Hey all,
I'm trying to cut down the rolls in combat and was thinking about implementing this tweak from SR4 p69:



Has anyone tried this? And if so, does it work?

thanks,

jkl

It over powers armor IMHO, as all but the most leathal attacks (AKA sniper rounds and higher) would bounce off. You would have to drop some of the armor values to make it work.

Case in point-heavy pistol base damage does not exceed the armor of a an armor jacket (even after the armor mods).

An assault rifle and smg on SA is in the same boat.

Even worse when you stack in FFBA. I have a combat mage with 10/7 armor... on a human combat mage. Think of what a troll sammy with bone lacing, orthoskin, and then armor on top of that... you need cannons (TANK cannons) to even hurt the slot... that rule WAAAAAAY to over powers armor.

I have tried it for a few nights. It's very reminiscent of First Edition Shadowrun and makes things faster as proclaimed. However, I find it lacking. So, for me it was a no go.

A good bastard half breed is to keep the Body part of the roll that would be applied if there was anything left after the auto armor. Then it would really remind me of first ed.

As the game system cannot possibly be designed and tested for every variant, we play as close to the rules as we can.

My Sasha would love to play in a game using that rule, then she wouldn't have to worry about anything smaller then a sniper rifle with APDS ammo.(14/11 armor)
And she's a dryad.

The biggest potential problem that I see with that rule is that it essentially makes armor three times as powerful. Before, you could soak, on average, one point of damage per three points of armor. Now, you soak damage on a one-for-one basis. You can already make tanks in SR4, and with the stackable armor options in Arsenal, even relatively normal characters can still have 10+ points of ballistic armor to soak with.

One could change it so that armor + body is used for buying successes, either at 4-1 or 3-1 rate - that gives a value one can directly subtract from DV.

That's definitely the way to go, since it goes with the assumption that 1/3 of your dice will succeed. There'll be no "yeah! I just took a panther cannon to the face and felt nothing!" moments nor "a light pistol just did what?" moments, and combat will go a little faster. 'Course, everyone will start tweaking Body, armor, and spells for that magic threshold, and Toughness et al. would have to be repriced...