I've been wondering, with called shots you effectively do more damage, however, this being a more "realistic" combat system, how would that apply to potentially fatal damage.

Example:
Say I called a shot to shoot through someone's unprotected eyeball. This person hasn't recently taken any wound modifiers, but realistically if it's successful, that person would be dead, rather than taking a specific amount of damage.


I'm sure this wouldn't normally be available, as I expect my GM to be a little more cautious than this, however my fellow players are rather crafty. Called Shots seem to be a little counter-storyline. I expect to see at least one blown off testicle in the coming weeks for incapacitation purposes.

Hey, we've only had one case of a called testicle shot in my old group back home.

And that was with old, uber-powerful characters that were showing off!

"Called left testicle shot, one-handed with a rifle, off-handed."

He called it out loud, too, and did it.

The other side gave up after that.

lmao!

Yeah, considering the audacity of my friends I fully expect to see some things like that happening. In our initial run with template characters, my character was annoyed at a weak ganger trying to manipulate us into paying more than we should, so I threw a cred stick on the ground. I commlinked to my friend to attack him. When he bent over to pick up the credstck, my friend sawed off his head with burst fire, while another friend levitated and in an intimidating manner asked to the other gangers: "You want some of this!?"

We got a little cocky, but it was hilarious. I giggled all the way home afterwards.

Superior firepower AND overt magic is a good way to demonstrate why it's a bad idea to mess with a particular group.

On the other hand, that's how you start gaining Public Awareness...

Yeah, we were just running one of the pre-made missions to get a grasp on the game mechanics, so we weren't very conscientious of our lasting effect.

Although in our actual storyline, we just unwittingly delivered a small tactical nuke to a corporation. So I think our public awareness is at a peak right now. :O

The things runners do for a little

"You delivered a TACTICAL NUKE to a Corporation???"

"It was only a small one..."

"SMALL and NUKE are NOT words that go well together!!!"

Yeah go figure. It was a classic case of,

"This package is protected from prying eyes, if you open it without the proper authentication number, it will detonate to prevent itself from falling into the wrong hands."

Small in the sense of mass, we figured that nukes in 2070 could be around the size of a bowling ball.


Anyway, it seems to me, that if a character with a high pistol dice pool could effectively call a shot to whatever he wanted, provided that there aren't too many hindering modifiers. So I got to thinking of the cheesy movie crack shot through the eye scenario.

Actually, nukes in 2070 are rare rare rare, and unreliable.

Magic did something to them. I mean, look at the one used in Chicago during Bug City! That should have levelled everything, but it barely had the power of a conventional bomb.

A *BIG* conventional bomb, but nonetheless... Of course, there was also radiation, but we already had giant cockroaches so that wasn't such a big deal.

I do think the rules are designed to take out vital parts on a human without hurting them. Vehicles yes, but the situation you described would be under the first 2 categories (+DV or -Armor) not the forth category (Special effect as determined by the GM). I think the idea of taking out a vital part is included for use against inanimate objects, especially vehicles and drones where you might target the tires, an exposed antenna or try to shoot out the tinted window so you can target passengers.

EDIT: rereading your question, I think you are talking about why a head shot isn't instantly fatal regardless of damage. I would say shooting someone in the eye is a pretty serious called shot (+4 or maybe even +5 DV) which should male all but the most wimpy firearms doing 9-10 boxes. This is a serious wound to be sure and would likely be a mortal wound. There is a chance the dude might survive, but then weirder things happen in real life.

Yeah I guess you're right, I have seen newscast in real life of people that have attempting suicide with a gun and living to tell the tale. The end result isn't pretty, but survival is the question.

I suppose that would account for not instagibbing the target, but you would think that even though your target isn't dead, he would be out of action, rather than being able to get up and shoot with a minus dice pool.

The way I work called shots in my game is as followed:
Arms / Legs = -2 to hit, if you do 1/3 overall number of boxes of damage that limb is no longer usable
Torso = Normal, no mods.
Head = -4 to hit, +4 to damage, most of the time that either kills them outright or gives them big negatives
If you want to do a called shot to the eye -6 to hit +4 to damage and if you hit automatic blindness in that eye.
Called shot to the testicles -6 to hit, regular damage + and additional +3 stun unresisted just for being hit

If you don,t make enought damage to kill the target, you didn't hit him in the eye(or what ever vulnerable spot you were aiming) but missed a little, so instead of dying the enemy got just a serious wound. And ofcourse the rules don't actually allow you to choose were your chooting, you can just choose to try shooting for a unspecivied vital spot:
the combat is highly abstract after all.

Yes, I agree. Keep in mind that powerful attacks knock the target down and standing up requires a simple action. I also tend to keep in mind the professional ratings and motivations of the target. A wound like that is going to take the fight out of anybody except the most professional and determined opponent. Just because they could technically stumble to their feet and shoot back with -3 or -4 DP (and probably negative mods for blindness, etc) doesn't mean they are going to. A composure test with -3 or -4 DP might also be appropriate.

Agreed. You might be trying for the eye, and if you get five net successes and drive him into overflow you probably can be described as having succeeded. Trying to model it as a "called shot" causes problems, because while the eye is easy to miss, if you only miss it by a little you've still shot them right in the face. firing at the head means shifting your aim so that it becomes more likely that you will miss.

You should always determine what the actual damage will be before determining exactly what happened.

y'know, i was thinking about the rules for called shots the other day. wouldn't it make more sense to have an opposed test +X threshhold instead of a -dice pool modifier for the attacker? example: defender gets 4 hits on his defense roll, in order for the attacker to succesfully hit the target in the head, he must roll more than 4 +2 sucesses. if you miss with a called shot, you're still likely to hit the target, just not where you were aiming.

True in some cases. If you're aiming for the left eye (anatomical) and miss left you shoot him between the eyes. But if you miss right you probably miss him altogether, so its hard to say. In most situations though I think your house-rule would probably work fine.

From a game mechanical perspective: This would encourage you to always make called shots, since if you get, to use your example, 4 successes you hit anyway, but if you get extra you get a better effect. Which is already the case. More net hits = better effect, you're assumed to be trying to hurt them in the first place, so called shots for damage are kind of weird right out of the gate.

From a more "realistic" standpoint, as I understand it if you're trying to give someone lead poisoning you generally aim center mass, so that if your aim is a bit off you still very probably hit meat. If your called shot is for their head, or their hand, or whatever (always a smaller target than the default center-mass) then those same deviations are more likely to result in empty air.

In other words, it'd be bad for the game because of the first paragraph, and hopefully the second paragraph makes you feel a bit better about the system the way it is.

If your called shot is for something center-mass, like Smaug's missing scale, then that's a called shot to bypass armor, not for extra damage anyway.

Check out this thread.