I don't think I understand. You're suggesting we change FA from a 10-round burst to… Suppressive Fire?

No. FA works exactly like it does now on your pass.

The difference is, if on your last pass you are full autoing, and there are still more IPs this turn, you continue full autoing each pass until you get another pass, but without recoil comp (See in the example how pass 1 he had no recoil, pass 2, he suddenly had 8 uncompensated. Pass 3, he had 17 uncompensated, bringing him down to 0). In the event your dicepool for your full auto test hits 0, you are treated as supressive firing, but the supressive fire has only 1 hit, so it is pretty easily dodged by most anyone. So yes, you will most likely end up supressive firing if you have only 1 pass. If you instead have say 3 passes, and pretty good dicepool/RC, you could theoretically just gain an extra FA attack with a hefty penalty on it.


Basically full auto is you holding down the trigger and letting it rip. If you have multiple IPs you have finer control over this, letting you get better use out of your recoil comp and maintain better aim while doing so, or even stop the full auto early and switch to doing something else. If you have fewer IPs you just keep holding the trigger and let the bullets fly where they will. It makes FA fire rates make a little more sense without making FA a god mode option, just a pretty good one.

I've never understood why people insist that having 4 IP "quadruples" the speed at which guns fire bullets. It really doesn't. The constant is the gun; the difference is the character.

Think about what full-auto is for a moment...it's basically a 10-round burst. And if you have 4 IP, you can perform that action more often than a character with 1 IP. The actual shooting takes less than a second...after all, a present-day assault rifle can fire approximately 15-16 rounds per second; a present-day infantry machine gun can fire about 20 rounds per second.. You still have to account for the time spent acquiring the target, swinging the gun around, squeezing the trigger, etc. An unaugmented character spends precious seconds on everything but the shooting; a sufficiently augmented character is much faster.

The gun is consistent; the meat isn't.

Because, you're blurring the line between burst fire and full auto. Burst Fire is where you squeeze the trigger to shoot a couple of bullets and that's that. Full Auto is where you hold the trigger down and bullets keep firing until you stop. There is no logical reason why a guy without 4 passes can't continue to squeeze his trigger, he's just going to be far less accurate in doing so.

It is not an implication. You divide movement by the maximum nbumber of passes in the turn, and that is how many meters per phase that all characters move.

Suppressive Fire suffers no recoil penalty at all.

So does the game. That's why the action is not called "Full Auto" anymore, it's called a "Full Burst." (SR4A, 154)

"Full Auto" is the term used to describe weapons that have the "Long Burst" and "Full Burst" capability.

I still do not see the need for this, or the reasoning.

Full Auto in 4 passes does not reach the average cyclical rate of fire for most (if any) fully automatic weapons. Those with 4 passes are capable of using the weapon to its fullest capabilities, that is all. There is no real problem with that. 40 rounds in 3 seconds is a lot of lead, yes, but still falls short of full ROF. Especially for those big guns where it really matters. A 7.62 Minigun can fire up to 6000 Rounds per minute on its highest setting, and that is still not its full cyclical rat of fire. That is 100 Rounds per SECOND. An M16 fires at a cyclical rate of up to 960 Rounds per Minute Maximum (Which is 16 Rounds per Second). Why is it such a disconnect to fire at speeds less than the Weapon is actually capable of? Even the fastest Street Sam is still only firing an Ares HVAR at 12 Rounds per Second. Which is STILL less than its likely cyclical Speed.

There really is no disconnect. Weapons can fire much faster than what is modeled in SR4, even at 4 passes.

This still doesn't explain why you literally cannot hold down your trigger and keep shooting bitches unless you actively choose to suppressive fire rather than actually target somebody. I get that SR4 abstracted that to make it easier to handle, but that doesn't necessarily make it -right-.




This argument seems wrong to me.

Basically what you're saying is, firing rates are lower than what they are capable of. This happens one of two ways, either 1: The person is actively controlling this, pressing and releasing the trigger, so as to not waste ammo and shooting with the best accuracy possible. Or 2: The person has the gun modified to shoot at a lower speed to better maintain the control.

In scenario 1, it still leaves the question of why can't the guy just hold down the trigger for the optimal rate of fire, even if it is less controlled.
In scenario 2, it leaves the question of why you can't modify your gun to shoot at its maximum rounds, even if you don't have the IP's to control it.


Basically you're saying "It's already slower than what's realistic, so the fact that the way IPs handle it isn't realistic doesn't matter" which I can't agree with. Besides, if the fire rates being slower than optimal is that big of a disconnect, you can always jack up fire rates, and modify how damage is calculated. That could even give an extra mechanism for differentiating guns (maleable fire rates)

Actually, No. The reasoning that a guy with only one pass can only shoot FA once in the turn is because it takes him so much longer to employ the basics of shooting. It takes him longer to take the action. Just because the Street Sam is taking his actions in 0.75 Second increments does not mean that the 1 IP guy is doing the same. He isn't. He is taking his ONE action in 3 Seconds. They are not the same thing.

Because what you are describing IS SUPPRESSIVE FIRE.

So if you just hold down the trigger shooting at max, you literally have no chance of aiming at anything and must always target a 10 meter area instead? I call BS on that.


edit: You are aware you can respond to more than one statement per post right? We'd spend less time talking past each other if I didn't make a post only for you to have two more already responding to stuff that had been said earlier.




Okay let's follow this train of thought:

Guy takes longer to employ the basics of whatever action he's doing cause he's not wired. So now, initiative passes grant earlier passes, and people with fewer act later. So if you have someone with only 1 IP, and he's up against someone with 4, the guy with 4 will act a full 4 times before the guy with 1 gets an action, because the guy with 4 is reacting that much faster.

However this is bad from a game design perspective because now a bunch of mooks are going to get mowed down before they ever get a chance to act. On the other hand, if that's the sort of thing you want to support, then sure. This makes more sense from a logical perspective, but really gimps people who don't get maxed IPs. This also sort of gives an explanation for why he doesn't hold the trigger down, because now he's spending the first few passes of the next turn getting ready for his next action (unless that next action is suppressive firing, but I can concede that actively going from full auto to suppressive fire is a pretty niche case).

But the way it works now? This justification doesn't work. In the first .75 seconds, both the super wired sammy and the average joe act. But the Joe then has to sit around for 2.25 seconds afterwards because he's not fast enough to really react to anything else at this point. During this time he isn't so much readying his next action (since his first action was clearly able to be done much faster than that), but rather not having the ability to react to more stimulus right away, so just holding down the trigger should be a viable option.

'Full Auto' is just the name Shadowrun gives to '10 round burst'. It's *all* burst fire. It shouldn't carry over to any other IP, because it's a completed action. I don't understand what possible use it could have to 'just hold the trigger down'… except for Suppressive Fire, which already exists. If you want to aim *at* something, that's a burst action.

It's true, SR4 doesn't support any burst longer than 10 rounds (or 15, etc.). That's just how the system is. If you want cross-IP 'walking fire', I guess you could add it in, but I don't get the motivation. AFAIK, that's not how anyone fires a weapon, except for maybe some emplaced machine guns?

Shadowrun has a long and stories history in regards to being schizophrenic as to whether extra IP are front-loaded or back-loaded.

Our house rule solution to that was to take the pyramid approach.

Pyramid approach?

Either way, it seems I'm pretty much alone in wanting a change to full auto rules, so I'll drop that argument entirely. Maybe make it an optional rule or something.



The initial point was to try to streamline IPs some. Making every IP last 1 second, (either by restricting IPs to 3 or expanding turns to 4 seconds), primarily for ease of use and book keeping. Also to modify movement speeds to go on a per IP basis, rather than a per turn basis, again for ease of book keeping. Would anyone be opposed to either of this specifically, ignoring all of the full auto stuff we wasted a page arguing over?

It's a very complicated 'fix'.

I think the front-loaded system is fine. Nobody dies before doing at least one thing. Personally, I think the whole +IP system should go back to +Xd6, divide by 10.

Movement is already per-IP, whenever it's convenient to do so. It might indeed help to make it more explicitly so, though.

Ouch, you say my suggestion is complicated and want to go back to a system where a guy might shift between 1 IP and 6 IPs between turns?

I'm sorry, that came off as cryptic. I didn't mean it to be. My bad.

Just to be clear, I'm not saying the 4 IP system is the ideal initiative system, but if we're going to use it, I think that the pyramid structure is the best way to go.

Let's assume for our example that 4 people are in a fight, and their names are 4IP, 3IP, 2IP, and 1IP. Named by transhumanist hippies obviously, but they're named well because that's also how many IP they each have.

A front-loaded structure would typically look like this in terms of their order: 4IP-4IP-3IP-4IP-3IP-2IP-4IP-3IP-2IP-1IP. In that scenario mooks get gunned down too easily, and people with 1IP wander off to play Smash Bros. because they're getting killed 3-4 times before it's their turn.

A back-loaded structure would typically look like this in terms of their order: 4IP-3IP-2IP-1IP-4IP-3IP-2IP-4IP-3IP-4IP. In that scenario, everything the books describe in terms of how fast some people are is negated, and IP has questionable value in some cases.

A pyramid structure would typically look like this in terms of their order: 4IP-3IP-4IP-2IP-3IP-1IP-4IP-2IP-3IP-4IP. Basically it splits the difference. It's called a pyramid structure because when you write it out and account for pseudo-simultaneous actions, it looks like a pyramid:

---1---
--2-2--
-3-3-3-
4-4-4-4

The obvious issue with it is deciding who goes first between 4IP/2IP and 3IP/1IP. Personally, we favor the faster character in those cases.

Not yours, the pyramid IP system. And how is variation the same as complexity?

Also, what? The front-loaded (SR4) system means that everyone gets to go at least once.

Okay, I can see what you mean there, but how do you describe that in functional game terms?

ie: You have 4 IPs to work with, what IPs does each character function on? Because that exact setup work on most combats.


It looks like, from your example each character acts on the following IPs:

4IP: 1, 2, 3, 4
3IP: 1, 2, 3
2IP: 2, 3
1IP: 2


The biggest problem I see is that this is harder to explain. But the way it works out is all right.



edit:


Ah I see. In that case I agree, the pyramid system is more complex. However, it is better than backloaded, and makes more sense than front loaded... the question is if it's really worth the tradeoff.

edit: doublepost

Right. I was implying that it's probably not worth the tradeoff, not that it's fundamentally unusable.

You're absolutely right that it's debatable as whether or not it's worth the added complexity. It's one of the very few places that our group added complexity back into the game instead of stripping it out. Believe me, the irony is not lost on us.

Once you're comfortable with it though, it really does work.

In my opinion there's no silver bullet when dealing with the 4th Edition initiative system.

I thought that the current rules support a front loaded system. Is there any downside to that approach? Why would another system be better?

The way I was using the term, the current rules actually support a back-loaded system.

Think of it this way: compared to an unaugmented person, a character with 4IP winds up with a pile of extra actions. If they take the bulk of those actions before the 1IP guy, that's what I refer to as a front-loaded system. If they take the bulk of those actions after the 1IP guy, that's what I refer to as a back-loaded system.

Shadowrun has historically experimented with both kinds of systems.

As far as "downsides" go, it's something of a matter of taste. The general lines of argument are that front-loaded systems make high IP characters overpowered (or low IP characters underpowered), and that back-loaded systems make low IP characters overpowered (or high IP characters underpowered).

The "pyramid" system we debated above has the downside of adding complexity to combat system that has been accruing complexity at an alarming rate, but it pretty much hits the sweet spot in what is otherwise a Goldilocks dilemma.

4th edition tried to fix this (and it could potentially still work), by using a back-loaded system, but by reducing the corresponding cost of IP-granting augmentations and abilities somewhat. The problem was that they never quite got the math right. And at some point the magic guy and the gear guy stopped speaking to each other, which is a subset of "never quite got the math right."

I was going to comment on "back-loaded systems make low IP characters overpowered", but realized that the terms overpowered and underpowered and both relative. Yes, low IP characters are more powerful if they get to act in the first pass relative to only acting in the last pass. But how does that ... oh, I get it. The pyramid system tries to simulate all characters acting simultaneously, whereas lumping the 1 IP characters either at the beginning or end makes it seem like they "twiddle their thumbs" for 3/4 of a combat turn.
Is the added complexity of the pyramid system worth the simulation of simultaneity that it provides? Now that I've had my epiphany, I think that it looks nice on paper. However, when it comes to actually using it in game, it seems like it might be a bit tedious, compared to front- or back-loaded systems.

To be fair, all the systems try to simulate all characters acting simultaneously. Even if you have good old 4IP, 3IP, 2IP, and 1IP plinking away at each other with light pistols every chance they get, that just means that they are all firing a combined 20 times in 3 seconds. The pyramid system does a better job than the other two at distributing those actions evenly throughout the 3 seconds in question.

Personally I don't think that it's really that complicated, it's simply not as intuitive as the other two systems. The first session we ran with it was slow, albeit semi-deliberately to get the hang of it. The second was fine with one or two unintentional hinjinx. It's been smooth sailing since then. But again, we play with more than our fair share of house rules, and most of those are designed to simplify the game and reduce what we perceive as redundant rolling, so we're running simpler combats even with pyramid included.

And as hokey as it sounds, it really is all about what's fun for your group. I've seen situations where something was spot on from a design perspective, but it was a bad fit for the group. And different (perceived) problems get under different people's skins to varying extents.

I get the theoretical elegance of the pyramid system, but I think it works poorly with fuzzy-headed people who have trouble remembering their Initiative - they have trouble remembering what IP they're in under the current system, so I don't think they can handle Pyramid. And every gaming group I know has at least one such person in it.

And I don't think I'm the exception; I think there'd be a lot of groups who have trouble with it.

Are we talking about the pyramid system or karmagen? *winks*

Sorry, had to say it.

No, but it is a weakness of karmagen.

However, complexity and confusion in combat is even worse than during CharGen, because you want to maintain tempo during combat.

I actually don't understand the joke there about karmagen, but whatever. I feel like to use this 'front-and-back-loaded' pyramid in play, you'd need a laminated card and a little movable counter to keep track of which IP you're in, and there are technically 7 'sub-IPs' now. If you have 5 IPs in play (Matrix), it's more.

The pyramid system would blend really well if we limited initiative passes to 3 instead of 4.

There are three passes, and for discussion purposes, each has a name:

First Strike Pass
Normal Pass
Last Second Pass

Everybody always acts during the Normal Pass, regardless of how many Initiative Passes they get.

A character with a second IP may choose to act in either the First Strike Pass or the Last Second Pass, allowing them to choose whether they want their extra speed to let them go before everyone or to react faster to what everyone else has done. A character with a third IP acts in all three passes.

I actually kind of like this. It's easier to grasp, which is pretty big. The things that augment IP would need to change, but it does make the whole IP thing a bit more intuitive.

Wow, that actually eliminates the need for a pyramid at all. I can dig reducing the overall number of IPs. Honestly, who needs 4+?

It would indeed take major tweaking (ware, magic, etc.), but maybe it'd be worth it. It would make Initiative (as opposed to +IP) more important, which is good. Sadly, it's much less compatible with +Xd6/10.

What I've been thinking about recently is somehow making a combat system without action phases, initiative passes, etc.

I have two suggestions, none of which I'm really satisfied with, but... well, I've been fiddling with this post for far too long already.

1) Action points
Instead of IPs, characters get action points, and each is worth one simple action. Each point takes a certain time, measured in initiative count, so you roll initiative once per round, and then go on order, and then deduct for the next action points. Let's say one simple action point takes 3 initiative counts, a complex action takes 6 counts.

So let's say you have three participants with Ini 12/8APs, Ini 15/2APs, and Ini 11/4APs

Everyone rolls initiative, which amounts to:
Init 20/2APs
Init 16/8APs
Init 14/4APs

Now the fast 2AP guy gets to go first, and does either a simple action, or a complex action. Let's say he takes his simple (fires a burst), then the count gets reduced, and at 17 its his turn again, so he takes his second simple action.
Then the count goes down by one, and the Init 16 guy takes his first simple action. The count goes down until its the next guys's turn, which is the 4AP guy at 14. Then the 8AP guy goes again at 13, etc.

This is a bit more complicated to track, and would likely as not need some sort of graphical helper system.

It might also be a thought to divide base initiative by total action points in order to determine the count cost of one action (prior to combat, on the sheet). In that case the 15/2 guy would take 8 counts for a simple action, and the 12/8 guy would take 2 counts per simple action.

The advantage of an action point system is that augmentations could also give individual action points for more flexibility. The trouble with it is that the Ini 7/2AP guys or worse take a while to get to act at all, and you are back at SR2.

OR you assign each action an initiative-count cost and scrap action points, simply let everyone act as long as he has init, and consecutive actions happen at the initiative after a previous action. The disadvantage is then you'll again arrive at a front-loaded combat round, where high-init guys can go multiple times before the low-init guys. This is again basically like SR2, I believe, without the division into IPs.



2) Interrupts

Instead of IPs, people who are faster get to interrupt those that are slower. The stats would be Init + Interrupt count, which would be one lower than IP count, because their first action happens normally. An Interrupt is worth 2 simple actions or one complex.

Initiative is rolled to determine who goes first and who can interrupt which other character. Then what happens is this:

The fastest init gets to act, does his action. Second guy gets to act, etc. Now at any time during another character's action whose inititiave is lower, a character with multiple interrupts can "call" his interrupt action. Every time a character acts his initiative goes down by an arbitrary number, let's say 5. Also, anyone can simply call an interrupt after another character's action, once all participants have acted once.

So let's say you have the same people as above, but the 15 guy has one interrupt.
15/1I, 12/3I, 11/1I

After rolling they have 20/1, 16/3 and 14/1

Now 15/1(20) goes first and does his thing, his init is then 15, followed by 12/3(16), who is too fast to be interrupted. But when 11/1(14) does his thing, 15/1(15) interrupts. Let's say 11/1(14) walks out of cover somewhere to check on something, and 15/1(15) then nails him, before 11/1 completes his actions. 15/1 now has 10 init left. 11/1(9) tries to get back into cover after that, by taking his interrupt. but 12/3(11) can interrupt him in turn, to stop him from running away. Now only 12/3 has another interrupt left, and can take it at his leisure.


Again, this will require a graphical helper to get the process smooth. One might do away with the counting and deducting by making the simple rule that one turn can only be interrupted once (or only once by the same person).
The problem this system has it that it gives a lot of weight to the actual initiative number, because you can't conceivably do anything against a guy with higher init without that guy acting first again.
So let's say that the faster guy opens the action, the second fastest tries to shoot him, and is interrupted. Then the second guy tries again to do something, and can be interrupted again.

You might also completely reverse the initiative order, so that the guy with the lowest initiative starts his action, then anyone with higher init can interrupt - or simply take his action afterwards, if there is no reason to interrupt.

So... yeah, obviously this all isn't too simple, and will probably be quite slow in execution, so I'm not really satisfied. But I thought I'd put it out there anyway, maybe someone can make something useful out of it.

That first method *is* +Xd6 / 10

Tangent: would other people be interested in a 'pure Stun' class of damage? As it stands, Stun from a physical attack (melee, bullets, falling) is 'minor cuts and bruises', right? Enough of that, and you roll over into Physical; a bad enough beating gets deadly.

On the other hand, Stunbolt, tasers, and neurostun (specifically designed to be 'safe') don't give you 'cuts and bruises'. They knock you out. I think we'd have less of the crazy 'oops, he's dead' problems if these things simply couldn't overflow. The same probably goes for (*some*) other Toxins/Drugs/related effects, including the crash from Adrenal Pump (so it doesn't murder users).

Thoughts? Would there be any major issue with this, apart from making S&S slightly even more desirable (but we're fixing that separately). I understand that drugging people is very tricky, but a) cinematic RPG, b) not all drugs have to be 'pure Stun' or 'safe Stun'.

I could get behind that as long as it was relatively simple. ie if it's a safe stun attack that knocked you out, no overflow. If you get knocked out by a normal stun attack, there is overflow, even if you had been hit by a safe stun earlier. If you wanted them to be separate, that would be trying to add a third damage track effectively, and is something I'd argue against.

As for stick-n-shock, like you said it needs a rework anyway. But with this change you could actually make it so stick-n-shock is basically just a gel round that is 'safe stun', and drop the "This is electricity damage so gives half AP and can stun people besides" crap entirely.

Two semi-related things:
1) We have physical damage staging down to stun when it's below armor. Should there be a mechanic for stun damage just going away if it's below armor? Like if a guy without killing hands or cyberupgrades punches an armored guy for 5 damage, and that guy has 5 or more armor, should it basically just have no effect? For stuff like neurostun or spells, this could either not apply (most likely), or go against chemical protection/counterspelling (so if you have chem protection 6 and the stun gas does 5 damage, it doesn't affect you, no need to roll).

2) In my group we recently implemented a houserule that may bear consideration here: When physical damage taken is below your armor value, rather than converting 100% to stun, after you finish the soak calculation 50% goes to physical and 50% goes to stun. This lets armored characters stay effectively functional longer, but with higher penalties, and avoids the weird issue where wearing more armor makes you drop faster, because you have a lower stun track than body track. It also lets the guy with armor benefit some from healing. (Yes, this part does go against the first one, and if this was implemented stun damage would simply be halved against high armor, rather than negated)

Yeah, I'd be fine with the 'unsafe Stun' just straight adding. The alternative would be a nWoD-style system: safe / + unsafe X + physical *. :/

It might be a good idea to have levels of 'physically inflicted' stun that you can shrug of, yes.

I'm okay with the half-and-half system, though it's slightly more work.

I'm in favor - the kind of stunning attacks (including sleep gas) you use to knock out people, but a scene later they come to, little the worse for wear. Instead of having to beat someone straight into the hospital to knock them out.

---

Anyway, hit points is another problem. I rather like the oWoD approach (afaik nWoD uses the same, but I'm too lazy to look it up);

You have one (1) condition monitor, which tracks both Stun and Physical. Damage is filled in from above and moving down. P damage pushes S damage down ahead of it. When the total of S+P exceeds some limit, you pass out. If the total of P damage exceeds that limit, you go into Overflow. When you heal, you start from the bottom-up, so S damage is healed and when no more S damage remains, P damage can be healed.

The big advantage to this system is getting rid of the wackiness where 12 Stun or 12 Physical will knock you unconscious, but 6/6 just makes you angry.

Yeah. I don't hate the / X * system, it's just that using it in SR would be a big change. It *would* model the stun/bruise/lethal concept.

Personally I prefer the separate stun and physical tracks, especially with the armor making damage split half and half. It makes characters a little more rugged in terms of how long they can stay up.

I understand there's a kind of weirdness of "Well if I take 8 boxes of this kind of damage I'm down, or 12 boxes of this kind and I'm down, but I can have 18 boxes total and still be up", but I don't mind that and can see it as too much of a single type of damage overwhelming you.

I like this, however it has the unintended consequence of making 2IP the optimal spot.

You probably want to either restrict the First Strike Pass to only 3IP, or clearly state that 3IP goes before 2IP goes before 1IP within the same pass. Possibly both, but I haven't had time to dwell on it, and this is a bit off-the-cuff. But I trust you see the potential issue of relegating 3IP merely to mop-up duty.

A single-track system would help resolve shenanigans related to overcasting. If you want characters to be less "droppable over time," then you just increase the healing rate for stun damage. Right now it's 1 box/hour, but you could change that to 1 box/30 minutes, 20 minutes, 15 minutes, etc. In my experience, that actually helps the game quite a bit.

If you keep the two-track system, then overcasting needs an overhaul. Our old houserule was that when you overcast a spell, you roll Drain twice: once for Stun, and once for Physical. This prevents situations where the mage does hinky stuff like saying, "Gee, I've been throwing down some serious spells lately...I'd better start overcasting so I don't get knocked out."

When people start doing more dangerous things to avoid damage, the system is not working as intended.

Cool stuff. Be back later tonight.

No, that should clearly be delineated as being a part of the initiative score. Even if someone has 1 pass, but gets an amazing initiative score, the should act before the guy with 2 or 3 passes who rolled low.

Otherwise, you're just front-loading again.

I'd say first strike pass is 3IP only, for simplicity sake. That way people with 3 IPs are exclusive in acting in that first round, which is an actually nice advantage that makes getting the 3rd IP worth getting.



This was actually the same sort of problem we were trying to solve with the armor splitting damage between stun and physical. Rolling drain twice, or just rolling it once and having drain apply to both tracks, is a good way to solve that.



Anyway, you mention instead of the dual track system, you could have stun heal faster. In my experience stun damage generally gets healed between encounters anyway, so just speeding up stun healing doesn't really make the difference, unless you're having a number of weak encounters in a very short time span. While you could achieve basically the same result in terms of increasing overall durability by making health tracks longer, that also makes it harder to ever drop a character in one shot, which is something that should be doable, even if your average runner will typically take more than that.




edit:


This is true, and it could be that IPs add a bonus to initiative score. Rather than initiative boosters giving you + reaction, you can just straight up add twice your number of IPs to your initiative score.

So you have a guy with 3 intuition, 4 reaction, and 3 IPs, his initiative to roll is 7 dice, but his initiative score is 13+hits.

This makes it so reaction enhancers are worth getting, rather than everyone just getting it free with extra IPs, and making IPs have a more meaningful impact on initiative score without outright saying "The person with more IPs will ALWAYS go first"

IPs and iniative
In SR you have two values, INITIATIVE AND PASSES.
And I have to say, I like the idea.
So one suggestion to keep the INITIATIVE Score important.
First full ini.
Second half ini
Theired quater ini
forth 1/8 ini

So you just can count down, and everybody is acting when his INI is up. (If you have the numbers of the players you also know when they got to act.
So a very fast person might go twice before a slow person might act.
Example:
Jack the rabbit has an INI-Score of 24 and 3 passes.
So he gets his first pass at 24
He gets to act again at 12
And his last action is at 6

Bob the turtle has 4 passes but only an Initative score of 10.
His first pass is at 10
Second at 5
Third at 3
And the last at 2

One other Idea I thought of was using the rule from WoD that you may have multible passes, if you take a malus for each action.
If you know your way around a gun, you are able to aim faster and still hit something.
Something like, do every action with a malus of 4 and get one additional INI-Pass.
That is a great thing if you got just one, but gets quite useless if you have allready 3.

The full auto rule mentioned here would be a special case of this rule.

I think that's the wrong tool for the job.

If you want more rugger characters, you could increase Damage Resistance pools, the size of the (unified) condition monitor, the time between overflow damage, or decrease DV of weapons.

Occasionally oWoD actually used a very nifty trick to make a character more rugged: simply add a few more boxes on the condition monitor, on the top. So it takes more damage before you start taking pain penalties like everyone else.



The current system can actually have really off effects. For example, because an attack doesn't do enough damage compared to Armor to be Physical, it does stun, and render you unconscious, while if it did a few more damage, it wouldn't have dropped you. That's not "more rugged in terms of how long they can stay up", that's Russian roulette.

Actually, that does make the person ALWAYS go first. +3 IP and +6 initiative? 6 initiative is worth 18 dice!

I would remove the bonus from reaction / initiative score entirely. They don't get more dice they just get to act more.

This seems kind of interesting actually.


So if I understand this right, a guy with 4 Passes and 20 initiative would act on 20/10/5/3. A guy with 16 initiative and 3 passes would act on 16/8/4. A guy with 2 and 18 would act on 18/9. A guy with 1 and 12 would act on 12.

This basically accomplishes the pyramid effect automatically, but a bit more flexible. It's also a lot easier to explain than the pyramid system described earlier, which is good.

The downside I'm seeing is with this system, determining movement becomes a huge pain. Right now you can divide move speed by 4, and move the person each pass whether they have an action or not. However with this system, the passes are much more fluid, so how do you determine when they move? If they move only when they get an action, suddenly you have the problem of people running effectively faster thanks to lower IPs. I guess you could make everyone move at the points when the highest initiative person gets an action, assuming they get a pass for those purposes (ie the highest initiative count in the combat is a 2 pass guy with 24 initiative. On 24, everyone takes a movement, 24 guy gets his action. At 12, everyone takes a movement, 24 guy gets his action. At 6, everyone takes a movement, but the 24 guy no longer has any more IPs to take an action. At 3 everyone takes a movement), but then it's getting complicated again, and loses the beautiful simplicity of the original proposal.

If you can think of a simple way to make movement work and make sense with this, I'm behind it wholly.