You can always tweak the model until you get what you want. Someone suggested extending the track to compensate, while I've also seen things like P+(1/2)S, or whatever. In some ways, I like the idea of Physical damage causing/including a Stun component; that's the shock of the wound. Being S, it would go away fast (including stim effects to mask it; good catch, Draco18s), but the base P component would linger (P's slow heal times).

Sure there are. They grant high pain tolerance (but don't actually heal the stun).

I was being a bit facetious and referring to the premise of the OP that, people would rather take a bullet to the chest than pop a StimPatch to avoid unconsciousness.

It doesn't matter that they don't heal the stun stim patches keep you fighting long enough to win maybe. Given the existence of stim patches; volunteering for Physical damage to avoid more Stun Damage is meta-gaming of the worst kind. (regardless of risk to magic.)

Also:
I like the idea of physical wounds doing stun (especially with firearms because I'm a sometimes believer in the Hydrostati Shock theory. But that's a tough mechanic to write.

Either there really is an immediate difference between the Contusions, Abrasions, Fatigue of Stun damage, and the life-threatening traumas of physical damage or there's not. Really, damage is damage and the distinction is one of degree, not type or location. I see that doubling the wound modifier would make the game unplayable. I still think the way to encourage players to fear and avoid physical damage more than stun is to model it better.

Perhapse it would work to model things like broken bones, punctured lungs and open veins. How about;

That sounds like the Advanced Wound rules from Arsenal.

You wouldn't *just* double the wound mod (if you did that at all); you'd alter things to compensate.

Do stims actually prevent unconsciousness, if they only give pain tolerance? Those two things are necessarily linked, and I don't recall if the rules actually do that.

TJ's point, which I would totally agree with, is that nobody in their right mind would want to take a slug in the gut rather than in the ballistic vest. End of. A player (esp a troll tank with high BOD) looking at their condition tracks and saying "Oh, I can't take any more stun damage, time to take off the armoured vest and take that P damage." IS metagaming, like it or not.

I have no problems with the system as it is, and would not let that sort of metagamery fly at my table, but YMMV. For those who find it hard to sleep at night because of this possible exploit, I suggest a simple house rule that anyone taking S damage can elect to take it as P if the stun damage would have knocked them out. Simple!

Interesting suggestion from Thorya about the much bigger stun track (with presumably reduced penalties to boot). Don't think I will be using it however, as I am fine with the system as it currently is, and I don't want to encourage my players to use lethal force over stunning opponents any more than they already do ...

No one disagrees with TJ's point, or that it's metagaming; they never did. He's arguing against nothing. The actual point is that there's a weird and nagging glitch in the rules, and that's objectively undesirable. Not catastrophic, not unplayable, just a glitch to be considered and maybe fixed.

It's like how TN7 was the same as TN6 in SR3; it never really changed much, but it was an annoying little error in the mechanic.

@Midas
Nobody takes his armor off. That is not what this glitch is about.
It is about hitting a passed out target with gelrounds is nearly as deadly as "normal" rounds.
It is about a guy hitting you for physical might not take you down, but doing less damage and beeing stun would.

Yes, if you have either unarmored players or the trolltank, this won't come up.
But lets take a look at some guy with body 3 and 6 Worn armor. The "normal" guy. If you shoot him with one of the many DV 5 weapons, you will always vary between stun and physical.
So this guy will be standing a bit longer, than the guy with 2 additional points of cyberarmor...

But I get it, it is a thread on dumpshock talking about the rules and not about abusing them. This can be confusing...

Well, a quick fix would be:

Someone falls unconscious when one of the following conditions is met:
- Stun track is full
- Physical track is full
- Stun + Physical dmg exceed 1,25 times the lower of the tracks

For the mage with a good drain resistance pool it's more similar to armored to the gill borg troll putting a light pistol to his head and repetaply pulling the the trigger for shit and giggles, as he know that only think those bullets do is a funny blink sound when they bounce of.

Except that StimmPatch doesn't stop one from dropping unconscious.

This is one of the reasons I have fiddled with the personal armor rules.
My current idea is thus:
Unless you are wearing hardened armor, incoming *Physical* damage is turned into stun by half the relavent armor rating (round up) after the soak roll. Any damage beyond that is physical. eg: Taking 5 physical damage after soak roll while wearing 6 armor means you'd take 3 stun and 2 physical.

Or, when your total dice pool penalty from wounds is equal to your Willpower...

Add a mage with "Reduce Willpower"

Except it's not, because those rules are observable reality to anyone who has been shot a few times within the game. It's not a nice rule, but it's observable nonetheless.


Actually a larger stun track but with the same modifiers would be perfectly fine - after all, concussion can be every bit as bad if not worse than bleeding wounds - until the blood loss gets worse. (And the effects of blood loss in the game are rather under-represented, I believe.)

But overall I still think the combined tracks are probably best for consistency.

Faraday, any playtesting on that? I noticed that you didn't round up, though. 5/2 = 3 stun, 3 physical.

At that point, I am likely running and not casting spells. That is why my Current Mage has a Base of 10 Dice to shoot guns with (12 With Tacnet). So I do not HAVE to risk killing MYSELF with Drain. The nice thing about guns is that they have... NO DRAIN...

You see, I don't feel the need to houserule a Loophole, Edge Case, Exploit. I just do not allow the Edge Case Exploit in the first place. Why? Because it is Metagaming BS. It was not considered to be a valid option when the rules were crafted, so why should I care? Just Say NO. Your life will be happier.

It's not about play, it's about theory. It is obvious that it's a non-issue in play, because no one lets it be one. You've admitted (how could you not?) that the issue exists *if you don't disallow it*; the only argument you could make against discussing and maybe fixing it is laziness (let's say 'time management'). Given that we're a bunch of game-players on a forum for discussing the game, discussing the discussion of the game… I'm gonna guess that we have plenty of free time.

I seriously doubt the rules were 'crafted' with a conscious decision of 'hey, let's add a glitch to P/S resolution because it's not a valid option anyway'. It is likely an error, which is the whole point.

Stim patches don't keep you from falling unconscious either.

10 stun is 10 stun is 10 stun.

But how do you just disallow a situation where more successes for a player equals a worse result? This isn't an exploit anyone particularly wants or tries to set up. It's just there. No one's choosing it. You can't just say NO, if it's just something that happens.

It's like the fact that an untrained buddy can prevent a good medic from bandaging you even without a glitch, because they attempted to help you before the trained medic arrived. It breaks the reality a little if you're better off bleeding out then having the wrong person stop the bleeding. Would it be metagaming for someone to say, "you're better off if we just leave that gun wound bleeding, because I have a low logic and no first aid training" yeah it would, but it's still frustrating for the players because it doesn't make sense that putting a bandage on can be a bad thing.

It's not something we particularly have problems with on the player end, the players are usually okay blacking out rather than risking death. It's only a problem in the case where they were doing Stun and Physical damage and it would break the reality that a bullet through the gut was less dangerous to an NPC than one to the trauma plate. Since I've started GMing, I just gave the NPC's a single damage track and they lived or died based whether there was more Stun or Physical (easier bookkeeping too).

But how do you just disallow a situation where more successes for a player equals a worse result? This isn't an exploit anyone particularly wants or tries to set up. It's just there. No one's choosing it. You can't just say NO, if it's just something that happens.

It's like the fact that an untrained buddy can prevent a good medic from bandaging you even without a glitch, because they attempted to help you before the trained medic arrived. It breaks the reality a little if you're better off bleeding out then having the wrong person stop the bleeding. Would it be metagaming for someone to say, "you're better off if we just leave that gun wound bleeding, because I have a low logic and no first aid training" yeah it would, but it's still frustrating for the players because it doesn't make sense that putting a bandage on can be a bad thing.

It's not something we particularly have problems with on the player end, the players are usually okay blacking out rather than risking death. It's only a problem in the case where they were doing Stun and Physical damage and it would break the reality that a bullet through the gut was less dangerous to an NPC than one to the trauma plate. Since I've started GMing, I just gave the NPC's a single damage track and they lived or died based whether there was more Stun or Physical (easier bookkeeping too).

I will try to answer these individually...



Easy... I just say No. More successes does not equal a worse result. It equals a Better result. ie. From Stun Damage to Physical Damage. It sucks to be the guy taking the Physical Damage now instead of the Stun, but there you go. If He takes more Stun damage instead (The worse reslut I imagine you are talking about), then he goes unconscious. This is NOT BAD. It is exactly why characters wear armor. SO THEY DO NOT DIE.



In this instance, I do not have the untrained guy roll the dice. He applies a bandage that stops bleeding. As a bandage is supposed to do. The Field medic actually makes the roll when he gets to a location that allows such things to occur. So, No, I do not have that issue. Interestingly enough, Since there are NO BLEEDING RULES in the game unless you opt for the Optional ones in Augmentation, not making the roll immediately will still work narratively, while still applying a "bandage" to stop that bleeding. This instance is best handled narratively, as most things are. You can apply a bandage, and not make a First Aid Roll, after all.



And that can work. But since I have never had any issues with the way the rules work for tracking/applying damage, I have no desire to actually change the rules on how damage is applied. Besides, a Bullet through the Gut is NOT less dangerous than one to the Trauma Plate. Saying it is is disengenuous. There are already rules in place for healing that say different. If your players see it that way, then maybe it is in the way that you (generic) describe the scenario, rather than in the mechanics. Mechanically, a wound penalty is just a wound penalty; Narratively, it is not.

If it's the player who's attacking, then it's quite possible to get just one hit too many witch pushes the damage to physical and leaves the bad guy standing to shoot back for one more turn, where as he would have been unconscious from the stun damage.
That's quite clearly a worse result for getting more successes.

No, its not. It is a Better result. It may be an unfortunate result, but if your goal is to take someone down non-lethally, use Non-lethal (Less Lethal?) rounds. Problem solved. If your goal is to kill them, then the result you claim is worse, is, in fact, better. Now, if you are going to metagame, then yes, you could argue your point, but it would still have absolutely zero validity. You have inflicted a wound that heals on the increment of a day, vs a wound that would heal on an increment of an hour. Sounds like a more successful result to me. Again, people are arguing from a metagame POV, not a World POV.

Describing specific circumstances and methods for *avoiding* these glitches, TJ, doesn't mean they're not there. Quite the opposite. Ideally, they wouldn't *be* there, so you wouldn't have to avoid them.

What if the goal was to drop him ASAP, then? If you change the goal, you change how 'good' the result is, obviously. The character has no reason to assume he has to switch to Stun in order to achieve that perfectly common goal. This is identical to what I told you before, when I proposed that the goal was to stay standing, not avoid dying (which, once again, is a total nonissue).

You're right, people are arguing from a metagame perspective, because this is a theory issue. Metagame means looking at the way the mechanics match (or fail to match) the purported game world. Why is that so hard for you to grasp today? They fail to match, that's objectively a problem, problems should be fixed, fixing requires considering and discussing, and that's what we're doing (when not trying to explain it to you ).

If the goal is to drop him ASAP, you pick a method and go with it. My guess is that most would choose SnS. Me? I would Choose APDS, personally. But here is the kicker. Are you trying to not kill him or kill him. The scenario changes depending upon that choice. Goal Matters. I am not trying to argue that you change your goal based upon the targets damage. Others are doing that. If my goal is to kill him, I shoot him with lethal ammunition. Some times, the target may take stun, and other times they may take physical. Which is irrelevant to me, because I am trying to kill him. I don't care which he has taken, and in fact have no real way of telling whether he soaked all the damage, took stun, or is bleeding internally. IN THE GAME, it makes absolutely no difference narratively. It is only when you have players that apply the mecahnics to everything that they see, in game, that you have an issue.



But my point is that the Mechanics DO match the world view, UNLESS YOU LOOK AT IT from a METAGAMING (Or Theoretical) viewpoint (Objectively, in the world, the mechanics work, it is only in the Subjective reality of the Players that it becomes an issue). Individuals IN THE WORLD do not have that luxury of second guessing the mechanics, which is why when players do it (because their characters are incapable of such things), it should be slapped down mercilessly.

Not sure why that one is so difficult either.

But, as is often the case, we see things from different perspectives. I look at it from the World View (more often than not) and you look at it from the Mecahnics View. Usually, these view points are at odds.

In what bizarro word do you live in that having a guy still standing and trying to kill you is better then him lying in the ground unconscious.
For normal shadow runners, who are not specifically trying kill or not kill the security guards, dead or unconcious doesn't matter, only think that matters is that the guy isn't capable of shooting at them any more.

Not to mention that if you are trying to kill him, an unconscious body with no physical wounds is easier to "make dead" than a conscious one with both physical and stun (the latter tends to resist).

Context Matters Max... Bleeding is always better than bruised, from the shooter's standpoint. If you are going to make the target bleed, then make him bleed. But you cannot argue that because the round impacted on the armor the first few times and the third time you actually penetrated and caused real wounds that the system sucks. It functions as it was intended to function. Armor keeps wounds from being lethal, boith in the real world and in Shadowrun. If you don't like it, then use a round that either causes Stun all the time, or use ammo that will reliably penetrate armor. That is Life, both in the Shadows and outside of them.

But then you are NOT trying to kill your target, you are trying to make them unconscious, and then you have the luxury to decide what to do with him after he is down.

That is NOT the same thing, Draco18s.

Pure theory, straight off the cuff, never been tested.

Give a single damage track of Body+Willpower. Stun damage does a / across the box. Physical Damage does an X on the box.

When the last box is filled in with a / you fall unconscious, if it is filled with an X you die. (If you really need an overflow chart, add Body extra boxes on the side.)

When you take Stun damage, you have the choice of either putting a second slash in a box with Stun, and rendering it Physical, or you can keep climbing the chart. (That first punch knocked the wind out of you, the second cracked a rib)

So let's say that Johnny has a Body of 4 and a Willpower of 3. [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] [ ] He gets attacked by a pair of Halloweeners.
After taking two punches for 3 boxes of Stun damage each, he decided it's going to ring his bell but not do lasting damage. (Option A) [/] [/] [/] [/] [/] [/] [ ]

Or he could take a few sprains and cracks (Option B) [X] [X] [/] [/] [ ] [ ] [ ]

Physical damage adds at the base of the track and pushes stun higher.
The gangers up the ante since Johnny still hasn't handed over the keys to his car. One of them stabs him for 2 boxes of Physical.
Option A-[X] [X] [/] [/] [/] [/] [/] {Here the overflowed stun rolled over into Overflow boxes.} Johnny passes out but will come to in a few minutes.

Option B-[X] [X] [X] [X] [/] [/] [ ] Johnny can keep fighting and has the strong possibility of dying.

The damage system is dynamic without really bogging things down and adding tons of extra paperwork. If players really want to game the system and transfer Stun into Physical to stay standing, they can--though it's a damgerous game because it could mean the difference between "Dead" and "Able to Fight Another Day"

Which is a viable solution, ala NWOD. Though the damage in Shadowrun is still a lot more deadly (as in Hits + Base Damage) than in NWOD (Which is just Hits).

It's not a mechanics perspective, it's a metagame (mechanics+world) perspective. That's the point. There is a mismatch, and there should be no mismatch. The question is not 'how often does this come up in play?', 'can this be abused?', 'how can abuse be avoided?', etc. It is 'do the rules match the world coherently, or not?'; the fact is, they don't quite. Not unplayably, but noticeably (because people manifestly do notice it).

Or we could go with a hit location system like pheonix command. Not that combat needs to be anymore complex. Plus, I'm not sure that system has stun and physical charts.

Come to think of it P damage definitely has some location to where it happens, whereas stun seems to represent overall fatigue, shock and concussion damage.

Tymaeus--I've never played NWOD, but I can see what you're saying. A simple option would be to do 5+Bod+Will, similar to the current tracks being 8+(1/2 Bod). Alternately, the soak mechanics may help compensate for the damage difference.

Yerameyahu -- Alright. I've never had it come up as a problem with my tables, or heard folks complain about it when running convention games. If it is a problem for your group and others, due to the rules not matching a coherent world view, how can we change the rules to make it match? If we argue about perspectives, our work will never be done.

Okay Tymeaus Jalynsfein, I can accept that in your games, people continuing to shoot at you and potentially killing you is a good thing as long as it means they'll feel it more the next day. It's clearly not the world anyone else is playing in, but each game is different.

How do you justify the casting problem though? If I'm a mage that has 9 boxes of Stun damage (Let's say I drop at 10 for the sake of this scenario) and no physical damage. I've fired off a few stunballs already and took out most of the gang, casting conservatively so that I wouldn't hurt myself (hence the stun). My street sam partner is down (having drawn most of the fire in the first few passes), so I'm facing the last three guys by myself. It looks like they'll tear me to shredds and I can feel that I'm hurt and near my limits, but I know that if I push it and put myself in some serious physical danger with this next spell, I'll take them down with me and our hacker buddy can come haul us out of there. Narratively, I let loose with my last bit of effort and knock those guys out then collapse from exhaustion and pain. Mechanically, I overcast stunball at force 10 and roll to resist 6 drain. The three guys drop, I end up taking 4 boxes of physical damage and I . . . am still standing and can haul out of there no problem. Whereas if I had decided that it's better to try to stay on my feet with these guys in case someone shows up before our hacker friend, I cast at a conservative force 5 and have to resist 3 drain, I take 1 box of stun damage, I'm unconscious and the three guys are still up. They shoot me and my sam buddy a few more time and our hacker gets to come in and recover our bodies later. Narratively, it doesn't make sense. I was doing something more dangerous, putting out my last bit of effort and I'm fine. But if I had done something less dangerous, it has worse consequences. Sure I'll need to heal 4 boxes of physical damage, but that's nothing compared to being riddled with bullets while I'm unconscious. There was no metagaming BS there. Either choice is justified from a player perspective, but the one that should be more radical and dangerous narratively is less so mechanically.

This, so much this.

I mentioned some things way back at the beginning, Bishop. There are certainly other ways, as well, and we would've been proposing and critiquing those methods if we hadn't wasted all this time, hehe.

The problem, thouygh, is that you resorted, at the end, to a mechanical and not narrative resolution. Yes, Mechanically, you have 4 Physical and 9 Stun. But Narratively, you still are exhausted and copllapse from the pain. This does not mean that narratively, you cannot actually help your friend, nor get away. But if you just "Stand up and put him over your shoulder, hitch up your pants, and walk 3 miles to your vehicle, all the while whistling a tune" then you have just metagamed the scenario. Why? Because you do not take into consideration the World Impact of what just happened, you are only looking at the mechanical perspective.

There is a ton of narrative license that can be taken in the game, if you but do so. Defaulting the mechanical descriptions is a cop out, and a metagame issue.

In the end, both scenarios result in the same net damage to the character. But one is completely narrative, and within the scope of the Worldview, and the other is complete Metagame BS and is from a Player, not character, perspective.

Unfortunately, we are not really solving anything here. They are ultimately two different ways of looking at the rules, and they generally never meet in the middle.

TJ, once again, you have exactly illustrated the problem: at no point should a player be required to narratively compensate for broken rules (in fact, actually defy them). That's like saying players should be able to say, 'no, that guy didn't hit me, it doesn't fit my narrative'. That's the *point* of RPG rules.

"Really? My sheet says I'm still conscious."

But it is not that...

Why when it is narratively described does it all of a sudden change when it is Mecahnically resolved. I know that you say it is because the mechanics do not relate to the description. But I disagree... Descriptively, the character IS exhausted, and has, on top of it, effectively given himself an anneurism/stroke to deal with. At what point is he still "Standing"?

He has Hurt himself significantly (9 Stun and 4 Physical). How are you now saying the he is "Okay"?
This is a disconnect between GM's, Players, and their characters. Not the rules and the World View.

It is not narrative compensation, as far as I am concerned. It is a view of the world FROM THE CHARACTER'S POV. NOT FROM THE PLAYER'S.
THAT is where the issue resides.

And gravely hurt. So much so, that you should be almost unable to stand, much less carry a 100 Kilo friend to safety. But that is my point. PLAYER's Don't care about that, they go "to the Numbers" to resolve something rather than the Character's Viepoint in the World. It is very DnD, actually, where you are totally unhurt until you take that last HP of damage. I call BS on that type of mentality.

No, he's not "OK" but he's conscious and capable of carrying out further actions (albeit at a stiff penalty).

Whereas if he'd been unconscious (due to using a lower force spell), he'd have been captured and/or killed (because his enemies were still conscious and his rigger buddy isn't capable of picking him up first).

I agree that he is conscious. But if you perform actions that are not commensurate with your wound levels (especially ones that require minimal or no rolls) then you are "Playing the character sheet and the numbers" rather than playing based upon what the CHARACTER knows/can perform.

As for captured... So what?

As I said... Two completely different Perespectives.

You can't not go by the rules, TJ, just to serve your own roleplaying vision. If the condition monitor says you're conscious but wounded, you're conscious but wounded. It is not up to the players to say, 'no, I think I'm actually unconscious, guys', just as much as it's not okay for the player to say, 'no, I think I'm actually still conscious, GM'. You're asking something that's literally impossible, and rightly so. That's why there are rules, instead of being freeform. This is not 'playing the wrong perspective', it's broken rules. There is no perspective involved here at all.

Sadly, no. I think you transposed the numbers in my post, no rounding up needed to occur. (5 physical, 6 armor. 6/2=3. So 3 Stun, 2 Physical)

I might try it when I GM again with my group, still trying to figure out what to do with burst fire. Maybe have it add to physical if base DV+hits>armor, stun if=<armor.

OH! I thought you meant 'take the incoming P, send half to S'. Totally misread, sorry.

No worries. The idea is to make personal armor protection more granular. Makes combat more costly, but also less dangerous to an extent. In general, if bullets are flying, wound modifiers will get to stacking pretty quickly and one side may well give up before going unconscious.

Shhh! Don't tip off my players to it!
But yeah, that works - and it's part of my point, actually... There is precedence for 'negative modifers > Willpower = no actions' - Spells like Agony, for instance. I think it works even for damage, though you can rule that the target is conscious but in too much pain to act. It adds flavor, as there is a real reason to use stim patches and drugs or anything else that gives you pain tolerance beyond getting 'more dice'.






The character doesn't really have to know either way - even if the player plays the character according to the in-game facts, the problem is there. Even if your goal is trying to kill the bad guy, you end up in a situation where a better roll gives a less desirable result - whether the character knows it is irrelevant.

If the target has high levels of pain tolerance and high skill ratings, it may be quite costly for the character to make a 'great shot' and get through the armor rather than a mediocre one and drop the villain with stun damage. The character will likely never know this, of course - but it is possible even from an in-game perspective to discover this phenomenon. It could be easy, as well - 'hmm, whenever I throw a manabolt at the guy my friend has been ripping to shreds with his claws, he drops, but when I do the same to the guy that the troll has pummeled with his fists, it seems no different than if I had done it against an unwounded fellow...that's odd.' or 'if I've been shot and I'm bleeding, I never pass out when I come down from the Betameth, but if a round got stuck in my armor, or I was punched hard in the face, I always pass out...why is that?'

Using narration to complement the rules is a great tool and goal for RPing, but if you have to use it to override the rules just to avoid weird situations, then it's a sign that the rules are flawed.