Everybody knows them, everybody hates them. Let's try to improve the Ramming rules.
I start with what's there.


So far so good. you can go on Full Defense and add Dodge/Vehicle skill twice


Well, that's just unnecessary.
Also, I know what the author intended to say, but really? the driver runs??? If the drivers runs, he gets a -2 modifier to all his action How did this get through proof read?


A bit nit-picky, this is for meat drivers only. Drones and Riggers roll different. Hence, the attacker makes a Vehicle Test.


Issac Newton said different, and afaik he's still valid in 2070.
Damage=Body is fine but the speed has to be the relative speed. The attacker suffers damage equal to the Body value of the target modified by the relative attacking speed. A little bit more Newton. Who wants to start a discussion whether the collision is elastic?


Now why would that be? It's not any kind of elemental damage. It's equivalent to someone punching you. So full Impact armor applies.


sure, why not...


I guess for the case of a vehicle being the attacker this looks good. There are rules for achieving speed through acceleration and everything else needed.
So what about people ramming people. Or a troll ramming a Citymaster.

I think one author once thought about it, and put it into the Improvised Melee Weapons table. Damage=Body/2+2, not too bad and off the Ramming rules.
I would add the rules for Charging, i.e., the character must cover a substantial distance and take the Running free action. Adding speed by the taking Sprint simple action should be allowed somehow in addition to the Ramming attack.

When you punch someone, should you therefore roll to resist the damage value of your opponent headbutting your fist ...

No, because you're not Ramming, you're using some a skill you trained for called Unarmed Combat including techniques to minimize the damage done to your fist. Ever punched someone? It hurts awfully...

IMHO being rammed by a vehicule is much closer to a fall (which halves impact armor) than to a melee atttack - the impact is already spread over a wide area, making armor less effective. Or do you plan to make impact armor fully effective against falling damages too ?

I fully agree with the "relative speed for damage" bit.

Firstly, if you're going to re-write the Ramming rules you can't then use anything to do with the Ramming rules as a defence of an argument that's been called into question. "Because you're not Ramming" relies on a premise that different laws apply to the two situations and you haven't demonstrated this.

Secondly, what about police and military drivers, not to mention bodyguards, who are taught how to ram effectively and to their own advantage? What skill would you expect them to be using to achieve this, because I think it would be the same one that everyone else uses for ramming. Techniques to minimise damage to your own car during a ram are just as valid as techniques to minimise damage to your fist when punching I'd say. So where's the logically-derived distinction? In both cases the character is using a skill to hurt another more than themselves and you've already accepted the RAW premise of treating a ram like a melee attack.

Thirdly, yes it does hurt but that wasn't my question: would you make a player roll to resist damage to himself when he hits in unarmed combat*?

* Assuming no elemntal aura or whatnot.

Ooh, my first ever double post.
I think.

Exactly right. If you can control a collision between fist and face so you get hurt less, then it makes sense that a ramming vehicle would take less damage than its target.

Falling uses half impact I think partly because the nature of the attack against your body... its a wide area of affect with a force much greater than that of a bat or fist, spread out against many different points of impact. Armor helps, but your not deflecting the bat off with your forearm guard, so alot of the armor parts are not going to make that much difference in a fall... hence half impact. Just imagine leather... keeps you from getting scraped up, but does nothing for the bonebreaking effect of a fall.

Getting rammed by a vehicle is the same principle... much greater force than a normal melee attack, but spread against a wide area.

Really, Aerospider said it best, I am just rambling because I like to type.

would accelleration used as the damage not make more sense? O.o
after all, you are accellerating, when ramming. if you're not accellerating, you are not ramming.
well, maybe when going side to side, but front to rear is so accelleration . . and even side to side you technically have to accellerate a little bit, because otherwise the other vehicle will pull away a bit . .
i think the speed difference being used was in SR3 Ramming rules.

That makes no sense, if I'm going 100KM/Hour and I ram into a guy standing in the middle of the road, he doesn't take 0 damage because I wasn't accelerating.

You're not, but *he* sure is! F=m*a, poor bastard.

@Aerospider. Regarding your post. I don't want to re-write the rules. I want us to improve the rules. And I deem your last question rhetorical...

Do you have any improving suggestions or do you like the rules as they are in the core book? If the latter, this could be the wrong thread for you, because you will waste a lot of time commenting on things you're not really interested in int the first place.
I can agree with you, that there are techniques to makes the best ramming attack possible and reduce the own damage.

@Yerameyahu: kinetic energy is mass times speed^2

Yes, when ramming a stationary target, you are, of course, completely and utterly correct . .
But i thought we were at ramming battle between two moving vehicles? O.o

Either way, it's not that complicated: ramming speed equals the 'net speed', the difference, between whatever two objects.

So no room here for someone looking to learn from a well-reasoned exchange of ideas to improve their game? Or someone willing to call you on an inconsistency? Consider me both. You seem to take me for a troll, where at worst I was playing devil's advocate.

If it makes you feel any better, ramming vehicle resisting damage according to the target's body is a very good idea so thank you for that.

Insert clip of American Dragon getting a prophesy that he's going to get hit with a boulder that's flying at 180 miles per hour.
(The twins neglected to say that he'd be flying at 179 mph at the time)

first, the rules as written are likely more about ease of play then realism.

Sadly, if one want to make it realistic one have to add factors like relative directions (head on is much nastier then rear ending, as the force involved is the total of the movement). As i think about it i suspect those where left out because they made the assumption that most times one would use the ramming rules one would be attempting to take out a stationary target, or a fleeing target.

Likely the same ease of use is why we get the damage based on the attackers vehicle rather then some kind of difference or either side resisting based on the other. It is much faster to calculate once and then have both sides roll then having to calculate twice, and anything based on the relative difference breaks with other damage mechanics in SR (this as the body of either vehicle would both flat alter the damage and then used as a dice pool reduction).

Now the real wonkiness comes with the crash rules, in that they are basically the vehicle ramming itself. Still, they are quick and easy to use in that if one know the ramming rules one know the crash rules. And one do not have to look up likely materials the vehicle may have found itself crashing into. Also, a lot of these crashes will come from a failed vehicle test. This could be a indication that the vehicle not just spun out, but actually flipped and rolled.

Attacker running is not the same as driving at high speed for the vehicle in question. We need a distinctive mod, value to be discussed.

Regarding deformation, armor should contribute more to damage than body. Armor is hard, while modern frames are "soft".

Perhaps SR car brands have gone back to the "heavy metal" of US vehicles?

Flexible frames are there to protect weaker targets like pedestrians. Once you assume hard armor as a given, the manufacturers might as well return to the cheaper rigid frames. At that point frame design is just a question of fuel efficiency.

As I understand it, the 'Rammer Running' penalty reflects the fact that you had to go far enough out of your way to hit the target that you lose some of your control. I'm not saying the rule works properly, but the intent seems simple enough: easy (close) targets are easier to hit than target you have to 'reach' for.

It does seem like we can all agree on two things: ramming speed is the net/difference in opposite speed at impact (which, yes, oblique hits complicates, but hey), and the objects suffer damage based on *each other's* Body.

so much for knautschzonen . .

"Your body armor might be strong... our tank doesn´t care."

Huh? unless we are talking about two different things, my understanding is that modern car design (outside of the tank like US SUV) is to absorb the force of a crash via crumbling in a controlled way to protect the occupants of the vehicle.

So, everybody talks about Ramming with an vehicle. But what about a 100 mph Troll aiming for a security guard without the goal to hit, but to just run through him?

He will have a very confused guard trying to hold on to him for dear life . .

If it's a person, it's not Ramming.

No, then it's Bull-Rushing or herding, right?

What the crumpling does is to stretch the interval between contact and full stop to decrease the G taken by the occupants - if a 'hard' car takes 1/10th of a second to stop and a 'soft' one 2/10th, the 'soft' car's passengers will take half the Gs and probably fare way better.
Armor will tend to hamper that. Low-grade armor are likely to be kevlar panels and the like and won't be a problem. but anything seriously bulletproof wil have to be hard, and that's going to ruin the effect. You may stretch things a bit with armouring the pasenger area (it's already rigid, no problem there) and using redudancies and armored components under soft armor into the crumpling zone.

It's also the reason why ramming a wall with a tank is a bad idea : the tank's hull will probably handle it without breaking a sweat, but the passengers won't enjoy the experience.

As I understand it, it also very efficiently absorbs energy. I think that both effects are valuable.

As far as the OP goes:

Personally I have always used relative velocity. As a house roll I give the attacking driver a piloting roll. If its a good one, his vehicle takes half damage. Its not RAW, but many other games I have played used this, and on the few occasions that we have rammed vehicles it's worked well.

Coming from the UK where people actually wear safety belts (and my fathers life has been saved by one in a 140mph head on collision), I am a big believer in the effectiveness of modern safety gear. If you are wearing them / have them activated, you will only take stun in a ramming attack (attacker or defender).

As far as trolls running into people, its just an unarmed combat roll. As far as I know, without Spirit help its hard to get up to 100 mph. Spirits mostly ignore physics like inertia and air resistance so they don't particularly help here. Charge rules and "called shot for aimed damage" seem to cover this eventuality well. I use the called shot to mean: give up attack die for more damage, which can easily simulate a wild/fast charge.

If the troll has been fired out of a canon, then you could treat him as a projectile, its not a Ramming roll