So a couple days ago a ran my first game of SR4 ever and I encountered a couple problems that i was hoping you guys could help with. Since we are all new all we did was a practice combat and some role play. Anyway, the first problem deals with dodging bullets. If I understand the rules correctly the attacker roles their agility plus relevant skill plus modifiers vs. the attackers reaction. The problem is, does the defender have to try to dodge? I had one player get injured and had a -2 penalty. His total reaction was a 4 so he was rolling two die to dodge. He got a critical glitch as one of the die was a 1 and the other a 4. I wasn't quite sure how to handle this so I simply increased the damage by 2. we got into a discussion though that in that situation you are almost better off just taking the damage not not risking a glitch with only 2 die than trying to dodge. Are we missing something? The second issue dealt with recoil and multiple passes. a guy had a machine gun and was firing burst. so first shot first pass -2 dice, second shot first pass -3 dice, then first shot second pass it seems like the book says that it is back down to a -2. I feel like I am missing something as that is nine bullets in about three seconds. Of course I simply be trying to force 3rd ed. recoil rules into a different system. Hope you guys can help. thanks.

Sounds fine, only option not gone over was Edge. That could have been used to add to the roll, reroll, or to avoid the glitch. Also buying hits, which would have meant no hits is a possibility.

What the critical glitch effect was could have changed, but the extra 2 DV seems to be in an appropriate range. It might be fun to look at other possible penalties or effects, there's no limit to what you can do with it really. For example, "Shot in the leg." which will reduce your movement by 2 meters until you'r healed. A minor inconvenience that could add some flavor to the scene.

Recoil first: the recoil only applies within each Initiative Pass. So, yeah, it goes:

First IP: First burst causes -2 recoil penalty, second burst has a -5 recoil penalty
Second IP: First burst causes -2 recoil penalty, second burst has a -5 recoil penalty

And so on. Or, if they had one point of recoil comp:

First IP: First burst causes -1 recoil penalty, second burst has a -4 recoil penalty
Second IP: First burst causes -1 recoil penalty, second burst has a -4 recoil penalty

Etc. etc.

As for your first question, the defender _must_ roll their Reaction and risk the glitch or critical glitch -- it's not fair on the attacker otherwise. As DireRadiant points out, they can always spend Edge to negate the effects. An example glitch might be falling prone or something, whereas a critical glitch might cause half a D6 of extra boxes of damage or bring in the Heavy Damage rules from Augmentation.

The guy had a Machine Gun? Heavy weapons double post-compensated recoil.

First burst: -4
Second burst: -10

It resets each action phase.

Check out Aaron's cheat sheets. They make life much easier for a beginning player. They did for me. Here's the one for ranged combat.

Bullshit. Dodging is an action, and as with all actions, is optional. Also, how the fuck is a guaranteed hit with 1+ success "not fair" to the atacker?

For clarification:

The defender is assumed to be dodging (i.e. try not to just stand there for target shooting) whenever he is aware of the attack. This is what he is rolling reaction for. The optional "full dodge" means that the defender is doing nothing but trying to avoid getting hit, and this gives him reaction + dodge to avoid being shot.

SR rules are "favoring" the attacker, which is not too unrealistic IMO. If you just stand in the open, a trained shooter willl get to you. A GM should be aware to include all negative attack modifiers for visibility, cover and movement (attacker and target), which will reward a target tat is using cover to his advantage.

But even with these modifiers most skill shooters will hit with nearly every attack where the target is not using the full dodge option.

As for recoil:
As stated above correctly, recoil resets after each IP (RAW version). We felt that this is "unrealistic", since someone shooting over multiple rounds/IPs should suffer a build up of recoil. Our houserule is that recoil carries over from round to round (or IP to IP if you will [we do not allow multiple IPs, but that is a controversial topic in itself]). In order to "reset" recoil to zero, the shooter has to spend one action not shooting (he might do other things with that action, so it is not a lost action)

Hope this helps,

The Pat

I think The Pat hit the nail on the head. Nobody stands in the midst of a gun fight and waits to get shot. Its ingrained in our fight or flight response- detect threat, assess threat, posture as appropriate. At the very least you lower your head or crouch down to make yourself a smaller target.

[edit] This is also why the use of the word "dodge" in a firearms context really makes me cringe. To me, that word implies volition, and the idea of consciously dodging bullets is just goddamn silly.

Friend of mine once ran a campaign where the runners broke into an animal experimentation facility. Once inside, a bear with muscle augmentation attacked the team.
The team fired on him, and the bear, believe it or not, made a successful dodge test against an automatic weapon.

From here on out, when talking about ranged combat dodging, we fondly remember "Matrix Bear" and his Keanue Reeves-esque dodging of submachinegun fire.

I'm torn between "Well, look who's not 'The One,' everybody!" and "Pfft, with an attitude like that, of course it doesn't work when you try to dodge bullets!"

But I just can't pin down which amusing one-liner to go with.

If you were doing something else, and not really paying attention to the shooter, I could see forgoing a dodge roll. Maybe with a Willpower test? But if it was just you and the shooter, and you wanted not to dodge, I'd probably give the shooter a bonus, since you're willfully standing there and staring at him.

But bear in mind that deciding not to dodge is making use of metagame knowledge. A person wouldn't really be aware of the risk. Besides, the glitch shouldn't necessarily make whatever happened even worse. Above all, it should be interesting. For example, not "you take even more damage," but "you get shot and fall off the ledge." "So that means I'm no longer a target, right?"

You're not dodging the bullets, you're dodging the hand holding the gun.

On a related note, my character managed to dodge a wide burst from an Ares HVAR during tonight's session. That -11 penalty doesn't mean as much when you've got a dicepool of 26. One thing to keep in mind is that shadowrun characters are typically *much* better at what they do than any RL human could be. For a guy with Move-by-Wire, Reaction Enhancers, and a rating 4 tacnet, maybe dodging bullets isn't so silly.

Shadowrunners should only engage enemies on their own terms, and any fight where you don't have superior firepower and/or better positioning is one you might lose.

SR combat is deadly, don't forget that. The rules give attackers lots of advantages, especially if they get surprise.

Heh, did I mention the guy had full cover, as he was firing his smartgun from around the corner of some metal cargo containers? Or that he and his team had completely ambushed us?

I caught up and cut his gun in half. I'd feel better about it, but I was aiming for him.

Yeah yeah. Not a debate I care to have again. Suffice to say thats closer to reality but still a little unrealistic.

Also, I'm not arguing that the Dodge mechanic itself if wrong- its kind of essential to preserving the defender in the context of SR's ultra-lethal ranged combat where people almost never miss. I just think it should be explained differently as it really represents tactical movement, use of cover, avoiding enemy fields of fire, knowing when to bound and when to hunker down, etc... Its just the word "dodge" that makes me want to kill kittens.

Thanks for that by the way. He was meant to get into melee with me (thus his melee reinforced handguns) and then use his gun-fu to pwn me Instead, I spent the entire combat standing on an exploded bike, amidst raining white hot fire, dodging sniper fire and machinegun rounds from flying drones. At least until my last pass where I said screw it, and quick-drew my custom built gauss rifle and shot the troll sniper from 200 meters away.

<_<

I guess dodging bullets doesn't sound -so- crazy now :3

back on topic though. I tend to avoid punishing critical (defender) glitches with more damage. They're already screwed, no need to make the player feel worse. Make something interesting happen! Like being shot in the leg, or knocked behind cover. If its that bad, you can inflict the massive amounts of damage, and then still help them out in some small way so that the game can continue and be fun.

Oh, he was meant to kill you?

No wonder the fragger dodged so well. Makes me kinda proud to have been holding my own with just a 400 BP 34 karma backup character.

Wow! You're right!! That totally realistic scenario you just described has utterly shattered my long-held belief that bullets cannot be dodged. I have seen the light!

Nope. Dodging requires no action (declaring Full Dodge does, but that isn't what we're talking about here) and combat is handled as an Opposed Test. As Shadowrun includes no rules for "relenting" on tests, then the target must roll their Reaction (plus Dodge, Unarmed Combat or weapon skill if in melee) plus or minus any modifiers as per page 139 of the BBB.

Rather than giving the shooter extra dice, I'd probably just let them purchase successes at the usual 4:1 ratio.

Oh, I completely agree with you if we were playing a game that was trying to mimic reality. Game mechanically speaking, since I was on full defense for every initiative pass in the combat, my character just stood there over his demolished bike and never moved, and yet didn't get hit, either. Were I to try and describe this in some other way, I would probably have the character doing something else, and perhaps have him move (even though movement isn't allowed, since I was sacrificing my action to do full dodge) somewhere towards cover to explain him being un-hit by a spray of automatic fire from drones. However, in a game where characters are leaping 30 meters, or summoning white hot fire to fall from the sky, not to mention the fact of what they can accomplish in the single second combat turns, its not too unreasonable to expect Neo-like matrix dodging.

God kills enough kittens because of 4-chan, we don't need to start killing them because of reality bending mechanics that already exist in every other aspect


On the other topic, if someone wants to not dodge (make their reaction test) I see no reason why not to just make the test to shoot them an automatic success and go straight to damage soaking. You get the same response out of a surprise attack. They don't get to avoid it, they just go straight to absorbing damage.

Also helps model those situations where a target really doesn't want to dodge. (Unwilling extraction target maybe?)

Still, alot of that is just plain reflex, so you might want to require a composure test, depending on the level of realism you want in your games.

As for the statement that the character in the OP was metagaming, well, you could argue that the rules provided an unrealistic result in this case, as sometimes happens. This could be countered with the argument that it's literally a situation where "there's so many bullets, you're likely to run into one trying to get out of the way".

Also, there's the angle that a person seeing an attack coming that they know they can't avoid might simply try to endure it as best they could instead. (IE: Throwing up your arms when a grenade goes off in your face.)

Ultimately, I guess it's up to individual interpretation.

A quick question about Full dodge that would be appropriate in this thread: Do you have to declare a full dodge on your turn? My group has been running that you can declare a full dodge if you want to add dice to your reaction test, but you loose your next action (I'm not sure if it's a simple or a complex action, because my character never does it). Is there an issue with game balance in regards to this?

That's how it works by RAW. You either declare full defense at the start of your turn, or you (more commonly) "abort" to full defense when the drek hits the fan, using up your next action instead.

Yea, you can declare full dodge either on your turn (and not sacrifice your next one) or when the other guy tries to turn you into a pincushion, which which case you give up your next action (it is a complex action). You DO still get a free action, so you could adept center, or take aim. As in my case I took aim through 3 initiative passes :#

SR *is* supposed to mimic reality to some extent. Thats why it is set in the future of our world. I want realism from my guns and computers but fantasy from my dragons and orks. Thats the whole point of the setting. Otherwise it would be called D&D and cause cancer.

The way I interpret dodging is finding good cover. Get that support beam between you and the other guy. That crate. That other guy. Duck.

That's why Full Defense is a complex action. Reaction is going "oh, that gun is aimed at me, I should try to avoid that when he pulls the trigger."

When you edge to dodge it's basically going "oh shit, that was lucky! I almost got hit!" (i.e. your dirty rectangle hitbox took a bullet, but the close mesh hit-test failed).

Uh, movement is allowed. SPRINTING isn't allowed, but standard movement (walk or run) is a free action declared in addition to your actions (and of course applies a modifier to them). BBB138.

Movement isn't even a free action, it's a movement action giving you a grand total of:

A complex action (or two simple) [full defense]
A free action [swearing loudly, or perhaps using your martial arts knowledge to quick draw, or something]
A movement action [move 10 meters!]

We're both half right, actually. I rechecked - walking does not take any action, running takes a free action, and sprinting (run + test for speed) takes a simple action. It's embarassing to get that off when I even quoted the page number. That's what I get for skimming.

So in one initiative pass, you can declare that you want to run (behind some cover, perhaps), and you want to go Full Dodge while you do it.

Even with 4 init passive, dodging bullets is silly, they move faster then the speed of sound. The best you can do is try your best to not be where the gun is pointing when the trigger is pulled, which can be accomplished by moving quickly, weaving in and out, and using tactical cover. It's really hard to hit a target that won't sit still.

The generally rule I follow is that unless I have cover I spend my rounds using full defense unless I am sure I can take my foe out in one action.

I guess I'm a little bit more gungho then. Of course, my fellow party members are borderline suicidal, so I don't have to worry about being shot.

Until later when I actually become a threat, but have the armor to deal with it, muhahaha. That session is going to be epic (though not quite as epic as a Scion game that was "From Hero to God in 11 weeks"--they destroyed the universe and killed the Christian god--GM turned Christianity into a pantheon pretty well--for comparison, Hero to God in 11 weeks takes about 60 EXP a week per player, roughly equivalent of doing a 1 session run in SR and getting...200 karma and a million newyen, only with something to do with it all, and still not have enough).