Because they don't make any sense to me.

When a PC shoots at a metahuman with a standard attack roll, what's he trying to do? Kill them. So, when he shoots at a metahuman with a called shot for damage, what's he trying to do? Really, sincerely try to kill them? And why is it harder to really, sincerely try to kill someone than it is to try to kill them in a more desultory way? With the called shot he's aiming at the head, but with the standard roll, he's aiming at the toe?

In real life, the shooter automatically aims at the head or the center of mass, the most vulnerable, and in the latter case also most easily hit, targets. How well our PC hits these areas is reflected in the damage he does with a standard roll, and can be forecast, more or less, by their die pool.

I do allow called shots for things like trying to shoot an item out of a target's hand, or shooting out a tire.

i guess its more like how much focus the targeting person is using to aim, so if he tries to be more precise its more probable he actually hits exactly what he wants, the normal method is more the oh there is my target, SHOOT IT reflexive style of aiming and instantously pulling the trigger, therefore more unprecise but easier to do since you dont focus so much..

hope that helps

Most shooters are trained for center-mass only. I always assumed the extra damage was going for a head-shot...

Seconded. A standard shot is assumed to be aimed at the easiest spot to hit (i.e. center-mass, or torso, shots). A called shot for damage is a headshot, kneecap, or similar.

Police are trained to shoot for the chest, although a head shot is much more effective, but harder to pull off.

So yes, shooting them twice in the chest should kill them, but if you need to kill them faster, a head shot does more damage, but is harder to hit.

This rule is the single best way to attack...PERIOD. When will you roll 4 extra hits for damage on four dice? Almost never unless you blow Edge. With this you get a huge boost in per-shot "oomph" and you can still blow Edge to make sure it counts if you want it that bad.

1.33 hits for +4 DV? I'll buy that for a dollar!

And yes, we have banned it in our game as well.

PS: Anyone else notice that the piss ant "-dice" as a penalty mechanic is as worthless as my group has? I mean, it's been pretty well demonstrated here that you can easily make a 15+ dice monster (insert character type here) with the 400 BP base build pretty easily...

We *used* to ban this, but then we did the math on it.

Burst and autofire give a (similar, not identical) increase in damage output, without having to take a free action to call the shot and with RC allowing you to reduce or eliminate the penalty. Only downsides are increased ammo consumption (almost a non-issue) and the +DV doesn't count towards armor penetration. That free action is also what you could or should be using to dive prone or take cover during the off-turn. Called shot also restricts you to short bursts or semiauto fire... putting the DV through the ceiling, even if it ends up being only stun damage, is a lot easier with an automatic weapon. The free action prerequisite also means you can only fire one called shot a turn, whereas you can fire two short bursts, a long and a short, or (with an HV weapon) two longs. Recoil compensation that'll mostly handle two long bursts takes some work, but it's far from unreasonable to get.

Call-for-+DV only looks broken when you compare it to Call-for-AP... which is horribly underpowered, in the long run (I've never seen it used, even when we had Call-for-+DV banned). When compared to the other ways you can increase damage (Nuyen-for-+DV, also known as "buying a bigger gun and/or good ammo" or Nuyen-and-recoil-for-+DV, also known as "buy more ammo and get some recoil compensation"), Call-for-+DV really isn't all that big of a deal. And with burst and autofire weapons available within pretty much every weapon type and under every Skill umbrella, letting the folks who stick with a hunting rifle, hold-out, or other low-ROF weapon keep up with the damage curve doesn't bug me in the least.

That's all fine and dandy, Shrike30, but you forgot one thing...there is nothing in the rules that says you can't call the shot for DV and fire a weapon in bursts. In fact, it specifically states that the "called for damage" option is only for SS, SA, and BF mode weapons on pg. 149 of the BBB.

Hmm...yikes?

First you aim (simple action), then you Call the Shot (Free action), then you fire once. Most of the 15+ dice monsters are better off shooting twice.

How so? You still get trade +4DV for a typical loss of only 1.33 hits. You won't get the +4 DV with the extra dice very often (if ever), and you're still rolling an average of 3.66 hits per test before tossing in Edge:

2 RC for an average of SMG 3-shot burst 7DV + 5.33 hits compared to 11DV + 3.66 hits on average. Oh yeah, and my way still lets you fire a second burst, just in case they need extra convincing.

Good trade? I think so!

Yes, you can use Called Shots with Burst Fire, as Shrike said. Long Bursts, however, are not considered Burst Fire, but Full Auto, & thus only Short Bursts are allowed with Called Shot rules.

Oh yes, I forget that some of y'all have characters that waste ammo...err, fire on Full Auto more than maybe once every two or three runs.

My bad...

In a specialist character's area of expertise, losing less than 8 dice is usually not horrible, no.

Of course, said expert is probably looking at dicepools of no more than 6-8 in anything other than his specialization, so losing dice can hurt lots there.

Which is, in some ways, actually an improvement over earlier versions of the game, since a +TN penalty was often even more laughable, such as when choosing whether to use your recently-learned skill of 1 die, or to "default" to a nearby skill/attribute of 10 or more dice.

Shrike30:
I have seen call for -AP used effectively once...against a spirit's immunity-to-normal-weapons. Since it's not limited to 4, and the player had a brick of dice to throw, he could toss in edge to damage any spirit up to about force 15 or so.

Ammo is cheap. Using Long Bursts is not even remotely close to a waste; +5 DV for zero to two Dice Pool loss is a significantly better deal than +4 DV for -4 Dice Pool and a Free Action.

Sucks for your players then. They must all have really low Edge or never use the long-shot rules. When your shooting at something with so much armor you don't have a chance of hurting it, the Call-for-AP and Edge-Dice-Long-Shot combine for a nice little "Golden BB".

(If you don't know what a Golden BB is, ask any old time BattleTech player)

Call for -AP works really, really well on vehicles. And that's all I'm allowed to say on the subject.

It also works well for calling shots in situations where you haven't a non-lethal way of taking an opponent down. Called shots have been used several times in my games and I allow them with my approval, which is better than banning them outright. So far they've been used to damage cyber limbs, disarm opponents, take down fleeing informants, etc...

Now, I could use the logic some of the above have stated and it go like this:

"I shoot the guy as he's running away. We need him to tell us where the bombs are rigged."

"Okay, he flees and you shoot him twice. He'd dead."

"I didn't want to kill him."

"Yeah, well, people go for the largest portion for maximum efficiency, the chest in this case. The bullets killed him."

The rule is fine as it is, it's only when it's abused by players that it really become an issue. My group is comprised of 6-10 dice pool characters, and they have no issues with pulling of called shots or even regular shots with no problem.

How do you get the second burst? I think you need to aim as prequeresite for calling a shot? If you don´t have to do that, calling the shot will indeed be a no-brainer.

Ditto. Also effective on certain critters.

I think his signature line probably says everything else on the subject he wants to contribute

Vehicles, Spirits, and some Critters are "armored everywhere." You cannot shoot for an armor-less spot that doesn't exist.

5 bp
Martial Art
Krav Maga
Take Aim as a Free Action.

It's a pre-req to join the team I GM for.

I would rule at my table that you can't bypass the armor on a spirit, but how can you honestly declare some critters and all vehicles to not have weak spots?

He didn´t. He declared that there are no armor-less spots. Shooting for +4 DV compensates for some 12 armor dice.

Sorry but no vehicle is "armored everywhere". That is actually impossible to do. Take the M1A2 Abrams Main Battle Tank for example. RPGs that hit it's front or side armor are pretty much a waste. But RPG's still kill them sometimes with a single shot! How?! Easy, they hit a weak spot. One of the tanks that got taken out during the Thunder Run took an RPG up the exhaust (I was there so please don't get snarky with me about it).

So for very armored vehicles, I would only rule that you can't use the Called for AP if you were shooting it from the front, and then only if it was something like a APC, IFV, or MBT.

Compared to older rules, called shots in SR4 are actually more balanced.

Better than the -4 dice to ignore all armor.

I just have an open rule to my PCs whatever tactics they use, the NPCs will use. The MAD principle I call it...

- J.

True enough. And nothing bothers them more than having the same dirty tricks they pull used on them later.

The -4 dice also means it's easier to dodge. If you can't hit the extra DV is for nothing. It is a kind of gamble. It's no guaranteed win-win situation.

You walk up behind someone using Infiltration and make a called shot to the back of the head from point blank range, I'd say you are (pardon the pun) staring down the barrel of a pretty darn close win-win situation.

- J.

Too true, but if you sneak up behind someone with infiltration undetected, you damn well DESERVE that sweet shot, 1 bullet/1 kill in my GM book.

In one of my games, physad ninja sneaks up behind a mafia enforcer and hits him with the called shot katana. So much damage was inflicted, I ruled she decapitated the guy. In front of her team. Pretty epic.

The -4 vs dodge is meaningless, when you're discussing a medium-sized gun bunny. The combatant is going to have a dice pool of 15-20. Let's assume 20 dice, which means an average of 6.66 successes. Subtract 4 dice for damage, and we're discussing 5.33 successes. In either case, an exceptional target is going to have a reaction of 6. meaning he's going to average only 2 successes. The gun bunny is going to hit and cause damage each and every time. The only difference is that by calling a shot, he does more damage with no meaningful penalty.

Eh? An exceptional target with only reaction 6?

A base reaction of 6, perhaps. But not after enhancements like Wired Reflexes and its other variants and other powers/spells, etc. I reckon such a medium-sized combat target would have about base 11-15 dice to dodge before Full Defense. Your gun bunny has about 1 more dice after the -4 called shot.

While I won't dispute your numbers, the fact is that most targets aren't going to have a Reaction of above 3, and a difficult target will only have a reaction of 6. Only superior opposition will have defense pools equal to a gun bunny's attack pool. If your target has attack and defense pools of 15+, you've gone past "difficult" and gone straight for "Big bad" territory.

The Jake: I think I'll have to agree with Kev on that point. If you manage to get so close and want to shoot/strike first you deserve to get that bonus because unless it's a troll he should drop very dead. Probably if it was a troll too.

Jake: Most targets are what would be called "extras" in some games. They don't really stand a chance anyway because they are just not good enough. But if they cooperate they can inflict some damage, wearing the char down, or even drop a char if they get lucky.

But if every Avarage Joe could dodge my 18 dice gun adept, what would be the point of being better than any mundane could possibly become? He deserves to be able to make headshots for extra damage. And statistics doesn't always work your way. In this line of work a miss might well be fatal.

If your NPC has Reaction 3 to 6, then that NPC is very likely a Grunt or an Inferior Prime Runner NPC. In combat, a combat PC has to be countered with a combat NPC. Come on, you know very well that it will probably take at least an Equal NPC to match dice pools with a PC in his main area.

An equal prime runner, at least how I define them, would have either an equal defensive dice pool, leaving them weak on offense; or vice versa. Outside of a dedicated defensive build, which would tend to have crappy attacking ability, you're simply not going to see anyone with a huge dodge pool.

Sure, I could create someone with a high defensive and offensive dice pool, but that goes past what I define as an "equal" NPC, and moves well into the "Superior" range.