Consider the following situation: You've been captured by corpsec, they're drawing a bead on you and your hands are on your head. You decide it's time to make a move, so you go for your concealed holdout.

How should this be modeled mechanically? Obviously, it calls for some sort of surprise test to see if the corpsec can react before you pull out your gun. The corpsec is alerted, so they're at +3 - but aren't you "alerted" too, since you know what you're about to do? So then it's just even odds, as if you and the guard had stumbled into each other whilst on patrol.

Personally, I'd let the corpsec squeeze off a free shot before anyone actually rolled anything, but I'm curious as to how others would deal with this.

Just a regular initiative roll here. I'd say roll for initiative, draw weapon, ready it and fire. If you can quickdraw, all the better.

To be honest, you deserve to get shot in the head for deciding that such a wretched time to make your move was the best time to make your move.

As you described it, the guards are essentially holding their action and/or spending all that time with Take Aim actions. You make even the faintest attempt to not do what they tell you and it's just a simple reaction to squeeze that trigger. Think of it this way: How would your players feel if the situation was reversed and you let your NPCs get the upperhand in that situation? It wouldn't be very realistic at all.

In order to have any chance at Hell of initiating a Surprise Test, you need to do something to set it up. When they lower their weapon to cuff you, when one gets close enough for you to make a viable attempt to disarm and use him as a living shield, whatever. Until then, you bide your time. You sure as Hell don't think to yourself, "Okay, I got ten guns aimed at my skull and my hands are up on the back of my head, time to reach into my jacket and pull out my gun!!!"

As long as the player can double the initiative score of the guards I would allow it. Else the guards can fire first.

This is exactly the situation the 'Spend An Edge to Win Initiative' rule is for.

Let the corpers get the first shot UNLESS the player in question has at least three or more init and at least one more IP, then roll for surprise and let the winner act first.

Also, my players would be more likely to "well, I'm currently channelling my ally spirit, so that's, what, immunity to normal weapons 5? Okay, I think I can take the shot. Let him fire!"

You die. If they are holding you at gunpoint they think you are threat. They are essentially waiting for you to do something that suggests they have to shoot you. It takes at least a second to draw a gun from that position. In a second they all have fired at least 3 times. Idiocy has it's own reward.

The question isn't actually that stupid, as some may think it is.

Realisticaly, you can attempt a disarm in such a situation, but it requires several prerequisites to end with an outcome other than a bullet hole in your head:

You need to shift the focus of the guards aiming for you away from immideate danger
While they are expecting resistance, they will remain catious and react towards each of your movements as a potentially threatening move. In other words, they will pull the trigger. Therefore you would need to put them at ease before you make your move. Pretend submission. Follow their orders. Make them think they have full control over the situation.
In game terms this would be a con roll.

You need to get in range
Forget about the idea with the holdout. Your first move will be for the weapon. That's precious time lost. Your first move should be for their weapon. Get close. If they walk behind you, walk slow, so they start pushing you. If they walk to your side, stumble bit every now and then. If they walk in front of you, they deserve to get shot with their own weapons.
It is a bit tougher to put this into game terms, but I would recommend to handle it with the same con roll you used to shift their focus away from immideate danger.

You need to get out of harms way
Once you make your move, they will shoot at you. It is therefore imperative that you get something between yourself and their LoF. Preferably one of them as your meatshield. In an ideal world, the one you took the weapon from.
IN game terms, this would be a subdual combat move.

You need to get their gun
It's not enough to have a meatshield, you also need a gun. Grabbing your own holdout is an option, but if you are going to use a meatshield, you need to get their gun away from them as well. You might as well kill two birds with one stone here.
In game terms, this is a disarm.

To handle Initiative when you make your move, I would take the Con roll into consideration. If they feel at ease, I would roll Initiative normally (it's not really a surprise for them that you attack). If they are still cautious, I would either treat it as an ambush on their part (meaning they get the +6 bonus for the surprise test), or as a triggered delayed action for the Corp Goons.

I hope that bit of info helps.

if its a mage, then this is why you have spirits summoned to help you. letting the mage live a few seconds is enough for him to unleash a lot of fire elemental fun. your way.

in general though? i say a lot depends on what guns/ammo they have, how augmented they are compared to you, and what armor you have. a very well-armored troll faced with a half-dozen assault rifles at short range could be tough enough to live through some stupidity.

situations like this are why some upgrades will put a holdout in your EYE.

Well to be fair you might (probably not) be able to dodge long enough to get a shot off... but yeah, you're pretty much toast.

If you're a mage you can cast an AOE combat spell without even twitching to give away your plan...

Drone rigger has, um, similar options.






-karma

Plays a character that is both a mage AND a drone rigger. Among other things.

No surprise possible for in this situation. Both sides see each other clearly and know each other to be hostile. You'd have to pop a weapon out of no-where or have a convenient distraction handy - so unless you have an implanted weapon, are a magician, a buddy nearby, or have some other ace in the hole, you're SOL.



That's how I'd handle it, but I'd only allow one simple action before the guard got off a delayed action. Maybe it's not RAW, but this sort of situation is what reaction enhancing ware is for. Besides, there is just something cool about the mental image of a street sam out drawing and shooting a guy who already had a gun drawn.



Yep. Though one wonders how much edge this particular shadowrunner has left if he/she got into this position in the first place...

Suddenly, Joe thought to himself that buying that adrenaline rush quality wasn't such a bad idea after all.

Spend a point of Edge. Go first in a pass.

I like the interpretation of the guards being the ones having a delayed, aimed action to shoot you ready. If you so much as announce an action, they'll use theirs to fire. This includes spellcasting, if they notice it (remember that the threshold for noticing it is 6-Force).

However, IF you can get them to somehow spend their delayed action, you can call for initiative. This could be when they're distracted by something, if you shake their nerve with a very good social test, of when they move to cuff you. At that point, you still need to win initiative, but that's where Edge comes in handy.

There are a handful of other ways:

- A very hard contested Palming vs. Perception check to grab your holdout without them noticing (if they allow you to move your hands).

- An Eye gun.

- Mental command to a spirit.

- Some Adept powers, like Commanding Voice.

Rules as Written, the corpsec are delaying their actions, & automatically go first when they decide to intervene. Shadowrun does not handle "readied" actions such as this very well, as the guy with an Initiative of 2 (1 Rea + 1 Int), suffering a -3 penalty from Wound Modifiers, with a single pass, will automatically go before the Initiative 15 (9 Rea + 6 Int) with four passes if he has a delayed action. This is bullshit. People can and do act successfully before readied actions can be executed in real life. I suggest ruling it the same way that it is run in my game.

If a character attempts to execute a Delayed Action in response to another action, a Surprise Test is made, with the delaying character receiving a +3 dice pool modifier. If they fail, they cannot act in response to the action, instead acting after.


When I am actually awake tomorow, & assuming I remember, I will find & post my clearer, more precise ruling.

Just thought Adrenaline Rush would be a humorous and very apt quality to have in this situation. So would 7 edge, but as someone said, if they're in the situation, they probably could use some more edge, not have an excess of it.

You are confusing two things here. "Readied action" is not just aimin the gun at the target alone. It is specific focus of attention, evaluating the situation for specific trigger conditions (like supisious movement) to execute a predetermined action (note: I am not talking about the wording of the rules, but the psychological concept behind it, since your excemple referred to real applications).

As long as the focus of the "guard" is on you and your actions several factors will be involved:

-It will stay out of your reach
-It will react to each of your movements
-It will be prepared

If you use real life applications, like in Krav Maga to name an excemple, you rely on suprise. You cannot surprise an opponent that expects a specific action. Not in SR and not in RL, either. To suprise him, you need to shift his expectations, or in other words, his attention focus.
That's exactly what I mentioned in my previous post. You neeed to put them "at ease". Have them believe they have the situation under control and most importantly that they have you docile. Only if they no longer believe you to be a threat, will you have the chance to get close enough for a direct action.

You may want to check demonstrations of disarming/subduing moves against an armed opponent in a ready action. They all start with sign of submissions (raised hands, palms towards opponent, downwards gaze, lowered chin, slumped shoulders, bent knees, bent back, ect...)
The purpose of all these initiators is to signal false submission, to shift the attention focus of your opponent.

I can go into detail, if you want me to, but it should be clear from here on.

A great deal depends on whether you are in the middle of combat, or have gone out of combat and starting combat again.

If you are in the middle of combat and the scenario occurs;
Mechanically if the Guard is on a Delayed action and the PC isn't, the guards get to use their Delayed action before the PC can act.

If both the Guard and the PC are on Delayed Actions, they both act at the same time.

"Characters who have held an action and
intervened in this manner go before anyone who is normally taking
his action during that Action Phase. If multiple characters delay their
actions until the same Action Phase, they act at the same time"

If you are out of combat, not rolling initiative, not using IP and declarations etc, then you are in a Surprise situation. and the Surprise rules can be used. (Once the PC "Gave up" this is likely a moment that the GM can consider as going off combat mode)
Mechanically I would have the guards be ambushers and have the +6 modifier, the PC can also get the +3 alerted to the ambush modifier, and roll surprise Initiative test as normal.

Note that Surprise in Combat only applies to new combatants arriving during the middle of a combat.

Optionally, for flavor, the PCing using a non combat skill as a means of offsetting the situation, such as creating a distraction, is entirely reasonable and fun to allow.

I'm away from my books right now so i could be wrong, but I know that when two or more characters act on the same initiative, they act simultaneously. The only thing i'm not sure of is about delayed actions....whether you simply act at that initiative for that pass, or if your action actually takes place before the interupted action.

If its the first, then all parties involved declare their actions and then you watch the events unfold. You draw your weapon as your first action. Their first action is shoot you in the face. If your still alive, you shoot somebody with your next action. at the same time they shoot you again.

If you quickdraw then you may be able to justify you getting your first shot off as they are as well.

If delayed actions act as interupts, your out of luck (by RAW).

Your only chance is breaking their delayed actions, either by distraction or putting them at ease.

How about a quick question to another runner also in their sights?

"Boss?"
"What?"
"Should I tell them about the explosives we planted everywhere?"

Either that, or use AR hacking to trigger fire alarm. Should be an easier hack than most and various fire-suppression systems are likely to provide a major distraction to corpsec.

"If two characters get the same score, then they act simultaneously. If for some reason it is imperative to determine which one acts first, compare attributes to see who has the highest Edge, Initiative, or Reaction (resolving ties in that order)." (SR4A, p.144)

"Characters who have held an action and intervened in this manner go before anyone who is normally taking his action during that Action Phase. If multiple characters delay their actions until the same Action Phase, they act at the same time. Note that a delayed character can choose to intentionally act after another in an Action Phase, but only if he would normally have gone before." (SR4A, p.145)

So, RAW is that someone who delays their action goes before whoever they are interrupting unless they choose to go second.

If we're talking Real Life here, I'll throw in the fact that reaction time is about 3/4s of a second on average. You might be able to shave it down to half a second if you are intently waiting for something.

For a hyper-wired street sam, half a second can be an eternity.





-karma

Nobody's thought of putting the holdout in a hidden (cyber)arm slide yet? If they haven't scanned or searched you yet, there's no way they'll know it's there until you trigger it. Wait for them to relax, possibly helping things along with a Con check, then pop the gun into your hand and start rolling dice.

That's not the point though, even if you mention it only half-joking. If it is down to reaction alone, the one with the gun aimed at your head wins. Period. The point is to shift his focus from wathing your every move to perceived certainty that he is in total control over you.

A 4IP character does not only react in 3/4ths of a second, hge also punches you in the face or casts a spell or lets rip with an assault cannon barrage.

That said, that's; the maximum for anyone not in a drone so half a second ain't an eternity, even if you have 12/13 reaction.

Oh, I'm not saying you can accomplish a heck of a lot in 3/4 of a second. But perhaps you can shift just enough such that the incoming fire is merely horribly damaging rather than instantly lethal.

Try this. Have a friend dangle a dollar bill in the air. Place your fingers on either side of the bill ready to grab it the moment your friend releases it. Tell your friend to get go of the bill sometime in the next 30 seconds but not to tell you when. Most folks will be completely unable to stop the dollar bill from falling to the floor. This is even though they only have to twitch their fingers a fraction, and are intently watching for the bill to drop.

The farther from you the opponent is standing the better, of course. Trying this when he's standing just outside the reach of your lunge might not work so well.

A person's reaction time can be greatly impacted by distractions as well. This is why when going into a hostile environment my main SRM character often drops a goodie bag (or three) somewhere on the way in, that can be remote activated with a mental command. You'd be surprised how distracting it is to the guy pointing the gun at you, when the world seems to explode around him. Additionally, if you are instead just trying a 'hot' exit from the site, the opponent's motor pool going up in flames works surprisingly well in preventing pursuit.

=)



-karma

While it is distinctly possible in real life for someone to pull it off it is rare enough that shadowrun did not want to model you getting the drop on people who are holding an action to plug you. House rule wise I think I'd require a critical success on an opposed initiative test, and they better make there fast draw check because they only get a simple action.

Now a concealed arm slide is an example of a built in distraction, a palming success and they won't see it coming.

But normally you need a

----------------------------->
Look it's a distraction. (the actual line I always use in these situations)

Where did you get that figure? The commonly cited one for braking response time is 2/3 sec.

For the situation posited here (held action, simple trigger), http://www.humanbenchmark.com/tests/reactiontime/index.php is a good simulation. Somebody with a smart gun might even be slightly faster, as no keystroke / trigger motion is required.

Try it. Out of 10 trials, I had 4 that were around 225, and 6 just over 200. Apparently the overall site average is 215Ms. They say adrenaline (such as from holding a gun on a violent criminal) can improve reflexes a bit...

Besides, screw holding the guy at gunpoint to get out cuffs. Its a pretty sure bet one of the guards is just gonna pull out a taser and pop your ass while his buddies have you in the sites.

Was actually quite a while ago, actually. Some psychology class, actually. Dunno, I suppose it'd vary depending on the situation and how much adrenalin was pumping through your system. Which is why I commented it might be as little as half a second.



That'd be the smart thing, yes. Don't talk, don't demand surrender, just pop the taser and deal with the guy when you have him in a cage.



-karma

Yeah, I'm a fan of Adrenaline Rush for sure, thing is...



vs.



means that, according to the rules, Edge can make you go first regardless of a held action, unless the guy with the held action also spends Edge. But, as has been pointed out, anyone can hold an action so long as there are still IPs going on. So, you spend Edge, they spend Edge, they've held their Action, so you hold an Action. Everything cancels out, and it's still just a straight up Initiative contest.


Changing gears for a second here..
Another instance in which I think a surprise test may also come into play is for a hidden smartgun in the arm slides. Since they can be fired with a thought by anyone with the proper setup, a character could be raising their hands to their head and, as part of that action, have the range of motion to point the guns at anyone who isn't directly behind them. But, in this case, a surprise roll does nothing here but negate their reaction/dodge.

Huh. Interesting. Didn't know some of that. XD

So, grabbing someone and using them as a body shield, what would that be, subduing rolls on them?

That's how I would handle it. Tehcnically, the "subduing combat" relates to "take them to the ground and hold them there" but I consider it a rather limited application of the core concept of subdual combat in the first place.
Comparing it to many other forms of martial arts, especially the ones dealing with modern firearms, subdual combat is more about control than getting the opponent to the ground. Especially since when you are both on the ground, you are actually at a disadvantage against more than one opponent.

Hence, why we use the subdual combat for standing holds as well as ground holds.
That could be considered a house roule, though, depending on how literal you wish to take the description of subdual combat:



On the other hand, that interpretation would question the purpose of some of the special combat options available against opponents nin a subduing lock:



My personal interpretation: The reason the character is considered prone is not because it actually is prone, but to use an existing dice pool modifer to reflect the advantage the attacker holds over the locked down target. If you want to take him to the ground, you need an additional attack to knockdown to do so.

This reminds me of a Miami Vice episode when a modern gunfighter type dupes two officers into relaxing because his "hands up in surrender" posture was actually a decent ready position for him to fast draw. His hands were up/palms out but only to face level, and there is very, very little difference in draw time from that position as opposed to hands down by your sides.

Tasers aside, the clear command for hands up should be more explicit...hands on top of your head, interlock your fingers, etc.

RPing the above Miami Vice scene, I'd allow the gunfighter a Con test, although many other methods mentioned here are viable.

Hands up at shoulder height is a standard IPSC start position. But it's still slower than having the hands at the gun.

In a class we had a 21 foot drill where a dummy approaches you, then charges you, you needed to challenge it as it approaches, then shoot it and step off the line of attack before it reached you. One Federal agent had serious issues with not getting the gun out in time until he realized he could grip the pistol as he challenged. That made a huge difference in speed.

I've had some training in this in a martial arts class.

First off, we were warned extensively just to cooperate with the guy with the gun instead of taking this risk.

The idea was to be within hand's reach of the gun, with your hands raised at about head height. (The maneuver only works if you're close to the gunman.)

You twist your body left, and push the gun to the right, then grab it with both hands and twist it to point at the attacker. After that's it's follow-up.

My gut reaction says,

There is a loud gunshot followed by a player creating a new character.

Mechanically my gut reaction is that there are two actions taking place on the part of the character,
Drawing the weapon.
And then firing the weapon.

Mechanically for the secguard there is one action.
Pulling the trigger.

Am I missing something?

RL?
I can give you half dozen examples were police and criminals exchange fire where they both miss with the first shot, both shoot each other, cop hits bad guy, bad guy hits cop. And we are talking about distances of less than 10'.
RL, I would bet on a high priced attorney over being able to draw, fire and hit a trained officer wearing a bullet proof vest and trauma plate.