The biggest question I have is if a single burned edge gets them out of the situation or just that shot.

The books example has the player falling into a coma but being able to live to fight another day. However without some extra hand waving getting knocked out often just delays a characters demise by a few turns. Does the edge buy that hand wave? What about situations where they're already trapped by the bad guy and are scheduled for execution shortly and they want out?

Nuthin'... as I don't allow it. My hand waves plenty as it is, so I don't need a player attaching a marionette string to it as well.

Its highly situational, but they usually a get out of jail free card for that one instant. The gunshot dosen't kill them, they survive the bomb blast, whatever. But, its only that one moment, and they still have to figure out a way out from there.

Judgement, may I then ask why you would burn an Edge to survive, when you could instead burn an Edge for a critical success?

The text does not say you may burn an Edge to survive that attack, it says you may burn an Edge to survive. In other words, regardless of what happens, you some how make it out of the situation alive.

It's an issue of scope. I presume edge doesn't give the player an invulnerability bubble for the rest of the session in your games. So at some point you have to define where the "situation" they paid to get out of is over. And you also have to decide if there are any situations you won't let them buy their way out of.

I suppose for the former point it works well with the "coma" thing as the player is out of action for probably the rest of the session.

The character somehow drops "off camera" but lives through it. Player is basically out until a new scene. Burn edge during big boss fight? Fine, you're not gonna be helping at all for the rest of it.

Depends on the situation. If a PC falls or bleeds out in combat and he wants to burn an Edge point, most likely he'll regain consciousness floating in Puget Sound, stripped naked and saddled with the Infirm quality from wounds and lack of oxygen to the brain.

Boom goes the Bomb, you spend edge to survive the Bombs Blast
Rumble goes the Building, going down, squashing you like a bug

The only time a player has burned a point of edge changed his faith from being dead into hospitalized and his friends had to help him out of hospital. The group rarely uses any "advanced" rules like aiming or calling a shot anyway, thus burning the edge was used only once. I'm the only one who has read the rules during 40+ sessions we have played SR... I did try to explain most rules so many times already but somehow the more advanced stuff doesn't stick.

Actually what does it mean to have scored a critical success on, say, a damage resistance test (such as against a bomb). Does the damage get reduced to zero?

If so I guess I could see the "buy a critical success" option as a player wanting to push on, while the burning to survive is the players way of tapping out.

Though that interpritation means the PC is essentially immortal.

That is burning Edge for a critical success on your damage resistance, not burning Edge to survive.

You burn for a critical success, you escape that attack (or other form of damage) somehow unscathed.
You burn for survival, & you make it out of the situation.

The result varies depending on circumstances, but I would suggest as a guideline, if the player burns to survive, they remain alive until they have recovered enough to act on their own, however long that takes.


A critical success is defined as 4 or more Hits than you need to succeed at a test. Burning for a critical success on a resistance test would then effectively give you DV + 4 Hits; reason being, anything up to the DV is not in excess of what you need - it all goes towards reducing the damage. Once damage is fully resisted, then excess hits go towards determining a critical success.

And there are ways for players to still die, it is just difficult if the player wants their character to live. Also note that living does not necessarily mean continuing on with the group. I have had characters that, even though they survived (& thanks to genetech, where in perfect health), I still had to replace with a new character for various reasons.

Shadowrun is a game of glass cannons - it is easy to die. The game has no mechanic for resurrecting dead characters. It is not fun to have your character killed, with no way of reversing it, in a game that is very easy to die in. For this reason, it is very important for the characters to have some way of returning to the game - that is Edge.

I was under the impression that critical successes were for opposed tests? Isn't the text something like 4 net successes? You don't have net successes on a damage resistance test.

Chris

I agree. Burn for a critical success, you survive the bomb, building squishes you.

Burn to survive, bomb blast throws you out of the building, and into a passing garbage truck, at 1 box from being incapacitated and you're out of the scene.

Actually, yes you can. If you have a DV of 12, you need 12 successes to soak it fully. So, if you burn Edge, you just scored 16 successes, 4 above what you needed.

The problem is with opposed tests. Depending on the situation, it can range from useless to overpowering. For example, burning Edge to try and kill someone with a basic light pistol (DV 4) is pointless; you'd hit him with 4 successes above whatever he rolled, but that only translates to a modified DV of 8. That's not enough to kill anyone, even assuming he completely botches his soak roll.

OTOH, burning Edge when summoning a spirit can get ugly. You're guaranteed at least 4 services out of a force 12+ spirit that way. You can do the same trick when binding said spirit; but in both cases, make sure you've got Edge to burn on your soak roll. You may need it.

I agree as well, with the slight caveat that I may invoke a heroic sacrifice house rule. If you burn Edge to defend against something that's normally not survivable (e.g., a Thor shot to the forehead), your character still dies, but the player gets to keep all his earned karma towards his next character. The same thing applies if the character dies in an especially cinematic manner.

Or to be completely absurd, take an Agility 1, Edge 1, 0 skill character, give them an assault rifle with no recoil comp. Called Shot - 4, Called Shot - Bypass Armor, Long Narrow Burst. Edge for a Long Shot test, burn for a critical success. Your opponent now gets Body to resist 19P, from someone who literally cannot hit shit.

Yes, this does work, but is retarded, & unrelated to the topic of this thread.

By the way, have I mentioned that squirrels are the source of all evil?

In the case of said Thor shot, I would suggest instead having something just happen to move in to block it, resulting in NPC deaths (or, if you are feeling malicious, a TPK minus the player who would have otherwise been the only death).

i thought for such things there was the longshot rule . . can'T you only burn edge for a crit hit if you have positive dice left?

as for the squirrels: no, care to enlighten/amuse us? ^^



i'd probably say that because he burned edge, whoever rolled to hit him critically botched his roll and thus missed . .

For my group:

A sniper hits you for a total of 25 damage... you have no armor and 4 body.

You burn an edge to survive the attack.

You just happened to look the right way, and the bullet passes between the halves of your brain (or through the meat of your chest rather then your heart or lungs)... you are reduced to zero life, you are unconscious, but you survived the attack.

. . hitting the rest of the party, along with a school bus full of elementary students.



& yes, I mentioned using the Long Shot rules in my above ridiculous example. Note, using Edge reduces your current Edge Pool. Burning Edge reduces your Edge attribute, but otherwise does not affect your Edge Pool (unless that was also at maximum) - meaning an Edge 1 character can both use & burn Edge. Long Shot always gives you a positive dice pool, regardless of how many penalties you stack on, so it always enables you to burn for a critical success.

wasn't there something about edge only being useable once per test?
so you can't use edge to be able to do the test and then burn edge to critically success?

ok i must have overread the longshot part in your example.
as for the other part?
nah, if i wanna survive due to sheer luck, then why should the rest of the party have to burn edge to do the same?
a dickish GM could go to town with that . . i burn edge to survive, ok, the thor hits 2 others of your party of 5 . . they roll edge to survive and the thor hits another 2 of the party of 5 . . now those second two also roll edge and the thor hits the first guy and another guy again who have to roll edge again . . and so on and so on O.o

Using Edge is different from Burning Edge. You may only use Edge once per test. There is no limit to burning Edge, except your Edge attribute.

Also, the near-TPK result of burning Edge is viable, but I would likely set a GM who did that on fire. It is good to play with fire. It is good to play with sharp metallic objects.. Blood tastes good...

Knowledge is power.
Power corrupts.
Study hard.
Be Evil.

so there's nothing preventing USE and BURN in ONE test?

Not by RAW.

i suddenly understand the whole Mr.Lucky Concept a whole lot better right now . .

You can only *spend* 1 point of Edge per test. You can *burn* all you like.

As to the second, the point is that burning Edge is essentially, as written, a "Get Out of Jail, Free" card. They're guaranteed to live to fight another day. (In fact, that may be the exact wording; I'll check later.)

Remove "guaranteed" and I believe it is.

I'm in that ''You burn the edge, and luck comes in somehow.''

The bullet example was good. Instead of your heart, it hits somewhere else. You're down and out, but alive. Another good example is the bomb blast-throws you back, knocked to crap but again, alive. You'll need to spend some time healing, for sure...but you got lucky.

This is why I actually don't mind being able to keep burning Edge. There are people in real life that have been though hell, having should have died several times...but didn't. In SR, you can say they had a high-ass Edge and just ended up burning it to live. Person struck by lightning? In SR, they burn the Edge. While I don't like to use real life as an exact scope for SR, the person with the 1 edge just isn't that lucky, and that 7 edge person somehow manages to cheat fate almost every time. We use edge as is; if you have a 5 edge, yeah, you can cheat death five times if you want. You buy it higher, there you go. Oddly enough, it's rare anyone in our groups have over a 4 edge, and it's usually more in the 2-3 range. You'd think for a ''get out of jail free'' card it's the first stat people would boost...but it's not. I know some folks have a problem with people spending Edge to avoid death, but we don't. I mean, if a character wants to sit there and spend their Edge up at the start rather than getting other things, and then getting into trouble and having to blow it, and then buying it up with Karma...great, while everyone else is actually getting somewhere with their character, they are playing Captain 100 lives. I mean, if that's fun for them...well, fun's the most important thing, I guess.

All of that being said...sometimes even Edge can't get you out. If someone is standing next to the nuke as it goes off...yeah. I mean, I really can't think of any possible way the Edge is going to get them out of that one. If they strip naked and dive into a pool of concentrated hydrochloric acid, I also don't know how I'd explain that one. There are certain things that I just can't see people getting out of. But for everyday ''deaths'' like a car crash, bullet, or knife, I just call it as ''it avoids vitals, you're messed up, you need hospital care for X time and X nuyen, you'll live.''

Actually, it's hideously inefficient to burn Edge that way. It'll cost you 24 karma to replace that top point of Edge.

If you really want to be evil, only get an Edge of 2. At the end of game, bind a max-force spirit and use the burn tactic on both the binding and drain rolls, if necessary. If you need to burn both points, you only need to spend 9 karma to rebuild your Edge back up again.

Maxing your Edge means you really don't want to burn any, if you can avoid it.

Yes, Mr. Lucky relies on 6~8 dice for every test via Long Shot, not Critical Success via Burning. Way to expensive to replace that lost Edge.

But still, 8 dice when your dice pool would otherwise be -50 or so is impressive.

You're right, but the guarantee is implied:

Guaranteed is not implied. It is by default included in a statement of fact, and thus redundant to write - no "implied" about it.

Actually a fair point is the difference between surviving and getting out clean. Specifically it'd be pretty easy to make the other siad decide to just capture the oc instead of killing them.

Not to be too picky, Kurious, but if the bullet passed between the two halves of your brain it would hit your corpus callosum, killing you deader than if it had instead just hit one lobe.

Chris

A better explanation of surviving a head shot would be the bullet is deflected by the skull, riding underneath the skin but above the skull to the back of your head, where it exits. This has happened multiple times in real life - just, I believe, with small caliber arms. I doubt it would be a reasonable explanation for a Barrett 121 shot.

There is also a lot of the head that isn't brain that could be blown off.

Last I checked, cutting the corpus callosum was still used today as a last-ditch treatment for extremely severe epilepsy. It's perfectly survivable, except for the fact that now your right and left sides of your brain can not communicate; but that effect is a topic unto itself. It's hits to the brainstem that are invariably fatal.


Well, you could call it a graze, blowing off part of the skull and exposing the brain. That might look fatal from a distance.

Well, sure... if a brain passed between the two halves of a brain...

But, just to clarify, I was referring to the upper portion of the skull, not the lower (or even middle). Another good example is like what Muspellsheimr said, it got deflected.

Hell, get creative...

What do my players get from a point of burned edge?

Survival, no matter what, and 5-10 points worth of negative qualities.

Cain, yes, severing the corpus callosum during surgery is a life altering if survivable operation. Severing it with a BULLET is not. I could be wrong, of course, but I'm almost certain that severing it without anesthesia and with a bullet, which by the way is signifcantly larger than the width of the corpus callosum itself, would kill the hell out of someone as their brain would shut down from the sudden overflow of sensation and trauma.

Chris

No anesthesia would be painful, but not as bad as you might think. There aren't many (any?) pain receptors in the brain itself. The bullet would be difficult, but it depends a bit on what tissues it hit on the way in. I can't find any good references as to size, and my anatomy texts are in storage in Seattle; but from what I can see, the whole of the corpus callosum would be larger than a small-arms bullet. As far as brain shutdown from sensory overload, that AFAIK is a myth. I've never heard of someone dying from oversensation, especially after brain damage. If anything, sensation should decrease, since the brain isn't able to receive the signals anymore.

See I thought there had been studies done... somewhere in my psych textbooks.... about sensory overload shutting down the brain. Maybe not, I don't have my anatomy books on hand either, but I was under the(possibly mistaken) impression that the corpus callosum was about a quarter of an inch thick. Maybe I am overestimating the size of a bullet, but I thought most were bigger than that. Also, sensation would decrease after the fact, but speaking as someone who has had nerves severed as a medical procedure where I was not allowed to be anesthetized, sensation increases dramatically at the moment of severance and the nerve activates a final time. Mine was in my neck, so maybe it was just the pain, but the doctor told me it was the release of neurochemicals as the nerve is ruptured.

I could be wrong though, very easily, I didn't really put much thought into my first couple of answers much less research so you could be correct.

Chris

Bullet size is one of these weird things. The 7.62 bullets used by NATO actually fire a projectile that's .223 inches across-- about the same size as a .22 LR round. The reason it looks so much bigger is because the cartridge holds a lot more propellant. I'm no gun expert, but I bet one will be around soon to correct me if I'm wrong.

I agree with Ryu.

Their out, and the other team members might or might not know if they survived. Could be left for dead, which is usually what it implies. Doc Wagon was generous, some mob boss felt they could use more muscle to exploit in exchange for saving them, Lone Star picked them up and cold steel slabbed them and they wake up in a prison lockup, who knows, but it usually is bad and more than likely, a burden for the team to recover them, or provides interesting Roleplaying arcs in the future.

At a recent session, a bullet-riddled character burned Edge to survive, during a hit on a corp facility. The GM ruled that one of the corpsec mage's possession spirits had entered the PC, giving him just enough INW to survive... but he was still wounded badly, possessed, and in the middle of a firefight at an oil refinery in frozen tundra. The other characters went out of their way to retrieve him. They couldn't kick out the possessing spirit right away; if they'd done that, he might have died as his P track reverted to its normal state. They extracted, got emergency medical care ready, then banished the spirit, IIRC.

If the GM had handwaved that the bullet-riddled PC was effectively whisked off-stage, that would have been easier for the team; it was fun to play out rescuing the near-dead team-mate, with his life still in danger. Also, before he got shot, he'd been the one to actually enter the facility's control room and do the hacking that was essential to the mission, the rest of us were there as his backup, so he'd earned a rescue.

In this case, yeah, it was just survival from a single attack. If somehow we'd botched the rescue, eg dropped his body while jumping over a burning oil slick, or if a corpsec grenade had landed next to him, then I dunno if the GM woulda invited him to burn Edge again.

He eventually recovered just fine.

As we rule it, his Edge went from 2 to 2/1, in much the same way that a STR of 5 plus Muscle Augmentation 2 becomes 5/7. So to recover the burned Edge, he pays the same as the cost to go from Edge 2 to Edge 3, and his final score is Edge 3/2. Same with Magic; when a wizard with Magic 5 gets a datajack (or other ware with Essense cost up to 1), his Magic becomes 5/4.

Survival, as always, is questionable in most gunfights/bomb blasts/other goofy stuff that would cause people to burn edge. That being said, the character will survive (in a state of my choosing) post burning edge. Usually, this amounts to a state of extreme luck...... or potential impossible random chance. A good example I have used in one of my games was a character that walked into a bomb trap. The bomb went off, and would have killed the character, but he burned edge. So, he survives with a broken leg and a broken arm, under a pile of rubble. Saved from the "event" of the bomb only, had to deal with the surrounding mess after.

The start for the SNES SR game revealed at long last.

Anyway it's the 5.56 round that's equivalent (roughly) to the .22lr width wise. However the 5.56 is longer, going a lot faster (as in the brain will get pushed apart by the shockwave), and will tend to go sideways and shatter which is why it is as deadly as it is despite being a smallish round.

7.62 is just that, 7.62mm in diameter (also known as .308)
.223 is 5.56mm
.22 is 5.5mm
.177 is 4.5mm, a typical air gun.
.50cal is 12.7mm that Barret uses... That makes nice airing holes
and 9mm is 9mm

isn't the conversion the same as caliber = inches? So converting .50 cal round to mm would be the same as converting 1/2 inch to mm?

Oops, I had a feeling I was getting that one wrong. But I think the point is, a shot that miraculously hits the corpus callosum and nothing else (via burning Edge) is potentially survivable, if with an intriguing new mental Flaw as a result.

Yep, I think even if one makes a 13mm hole to head, one can survive it.



Aye.

And when talking about cannons:
"The length of a gun divided by the diameter."
"a gun described as 18 caliber's long would have a bore 18 times as long as its diameter." - both quoted from google definitions