Canon Revision Project: Combat Mechanics, thread 2
Here we go again.

For those of you who have no idea what this is about, visit the last thread. This is an attempt to rewrite canon to fix the glaringly unrealistic, horribly broken, and enourmously wrong elements in the Shadowrun system. Though I originally had gotten into this simply planning to rewrite the guns to make them internally consistent, it soon turned into a project to fix Shadowrun's incontrovertible mess of broken combat mechanics. This project may go further; certainly, not absolutely everything is wrong with the Shadowrun system, but there are many things beyond combat needing work, from cyberware (eg 0.75 essence radios, cyberlimbs, mnemonic enhancer) to magic to small, miscellaneous rules (eg the difference between physical and visual searches). But, for now, the focus is on rewriting the combat mechanics to something realistic but still playable— and still faithful to the saner elements in canon.

The project's still going, and I'm still working on nailing down the issues that need to be tackled. But, first, to avoid repetition of issues already discussed (and some relatively solved):

Armor, Called Shots, and Hit Locations: I will be subdividing armor into specific bodily locations with separate values for each area. FFBA will no longer give 4 points of ballistic across the whole body with a full suit.

As for specific subdivisions, I haven't nailed down how many or where. Probably something along the lines of Torso/Legs/Arms/Head being +2/+3/+4/+5, though I'm considering +1/+2/+3/+5 or even leaving head at +4. With a comprehensive table of modifiers for vision and combat conditions— and a GM to make use of them— these could really be sufficient to make headshots largely ineffective in combat without being unnecessarily impossible. Each area hit will have its own set of effects for staging and power, and crippling hits to limbs will double the penalty to all actions taken solely with that limb and incur a 1.5x wound modifier penalty to actions involving that limb. No limb hit can do more than Deadly damage (Deadly being effectively hitting an artery or taking off a limb).

On normal attacks, will be using a 2d6 system rolled for each attack to determine where the shot lands, and it'll probably be similar to Raygun's setup. Yes, 3d6 offers more fine tuning, but in the context of this project, elegance is something of a necessity. Still, may change my mind on that.

Armor layering will likely be done per body region, but otherwise kept mechanically identical to canon. Body will be used to calculate how much armor you can wear effectively, not Quickness. Lastly, I'll be changing the mechanics to cause armor to impede movement from the start; you should not be walking around with an absolute minimum of armor at all times unless you decide that the tradeoffs are worth it.

Lastly, overall body armor will be calculated per some simple formula I've yet to devise, and will be used mainly for explosions, getting hit by cars, etc.

Auto Fire: I still have no idea where this is going. At present, the viable suggested systems have largely come down to two: Austere's system of breaking down autofire into bursts and Dashifen's system of hitting with all bullets up to the highest roll. To best honest, I have a number of issues here with pretty much every system I've seen, and how this is going to be handled is very much up in the air in my mind.

Semi Auto and Burst Fire: Basically, treat weapon skill as a pool that refreshes at the beginning of each Simple Action; per Simple Action, go ahead and fire as many shots as you can distribute pool to. Normal combat pool and recoil rules still apply. Credit to Person 404 for working on this with me.

Weapon ROF: Initially, I was opposed to factoring this in past a max number of rounds per 3 second interval, but I've really ended up changing my mind on this one. Weapon ROF in rounds per minute will be (naturally) divided by 20 to get rounds per 3 seconds, and this will then be further divided by the number of combat phases a combatant gets to determine the number of rounds he or she can fire per combat phase. In order to keep things sensible and acceptably streamlined, all of this will be calculated ahead of time and provided as part of the weapon's stats. If you want to run 1.5 or 1 second combat turns, I'm afraid you'll have to divide things further yourself, though that's obviously not very hard.

Weapon Recoil: Weapon recoil will probably be capped at Austere's suggestion of 4 + (3 * Weapon Recoil Modifier). eg assault rifles incur +1 recoil per shot, maxing out recoil at +7; a battle rifle or MMG incurs +2 recoil per shot, maxing out at 10. An HMG would incur +3 per shot, maxing out at 13. Firing on SA removes the base +4. Also, weapon attachments won't all factor straight into RC as per canon. Attachments like vertical foregrips will probably lower max recoil and max aiming actions by 1 or 2; attachments like bipods would lower max recoil and recoil generated per shot, depending on the weapon. All of this is still fairly malleable, however.

Additionally, I'll be using something similar to Raygun's RC by Reaction table, and I'll be using Strength based RC to feed right into recoil caps.

Also, expect GV4 and shock pads and all related silliness to go into the corner and shoot itself.

Ammunition: There will be seven types of ammunition: Light, Medium, and Heavy Pistol, Shotgun, and Light, Medium, and Heavy Rifle. Hell of a lot simpler than gigantic mess of different types. I won't be naming calibers, but for those who really are interested, Light Pistol will perform something in the vicinity of .22LR; Medium Pistol, 9mmP; Heavy Pistol, .357SIG, 10mmAuto, or .45ACP; Shotgun, 3" 12ga.; Light Rifle, 5.56x45mm NATO or 6.8mmSPC; Medium Rifle, 7.62x51mm NATO; Heavy, .50BMG. There will, of course, be guns firing custom ammunition types, but they'll be relatively uncommon.

I'm also curious if anyone would like to see shotguns broken down into Light, Medium, and Heavy variants, analogous to real life's 20, 12, and 10 gauges. All the other ammunition types get it, so I don't really see it being that much of an overcomplication, but I'm curious if anyone really cares one way or the other.

Rifles will get a 0.75 armor modifier, lowered to either 0.25 or 0.5 with AP (haven't decided which). I believe that this is pretty close to what Raygun uses, and it's simple enough to fit into the scope of this project. Hey, I love 3 part damage codes, but not here. I'm not sure where to go with pistol rounds (in terms of AP), at the moment. As for all other ammunition types, expect something realistic and an end to the silliness of flechette ammunition.

CQB and Weapon Handling: <=15m, all pistols receive -1TN; SMGs and carbines are the baseline, receiving +0TN; all full size rifles receive +1TN (I wanted to differentiate between carbines and full size rifles, but +2 is just too much); an LMG would receive +2TN; MMGs would receive +3TN; HMGs and heavy weapons, +4 and beyond. At <=5m, all CQB bonuses and penalties are doubled, and lighting, recoil, and called shot modifiers are halved, rounded up. Alternatively, could change the distances to 10m and 1m, respectively, but I think that may be fairly useless.

Shotguns: Completely ditching variable choke and it's area of effect swath of 2D. Thanks to Austere for the following numbers:

• -1 TN to hit at Short and Medium range; -2 at Long; -3 at Extreme
• Laser sights, reflex sights, and Smartlinks all give -1 TN (max of -1).
• Damage stages down at -2 Power/-1 Damage Level per range category. May consider -1 Power instead; I'm not sure if this makes shotguns too weak.
• Apply either double Ballistic or double Impact if the target as more than 1 point of either (ie at least 2, barring something completely weird).

Launch/Heavy Weapons: Will be increasing the power of most launch weapons and making most of them antivehicular (with possibly a couple exceptions; after all, the real life RPG-7 is basically an antipersonnel weapon). Also will be adding something along the lines of HIWS (as seen at Blackwater), mostly because it rocks.

Speed in Melee: Will probably be running with either a combination of Lime's system of requiring a simple action to counter attack and my system of Speed Reach or just Speed Reach. Either way, do not discuss this here. There's already a thread. Credit to Person 404 and another guy who's probably not going to post here for some time for putting together Speed Reach with me.

Explosives: Credit to Austere on these suggestions:

• Blast radius: -2/m
• Compared against 1x barrier rating
• Commercial Explosives (eg Semtex, TNT) are rating 6; C4 is rating 7; C12 is rating 10

To some degree, I wonder if these figures are lethal enough (100+ kilos of C4 needed to punch a meter wide hole through a reenforced cement wall), but for now, I'm ok with them. And factoring in each Demolitions success giving +25% Power, they might just be dangerous enough.

Could use some suggestions for rules on shaped charges, though there's the possibility that leaving Demolitions to handle this per successes does it well enough currently, albeit at an abstract level.

As for thermobaric explosives (again, thanks to Austere):

• Constant damage code blast radius: Rating * (kg/10) ^ 0.5
• Blast radius beyond this: -2/m
• Damage code: (Rating * 2)D
• Cost/Availability: (Rating ^ 2 * 3)¥ / Rating * 2, 7 days
• Minimum rating 2; maximum rating 6

Also, will have rules for improvised, cheap explosives. Specifically, fertilizer-based explosives at Rating 4 and its purified cousin, ammonium nitrate, at Rating 5. 20¥/kg for the former, 35¥/kg for the latter. Both quite accessible, easily detectible, and, if I can work out simple rules for it, fairly unstable.

Grenades: I'm either going with setting grenades at 15S (minigrenades at 12S) and enforcing the optional staging rules (numbers courtesy of Austere) or going with two separate damage ratings of 10S(f) (-1/m) and 6S (-2/m), one for shrapnel and one for concussion, respectively. Not entirely sure on this one.

Also, Austere: was the 12S meant to reflect the 40mm or 20mm platform? I'm pretty much ditching 20mm and high capacity underbarrel grenade launchers, but I'm not not removing 20mm entirely.

Skills: I'll definitely be rewriting the canon table of skills in order to keep the level of division consistent. No more Sorcery.

Fatigue: Unless there's interest and acceptance for an additional damage track for fatigue (resistable by Body and Willpower, healed with rest)— and do let me know if there is— I'll be going with Austere's system:

I have to disagree. It sounds simpler in theory, but when you run into players who don't like not being allowed to aim for specific parts of the body, it becomes a mess. Just look at the massive debates and incessant arguments that have resulted from the called shot and abstract armor rules. Ultimately, armor locations basically ditch this in favor of a much saner setup, and with redesigned character sheets with separate fields for different body parts, it's not really all that bad. Really, there are canon rules that require far more number crunching than just rolling 2d6 on every attack and applying that to a simple chart of effects.

Re: Ammo, you might want to make that Light, Medium, Heavy and Insane. Or something like that. The jump from the not-particularly-powerful 7.62x51mm to the far-too-powerful-for-just-about-any-application 12.7x99 is rather large. Put something like a .338Lapua or even .375H&H in there somewhere, for the big game rifles and many/most sniper rifles.

No real need for 3 different shotgun calibers. 12G is by far the most common, and people who don't know much about firearms assume all 12Gs are the same anyway.

To be fair, most of the "Called Shots Suxxorz!!!11" threads are complaining aboout how, after a certain minimum value, most armor is useless precisely *because* of called shots, specifically the ruling in the FAQ that says you can get around armor with a successful called shot. Hit locations and multiple armor ratings won't satisfy them, because called shots still exist, and their armor is just as easily bypassed as it was before. Most of the rest want detailed rules on shooting someone in the eye or throat or trigger finger. These people aren't satisfied either, because the proposed changes are too general. So the vast majority of objections aren't solved by this system, no more than they were before.

And I think you're underestimating how much this will complicate the game. Except for certain bits like FFBA, which by definition cover every part of the body equally (except ironically the most frequently-targeted parts of the body, the head and whatever mysterious part lets you get around all armor when doing a canon Called Shot), most armors will have different armor ratings for every hit location that you care to name. Thus every armor in the game will have to be rewritten with 8 sets of armor stats instead of 2, making them look somewhat like Matrix host stat blocs (a Camo Half-suit might be 4-2/2-1/2-0/1-0, for example). So now armor ratings become as dense to read through as Matrix hosts. This will also make stuff like jackets next to useless now, as they will have good ratings over the arms, fair over the torso, and nothing anywhere else. No doubt people will feel their arms/legs/head are never protected enough, and will beg and plead for more armors specifically designed to protect these areas that will stack well with all the torso armors in the published resources.

Let's also not forget that you're rolling another set of dice for every hit in combat now as well, to figure out where the hit takes place. Then youhave to look up what the roll means in one table, as well as what penalties that particular hit imposes in another. Accruing random penalties will probably be fairly common, since both arms and legs will have their own. This means people will have to keep track of many more odd miscellaneus modifiers, which they're likely to forget about at least once a turn (how many people here forget to add a die from Enhanced Artwinkulation or the Mneumotwink Enhancer every once in a while?)

This is simple?

The impression I got of the 20mm grenades is that they would be properly spin stabilized, and thus much more accurate. With 'adequate' fragmentation patterns in a 2-3 meter radius, you should be doing fine. Maybe make the 9S and use 1d6 scatter?

Eh, you're probably right and I'm just being paranoid. But I've still got some reservations about this Hit locations thing. Maybe I'm just being paranoid after reading literally dozens of threads tryint to add something similar to D&D, every one of them either becoming unplayable or not adding anything meaningful, and I'm just fighting the last war.

One question, though: how often to your sammies go for that called shot to the head/arm/eye/other unarmored spot, percentage-wise, in combat?

Everything else here looks really good. I'm especially eager to see what you do with the Skills section; the ball was *really* dropped there IMO.

Heh, just thought I'd add in one last reply before going back into lurker mode:

I tend to avoid such (armor/location) systems because I get really bored, really fast with the guy who figures out that bypassing armor is a good thing, so with his elite skills, comes up with the entertaining and varied tactics of:

"I shoot him in the eye!"
"I shoot him in the eye!"
"I shoot him in the eye!"
"I shoot him in the eye!"
"I shoot him in the eye!", ad inifinitum.

I had to put up with that as another Player in an Earthdawn game. God, I got sick of hearing that. The only time that character _didn't_ "shoot him in the eye" was the one time when the guy coming after us had some sort of magical tracking / death-ray eye. Still don't know why he didn't shoot it then.

Look some people need this type of realisim in their games...they'll find role-master after some time..

I wouldn't use any of this myself, cause I like abstraction, makes things easier on player and GM alike...however, I love hearing A & A's comments cause they give me things to think about to simplify into my own house rules. As to armor right now, I'm thinking of making a list that's FBA/PBA coverage...on PBA coverage called shots do dam with no armor...on a FBA coverage armor gets 1/2 it's value

I'll likely pull a few other things away from all this too before long...keep poundin away guys

I don't think you should drop the variable choke function of shotguns. The rules as written are pretty outrageous and unrealistic in the amount of spread but having variable chokes is sort of a nifty aspect to what makes shotguns fun in the game mechanics.

With our own game we simply changed the chokes from the old rating of 2-10 to 10-40 by increments of 5. When then use heavy pistol ranges when a shotgun is firing shotshells. The spread is still a bit larger than real life but it works pretty good and gives shotguns and interesting and unique niche in the game mechanics

Yeah, I know what you said, but I'm guessing that's to avoid the standard arguments, which this isn't so...

Wehn I said I'd use a combination, should've explained that it'd be a toned down version of Speed Reach. I agree, using the original version I proposed in addition to requiring action would be far too much.

As for CQB, keep in mind that 15m really isn't all that much. That said, though, I think I'm starting to agree that it's too far to give CQB bonuses and penalties. I think I'm settline on 10m/1m, which is enough to cover most of what you'll find indoors without being too unbalancing.

Honestly, if you want to rewrite the rules, youre going about it a strange way.

The problems of little rules inconsistencies or errors *pale* in comparison to the staggering statistical values for rolling the various TN numbers, due to the base 6 rolling unit.

Smartlink, in any form, still is, was, and always will be the most broken thing in the game; and is the prime example of my above statment.

...

But if youre going to use your rules set anyway, consider simply using the cyberlimb armor rules as a jump-off for hit locations. Head, Front, Back, Arms, Legs; 5 locations. For a FFBA full suit to give 4/1 it has to have 20/5 piecemeal, which is simply 4/1 to every location as long as the hood is worn. For Armor Jacket at 5/3 youd have to have 25/15 over the front, back, arms; so you might wind up with something like 7/3 arms and 9/6 front and back.

Then you can just use the overall ratings as listed for normal shots, and the split values for called shots. Just be prepared to make rulings on things like whether or not the Securetech Long Coat is flying back anime style or taped to someones legs when that called shot to the knee comes up.

RE:Shotgun rules: if you applied those rules in my game, realisitc or not, two things would happen. First Id hit you. Second Id quit. -1 dmg lvl? Hi never ever going to be used again weapon ever. *throws it in the same bin as light pistols, eye guns, etc*. If you want to play with guns to make them more real fine, but realize what youre doing. You make it easier to hit for lower damage codes, thats just like giving the shooter a smartlink and the target a smartlink for a damage test. Itll inflate everyones successes and result in little to no change.

My comment about your CQB rules wasn't about the numbers so much as the reasoning. I'm not new with firearms, but I know jack and maybe some shit about combat shooting and SWAT/urban tactics. I remember in a previous thread when you first mentioned (as far as I know) adding CQ modifiers, it was about dragging an assault cannon into melee combat (if I'm remembering right). What's happening some 32 feet away to make it harder to use an assault rifle, but easier to use a pistol? What condition are you representing with those rules?

Using hit locations opens up another can of worms: how do you handle location-specific damage.

• Hit in the head: do you take extra damage?
• Hit in left arm vs right (shooting) arm: should you get more modifiers to your aiming TNs?
• Hit in the leg: should you get modifiers to run speed?
• Do you expect more cyberware damage if hit in a location with 'ware?

If I was using hit locations, I'd probably just pull this stuff out of thin air on a case by case basis, but I'd end up pissing off the players when calls went against them.

GURPS has already done the work on this. The changes to the combat system described are exactly the way GURPS combat works. There is already armor by location, hit location, and different damage for different locations.
Making the SR game system more like GURPS is kind of a waste of time. Just play gurps, and set it in the SR world. If not, just steal GURPS' system, and graft it on to SR, as it's already been playtested by thousands for many years.

Then let's make one thing absolutely sure: Even without any smartlinks, everybody would always be taking headshots with +2 Power & +2 Damage Level if the TN modifier was only +4, unless the starting target number happens to be 2 or 8. At +2 Power & +3 DL, to properly balance it you'd need at least ~+8 modifier to call a shot to the head.

I've said before why I don't think +3 DL is even realistic, but it's your system.

Thing is, the TN modifier's not only +4. You also have to factor in lighting, movement, and combat conditions. When you do all that, you shouldn't come out with a modifier that's equal to firing and closing your eyes, but you should also come out with something fairly prohibitive.

And, no, +3 isn't realistic when you consider that the head area includes neck and the lower face, which are squishy and important, but not nearly as much as your brain. If it were a more precise system, then I'd consider +3.

The other modifiers don't matter when you're deciding whether you call a shot to the face or not. In fact, when the TN is already rather large -- anything at 6 or higher but not 8 or 14 -- every single player will go for the headshot with those modifiers. Always. Since it's extremely unlikely you'll get the 4 successes to stage damage up 2 levels you'll always take your chances to get that one roll 4 higher and get a Deadly base damage to begin with.

Once you get to the really high TNs, you'll never see anything but headshots. Unless you make sure the modifier really is prohibitive, which usually means ~+6.

Let me clarify then. Due to using a 6 sided die, and rerolling on 6, the TN scale does NOT scale up in a linear fashion, giving disproportionate weight to any piece of gear that lowers TN values because the number of successes rolled it what ultimatley determines how successful your character is. Smartlink is just at the forefront of that situation because it comes up the most often.

And yes shotguns can fire things besides shot, but in that respect are really no different than any other gun. If you leave the rest of the weaponry unchanged youll simply have no reason to choose anything other than the gun with the biggest on paper value, eliminating some of the reasons you might want to use a variety of weaponry.

And my armor reference wasnt talking about rolled hitlocations battletech style. It was a system for redistributing armor points for use during called shots. If you want to roll out the location for each hit then youre going to need an entire NEW set of TN mods. For example, a tn 4 at short range is the equivalent of aiming at a standing person, center mass. If you add hit locations, you need a modifier for what portion or lack theroff is behind cover based on the chance to hit each location, not neccessarily the amount of body behind cover. You need a called shot TN scale for each location. You need armor values for each of a dozen locations. You need to rewrite the wound effects tables from M&M to take that into account. You need to totally do away with the listed standard armor values, and shooting TNs, because theres almost no reason anyone would just take a standard shot anymore; the +2 TN for called shot tradeoff to avoid any cover by body position, avoid any armor except the targeted area, and possibly *increase* your guns damage code all in one manuver would beat out everything. And unless you really, really, really nerf smartlink into uselessness, the aboive shot wont really be that much harder than normal.

I still think most everything youve said is about worthless because its not fixing anything. Its adding about 5 chapters of paperwork that is, at this point, just as broken as the stuff you claim to be fixing. Post back when youve a harder mechanic than "uh Im going to fix this ya" because what youve said so far entails the opposite of fixing.

Players and Gms are going to be spending about 5 minutes trying to figure out armor and damage resistance with shotguns firing shot.

Let's see - two meter spread when it hits target, now you have to figure out the armor for head, torso, right arm, left arm, groin, right leg, and left leg - as every one of these have been hit.

As a player, I always use two shotguns - one with shot, and one with slugs.

However, we houserule that shotgun shot cannot be staged up with extra successes, and for every 3 meters of spread, the damage level is permanently reduced by 1 level, to a minimum of Light.

Extra successes still have to be rolled off by defender. And the reason for this is the shot has spread so much at 3 meters, or 6 meters etc, as to reduce it's effectiveness for damage level. Power is also reduced as per canon (-1 for every meter of spread). Otherwise, a burst with shot still does Deadly damage at 100m (extreme Range), no matter how much it spreads, according to canon rules.

Personally, I like simpler rules that keep the game going, rather than spending tons of time bean-counting.

As for where the wounds happen - that can be GM's call. Last week I had a Phys adept take a serious would that involved shredded armor, shrapnel to the face and chest, severed and near severed fingers, and a mechanical arm from an exploding drone embedded through his knee.

All from one 12D explosion, reflecting his serious wound.

I really, really have to agree with Eyeless on the cover and Multiple Locations Hit from attacks like grenades.