How exactly does a shooter "opt for stun" again?

Hit them over the head with a rifle shoulder brace.

Or an underbelly Stun Baton Bayonet.

Smartlink, Ammo Select, Stick-n-Shock. The real question is, why wasn't he already using SnS?

Which they actually do not do...

I miss narcoject rounds.

They still exist. They're just expensive, and don't affect spirits. Unless you ask Neraph.

You shoot a target you know you can't achieve enough hits, even with +4 DV and a narrow burst, to exceed armor, knowing that it will only be stun.

Or...

You hit them with the rifle butt, per canray.

*Speaks in a Clint Eastwood Impersonation* "Ricochet."

Sorry, if I can get in a Judge Dredd quote, I will. And the Comic, the COMIC! That movie ended as soon as the helmet came off, in not earlier!

What movie? There's no Judge Dredd movie. There was some Sylvester Stallone generic ugly future cop action flick (complete with silly sidekick douchebag), but I don't remember hearing about any Judge Dredd movie coming out. Sheesh, next you'll say there were sequels to The Matrix or Highlander, I bet!

Now, the new one, with Karl Urban? That's likely to be a Judge Dredd movie. Urban himself has said in an interview that the helmet never, ever, comes off.

To be fair, they've shown Dredd with the helmet off a few times... Once swathed in bandages, and the other his face was badly melted by acid.

To be even more fair, this is Shadowrun, and let's not hi-jack the thread. That's fifteen years in the Iso-Cubes after all...

Burst DV is not added to the modified DV when comparing to armor to determine stun or physical. That damage is added on after.
Which is why Full Auto doesn't kill spirits.

But it will attract their attention. Usually a bad thing.

"Jesus gets down off of his Crucifix, picks it up, and beats you with it..."

That's not right. *Narrow* bursts don't kill spirits. Wide bursts get you more net hits, which inexplicably helps hurt them. A little, but sometimes enough. Yay for the rules.

Even a hard blow to the groin isn't likely to incapacitate someone who's used to pain. I've been kicked there a few times, and while it hurt, I was able to keep fighting. And I'm hardly a trained fighter. I did know trained fighters, though, including one or two that I've kicked in the groin during practice. That just pissed them off.

Anyway, it's clear to me that you should be able to aim a shotgun/flechette blast for greater effect. IRL, you can aim at a bird with a shotgun for greater effect, and mechanically, in SR4.5, there's no rule prohibiting it. There are rules that model this: the Called Shot rules. While I still think the called shot rules are broken, they do allow you to aim a shotgun.

Only if you lose fewer dice to the shooting test then they lose to the dodge test.

I'm assuming you'd have adequate RC.

If you wanted to really bend the rules, you could put your shotgun on medium spread, and after aiming not only ignore the +7 AP but also give the target a -2 to their defense.

-DrZ

Ha! I wouldn't tempt the GM further, but that's funny.

I'm not much of a hunter, but isn't this exactly what you do when you're going after ducks? Spread the shot so wide that the bird has no chance to steer clear?

Ducks don't wear armor, so the AP doesn't matter. Or, at least it shouldn't. If I saw armored ducks coming after me in a Shadowrun game, I'd definitely cry fowl.

I'm afraid we're going to have to charge you for a pun that bad.

Only narrow bursts don't affect it by the RAW, though it's a good house rule (on our group just adopted today).

Isn't that what I underlined? A narrow burst?



Oh, yes. Yes it is.

I was replying to your general statement, not the unnoticed edits you made to the post you quoted.

I have not edited my previous post. I quoted the post I was replying to, underlined the original text, and made my comment, which prompted two people to clarify that only *narrow* bursts don't apply.

Seriously, WTH. THAT'S WHAT I SAID. NARROW BURSTS.

Dude, chill. Read my post. I said you'd edited the post you quoted, not that you'd edited your own posts. Take a few deep breaths, we're on the same page here there was just a minor miscommunication.

Generally speaking, people don't read the quoted text in a reply, they read the replies to those quotes and then scroll up if they need clarification. If you're editing the quotes you make and expecting that to be part of your message, this is going to happen to you a lot.

In which case:



When else does a burst add DV to an attack?

Last I checked there were two options:

+DV and -Dodge. Only one of those says "+DV."

Never gone Neo-Duck Hunting? Those things are nasty. They pick fights with Canadian Geese and Nene, and WIN! Thankfully their birth rates are very low.

My hunter NPC suggests Solid Tungsten Birdshot for them, BTW.

Your post (when the edited quote is missed) looks like a general statement about all bursts. That's why people corrected it, since the rule you referred to only applies to narrow bursts.

"Burst DV" == "DV from Bursts" == "DV from Narrow Bursts"

I fail to see why people have an issue with this concept and why I keep getting corrected, despite not being wrong.

Because "DV from Bursts" == "DV from Narrow Bursts", but it's only "DV from short narrow bursts" that the rule in question applies to. There are also long bursts and full bursts. Your statement made it appear* that you thought all sorts of bursts' DV did not count for punching through armor. That's the only thing people are correcting, and you've now clarified it.

I've got nothing better to do right now, so if you want to keep arguing back and forth about why people have misread your post I'm all for it, but everyone is now on the same page, so there's nothing to be gained by it.

But I would contend that NO form of Narrow Burst affects it: Not from Short, Long or Full Auto Narrow Bursts.
AS for Wide Bursts... They are your friend...

Precisely. Why would it effect only short bursts?

Not sure why, but I have heard that argument before... Just clarifying is all...

It only affects Short Bursts because the rule is only in the Short Bursts section. There is no wording that makes the specific rule suddenly become a general one, and in fact it very clearly refers only to the +2 DV.

Having it apply to long and full bursts is how it worked in previous editions, and it's likely what the author's intent was as it makes the most sense from a realism perspective. Why should 6 9mm rounds be better at hurting a tank than 3? But that's not how they wrote it and there's been no errata.

Yes there is.



Note that burst damage is not noted here. It's base plus net hits. The specific rule under short narrow bursts is a reminder.

I hadn't noticed that, thanks!

Mechanically a bruise is bleeding, it occurs when blood vessels are ruptured, the differance is amount of force and how closely it is concentrated, hit a man in the groin with enough force and he'll still bleed out in to the surrounding tissue. Blunt trauma just means that to do the same specific trauma you need a lot more kinetic energy and with armor on an area dispersing the force over a greater area as hard armor does means you need that much more of it. Bruising from is a sign of systemic damage and it does have real effects on how the body functions.

I'm aware. I've never heard anyone call that 'bleeding out', though. *Maybe* 'massive internal bleeding', which is assuredly not Stun damage in SR4.

Draco18s, don't be silly. You did say Burst DV… and then you said "Full Auto doesn't kill spirits". I only amended that statement for you, because it's misleading.

It's possible for a bruise to bleed you out internally in the right spots, just a lot more likely for the skin to get ruptured though, we humans are a sack of very easilly broken bits and fluids and that becomes more obvious the more you learn about damaging a human. I'm not trying to be a pain for no reason but there is a reason a kick to the groin is so effective, part of it is all the nerve endings down there, part of it is all the easilly ruptured blood vessels.



This public service anouncement brought to you by the Shadowrunners for Dirty Fighting Association.

*Sigh*

Look, a kick to the groin is not the uber-fight-stopper some people make it out to be. Yes, it hurts; but so do lots of attacks. It all depends on how well you deliver the kick, and how tough the other guy is. And let's face it, if you're good enough to reliably deliver a kick to the groin that causes massive hemorrhaging, you're probably more than good enough to do the same to any other part of the target's body.

You cannot depend on any single technique. A good fighter may favor one technique or tactic over others, but that doesn't mean they'll neglect them. Hell, just watch a few UFC bouts-- you don't see many fights ending due to a kick to the groin.

I think the main reason it's so "popular", is that for an untrained fighter, it's one of the easier moves to attempt that could do some damage. When you don't have a lot of options, this one is the best of a bad lot.

For a trained fighter, I'd imagine there are many better spots to hit, such as eyes, ears, throat (basically, what Cain said)....I'm not a trained fighter tho, so this could be bunk

Depends what you want to do exactly. If you want to take them out of the fight, solar plexus or kidneys is effective, and a good solid shot to the jaw can be even more so.

If you're thinking about killing them, or doing more long term damage, strikes to the throat or eyes, or even a good palm strike to the nose are all good options.

*For reference, I have some decent training in a hard school, but anyone here with military or police training would probably know more.

That's what I'm saying (and Cain too, I think) - if you're trained, you know what you want to do. Take them out of the fight, minimal / maximum damage, conscious / unconscious, etc.

If you're untrained, you don't know what your options are, or what you want to do, exactly. Ummm, you want to stop this person

My experience is that the throat is pretty tough. A good shot there can take the fight out of someone, but so can solid shots to the solar plexus or kidneys, like Raven said. You have to use the right technique for the situation: if you're fighting on tricky ground, a kick is among the worst things you can do; if you're fighting a group of people, going to the ground is a bad idea, and so on and so forth. But in other situations, those might be your best option.

I will say that after watching some MMA bouts, more of them end up decided by grapple than by striking-- at least, according to my observation. That doesn't mean striking is useless, or that grappling is the superior technique. What it meas is that in the kind of fights MMA fighters get into, grappling is the superior choice by a small margin. I'm a striking stylist by preference, and in the practice bouts, I won by rear naked choke. It's a very effective technique, but not one I can rely on, since I have to get to the other guy's back.

That's probably as good an analogy for the kick to the groin as I can get, though. Both techniques can be very effective, when used properly. Both have obvious weaknesses, though, and require the right setup to pull off. But I prefer the rear naked choke to a kick to the groin: in my hands, the choke is more effective, easier to pull off/less finicky to set up, and more tolerant on a less-than-perfect execution. On a botched choke, I still have their neck in my hand; on a botched kick, all I've done is annoy them.

Yes, kicks to the groin hurt; and stronger kicks will do more damage. But if you're able to deliver a kick that strong, you can hurt your opponent no matter where you kick them. And while the rear naked choke is potentially deadly, it's still got its limitations as well. Knowing one kick is not as powerful as knowing many kicks.



*Actually, if you ask my uncle, Skip Hancock, a quasi-tenth-degree black belt under Ed Parker, he'll say that he only needs to know one kick. But that's some serious philosophy.

Wow, did not realise people would go this far with what I said, but... ok, yes. I did overstate the effectiveness for a few reasons, one being the fact that it is a hard area to armor as I previously stated, compared to the other areas of the body. I'ld say it is the hardest except for the wrists or ankles, and those two get a pass because they are joints on the extremities. To take all the hyperbole out of it, a shot to the groin is not a magic fight stopper, but it is a very vulnerable part of the anatomy that is hard to armor effectively which makes it a good target if you are fighting an opponent reliant on armor for protection, especially with the superhuman levels of force an augmented human, troll, ork, or dwarf, is capable of generating with an unarmed strike, never mind the firearms even a mage is likely to carry.

This is under BURST-FIRE mode.



This is under LONG BURSTS mode

The same goes for Full Bursts.

So, if an exception is called in one section but not in another, we could assume that the one where the exception is not mentioned doesn't have the exception. I was discussing exactly this with Garou today.

It's not an exception. It's a reminder. The section on surpassing armor tells you to combine the base damage value of the weapon with net hits to find out if you surpass the armor rating. It doesn't mention burst modifiers at all. So in the sections you're quoting, they remind you of that in the first entry, then proceed forward as normal.

Fair enough. Still, I'll follow my ruling, it makes more sense to me. At least this way, a heavy machine gun is capable of making at least a dent in a Thunderbird without the gunner needing 9 successes.

However, you apparently missed something in the Long Burst Section... Here let me highlight it for you...



So, Like Short Bursts, Long Bursts follow the same rules as Short Bursts, just with more bullets.

You realize that there are machine pistols capable of full auto (long and full bursts) too, right?*

It's not just HMGs, but HMGs, LMGs, assault rifles, machine pistols, submachine guns, and some others, I'm sure.**

If you want to make an exception for HMGs (and possibly LMGs) go right ahead.

*Exactly one: the Steyr TMP.
**Even one shotgun.