Hi again everyone,

Gm'ed my first game recently and came across characters falling off bikes at high speed. From the rules we took it as written that the damage you take is proportional to the body of the vehicle and adjusted by the crash test speed table. As the character who fell was going at 60-200 m/turn, this mean x2 body. As he was in a Harley scorpion this mean 16P! So he didn't survive... However thinking back on it, it does seem silly unless he fell off and got hit by his own bike. So my thoughts are it should have been the characters body x2 in damage taken. Problem there is a troll falling off a bike is going to take more damage than a elf child.

So, can anyone please clue me in to the correct way of doing things?

Thanks again in advance

I don't think, there IS a correct way of doing this.
The rules you used were collision damage, and they wouldn't really apply there, as you mentioned.
I don't remember rules for falling off or out of a vehicle at high speeds, so you'd need to eyeball it.
But falling off a bike at 72 to 240 km/h IS pretty deadly.

The closest thing available are the rules for falling damage on p.164 in SR4a. I'd probably go with meters per combat turn / 10, and apply full impact armor.

Maybe you should Try to use the Falling Damage Rules .
Falling of a Bike at 60 m/r is maybe like falling ....30 Feet ??

HokaHey
Medicineman

3rd vote for the falling damage rules

reason being, falling off a bike at speed in any kind of armour or bike leathers does not do massive damage ...
the sudden stop as you hit a building or lamp post does.

I would allow a Reaction test maybe with threshold for the surface / street furniture etc. to find something soft to land in / crash into.

followed by body + impact armor test.

In motorcycle racing on TV it happens that the dudes fall of their bike, but usually they don't die from that.

How much damage the accident does depends on the circumstances. If you just slide over the empty street until you have lost your momentum, you probably wont be hurt badly if you wear protective Motorcycle clothing. After all, this clothing is made for exactly this kind of accident.
If you are unlucky and slide into an inmovable object, like a concrete wall, before you have lost your momentum, you should take damage, depeding on the speed you have left. (Meter per combaturn /10) DP seems reasonable in that case. It could also happen that the road has potholes or that you are run over by an other participants in the vehicle combat. This would of course cause further damage.

I know introducing physics into RPGs is frowned upon, but: If the character had smashed into a wall, you could take the vehicle's speed (in m/s), work out from what height he would've had to fall to go that fast (d = v^2 / (2 * g) =~ v^2 / 20) and look that up on the table.
60 m/turn (20 m/s) is equivalent to a 20m drop; 200 m/turn (~67m/s) to ~225m; err, smashing into concrete @ 150 mph is bad for your health, mkay.
For someone who fell off his bike - and thus has a chance to tuck and roll -, half or third that could work; maybe even less with a successful Gymnastics Test.

There is a company called aerostitch that makes riding gear used largely for touring and commuting by motorcycle. People who have accidents on the road send them their suits for repair after they get done with the skidding across pavement part. They said once that the highest speed accident they had been sent a suit for repair was 130 mph, 70-100 mph was not uncommon. People commonly end up off their bike with fairly minor damage at what are typical open road to highway speeds.

My former coworker and motorcycle racer/fanatic said that what kills people dead is sliding into a solid object, what hospitalizes people is tumbling. If you tuck and remain stable without tumbling you are often able to walk away from really high speed dismounts. That assumes that you are wearing clothing that is tough enough and thick enough that it doesn't burn through to your skin during the deceleration process.

I kinda threw my GM for a loop when I had a combat anthroform drone leap off a motorcycle to bodyslam a rider off another cycle in a Missions game. After a few minutes of perplexed searching through the rulebooks, he just used the ramming rules.

Somehow I don't think that applies here though.


-k

In that particular case the ramming rules sounds fairly sound - the situation is about the same as a self-propelled drone smashing into a pedestrian (with taking into account the relative speed - in that particular case the drone carrier's speed plus the incoming bike's speeed - which means it's proably going to hurt a lot). Just be sure to use the drone's body for the math here.

How about this for a mechanic? PEACHES.

Decrease the effective speed of the concrete surfer each round by his Impact armor - 1 for each previous round of surfing. If the effective Impact armor reaches 0 it has abraided through the armor, if you are still moving you begin taking road rash each round of current (Meter per combat turn /10) DP and then slow an additional amount equal to (BOD + STR).

So the Biker wearing Bike Racing Armor and Helmet with armor ratings of 5/9 could reach a safe stop after a fall from his bike going no more than 45 meters /combat turn (which equates to 100 mph or 160 kph IRL) without suffering road rash. Which modern day gear can handle reliably. And give the wearer 9 combat turns to navigate to a clear area provided they can steer while bodysurfing the concrete. Possibly using a soak type roll using Agility or Reaction and Impact Armor instead of Body to avoid impacting something other than the ground?

What say you all?

Minor nitpick: 45m/turn aren't 160kph. It's 54kph.
The multiplier is 1.2 if you want to convert m/turn to kph.

So, the rest of your numbers get wonky

I had at first thought of multiplying the deceleration by 1/3 Agility, but that seemed excessive.

So changing the equations to (Impact armor - 1)*(ARI/3(round down)) deceleration per combat turn. It would still only give 18 seconds of rash free concrete bodysurfing to steer out of harms way.

And after your Impact armor is shredded you take (M/turn)/10 DV and slow an additional (BOD+STR)*(AGI/3) per turn as your meat shears away from your bones.

I'm thinking of just keeping things really simple.

If you fall off your bike, make an agility+reaction test threshold 2 (normal difficulty) to skid instead of tumble.

If successful:

Take the speed travelling at the time of fall and divide by 10 (round up), minus impact armour, resist with body & impact armour.

If unsuccessful:

Take the speed travelling at the time of fall and divide by 5 (round up), minus impact armour, resist with body & impact armour.

If the damage taken is greater than half the impact armour, the armour is ruined and will need to be fixed/replaced.

for example,

Jax is knocked off his bike by a ganger with a baseball bat. He is travelling at 100 m/turn (or 75mph). He rolls his agility+reaction (8 dice) and gets 3 hits. He has managed not to tumble in the fall and is skidding on his back. Without any armour, he would have to resist 10P, fortunately he is wearing his biker gear and helmet which gives him 9 impact armour reducing the damage to 1P. He rolls his body (3) plus impact armour (9) and gets 4 hits taking no damage.

If he was travelling at 200 m/turn (149mph), he would be resisting 11P with his 12 dice. If he survives, he will need to get his biker gear fixed/replaced!

This is all presuming you don't hit anything.

If there is something to hit, use the ramming rules.

Note: As above posts, if traveling at 45m/turn (33mph) in full biker gear, you will take no damage from skidding to a stop, in fact you can go up up to 90m/turn, fall while skidding and take no damage.

Unconscious riders automatically tumble and in full biker gear will only roll for damage going faster than 46m/turn

I thought you said "really simple", Mystweaver.

Here's simple: roll Scatter when you fall, to determine where you land/what you hit. If you hit something, take Fall Damage appropriate to a distance equal to your movement speed, minus the distance between the fall point and the impact point to represent losing momentum as you skid. If you dont' hit anything, you don't take fall damage. GM determines any other damage from skidding, modified or resisted by appropriate armor.

~Umi