The point is not the rules, the point is the intend of the rules.

The intend is: The more hits you score, the better the result is.

If a player does announce, that he wants to knock somebody out, and he starts building up dices, then I have to think about how to handle the situation.

I could go with: The more net hits the better.
Or I could allow to withhold dices to adjust the nethits down afterwards(if wanted).
Or I should plain tell, I wont allow anything. (I would go like this with magic, maybe)

But to punish the player for not thinking into game mechanics is Bullshit and a real fun killer.
Why is that so?
Because there are a lot of game mechanics, which do not work very well.
If the GM starts going down this road, there might be player to follow. (Some maybe just because they are pissed)
And there comes essence free cyberware down your way.

If that's the case then the girl's dead, Jim.

He poored everything he had into hitting her, but wasn't taking enough care to not-try and kill her.

If the GM wants to get a little creative, maybe the shot blew her leg out from under her and she fell into traffic and got hit by a car.

That's why you wait for the result, if your dice pool is high enough, and use Edge (to re-roll any dice that did not score a hit) afterwards.

Bye
Thanee

Ok. Tidying up a bit and clarifying some stuff.

1) I (as the GM) didn't let the girl die but there was some discussion about it and I wanted to know what others think and if there might be some rule I overlooked that allows to drop net hits.

2) The girl had some stun damage. The player used a capsule round with narcojet. What would really have happened (if we didn't make there a mistake which led to less damage actually…): the capsule round deals loads of damage with so many successes and then comes the Narcojet with its 10S.

3) In my opinion an Ares Pred is comparable to a Desert Eagle. Even when you use Gel- or Capsule rounds this weapon hurts.

4) The runners "stored" her in a not so good area, the girl didn't really know that. Aiming is a simple action, with wired reflexes 2 it's 2 seconds to aim for 3 actions and shoot. Even after a girl scream "Rapists, rapists, they raped me". Btw. they put her immediately in a car (which was already on the way by another player who reacted fast to pick her up).

5) We decided now in our group: more successes in a combat action means more damage and the player gets himself a decent weapon for Narcojet (Dart Pistol) which doesn't have any additional damage on top of the Narcojet. It's far easier to handle it that way.

6) I already have to discuss too often about "reality" and game rules (matrix rules suck in any game if you play with CS-grad students, who also have practical experience). Sticking to RAW if possible makes it a lot easier. Btw. I do all my rolls hidden so that I can cheat and not kill players accidentally.

The next problem when you come up with: he doesn't want to kill and loads of hits do not kill (what several people argue here for), what do not so much hits do? What is one net hit, what are two?
What happens to a glitch and a critical glitch?

What do I do then after I ignored before that additional net hit do not add to the DV or stop to work?

I'm sorry, did you just say every 'worthy' GM has to be a carebear?

Fuck that. It's not a soft tap on the head when you shoot somebody. He could've done a failure reroll with that Edge die, but went in the "I'm going to fuck her shit up" direction. That's going to hold some consequences, as it should.

Mechanics-wise, use sleep gas or chloroform if you want to put someone down, not a heavy pistol round that's going to smack someone at about 1,100 feet per second. The dart gun is a fine compromise.

Folks are arguing that if you blow through the net hits, you stop stacking damage and just houserule that the shot does what you want. One net hit is going to boost the power by one, two by two. RAW isn't kind with 'shoot to wound' situations.

Four net hits! It's a critical wound!

You may not see it, but I'm shaking my fist at you.

*Grins*
My job here is done.

Btw. already read it twice: critical success happens with 5 hits since SR4A and not 4.

I am not a "carebear". I think that players should think about what they are doing and what consequences it has. I see the Ares Predator as a similar weapon as the Desert Eagle. Even if you use some rubber, gel, plastic ammunition it will hurt, a lot. But I thought that there might be a way by RAW if someone hits exceptionally good. After all rules are a model, thus an abstraction of the real world. And the abstraction handles successes in shooting as more and more damage because that's what players usually want. And it starts to suck if the players suddenly want not to kill with their heavy machine gun…

I "care" by cheating regularly on the rolls the bad guys do. If those are getting too good, they suddenly start too miss or do not have so many net hits and stuff like that. I like hidden rolls.

That's what Called Shots(4th Option) are for.

Hidden rolls in ShadowRun are almost a necessity. In other games, the range on the rolls aren't so wide (say, D&D, a critical hit hurts but won't kill outright, even when the DM throws 5 of them in two combat rounds, hehe*).

*I did a few weeks back. Bloodied half the party in one round.

If you put all five on one character though it would probably have killed that one.

If you always add net hits to damage, even if the shooter doesn't want that, you get a silly situation:
Less skilled characters (fewer dice to hit) would be better at nonlethal shooting than more skilled (more dice) characters. In other words, your very skill works against you.

That's bad.

As for Edge: Edge isn't just for overkill, it's for more success than normally likely. Such as managing the far more difficult "just enough" shot instead of the "accidental overkill" shot.

As for punishing the player because he didn't announce beforehand: that's for lawyers. When everyone at the table knows what the player wanted to do, then it's just mean to catch him on not filling in the Called Shot form in triplicate.

Lol

There really isn't that I've seen. Generally when it comes to ammunition that stuns, folks hose the targets until they hit the ground and then they book it. More often than not it's in a situation where the mook is going to have medical attention not long after the 'runners leave, but there's always the possibility that less-lethal ammo is going to fulfill its dark purpose - killin'.

Am I a hardass for wanting to make the player face the consequences for putting a high-power round into the back of a girl running away? Probably, but the jury's still out. Hindsight should've had him reroll failures if he couldn't beat her dodge pool since she isn't going to beat the soak worth a damn.

Telling me I'm not a 'worthy' GM because I won't handwave it and say she's exactly knocked out? I take a bit of umbrage.

Were I in your position, I would've done a "Are you really sure you want to do that?" verification move, but I won't necessarily fudge the roll to say she's exactly at 10 stun (especially if she's got enough stun on the track that an unmodified round is going to put her over), especially if he's using a Narcoject capsule on a frail, unarmored target.

@Doc Chase
Thats bullshit. Sorry.
If I say I try very hard NOT to kill her, I should not kill her for trying hard not to kill her.
On the other Hand, if I go like: I really want to drop her in one hit so narrow burst, all bets are off.

So a player says to the GM, that he wants to make sure not to kill her, for that he aims for three turns and he uses Edge.
If the GM asked to roll and afterwards declares, that she is dead because of 14 net hits, he is a dick.

Thats like: I want on a one square meter big platform. To do so I scratch together any dices I have, because I do not want to fall down the pit.
I roll very good and the GM declares I overjumped and fell down the pit.

The point is: A player has to declare intention, the GM has to care about the rules or make them up.
For faster gameplay most GMs let their players take care of the rules for their characters.
But it should be kept in mind, that the rulebook is just there for providing solutions for situations coming up. If a player wants to blow something up, the GM does not have to think of rules for explosives, he may look them up.
So If somebody trys to blow a door open and manages to get 12 net hits, no sane GM is going to vaporise everything in a 10 m radius.

LOL, no the player who uses a shot that would kill a Troll againts unarmored girl who has allready taken some damage should be hit with the rule book and told to think his actions truought a little better next time.

Seriously who the frak spends 3 actions aiming and edge when shooting a unarmored injured target with capsule round full of narcojet, that's so fraking stupid i cant even come up with a good word for it.

@Irion: Bullshit right back atcha. I'll reserve my apology.

This is someone attempting to do something with a tool that isn't designed for it. It isn't akin to jumping on a small platform, it's attempting to disarm a bomb with a hammer. This was an overkill shot with an overkill round on an unarmored girl with the SR Body score equivalent of sickle-cell anemia. Capsule hits with enough force to bruise her rib and possibly knock her out as it was, then the DMSO/Narcoject takes effect on top of it.

This is without any net hits. He rolls 14 dice, blows an Edge to explode sixes, and goes crazy.

He would've been better off with a Narcoject/DMSO water balloon (and that would've been appropriately hilarious). Hell, a spray bottle would've done the job, or a squirt gun at the range she was fleeing at.

There's a reason the use of baton rounds against minors is prohibited in general...luckily, in SR the effects can be negated by having the NPC burn a point of edge

Oh, and the player should earn a point of Notoriety for recklessly endangering a child.

Yes and yes. This is probably the best you're going to get out of RAW on the first.

Oh most certainly. 5 crits on a single character tends to down them (4e has a different death threshold), but there's only so many monsters you can squeeze around a single character without making them feel picked on.

I think my players hid that d20 from me too. I couldn't find it Sunday.

I also don't try and hit a single character with all the damage. I spread it out and will avoid characters that are in bad shape if possible.

Next week will be brutal though, I won't be pulling any punches. Kobolds with magic items are frakking scary.

As I said, I'm with the crowd that doesn't think "more success" should always mean "rules overflow." Because it boils down to situations like the following, which have happened in games I ran:

Guy is drunk, and so has taken some stun damage. Physad who is NOT using killing hands or anything decides to choke the guy out rather than put up with his shit. Physad swings, using his Agi of 6 and Unarmed Combat of 6 (Subdual +2) (Improved Ability +4) for a total of 18 dice. Physad rocks something like 8 successes. Dude doesn't get any successes on dodge or soak (he had like, 2 dice on each, -1 or -2 for stun penalties already accrued). 8 successes plus the adept's 4 base damage is enough to just kill the guy outright, considering his pre-existing stun track. His intent wasn't "I hit him full force", but I figured, "Hey, he can choose not to use ALL of his strength/2 base damage, because his stated intent was to choke the guy out, not snap his neck.

It's harder to accidentally croak someone in 4th than in 3rd, but it's still doable. When you start using handguns, yes, then I start to go, "Welllll... you can still KILL a guy with a handgun." But being a *master shot* with a taser shouldn't mean you're a master of accidentally killing people. The rules just don't make allowances for it other than the vague "called shot" rule, which I personally use more to represent if you're aiming for a crippling point and do enough damage to kill someone, you've only "killed' their ability to move, or whatever.

Your mileage may vary, but I see that as the cops leading a guy off in handcuffs while he's screaming, "I TRIED REALLY HARD NOT TO!" That is why there are manslaughter charges.

There is lethal risk inherent in most things a Shadowrunner does, no matter how skilled and well-equipped he is.

@Doc Chase
This is not the freaking point.

Let me elaborate a bit, using an example.
A evil and powerful man let you choose:
You may chose a man, who will fire a gun at you from 5 feet. If he misses you both die. He has to hit the torso or the head for the it to be considered a hit.

You may choose between an elite sharp shooter or some punk. Both promise, that they will try not to kill you.

Considering the Shadowrun rules, you would go with the punk. Would this be a wise choice?


Well, unless the target is alergic to something in it, right?

Yes, he did not take the right "tool". He took the tool at hand. But he tried to compensate by having a huge dice pool. The point is, that the player would get punished for trying to do the best thing at the time.

Rule wise it would be best to get about 4-5 dices to hit and spray her with a full auto wide burst. (She has no dices to dodge and you may keep your dicepool small)
(The Ares alpha does not have this mode, but I guess it is obvious where I am going)
This on the other hand would (in reality) be plain stupid.

The point is, that the choice of tool did NOT kill her. It was the fact, that his char was using the tool with superhuman skill.
If he would just have thought: Fuck it, I will hit her and it probably won't kill her it would have worked.
He would have rolled around 12 dices, getting 4 hits or something and she might have got one hit on the reaction test and one on the body. So it would have been a total of 6(?)+2 = 8 boxes. You want to punish the player for trying to walk the other mile and that is bullshit.

GM:"He is dead. His Head is lolling about as if there were not a single bone or tendon in his Neck. Yes, he is dead. WHY? YOU HIT HIM! A STR16 Troll with Titanium Bonelacing hitting a Body 1 Elf on the head is STILL A STR 16 TROLL WITH TITANIUM BONELACING HITTING A BODY 1 ELF ON THE HEAD!"

@Irion: I get the point perfectly. You simply cannot grasp that actions have consequences and that is a shame. Rewarding this kind of behavior often leads to poor decisionmaking in the future and I would be remiss as a GM to let it continue.

Now. You may throw half-baked hypotheticals at me all you like, but it does not match the situation given. Allow me:

Pop Quiz, hotshot: You are a highly skilled, heavily cybered man with a heavy pistol chambered with a Narcoject/DMSO mix in a capsule round. Said capsule rounds hurt before they deliver their payload. This loadout can flatten a Troll. You ostensibly know this loadout can flatten a Troll. After all, it is why you loaded your weapon with it, yes? (Different pop quiz)

Your target is a waiflike shell of a girl who's already sporting bruises and booking down an alleyway while screaming rape. You have assets moving to intercept via vehicle at the end of the alleyway, but you have approximately six seconds before she gets to the end.

What's telling is that this waiflike shell of a girl is not a Troll. Nor is she Summer Glau.

What do you do?
What do you do?

Why in the ever-loving crap didn't he give chase? He could run her down like it was Pamplona, get a Grapple check which he'd likely win, and hustle her into the back of the car without having to even take a shot. If you have to pull a gun on little Cindy Lou, you have fucked up. The greatest marksman in the world cannot change the laws of physics and that is what you're claiming must be done. She spends or burns an Edge, and then the sammie can explain to Cindy Lou why he had to break two of her ribs and nearly stop her heart with a horse tranquilizer.

OK, so the blue wire would have been the correct one...but my stated intent was to defuse the bomb, not blow all of us to kingdom come...


If mistakes can be lethal (with a non-neglectable chance) and the player takes his chances, I see no reason to let him off the hook that easily.

Actually yes the choise of tool had a lot to do with, a narcojet loaded capsule round is pretty likely to kill someone who allready has taken stun damage and has no soak pool to speak of(Seriously that stuff isn't ment for shooting injured children, it's ment for taking out dangerous Trolls) .
And on top of the idiotic tool selection the player did the most stupid think imaginable and spend multiple rounds aiming and then even used edge, seriously thats a long chain of moronic shoices and he should face the consecunses of his actions.

Well, in the case of "snipping the blue wire", that's a false choice. If the GM says "what wire do you cut", he's not caring if the PC made his demolitions roll - he's caring what choice the PLAYER'S made, and I don't think that's quite fair.

Shadowrun suffers from two problems when it comes to subdual combat: lack of guidelines as to what 'special effects' called shots can grant (Can I subdue someone with only 1 net hit, if that's my called shot?) and a lack of mechanic for "holding back" other than being *less accurate*, which is a horrible mechanic.

I can't find rules for it in the Combat or Skill Test chapters, but for magic (sr4A, p. 183) "The spellcaster can always choose to use less than the total number of hits rolled in a Spellcasting Test."

My table has extended this to all tests, where the player can look at the dice and decide to not use all of the hits. HOWEVER, this is decided before they know the result of the opposed test. So, in this case if the shooter saw he had a ton of hits, he could choose to only use say three of them. There can be some metagaming as the player tries to figure out how many dice the GM is going to roll, etc, but honestly, if they are self-handicapping I don't mind.

Imho the biggest problem is still: If one doesn't want to kill and has a lot of successes it doesn't kill. Next time he does not want to kill he has only 1 net hit. Is that a head shot which fills up to 1 overflow, or what? Glitch kills instantly and critical glitch…well…there will be something…

Roleplay or roll-play, the messaage is the same: Mistakes can be deadly, or at least have some nasty consequences for the players.

Are your players shooting at targets, and get into a brawl with you as well? If it is a mistake the player made you should ask yourself if the character would make the same mistake and only then hit the character with the consequence hammer, there should not be consequences for the player, unless his play style clashes with the rest of the group.

BTW not all bomb makers color code their wires at all.

And many use their own personal color coding, that is not standard. Part of being a good demolitions guy is having access to the database of explosives and how they were wired. Great ones have this database partially loaded in their brain.

Exactly and that is part of a high logic and demolitions rating, not guesswork of the player

Ahem.

No.


You're GUESSING that the intention of the game designers was. Your guess is as good as mine. Frankly, this particular case might never have been even considered by many of the game designers. This is simply one of those situations where the GM has to arbitrate and figure-out what's best.

I still find it counter intuitive that a super-amazing once in a life time shot by a professional marksman means = oops you fucked up she's dead. He should be able to clip her in the leg, or the shoulder. Given how weak she was, as long as she did not crit glitch her soak roll, she should not die, but instead need immediate medical attention. Snipers choose to shoot people in the leg, etc and disable instead of kill all the time. Especially in a cinemagraphic setting like shadowrun.

This is why you're better off burning an Edge point on the NPC's end. You're changing far too many rules to 'not kill'. You're still shooting someone, which is an action I cannot stress enough. You are undertaking a potentially lethal action.

A foolhardy action like this is directly invoking the Hand of God. If you try to fuck with the rules in order to reflect the shooter's skill, you're going to end up with a whole bunch of broken rules.

Don't overthink it. Make the NPC burn an Edge -or-, make your player burn it if he doesn't want to live with the consequences of his actions.

@sabs: Clipping her in the leg or the shoulder still means she's resisting 5 from the round and 10S from the Narcoject. The player stacked the rules against her and then expeceted the GM to wave the hand and say 'she's totally still alive'. He would have been better off shooting her with a standard round.

well the player can't burn it. He already used edge on the roll.

Then we're setting a bad precedent where every mission-important NPC is going to burn an Edge to stay alive when the players hose down the area in order to 'subdue'. There must come a time where you have to say "You fucked up, they are dead."

If you want to try a trick shot, don't do it with a two-stage damage code unless you are damned sure it won't kill.

I'd tend to agree, the question is : Did the player invoke the 'called shot' rule before rolling to hit a less-lethal place? Or did they simply say: "Imma gonna roll everything I can to do as much stun damage as possible" ? The two choices are quite different actions and should have different consequences. Shooting a less-vulnerable spot (this isn't really covered in the rules, but lets just run with it) might due too little stun-damage, increasing the risk the girl gets away.

As an aside: the GM probably should have invoked the 'common sense' rule. I.e. "Your shadowrunning experience tells you that shooting an already wounded girl, even with stun rounds, might severely injure or even kill her. Are you sure you want to use Edge on this one?"

Called shot or not, you still have the Narcoject to consider. That doesn't care where the hit is, just as long as there's a hit.

honestly she was dead even if he'd only gotten 1 net hit.

She was taking 16S, and she was already hurt. 15s against body 1? Even if she soaked all 2 hits she could.
That's 13 boxes. She had 16 boxes + 1 overflow. She's got 17 boxes, and she's taking 6S + 10S.
If she's unhurt she's completely unconcious, if she's taken even 1 point of damage, she's /dead/ unless she makes both of her body shots. So unless the girl had less than 3 boxes of stun already, she was /guaranteed/ dead even without the extra net hits.

I have no problems with her being dead because he shot her with 16S.
What I have problem with is that he would have done less damage by doing a snap shot, than by carefully aiming for the least lethal spot, and not having his super successful roll cause more damage than he intended. (Even though his intended damage was really enough to kill her)

Hmm, so it seems usual people are easy to kill in shadowrun . . who would have though O.o

But he didn't do this, that would be a called shot, he just spent 3 round aiming to increase his dice pool and added edge to make that pool even higher and have the rule of 6.

If you do the same actions against an injured fleeing child as you would do against a crazed troll trying to kill you, you should realize that the child is very very likely gonna die and reconsider the best course of action. Then if you deside to go along with that action, you should be ready to face the consequences and not except your gm to carebear all the bad consequences away.

@Mäx

It was told, they FORGOT the narcoject. So yes, if they would have thought about it, she would be dead, no net hits needed.
But it did not facture in and the only reason for her to die would have been the net hits. So the reason the shot killed her was, that the player tried not kill her with the shot and was very good at it.

The point is, the player is not punished for doing a stupid thing, he is punished for trying not to be too stupid or for not beeing a rule lawyer.


Right. Because every player has to fucking know any fucking rule in the fucking book.
You did not refere to page 3435 paragraphe 34 line 12, so you are dead.
Come on, seriously?
Sorry, in every game I played I have been a newbe once. And back then, I would not be able to explain what my character would do in the rules.
I would just discribe the actions my character would undertake and my intention. If you want to bash somebody for that, well you are a dick.
Some players do not enjoy reading and lawyering the rules. They do enjoy writing 20 pages of background for the attuned animal of their character.
To demand from those players to know all the rules would be like expecting from an other player to give in one page of background for any part of ware/spell etc. he wants to have

@capt.pantsless

I do not have to guess, I am able to read.

@nielsk

If you do not want to kill/injure somebody I would rule like every 2 net hits above the first three are used to reduce the damage of the weapon by one.
So If you get 9 net hits you may reduce the damage dealt by 3.
For more easy understandig:
Nethits/damage modifier
1 / +1
2 / +2
3 / 0
4 / 0
5 / -1
6 / -1
...
To keep the possiblity of a fatal shot in play I would use the rules for critical injuries.

The Called Shot rules don't give much for that. Unless I've missed something, for all intents and purposes SR doesn't shoot to wound.

By RAW, Suzy's dead unless she goes for the critical success or flat out burns for a HoG thanks to the two-stage ammo. If you try to say they're going to do less damage by getting more successes, then you're just going to run into problems. You can go with a reverse scale that you're buying off damage at the net hit rate, but there has to be a minimum. You can't shoot someone wearing a T-shirt and say your aim is so great that the bullet doesn't penetrate. Bullets don't work that way.

No, but your aim can be good enough that you shoot them in the leg, through and through and not hitting an artery (although probably not on a child)..
You're shooting a child, you're probably gonna kill them.

I'd be okay with a simple, I get to choose how many of my hits I use. (before the GM rolls his defense dice)