Ouch! Harsh!

Maybe a small part of those next two weeks will be downtime for everyone as the software (or whatever) is changed (or whatever).

pity, i like his style . . but then, i am more or less prone to similar behaviour as seen in the thread about marriage for example *g*

Please realize that a multi-week suspension is not given for a first offense.

I do not know the usual customs, I was merely surprised at the length.

Just in case anyone has forgotten the "Bad Bad Boy" thread over in the Dumpshock News, Bugs Reports, etc. So we know this is not a first offense for our favorite boy Frank. I will miss him though, he makes me laugh quite a bit, partly because his insults are funny and partly because of how worked up he seems to get about these things. I just can't understand caring that much, but I'm glad he does.

Chris

Original Batman movie? You mean the one where Batman pulled a full sized Acetiline torch(1920's to 30's era) from his utility belt? Or the one with the exploding shark?

Yes, I am. When someone gets as heated as Frank has gotten, there is nowhere else to go except for hurt feelings. I am not going to go there. I rrespect the guy more than that. So, for my own sake, I'm going to put on my flameproof undies and not dig through his ranting for useful arguments.

[Edit] I didn't see the outcome until after I posted. I feel very bad for my part in this.

You don't need to know what's happening in advance. Instead, you have even more input into the story than ever before. To go to the Wushu extreme, you're literally dictating events as they unfold, and the GM-- which, you say, yours already do-- runs with it. It's the same thing you say you have, only taken to the next level.

Actually, mfb's example-- which I didn't make very clear, I admit-- involves a normal sam with 17-20 dice in an appropriate weapons skill and maybe an Edge of 3. He can make the shot just as readily.

Which kind-of is my point. Thematically, the shot fits the movie and is an excellent plot setup. However, judging by the responses in this thread, the Citymaster doesn't fit thematically. However, since the rules allow and encourage this sort of thing, we have the thematic disconnect I was discussing earlier.

I think the difference between the two is this:

Aircraft are fragile, especially modern aircraft. The Bat-plane was probably made of ultra-light weight materials and things like carbon fiber. Now, taking down a ww2 or even Koreans, or, heck, even Vietnam era fighter with a pistol would be laughed at, because, well, those had actual ARMOUR. The Bat-plane most likely was more like a modern stealth aircraft made of carbon fiber frame. That makes it kind of fragile. Sure, it might be able to bounce a bird off it..but what I have trouble believing is that he could have survived the crash(Edge to Survive Certain Death!). Now, the Joker also used Edge to survive certain Death(how ELSE can a gatling gun and all those missles and rockets have missed?)

However, you take a look at the Citymaster, which is more a light tank that carries people then an APC, and you have a difference. You have thick slabs of armour over most of the thing. This armour most likely has points where it seals up, like on a modern tank. Did you know: the Abrams has a periscope for the driver?He does not really look out the vehicle, but looks at this little screen on his console, and he is behind the thick front slope of armour. With many of the newer APCs, this is also the case. And, considering that a modern APC can take anything short of a missle or explosive device, and the crew and passengers don't get killed...I figure that it is much the same with the Citymaster or any other light armoured vehicle that was actually built as an light armoured vehicle.

Now, you want to talk about the Eurovan with armour plates welded to it...that is a horse of a different colour....

OK, then allow me to provide a more reasonable example. Admittedly mine uses up 2 points of edge.

SR team is driving away from job.
Lone Star is chasing in citymaster.
Mr Lucky opens up a small firing port on the riggers whip to use his Mossberg CMDT on the target. SPending precious seconds to aim for the nastiest shot he can get.

now I am using
Cain's Mr Lucky Build with these changes
1: Pistols (semi auto) is Longarms(shotguns)
2: equipped with a couple of shotguns (AM-CMDT is the important one right now)
3: got contact lenses with image magnification, and thermo
4: got GV3 shock pad and gyro for the shotgun

ok this shot starts out with out hero taking 2 aim actions and firing
assuming long range fore the shotgun
full burst (compensated for)
moving vehicle -2 (the third point by what is left of the gyro)
range, compensated for by the image mag
light rain, compensated for by the thermo
called shot -4, +4 to damage
aim +1
now the roll looks like this 22-2-4+1 = 17 dice to roll
now edge can be used for rerolls or for enhanced roll
if you use it for enhanced rolls you get 10 successes on average
if you use it for rerolls you get 9.35 successes on average
going for enhanced rolls
Now the notable part of Cain's example of the citymaster is the extreme difficulty of the citymaster noticing the shot until after the first burst, so defense is inapplicable at this time (if necesary use edge to ensure it )
so 10 net successes.
this brings the base damage up to 23, and the armor of the citymaster to 22
so this blast of deer shot, soft lead pellets, has just penetrated.
but how much damage does it do?
average rolls time again. 16 body + 22 armor is 38 total dice to resist
this gives an average of 13 successes
bringing it down to 18 damage
whoops the citymaster only has 16 damage boxes

Wait a sec. Base damage = 23, minus 13 successes... that's 10 damage, not 18. Where'd you get 18 from?

23 is not the base damage value, it is the modified DV to compare with armor (9 +10 successes +4 Called shot bonus). I'm assuming he then factors in either a narrow full auto burst (+9 to DV , -9 modification [apparently compensated] to his shot) to calculate a DV of 32 for Damage Resistance purposes. The Citymaster would then have rolled Body 16 + Armor 22 (in Kremlin's example) = 38 dice.

Somebody check me on this, but I recall the Batplane bouncing a few shots previous to this. Ordinary pistol fire, maybe, but still...

As far as the Citymaster goes, let's try it again with one substitution. Mr. Lucky was armed with an Anti-vehicular rocket launcher or a Panther XXL. Now, all of a sudden, he stands a chance of hitting a spot vulnerable enough to target the driver.

For the GM stuff, I'll just point out that most GM's say they follow some of the ideals I posted. All I'm suggesting is that GMs should take it to the next level. Many others already have.

So you can punch through. Tada.

Which is really the way it should work. Fab.

I don't care about total number of negative modifers. I care that the weapon is capable of penetrating the armour as is required by the blindfire rules as outlined

An anti-vehicle rocket is of sufficient size to blindfire through the armour of the vehicle in question, and thus I have no issue with a lucky guy picking up an anti tank gun of some description, pointing at a tank and taking it out.

Given this requirement, it is significantly less difficult for the anti vehicle rocket to take out a vehicle, because it can, whereas a pistol automatically fails, ninjas or no.

hmm, interesting erratas... will have to run some playtest on those... the nerfing of special ammo alters several things.

as to the emotive response.. not if you are using deershot or birdshot, if you are using slugs then sure, oh yeah, remember the damn thing is a tank!

even an LMG should not do significant damage to a tank with regular ammo.
yet using the numbers above a white knight with a gyro will more than pulverize the target with soft lead rounds. (ok the skill is automatics now, but that makes it even better as his backup weapon is now a light smg.. he just specializes in the big one)

I know I promised I wouldn't do this now that Knasser's left, but this is another logical fallacy, an Appeal to Common Sense. Basically, what constitutes "common sense" is not one universal monolithic thing. It changes from situation to situation. I could pose a slightly-altered question, and "common sense" would dictate a different answer. (And I did, in the form of the Shot Heard Round the Barrens.) Any system that demands "common sense" in the place of objectivity and fairness is not a good system, is in fact a broken system, and becomes an instant candidate for "Horribly broken".

Onto a slightly different topic: mechanically and objectively, the more difficult something is to do in game, the higher the penalty should be on it. This shows the priorities and theme of a game. For example, in a fantasy world, build a fully-automatic gun is much more difficult than blacksmithing a suit of armor. In a modern game, the reverse might be true. SR4 allows cinematic actions to be easier than realistic ones, which should mean it's a cinematic game. Except, of course, it demands the Appeal to Common Sense fallacy, and tries to impose realism onto the Citymaster shot. So, we have a thematic disconnect which also interrupts the suspension-of-disbelief required for any RPG to succeed.

As far as GM rights go, that I haven't argued. I've simply pointed out that those rights are no greater than that of any other player. Which, the best counterargument is: "But I don't do it that way!". Actually, as demonstrated, you *do*, if you're any good as a GM; it's just a matter of level.

An appeal to common sense is a logical fallacy because "common sense" is pretty undefined. Or, to make the statement relevant, disputes based on differences in perception are quite possible as long as common sense is needed.

Larger parts of your argument are a fallacy because they deal with your expectations of the game. The divide between cinematic and simulationist is as unclear as it gets, at least within the abstraction level of useable RPG rules. "Horribly broken" has no place in a logical argument, either. As your opinion, it gets to be valid.

The GM quality issue is also not logical in nature, but a question of individual perception. Again, your perception is valid.

Now people do not like to have something attacked because of "faulty logic", especially in matters of valid personal perception. In such a case you do not reduce their aggression by ignoring their counter arguments. (I like my opinion pretty much, it is close to flame bait for me. But common sense prevails ).

If you condense your points to
- longshot tests should be limited somehow, or forbidden
- hardened armor needs a rework
you´ll get less flak for statements that do not strenghten your position. Our game has no longshot tests, and hardened armor will get a houserule soon.


(@Kremlin: That thing is an APC, not a real tank. And you need luck and a large weapon to take it down)

True, but I was examining the artwork for it, it would be classed as a heavy APC in modern terms, only slightly below an IFV.

so my reference about LMGs stands, the bradley IFV is an APC with a light turret attached. The Bradley can slowly drive into a hailfire of .50 nBMG rounds, so 7.62 will do nothing.

Yet Lucky can reliably take one out with a 7.62mm LMG

And rolling the other half of the rating, adding the hits.

WW2, Korean War, and Veitnam era crat were made of aluminium, just like most modern craft. They weren't equipped to stop weapons fire. This is why bomber crews were issued flack jackets in the first place, because it was almost guaranteed with shrapnel would pierce the craft. But, such shrapnel was far more likely to kill the crew than it was to disable the bomber.

But the thing about those sorts of aircraft is that they aren't very fragile. Sure, you can put holes in them very easily, but they can also easily fly with holes in them. NATO countries stopped equipping aircraft with .50 machine guns for just that reason. A .50 machine gun can swiss cheese a fighter, but the holes maynot be big enough to take it down. In order to take down a robust aircraft with a machine gun, you either need to be very accurate, very lucky, or make very large holes relative to the size of the target aircraft.

I don't understand your point. At any event, people are trying to invalidate the objective examples I present with an appeal to common sense, as if common sense were some all-seeing, all-knowing, logically consistent font of wisdom. It's not. Common sense is what sounds sensible at the time, which does not equal what's logically correct or what's right.

As for the rest: I'm slowly bringing people around to admitting that the rules are broken. The new counterargument seems to be: "But it's not broken that badly!", not enough to even qualify as broken in some people's book. Which is fine: Once I'm done convincing people that there is a problem, I can show people the degree to which is is broken.

Actually: You have continually failed to address the surgical destruction of your examples at any point. In fact, if I were so inclined, I could quote you stating you weren't even attempting to read posts that demolished your examples as flawed.

I'm certain there is a logically fallacy of 'ignoring evidence to the contrary' but I really don't care enough to decend to the level, as you have, of simply waving away everyone else by insisting their arguments are irrelevant.

Before this thread I was inclined to think there was something wrong on the margins of Shadowrun re: Mr. Lucky killing a citymaster.

After this thread I am inclined to think you are here with an agenda and just about anything you say should be examined in detail rather than simply accepted at face value.


In other words: You are not bringing me around, quite the opposite.

Emphasis mine.
I'm not disagreeing or anything, I just thought I'd highlight that bit, given the context of Mr. Lucky and all. Carry on.

...then there's the A-10 Warthog, ugly as sin, but pretty much a flying tank. I've stated an updated version (the Super Warthog) out for 3rd ed.

As to RL SOTA aircraft, most are made (at least the civilian ones) with a fair amount of composite materials to save weight and increase fuel efficiency. The last really "rugged" jet transport was the Boeing C-135/B-707 series which was built to military specs. There have been documented cases of these planes surviving some incredible situations and still making it back to the airport/airbase.

Also the only deliberate barrel roll done (in public view at least) with a large airliner was by "Tex" Johnson with the 707 -80 at the Seattle Seafair races back in '55. That single manoeuvre nearly got him sacked until Boeing started receiving inquiries from airlines interested in ordering.

rolling a 707

...old film but still pretty impressive, like to see someone try that with an Airbus...

[/derail]

The Shot Heard Round the Barrens has yet to be "surgically" attacked at any point. Or seriously attacked, for that matter. The Citymaster argument is now switching over to the Batplane argument, which I think should be very interesting.

The only person whose arguments I deliberately ignored (and which I read) was Frank's, who had become a little too excitable to discuss matters with. I won't go any further on that topic.