Wow. We both came-up with the elephant argument... weird.

Also IIRC vitality is defined as dodging, near misses, and hits to non-vital/well protected areas.

It could be because I mentioned elephant-rifle calibers earlier. Or it could be because it's such a good argument.

d20 Spycraft Core Rules define Vitality Points as "[...] a mixture of endurance, luck and experience. Losing vitality points is less a representation of actual physical damage than it is combat fatigue [...]". So it's not really about dodging. It's just that the first few 12.7mm 660gr bullets entering your chest at 3,000fps only tire you down, so that the follow-up shots can really start injuring you.

I am definitely not 5th level, having received all of a day of instructional time in rifle shooting, yet am more than capable of hitting a man-sized target at fifty meters, even with the poor old iron sights. I'm sure nearly everyone could, given a little practice. If all it takes to get to fifth level is a day at the range, shit, I just might play.

MAKE THIS THREAD STOP!

OH PLEASE!

You could just stop reading it, you know.

Yeah, there's already a couple Cyber* books for d20. It's just a matter of finding cyber equipment close enough to SR's and maybe modifying a few of them to better suit the feel.

Regarding snipers, it's a debated point in d20 games. A "coup de grace" is technically only allowed when a character is helpless, not simply unaware. Some GMs rule that a sniper shot vs. a stationary target is just a CDG, since they have no way of defending themselves. Others say there's still the possibility of a fluke, and make the sniper roll normally for damage.

One thing to keep in mind is that we sould be talking the d20 Modern version of the rules, not the Dungeons & Dragons version. In d20, there's a rule called the "massive damage threshhold." Basically, when a target takes more than a certain amount of damage in a single attack, they have to make a saving throw or be dropped to -1 HP instantly.

In D&D, that threshold is 50 HP. In d20 Modern, it's your Con score. So, if you have a 14 Constitution score (roughly equal to a Body 4), any attack which deals 14 HP of damage or more in a single strike forces this save.

A Barret Light Fifty from the Ultramodern Firearms supplement does 2d12 damage. So, an average hit is at least 12 HP. A slightly better roll for damage, or a critical hit, means there's a chance of instant death, regardless of how many HPs the target has.

It's a slightly different feel, but cyber and combat aren't that vastly different in the two systems, when you boil it all down.

The only real problem is the SR magic system. A skills-based magic is very, very different from what's in d20. I've got a few ideas on how to make a good compromise, but it's not easy.

In the end, I like both systems d20 SR isn't an abomination, and could be fun. Hell, I plan on running a "Bug City" campaign in either d20 Modern, or in a fantasy D&D game.

Still, I just love grabbing two handfuls of d6's and throwing them onto the table.

Yeah.

But that'd be too simple, and I'd have to go do work and stuff.

I've been discussing the d20 Modern rules all the way through, and I have mentioned the Massive Damage Treshold quite a few times. The Treshold is not 10+Con Bonus, it is your Constitution score. So the Con 28 Mr CyberTroll has a Massive Damage Treshold of 28, unachievable with a non-crit Barrett hit using only d20 Modern rules. Even if Mr CyberTroll DOES take 28 or more damage, he only has to roll a 3 on d20 to not take any ill effects -- and that stays the same even if he took 45 points of damage. Using just the Hit Points, he could in fact take 84 damage on a single hit and not get any ill effects.

An average hit with the Barrett is 13 damage ((2+24)/2), and will certainly kill Joe Average easily. No problem there, at very low levels (1 and 2, maybe 3) it works out fine. At higher levels, however, using either d20 Modern or d20 Spycraft rules, it's screwed up. Like I said before, a maximum damage non-crit hit with a Barrett doesn't do squat against Mr CyberTroll. Even an average critical hit (13 x 2 = 26 damage) doesn't bother him much.

How does the d20 Modern/Spycraft Sneak Attack work? I'm guessing in d20 Modern it's additional dice like Double Tap and Burst Fire, and in d20 Spycraft it's straight +damage? Giving additional dice for it (Barrett 2d12 -> 3d12, or better yet 2d20 -> 3d20) makes it quite useful, straight +damage not so much.

And back to the sniper & assassination attack... The assassination ability is open only to prestige classes in D&D. I am not sure how the ability is used in other d20 games.

Most people, even those with only a crash course in firearms, are going to miss a target with any weapon at 50m, even a Barrett and even if it's on a bipod. They won't consistently hold the weapon the same (or even the correct) way. They won't have the breath control needed to guarantee a consistent shot. They'll be likely to yank the trigger. They won't be able to alter the sights as needed for their personal use, due to this lack of consistency, if they even know how to adjust the sights. Even with a bipod, they're going to have trouble hitting. This all assumes an immobile target and the best possible circumstances to hit the target at 50m.

Now, even these people are going to kill a target that they manage to hit with a Barrett. The average person (in d20) has 10-11 wound points and NO vitality points (VP being restricted to PCs and non-mook NPCs in d20 games). The target is immobile, so their chance to hit will be better. On average, the Barrett will kill in a single shot. I do not personally own a copy of Ultra-Modern Firearms, so I can't say whether the Barrett has any more characteristics than the "2d12" damage that someone mentioned previously and I don't even know if 2d12 is correct.

The question of whether a shooter can, without hesitation, take aim on and fire at another living, breathing human being is another factor that is only dealt with through experience. Even thoroughly-trained and experienced snipers have a lot of problems dealing with the psychological ramifications of their job. A fair amount of trained snipers can't even bring themselves to kill a single person, let alone multiple people. Presumably, it would get easier the more times you do it.

bwdemon: Have you gone shooting before? Even untrained people (there are a lot of them where I go) are capable of satisfactory accuracy at 50 meters, especially with rifle class weapons. You wont hit much with a handgun out there, but in a prone position w/ bipod you are nearly guarenteed a hit.

As for the ramifications of firing on another person, I think that is best roleplayed instead of inserting modifiers for that. Some people can be pretty disassociated and/or cold blooded. They're generally the ones that reach out and touch people in the first place, IMO.

I have never seen anyone take the Toughness (+3 HP) feat in D&D 3rd Ed, and I've GMd a lot of it for a large number of guys. In my experience, most people will not spend Feats (or anything similar) on stuff that gets relatively worse as you get better. Money is slightly different, but only slightly. If a Longsword +1 would have to be implanted, and would be a bitch to get rid of again, most people would just wait until they can get a Longsword +3 at least. Or maybe +5. Or maybe they wouldn't get anything until they can get that Holy Avenger. The last seems most likely to me.

if i hadn't been posting on three hours' sleep last night, i'd have caught and commented on this earlier.

austere, you're making up rules for this non-existant d20 SR cyberware, and then turning around and talking about how unbalanced it all is. maybe it's because the stats you've come up with are completely around the bend! in the clear pre-dawn light of oh jesus god in the morning, this makes most of your arguments incredibly absurd.

No, the whole idea of a d20 shadowrun conversion is absurd.

Period. It's like making an airplane out of bags of Sakrete.

If you think Cyberware should be incapable of increasing Constitution, Massive Damage Treshold or Hit Points, then forget about the cyber. Let's re-do Mr Troll. Let's make a mundane, unaugmented Mr Troll. Because he can no longer increase his Constitution with any Powers or Ware, let's get him a starting Con of 18. Add +4 Constitution from Racial Modifiers (or will you argue that d20 Trolls wouldn't have even +4 Con?) for 22.

Let's forget about the heavy armor too. Scratch the Medium and Heavy Armor Proficiencies, a Leather Jacket will be enough for Mr UnaugmentedTroll. Add another level of Toughness and one level of Improved Damage Treshold. He now has no augmentations whatsoever and is about as legal as you can make a Troll in d20, and he has, on average, 68 Hit Points and a Massive Damage Treshold of 25. A single non-crit Barrett hit still doesn't trouble him in the slightest. He can still take 5 average-damage non-crits from a Barrett and stay in the fight without trouble.

Mr UnaugmentedTroll in d20 Modern can still withstand a few orders of magnitude more punishment than Mr CyberTroll can in Shadowrun. Take Mr UnaugmentedTroll in canon SR, and he'll drop unconscious in about 98% of the times if hit with a Barrett. In d20 Modern, that's about 3%: A natural 20 (5%), followed by a normal hit (about 75%, since this is an easy shot), followed by at least 13 on 2d12 (55%? 60%), followed by the Troll rolling under 6 on the Fortitude save (25%).

If you use d20 Spycraft rules, Mr UnaugmentedTroll is in fact better off, since you now have to deal 50 points of damage on that single attack. If you consider it an auto-crit, you still can't do more than 48 points of damage on a critical hit with the Barrett. The average damage is 30 with a crit, and to get that average over 50 you need 11 points of Bullseye, for -11 on the attack roll, and at least an 11th level sniper. Even then, Mr UnaugmentedTroll has a 75% chance of not being significantly harmed. And the SR equivalent of an 11th level sniper averages well over 6 successes with a similar shot (more likely around 10), which would lead to the Troll dropping unconscious every time (about 99.999% for the überpedantic among you), and well into Over-Damage if you use that (canon) rule suggestion.

check your stats. the crit range on a .50 BMG sniper rifle is 17-20, and the damage is 2d10+4. and if you're sniping, all you have to do is to spend an AP and it's an auto-crit. that gives you an average damage of 14. if you're not sniping, no weapon should be capable of a consistent auto-kill in a hp game anyway.

(edited for lack of 1st-grade math skillz)

In d20 Modern, the crit range on a .50BMG sniper is 20. Not 17-20, it's 20. In d20 Modern, the damage of a .50BMG sniper is 2d12. Not 2d10+4, it's 2d12.

In d20 Modern, I could find no rule for auto-critting with an AP. Is this a Feat somewhere in d20 Core? No such thing in the basic Feat list, nor could I find a mention in the Combat rules section. As far as I could figure, there's no rule in d20 Modern that allows you to get a crit unless you roll a natural 20 and then manage to hit again. So my numbers were absolutely correct.

For the d20 Spycraft numbers, I already assumed an autocrit, and I did use 2d10+4 for the damage (as obvious from the 30 average damage for a crit, instead of 26 for an average crit in d20 Modern). I was going with the "Extremely Deadly Situations" autocrit rule that was mentioned before. For anyone between 1st and 5th level, using an Action die on the damage test will result in +1d4 damage. This is a "limitless" die, so the average is about 2.78. This is not doubled on a critical hit (additional dice are never doubled on a crit in d20 AFAIK).

This means using the Action die gives you a 5% better chance of forcing a Fort save, and actually gives a shooter without the Bullseye Feat a ~1% chance of forcing the Fort save. To get the average damage over 50 now only requires 10 points of Bullseye, a 10th level sniper at least.

bad math, which you caught just before i did. the auto-crit rule is in Spycraft, pg 179. note that, in Spycraft, critical damage is dealt directly to wound points.

And while I'm at it, I'd simply love to rip into the rest of the damage values of the d20 Spycraft weapons. But I guess it would totally go to waste, since nobody uses d20 Spycraft rules for realism. (Right?)

[Edit]**** that. Having had a closer look at the weapon lists, I'd really just like to rip it all to pieces and start over again. A .357 service revolver is twice as likely to jam as a 9mm service pistol? WTF? And 5.56x45mm weapons do the same average damage as 7.62x51mm weapons, but 7.62x54mmR weapons do 1.5 points more? 2xWTF?[/Edit]

right, because a loss of vitality points means you got hit by whoever was shooting at you. oh, wait! no, it doesn't! matter of fact, it specifically includes "near misses" in the sidebar on page 159!

the weapon values make more sense when you consider them in relation to wound points.

no, you're just 4 times as likely to kill them in one shot.

*shrug* there are problems with it, but there are problems with SR, too. generally, especially when it comes to modern combat, i prefer SR's mishandling of things to d20's.

Then you're saying that a non-crit hit actually is a hit, and not (even potentially) a near-miss?

If the Spycraft gear list did not even try to be based on RL stats, then suspension of disbelief would be a heck of a lot simpler. If you don't know shit about calibers, then don't try to add them into your game, etc. It just pisses me off to see stats like that when they could've just asked any ole fanboy what would make sense.

i'm saying it's up to the guys playing the game to figure out a description that works. just like we have to do in SR, when a troll soaks a PAC round, or a bullet stops dead at its extreme range.

you've got issues with Spycraft's weapon values, but SR's a just fine? for the love of mike.

same here. like i said, i prefer SR's mishandling of combat to d20 modern / spycraft's.

Yes, I have been trained in firearms per US Army basic training and MP training. I watched as well over 50% of the people in basic couldn't hit the target 50% of the time at any range and many were worse. I watched as they adjusted and readjusted sights in an effort to correct this, but they never held the weapon the same, exercised proper breath control, or squeezed the trigger the same. These people had no idea what they were doing with a gun prior to their training. Of the ones who did well, most of them had prior experience with firearms (I qualified marksman with no prior experience). At least half of my company (and a large percentage of the others training with us) failed the automatic fire exercises, but this was conveniently overlooked in order to get us all through together. It was also really funny watching them try to hold the trigger just long enough for a three-round burst. Even when these people over a week in intesive, exclusive training, they still weren't good.

Give someone a rifle who has never used any sort of firearm at all. They've seen television and read a few stories, so they know which end the bullet comes out of and they know where the trigger is. Tell them how they should hold it, how they should aim, and how/when they should squeeze the trigger. Then let them fire away happily. Will they hit consistently at 50m? Not a chance, unless they have some real aptitude for it. Will they hit half the time? Maybe, but that's not consistent. Where will they hit when they do manage to hit the target? Will they have any real control over it or will they just hope for a good shot? Will the recoil shock them? Hurt them? Will they close their eyes as they squeeze the trigger?

Unless they've been trained and/or been around trained people using them, most people will not hit consistently at 50m. If they do hit, they'll be lucky to group it at all and luckier still to hit anything that would be an instant-kill on the target.

Now, back to the troll. Yes, he could have a 22 Constitution, unaugmented, according to d20 rules and I'll even agree with the bonuses you set forth for trolls. He'd be a basket case outside of that stat, a liability to himself and those around him, but it could happen.

I still don't agree with the "5th level" match between SR3 and d20, for all of the reasons I listed above. The skill example falls short, too. In d20, you get to use more than just your skill ranks, you get your attribute bonus, too, as well as any other bonuses you may have. A 1st level d20 character can have 4 rank + up to 5 from an attribute bonus + 2-5 from feats for any given skill. SR3 makes the mistake of discounting attributes altogether from skill use, but d20 does not. So if you've got a +2 from your attribute and +2 from a feat with 4 ranks base, you'd have a skill of +8 at 1st level. Ranks aren't all that matter in d20, thankfully. This person would meet dc 19 50% of the time and could "take 20" in some cases to ensure the best possible result of 28 (so long as you didn't have any time constraints).

I further disagree with your probability example. SR3 handles probability extremely poorly by using 16.7% increments and dropping 16.7% after an open-ended 6 is rolled for no reason other than the mechanic is poor. In d20, a GM has much more fine control over probabilities (5% increments). Saying that a TN 6 test in SR is equal to a DC19 check in d20 is way off base. A DC20 skill check is something that is pretty amazing, including such things as crafting a masterwork item, swimming in stormy water, moving at half speed on a surface less than 2" wide, casting a spell during an earthquake, combat training an animal, long jumping 20' with a 20' running start, learning a 5th level spell, and other very difficult tasks. A DC19 task is only slightly less difficult than the above (e.g. jumping 20' becomes 19'). You can compare based on probability, but SR3's probabilities are badly skewed due to the system, so the comparison won't work.

Regarding the lethality of d20, I say that it is lethal to all characters with the VP/WP game mechanic. D20 is severely lethal to low-level characters and it becomes less so as you increase in level, while still being lethal. SR is not lethal under most conditions and gets far less so as the characters become experienced. An experienced human shadowrunner wearing a secure jacket can avoid/soak massive amounts of damage between their combat pool, karma pool, and body. At 200-karma, this character could add 12 dice to his soak and reroll failures 4 times. Even at 0 karma, a completely unaware shadowrunner with 1 Body can invoke "hand of god" and take no damage from a point-blank Barrett shot fired by an expert marksman under optimal conditions. That's lethal? In d20, you get the roll and you deal with the consequences.

As for the Toughness feat, I've taken it before on a D&D character. A sorcerer with four base HP really enjoys having three more HP at 1st level. It's even more useful under the WP/VP game mechanic.

Another issue I have with the d20 system is the damage of weapons.

In SR, for example, a weapon has a base damage score that is always dealt, so long as one success is rolled. You can stage this damage up with more successes.. So, a skilled runner can make even a light pistol a lethal weapon..

In d20, a pistol does about 1d10.. So the damage of the weapon is left entirely to chance.. The skill of the character only determines if the shot hits or misses.. Not how effectively it hits.. The damage is completely random, and so a skilled shooter has just as good a chance of doing minimum damage as a low level character.

it's not like killing someone with a single shuriken is easy in real life, either--or in SR. i mean, let's take a look at SR's combat. what's the longest combat you've ever run? most engagements last 6-9 seconds in SR. at least in d20, combat takes something close to a realistic amount of time to resolve.

the weapon damage in d20 is static because stuff like dodging and soaking is rolled up into hp.

as far as the training thing goes, there really are some people who just plain can't shoot. when they squeeze the trigger right, they forget their breathing. when they remember to breathe right, they don't assume the same position with the weapon. when they get that right, they do it wrong again on the next shot. but a person who isn't a complete spaz can be trained to point their weapon in the right direction with two weeks of hard training. if i was going to run someone through BCT in Spycraft, they'd probably end up with 2 levels of Soldier by the end of it.

which is just as it should be. otherwise, everyone would run around flicking shuriken at each other, instead of just using guns. how realistic is that?

a one-on-one fight taking five seconds, yeah--but in SR, fights between large groups of opponents resolve themselve in less than a minute all the time. how many bar fights take less than thirty seconds to end? how many firefights are over in less time than it takes to read this post?

Most, actually.

Something like 92% of all gun battles are engaged at less than ten yards by untrained opponents, and are non-lethal in nature.

But that's probably not what you meant.

what toturi said. the AEG RCS, Way of the Samurai / Ninja / Wujenga, and Fortunes and Winds all have d10 blocks side-by-side with d20. sure, there are more total pages of d20 stats--that's because a d20 stat block takes up more space. "one entire book" is not exactly the seventh seal, here. and if all you're using the books for is the stats--which isn't anywhere near half of the book--then that kinda weakens your argument about how d20 is so combat-oriented.

i never said d20 made for a grittier, deadlier system than SR. i never said it was a better system for SR. matter of fact, i've said several times that i prefer the SR system to d20 Modern or Spycraft, for modern and futuristic games. my main point is that d20 is a viable system for a gritty setting. i'm also shooting down wholly imaginary arguments like:

Just a point about using Wounds/Vitality in d20...

The best description of Vitality I've heard is to treat it as Luck. The ability to avoid getting killed. You use up luck avoiding death. More experienced characters tend to have greater amounts of this Luck than newbie ones.

It's a reasoning that works for me so far.


-karma

even that has problems, though (which i'll point out, to deflate the d20 naysayers!), in that luck really doesn't have a whole lot to do with constitution.

loss of vitality points isn't a hit, any more than a wound soaked and dodged to nothing is a hit.

austere, read the description of vitality points. they're not hit points. if i came up and said "body represents how attractive you are", i'd be just as wrong as you. SR has dodge and soak; Spycraft has vitality points.

criminey. allow me to quote the sidebar on vitality vs. wound points found on page 159 of Spycraft: