a bad guy might be in. if he falls over and dies, or shoots back, then you found him. if not, you haven't (or maybe he's just really cool under fire).

Called shots are described as 'specifically aiming at vulnerable points of a target' ie not searching fire in any way, because searching fire is a series of gunshots in a pattern in an attempt to route out a hostile position.

Taking the long shot mechanic as used here to enable a really specific called shot and then rebranding as searching fire is being a bit generous. Searching fire is most closely matched to suppressive fire and we both know it, or potentially blind fire through a barrier, which we are also doing here, but only in combination with highly specific called shots.

So no, longshots are not the best mechanical fit for searching fire, and if someone is using searching fire they need another mechanic.

In the M113 case, the sniper would shoot at the location where the driver would be sitting if he was in there. I'd probably allow for a (military knowledge: Vehicles) roll to determine if the sniper knows where the driver would sit, if he could know such a thing (like, if all M113 of one series had driver controls moved to the center of the vehicle when they were upgraded to rigger controls). If he hits well enough, then he'd hit where the driver would be sitting if he's there. He'd not suddenly hit a driver sitting in the central area if he aimed at the left forward area.

For searching fire, I usually just roll a die for random chance.

yeah but suddenly hitting someone of whom you have no idea of their position of existence is indeed being discussed, not shooting a particularly point in space and hoping that is occupied.

Edit: Another arbitary way to look at it.

A boeing 747 simulator encased in a 10 foot thick hollow sphere of concrete. inside are two pilots at two sets of controls who are taking successive turns to train on the simulator, but who are physically a distance apart.

Some people (cain) are saying that Mr lucky can pick up a gun, and without knowing where either person is, or that there are two of them, or who is controlling the simulator at the moment declare he is shooting the person who is currently controlling the simulator and hit him despite the solid sphere of concrete.

Other people (me) are disagreeing.

Cthulhudreams, you responded to my post, so my assumption was that you were responding to what i said rather than continuing your own argument in the guise of a response. i see now that this is not the case.

in the case of shooting at the 'driver' of a rigged vehicle, the logical option would be to assume that the player is shooting at the spot that a driver who was physically driving the vehicle would be sitting. the character would be perfectly free to take that shot, and if he rolled well, he would put a bullet right through the spot the driver would be sitting if said driver were physically present in the vehicle. your option would require the GM to throw out both common sense and the rules, since the range of a pistol is somewhat less than the distance between the US and Australia. the longshot rules do not allow for exceeding the range of a weapon.

as for my point, it stands--attempting to shoot at a target you can't see, through vehicle armor or not, is hardly a wacky edge case that should require careful GM consideration.

Cain's basic complaint, which people keep derailing, is that Edge makes the unimaginably impossible easy. i would add that you don't even need Edge for that in SR4, but that's a whole 'nother argument.

mfb has it essentially correct. People are getting too caught up in the minutae of the example, and missing the forest for the trees. Everyone else seems to be ignoring The Shot Heard Round the Barrens example, which is mechanically more difficult, yet only one person has made a halfhearted complaint about it. I'd think more people would notice the fact that it's easier to shoot down a Citymaster than it is to make an extended-range shot, under essentially the same conditions.

The whole point is, after a certain point (which is easy to get to) you may as well pile on the penalties for extra effect, since they don't affect your chance of success. The called shot is just an easy excuse to put a -20 modifier into the example; the technically-legal armor bypass is just a nifty bonus. As I understand it, mfb's point is that you don't even need to go that far to break the system; someone throwing around 20-30 dice can do that on a regular basis.

EDIT:

and here i thought the hollow-point of artillery was the big boom of the explosive charge in the projectile O.o

You're derailing yourself again. The point is that it's equally easy to make a minus fifty-three roll as it is to make a minus five-hundred-and-three roll. You can pile on the modifiers all you like, getting all kinds of extra effects out of the deal. And this helps break the system.

Okay, now we're getting somewhere. You're right, there's no difference in the difficulty once you pass the Zero-Dice-Pool threshold. At that point, the GM has to exercise his common sense. Just because the rules state that something might be *possible* doesn't mean it should always be allowed. The rules can't cover every possible situation, and that's why there's a GM to moderate things and adapt on the fly. Some thing *should* be 100% impossible. Sometimes you find barriers or problems you just *cannot* solve in a specific way, and thus you must find another way or abandon the problem altogether.

Oh, and Cain, you weren't arguing that point. You were arguing how it was possible to shoot someone inside an armored bubble and somehow bypass the armor in the process. You've switched points, and your latest point actually has merit.

Course, I agree with Frank. The 1 in a million shot is an edge roll, and there's not much wrong with that.

I don't think I can match Frank for passion here, so let me perform the more menial work of cleaning up some loose ends in the aftermath.

As a tangential issue that arises from the acrimonious counter-claims:

What is a GM for, if not to make decisions about what is and is not possible? Why have a GM at all if you devise a rule-set that purportedly eliminates such decisions?

And who in their right mind would want to play a game like that? ("The rule book is HOW MANY pages??") I've played Shadowrun since it first came out, and it has generated far fewer rules questions than just about any other game I've played. That's been just fine for me and all the other players.

Let the GM decide, off the cuff if necessary, and lets get on with the fun.

...pbangarth, thank you.

After all isn't that what this is all about? I deal enough with discussion (and arguments at times) on whether this or that is the correct procedure at work in RL. The last thing I want is my leisure time to mimic my time "on the clock".

Yes, there will be times when something doesn't make sense. And yes it needs to be dealt with. However, the GM is the final arbiter and if he or she knows the rules as they stand then making whatever decision is required to get things moving again is in everyone's best interest.

...just my two Zlotys' worth.

Purely a tangental point: I recall the 'called Shot' rule had a -4 dice for a +4 power effect, which is the only called shot rule we've ever used at the table.

Isn't 'bypassing armor' strictly an optional rule the GM can use or not use? 'Cause I'm thinking that +4 power isn't going to break the game with Mr. Lucky against a City Master any time soon either.

Eh. My last game died when the Gm got tired of arguing with his wife. Too bad, my bio-adept gunslinger was totally ruling the game by means of underhanded trickery and generally being the smartest player at the table (not hard, most of 'em weren't out of highschool.... there are upsides, surprisingly, to gaming with youngsters....)

Thank you, Fortune. The key is that the rule specifically states that the GM must approve the call. If the GM doesn't think you should be bypassing Citymaster armor to shoot pilots, by RAW he can say so. Its the rules.

Although I can't double check just yet I seem to recall that by RAW a DM can simply throw the entire book away and make whatever calls he/she wants, so that isn't really a rebuttal. (OF course, as long as Edge is kept at what I consider a reasonable level even the longshot rules aren't too hard to handle, although I do make use of my DM Hammer of Doom if the longshot sets off my BS Detector.)

This is kind of relevant given the discussion is veering into the pros and cons of Edge. I actually have a different approach that I've sometimes mentioned here before, more akin to the old karma pool rules in previous editions.

I've compiled my house rules here and the Edge one is third one down. I actually have a couple of other house rules but I can never remember what they are - obscure things that don't come up often, anyway.

I'll flesh out the Clarifications section so there's actually something in it sometime, if it's of use to anyone.

-K.

I'm a huge fan of house rules, and have a pile of them myself, but you make some really good points. Personally I don't really mind the idea behind longshot tests because once in a while I like the idea of making that one-in-a-million shot against all odds, I just don't like the idea that it is something that your Mr. Lucky can pull off at will, in addition to all of the other crazy stuff that characters with outlandish dicepools can pull off in a Fixed TN universe. (And bear in mind that I happen to like the Fixed TN, Floating TNs was the one aspect that I really hated about Shadowrun, although I can't really explain why, just a matter of taste I guess.)

I actually think they handled the called shot stuff fairly well, and I've never had a problem with Long Shot tests either. Long shots aren't a big deal unless you have shitty(in my opinion people who try to do things they know don't fit into that type of game are shitty players- if it does fit in your game then that is all well and good and have fun) players or are bothered by hypotheticals. They work fairly well in all situations where someones dice pool is barely reduced to 0 or below. At least for me. Sure, Rule Zero in every game system is and should be "The GM is always right." or something to that effect, but the designers knew that they could not outline all possible ways to use the called shot rules or even all the possible situations in which the few possibilities they listed could be used. So, instead of just leaving it to the original stating of that rule earlier in the book, the called shot rules well... see for yourself.

Given that the GM is running the game, and without him, you've got nada, I'd wager he's a *little* more important than any single player. I agree it shouldn't be a totalitarian ruled environment, though. Of course, if it is, then you're likely not having fun, in which case you're likely not playing a game.

As for Start Wars, the thermal exhaust port was a legal vulnerable point that allowed you to funnel a proton torpedo right into the heart of the damned facility. An armored APC is NOT going to have that where you can toss a bullet right into the driver's face without taking the armor into account. Stop being ridiculous.

The GM shouldn't wield ultimate power - GM fiat as a substitute for the rules is bad, because it makes the rules meaningless. And the rules are good because they quantify things, letting players make meaningful choices in character creation and battle tactics, and they also add a true random element to the game.

However, a GM should have the ability to quickly resolve rules disputes in order to maintain the flow of the game. And as the person providing content to the other players and acting to facilitate the flow of the game, the GM should have more say in how things are run - approving characters for play, implementing house rules where he/she feels they are needed, and so on. It's a fine line to walk. Some GMs are overbearing bullies, and other GMs let munchkin players walk all over them.