From what I've read, SR4 does not differentiate off-road and on-road performance. This is ridiculous: a WRC rally car is far slower than a F1 car on tarmac, but put it on mud and it will outrun anything on wheels.

I personally group cars into four categories:

1. Standard road cars.

These are vehicles designed for use on the road, and the road only - in short, most cars, vans, and motorcycles. Take them on even simple ice or snow, and you'll end up in quite a lot of trouble. Massive penalties are in order for driving over anything that's not completely flat and hard.

2. Softroaders

This class includes vehicles that lack the ground clearance and axle travel of proper off-roaders, but have four-wheel-drive systems or other tricks that compensate for the lack of grip on loose surfaces. Most small SUVs fit into this category, as do vehicles such as the Mitsubishi Lancer Evo, Subaru WRX, and Audi Quattro. Penalties on ice, mud, and gravel are greatly reduced over normal cars, but they're still useless on severely uneven surfaces.

3. Mild offroaders

This category includes most 4x4 pickup trucks and truck-based SUVs, dirtbikes, ATVs, and the like. Vehicles in this category have big, knobbly tires and suspension systems with adequate travel and durability for use on rough terrain. While roughly on par with softroaders for simple loose surfaces, they're far better suited to driving over large ruts and debris.

4. Hardcore offroaders.

If you want to drive over gravel, you want a softroader. If you want to drive through a rock quarry, you want a mild offroader. If you want to drive off a 20-foot cliffs without damage or even so much as a loss in speed, you want one of these. Vehicles in this class include desert rally trucks like the Bowler Wildcat, baja racers, crazy dirtbikes, and tanks. Vehicles in this class take minimal penalties for driving over just about anything.

Your right, they did take out the mechanic for onroad/offroad penalties.
Use to be handling was broken up like that in SR3.

You can always try and add a 2 penalty for your standard and give your pure off road vehicle a 1 bonus. Pretty sure that'll be in the ballpark.
Though I believe it had been handled in the past that the pure offroad suffers penalties onroad.

Don't have any examples in front of me this is all just from hazy memory.

You might want to check the rules on offroad suspension and tires.

Those are the rules for splitting handling.

As far as I can tell Shadowrun 4, and really all editions of Shadowrun just aren't set up to be a realistic simulator, and heck they say as much in the front of the books. If you, or any one, comes up with something is elegant and simple let me know. Until then get in the boat with the rest of us!

My group tried to do some off-roading during the extraction of Goofy (Yes, the Disney Character), but forgot they were in the middle of L.A.

A hardcore offroad vehicle could be a serious asset for shadowrunning. They're expensive, they're inefficient, they're uncomfortable, and they're cramped, but a high-speed offroader in the style of the Bowler Wildcat would allow the runners to evade pursuit by simply ignoring curbs, medians, stairs, and the occasional wall.



All you need is the right sort of truck.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lrk6vsb77xk...93CABDF042A9514

When you want to do that kind of stuff in SR4, you may want to get a motorcycle with the Smart Tires option from Arsenal.