I'll preface this by saying that my group and I have played d20 for the past few years almost exclusively, so we're not used to people being able to act in the middle of their movement without some sort of special ability (a feat in D&D).

That said, what do people think about the ability to act during movement. The rules don't say whether you can or not, but they seem to imply that you can. However, it results in several odd occurrences being possible such as

• Step around the enemy's cover, shoot with no penalties, then run back to your cover.
• Mages can cast spells while sprinting (using athletics to increase their run speed)

Does anyone else have a problem with this, or any reasons why it shouldn't be house ruled?

Using athletics to increase your running speed is a complex action, as is spellcasting, so you couldn't do both in the same phase, although you could do one then the other, or house rule that you can do both at once.

Regardless, yeah you can do things like moving around cover, shooting, and then moving into cover. A lot of people (including our group) house rule some aspect or other of the whole initiative or movement thing and when modifiers apply and when they don't. But even if you don't, remember that, even if you're negating all your opponent's cover by moving around and shooting, you will still get the penalty for walking, or more likely running, instead. Might not be as high but it's still something to consider.

SR is more realistic than D&D in regard to moving/acting, but also a bit harder to manage I suppose. Same goes for a lot of things.

You declare your movement at the beginning of the turn. If you step around cover, you take the Attacker Walking penalty. For running, Attacker Running. Also, your movement is divided among every initiative pass, regardless of whether or not you get an action in it.

As for mages casting spells whilst sprinting, I believe using Athletics to increase run speed is a Complex Action. Otherwise, why would it be a problem?

And for balancing the duck out of cover, shoot, duck back in: the very held actions your other thread discusses.

~J

If you act while moving, you suffer movement penalties as per the ranged combat modifiers table. Which means if you walk around your opponent's cover you'll take a +1 or +2 depending on if it's difficult ground or not. Also, movement is broken up over the total number of passes in a combat turn. This means that for a human with a quickness of 6, who can walk 6 meters per combat turn, could only move two meters per combat pass if the combat turn had three passes. So, you could still move to circumvent an opponents cover, but you would be unable to move back to your own cover until next pass.

Also, sprinting is a complex action, which means a mage cannot cast spells while in the process.

I recall something in the FAQ about changing direction. You can't alter your movement that much till the next new initiative. I could be wrong though. Just seems cheesy to dart out, shoot them with them having no cover then dart back behind a trol.. I mean cover.

Count the movement before actions. If there are several Initiative Passes in a CT, divide everybody's movement to all the Init Passes and calculate those before anything else happens in that Init Pass. That should solve most problems.

You can't cast a spell or do much anything else while sprinting -- that takes a Complex Action and is only effective for that one Combat Phase.

Three seconds long.

~J

Running isn't a complex action, it's movement. Sprinting is a complex action.

Sorry, I had missed that sprinting was complex. But you can still run at top speed and cast a spell, or pop around cover and shoot someone. Attacker running (+2) is a lot better than defender has cover (+4).

It just seems kind of silly to me. I've watched a lot of gunfights on TV and you never see someone doing something like that. While I've never seen a real gunfight (except on reality TV shows) I seriously doubt that you'll find anyone running around cover, taking 2 shots, and then running back.

Attacker Running is +4, so 50% cover is a wash. On difficult ground, it's +6.

~J

Does it say sprinting is a complex action someplace?
I thought it was a simple action.

PS I think it is dumb to let people move out of full cover, shoot, then move back into full cover. If they do that you could just give them partial cover. The combat system is turn based for reasons of OOC expediency, not because thats the way things are really happening IC. Similarly if a person just runs from one full cover spot to another across open space they probably should not get full cover on the next shot. Give them some sort of average cover over the phase. At least do all that if you want to have highly tactical combat. If you don't it doesn't matter much.

That's what happens when I don't have my book in front of me while posting.

Cochise: It says it in the movement section, page 108, under the "Running" header.

What is the target number modifier for kicking ass and chewing bubble gum?

Dunno about SRComp, but it certainly says so on page 108 in SR3.

What's your house rule?

As luck would have it I was just looking for the document that has various house rules of ours, so here you go. I'm sure our GM won't mind you guys looking over and disecting it. I've not actually re-read it myself, and we rarely need it, but anyway this is said set of rules:


• Attacking from cover. If a character starts his action behind full cover, he can move and attack normally, but cannot end his action in full cover without spending at least a simple action at the start or end of the attack. Also, the furthest change in cover modifier a simple action can provide is+4. So a character starting in full cover can move, fire from partial cover +4 (one simple) and then return to full cover +8 (one simple). If he wanted to fire from +2 cover, then at the end he could only return to a maximum of +6 cover. Similarly, a character standing behind a wall (partial cover) can use a free action at the end of his phase to drop prone (full cover). But his next action would consist of change position (simple) to partial cover +4, fire from partial cover (simple) and drop prone (free). In the case of a character who wishes to run across the end of a corridor from full cover to full cover whilst firing down the corridor, the following rules should be used. The character may do this, but still uses a simple action to end his phase in cover; he may use the other simple to fire if possible. However, he is subject to cover penalties and return fire as though in partial cover till his next action. If a character wishes to move from like cover to like (other than full) then he can use all of his actions for firing, and will take the cover penalty on them. If he changes type of cover on this kind of action he can choose which modifier will apply.

Holding actions might not help. You would have to allow action holding charachters to take thier turn in the middle of another charachters turn:

Alice moves from cover and fires a semi-automatic shot
_Bob uses his held action to fire a semi-automatic shot at alice
__Charlie uses his held action to fire a full auto burst at Bob
_Bob readies a grenade.
Alice fires her second shot shot and moves back to cover.

That would work ok too, probably about the same management pain as averaging cover values.

We rule that you can shoot out of Full Cover (pop out, take a shot, pop back in), but then you compromise your cover down to a level that your character chooses. If you jump out and shoot, you only get a +1 penalty to attack, but you only get a +2 cover modifier (same as 25% cover). If you lean out and shoot, you get a +2 penalty to attack, but you only get a +4 cover modifier (same as 50% cover). If you just stick out your hand and head and fire shots, you get a +3 attack modifire, but a +6 cover modifier (same as 75% cover). If you take a shot, you are automatically not taking advantage of full cover because you are not completely hidden... it's not like you pop out once and fire, you are looking for an opening and thus you pop out multiple times during the firefight until you can take a shot. This is just like if you walk or run at any point during your action, the movement modifiers affect you until your next action. You don't run, then stop, negating the run modifiers.

Thinking about movement (and the initiative count) as a process rather than an end point does wonders in determining how certain situations work. It's not "I fire and move, then you fire and move", it's an abstraction of how people fluidly move in a room and an approximate order of how the shots landed.

You can't carry it, but it comes with a battery and treads

~J

I think a troll would have trouble carrying around something that heavy.

*Point point* Battery and treads? We're talking a drone here. Self-propelled.

~J

Pshee, just spary out a freeze foam castle from your internal air tank and cyberarm hose.

... a one foot thick piece of steel plate, that is.

dp

I also play it down a little more granular. Say there are three passes, with the highest initiative being 31. Someone with a quickness of 10 can move 30 meters running during that time period, or 10 meters per pass.

I further break that down so if a pass has 31 phases, and the character moves 10 meters that pass then he moves about a third of a meter per phase. If he tries to run for cover 9 meters away and on a 15 someone shoots at him, he's halfway to cover, still running across open ground. If someone shoots at him on a 2 or 3 I may give him 2 points of cover as he's really almost there, and on a 1 he's in cover, they cant see him and he can't see them.

"Taking cover" represents you ducking behind cover and popping out to take your shots, how much you want to pop out and for how long determines how much of a penalty you and your opponents take while shooting each other. I do not consider 4 points of cover to be "I am standing motionless but you can only see half of me".

I heard of a rule which takes a bit of the headache out of the moving while firing, but adjusts the rules some.

"Each person can move up to their quickness in every combat phase. However, any actions they takey after moving suffer a TN penalty equal to half of the the distance they moved if they walked(round up), or the full distance of that if they ran."

Example: Runner A wants to get behind a building so thug B can't shoot him, but he's across the street from it(six meters) Runner A has quickness 7, and decides to sprint halfway onto the street, fire a burst at Thug B, and then continue springting to the building. Runner A moves 3 meters, so his penalty to shoot is -3(the distance he ran) before anything else. If he chose to take a second burst when he rached his cover, he would be at -6 to shoot.

SR2 used to let you move you Quickness per combat phase, but that's really fast. Q=10, and Init=31, you would be moving 10 m/s (~22mph), and that's just at a walk!

Bleh, SR3 isn't that bad, just play it for what it is IMO.

haha, what?

I had just finished watching The Tick...

One could argue that changing direction while running is a simple action (change position), which cuts down on a lot of silly run back to where I was crap. But by looking at the melee intercept rules we can see that actions are taking place in a fluid timeline, and therefore one should not gain the full benefits of full cover if they have been in the line of fire for a duration.

While its a great house rule, and I might swipe it, it isn't the way the rules work. It could be argued, but that argument would fall short in the face of the Change Position description. Change position is only used to stand up or lie down.

I guess inacting house rules is what you consider resting your case? Not that there's anything wrong with that. I would put good money on saying that at least 90% of all SR groups have at least one house rule, usually more. But if you're using house rules to cover flaws in the SR movement system, you should probably refrain from telling people that they are soiling the game by using the rules as written.

Movement and cover is incredibly easy to counter with held actions. Plus when you space out the movement as the rules state its usually pretty difficult to get there and back again in just your action.

As for casting spells while moving, this isnt dnd. Its shadowrun. And all the baggage that casting takes isnt here. Casting a spell is no more involved than simply willing it to occur, tho it may fatigue the caster. All the arm-waving, chanting, dancing, component using crap is a penalty imposed on casters who are trying to counter a loss of magic in the form of Geasa. That said, why should "thinking" be disallowed during running?