I said it was probably terrible.



Agreed, though this was semi-intended. In order to really, really hurt someone, you have to hit and they have to botch.

Called shot rules could fix this (take dice pool penalty to start damage at higher tier?).



Accuracy 1 would be the bottom, yeah. Some thought would have to be put into the weapons, or maybe Smartguns would just have to be -1 Acc. Accuracy higher than 4 would be reserved for really, really inaccurate things.



This is true. I was reusing terms instead of thinking up new ones.



Feature-ish. I think that SR4/5 damage doesn't cause enough of a penalty.



It's about the same amount of comparison. There can be guidelines that suggest dropping mook NPCs once their damage passes their Body/Willpower score, rather than rolling for them.

This can bring Called Shots back around -- defenseless guy shot in face = dead guy.



Yes, it works out that way. Instead of damage tracks and fiddling over taking 4 points or 5 points or 8 points, it's just a simple scribbled "L" or "M" or however.



Even at Acc 1 it doesn't scale that fast. 1-2 net hits = Power, 3-4 = Power x1.5, 5-6 = Power x2. And generally no AP.

Acc 2 1-4 = Power, 5-6 = Power x1.5, and so on

If you're getting 5-6 net hits, you're doing pretty well for yourself and deserve to put out a hurting. Light pistols start to lose effectiveness against heavier armor, while heavier pistols stay for awhile past that.


8. Your chances for severe trauma and incapacitation don't make sense, since the Body is automatically eliminated from those rolls (since you subtract the wound modifiers from the Body+Will and you don't roll until you're at a negative equal to the Body score). I get the staying conscious, but a strong willed character is less likely to have a specific trauma? Unless you meant the accumulated modifiers beyond the body score apply on this test, in which case a high body character will likely stay conscious for many shots beyond 3 or 4.


I know. This part's a bit of a mess.


9. I'm not seeing the narrative control in this system? Did I miss it?


I wasn't shooting for additional narrative control in this batch. If you've missed anything, it's that I like to make systems.


10. Added Complexity
Current System:
Roll opposed, compare rolls, add net to weapon damage, subtract AP from target armor, roll soak, subtract soak from damage, subtract damage from boxes= 7 operations with comparisons, addition and subtraction(yeah, there can be more with modifiers and bursts, but that's true both ways)
Roll opposed, compare rolls, compare net hits to weapon accuracy, determine power, subtract AP from target armor, roll soak, compare to power, apply damage = 8 operations with multiplication, comparison, addition, and subtraction (multiplication, especially by 1.5, takes longer for people to do than the other operations)

It seems like it needs more tuning and some play testing, but I don't see this actually making the fights any less- "I shoot, I hit, I do X damage" and it might push it in the other direction.


This has had no tuning and no playtesting.

A lot of the complexity can be handled in advance, especially the multiplication. A gun with 2 base Power does 1, 2, 3, 4 for its glance/hit/better/betterer categories, which can all be written down with the weapon and referenced quickly. A gun with 3 power does 2, 3, 5, 6 (assuming round up). A gun with 4 power does 2, 4, 6, 8. And so on. With net hit ranges attached.

The burst mechanic I think is simpler mechanically: add one to everything, subtract one from defense pool. Double it for a long full auto burst.

It's slightly different in tone, since it's shifted away from doing 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 8, 12 points of damage and toward doing "a graze, a hit, a good hit, a really good hit."

Narratively it could use some work.

(I ran out of allowed quoted blocks, so italicized means quoted.)

It is hard to power game FATE. It really is (It isn't the focus). Though depending upon the FATE ruleset you are using, you can get pretty powerful. Using Dresden, you can be quite powerful indeed, over time. Core FATE, it is more difficult. You can definitely focus, though. FATE really cares more for the Story, though. And that is how the mechanics are structured.

As for Shadowrun, it is EASY to power game, if that is your desire.

Then you need to change your wording if you intended the above results. Currently it's:
Acc 1:
1-2 net hits = Power, 3= x1.5, 4+= x2

I think you might need to change this a little more, since it seems that you're going to get weird results.

Acc 2 1 = Power/2, 2-4 = Power, 5-6 = Power x1.5, and 7+= x2
Acc 3 1-2= Power/2, 3-6 = Power, 7-9 = Power x1.5, and 10+= x2
Acc 4 1-3 = Power/2, 4-8 = Power, 9-12 = Power x1.5, and 13+= x2

Consider your current suggested weapons. Assuming 12 dice attack versus 6 dice (I'm assuming typical SR4 pools here), you've got about ~20% chance each for no net hits, 1,2, and 3 net hits, with a ~10% chance of 4 net hits, ~5% chance of 5 net hits, and ~2.5% chance of 6 net hits. For a various weapons (neglecting smartlink, rounding up):

Light pistol (2P, Acc 2): 20% chance 1 Power, 50% chance of 2P, 7.5% chance of 3P- 1.425P Expected
Heavy Pistol (3P, Acc 3): 40% chance 2 Power, 37.5% chance of 3P- 1.925P Expected
Sniper Rifle (4P, Acc 2): 20% chance 2 Power, 50% chance of 4P, 7.5% chance of 6P- 2.85P Expected
Assault Rifle (3P, Acc 2): 20% chance 2 Power, 50% chance 3P, 7.5% chance of 5P- 2.275 Expected
Assault cannon (6P, Acc 3): 40% chance 3P, 37.5% chance of 6P- 3.45 Expected
Which looks okay.

(with smartlink -1 accuracy, rounding up)
Light Pistol (2P, Acc 1): 40% chance 2P, 20% chance of 3P, 17.5% chance of 4P- 2.1 Expected
Heavy Pistol (3P, Acc 2): 20% chance of 2P, 50% chance of 3P, 7.5 chance of 5P- 2.275 Expected
Sniper Rifle (4P, Acc 1): 40% chance of 4P, 20% chance of 6P, 17.5% chance of 8P- 4.2 Expected
Assault Rifle (3P, Acc 1): 40% chance of 3P, 20% chance of 5P, 17.5% chance of 6P- 3.25 Expected
Assault Cannon (6P, Acc 2): 20% chance of 3P, 50% chance of 6P, 7.5% chance 12P- 4.5 Expected
There is a significant increase in power with decreasing accuracy.

But when you look at expected damage, you just need to tie or beat the defense roll which are going to average, from 2-3 (3-4 for trolls) and all those really high power cases don't do anything for you.
Assuming a 9 damage resist roll (4 Body + 5 armor) without a smartlink:
Light Pistol: 16% chance of flesh wound, 10% chance of solid hit - (average wound penalty per shot: -0.36)
Heavy Pistol: 21% chance of flesh wound, 26% chance of solid hit - (-0.73)
Assault Rifle: 19% flesh wound, 34% chance of solid hit - ( -0.87)
Sniper Rifle: 13% flesh wound, 54% chance of solid hit (-1.21)
Assault Cannon: 9% flesh wound, 65% chance of solid hit (-1.39)

Assuming a 9 damage roll (4 Body + 5 armor) with a smartlink (because why wouldn't you use one?):
Light Pistol: 18% chance of flesh wound, 25% chance of solid hit ( -0.68)
Heavy Pistol: 19% chance of flesh wound, 34% chance of solid hit ( -0.87)
Sniper Rifle: 6% chance of flesh wound, 70% chance of solid hit ( -1.46)
Assault Rifle: 13% chance of flesh wound, 54% chance of solid hit (-1.21)
Assault Cannon: 4% chance of flesh wound, 70% chance of solid hit (-1.44)

So now we break down the number of shots required to drop a target on average and the number of combat passes (sticking with our body 4 target and only looking at smartlink).
Light Pistol: (5.9 shots, ~2 passes)
Heavy Pistol: (4.6 shots, ~2.3 passes)
Sniper Rifle: (2.7 shots, ~2.7 passes)
Assault Rifle: (3.3 shots, ~1.6 passes)
Assault Cannon: (2.7 shots, ~2.7 passes)

So my initial impression was wrong, the assault rifle is the best weapon in this system. ROF fire is huge in terms of how quickly you can take out an opponent (in passes not game time spent on rolling) and no weapon will reliably drop someone in 1 pass and even for most weapons under 2 passes is not possible. Start figuring this for a troll and you're looking at a solid 4 or 5 round fight easy. The best option for dropping people before they can fire back also happens to be the best option for ensuring lots of rolls with many of them not doing much. This system currently pushes combat strongly in the direction of tedium.

You could try renaming accuracy to scatter.

P.S. yes there may be some rounding error and I realize that the burst rules will have some impact, but not too much since the drop in (increase) in accuracy will balance the increase in power. A burst from a light pistol basically makes it a heavy pistol mathematically. Also, I ignored glitches, so they'll reduce the time to drop an opponent, but my gut says less than have a pass.
P.P.S. Yes, I do like math and breaking down mechanics.

My objection to accuracy as a stat is that virtually every gun is more accurate than >99% of the people who might ever shoot it will be. Even really light short barreled revolvers shot clamped into a mechanical rest are more accurate than the best bullseye pistol in the hands of 99% of shooters. So the limitation to accuracy under normal SR conditions isn't the gun, it's the guy between the gun and the ground. This isn't so true with long range precision shooting, but I'll argue that a nationally ranked long range shooter with a decent off-the-shelf Remington 700p and a decent Leupold scope will nearly every time beat a novice or even an average shooter who is using the nationally ranked shooters totally optimized setup in the same caliber.

Not about Hit points (because you use something else) but about game feel and narrativism:

I d hate if SR would tend to narrativism. I'm not against narrativism but a gamesystem should complement the feeling of a game. And to me, shadowrun should have a realistic hard and gritty feeling.

A narrativist approach gives the player a more badass feeling, where they're action heros (because, like pointed out, a narrativist system where you'd mostly stay at cover and should would sucks). I prefer my games to be tactical, where sometimes, one PC does something tough/hard and that's where his edge/karma helps him to succeed.

IMO, it's something important to point out. That gamesystem+universe.

For exemple, even if pathfinder adepts are more numerous then Earthdawn ones, I'm certain that classical ED books will always sell more than ED version pathfinder.

Likewise, in SR, I bet that simulationists lovers (for SR) would outweight a Narrativist SR

A narrative approach isn't really necessary, though I'm disappointed at the simulation compared to its overhead.

Most of the problems I'm having at approaching this are oriented around the difference between "average dude" and "nightmare troll." Balancing either end tends to screw up the other end.

In my example system above, the nightmare troll (Body + Armor 20 or so) would on average shrug off pretty much anything below Power 6 (which is pretty much everything) and be able to accumulate 6 or 7 moderate wounds before having to test to stay awake, which would mean a ridiculous quantity of assault cannon fire.

Of course I don't know if that's wrong -- nightmare troll (max Body + max augmented Body + high armor) is supposed to be a humanoid tank. But it seems absurd, so I don't like it very much.

In my Experience, Nightmare Troll is Harder to pull off in SR4+ than in previous editions. Not really a concept that I prefer, though I have had one (and only one) in previous Editions.

If the guy was able to accumulate enough body + armor to simulate a small tank, then he totally should only be dropped down by anti-tank fire. That's not a problem.
The problem on the other hand, might be how easily can one pull this trick. If only the most extreme outlier examples are capable of this then it's not a problem.

Indeed... You have to specifically build for this. Much like a Pornomancer, Ultimate Climber, or God Medic. I don't really see the point in those endeavors.

I'll say that for all its flaws, the level of damage can be pretty easily described by the GM. If the GM draws a blank (like when a mook needs a name)--just having a random hit location should be sufficient in ease of play. Just do after damage is determined so no rules need to be changed.

Epicedion, I had some spare time and was thinking about it. I've got a proposed system that might meet some of what you want from a damage model. Though it pushes combat to the very abstract.

Instead of keeping track of specific damage, keep track of a threshold for staying conscious (wound level if you prefer). It starts at 0 and each hit sets the threshold for the character rolls to stay conscious (Body + Willpower, maybe?). If a previous attack already set the threshold higher than the current attack, your hit just forces another roll to stay conscious. If you want apply the wound level as a modifier to all rolls. Not sure how detailed you want to get on weapons and armor in this system. My sense is that abstract is better, but you could include various levels of net hits that add to the damage if you want.

Might go with 2 statistics for guns, in terms of damage (not going to worry about ammo capacity, etc. here):
Armor Penetration, Wounding effect

Armor penetration is much higher for weapons in this system. Wounding effect come in one of two forms, they either add to the threshold or set it to a specific number. The wounding effect never reduces the threshold. So if you're at a threshold of 6 to stay conscious and you get hit by a grenade you're not healed by it, but you do still roll to stay conscious. The example numbers are just spitballing.

Example: Light Pistol- 5 armor penetration, +1 to threshold
Assault Rifle- 8 armor penetration, +1 to threshold
Assault Cannon- 12 armor penetration, +2 to threshold (special: sets threshold to 2 if converted to stun)
Grenade- 10 AP -1/m, Set threshold to 4 -1 per 5 m

Armor has one statistic (could divided into two types if you prefer):
Armor value

Armored Vest- 8 armor.
Armored Jacket- 10 armor.

Additional hits on attack tests push the armor penetration up. If the armor has a higher rating, the attack does stun damage. Stun damage sets the threshold to 1 (unless already higher). This has a thing I like where some weapons essentially entirely ignore lower rating armor and some weapons almost never get through higher rated armor.

Example fight between a runner with a runner troll with an Assault Cannon, an armored jacket, Body 8 and Will 3 vs. a guard with a light pistol, armored vest, Body 3, and Will 4.

Round 1.
The guard wins initiative and shoots. Gets 1 net hit on the attack. His effective armor penetration is 6 (5 base +1 net hit) so the attack is converted to stun. The troll's wound threshold is set to 1 by the stun damage. The troll rolls 11 dice and easily stays conscious (only has about a 1% chance of dropping).

The troll fires back. She has a negative 1 for her wound level, but easily gets 2 net hits on the attack. The assault cannon has effective armor penetration of 14. The guard's armored vest is useless and the guard's wound threshold is raised by +2 (from 0 to 2). He rolls 7 dice to stay conscious (25% chance the guard drops) and manages to stay conscious.

Round 2.
The guard wins initiative and shoots again. Rolls amazingly well, gets 3 net hits on the attack. His effective armor penetration is 8, which still isn't enough to have hit a weak point in the armored jacket (but a guard with an assault rifle would have). The troll takes stun damage. Her wound threshold is already at 1, so it stays there and she rolls to stay conscious. Again, 11 dice to stay conscious, and she does so easily.

She fires back and blasts the guard with the assault cannon. The armored vest is still useless against the massive weapon, the guard takes +2 to his wound threshold and has it set to 4. He now goes down (80% chance he fails).

I know it still needs some work and fleshing out, but thought I'd throw it out. A few things I like. Since a heavy armor troll has such a good ability to stay conscious, they can survive a hail of pistol bullets that aren't increasing the threshold, but each still has the potential (though small) to drop them even from an unskilled shooter. Every shot that hits has a chance to incapacitate, but it's not likely, especially with the stats runners are throwing around. If you want mooks to drop quickly give them <6 Body + Will and they'll go down in 1 shot most of the time. Stun damage is bad if you're already pretty wounded, because it forces another roll. Negatives accumulate quickly and then taper off.
I would probably let certain 'ware and other factors give bonuses on staying conscious and might let attacks designed to incapacitate give negatives on rolls to stay conscious. Haven't figured out burst attacks yet. I might let net hits add 2 per net hit to the armor penetration, if I wanted it to be more deadly.

The above is interesting. I'm not going to address it point by point, because I can't really afford the time for the meta-analysis right now, but it's interesting.

I'm seeing most systems as having conflicting goals. On one hand, there's a desire to have weapons be very effective -- after all, you don't want things to be like D&D where you have to grind down the enemy's health over the course of a long combat. On the other hand, you don't want weapons to be so effective that they regularly remove players from the game for long periods. This is where the game as a simulation gets weird.

Referring back to the recent editions, you have:

1) SR3: weapons can do really high damage, but in general are difficult to hit with to produce that high-damage effect. Any weapon can incapacitate in a single hit. Resisting damage is hard. Damage produces huge negative effects. Damage is most often Physical.

2) SR4: weapons are in general easy to hit with, but don't do really high damage. Incapacitating in a single hit is fairly rare. Resisting damage is fairly easy. Damage produces minor negative effects. Damage is most often Stun.

3) SR5: weapons are more difficult to hit with, and do high damage. Resisting damage is still fairly easy, but not as easy as in SR4. Incapacitating in a single hit is more likely than SR4, but still not highly likely. Damage still produces minor negative effects, but dice pools tend to be somewhat lower than SR4 so those effects are slightly stronger. Damage is weighted toward Physical but produces Stun often enough.

So, that leads me to the following questions:

1) How easy should it be to hit?

2) How easy should it be to incapacitate a target in a single hit? Also, how often should a hit be fully absorbed?

3) How big of a negative impact should damage have?

4) What should be the balance between Stun and Physical?

5) How much advantage versus damage should PCs have versus NPCs?

My immediate thought is that hit points are silly if every attack is doing 30%-60% of an approximately 10 hit point track. It would be easier (and simpler) to record things as "meh" "ow" "really ow" and "hrgghghgh."

A thought:

Weapons get a base DV and AP (DV, AP, and armor need to be rebalanced for this). Comparison goes like this:

Attack test as normal. Defense test as normal. Count net hits.

Subtract AP from armor, then subtract armor from DV (0 min), then add net hits to the remaining DV. If armor reduced DV to 0, the damage is Stun.

Roll Body and subtract it from the remaining (DV + net hits). For every 2 full remaining points, mark one higher step on the wound track.

Wounds track:

Light (-1)
Moderate (-2)
Serious (-3)
Deadly (incap)

Each category can hold 1 tick mark. If a category gets a second tick mark, unmark it and mark the next worse category. A character who receives a deadly wound is incapacitated. A character who receives a second deadly wound dies.

This means that a character takes 8 successive Light wounds, or 4 Moderate, or 2 Serious before pushed up to Deadly. Or some combination.

Oh yeah, the "2 points per level" thing -- an odd point adds a "Flesh Wound" that adds a -1 dice pool modifier on any tests made before the next initiative roll. A character can accumulate any number of Flesh Wounds.

Stun damage follows the same logic, but Stun penalties affect Initiative, not dice pools. The Stun equivalent of a Flesh Wound is "Disorientation" and affects the next initiative roll.

----

So let's say Bob Runner (10 dice for pistols) shoots Joe Security with an Ares Predator. Say the Predator has a DV of 3 and an AP of -1. Joe is dead average, and has 6 defense dice and 3 Body and 3 armor.

Bob gets 3 hits. Joe gets 2 defense hits, for 1 net hit.

The Predator's DV of 3 is compared to the modified armor of 2, for 1DV + 1 net hit, or 2.

Joe gets 1 hit and takes a Flesh Wound.

Bob shoots again, this time getting 4 hits on 10 dice, and Joe gets 1 hit on his 4 remaining dice (-1 from the Flesh Wound and -1 from multiple dodges in the round), for 3 net hits.

1DV + 3 net hits, for a total of 4.

Joe gets 1 hit and takes a Light Wound and another Flesh Wound (note that an unarmored target here would take a Serious Wound, since the DV + net hits would be 7).

---

Amping up the combat, Bob breaks out his lucky rifle (DV 4, AP-1), getting 3 net hits on Joe.

That leaves 2DV + 3 net hits, or 5. Joe rolls a hit on his Body and takes a Moderate wound, now having a wound track that looks like LM (-3).

Another Light would push to Moderate, which would then push to Serious, and his track would just look like S (-3). Instead, another Moderate would push to Serious, and his track would look like LS (-4).

And so on.

--

Troll time. Bob Runner shoots Tim Troll (Body 10, Armor 4) with his lucky rifle (DV 4, AP -1). Tim Troll is somewhat slow, and allows Bob 4 net hits.

That leaves 1DV + 4 net hits = 5. Tim Troll rolls 3 hits on Body and takes a Light Wound.

Bob sees that this isn't working as well as he'd like, and fires a long burst (+2 DV?), for 4 net hits again.

That makes for 6-3DV, or 3DV+4 net hits =7. Tim Troll rolls his Body again, for 3 hits, and takes a Moderate Wound.

---

So I'm not hating this. Weapons would need balancing, the system can be deadly but trends toward middling damage, and Nightmare Troll doesn't completely run away with things.

Also it puts a big emphasis on getting lots and lots of net hits -- 6 net hits and a sniper rifle (DV 5, -2AP?) would give a heavily armored target (armor 6?) 7 damage to resist. That's almost a guaranteed Serious Wound for average humans (and a called shot for higher DV or perhaps more AP could trend that toward Deadly). It would be a lot of work to one-shot anyone, especially an aware defender, but really high-skill characters (post-chargen prime runner type characters possibly using Edge) could occasionally pull it off.

This would mean that the majority of mooks with guns rolling 8 dice for 1 or 2 net hits with DV 2 and 3 weapons against street runner characters with 2 armor would probably be doing mostly light and flesh wounds, with the occasional lucky moderate.

Minor modifications:

Maybe you can accumulate Flesh (Minor?) Wounds up to your Body, which then convert to a Light Wound, but otherwise have no effect. Same with Disorientations (Minor Stun?) up to your Willpower.

Magic:

Direct Spells -- DV = Force - 4 (min 0). Net hits on the spellcasting test (vs Body or Will depending) add to this, target takes the relevant damage.

Example: Mage casts a Force 6 stunbolt at Joe Security (W 3). Mage gets 4 hits on the test, Joe gets 1. Joe takes 5 damage, or a Moderate Stun with a minor stun.

Mage casts a Force 10 stunbolt at Joe Security (W 3). Mage gets 3 hits on the test, Joe gets 1. Joe takes 9 damage, or Deadly Stun with a minor stun.

Indirect spells -- DV = Force, AP = half Force (round up).

Example: Mage casts Force 4 lightning bolt (DV 4 AP -2) at Joe for 2 net hits (Joe has 3 armor). This does 5 damage. Joe rolls body for 1 hit and takes a moderate wound.

Drain works the same way as regular damage -- roll drain resist versus number, take one level for every 2 remaining damage. Force > Magic turns it Physical.

Example: The force 6 stunbolt does (F-3 = 3 drain). The mage rolls Log+Will and gets 2 hits, taking a minor stun. The F8 stunbolt does (F-3 = 5 drain). The mage rolls Log+will and gets 3 hits, taking a light wound.

A couple other things.

Melee weapons get a DV based on Str/2, and an AP. Bludgeoning weapons tend to get a positive AP. The classic Punch would then be Str/2 AP +2, for example (ie, a character with S6 would do DV 3 AP+2, or 3 vs no armor, 0 versus 1 armor -- remember once DV is zero you still get net hits). The same character with a simple knife (S/2 +0, AP 0) would get DV 3 vs no armor, 2 vs 1 armor, 1 vs 2 armor, 0 versus 3 armor, and so on. The combat axe (S/2 + 3, AP -2) on that character would get DV 6 versus 0, 1, or 2 armor, 5 vs 3, 4 vs 4, 3 vs 5, 2 vs 6.

Meanwhile the Troll with augmented S 12 would come in with DV 6 AP +2 -- 6 vs 0, 3 vs 1, 2 vs 2, 1 vs 3, 0 vs 4.

Adept powers could change the AP (.25 per level to modify AP by 1?) so that an adept with 6 ranks (1.5 PP) might have AP -4 unarmed attacks, and stay in the punching game.

So Tim Troll with a combat axe (S12, or 9DV -2AP) strikes Sammy SWAT Team (Body 5, Armor 5) for 2 net hits. That results in a DV 6 + 2 net hits = 8 damage attack. That's a deadly hit, but Sammy is likely to roll 1 or 2 hits of his own and take it down to a Serious or Serious with a minor.

So nightmare trolls are still nightmares, but not necessarily cleaving people in half all the time.

--

On the magic stuff I posted, you might see that a F1, 2, 3, or 4 direct spell does DV0 (just doing net hits damage) which may seem odd, but each would carry the minimum drain if Drain is F-3. There are few reasons to cast below F5 -- arguably you could have a mage that has very low Magic (F3 might be overcasting) and drain resist (can't guarantee a hit or two).

This would only affect Stunbolt, Manabolt, Powerbolt, etc. My thoughts on spell drain are pretty much this:

Direct spell: touch F-4, LOS F-3, LOS(a) F-1. So at the nominally "high" basic level of F5, drain results would be 1, 2, and 4, for 1DV + net hits damage. A good mage can probably get 3 or 4 net hits on the spellcasting test, which results in 4 or 5 damage (or a moderate wound) to targets. The same mage casting a F10 overcast would be doing 9 or 10 damage, which is a splort, for 6, 7, or 9 damage. Assuming he can regularly get 4 hits on a drain test, he'd be taking a light, light+, or moderate+ physical drain to do it.

After reading what I just wrote, I'd say that P-damage direct spells should have their drain bumped up to touch F-3, LOS F-2, LOS(a) F (to put them in line with Indirect spells as below), while S-damage spells should be as above. That way the F10 Manaball would stand a serious chance of knocking your mage out, making a lower-Force indirect spell somewhat more economical but much more risky in terms of environment and target (a F5 Manaball would be about as effective as a F3 Fireball unless the target has high Body, armor, or has a high defense pool).

Indirect spells get DV and AP even at low levels, so aren't completely useless. A F1-2 lightning bolt spell might be as effective as a light pistol or so.

Indirect spell: LOS F-2, LOS(a) F. So at the same F5 (DV 5 AP -3), drain results would be 3 and 5. A good mage with 3 net hits would then expect to put 8 damage on most targets (then resisted down a bit with Body), in exchange for just a little drain. Cover and/or more armor would make this progressively worse. The same mage could drop an F10 on a target (for 8 or 10 drain) and do DV10 AP-5, virtually guaranteeing an enormous amount of damage and incinerating the average guy even in good armor. Of course, then the mage would start bleeding out his ears (with a real risk of Deadly physical drain). Also that big of a Fireball might not play too friendly with the local environment.

how would you use reagents with the above magic working? As currently listed or scaled back a bit?

I hadn't really considered reagents.

You'll notice that I didn't invest any time examining Limits, as I don't really like them all that much. I'd probably either ditch Reagents altogether or allow them as expendable spell boosters: burn reagents up to the force of the spell (or your Magic rating? Whichever is lower?), and apply them to either the spellcasting or drain test (or a mix). At 20 nuyen a pop, you could throw +5 dice into a Force 5 spell for 100 nuyen, which is a nice sum, but only worth 2-3 hits on either test (or like 1 and maybe 1 if you split them).

That's probably worth about the price of a grenade.

Q: Why do we still have hit points?
A: Because we haven't taken that much damage yet!

Ha ha ha h- *Gunshot, a body falls to the floor*

Matrix would likely then need an overhaul. Working off SR5 for simplicity, I'd probably have:

Device Rating = Body
Attack Program = Strength
Sleaze Program = Armor Penetration
Data Processing Program = Reaction
Firewall Program = Armor

The concepts of marking targets otherwise wouldn't change, except they wouldn't have Limits.

For example, you might want to Brute Force your target for a mark. You'd roll Cybercombat + Logic versus Willpower + Firewall as normal, just no limits. Hack on the Fly would be Hacking + Logic vs Intuition + Firewall as normal.

I'd change Data Spike to be Cybercombat + Logic vs Intuition + Data Processing (making it in line with Intuition + Reaction in meatspace). DV = (Attack/2)+marks, modified down by (Firewall-Sleaze), then add net hits. Resist damage number with Device Rating.

So if your deck is DR3 A5 S4 D3 F3 and the target's deck is the same, and you have 2 marks on the target, you roll Cybercombat + Logic vs Intuition + Data Processing. Let's say you get 2 net hits. Your DV would be (5/2 = 3) + 2 or DV5. The target has 3 firewall but you have 4 sleaze, negating his "armor". The target rolls 3 (DR) dice vs 5 damage, and probably takes a "moderate wound."

Additional programs would essentially modify these scores.

Encryption, for example, would increase your Firewall by 1 (which would help protect against marks, count as armor, etc). Armor, on the other hand, would increase your Firewall by 2 but only when used as "armor" in matrix combat.

A program like Exploit would grant +2 Sleaze when considering it as Armor Penetration, while Stealth would just grant +1 Sleaze. Note that Armor Penetration would be a huge deal when trying to crash IC on a host, where Firewall could easily be 7, 8, 9, etc.

Other programs might need to be completely redesigned or junked.

Otherwise, I'd say that once you've got yourself at least a bargain-bin cyberdeck, you're in the land of milk and hacking. You can edit files, hack into hosts, and do all that fun stuff, without worrying about Limits. The deck only comes into play when you're actually trying to damage something or defend against someone else's matrix actions. A crappy deck means getting spotted a lot and having limited defenses against taking damage or receiving marks.

You might want to make flesh wounds be in effect until the end of the character's next turn. Otherwise, it seems like they wouldn't have the same effect on someone that has already taken their actions for that initiative.

Not quite sure I get how stun works in this system. Do you have a separate track for the disorientation that builds up, or does it just cause a -1 on initiative? And if you get stun when the DV is reduce to 0, how do you ever accumulate hits in the stun track?

So how is this different than a 8 hit point track with the following penalties:

[-1] [-2] [-3]
[-3] [-4] [-4]
[-5] [-6] [unconscious]

I guess it has a little more mixing and matching possible with the penalties, but it still feels like a hit point system to me (one with some serious penalties).

I really like the flesh wounds/disorientation that just conveys penalties for a short period of time.

I did a little rethinking and figured you should accumulate flesh wounds and disorientations until you get a number equal to your Body or Willpower respectively, at which point they consolidate into a single Light wound/stun (and then reset to 0). I don't know if this would be better, but it seems more realistic.



Stun remains its own track with the same basic penalties, just to Initiative instead of dice pool modifiers to actions.

Even if the DV of a weapon is reduced to 0 by armor, net hits still produce damage, but the damage is Stun. In other words you've got two concepts going on -- weapon damage and armor mingle, but net hits are never reduced. This sort of replicates the idea that sufficient armor reduces physical damage to stun damage.

In this way, you could shoot a guy with 20 armor with a light pistol, effectively doing modified 0 weapon damage, but he still has some net hits from the attack to contend with that may do some Stun.

This adds quite a bit of possible dimension to weapons -- a DV1 weapon with -6AP against a guy with 6 armor still does 1 + net hits physical damage. A DV6 weapon with 0AP against a guy with 6 armor does 0+net hits Stun damage.



It's an exponentially scaled damage track. Basically, 2 Light wounds consolidate into a single Moderate wound, and 2 Moderate wounds consolidate into a single Serious wound, and so on. It takes 4 Light wounds to equal a single Serious wound, and 8 to equal a Deadly wound.

So if you take a Light wound you look like this:

L (-1)

And if you then take a moderate wound you look like this:

L (-1)
M (-2)
(for a combined -3 penalty)

And then if you take another Light wound, you look like this:

S (-3)

You're then free to take an additional L and M, in which case you'd look like this:
L (-1)
M (-2)
S (-3)
(for a combined -6 penalty)

At this point any additional damage would roll its level and above up into a D (incap). So if you took an additional M wound, you'd look like:

L (-1)
D (incap)

So even if you get unlucky and take a Serious wound right off the bat, you still can take 3 Light Wounds or a Light and a Moderate before you get knocked out.

About the "looks like hit points" part:

Specifically it's not hit points. Every 2 damage left over after armor and Body are taken into account scales the damage up one wound level. If you take 8 damage in a go, you get a Deadly Wound and pass out.

However, if that 8 damage is spread out into 2 damage 4 times, you take L L L L, which means only a serious wound. It would take another 6 or 8 points of damage in a single attack to knock you out directly. You could actually take a 4 and a 2 and still remain conscious. Or three 2s.

So it depends on how you take the damage. Two serious wounds (6 and 6, or 12 total damage) would do it. A serious and two moderates (6, 4, and 4, or 14 damage) would do it. A serious, moderate, light, and deadly would do it (6, 4, 2, and 8, or 20 total damage).

Not to mention if you do the accumulative flesh wounds, where you can take (Body) of them before they turn into a Light, a troll might take 10 1 point attacks and get away with a single L, able to stand up against 80 of them before keeling over. Meanwhile the crippled old man with a body of 1 could only take 8, since each flesh wound would be an automatic Light (the penalty for being so decrepit, I guess).



I'm waffling on those. I dunno.

1. Relatively easy. Solid hits about 1/3 to 1/2 of the time, not counting edge cases. Why? Otherwise you have ten minutes of rolling "miss ... another miss ..."

2. Fairly easy. Two reasons for this; firstly, like you've pointed out, there needs to be some narrative here, and getting hit with a shotgun should very rarely be "oh, you're bleeding a little from your foot. You can walk it off." It's a shotgun. And you got hit by it. That's frequently deadly.

Secondly, low damage makes for boring combat. This is D&D's problem. I have a 100HP fighter and the ork hits me for 1d8+1d6 damage (average of . Uhhh ... forever.

However, ideally the PCs (or important characters) can take a few more hits than NPCs, or at least have a little longer to be pulled back from the brink. Otherwise you end up with a lot of dead PCs.

3. There should be A penalty, although not a huge one. If it's huge, the character is basically dead. If there's none, it goes back to your problem. Really, story-telling combat (including in RPGs) isn't about describing cool fight scenes; it's about what is at stake. A well-described fight scene over nothing is cute, but forgettable. Everyone remembers that time they HAD to make that roll or else they would fall out of the helicopter/get splattered/the baddie would escape/etc. Penalties give even minor combats something at stake.

4. No opinion on this one.

5. As I said, the PCs do need some sort of an edge over mooks. Not so much that fighting them is just rolling dice until the GM gives up; there needs to be a serious risk of the mooks winning. But in general, the PCs need to:
1) Face a risk of losing something valuable.
2) Have enough of an edge that there's an 80%+ chance of them beating that challenge (against mooks -- named NPCs are different).
3) Even winning may have a cost (extra stun or drain, giving away their position, minor injuries)
4) The GM/players have tools to avoid a TPK from a few bad rolls in the first encounter.

In my play, mooks don't have karma pool, don't have trauma kits, rarely have the advantage of surprise or top-shelf gear, and retreat from battle when they're clearly beaten.

True. One of Shadowrun's major problems has always been the bog-down you get into with combat.



Shotguns drive me up the wall in Shadowrun. The game isn't well-suited to running a full tactical map since that takes up too much time with the rest of the mechanics in play, but shotguns have all these fiddly rules for hitting multiple targets at certain ranges certain distances apart. Ugh.



Edge/Karma Pool goes a long way for protecting PCs for a little bit, at least. First Aid and Heal spells can go a long way toward putting PCs back into the fight (which NPCs don't usually get the chance to pull off adequately).



SR4/5 goes the dice pool modifier route, which typically leaves characters running at 75% of their dice pools in the worst case. My weird system above caps penalties at -6, which would probably be about 50% for starting characters (or 25% for starting mooks). Not terrible, but significant.



Basic mooks tend to be obstacles, anyway, something to avoid or takedown quickly and quietly, only able to produce minor damage on their own but usually in greater numbers (or at least capable of calling in actually effective backup if alerted). Once you trip the alarm or go loud, you're on a short timer until backup arrives, which is when things should get really deadly.

Edit: Mook damage is generally low because of their dice pools. If the beat security guard with an 8 in agi+pistols and a Fichetti takes a shot at the samurai runner with Rea+Int 12, he's not guaranteed to avoid damage, but the odds are really good. Put 5 of them together all shooting at the same guy, and things suddenly look worse. It's when you get 5 Knight Errant guys on a response team all shooting at him with burst-fire SMGs that you're in "down in a blaze of glory" territory.

SR people hit FAR more frequently than they do in real life.


Which isn't anything like how shotguns actually work in the real world. Spread is typically 1" per yard.