So, they guys is a troll.
That means hes wearing a body armor, a shield and a helmet. Which gives him a nice 14 ballistic armor rating.
Seriously, how can bullets actually harm him? Everything get turned into stun damage.

Stun damage eventually turns into Physical damage. You just keep going at it. And, honestly, a Ballistic Armor rating of 14 isn't that hard to get for a combat type. Anyone with a Body of 6 can do about the same using nothing but an Armored Jacket (8/6), Form-Fitting Half-Body Armor (+4/+1), and SecureTech Vitals Protector and Body Casings (+2/+2) with absolutely no encumbrance. That's Ballistic 14/Impact 9, and it's easy to get your Impact up higher, too. It's also all perfectly reasonable for a typical runner.

If it bothers you and the characters are earning a reputation for being hard to kill, it wouldn't be out of the question to start having enemies carry ammo that helps. Any kind of taser or stick-n-shock attack will instantly halve their Impact armor, which is almost always lower than Ballistic to begin with, and APDS loaded into a shotgun or Ruger Super Warhawk can ruin anyone's day. Most forms of magic will ignore it completely, and security drones are often loaded with heavy weapons that can easily handle FA bursts. Called Shots are another official option, but the way they handle it is kind of weird; apparently, it's just as hard to hit an exposed area of someone wearing Armored Vest as it is someone wearing fully Armored Clothing with a Helmet. But that's the joy of an abstract system for you. Gotta take the good with the bad.

That said, trolls are supposed to be a bitch to kill. It's the main perk they get for their huge creation costs.

why do you think stun/=harm? a troll's stun monitor will almost ever be lower than the physical one, therefore he's out even faster than without converting.

edited for clarification refering to the following post

That's not really accurate, though. Without the armor, he'd be taking more boxes of Physical damage than he would be taking Stun damage with tons of armor. I'm pretty sure that unless he's a full conversion cyberlimb junkie or something, he's not going to have that much higher of a Physical Condition Monitor.

dont forget the non-conductive lining to four FFBA. electricity is the most common nonstandard damage type after all.

if you have 12 dice of baillistic armor, thats 3 or 4 less damage on average from soak. your 14 armor body 6 is going to soak an average of 6 boxes, enough to ignore a large amount of gun fire. the thing is thats an average- and the roll will botch eventually, and you will do a lot of damage all at once.

now, if you want to stop a troll? manabolt. willpower of 3 or 4 isnt enough to keep standing for long.

Doc is right, of course - figure every three points of armor works out on average to -1 on the incoming damage. That can be pretty huge, especially on a troll - a Body of 12 and Armor of 12 (both only average for Trog Shadowrunners) works out to -8 soak on average. That's a huge advantage.

Regarding the Physical/Stun track difference, though, I must respectfully disagree. Our Body 12 Troll from the previous example would have 14 boxes of Physical damage. If he has a decent Willpower of 4, he will have 10 boxes of Stun available. Given the amount of damage his armor will be mitigating, those 4 extra boxes could mean he keeps standing vs physical damage for at least one extra IP, and the sooner he goes down, the better.

Just my personal opinion, of course - I do a lot of autofire attacks, and justify the lousy armor penetration with the argument above. Stun puts them just as out of the fight, does it quicker, and once they're down you can ignore 'em, execute 'em, or interrogate them at your leisure.

Seconding what's being said here. When high armor becomes an issue, things like Fire, Magic and Sticky Shock become the solutions. Stun damage drops anyone faster than physical anyway, due to the reduced ability to resist it. And with the exception of low body/high willpower magic users, almost every single creature will have a smaller stun track than physical.

Over in the K-10 thread people were trying to brainstorm and 12 boxes of stun is the most that anyone can get without putting some serious Karma into Willpower after character creation. As soon as any damage track is filled, the character falls unconscious until some of the damage is healed. So, if all the damage you're doing is converted into stun, it's really easy to knock them unconscious. (Especially since most trolls have low Willpower.) In fact, the troll might stay up on his feet longer if he took some of the armour off and let some of the damage go physical instead.

I envision a system in which your armor has a quick-release system connected to a biomonitor, so once you get below (say) 3 boxes of stun, it automatically falls away, so you can start taking physical damage instead.

Yeah, that always bothers me. Alright, you barely won your brawl with Tyson, Little Mac, and you're about to fall over. However! It won't matter if I shoot you in both legs right? *BANG BANG* See? No problem, no difference. Well, except for you're bleeding... just don't bump your head!

I've been debating on a house rule that half of one monitor to be 'ghosted' on the other one for determining someone going unconscious. I say ghosted because it wouldn't add any more to the negative modifiers, but if you had, say, 6 stun and 6 physical, I'd check your consciousness against 9 boxes on both. Haven't implimented it to see the results yet though, just something I'd been tossing around.

Yeah, it's definitely an odd system. Sure beats straight-up hit points though. <shudders at the thought>

Maybe someone could come up with a system that, while keeping track of two different types of damage, determines unconsciousness based on the total negative modifiers of the combined tracks. For instance, say every time you suffer enough boxes to warrant a -1 modifier, you have to make an Essence + Willpower Test with a threshold equal to the modifier. And once the threshold reaches a certain level, you automatically fall unconscious no matter what.

Okay, so that example is pretty extreme and crippling, but you get the gist. Personally, I don't really care enough to put much thought into it. It works well enough for me.

You mean like my Lolth Touched Half Howling Dragon / Crystaline Troll Mineral Warrior? 250 "you can't hurt these" points.
(Ah, ECL 20, what can't you do?)

Well, Funk, for a quick and dirty, figure out what your max negative is (body or max), if you hit that max between the two charts, nighty night.

If I didnt know better I would swear the OP was talking about the troll in my campain. Body 8, Camo Suit, Ballistic shield, helmet, dermal implant 2, Aluminum bone lacing. For my poor NPCs its hard enough to hurt him, much less cause stun damage.

Goon: 3 pistols, 4 agility, smartlink = 9dice. avg 3 hits. (Ares Predator)
Troll: 8 reaction (6 + wired 2)=2-3hits average. So I normally barely hit.
Damage from predator: 5 base + 1 Net = 6p damage.
Troll soak: 8 body + 8 armor + 2 helm + 6 shield + 2 Bone Lacing =26 dice. 8-9 avg hits. No damage.

Even swapping in a assault rifle and a long burst only pumps the damage to 13. So a net of 4-5 stun damage.

Trolls are just beasts like that. I reccomend mages. Oh, and mounted MMGs or Panther Cannons.

Pain Editor.
You won't keel over untill your physical monitor is into overflow, as long as that thing is active.
I still don't see why people are actually COMLAINING about Trolls being REALLY tough.
It's the only thing they do better than most other things. Well, that and athletics where Strength/Body counts.
Trolls are SUPPOSED to take a Shotgun to the chest and barely cough.
Trolls are SUPPOSED to take the heavy pistol to the head and get to complain about a slight headache.
And stuff with regeneration might be easier to hurt, but it just keeps getting back up again.

If you think 14 armor is bad you should check out the Possession Tactical Manual thread. 50+ soak dice, 16 of it Hardened, makes GMs cry. Notably that thread also has a good deal of information about taking down ridiculously armored targets.

Great point. Pain Editor (and Adrenal Pump, if you're so inclined) both turn your entire stun track into "free" damage boxes for as long as they last. In SR4, I don't even see a downside to Pain Editor - presumably the GM could make you roleplay the whole lack of tactile feedback/doesn't realize he's bleeding out thing from previous editions. Was there ever any crunch for that, or was it all fluff? I think I remember the Shadowtalkers shuddering at what a bad idea it was.

Anyway, Pain Editor is part of my standard loadout for Prime Runners. Still, a few more Full Auto bursts will usually do the trick.

Yes, there was crunch for that:
You don't get to know how much your character has taken AT ALL.
Even your physical damage.
The GM simply applies the wound modifiers to your rolls.
When your Character DOES keel over without warning, your character is in overflow without you knowing.
You could more or less circumvent this with a bio-monitor.
Else, Pain-Editor is the be all end all of being nigh unstopable.

I'm working on it, but it involves frankensteining a system from dreampod9 onto SR4.

I still like the SR3 System better.
Staging down Damage is from physical to nothing and from stun to nothing.
And if stun goes into overflow, it goes into physical. and if physical goes into overflow, it goes into dead.

Speaking of pain editors and regenerating creatures does anyone know of any regenerating creature which can accept and have functional gene ware?

Anyone possessed by a great form plant spirit can manage it.

Shapeshifters can have high grade cyberware in their "original" (animal) form. They lose essence as normal, though, so you'd need to buy up magic before cybering or once you get any cyberware you lose your only point of magic and become stuck in your animal form forever. Or you can just stay "stuck" as a bear with a freaking laser embedded in your cybereyes and Wired Reflexes III with a smartgun skinlink in your paw or something, maybe using your new implanted ware to communicate with others via the Matrix since you can't talk anymore.

By the standard rules, shapeshifters can only accept deltaware. Geneware is not available as deltaware. I don't see why they can't accept a Pain Editor though.

Was thinking about if it is possible to have it encoded into their DNA so it becomes a 'normal' part of their nervous system using the gene heritage edge.

You know what's better than being able to absorb 90% of damage thrown at you?
Not getting shot because you thought to hide rather than lumber around with 3m² of Plexiglas on a handle.

If you're worried about sponging up bullets than you've already crapped out on your first two lines of defense.

I'm more worried about the MbW-sporting, Tacnet-assisted chamo-suiter who throws 14 infl dice and Dodges with 16.

Double up.
Unh-unh.