The 4.6x30HK and 5.7x28FN Damage Codes I'm really not sure about. I keep them Moderate in my games, because then I don't have any problems keeping the assault rifle calibers Moderate at long ranges... Feel free to make them Light if you think such itsy bitsy rounds shouldn't hurt much.


I've seen many sources saying that HP rounds for rifles don't really cause significantly more damage. I just wanted to include them to have some way of representing common hunting ammunition, shooting range ammo, and the like.

I have no rule system to deal with incendiary damage from bullet wounds. If someone gets hit by one in my games, I'll just describe the sizzling and burning and smell in a disgusting enough way to make the players get the idea. However, Raygun does have rules for that.

The shotgun damages are yet another debatable point. The Power for them might be a bit too high, and Serious might not adequately represent a 2.5cm+ hole through you. On the other hand, if they dealt Deadly damage with slugs, what the heck would they do with Shot rounds? Deadly +1 Overdamage? That might be a bit too harsh... And I left different kinds of shot rounds out for a reason, and will just use the Buckshot stats for any shot ammunition. So sue me.

Oh and the identical entries for ammo like .50BMG and 12.7x108 are there because they differ in things like price and weight, which I didn't bother to copy onto here.

And again, please post your thoughts about the numbers. Don't bother saying things like "it's too complicated", because I've already used it for a long time and it's not a bit too complicated for me. And there's really nothing much that can be done about the system to make it less complicated without scrapping the whole idea.

[Edit]More clarifications:
The 5.6mm Flechette always fires an APFSDS tungsten arrow and cannot be modified by the Rifle Bullet Types.

VC stands for Velocity Controlled, ie what the round's stats look like when intentionally subsonic for sound-suppressed shooting, including heavier (and possible longer) bullet and all. If a caliber isn't marked as Always VC (which means just that) and it doesn't have any DMG or PEN ratings in brackets, it can't be velocity controlled. What this really means is that it wouldn't make any sense to make subsonic loadings for the caliber, so I didn't bother to make stats for them. If a caliber is marked with a DMG rating in brackets but no PEN in brackets, it uses the supersonic PEN rating even when subsonic.

No Armor Piercing round (AP, API, APDS) can be Velocity Controlled, not even with Always VC calibers. Match doesn't stack with APDS or Gel, but I suppose you could do match grade version of any other kind of bullets. (Right?) Match-grade PIEs are going to be insanely rare and expensive, though... Tracer stacks with at least FMJ, AP, API, APDS and PIE. SP, HP and Frangible Tracers are going to be extremely rare, but not impossible. No Gel-Ts...

.50BMG and 12.7x108 ascend the normal Bullet Type rules. Most of the time, just ignore any body armor with them and you won't be far wrong. In extreme situations and against vehicles, I've got AP, API, APDS, PIE and HEIAP(/APHEI/whatever) rules for them:
AP ... -2/- ... -5
API ... -2/- ... -5 ... Incendiary
APDS ... -4/- ... -8
PIE ... -4/+1 ... - ... Incendiary
HEIAP ... -2/+1 ... -8 ... Incendiary
Well okay, I just made these up. Comment away. I know they're overkill against people, but they're supposed to be. Any of those AP rounds is going to ignore each and every form of body armor possible in my games, including the heaviest possible tactical assault armor breast plates with additional plating and Form-Fitting underneath.[/Edit]

I've never run into the 3rd ed of MW. I've got some 2nd Ed books for it, though, and those still use the weird "This armor negates 3/4th of projectile damage" rules.

I don't think I've copied the system out of anywhere (I know you didn't claim I did and probably didn't mean anything of the sort with the reference, it just made me think about why I created the rules in the first place). I think it springs from the fact that I've always liked a static Armor Rating Reduces Damage By Amount X, Which Can Be Changed By Penetration system in all RPGs for some reason.

If you wish, using the rules above, you might simply declare that any Damage caused by a gunshot where the Power was modified to 2 or below by Armor only causes Stun. Easy.

However, unless you also use hit locations and armor rules to go with them, that won't make much sense. In a canon game, body armor dropping a Power to 2 or below might just mean that the shot landed in the guy's foot and thus doesn't stand a good chance of killing the target, but the bullet itself never came into contact with any armor.

It seems that since the original discussion I had about this system with Crusher Bob something like a year ago in the old forums, no one has really had anything significant to say about it. After that, whenever I've posted it, there's just a few very general, short comments, and then the threads die away...

Well, now... Getting hit by a club does Stun by canon. Even when the club looks like this. I think you'll agree that that would do the same sort of damage that a bullet stopped by armor would. Therefore, if you advocate Stun damage for clubs, it can be argued that Stun damage from stopped bullets would also make sense.

Feel free to think it's inelegant, though. I used a total of 0.3 seconds making it up. I don't enforce any similar rule in my games, stopped bullets always cause Physical here.

Please tell me, what exactly needs refining? I'm sure there's loads of illogical things there, but I can't find 'em alone. I've spent a lot of time honing the numbers, and it ain't likely that I'll make them any better on my own. I depend on you people to tell me what needs refinement, which is part of why I'm a bit sad all the threads I've posted this in ended up like they did.

I didn't put it up for its aesthetic value.

Yeah, I'm sure the formatting is off. Feel free to try to get all those figures in nice, clean columns on this forum. Now that there's no [pre] command anymore, that's damn near impossible, and it used to be really freaking hard even in the old forums. I decided that I won't use more than 30 minutes to format the damn thing, and that's about as long as it took, using MS Word and a lot of Find/Replace.

What else is messy, though? The formatting I really don't care about, I'm more interested in the substance than the style.

Now that is a motherfucking mi-zace in this hizzle.

Now, combine that with the fact that all my numbers are based on the idea that a gunshot which has been reduced to modified Power 2 or lower has been stopped by the body armor, like I explained at length. Then using hit locations, redone armor and the Dam/Pen system above, wouldn't you call that a mechanic for determining when a round penetrates?

They were never, ever intended to be a replacement for the firearms rules. If I wanted to do that, I'd have done what so many people have told me to do with this system: Play some other RPG. They are not supposed to be anything more than a minor modification to the way Damage and Armor is handled in the game.

I do not plan on ripping out all firearms rules and rewriting them, ever. I do not see how that might improve my existing set of house rules in such a degree that it would be worth the incredible amount of work it would require. At least not as long as you keep even the basics of the Shadowrun system for ranged combat (the Damage Monitor, the Damage Code system, the Skill rolls against a set TN, etc).

If you want to completely change the way SR handles combat, you're on your own.

It was never meant to be published. I don't give a damn if no one ever publishes it in anywhere and it never leaves these forums. Diesel asked for suggestions for house ruling damage codes to make penetration more sensible, and I delivered. That's all. I am far more interested in comments about how to make the house rule work better in a game of SR while keeping the core intact (minor modification through adding a Penetration rating for calibers).

I'm sorry, I know I sounded a bit harsh. I was a bit upset, probably because it feels like no one actually read any of the stuff I posted. Maybe Diesel did, I dunno.

Perhaps it'd be better if I never mentioned the whole damn system anywhere anymore...

Heh, my players aren't gun nuts either. They need to be reminded every time that 7.62x39 rounds don't fit a 7.62x51 rifle. [Edit]Well yeah, they "fit", but it won't work too well... [/Edit] But the whole caliber system doesn't place any stress on them, they don't need to know anything about the calibers. I tell them what they need to know, which in generally means I tell them everything.

And when they just don't want to know or think about the extremely small differences, I find it extremely gratifying when it finally boils down to people picking one gun over the other just because "The name sounds cooler" or "I rather take the German gun over the American".

This is why the shaman in our group now has a .500S&W: Her Korth Combat Magnum didn't kill people dead enough, so she asked for the biggest damn handgun from all their firearms contacts. And one has a G12A3/z because he really loves the way a G11 looks, and the last has a H&K MG47 LMG because it's German, has a high RoF and looks a bit like an MG42.

Don't sweat it. Apparently it is impossible to make a readable table on this board.

Nope, I had no idea there had been anyone around with a name like this. I picked this after I "suicided" Grim Redeemer by giving him a huge, random password so I wouldn't use him again. Basically inserted Grim and Redeemer into the Merriam-Webster Thesaurus, and used the first sensible ones that came out.

Well, one thing you could then do is decide that the AK97 Carbine is actually a SMG version, like the Colt Mod 635 is to the M16/XM177 and the Steyr AUG Para is to the Steyr AUG. And then just drop the SMG Penetration to the same as the Pistols, -2. And if you end up getting carbines of the "Shortened AR" type, just make them ARs with Shortened Barrels.

The thing is, with the numbers you've given there, small caliber Sporting Rifles end up with poorer overall Penetration than ARs (7S/-2 vs 8M/-2), which isn't very logical considering that you'll be hard pressed to find Sportin Rifles IRL which penetrate worse than ARs.

It certainly isn't a big issue; I just thought I'd point it out because my, system has been created with exactly those kinds of things in mind.

nezumi:
That creates a host of other problems. I have never read 1st or 2nd ed rules, but IIRC armor worked differently back then, giving you autosuccesses instead of dropping Power. To balance the whole thing out, you'd still have to re-do all the Damage Codes. Also, that would make it too damn hard to kill people with a single shot of a small-caliber rifle or perhaps even a large-caliber rifle.

That's certainly a bonus.

Well, the name was nothing like yours, but it was AE for short...

Worth considering. If it ever comes up (or if I finish all the other shite that's required to bring my house rules up to speed) I'll look into it.

Agreed. I guess I wasn't clear enough that the numbers i posted were pulled out of my...err, hoop, I guess. The math works with the real ones, I just don't remember them off the top of my head. You're right, with respect to the wrong numbers.

Nezumi - I hate the old damage code system with the white-hot radiance of a thousand blazing nuns, so I don't think I'll be using it anytime soon. Man, that sucked.

Interesting trivia about maces for those that don't know - While they were often spiked and whatnot, the major damage was often from internal bone breakage and stuff -- in fact, the haft of the mace / warhammer was usually steel (for durability, I imagine), so even when the head didn't connect, you STILL were hitting them with a pretty hefty steel bar.

That much mass moving around, I imagine that you'd incapacitate whatever limb you hit. I think that is a good argument for physical damage as opposed to stun -- it takes more than a day or so to recover from having the bones in your upper arm shattered.

I've also reclassified armor:

Soft:
Reduces power as current armor does, to a minimum of 2[DL]. Present in all armor which does not specifically mention plates / ceramics / etc. in the title or fluff text.

Hard:
Present in "vest w/ plates", "Security Armor", and a few others. Soft armor can be made "hard" with trauma plates, sold seperately. Reduces power to a minimum of two. If [Armor Rating] > [Power of attack] then the damage level is dropped by one, to a minimum of L. Minimum damage effect of 2[DL-1].

Vehicle / Ultra-hard:
Armor on vehicles or gelpacked armor. If rating of armor exceeds the power of the attack (twice the power, in the case of vehicles), the attack does not succeed.

---

I am in the process of assigning standard ammunition to all SR weapons (with a wee bit of aid from Raygun's site) and redoing their individual damage codes/assigning penetration. I figure a whole and complete list will be completed within a week.