To quote Homicide: A Year on the Killing Streets, by David Simon:

"Hollywood tells us that a Saturday Night Special can put a man on the pavement, yet ballistic experts know that no bullet short of an artillery shell is capable of knocking a human being off his feet. Regardless of a bullet's weight, shape and velocity and regardless of the size of the handgun from which it was fired, it is too small a projectile to topple a person by the impact of its own mass. If bullets truly had such power, the laws of physics would require that the shooter would also be knocked off his feet in similar fashion when he discharged the weapon."

However, later on that same page:

"Although the popular belief that many people fall down upon being shot is generally accurate, experts have determined this occurs not for physiological reasons, but as a learned response. People who have been shot believe they are supposed to fall immediately to the ground, so they do."

So instead of relying on the damage inflicted as opposed to the victim's Body, maybe it should require a Willpower Test to remain standing after being shot.

I would think that it's more shock and the sudden and unexpected application of force, generally to a point higher up the body. You can't really predict getting shot and the force is applied so abruptly that you simply cannot brace yourself against it. A standing human is a careful balancing act supported by the muscles of the individual, if the balance is off by more than a little then they're going to fall as they cannot compensate fast enough. Even rocking backwards onto your heels will cause you to fall unless you expect it. A short, sharp impulse applied to the central body is probably going to disrupt the balance of the target sufficiently to initiate a fall, even without the effects of shock from getting hit.

I apologise if I come off as aggressive, I hate to see disinformation spread.

Falling down after being shot makes sense. It's called using micro terrain, or rather making yourself a harder target to hit. Instinct kicks ass.

See, I'd think so, too, but Simon's book was written based on spending over a year with a squad of homicide detectives, so I have to assume that he knows more about the subject than we do. I mean, what do you or I really know about the physics behind people getting shot? He interviewed detectives and medical examiners.



Again, if that's so, then a test regarding the person's Body just doesn't make sense. It should use Willpower or Intuition.

My point is that knockdown does not make sense, rolls be damned.

I suggest that the gentleman's never been shot. I have, by a medium caliber hand gun and between the sudden shock and the IMPACT (it felt roughly like being hit with a baseball bat by a VERY strong person...a thing I also had happen) I didn't so much "fall down" as get ejected from my feet.

It may not be simple mass alone, but there is no "learned response" here either. The body is a self preservation unit, when a sudden overwhelming injury occurs to it, IT reacts completely on it's own without learned response having jack shit to do with it. I suggest that the "experts" who have determined that physiological reasons don't apply have their heads up their fourth points of contact.


Isshia

I propose that regardless of real life physics, firearms in Shadowrun should pick people up off their feet, throw them backwards anywhere from 2 to 10 meters, and perhaps remove a limb or two in the process.

This is Shadowrun, after all...

I strongly suspect that it's just like burning yourself with your coffee or getting hit in a fight. Your body's first reaction will be to jerk away from it as violently as possible. This is why, I assume, that the majority of people shot in the front will fall backwards as shown time and again during police videos (even if caught off-guard). Of course, a nice shot that sufficiently disrupts the target to render them an immediate non-combatant will tend to look like their strings have been cut more than anything you see in the movies (besides Saving Private Ryan and Children of Men, of course).

i remember they did this on Mythbusters. they hung a side of pig up on some kind of ballance point, and fired various caliber weaponry at it. the best they could do was make it sway a few inches, but nothing was able to knock it down. i agree that its more of a factor of the mind reacting to the gunshot wound, and less about the body reacting to the force.

There is one big difference between the typical gun shot wound victim and your average runner and antagonist. Body armor. With rare exceptions, anytime my players or my characters have been shot at, they have alwyas had some sort of ballistics protection (cost of doing business I guess). Granted, I have never been shot while wearing a vest, but it does spread the energy out over a larger area (akin to being hit with a baseball bat, or a truck, depending on who was speaking about it).

The wonderful thing about roleplaying in general is how some systems absract things for us, so we don't get bogged down in detail. You could make the argument that it should be a willpower check for a penetrating or armorless shot, and a body check for an armored hit, or accept that the rules took that into account without breaking it down to every possible situation (even if they don't, assume and error on the side of fun).

The fact that the knockdown factor in gunfire is not simply a function of overwhelming force, like getting knocked off your feet by a truck, pops up periodically as if it's innovative and surprising news. No, it's not overwhelming force picking up the victim and flinging them. It's shock, surprise, not being braced against the blow, pain, and the force of the blow. But the fact remains that people who get shot tend to fall down. If that wasn't true, the firearm would not have caught on.

The current SR knockdown mechanic is a trade-off more in favor of playability than realism, but it works OK for me.

The weight of the leg and the tensile strength of the meat and the fastening mean that the leg experienced a force opposing the swing. In contrast, a person falling gets positive feedback from the strength of his legs and gravity, causing the fall to grow faster. In layman terms, when you're hanging it's like you're on the inside of a ball and when you're standing it's like you're on the outside of a ball.

One is a hell of a lot easier to fall off.

THIS gets in to the area of what I'm talking about. There is no "learned response" idiocy involved in autonomic nervous reflexes...and THEY are what takes over when you're hit by hyper velocity metal with very, VERY, little regard to the mass of said metal above and below certain threshold points. The insane idea that you fall down because you believe that you should is simply not defensible to anyone who stops and thinks for a moment about how the autonomic nervous system works and why the human body operates as it does. Again, I can almost bloody guarantee that the guy who wrote the article the OP read has never been shot.

Isshia

I wasn't actually talking about autonomous reactions, the positive feedback effect is the same one that makes a stick accelerate sideways as it falls from standing in its end. The resultant force from the fact that the leg is still attempting to support the body and the effect of its weight is that a force applies to reinforce the initial force. My main point was that standing is inherently less stable than hanging due to weight and the way that force vectors add, magnifying a small initiatory force into an unavoidable fall, hence the reference to the balls. When you're on the inside of a ball you tend to end up in the same place eventually (assuming some kind of damping), on the outside you tend to head off in a random direction with the least provocation.

You know, I'm sure he hasn't ever been shot. You're probably right about that. But what exactly makes you such an expert on physics and human psychology that you can dismiss a professional's report of expert theory as "insane"?

Also, what does OP mean?




That's the most reasonable response I've heard so far!

I heartily agree that Shadowrun should not follow real life physics in this case. Cinematic combat has no use for physics.

Also, OP = original poster

I've heard descriptions of shooting victims range from "got hit by a sledgehammer" to "I didn't even know until I was shot until I saw the blood staining my shirt".

I, thankfully, have never been shot and hope never to be shot.

However, while a bullet impact may not, in and of itself, be the sole factor of a person being knocked down, I think it is inaccurate not to say that it would be a significant factor in a person ending up in a prone position. And as another poster mentioned, it really doesn't take a lot of force to topple someone who is already off-balance - the entire sport of Judo revolves around that idea.

As for the rest, put two experts in a room and you'll get three opinions.

-Siege

There is a video out there of a guy standing on one leg with his hands behind his back wearing a level IV vest who is shot by a 7.62x54mm FAL at point blank range. He doesn't even sway much. It's just not that much force if it's stopped by your body armor. OTOH, it could knock down some people if they are off balance, and if it isn't stopped by your armor it could do all sorts of crap.

I thought most fatalities due to bullet wounds was due to blood loss. Now, I think, we have to consider where the person was shot. If someone gets shot in the knee with a shotgun, I'm pretty sure they're going to fall. Of course, I do not think it's reasonable to bring an anatomy book to a game. Instead, just do your best to keep the game interesting. In a cinematic game, there is nothing wrong with someone being knocked down with a bullet. Just be consistent.

Most fatalities of gun shot is due to shick and the fact that a bullet doesn't travel in a stright line thru the body most of the time(in fact it's very rare) they're designed so that when they hit the bullet actually turns and starts to tumble thru the body turning the flesh in it's path in to mush(so says my criminology instructor)

And I also think that real world physics should not be brought into a fantasy RPG... It causes to many arguements and detracts from the fun.

If you want to make that case the game must be internally self-consistent, with all possible rules questions able to be settled by the rules, without expecting people to rely on any outside knowledge of how the real world works. If the GMs answer has to be "that's obvious" or "use some common sense" or "that doesn't make sense" or "because I say so" the game can't make that argument. SR certainly isn't a game that can claim that strong a set of rules.

People's activities in a game based are on their model of the world. They will fill in the holes based on their understanding of the real world and the literature the world is based on. You have to be able to supply a complete model if you really intend for the sun to actually be carried through the skies by horses of fire over the flat earth floating above underworld. You have to actually tell them this and get them to understand that this means there is no real horizon.

It completely ignores human bodily response (the autonomic nervous system) and relegates every aspect of it to learned response. That is rather bizzare at the VERY least.


Isshia

Well, there is a point to the "I learned to fall down so I did" argument. There have been a huge number of casualties where the soldier/police officer/etc was given a pretty minor wound that really shouldn't have taken them out and they went into shock, passed out, stopped fighting, etc. As immediately deadly direct-fire casualties are relatively rare in respect to overall casualties, I would have to say that there is indeed a strong psychological element to the overall effectiveness of individual gunshot wounds.

I gotta look this one up - SAPI plates in particular and body armor in general just diffuse the impact and spread it out over a larger area. Softer kevlar and the like just snare the bullet without actually blunting the impact.

At least, so I understood the concept.

-Siege

You don't go into shock (except in RARE cases) because of what you see that has happened to you. Often times the way shock affects the nervous system is by something akin to overload shutdown. It isn't that you don't feel the gunshot wound until you notice the blood, but that your conscious mind doesn't process the information because of overload shock. Often it is the return of perception of the wound, because of the overload being processed, that is WHY the person now notices they've been shot when they didn't before and they look in the area (or feel the blood flow there first in a concealed area) because they are beginning to perceive the wound as the overload works out.

I've seen a damned good deal of wounding in my time and can't place a single case where a significant wound was "pretty minor" except in appearance. How in the blazes can it be said that a wound shouldn't have taken them out if it was severe enough to cause shock? Shock is a physiological, NOT a psychosomatic condition. The human body is actually a VERY tough instrument. It can take a tremendous beating and keep going, or take what looks on the surface to be a next to nothing wound that, because it has caused severe internal injuries or because of the simple proximity to a nerve plexus, takes down IMMENSELY tough people who wouldn't be even slowed down by what looks to be FAR more severe wounds.


Isshia

It may not be "shock" in the technical sense of the term, but there is definitely a psychosomatic aspect to any kind of injury.

Several months ago, I accidentally cut myself. Nothing major, just messy. My life wasn't in danger. I _knew_ my life was not in danger. I lose more blood when I go to the blood bank.

I still felt faint and had to sit down.

So, essentially I took 4-5 boxes of stun from less than one box of physical. Because, against my wishes, something in my brain said it is time to drop my blood pressure for a minute or so.

I love this description of shock. This is how I am going to describe stun damage from now on.

That is not psychosomatic. It's just plain physiological shock. Your mental and emotional state can affect whether you enter a state of shock or not (only time I've ever been in shock was from a *skinned knee*, for heaven's sake, but I was already emotionally stressed out by exams and a seriously ill mother and being late due to having to return home to change trousers and clean the grit out of the graze: I was sick on the bus). 'Tis different from psychosomatics.

CAN there be? Sure. Does there need to be? Absolutely no. You can also, with the same person, just shrug and walk on as if nothing at all happened period. Why would it be a learned response one time and not the other?

The more likely explanation is a physiological one. Maybe you were nearing an electrolyte deficit as it was, before the accident. There are so many contributing factors to human physiology and how it operates in this situation THIS TIME and why it operates completely differently another time that simply because nothing obvious was happening doesn't mean that the explanation wasn't almost entirely physiological.

I know that I've sometimes felt faint after donating blood and that after I was shot (and lost more than twice as much blood as I would have from a donation) I jumped (literally) right back up and scrambled on. Adrenaline pumping through you can produce some drastic effects.


Isshia

From a medical perspective 'shock' refers to the circulation being compromised by a loss of blood.

/pedant mode off.

I'm not going to weigh in on guns or being shot, but in my experience as a phlebotomist people's response to losing/giving blood can vary a huge amount.

Some people completely ignore it, others freak out at the sight of the needle. I had one guy pass out when I was taking his blood pressure because he had gotten himself so worked up about the prospect of the needle. Another time a guy gave blood quite happily, but when he saw the vials with his blood in it he got very faint. Interestingly it's mostly men that have a problem with giving blood, while women, even if they hate needles faint far less readily.

If its an instinctual autonomic response then one should be able to train and condition it away. Just have somene shoot you in the chest, put a bandage on the the wound, and repeat until you don't fall down.

Or until you don't stand up.

ROFLOL

While there are indeed experienced EMT/medic/paramedic-types on this board, there are also documented cases of soldiers and police officers going into shock and dying from minor wounds to the hands and/or feet. No excessive blood loss, no loss of the appendage. Hell, the coroners were pretty damn confused, I'm sure. That said, the psychological impact is absolutely huge and shouldn't be casually discounted as you never know what's going to happen until you or your patient has actually taken the wound.

No they disperse it. It's what the whole backface deformation in the NIJ standards is about. The description I heard from a cops was that being shot in the chest with a vest was like being poked in the chest by a strong man's finger.

If that is the case then, wow! I'll take a poke in the chest over a shot to the hand any day...

I'd like to read just ONE documented case of this. You don't simply drop dead because you see yourself bleeding. You MAY well pass out, but death from psychological trauma is rarer than hens teeth.


Isshia



Note: Hens no longer have teeth.

What?!?!? Wait, since when?



Is there a source online that a lay person could investigate strange gunshot deaths?

perhaps "strange" should read "improbable".

Part of an old joke based off of this prehistoric bird: Hens Teeth

Isshia

No, but it is conceivable that the vasoconstriction your body applies to limit blood loss from superficial injuries can get out of hand. It almost certainly has nothing at all to do with the *seeing* of the wound, and everything to do with an inappropriate physiological overreaction leading to decreased heart function which precipitates a lack of blood to the heart muscle and a vicious circle leading to arrest. Painful injuries are more likely to induce shock, so hand injuries are more likely to trigger such an unusual reaction.

Shock is physiological. And can be unpredictable.

Sorry to necro the thread, but I was wondering if the boxes of damage needed for knockdown are pre-damage test or once they are inflicted... (I can see pre-test for a definitely more cinematic game)

It is damage taken (DV - Resistance Hits), not damage value (Base DV + Net Hits), that determines knockdown.

Well, they do when they're born.

http://chickscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/resourc...procedures.html

Peter

Any attack that does in excess of your body in damage is a pretty serious blow which more then likely resulted in some bone and muscle damage, when you take several of your muscles and/or bones failing/weakening(when can cause you to lose your balance) combined with the pain and shock of being shot you will more then likely collapse. The human body holds a surprisingly delicate balance, try standing completely still and erect and do not move a muscle, physics says you will fall.

Basically, it's not so much knock down as fall down.

A gun shot wound is a menagerie of pain stacked high in between two pieces of shit. Seriously I would say it is everything and nothing about this argument. Sometimes people will go into panic and shock when getting hit by a bullet, sometimes they might just get back up or not even fall over (especially if you know its coming.) Man the reasons are varied and each and every individual getting shot will probably not fall under one very specific type of "you will deal with getting shot this way."

Or ten boxes of damage... regardless of the body. Hmm thats pretty fun and quite possibly very useful.

Not to be a curmudgeon or anything, but this sounds to me like an unnecessary encumbrance to the system.

That's a very interesting drawing, but all I see is a drawing.

I find that it gives me, as the GM, an excuse to not keep shooting the n00b PC who's standing in the middle of the street getting shot at. It also gives NPCs with low Professional Ratings a chance to surrender without having to fight to the death. I've thought the rule was a Good Thing ever since I first read it.