Why not just join the two damage tracks? You get 8+(Body + will)/4 damage boxes (or whatever). Then just add your total damage taken togeter, if you fill up your damage boxes, your are incapacitated.

Example:
Joe Genero has 10 damage boxes
He takes 5 stun and 5 physical, he is KO'ed.

This rule may require some entension of the damage track +2-3 boxes?

because if you do that, it sorta throws the whole' unconscious and living or unconscious and bleeding' bit out the window, and then it makes things more complicated as far as mages and several bits of ware go. How are you gonna adjust for that?

Also you may as well call that a "hit point" system and remove the S or P designators completely.

Personally I like the two damage types, as it allows for a second dimension of damage-dealing. It could use some tweaks for added realism, sure, but at some point "ease of play" beats out realism.

On the other hand, the unified damage system makes it easier to beat someone unconscious whom you have shot several times first.

You can be 'dying' with your condition monitor full of physical, or you can just be unconscious, with your physical + stun equalling your number of damage points.

You may as well cut the two bars in half or something then to help keep track or use the DnD numbers and make it officially hit point based on a low scale. Or something like that, heh.

Or you could use a single damage track and put a single line through a box if you suffer stun and put two crossed lines (that is, an "X") in the box if you suffer physical.

-Frank

Like in the WOD-System?

Just like exalted.
Stun damage = /
Physical Damage = X

So if you have three boxes of stun it reads: / / /
If you take two boxes of Phys you put an extra line through the first two slashes, and add the extra slashes onto the end of the track: X X / / /

This could make for interesting situations. Lets say you are dying (but awake) when an X reaches (10+Body) boxes, and fall unconscious when a / or an X reaches (10+Will) boxes. If your char has a higher Will than Body, he might be dying while awake, which should happen now and then. Once you start mixing Phys and Stun, it becomes way more likely that you will pass out long before you die since the / is always at the end of the track.

But then a super-high body only keeps you from dying, but doesn't keep you from passing out... That would even the playing field for humans. Not sure if that's a good thing.

there's a reason a troll is given an advantage over humans, as well as disadvantages. balancing them back out just makes them ugly humans.

You coulds till bleed to death while awake by a simple GM decision. perhaps a particularly powerful shot hit something vital, or else a called shot did it?

I got the devious idea last night, to inflict an equal amount of stun, everytime someone suffers physical (but not the other way round ). If armor is high enough, the char only suffers stun as usual.

That way, physical DV attacks would slow the opponent down much more than only stun. maybe its a bit heavy, have to test it, but I like my games a bit more deadly and I allways liked stimpatches and my players seldom use them

We switched over from Fuzion to Shadowrun when the new SR edition came out, but Fuzion had an interesting damage-tracking element that I liked. That system (or at least, the version we were playing) also has two damage tracks. A tough human would have around 30 physical hit points and roughly equivalent stun hit points.

Basically for every 5 full points of physical damage you took, you also got a "free" point of stun. Likewise, for every 5 full stun you got a point of physical. If you took 4 or less points from any one attack, you didn't get any rollover damage.

Example: I kicked a guy for 9 points once. He marked down 9 boxes of stun and 1 box of physical. If I had managed to squeeze in an extra point somehow, he would have taken 10 boxes of stun and 2 boxes of physical.

That way you could beat someone down with your fists, and while they'd recover from the stun damage quickly there was still some comparatively minor trauma (cuts, abrasions, busted lips, etc.) that lasted for a while. Likewise if someone gets shot or stabbed a lot but not taken down, they'd have a chance to recover some stun and catch their "second wind" as the minor stun damage goes away long before the wounds are healed up.

Damage recovery was on a different scale than Shadowrun, though. Stun damage went away in a matter of seconds (so "stun" is more of a "shock and disorientation" thing) while physical damage healed at, like, one point per day.

Anyway, there's something else on the table for you guys looking for alternatives to the RAW's damage tracking.

Interesting, I had ideas like this for a long wile, but never realized them in my games.

For SR, you could have 1 free for every 3 or so.

Which, of course, makes things more deadly.

For a similar, but less deadly, option, you could shift every third or fourth box to the other track, rather than adding a "free" box.

I like deadly. Gunfights and Knifestitching are deadly!

Is there any way that the shifted damage could be based on the armor you're wearing? Maybe add another stat for armor, or use a fraction of its rating...

I'm considering a 2:1 conversion rather than a 1:1, and rounding as appropriate.

Me, too.

He's saying that if the body armor causes a reduction from P to S, he uses the COMBINED TOTAL of ballistic and impact to reduce the stun damage... IE, your armored jacket (at 8/6) would provide 8 dice against a normal physical hit, or (8+6=)14 dice against a hit which was reduced to stun. Not a bad way to go about it.

If the round is usually resisted by impact armor, do you just double the value of the impact armor (flechette being a good example)?

Exactly.

Find the full rules in the newest version of SHP.

Serb, just put your SHP self-promotion into your sig. That way you won't need to keep bringing it up in your posts themselves.

What about stim patches, though? For 300y, you've got High Pain Tolerance 6. Mind you, I've had the book for all of, what, 3 days, now? And I've been too busy with my classload to actually sit down and read the damned thing, so it's all conjecture.

When a stim patch wears off, you get an extra point if I recall. SO it's a risky temp job. Also, I think that regardless of the patches, if you go over the limit you're screwed, or else you're gonna need a lot of quick slaps before you overdose and die or whatever.

Yeah, but a rating 6 patch lasts for one hour.

EDIT: Wait a second. Isn't the base time to reduce stun damage one hour?

And note that a stimpatch negates your capacity to rest.

Oh, that's cute... I thought they lasted noticeably longer, for some reason.

I've got a shaman in my crew who uses stimpatches to hold himself together during huge summons. I should probably learn them inside and out.