Here's what I do...

Stress Points for Regeneration.

I've explained it on here before, regenerating characters won't have cyber/bio generally so substitue 1-2 (cyberware) on the Stress point chart with Power Stress.

Then on the Power Stress chart have regeneration be 1-3, 4-6 can be nothing or some other power (Mist Form, Shapeshift, whatever.)

Any wound which causes regeneration stress has to be healed normally... also, regeneration stress works like bioware stress, ie.

Light Stress: Regeneration is painful and the sensations of the wound linger on.
Moderate: Regeneration is slowed, damage heals at the end of the following Combat Turn
Serious: Regeneration slows to 1 box per minute, normal healing for wounds that normally take 1 box per minute (ie. physical drain)
Deadly: Regeneration craps out.

Use 1/2 Essence dice to check for failure.

This system works fairly well and gives fairly similar performance to standard regen for a body 5 character taking regular wounds. It skews out at higher and lower body values but I think it makes sense.

Also, when combined with the optional overdamage stress point rules from M&M it means that massive damage has a fair chance of overloading regeneration.

It also prevents the silly all or nothing regneration as it's possible (albeit unlikely with high body) to take Serious or Moderate wounds which don't heal.

What do you think? Seem like a good solution? I've used it for the Shapeshifter PC in my current group and it seems to work pretty well.

[removed after some thought]

Edit: Actually that stress will liekly never happen and doesnt change anything. To not take stress all they need to do is have the highest roll on damage resistance be more than the number of boxes of damage they took. With a body of 10+ that's not likely to happen anytime soon.

At a moderate wound if he rolls a single 3 anywhere on his damage resistance roll he takes no stress, and on a serious if he rolls a single 6 he takes no stress. How well that works depends entirely on the body of the regenerating creature.

For my medieval fantasy conversion, I'm considering a house ruling on regeneration that would resemble this:
The Regeneration power of a critter has a rating. At the end of any CT when the critter is damaged, but not yet regenerating, it rolls a number of dice equal to the rating against a TN of (2 + Wound Modifier). The critter will regen one box of damage in 4CTs, -1CT per additional success. The box is healed in the end of the CT at that time. If any damage remains, the critter rolls for the next box. If no successes are rolled, roll for regeneration again after 4CTs have passed.

The base time for a box of Stun damage is 1CT instead of 4CTs. All Stun damage must be regenerated before Physical damage can be regenerated. Only the Wound Modifier from the type of damage to be regenerated is taken into account. If successes from the regen test remain after the base regen time is reduced to 1 (beyond 4 successes for Phys, beyond 1 for Stun), each additional success heals an additional box of damage by the end of the next CT.

The rating of the Regeneration power is likely to end up being the Essence of the critter in question, except in very special circumstances.

Is there anything clearly wrong with that? It nerfing regen a bit doesn't bother me, nor does the slight addition in bookkeeping.

[Edit]Drain would be ignored for Regeneration purposes -- except for the Wound Modifier. Each regenerating critter would have some forms of attacks which would deal un-regenerable damage to it. To permanently kill a regenerating critter without such forms of attack would be extremely hard, and subject to my ruling.[/Edit]

I reread the regeneration section again. It would seem weapon foci can be very deadly. Considering that aside from karma costs, an mage may well bond up to twice his magic in weapon focus force without addiction. So, 6*2 =12. Furthermore, the vamp's got to get a success against a TN of 2*12 = 24. I also reread the wound modifier section in BBB - wound mods apply to everything except damage resistance and dodge tests. The vamp is making an Essense test, wound mods apply. TN 27.

OK, a reasonable person would not have a Force 12 weapon focus, so instead have say force 6. That is still TN 15 (I know, Deadly damage but still the max mod is 3). Also in melee(weapon focus here, you can't do range with a weapon focus), skill is the key. So with an adept with edged weapons 6, improved ability EW 6, and a force 6 weapon focus that's 18 dice. And if the stupid vamp is unlucky, he might just impale himself on the weapon focus on his own attack.

Just remember guys. Every time the vampire recieves a deadly wound, it must make that roll on a d6. If it comes up a 1, the vampire is dead.
You may have to kill it 6 times, but it will eventually die.

Or more than that -- remember, statistic probability does not ensure success.

-Siege

Right. On a good day, the first time you kill it may be the only time.

PS, can you use your karma pool to make some one else re roll a test

Problem is that the D6 roll is not a test per se. The only test it should take is the one against a weapon focus.

That is a valid SR Dragon power too. Check DotSW for more info.

Although it will on-average have died after 4 deadly wounds, which would probably take less than a single combat turn if a group of 3+ fast people are working together. Also: Once the vamp is down you can do particularily nasty things, like casting&sustaining control actions when he has no spell defense up.

Excuse my ignorance, But can i bond Weapon Foci to a Monofilament whip?
AndAs for talking about Railguns reducing targets to component atoms i was talking about a PROPER rail gun which is unfortunatly unpractical. But it is based ofn the theory that stopping an object moving any where near the speed of light will give off a hell of alot of energy. And yes its still kinetic energy transfer, just on an ungodly scale. Also what would a Tesla coil do to a vampire. It might not kill it out right, but i dont think it would move for quite some time.

Oh, a proper railgun is very practical. All you do is station it somewhere with a lot of mass for bracing and no atmosphere to speak of. The moon, for instance.

Impractical for runners, yes.

~J

YEs but for my purposes quite impractical. now tesla coils.....

Technically they do get overflow, as nothing actually states that they don't. Their overflow is utterly and completely useless, as its function (determining when someone is actually dead) is preempted by the regeneration rules, but they exist.

~J

Hmm, my only complaint about ignoring overflow is that, after enough lead and anything else you may want to hit it with has been slammed into the SOB, you're going to get to a point where there isn't much of a body left. If you've hit max overflow, the corpse will not even vaguely look like it's original shape, get over twice the max overflow and you're going into "bloody smear" territory.

The problems that i've seen plague this discussion so far is not one of what rules apply, but more of if people choose mechanics over realism or vice versa...

If, by what has been said in the previous interpretations of the rules, you get the sod to deadly damage, i'd say you got the bugger on the ropes, either which way you are looking at it, any further damage is going to seriously inconvenience any regenerating attempt (after all, overflow is just to simulate even more deadly and horrific damage to whomever is unlucky enough to be said situation). Somebody hacking blindly with a Katana at what is essentialy a near corpse is going to get to the point where there isn't much left to cut anymore. Similarly, someone hosing down someone with prolonged and sustained firepower is going to get to the point where there isn't much left to shoot.

Now a vamp could still regenerate this damage, in games mechanics terms, but from the point of realism (and yes, i do know that this is a game set in a fictitious world and that pretty much anything can and will happen) where do you get to the point where there simply is not enough vampire left to regenerate? Does reaching body overflow at least count as "extensive tissue damage"? (i'd say a big "hell, yeah!" to that).

As per usual, SR3, nor any sourcebooks, gives a hard or fast rule on the subject, leaving a wonderful vista of grey area before us. (I personally think they do this so that we can whittle away our time arguing about it in forums like these, but then, everyone has got to have a hobby.. )

My only opinion is to try and use common sense where applicable (OK, i realise that this is Shadowrun we're talking about, but one remains optimistic, despite my natural state of being an apathetic pessimist (or is that a pathetic pessimist? who knows? )) i will say this though, no matter what you decide is best for your game, keep them regen rolls a secret and do them at the begining of the combat turn, YOU (as the GM) may know the SOB's dead as a door nail, but the players don't and there's nothing i love more than to see players sweat...

As for my contribution to "What are we hitting the vampire with?", i'd suggest a vindicator minigun or HV weapon loaded with splash rounds containing Green Ring 8. It may regen the damage, but it's not gonna be thinking about stomping your ass when it's puking it's guts up...

That's my tuppence worth anyway, hope it made sense!