So, something I saw in the unwired thread just made me wonder about body armor in SR4. Pistols and Rifles have about the same amount of damage, the edge being slightly in favor of rifles. It strikes me however, that that's not quite correct. A smallish rifle round, like the NATO 5.56mm is pretty small, fast, and designed to penetrate most "soft" body armors (kevlar and what have you). The larger 7.62mm rounds that an AK uses are much larger, and penetrate more on sheer mass than raw speed and a point-ish shape. Both are valid methods of penetration, since the force of impact is related to both mass and speed. The difference being that an AK round will do a lot more damage to an unarmored target than an M-16 round, since the AK round is slower, and bigger, it will transfer more of its energy into the target.

This is why we now have things like trauma plates in military grade armor; its a solid sheet, that resists hard impacts like rifle shots better than kevlar. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KS0pSwdQfbY for a reference to modern private sector "hard" armor. (NB: The guy who narrates this show is kinda melodramatic about EVERYTHING, but the info seems pretty good.)

It strikes me that rifles ought to have maybe some more varied damage stats. Larger rounds having higher base DV, smaller rounds having more AP, perhaps? Just food for thought, interested to see what other people think about this sort of thing.

Ahh, my boy Mack. "One hit with this.. <dramatic pause> ..and it's all over."

But yeah, the whole round dynamics thing has been discussed quite a bit with SR's ranged combat system. Personally, I think a good first step would be giving rifles better AP across the board, but that's just me.

Shadowrun damage codes and armor values are perfectly fine and realistic.

There is not enough granularity in SR4 damage code to do variations inside a category of weapons like in Sr2/3

On the other hand, 2070 has pretty much left out kevlar and others "hard" armor for more efficient soft protection.

I'm kinda okay with this. I think assault rifles and heavy weapons should have at least one more point of AP.

The problem is that that statement is false. The 5.56 NATO round causes more tissue damage than the 7.62x39 Soviet. The 5.56 round breaks up inside the target splintering into fragments that cause much more damage than the bullet otherwise would. The 7.62x39 round has it's own trick in that it starts tumbling end over end making the wound larger, but it still can't compete in terms of raw tissue damage. It's penetration is also better and tends to waste energy by passing all the way through it's target. Generally speaking you would be correct (see 9x19mm vs 45acp) but reality is usually more complicated.

Any bullet can kill you with a single round if it hits something vital. People have been shot multiple times with what the ME (medical examiner) determined were fatal wounds and proceeded to run around and kill the people who shot them before dying. People have survived getting shot a dozen times with handguns and others have died from what the ME felt should have been a non-fatal wound. I also know a guy who has been in a lot of shootouts and his comment was that the only guy he stopped with a single hit was hit by a .50 cal HMG. 9mm, .45, 5.56, shotgun, smg - all required multiple hits.

Coming up with a simple but realistic system is extremely hard. The further issue with SR as a starting point is that it makes some crazy assumptions about how guns work that are hard to fix without gutting the combat rules.

However the following is generally true in the real world (but none are universally true):
* Someone who is highly motivated is much harder to stop than someone shot who hasn't a clue that he's in a fight. My impression is that unaware guys also die at a much higher rate.
* People hit by HMG fire are often killed outright or need urgent surgical care. .50s can remove limbs. Body armor is pretty much worthless against them. Heck, brick walls are pretty much useless.
* Anything larger than a HMG is pretty much instant death. 25mm HE rounds tear human bodies to sheds and body armor is worthless.
* People who are shot by close range shotgun fire are often killed outright (dead right there) and if not are often in desperate need of a surgeon.
* Pistols are unreliable as weapons to stop motivated attackers and it's uncommon for a single pistol bullet to stop or kill someone. It's common for someone to get shot multiple times and recover in the hospital. 9mm or .45, it doesn't really help much.
* Rifles in 5.56 and 5.45 are much more effective weapons than pistols. Notice that the so called DC snipers shot 13 people with a single 5.56mm bullet each and 10 of them died.
* Medium Machine guns are very effective, more so that 5.56 mm LMGs. That's why armies still drag them around.
* Body armor works. People wearing body armor rarely get injured much by bullets that their armor is rated to stop that hits their armor. They often don't even realize they were shot.

A simple solution is as follows:

Change all rfiles:
Subtract 1 DV and add -4 AP.
For example, the assault rifle goes from 6(-1) to 5(-5).
This makes shoulder arms much more likely to penetrate armor, barriers, etc and gives them about a .33 point of damage increase. But keeps them from being instant kill weapons, which no small arm is.

I'll just refer you back to here.

Raygun was on top of this stuff...

So Assault Rifles do the same damage as SMGs/Heavy Pistols against unarmored target?
In fact, all rifles will have average damages against unarmored...

I don't think that makes more sense that actual damages...


No, I think the authors have been a little timid with AP modifier.
A small boost to all rifles / heavy weapons (except grenades) would give a better balance.

A quick fix is hard, but heres a proposal:

All pistols, SMGs, machine pistols get a +2 to armor (this replaces any -ap they might have) and a -2 to damage. No AP ammo for pistol/MPs. SMGS, etcs, they are just too low velocity. (yeah it means it even less likely for grandma to kill the gang banger with a lucky hit.... Sorry)

Assault rifles and LMGs do 6P -2 armor
Sport rifles, MMGs and sniper rifles do 8p -3 armor
For rifles AP rounds do an extra -2 armor instead of -4
HMGs and heavy sniping rifles do 12P -5 armor (no extra AP or other funky ammo available)

Shotguns do 12P(f) for shot/flechettes or 9P no AP mod for slugs, ranges using the shotgun tables. Single target, no chokes or spreading. If you want to be complex shot/flechetts should lose damage at range, so 10p(f) at long and 6p(f) at extreme. AP slugs make some sense, provide a -2?

For range mods go to +1 short, -0 medium, -3 long -6 extreme, and scopes don't cancel any unless they are using active (detectable) stuff like laser rangefinders, in which case they will change long to -1 and extreme to -3.

Get rid of the explosive ammo, gel rounds, and stick and shock. They are silly and broken. I'd also ditch assault cannons.

Using hit locations would be needed to make armor work better, but that's painful.

To the first two, there's a solid statistical reason why they don't specifically teach us how to treat wounds from HMG's or better. A surgeon I once talked to stated that .50 cal rounds that had passed close to people often inflicted grievous injuries. That's largely ancedotal though so I'd take it with a grain of salt.

*snort*

I dunno, I've heard multiple stories about soldiers currently deployed complaining that the M-16 just doesn't have the stopping power on a lot of the unarmored targets that an AK does. M-16 rounds also don't always seem to fragment unless they hit something solid (like bone) or grainy (like sandbags) that tear them apart due to the sheer speed with which they're moving. I know it's just anecdotal evidence, but...dunno, maybe some people just have bad luck.

And yes, anything can kill with a hit on the right spot, that's what taking penalties for extra damage (or lucky high rolls to hit) are supposed to represent. I'll conceed the point on handguns vs rifle stopping power, since it seems like everyone is saying they're far superior. Seeing the responses it seems like adding -1 or -2 AP and wouldn't be out of the question, or maybe +1 DV.

And yeah, anything in .50 is terrifying to behold. Watching those things chew through unarmored vehicles makes me shudder to think what would happen to a person hit by one or two of those. Worse yet if you happen to get hit by one of those nasty exploding .50's they can load up in the Barret (I think? been awhile since I heard about them). One will just about cut someone in half at the waist as I understand it.

I dunno if I buy near misses from .50 cals being dangerous, unless the guy meant it hit something beside someone and shattered the object or the bullet itself. That I could imagine being pretty dangerous to be near.

Small arms really shouldn't have basic DV values that high, since this implies that even a peripheral hit with them is deadly. Note, not 'maiming', but out and out, you are instant dogmeat deadly.

The general rule of thumb I came up with to check small arms deadlyness when I was working up the thread I keep dreding up was this: In general, any wound that does 6 boxes or more can be considered an eventually fatal wound, but not one that will take you out of the fight immediately.

So, a hit to the arm with a 50 BMG round is not going to kill you, because its almost impossible to actaully kill someone by blowing their arms off. So I rated 50 BMG as 8 (-12). It's still possible to survive being hit by 50 BMG, since you might have been hit in the arm or leg, but any COM hit will leave a wound you can see daylight through and you will be dogmeat right on the spot.

Plenty of people have survived COM shots from full power rifle rounds. And a good COM shot is probably worth 3-4 net hits in SR terms.

If full caliber rifle rounds were rated at 8(-3) like kzt wants, then a 3 net hit shot is basically enough to make you dogmeat right there. An even a 1 net hit shot is going to do around 8 boxes to a normal guy. Enough to blow one of his limbs off or something equally spectacular.

I left pistols at AP zero simply because it seemed simpler to leave something at zero, and just give stuff with higher penetration a negative AP value.

What pistols are we talking about now? Light pistols with a DV of 4 can't kill an averagely tough person in one shot without 6 net hits, which requires at least 18 dice on average, i.e. uber scary expert gunfighter. Even the Super Warhawk, which is effectively a .50 cal, can't kill someone in one shot without significant skill. A pistol shot by a person of average skill in SR4, as in real life, will rarely make anyone "instant dogmeat" as you put it. Even rifles and shotguns have trouble doing that. The deal is that shadowrunners are often very highly skilled, much moreso than regular soldiers. Why? Because we all want to play movie style badasses

If was referencing the 12P shotguns and 8P rifles, not the 4 or 5P pistols, which seem good enough. Remember that anything that doesn't need a crew counts as small arm. Even HMGs are sometimes labeled as small arms.

Some topics make me feel like being able to time travel. They come up again. And again. And again. And again...

So... stats of the delorean ?

I think when referring to .50 cal we usually mean the .50 BMG, not the 0.50 AE. I'd peg the Super Warhawk at 0.454 Casull at the most.

However, this might be closer to what trolls want: http://www.vincelewis.net/60magnum.html

Which Back to the Future?

Just remember to up the body and the armor because that tub was made out of stainless steel

The second movie of course.
Flying DeLorean with Mr Fusion is awesome.

Maybe I'm nitpicking, but what about SMG Carbines? Like, an AK or M16 or etc in Carbine form. I'm thinking:

SMG Damage (5P), -1AP (not as much AP as an Assault Rifle, but more than the pistol or stock SMG at 0AP)

Assuming that it's shooting the same bullets...probably the exact same damage, just make is use SMG ranges and take away any recoil comp from bracing it on your shoulder. That's what I'd do anyway, the bullets are still going to be almost the same, but you're gonna lose some accuracy in the mix since you're chopping down the size.

I'd argue for no change in damage. The system isn't sufficiently granular to model this. In the real world there are some interesting things that happen as the MV from a 5.56 drops below 2,700 to 2,500 fps, namely that the bullet fragmentation from breaking at the cannelure doesn't tend to happen. But this also happens at a longer range with a long barreled rifle, as the bullet continually loses velocity. It just takes longer to drop to 2700 fps when it starts at 3300 fps.

And I'm not sure I want to use a range based damage table.

If you want more data, look HERE, on the second table down.

I don't have much understanding of 5.45mm wound ballistics.

Got it. Gonna implement this in my upcoming game.

There was actually a discussion of this a bit on the SWAT 4 forum. Ideally, someone suggested, you'd seperately track the following things:

1.) Damage to the armor in terms of how many hits it's absorbed and the extent to which it may be compromised.
2.) Damage to the person underneath tracked seperately from damage to the armor.
3.) Whether or not rounds are striking the armor or bypassing it entirely.

In the Sheriff's Special Forces SWAT 4 mod they try to be realistic by allowing the player character to basically take a lot of hits from pistols and SMGs, but the flaw is that there's no way to differentiate between a round that hits the torso and the armor or one that bypasses the armor by hitting an unarmored spot.

In a RPG this could probably be handled by assigning each piece of armor a certain % coverage on each body part. A hit to a body part would then have a % chance of hitting the armor, or not hitting the armor.

Perhaps adopt a blast from the past, and let the armor's rating directly reduce the weapons DV, but not add to the body roll?

Ba-dum-ching! Seriously, that means sniper rifles would, against a well armored person, do 0 damage. That's a swing too far in the other direction.

You are right Larme.

I should have said so in my previous post, but I was thinking strictly from a game mechanic POV. The stats for weapons and armor would certainly need to be rebalanced.

I really don't see how you could balance that system out. In SR3, it worked just fine because few if anyone could get more than 12 or so ballistic armor, so the weapons on top of the heap could still annihilate them. But SR4's armor values are just much higher. Someone with 10 body could easily have 24 armor, and there actually isn't a single weapon that does 24 damage. You would have to change the entire system. And if you need to do that much before you enjoy Shadowrun, maybe you ought to just play something else?

I've done it.

If I had carte blanche to revise the system, I would first work in a hit locations system. That lets you use sectional armor. Which gives you the ability to armor the really critical stuff (head & torso) while keeping the limbs light for ease of movement.

The hit location would be a overall random roll for no penalty, or a "somewhere above the waist"/"somewhere below the waist" for a small penalty, and then varying penalties for specific locations. Limb hits would reduce the final number of damage boxes, head/vitals hits would increase the number.

A fan of another game system* came up with a game mechanic I really like. It allows the armor vs bullet interaction to be very predictable, while the body vs bullet interaction is very unpredictable.

Say you have a "4d6" weapon. If you have "4d6" armor, 4 minus 4 is zero, you are uninjured. If you have "2d6" armor, 4-2=2. You take 2d6 damage. You might roll a 2, little more than a graze, or you might roll 12, a very dangerous injury. The human body is funny like that.

In SR4 (SR4.5?) terms, you would take the DV, subtract the armor value, roll 1d6 for any remaining DV, then divide by 2 or 3 to get the total boxes of damage.

Then the resistance roll. There isn't one. The point of a high body is to let you take more damage without dying, right? Lets skip the middle man and just give more boxes. 8+2/3 body, perhaps.

Everyone's damage track would now have 4 rows of boxes. How many boxes you have will determine how many boxes on each row. A librarian might have 3 boxes per row, while a troll streetsam might have 5. When row 4 is full, you are dying.

Having more boxes sounds like it would make healing harder. You can either make the spell easier to cast, or let it be cast once on each wound.

This is a rough draft, off the top of my head. Lets discuss it.

*(The fan is DouglasCole, and the game system is GURPS, BTW. Credit where due...)

Here is the issue with hit locations:

a) in real life, people rarely if ever try for a head shot in a combat situation. It is too intense, and except at very close range, most people lack the reflexes and visual acuity to pull off a headshot in a real life combat situation. It's much smarter and safer to just aim for the person's central mass. That's what they teach everyone in law enforcement and the militay AFAIK.

b) but also in real life, people do get shot in the head.


So what it comes down to is that head shots in a combat situation are almost impossible to pull off, but they do happen. It's not according to random chance, skill has something to do with it, but there aren't people who just run around a battlefield head-shotting all day.

And here's where you hit the problem with hit locations: in Shadowrun, everyone will want to head-shot. With the amount of hyper amazing tech and magic someone can have pumping them up, it's plausible that, according to any system where skill is a large factor, the twinked out sammie will usually pull off head shots, ignore armor, and kill everyone in one pop. But that's no good, it makes combat into an FPS rather than an aproximation of real life. So what do you do instead, make it random? It's just as implausible that the master gunfighter has no bonus to head-shotting than that he can do it automatically. There has to be some kind of balance between skill and chance. Head shots have to be rare, but possible, with skill worked in there somehow but also a dose of chance... It is just too goddamn much to make a hit location system that isn't a) based on randomness, and therefore unrealistic, or b) reliable, and therefore unrealistic.

This is why Shadowrun's system is great. It is abstract. You people complaining about realism have to get that through your heads first and foremost. The rolls, from a realism standpoint, mean nothing. We're not talking "I shoot him, and the bullet hits his armor jacket, and he rolls body, and he takes 4 boxes." First you roll, and then you see what happened from a realism perspective. You shoot, the guy takes 12 boxes. Does that mean your bullet magically penetrated through his armor extra good? Probably not, it probably means you nailed him between the eyes and he died instantly. The point is that the realism comes in afterwards. First you have this nice, simple roll which abstracts out the path of the bullet. While you're still rolling, nothing is decided. Fill in the details after you roll. The rolls are just there as a place-holder, as something that tries to ensure game balance.

Realistic systems are, IMO, always going to err towards either being too deadly or not deadly enough. Without a mathematically accurate (and I mean real physics, not d6 based math) system to model reaction times, visual acuity, a person's skill and reflexes, the path of a bullet, etc etc, it's just going to miss the mark. Either it will end up giving too much credence to the overall statistical randomness of gun battles (which was Cyberpunk's flaw), or it's going to be too much on the side of how, IRL, bullets are quite deadly and almost impossible to evade. Balance is the one and only thing to consider when making a good firearm system. You can worry about if it's realistic afterwards. But the fact is, nobody wants to play a system where they make a new character every session, and nobody wants to play a system where, like in real life, there are so many variables to a gun shot that a master shooter in slightly sub-optimal conditions might have no way of knowing where his bullets will end up down range. Either way you do it, it sucks. Don't beat your head against this one, the problem will remain and your head will hurt.

It only works if you determine FIRST whether or not it hits the armor. Hence the requirement for a hit location system....

I think in the past I proposed that an attack with a high degree of success is considered to have hit the head, or if that's literally impossible due to cover or something, the attack hits the next most important body part (the torso I guess) is hit. A moderately successful attack would hit the body by default, whereas a marginal success might hit a limb.

But the problem is, in real life, a highly successful attack would probably strike the center of the torso, since that's where a professional aims in real life. Skill only applies when you actually target the head, which nobody really does because it has such a low probability of success in a combat situation at anything beyond close range. This is why reality based systems fail. Because reality is no frickin fun. People don't get head-shottie'd very often, and lots of bullets miss. Combat would take forever, it would be unpredictable, you wouldn't get your money's worth out of your character's enhancements, and combat would be boring.

Is the center of the torso *invariably* where a pro would aim? What about in hostage situations? Or for sentry removal with a suppressed firearm?

Also, the "reality is no fun" thing is totally subjective. I personally want more logistics in my games.

You hit the nail on the head - a calculated, planned shot is a far cry from a rushed snap shot in the heat of battle. In one, the target is ducking, dodging and weaving all over the damned place and odds are, you probably are too. In the other, the poor bastard probably isn't even aware of what's coming - any movement is relatively limited and predictable, allowing the shooter to "pattern" his target.

-Siege

Nostalgia. And the smell of burning, dead horses.

-Siege

You also have to review the situational variables to determine if the round is legitimately at fault or being used outside specified functionality.

Here's an article for thought: http://www.encyclopedia.com/doc/1G1-158733704.html

(Although I disagree strongly about "best weapons")

-Siege

Nothing that can be used as an individual infantry weapon can reliably drop motivated people with one shot. I've seen reports of VC sappers not getting stopped by bursts of M-60 fire that removed limbs. Shotguns at close range are HIGHLY effective (if the target isn't wearing armor) as they deliver multiple 8-9mm hits in a single shot, and .50 cal BMG bullets are HIGHLY effective. Neither is 100% and neither is suitable to be issued as an M4 replacement. Everything less is going to be marginally effective at best.

"Anything worth shooting once, is worth shooting twice."

If you read Black Hawk Down two Rangers drill a Somali dude with a mounted M60 but they need to do so multiple times before aforementioned Somali stops fighting.