Ok, maybe I am missing something here.

Lowly pathetic Palladium games has a system in place for putting a 40 up to a persons head and pulling the trigger. It involves a complicated series of charts to roll on, plus some bypass-S.D.C.-and-go-straight-to-hitpoints damage, but there is something.

In Cyberpunk, guy has a 18 point cowl plate, you put a weak 2D6 9mm up to his head and squeeze you don't even roll for damage. Point Plank shot is ALWAYS maximum damage, plus a head shot is double damage. Bang, 6 gets through, make a shock save. But it doesn't matter. 6 points to a body part with one attack will sever or mangle it, so that dudes head is toast. Make a new toon. 18 points of armour on a head is the same as the armor on the door of an armored vehicle.

Swap out that pitiful pre crash 9 with an armalite 44, thats 4D6+1, or 25 x 2 for 50 points of damage to a head. That head is blows clean off. Tone it down with a City Master which is 3D6, and you still get dead.

Change that ammo, and the results are more splashy.

I hate house rules. Don't use em. If I have to make house rules, we will just make up our own game and play it, no reason to pay for a rule set, just to change it.

In Shadowrun, you put a colt manhunter up to a guy ties up, have 12 dice in your pool, roll average, you will do 6 + successes, which is about 4 on average, for 10 boxes, which will only kill of you have less than a 4 body.

A Colt manhunter is like hitting with the Armalite .44 from Cyberpunk, which in the same system is garunteed to do what it is supposed to do at point blank, which is to remove said head from same body.

In Shadowrun, you need to use burst fire to kill, which works for me, as I have no issue with killing players and NPCs with guns, as long as it's not a single shot execution shot.

Or am I missing some rule in Shadowrun?

Did you know that a bullet to the brain-case isnt necessarily instant death? An astounding number of people survive it. There is a reason those old-time gangsters used to shoot people in the head TWICE.

It's an aimed shot, so you take the appropriate malus to your pool.
If you want to aim for several actions/seconds, you get dice back.
No, there is, to my knowledge, as of $R4.5 NO rule for the Krönlein-Schuss/Coup-De-Grace or whatever.
This stems from the simple fact that the shadowrun damage system does not have any hit locations.
You get enough successes, even if you aimed for the pinky finger on the trolls cyber-arm, the troll DIES.
Wanna see it get even more silly?
Try to shoot yourself in the head.
It's an aimed shot, so you get a malus.
It's a blind shot, as you can't SEE your target . . yeah, well, take SEVERE malus.
And it goes on and on and on like this . .

I underlined the key point. For something as simple as putting a honking big gun to someone's head and pulling the trigger, it should pretty well slip into: "GM takes over and gives a gory detailed listing of the splatter pattern redecorating the wall. "

Nuhu!
I'm wearing my bullet proof Shoes! i get all that armor!
And my complete Bone-Stuff. And my complete built in Armor, be it magical, natural, biological or cybernetic too!
and i am a big frigging Troll! the bullet goes SPLAT on my hard skull and i headbut the gun into his mouth!

GM Fiat is not a "house rule".

If you're a troll with bone lacing and a combat helmet and get shot in the head with a .22, then yeah, all those stupid rules that let you soak damage probably would apply. It *might* give the troll a headache. If you put a 30-06 up to the troll's head, GM Fiat takes over and says "splat".

Also, Cyberpunk (or more specifically, Friday Night Firefight, the advanced combat rules for Cyberpunk) were drawn from FBI gunfight statistics. You shoot a whole bunch at less than 30 feet, in a poorly lit area, you're not exactly well trained, and the first bullet usually takes you out of the fight period.

Shadowrun and Cyberpunk are on two entirely different reality levels as far as combat goes. Shadowrun is far more fantastic than Cyberpunk 2020 is.

PS. I know you hate house rules, but I find it hard to believe you've never done anything in an RPG that wasn't covered in the rules. No rule system is complete for every single potential outcome possible.

If you want to go by the rules, you can say it is a called shot for -4 DP + 4DV, +3 DP take aim, +2 DP impossible to miss and rule that it bypasses all armor. So you are at +4 DV, +1 DP and bypass all armor. Load up flechettes for a additional +2 DV, and you have a +6 DV + 1 DP attack the target resists only with his body.

With a Ares Predator that is 11 DV before counting any hits from your DP.

Shadowrun combat rules are intended to be a relatively quick resolution for a combat situation where people are moving and shooting and attempting to dodge. Outside of this you should revert to whatever makes sense for the situation.

I would also like to take this time to point out (kind of as a PSA) that the modifiers listed in the book(s) are not intended to be all-encompassing. They are not a list of every modifier that could ever be applied to any situation that could ever come up. Such as list, by its definition, would be infinitely long. So, if a situation comes up where the list of modifiers doesn't seem to make sense, throw in some other modifiers. This isn't a house rule, it's the GM doing their job. So give the person a +8 or +15 or +20 to their shot because it is ridiculously easy to shoot someone when they are tied up and helpless. Personally, I wouldn't roll dice at all in this situation, the target is simply dead. If the target was a PC I would let them burn Edge to survive, but that would be it.

Exactly. That last +2 DP should be for "Point Blank Range" from the additional combat rules in Arsenal. To my knowledge there's no "Impossible to Miss" bonus.

Edit: And without the possibility for your target to Dodge, it should be over quick.

Called shot rules anyone? sub 4 dice for +4 damage, you get 8 dice, +2 for the target being point blank(Arsenal combat modifier rules) assume target gets no hits on his reaction roll, average 3 net-hits means 12 damage. Apply soaks as needed.

DM can fiat what soaks apply (My armor pants will protect me!)

If the target is nice and restrained he gets no reaction roll and thus no hits. You can use take aim actions to compensate for the call shot dice loss.

And if it's built in, natural or magical armor, there is no bypassing all armor either. Same with formfitting full body suit and a Helmet.
If you ever start this kinda nonsense, everybody and their grandma is going to get an assault rifle and aim only for the unprotected eyes.
So there is only heads going splat, nothing else. Any Gm try to pull this kinda nonsense on me had better let me pull that kinda nonsense on . . oh, see that dragon over there?
His eye is TOTALLY unprotected!
Also if the character is specifically built to resist damage, taking away his means to do so is just bad form.

Rule for avoiding armor is taking a dice penalty equal to the armor rating your trying to avoid, thus milspec armor is almost impossible to bypass. The number of dice you would lose at all times for this would make running around shooting people in the head almost impossible. But still with APDS rounds and a point blank shot, called and all that jazz, restrained targets will go splat.

Ever play Syphon Filter? You get an air taser than can set people on fire if you tag them long enough, but it won't work on body armor. Unless you aim for the head. Then they die a gruesome, electrifying death, and you get a clean, unharmed suit of body armor.

I don't have my book handy, but as I recall when making a called shot there are a couple of choices that people have.

1 choice is the above mentioned +DV (up to 4) for -DP (on an equal amount).

However, there is also the listed choice of bypassing armor. I think that the -DP modifier is equal to the armor value you are bypassing, but if you hit the armor is not used. This is basically the option that anyone using Flechette will chose, since Impact is typically the lower armor value.

Addressing the OP though, you get 2 shots per action. If the target is subdued or you are somehow able to get this point-blank shot to the head, remember, double-tap. As posted above, its a time-tested method for a reason. Aslo, remember that MOST humans, elves, and dwarves, will have 9-10 boxes of damage (enough to die by your example which is leaving out things like called shots). If there is a chance that a tougher PC, or an Ork or Troll, might not die from that 1 shot, I'm perfectly okay with that. You can still execute MOST people with 1 shot that way. The exceptions (which is what PCs are) either take a bigger gun (Ruger SuperWarhawk helps), better ammo (Flechette using the called shot to bypass armor), or even two shots; but they are a FRACKING troll so I'm okay with it.

if they are not wearing a fully enclosed helmet, then their face and especially their eyes are open to attack. no armor for them.
if they are, then so am i.

SR is not a rule system for declaring exactly what you do and hitting a precise location. its abstracted far from that. Anytime you try to be very precise its going to seem silly in such a system.

Arsenal gives rules for point-blank shooting.

Let's crunch the numbers on this one.

Let's say that you've got a gun to a helpless person's head, thereby negating their ability to dodge. You've got 12 dice in your base pool. You've taken 3 Take Aim actions (+3), have Point-blank range (+2), giving you 17 dice to play with. Subtract 4 dice for +4 damage on a called shot, we're still discussing 13 dice to attack with. You make the roll; we'll round up a bit on the average and give you 5 successes. On a Streetline Special (equivalent of .22LR), that's 4P + 4 called shot +5 successes, for 13 damage that's only going to be soaked with body. Since Joe Average is only Body 3, there's no way he can take that shot. Up the damage on the gun, add special ammo, and other nifty factors, and you've got your instant kill.

i should really stay off this thread, but now i understand why so many gun fans seems to gravitate towards cp2020.

really? me and a buddy of mine are avid gun owners and generally dont like going through such details in combat, prefering the more abstract systems.

Eh, it's hit-locational, it's hard to actually shoot someone, and when you get lucky enough to shoot someone, it usually takes them out of the fight.

My CP2020 fights usually started with one person trying to get the drop on someone else, and then a round or two where everyone fires blindly while running to cover (since armor isn't all that useful) before resuming the firefight more properly. Otherwise, you're one bullet wound away from being combat-ineffective.

I even had firefights fizzle out because everyone ran to cover, and one side just kept running after that.

I wouldn't say it's *better* per se than SR4, but it's a very different flavor.

I personally miss the old damage codes in earlier editions of SR. The toughness to soak being independent of the actual amount of damage inflicted rocked. It led to a *lot* more variation in the guns than we have in SR4. In SR3, you'd up the damage to deadly pretty easily in an execution, and then any remaining successes would go towards upping the soak difficulty as high as possible. Therefore, while you *could* kill someone with a .22 to the back of the head, your .357 or .45 is going to be a lot more reliable.

It was more math, but felt better to me.

There really is only one place that you can shoot someone where you can be sure they won't get a chance to shoot back, and it's not the brain, it's the base of the neck, and even then only if you sever the spinal column. People use .22s to kill people at point blank range specifically because a higher caliber round isn't necessarily going to be lethal.

The system is designed so it usually takes two shots to ensure they are dead when executing, which is realistic, and hey you get two simple actions a pass.

At the risk of melanoma I would like to bring up the d20 coup-de-grace system. It boils down to a saving throw, fail and you die, succeed and you take double damage and probably still die.

Here's how I would do it in SR:

Coup-de-grace- When the enemy is helpless (unconsious, bound, paralyzed, ect.) you can attempt to kill them with a complex action. You must be standing next to them. Roll an opposed test (body + willpower + will to live/die) vs (attribute + skill). If the attacker wins the defender dies, otherwise calculate damage disregarding the defenders hits. Resist as normal.

What do you do, if someone cuts somebody else's throat with a knife? Do you roll damage resistance agaist (Str/2)+1P or let the poor guy just die?

I am not talking about making aim shots for eyes. I am talking about executing someone.

Pathetic palladium has a bullshit system for it. It is bullshit, but at least it is an attempt. Cyberpunk has an uber unforgiving system for it. You put your pistol to the back of a head, you WILL blow their mind.

Shadowrun has no such anything. You must rely on GM Fiat. I hate that. It invites rules lawyers. It also invites you to have to pull out the "I am GM, my fiat rules" card. Both of which I hate.

This should have not been omitted.

EDIT: For the record, I LOVE Shadowrun. I do mean love it. I love Cyberpunk no less that Shadwrun, no more than Shadowrun. Except for CPV3. That game is worse than Palladium games. Leaving in Michigan, we got that crammed down our throats for more than a decade, so glad to see it die the horrible death it deserved.

If the guy is tied up and your placing a pistol to his head, why roll? Sounds more like a roleplay scene than a 'combat' scene, and the golden rule is that dice shouldn't get in the way of roleplaying.

Not going to tell me where the paydata is?
*places pistol to head and pulls the trigger*

I do still understand where you are getting from regarding the rules, just wanted to ramble on.

Move along, nothing to see here.

A slight comment on CP's 'dougle had damage' rule : even if its never clearly precised, I consider thar damage is doubled after the armor. Which means an SP 20 cowl will stop even a .357 (3d6, maxi 18) dead in it's track, even at point blanck. The .44 magnun at 4d6+1 will slip five, doubled to ten, through. Which seems normal for something that's in the same protection range as a milspec armor vest (with the insert plates in). it's a 'robcop like' hard armor afterall.
It's damn though. It's also ugly and obvious and leave your face unarmored (though it could be armored too, but that ranges into the fugly and blatantly obvious category)

In shadowrun, a grenade won't kill a healthy person instantly if it detonates in it's mouth.

Houserules might disagree.

Depends how many times t reflects on their teeth.

But seriously, a GM deciding that something happens as a result of the players action isn't breaking the rules, especially when there are no rules. There are rules for combat an attacks, not for executing prisoners.

Actually, yes there is a rule for executing prisoners.
Its called doing a called shot (4 damage) while aiming against a helpless opponent.

CP2020 actually handled *better* when you ran up the power scale, letting people sling AP ammo, breaking out the serious body armor, and hauling the full-conversion borgs out of the closet. When it was just a bunch of yahoos blasting at each other wearing armored clothing and kevlar bandannas, it was kind of annoying and lethal as hell, but when we started hauling out big guns (and armor to match) it ran pretty smoothly.

The first time one of my augmented players leaned out the back of their REO Meatwagon aerodyne and started sweeping the street with a Helix shotgun (belt fed, 5 barrels, loading AP-flechettes) because he figured "they're over there somewhere," I knew life was getting good. The .50 BMG return fire from the jacked-up gangbanger down the street proved that reconnaisance by fire can do wonders

In any circumstance that this might come up in-game, there shouldn't need to be rules to cover it -- either the players accept it as an inevitable part of the situation, or they rebel against it. I feel no shame in saying that any gaming group that needs a rule to support the situation you are describing (potentially NSFW example) being fatal is one that should give up RPGs as a hobby -- either you accept it as part of the larger story that the group (players and GM) is trying to tell (in which case no rule is necessary), or you don't (and cling to page citations to counteract the apparent narrative flow).

Combat rules are here to deal with what happens in a combat situation, when people fight each other. If someone is asleep and you put a gun against his head, you're not in a combat situation so combat rules don't apply.

Shooting someone in the head at point blank range in a simple action means that in 1.5 second (assuming you only have 1 IP) you manage to align your gun with the target's head and shoot in a combat situation. If the combat rules said "shooting someone at point blank range in the head automatically leads to weapon's base DV+4 damage (for example)" then you'd have melee characters carry guns because they are sure to hit and deal a lot of damage.

And you won't need to use house-rules to state that a shot to the head kill the victim instantly, you just have to apply that rule that says that the GM should feel free to adapt the rules according to the situation. It's a rule just as valid as the rule that states that a hit is scored on 5+.

WRT the called shot rules, they're for when you're making a specific shot in a moving combat scenario (i.e. a moving head at a distance) so for crunching the numbers in a restrained-victim scenario the shooter should get his maximum DV bonus without any DP penalty since he doesn't have to achieve the same kind of accuracy nor would he find it easier to step back and aim generally at the seated target (if anything he'd be more likely to miss that way).

WRT not doing enough damage to be lethal, use the heavy damage rules in Augmentation. Any single wound causing 7 or more boxes of damage means something has been blown seriously out of whack. With a point blank shot to the head the most appropriate choices are severe brain damage and bleeding out, either of which is as good as dead and even adds a bit more flavour as the poor slot gurgles and oozes in front of you

I thought, but could be wrong, that there is mitigating text in the book that at least hints at (if not outright states) that things like executing a restrained individual with a shot to the head shouldn't be rolled for and that's how I play it unless there is a seriously good reason why that wouldn't be a realistic representation. After all, RPG rules are only there to give a story-telling game an integral frame of reference - if you want to live and die by the rules alone and don't much care for the story-telling bits inbetween then what you're actually playing is a very complicated board game.

Of course all of this goes out the window if the target is a human with an Edge score of 8.

to the OP. Tell me if I'm wrong, what you are saying is that a good rule for executing someone is one that insures that the act is lethal and the rules are not overly complicating.

However, if the GM rules that someone that's defenseless is outright ded if you put a bullet in his brain, it isn't good enough.

Question, are you really looking for a rule that says "if you execute someone, that person is dead"?

i guess he is looking for a deterministic way to say, "this is a execution. target is dead. end of discussion".

So the gun jams 8 times or the PC becomes a vegatable. Either way it becomes an issue of if the character being unplayable. Burning edge to live does not mean that there aren't consequences (like being incapacitated).

In such situations, I usually go by the statement on pg. 60:
"The gamemaster should not require a player to make a test when the action is something
that the character should be expected to do without difficulty."

Shooting a helpless person in the head at point blank range is something most people should be capable of, so I skip right to the gory descriptions. If the victim is able and willing to act - that is, not helpless - dice will be rolled.

Good times man, good times.

Ok, here is the full scene as to why this is an issue.


Meat body A was grappled. Meat Body B, C,and D where on same team. B, C, and D had A in a cop type hold face down on the ground. You know the hold, officer friendly has the hands in a wrist lock behind his back, another with knee on neck.

B, C had A grappled, D got trigger happy, put gat up to A's head and pulled trigger. The fight was on going, I gave A a defense roll to move head, and D got 2 net successes.

I penalized the dice pool of D to make up for the fact he didn't want to cap his partners by accident, and it was an aimed shot. I penalized A's dice pool for being grappled.

2 net successes, base damage of the weapon, after the soak roll, no effect. I didn't bypass the orthoskin or bone lacing.

Had this have been cyberpunk, A would have made pretty red and pink chunky paint on the concrete.

I couldn't just let A get no soak roll, because the fight was ongoing.

This is no different than an execution, a point blank shot to the side of the head.

Only difference, one target is tied up and on his knees, one target is grappled and on his belly.

In wack ass Palladium or in dead on Cyberpunk, A would be dead.

There should be rules to deal with head shots at point blank range, that keeps the rules lawyers away.

P.S. Next action "A" ate a burst from a Ruger Thunderbolt and is no longer with us.

Anyway, me and Garou discuss time to time how simulationist (is this a word?) and lethal a system is by picking an average joe put a gun to his head and pull the trigger folowing all the rules given for a situation like this. Cp2020 works, D&D works (because of coup-de-grace rules), GURPS works, L5R works (in this case putting a sword through your belly). I think there are other but these are the ones I remember right now. Now, while Shadowrun has walked a little away from the pink-mowhak concept, it is still a game about larger than life situations, with dragons, spirits, AI's, Trolls holding MG one handed, etc and I don't think that it should be so easy to kill someone in combat with just one shot, now. Execution is an execution it shouldn't be needed to roll in the first place EVEN if the system was capable to handle it in the first place.

In this situation I would not have bypassed Orthoskin or Bone Lacine either. If it was an area that was unarmored I might have given no-armor on the soak roll as a free bonus; or depending on how frenzied the situatino was I might have said use the avoid armor called shot rules. You said it yourself, it was not an easy shot. the target was not completely subdued, had legitimate protections, and so it might not be a garunteed kill.

You applied friends in melee modifiers. I'd have also applied called shot modifiers (the -4 DP for +4 DV on the shot). However, I would also have greatly reduced the Reaction pool for the target (don't have my book handy to tell you what modifiers I'd have used). Since all the target could get is a body twitch and a head move it would have been reduced. Odds are, unless this was a troll, you'd have a near-dead or dead target.

This is one of those situations where the GM has to decide; are thigns still fluid and therefore we should check the stats and luck, or is settled enough that the target should be dead? If the answer is the later, then don't roll. If the answer is the former, you roll it out and play it out. Afterall, strange things can, have, and do happen when people are struggling and someone else is trying to shoot them (be it with a pistol, tazer, whatever).

See? Now THIS i can live with.
All inside the rules, not just point gun, scratching off ammo and saying he is dead.
And why are people so surprised about this anyway?
Orthoskin and Bone-Armor are made SPECIFICALLY to do this. Technically, there should be no way in hell to circumvent built in cyber/bio/natural/magical Armor EVER.
With the single caveat that magical armor is, of course, still subject to background count. Only worn armor should be applicable to the called shot to the nuts rules.
Back in SR3 the Cyber-Skull had a REALLY nice feature: namely the ability to completely soak one LEVEL of Damage from a called shot to ANYWHERE above the shoulders.
Deadly Damage became Serious business, Serious Business became Moderately annoying, Moderately annoying became Light still on and Light still on became PLINK.
This has not made it into SR4 of course.

Execution, if handled correctly using the current rules have VERY high chances of success.
You still need to roll, if only to see if you glitch.

Just load up a cyberskull with armor. We'll wait =)

So in the middle of combat, someone snapped a shot off at a struggling person who had armored skin and armored skull bones and it didn't kill the target.

That's not an execution. In game, you say the target jerked, the bullet grazed, and didn't do any damage.

I'm not seeing your problem here.

Let me put it another way. If you pointed a .38, point blank range, at someone's head, but there was a half inch of cold steel between you and the target, would you expect the bullet to kill the dude?

you need the executioner a two barreled Eichiro Hatamoto II. I'll dig up stats.

Edit:
Extended Clip (round fractions up 1.25 is there for 2)
Firing Selection Change SA
cost 800 base 800 for mods
total 1600
add additional clip and extended clip again an you have a nasty side arm... but this version leaves 4 slot free for any needs.

Put this to some ones skull and your almost certain to kill them with both shots if not the first.

Mod it for short burst by firing both barrels at once. Double-Barrelled should mean something.

Yeah but the +1 dv isn't worth the slot take up in my mind an long with more slots and money.