From: reanor@speedy.cs.pitt.edu (Jeffrey Getzin)
Newsgroups: rec.games.frp
Subject: Re: Shadowrun
Date: 14 Apr 92 06:04:41 GMT
Organization: Computer Science Dept., University of Pittsburgh

In article <31616@sdcc12.ucsd.edu> cg108fai@icogsci1.ucsd.edu (Steerpike) writes:
>>I'll tell you what surprised my players.    I had a sniper with a specialized
>>skill level of 9 (not too hard specialized), and a smartgun.    He shot
>>them with a 6S2 and staged upward to a 6-three-over-deadly-2.   This
>>dropped the street samurai who had withstood LMG's galore.
>
>Not unless that was an exceptionally stupid street samurai. Anyone
>with half a brain, who expects gunfire, wears an armor jacket or
>some such. 6-(D+3)-2 merely reduces that 5 points of balistic
>protection to 2, which then knocks the damage down to serious.

Said samurai was wearing an Armor Jacket (5/3), had Dermal Armor(2),
and a body of 6.

The fact that the wound was three above deadly means that his
armor is reduced by 3 to a ballistic protection of 2.  In my campaign,
armor is a bit weaker than standard Shadowrun rules, but even using
those rules we get:

6-three-over-deadly-2

Armor brings it down to:

6-two-over-deadly-2

Let's say he gets all successes in body and dermal, eight in all:

++   ++   ++   ++  ||  ||
Two One   D    S   M    L

So the BEST he could have done, assuming he rolled ALL sixes would have
been a moderate wound.    Probabilistically, he could only expect
1.3 successes, which would mean that he would take a two-over-deadly
wound and be quite dead. 

(as you probably notice, I don't treat over-deadly wounds as merely
deadly with armor reduction ... nuh uh uh ...   hell, I don't even
treat armor as auto-successes!   I'm sorry, but the invulnerability
of SR armor is too much for my sense of realism!)

>Ok,
>even granted the lack of body armor -- with no armor to reduce, the
>gun does 6D2. A street samurai needs only 2 successes with what, 6,
>7, or 8 body dice? Tricky, but not really (esp. if he's got a single
>karma point or more).
>
>Whereas an LMG on full autofire (if it hit, or couse) would do 
>(some number in the 'teens)D2 (or something like that) and reduce
>armor by two ranks automatically. That's BEFORE you count in the 
>extra successes, if any. Use explosive ammo (standard with military
>weapons) and it's bye-bye time for anything you hit.

Yes, but I almost never give my NPC's LMGs or higher.   It's too unrealistic.
Nobody would use something that bulky and noisy.   Only PC's are that dumb.

And besides, the person firing the LMG would have been toast by the other
players in the team, because it'd be quite obvious where he was firing
from and (firing from the roof as he was) he would have to make himself
quite visible to fire such a large weapon.

Meanwhile, with the sniper rifle, only ONE shot was fired (silenced
at that), and that was done from a prone position so that the party
couldn't spot him, and if they could have, he'd be under full cover.
 
One of the major problems inherent in SR, I've noticed, is that people
keep going for the "big guns".   It's always a matter of what does the
most damage, players start thinking that that's the solution.   I finally
trained my players.   For the first two months, they'd burst in a door,
and the enemy would take cover.   The team would barely get out alive.
They get attacked, they stand still and fire like idiots waiting to
get nailed.

Eventually they caught on, and, I'm proud to say, they almost always
take cover the moment they're fired upon.    I still haven't been able
to get the Street Samurai to understand that, under most circumstances,
full heavy armor and a heavy machine gun carried like a rifle is NOT
the way to go, but I'm working on it.


			=*()*()* Jeff *()*()*=


--
					---
Jeffrey Getzin
saintdor@vms.cis.pitt.edu