You're shooting it out with the police.

Would honestly say it is BETTER for you to go unconscious and take the consequences were being arrested, tried before a jury of your peers, and sentenced to life imprisonment because of the crimes you comitted, and it is WORSE for you to take a gunshot wound to the meaty parts of yor upper arm, escape the police and get away so that you can collect your part of the payment/loot?

You can't just ignore the context the damage happens in, because if a wound or unconsciousness is better or worse depends on where you are and what you are doing.

Driving a car? Which is better?

Swimming?

Swimming in shark-infested waters?

Running from the police?

Running from a serial killer?

Having an excellent Mage with a heal spell on hand?


In many cases, it won't matter if you take an actual wound or not, because if you fall unconscious instead you'll be dead (or wishing you were...)

Totally.

Not that it even matters, because the real issue is that, in reality, half-and-half pierced/blocked bullets is *closer* to KO than all blocked; in SR, the opposite is true. The way reality and SR fail to line up in this situation is the problem, and yes, that's a theory problem.

Nope. My position assumes that Physical Damage is objectively more damaging than Stun Damage is, regardless of how it is applied. It also assumes that Armor allows for the splitting of your damage amongst two different damage tracks, and that it is entirely by design. Anything else that has been brought up is entirely Subjective, and is irrelevant when discussing your theory.

It has absolutely nothing to do with Game Play. As for possibly bad things happening to you when you are unconscious, I never said there were no consequences. Look, and you will see that. I fully expect there to be consequences. I agree that it would be unreasonable to not expect them. And yes, if you are unconscious, you can be killed afterwards with no penalty. But again, I never disputed that.

However, if you go back to the arguments, both sides have different views with how damage interacted with Armor, and how that played out. And all sides agreed that it is not a Game play issue, because it was so rare to have it occur that is was an extreme edge case when it did. I believe it was even you (Could be wrong, though, there has been a lot of opinions/ideas thrown out here in this topic) who said it would never occur, due to the rule that Mooks (Non-Prime Runners) never used more than a single track anyways. So, in the end, it was never a detriment to the game at all, as when it did happen, it was only to the Player Characters, which are never going to complain about splitting their damage amongst two tracks instead of applying it all to one, becasue that provides more surviveability to the character. *Shrug*

No worries, though. I think I am done here, again, as nothing is being resolved.

The assumption that armor is *intended* to split damage half and half is clearly a bad one. More armor should keep you standing longer; instead, you're saying that there's a 'sweet spot' amount of armor (based on available weapons and average skill/situation matchups), and that's by design? Unless characters in the game are thinking, 'whoops, don't wanna add that helmet, it'll ruin my ability to stay conscious', you're the one making the metagame argument there.

You disputed it when you chose to leave it out of your 'objective' comparison of P and S. That choice implicitly makes the positive assumption that nothing bad will happen.

I don't particularly agree that the effect never shows up, I just don't think it *matters* whether or not it shows up; being a detriment 'to the game' is not the standard of whether an issue exists or not. Theoretical (and/or rare) issues are not less real than gameplay (and/or common) ones. So, yes, I did note that the mook-track rule means it can't ever show up… for mooks. Luckily, there are also PCs in the game. It shouldn't matter if the error is always in the players' favor, it's still an error. You of all people should appreciate that, being so worried about the players metagaming.

(In fact, the single mook track is an example of how it should work, and that's why some people suggested such a single-track system for everyone. For mooks, more armor is always better, and more bullet-hits (and *stronger hits*) is always worse. This parallels reality, and is therefore good.)

I pointed out a long time ago that, if you personally don't care about theoretical issues, that was fine. But that preference doesn't affect the discussion, just your presence in it.

That's only objectively true if the system's mechanical rules reflect that.
(They don't)

And yet Shadowrun has had this theoretical issue, as you call it, for twenty years, with no complaints. Why is it an actual problem now? Especially when it does not actually impact play.

In the end, The only real fix for your Split DSamage Theory is a single track, where everything accumulates to it, ala NWOD. Which I believe both of us, as well as several other, have recommended to fix this theoretical issue.

Anyways...

They actually do...

You already raised that point pages ago, to which I responded that this thread is hardly the first time someone noticed or mentioned it. Neither is the presence of complaints the criterion for the existence of an issue (just as 'impacting play' is not). I don't know why you constantly argue against points I never made. From the beginning, I made it clear that my position was only that there exists a theoretical issue (that is, a rules issue) where the mechanic mismatches the RL behavior, and that such a mismatch is non-ideal. I didn't say you cared about such issues, that they ruin gameplay, that it bothers everyone, or anything else like that. Half of Dumpshock is theory discussions: I'd prefer the skill ratings go to 12 (even if 12=6 now), maybe, or that drones were more expensive, etc.

That's one solution, yes. We've always discussed some others, when not distracted by this sideline stuff.

And again:

Aside from healing times, which are effectively meaningless (due to First Aid and magical Healing), you are incorrect.

Congratulations. This thread has now devolved into a chicken vs egg debate.

Noone wins this debate.

- J.

Can someone clarify for me please.

Throughout the various threads I have read, there seems to be an understanding that weapons that cause stun damage (either because it didn't penetrate armour or because they are electrical) are resisted by Willpower rather than Body?!

The core rules says:
. My emphasis, but I can't find where it is written that Willpower is used, rather than Body.



Thx

Wether body or willpower is used doesn't depend on the type of damage, but on the type of attack.

For most sources of damage, body is used to soak both stun or physical.

For mana spells, willpower is used to soak both physical or stun damage (which depends on the specific spell used).
There's not a whole lot of other attacks that are soaked by willpower in regular (i.e. non astral and non matrix) play.

You might be misunderstanding, since the Stun Track uses Willpower to determine how many boxes you have. So weapons that hit Stun on a Troll usually have to fill less boxes.

AFAIK, it's just bad writing, Zoot. I'd be interested to hear if that's not the case.

Thanks Guys, that is what I thought but I read a few threads that seemed to suggest differently. Just wanted to be certain I hadn't missed something.