The skill caps are more a way to establish some agreements among my players and I. It not only limits the pc's low skills -I think the argument saying that 12 success maximum for a skill 6 character will never bother him/her, is very good-, it also limits the npc's low skills. It makes the game a bit more gritty mechanically, and huge amounts of successes become somewhat more rare.

Now its not a mechanic implemented towards avoiding min/maxing and the munchkinization that a knowledgeable player can accomplish with a given character. After seeing lots of posts about this problem, I came to the conclusion that the /only/ really effective way to stop this is to speak and communicate with your players.

In the case of characters with no skill, they are capped to 1 success. If your dodge is 2 the maximum successes you can accomplish with any action that involves dodge is the skillx2. Alternatively you can dodge or avoid blows, shots, stabs, etc with other skills. And if you are afraid to die, then use edge, since it blows those caps.

In the playing experience with these rules I can say the effects they produced were the following:

1) Edge becomes an even more desired attribute. Mechanically its benefits are better than in a regular game.

2) Players were avoiding maximum skills (i.e: skills at 6) and had lots more skills at the 2-4 range.. Specializations are good, but only after the skill it applies to is at 2 or more.

3) Skills at 1 will be trained with karma to 2 in the shortest time possible.

4) Wide skill groups benefit a lot the character. He now has /more/ skills with /higher/ maximum number of successes. Almost every character on the table had all the social skill group at 2, at least, for example.

5) Extended tests, specially with the automatic success rule enforced, were really extended tests. The downtime was easily regulated (I knew how long it would take the players to train X, or to customize that bike they received for Christmas from their fixer -it did happen-). This came along with me using the time sheets the missions files have, and rolling for a random time that would elapse between missions. This meant sometimes players weren0t completely healed before the next assignment, or that the skill they just bought wasn't fully trained ye. The test for the mission thing was an extended test against a challenge of 4 to 6/1 week and the players rolled their street cred, they could help each other to put in more dice into the pool and could use edge that would be unavailable for the next mission.

6) Magicians bonuses were somewhat under control and the amount of spirits and services was also somewhat limited. It didn't gimp them, since they could use edge to remove caps or roll or assume success with 4 left over successes (by burning an edge point) when summoning was important, but for the day to day summonings and bindings rating 3-4 were used a lot. And the group had 2 full magicians and one mystic adept at one time, they never complained that their characters were underpowered, which leads me to think that the rule was effective. This in turn with the 4 dice equal 1 success would mean less rolling, since they would use that for drain tests when they were not in a fight. This would make summoning of lesser force spirits also a great benefit (the spirit did roll for the drain test). For technomancers and sprites this is analogous.

Now, the system I used does generate a mechanic feeling of slight low-powered, more "realistic" world (I use the word with care, hardly realistic where you have gun-toting ork magicians with cybereyes). But no matter what mechanic you use, in the end, the campaign will have the flavor you give to it by your descriptions. In this case I used lots of pink mohawk fashion elements with dark constant rain and dangerous gangs. It was a brutal dark-pink gothic punk atmosphere, that some mechanics tried to support, but the main idea comes from descriptions. As for lethality, imprint that as a feeling rather than as number crunching for better effect. No need for assault cannons to have the players feel threatened, a good description of a hold-out pistol held to the head can make the player /feel/ the threat instead of starting an arms race between GM and players to achieve /more/ dice every time.

I just remembered another effect of the skill establishing a cap for hits. Critical success (where you succeed by a 4 hit margin over the difficulty) is rare and only accomplished by those with a skill of 3 or more.

P.S: Forgot how to edit my past post, so I had to do another reply.

Does this mean that if you're rolling your 8 reaction to avoid getting shot (AND NOT DODGE or any other skill), you're still capped to Dodge skill *2?

I can't really figure out the causality between this effect and the hit limit of skill*2.
Why would a hit limit their unlikely to ever reach, make people to avoid maxed skills?
Or do you mean that becouse they needed point to raise their low skills to at least 2 at chargen, everyone took those points from their main skills and just never bothered to raise them to 6 in play for what ever reason?

A fluff way to make the game more leathal (no crunch necessary):

While wearing discrete body armor is acceptable, obvious and heavy body armors will raise eye brows and attention for local authorities (be it corp/lone star/KE/or local fuzz). As such, if a player has more than 2X his body stat assume it is obvious. The security forces would be wondering why this guy is wearing enough armor to take on a small army and being paranoid would assume the worst.

The result of this is that the armored tank troll, while he may not be immediate arrested for walking down the street--he would be watched. At the first sign of criminal activity he would be arrested. Probably involving mage or other armor bypassing methods of attack.

In otherwords pull out the high powered rifle/shot gun. Even if he does survive the shot-he most likely will be made combat ineffective (most likely unconcious).

This of course would also apply to Barrens, but in that case--gangers might think of it as a challenge/threat to take out.

When going this route, it would be a good idea to warn the players that wearing too much armor has these consequences (knowledge sec procedures/ettiquet roll). If they ignore it, don't be shy to bring the heavy guns.

No. Certainly no.
If you use gymnastics to avoid a shot, you are capped by that skill's rating.
If you have no dodge, no gymnastics and only reaction, you are capped at 1 success.



I don't know why they never aimed for the 6. Its expensive, and maybe the benefit of it is not worth the karma or BP cost? I think the players preferred to have more skills in the 2-4 range, than a few in then highest ranges, since with a 4 they had solid results...
Again, I am merely saying what I noticed happened in my campaign.
Also the players weren't forced to raise skills to 2, its just the jump in maximum successes from a skill 1 (2 hits) to a skill in 2 (4 hits) is huge and tempting, thus they did it very often.

The default defense against guns is reaction. You just made it that much easier to kill someone.

There's no reason to default ever.

What about resisting spells? if I have no counterspelling is my willpower roll capped at 1?

I wouldn't think so. Just as damage resistance wouldn't have a cap, spell resistance wouldn't either - counterspelling or no.

Well, the name of the thread is "more lethal options."

I offer a caveat: its been more than a year since last I touched a SR rulebook -and, yes, nostalgia is setting in- so with the dodge mechanic I may be wrong. I was working from memory and the last posts make me doubt the result. In any case I still think the answer is the same, unless there is an explicit rule quotation that contradicts my ruling (that's the way I roll with players too).

Now, about resisting damage from spells it works just as soaking does. Counterspelling dice help in reducing the hits generated by opposition.

I seem to remember a rule that said that if dodge hits or counterspelling hits equal or surpass those of the spell of shot, or stab or whatever you avoid all damage. Anyone can confirm this, please by RAW?

No no no no.

You have 8 reaction, 2 dodge.

You get shot, have no dodge declared, so you roll raw Reaction (only 8 dice).

How are your hits capped?



Also this. Non-magical characters can't get counterspelling.

I'd cap it by dodgge, since that is the action even if the skill dice are not added to the roll.
In that case the cap would be 4 successes (from dodge 2).

I don't have a ton of hands on experience with the lethality of combat SR4, but could someone fill me in- isn't it already pretty lethal? Especially compared with older editions?

A security grunt with Pistols 3, Agility 3 and a smartlinked Ares Predator IV has 8 dice for his attack test, assuming no modifiers. He can fire two shots per initiative pass, with the second at -1 (unless he has RC). Your average combat-focused shadowrunner doubtless has as reasonably good Reaction to defend with, but 8 dice is surely still enough to make a successful hit a reasonable possibility (unless the runner uses a full defense action and can add his gymnastics/dodge, which he pays for with a future initiative pass). Even if the runner has a Reaction of 6, the grunt will still have 2.66 hits to the runner's 2, on average. His base DV with the predator is 6 (5+1 net hit), assuming no special ammo. The pistol has AP -1, so the damage will be physical unless the runner has at least 6 armor. I realize that getting more than 6 armor is fairly easy, but doing so without worrying about encumbrance or concealment is less so- yes? Certainly non-combat focused characters will be much less likely to have astronomical armor values.

However, even if we assume the grunt is firing on a troll sammy with armor exceeding that of a tank, he's resisting 6S. To completely shrug off the pistol shot, he needs, on average, a combined Armor+Body of at least 18. A troll with 15 body and full heavy milspec armor (and helmet) may have the 33 dice to do this easily, but other runners would have a more difficult time with it. Even that troll would take damage about 2% of the time. Which isn't unreasonable really, for that amount of armor. A runner with a still-respectable 18 dice (before AP) for the damage resistance test would take damage about 40% of the time. Sure, a box or two of stun once isn't anything to worry about, but that grunt gets two shots per phase, and there's likely more than one grunt to worry about. Give those grunts some better weapons, such as Remmington 990s firing EX Explosive slugs, and things are even grimmer: the base damage is now 9 (7+1 net hit+1 from ammo) with -2 AP. The 18 dice runner (reduced to 16 after AP) would take damage 95% of the time, for on average 4 boxes. Even the super troll, rolling 31 dice (33-2 AP), would take damage about 25% of the time, usually for about 2 boxes a shot.

Now, these examples are figuring run of the mill grunts with low availability weaponry straight out of the BBB. When you start encountering opposition with the same kinds of 'ware, guns and skill that the runners have access to.. things only get bloodier.

So.. why do you need to make things more lethal?

I can see wanting to make injury more lasting- going from 1 box away from true death to completely healed in a day or two is entirely possible with a high body character, and is silly if magic isn't involved. Still- that should be as easy as increasing the healing extended test interval. Why not make it a number of days equal to the current number of boxes on the injured character's physical track? Throw in injury penalties as well, if you want it to be even harder.

See, under your rule, it takes [10] Capacity to reach +1 Armor, but only [5] to reach +1 Body. And Body is more valuable; it increases hit points, maximum worn armor and it soaks damage just as well as Armor.

Better, in fact, as body can't be reduced by AP. The trade of is that without armour you'll be taking P damage more often, which isn't a small thing.

One thing I'll be implementing, but may only be relevant for my NPCs, is partial cyberlimbs don't add 1 hitbox per partial limb.

Fixed that for you.

Um. "It's possible" means the same thing as "you can", and there are no tanks in SR4 to compare.

Moot-ish point, but I guess. It should be noted that vehicle armor only goes to 20 though, so that should be a note.

I seriously expect WAR to change that particular rule, if it gives stats for tanks.

Actually, S damage is just as bad as P damage. Many characters have more P hit boxes. Capture is usually catastrophic, so passing out from S is just as unacceptable as going down from P.

Stun is usually worse for most characters than P. Most characters will have a higher Body than Will (leading to more boxes) and the mage would rather keep both tracks at about the same level and adding 4 stun inhibits their ability to cast reasonable spells (e.g. not overcasting).

I wouldn't go that far. Stun can be healed very quickly, while Physical requires magic and/or a great healing check (Body) to begin with. Yes, there are circumstances in which getting Stunned is no better than bleeding, but it's not 'worse'.

Or first aid. Enough dice on first aid, followed by enough dice on a Heal spell and voila, the party's ready to go again in a matter of minutes.

The mage just can't heal his overcasting drain, which is why he'd rather get shot and take P, saving his stun track for spells.

Right. That's a very special circumstance. Like I said, you'd *need* a good First Aid + a good Heal.

I have never really understood this mentality... Since when is it more acceptable to DIE than it is to be Captured? In what reality is this the case. Being captured opens up whole new vistas of opportunity for a Shadowrunner... While Death, is just that... Death...

Can someone please explain this to me where it makes even a SHRED of sense?

My group uses a lot of the more lethal options such as: +2 damage, no reaction test without being defensive. We also trade in a lot of the dice pool modifiers for +threshold at a rate of 3 to 1. Makes for faster, deadlier combat and less die rolling. It also makes players behave more "realistic" in regard to being shot at
Works great for me!

Trading 3:1 eliminates a lot of the fun randomness, though.

Because the bad things likely to happen when you're captured are nearly as bad, or worse, than death. (Loss of gear, execution, medical experiments, cranial bombs, Tamanous, etc.) Sure, maybe the environmentalists won't do that, but if you get captured by insect spirits or in a zero zone, you're as good as dead anyway.

It's also a system quirk; if you take 50% S and 50% P damage, it takes twice as long before you're incapacitated as when all damage is routed to S or P. So it's advantageous to spread damage around a bit.

Loss of Gear can be replaced...
Execution is GM Driven, so is not a foregone conclusion...
Medical Experiments are a source of interesting game story effects...
Cranial Bombs are a form of persuasion...
Tamanous is also GM Driven, so not a foregone conclusion....
etc...

It would be Exceptionally rare to find someone (anyone) who will fight to the death, rather than just surrender when confronted with overwhelmong opposition. You will live to fight another day (likely) and it has the capability (also likely) of spawning so many stroy hooks. Why would you not allow such things to occur? Why would you choose to just throw a life away? I would say that you wouldn't, and doing so would be a Metagame choice...

And yes, before you ask, I have allowed myself to be captured. And yes, it sucked for the character (loss of gear, cyber and even bioware... Incarceration, etc.) but was not the end of the world. In the end, it gave me a chance to plan my escape and rejoin my group (under a new identity) and plan my retribution on those who had betrayed me. Yes, I also had to spend a fairly large chunk of money to replace all the gear and 'ware that had been removed from my character. But it was fun, and created a very interesting story line that I am STILL pursuing. And interestingly enough, I managed to also parley all of that crap into 3 very influential contacts and more than a dozen additional contacts that were a little less influential. All becuase I did not force the opposition to just whack me out of turn. And no, I did not end up less powerful for my time invested during my incarceration... In fact, the character is one of the most influential (if not THE most influential) character in the party because of it. Not bad for a former Company Man (Knight Errant Cyberlogician). Of course, this may be because the character had a fairly detailed backstory, with a ton of plot hooks (most which have YET to be resolved).

On the other hand, if the GM is just going to kill you anyways (instead of using all the potential plot hooks to add to the story), then yes, no reason not to take as many of them down as you can before they take you down.

Anyways.

Suppose a regular Joe with Body and Willpower 3. He has 10 boxes in both Stun and Physical. If he takes 10S, he's down. If he takes 5S+5P, he's still fighting with only -2 penalty.

Going down in combat is bad. Getting captured is bad; not getting executed (eaten, dissected, possessed) is GM fiat too. If you're captured by MCT, ghouls, Tamanous, insect spirits, sadistic thrill-kill gangers or anyting like that, you have no IC reason to expect survival.

That you have "more hit points" if you split the damage halfway is really a kind of bug in the game system. I personally like White Wolf's system where there are several damage types in a single condition monitor better; if the sum of P and S damage is enough, you'll go down. That way, common sense and rules sense start being the same again.

Everytime I scroll past this thread I think of Less Lethal Munitions. Which gets me thinking of MORE Lethal Munitions.


I can only suggest APDSEX-EX.

I would like to try all of those... The 4:1 I use, except not in combat... but lowering it to 3:1 sounds very interesting... it would simply mean to maintain more secrecy in regards of results on NPC?s and rely more description so the players may be surprised with results.

On the other hand: Alpha Blue was a Johnson, former samurai, in a 2 ed adventure: "Eye Witness", she was one of the hottest characters in an adventure and one I have used recurrently.
Kudos for the nick, brings good memories

Technically, it could be 'raising' it to 3:1. It just means that everyone trades dice into *more* hits; this tends to favor whoever has a bigger DP.

Lowering the exchange rate was what I was thinking, but yeah essentially the same thing.
And yes it favours big DP, which I don't mind... Rolling more dice does that too, so I think I missed your point, because besides the mathematical differences that might come of it, the point is moot: A bigger Dice Pool is beneficial to the one who has it.

I just meant that 4:1, 3:1, whatever, doesn't make the game more *or* less lethal. What it does do (and I did say earlier) is remove all the randomness. Which means that the people with bigger DPs can much more reliably win everything. If it's 10 dice against 6, sometimes the 6 will roll better. 10 (3 trade-in) against 6 (2 trade-in) will never lose. That's all. And runners tend to have the bigger DPs

It works in other places, too. For example, if I have Body 5 and Armor 10, I'm positive I'll block 5 boxes every time. Which means I can ignore things that might otherwise be threats. Be creative, you can find other examples.

Ah ok, now I see what you meant.

Which is not to say you can't streamline things at all. Exalted 2e, for example, precalculates everything on the defense side of the equation, while leaving all offense rolls as rolls. This removes some of the randomness, but less, and also gives preference in the game toward 'predictable not-dying'.

Streamlining is certainly a consideration. I don't think I'd force it on my players but I'd certainly consider it for bad guys, with the exception of prime runners and their equivalents.

Be very careful about that. Such NPC favoritism is pretty obvious to players and may tip your hand as to who is important before you're ready to. One time I took a pot shot at a new adversary, and when the GM bought hits on D (a prime runner houserule) my old roommate promptly piped in with "Give him a burst, he's got Plot Armor!"

Everyone laughed but the GM. Eventually he just went back to RAW.

That's a quote for the archive. Hehe.

Plot armor is hard to do well, sometimes.