Oh, that's a great point. When I read your post, I didn't even notice the Matrix damage aspect. That indeed is the clearest differentiation of 'mental damage'. I guess that goes back to previous editions, where matrix damage actually *was* based on your gear? You're right that the biofeedback aspect probably never made sense to *not* be stun.

You've been awake for 30 days? Come on. :/

Don't forget Dumpshock!

I hit the Hacker in my group with that so many times that he started bleeding from the eyes. After that, he said, "Screw you guys, I'm going to bed!"

He also needed new boots, and suffered the worst case of dry heaves in the history of our group. And, he had to admit, all legit reasons.

Hmm. So there's lethal wounds (Phys), nonlethal wounds (maybe misnamed 'Stun'), systemic damage (some diseases, drugs, and toxins), damage to *programs* (Matrix), mental (dumpshock, Black IC, Drain, drugs). And there are 3 damage tracks: Physical, Stun, and Matrix. Right? I'm just trying to remember everything we're working with here. I'm deliberately leaving out emotional stuff, that's for Eclipse Phase.

Heh... Yeah. Thanks. Been a real long time away from that, fortunately.

I know that in previous editions there was White IC (hurts the programs), Gray IC (hurts the hardware), and Black IC (hurts you).
But I don't recall the mechanics. Also, I only ever played 3E, and only once or twice.

If we really wanted to, we could subsume the hacker's other tracks during the hack. Physical damage is damage to the rigger's body. Stun is damage to the rigger's hardware. Stress damage is still stress.
[Warning, hypothetical]
What would happen is that if the rigger's stun track fills, his hardware is fried, has to repair it (takes dumpshock: erase stun track and fill in new stun). Cost of repairs is some value and takes some amount of time (not getting specific here, as this is just hypothetical).
When the rigger's physical track fills, he falls unconscious. Erase any stun (trivial damage to the hardware; burn fuses, nothing critical, and can be ignored), move physical track/overflow into the stun track/overflow to physical. Take dumpshock.
When the rigger's stress track fills he performs a panic-logout and has to spend a few minutes shaking it off. Physical damage moves to stun (hardware "stun" is ignored, see above), and the hacker starts making mental healing tests (undefined, hypothetical dice pool) until his stress track is reduced enough that the hacker decides to make another attempt.



Hours.
Did I not specify a unit?
Apparently not.



That's why I called it "emotio-chemcial." Emotions are just chemical and electrical impulses in the brain (which can be upset/tweaked by a chemical imbalanced, e.g. Happy Pills). *Way to clinical about this*
But ostensibly you are correct. I just wouldn't use all *five* at the same time. No more than three. I'd merge metal damage in with systemic damage, as they overlap heavily (drugs) and drop Matrix damage entirely.

I agree that emotional is chemical, but I still think it can be conceptually ignored for our purposes. Otherwise, mages get a *new* more irresistible sadbolt.

"I call it them EMO RAY!"

Or stun bolt becomes the "emotional"-damage spell *shrug*

Another thing to consider is the dice pool penalties from more tracks. I almost want to make the emotio-chemical track (we have a good name for this one yet?) only have negatives "half" as often (i.e. every 6 boxes) as generally speaking, "being sad" has less effect on your general performance than having a concussion.

Hmm. Actually. [Hypothetical numbers]

Physical is every 3 boxes (bleeding HURTS).
Stun is every 4 (being punched sucks, but you can ignore it more than that broken arm)
Emotio-chemical is every 5? (being sad is a little depressing, but you can work through it).

I'd also want to rework how armor stops bullets, but I'd have to mull that one over (i.e. avoid the 6 DV -> stun, 7 DV -> physical issue). Get closer to bullets causing stun most of the time, but in small amounts, but penetration SUCKS.

Actually. Just had a thought.

If the modified DV is not greater than the armor value, then resist stun equal to the net hits (ignoring the base DV*). A bullet or two that penetrate will down you, almost all the time, but an armor impact hurts significantly less.

So it moves from a "fuck, that +1 net hit means he takes physical, now he's still standing" to a significant boon, pushing the game over into a "physical damage bullets SUCK ASS, all the time" because you're going to be taking 4, 5, or 6 more damage before rolling the resist roll.

Means we'd have to rein in armor stacking, so you can't get 18+ armor, but we need to be doing that anyway.

*Alternatively, the reverse. Resist stun equal to only the base DV.

The last one I saw was that (n Phys) versus (n Phys + n/2 Stun), which is quite similar to what you just suggested. It comes down largely to simplicity, of course.

I think I prefer your last point: only bullet makes more sense to me than only net hits. I think the net hits thing could produce odd variation, where you drop people with really accurate DV1 attacks.

True.



Hmm. Good point.

I think halft the "normal" damage is a better choice.
Afterall, a holdout does not have the punch of an assault cannon.

But with all those rules it should be considered, that physical damage gets a lot more lethal.
(If you are passed out the physical damage would be increased by 50%. And you will have a nearly full stun monitor to go with your phsical monitor. So it won't be uncommon to be left with 3 boxes in physical and 1 in stun. So if a last bullet hits you for 8 physical you (you soaking 2) you will be down to 0 Stun and -5.

As a matter of fact, I would rule that with a filled stun track, you take 1 phyisical for every 2 stun.

Thats why I liked the singe monitor, because you passed out faster, but the shot which brought you down was much less likely to kill you.

And?

I'm also not in favor of n P + 1/2 n S, just because of the overflow condition. Attacks against unconscious targets are 50% more lethal, not because they're unresponsive (i.e. not dodging) but because their stun track is full.

No, that case was specifically excepted. Here, I'll quote it:

Stun spells are often called "Sleep" spells according to the book, so, it encourages nappy time.

Hehe, except they cause/allow overflow into lethal wounds. 'Sleep' indeed.

For in that sleep of death, what dreams may come.

You can die if you sleep too soundly. One step too far into Wonderland, and...

Brilliant!

It was really because his stun track was almost full from the first shot, and he didn't want to risk another bullet to the helmet knocking him out

*Snorts* XD

HAHAHA!

Oh man... callback joke... to the ENTIRE THREAD. So much win.

It looks like he went into... *Puts on Mirrorshades*... The Big Sleep.

YEAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

As it is, the current damage system isn't too realistic, with everything that isn't Physical in nature lumped into a generic "Stun" category (aside from Matrix damage, that is). This isn't too realistic. However, is adding more types of damage, and corresponding condition monitors, the best way to fix this issue? "The simplest solution is always the best", right?

Typically, the beginning of that saying is 'all things being equal, …', and it's 'likely the best', not 'always'.

Still, we already have 3 tracks if you count Matrix, so, I was mostly asking if we could re-distribute the various damages I listed into the existing 3, or even reduce the numbers (the WoD-type ideas have 1 track, and technically at least 3 kinds of damage). You're right that the total degree of complexity matters a lot.

I'm still kind of interested in the quoted bit attributed to Sponge, which alters the basic (P+1/2 S) idea in two interesting ways (less stun from 'failed' lethal attacks, and no stun overflow from 'successful' lethal attacks). I'm going to give it some thought and play with the numbers. Not too much added complexity, either.

The intent is that it "correctly" orders the 3 victims: Victim A who takes 4 shots past armor (P damage), Victim B who takes 2 shots on armor (S damage) and 2 shots past, and Victim C who takes all 4 shots on armor. Victim A is going to keel over from Physical damage before the extra stun will really matter (although he may end up with extra wound penalties along the way - nothing a stim patch won't help though ), Victim B still ends up with about the same amount of damage to both tracks as in the RAW case, and Victim C is a lot better off (having only taken about half the stun damage previously), and (with P and S tracks roughly equal) ends up being the last man standing as the bullet barrage continues.

However I admit I'm a little concerned about super-armored tanklike characters being even harder to take down with those house rules, at least with bullets - but they're supposed to be. Of course there's still SnS, stunbolts, and other means to hit the Stun track directly.

As I said originally, untested. I may try it out soon in our games, though. If anyone wants to try it out, I'm curious to hear the results.

Yeah, I like the sound of it. It bears testing. If it requires changes to DV levels in general (or AP?), that's just what it requires. It has interesting consequences for S&S, as well; if you're likely to beat armor, S&S is worse, but if you're not, it's twice as good as before. If anything, this exacerbates the issue of S&S making small guns better and big guns worse… so, another thing to watch for when testing. (Shotgun-only S&S still works fine, though.) It correctly makes flechette even weaker against armored enemies, instead of doing lots of Stun. And so on, various consequences.

Interesting, anyway.

Like TJ, I do not really see a problem with a mixture of P and S damage making it harder to take down the opposition, that's just the way the mechanic is, and if it "penalizes" PCs for making cardboard cutout characters with monster DPs, so much the better. Actually, if the GM is doing his job properly, NPC B (who if you recall took 1 S hit and 1 P hit, while his buddies A and C were dropped respectively by 2 S hits and 2 P hits) is going to be surrendering/trying to retreat pretty sharpish unless his Professional rating is through the roof, or he knows surrender means a cap to the brainpan.

Neither do I have a problem with Thorya's example of a mage overcasting to take down the remaining mooks in a do-or-die situation, like he said himself he had to be damn sure they went down else he and his sammie buddy would be dead.

If anything, the problem is how ridiculously easy it is to heal up P damage by use of the Heal spell and/or use of a R6 medkit, at least as far as PCs are concerned. IRL if you take a bullet to the gut, you are not going to be doing anything other than try and stop the bloodflow and hightail it (alright, TJ, stagger) to the hospital. IRL nobody wants to take a bullet to the gut because even if you survive you are going to have to face a lengthy rehabilitation and may never be the same again.

In SR, you can get shot to pieces then made whole again with a wave of the wand and a bleep of the tricorder. It is this that makes PCs worry about S damage and shrug their shoulders at P, which as TJ says should be far worse. Perhaps house rules to make the heal spell take hours rather than combat turns (with the recipient immobile the whole time), and to make medkits only stabilize P wounds rather than heal them might make players far more leery of taking P damage ...

BAD THINGS happen to your character while unconscious. Bad things...

I've been showing my fellow PCs how bad Stick-n-Shock and Stunbolts can be. There is no arguing now. Unconscious can be every bit as bad as dead. The difference is that you may live, wishing that you weren't...

- J.

You can't argue that the mechanic is okay because 'that's the way it is'. And 'monster DPs' have zero bearing on this; if anything, such a character will always beat Armor anyway. If anyone is penalized, it's 'normal' characters.

This ^ Exactly.
I don't think that it's the whole problem but it's more than 60% of the problem. Healing should take longer. Magical healing should not be so, effective and medkits shouldn't heal damage they should just stop bleeding. Bleeding should be modeled as I've mentioned above.

Make P damage more scare and more cumbersome. Make it hurt more than stun.

It's an issue, certainly, but I'm not sure how to address it.



See comment about the DP penalties for the different tracks; 1/3 for physical, 1/4 for stun, 1/5 for chemical.

It's true that we're dealing with a few interacting systems, so we might imagine getting similar results by tweaking any one of them. However, adjusting healing rates simply doesn't specifically address the weird 'half-and-half lets you stay standing longer' issue. I fully agree that P damage should be more debilitating (like Draco18s' suggestion) *and* harder to heal, but those issues are actually less directly tied to that specific issue. … We should do all three.

Can we talk more about this 'chemical' type, Draco? If we're saying being drugged is *less* disorienting (per box) than bruises, does that mean you'd have to dramatically increase the number of boxes a typical chemical effect inflicts? Because drugs and toxins are pretty disorienting. Or, are you presuming coincident 'status effects' like Agony, Electricity's -2, etc.? (Effectively 10 boxes!, without actually KOing you.) Personally, I think more drugs should have such effects, but it's tough to make their magnitude fair.

I was referring to my "emotio-chemical" track.

In any case, it's something that could be looked at. -1 per 5 boxes might not've been the original idea (I forget) and I'm not set on that number. I also never defined how many boxes that track has.

I know what it is, I'm just asking more about how it works. In theory, ideally, etc.

I'd probably have to sit down and fiddle with it. Just based on thinking about it driving home (in no particular order):

1) -1 per 5 "feels right" for various reasons, not the least of which is removing incentives to cast "Depress" and making people sad. The penalties per damage box are low, and filling the track doesn't remove someone from the fight.
2) -1 per 5 "feels wrong" due to the level of damage required to have a significant effect on someone (although I disagree with the electrical damage comparison, as that is stun, which is significantly more painful).
3) subset of the above: being almost drop-dead-drunk is about as bad of a distraction as having been shot in the leg (give or take). Should it be?
4) considered altering it to -1 per 2, and reducing various numbers such that the track can be 10 boxes long, but be "effectively" a 2:1 with stun (that is, 2 stun == 4 chemical) and adjusting damage numbers down for that track (although, then we get to issues of the damage resist rolls, etc.)

I wasn't comparing it to Electrical, I was just illustrating what I meant by 'status effects'.

Oh oh.
Well, I was presuming that existent status effects would remain (such as electricity's -2), but that the "chemical" damage would be instead of the stun damage.

Which would be "disorienting" level (a -1 or a -2) rather than debilitating (a -3 or -4).

So, let's break it down a little bit. In Eclipse Phase, for example, there is actually a mental/emotional 'condition track' that parallels that of the physical body (no P/S distinction, let's ignore that). Under that system, you suffer 'Stress' from various stressors, which impose penalties on your performance. So far, so good. But the aspect I'm unclear on is how exactly the chemical side of 'emotio-chemical' comes in. Are we saying that drugs (chemicals, including toxins) always affect *that* track, or might they inflict Stun (or even Phys)? Because being sad and being drunk are different mostly in degree (a largish degree, maybe), but being mad and being Narcojected are pretty different (not to mention Cyanide).

I'm not saying 'you said this and you're wrong and dumb', I'm just checking these points with you. Personally, I'd be cool with chemicals being able to inflict any of these kinds.

It'd depend on the drug. Knock-out drugs, recreational drugs (of which alcohol and tobacco are two), and some others would effect this track.

It's for those things that aren't directly causing physical harm to your body (at least, not in the single-dose increments, ignoring long term effects, such as cancer and liver damage).

There's probably going to be a few substances for which the track isn't as clear cut (all I can think of at the moment is Mustard Gas*), but a lot of our "not supposed to kill you" drugs will fall into this category.

*Mustard gas might actually inflict wounds onto each of the three tracks, depending on level of exposure, concentration, etc. etc.

Mhm. So your super-safe NeuroStun, that's just massive Chemical DV; KOs you, but can't overflow to Physical (maybe it overflows to Stun!). While cyanide probably is correctly P damage. I could see some more dangerous drugs (KO drugs are basically 'magic', compared to RL) doing Stun-with-overflow, I guess.

To avoid re-DV-ing everything, it might be best to *start* from the position of Chem damage doing the same wound penalty as Stun. I'm good with Phys being 1 worse, though.

Care to share the story?
Sounds interesting and you know ...
im always looking for some .. inspiration

Well I am normally the GM but finally got a chance to play, so I switched to playing a shaman who generally (but not always) eschews lethal combat.

So I started using S-n-S and Stunbolt as my only combat spell and went to work. One of our earliest fights was against an Ant Shaman and his small-ish hive (long story short). Overcast stunbolts and some judicious use of Edge (no reaction/Initiative enhancement either) I took out two spirits (a flesh form and a true form I think) and knocked out the shaman. I had help mind you from the other PCs but in all three instances I made the finishing move. I think only the first spirit I took out fully on my own.

Anyway what we've found is that stun is great - Willpower is often the lowest attribute, Stick-n-Shock halves impact armor and even if they resist that, they still need to make the "twitch roll" as we call it (to see if you can still move after being zapped). Also not many people have "nonconductivity" mod for their armour. Heck, I even shot another PC with Stick-n-Shock for his character being an asshole. He soaked the damage and he made his twitch roll and he was NOT happy. LOL.

Spirits just take damage - stun or physical - its the same to them. They get disrupted. People, we just stun them and if we really want to take them out, we just execute them after. We've only done that a few times and they were to people smugglers so we didn't feel particularly strongly about doing them a disservice. But stun damage means you can make the decision what you do after. We've been able to interrogate people this way and its worked quite well for us.

Unfortunately, the door swings both ways. NPCs might use stun when they want to capture you alive -- and that is never a good thing. Also, depending on how nasty your GM is, if he's pulling this on you then you can almost bet death would be a kinder fate.

- J.

Yup. That's why everyone (almost ) says S&S and Stunbolt are overpowered.

I actually don't think they're overpowered at all. Spirits being disrupted by Stun damage is no another thing entirely but that isn't the fault of Stunbolts or Stick-n-Shock.

I can do equally nasty tricks with chemical weapons (gas or liquids) too.

- J.

Not as easily, and that only says they're *both* overpowered.

And I refuse to go into it again… but you're wrong.

I'm sorry you feel that way. Maybe when you play the game a bit longer or think it through a little more, you'll see that isn't the case.

If you increase the cost of both, you then diminish the point of people using non-lethal means.

- J.

I've been lurking on this debate for a bit, and something seemed off. I finally turned my thoughts in the direction of why this has never been a problem in my games.

If characters are suffering from wound penalties on both tracks and don't really notice, your game's dice pools may be too big (GASP?). Dice Pools outside the game's intended range will cause unintended effects. In a more reasonably scaled game, the bloke who stayed conscious due to the physical wound should still be mostly incapable due to the extra penalties, if he was already highly stunned.

I'm with Tymeaus Jalynfein here on the interpretation of the damage and the intended consequences of armor.

There's really no call for that kind of ridiculous condescension, Jake. Especially from someone who admits to being an "asshole player".
Currently, there is no point to *not* using nonlethals. They're better in all ways; that's bad. This has been covered to death here on Dumpshock, so I'm neither expressing a fringe view, nor being unfair when I decline to rehash it.

--
Lanzter, that's still beside the point. The point is that there's KOd and there's not-KOd. It's not a question of how much they notice the wounds or not.