SR house ruling for non-lethal rounds needed!

[Joose]

Something has just occurred to me as a problem. Ok, so it occurred to me a while back, but I've just been reminded of it by where we are in Pete's game.

The are rounds in Shadowrun that are designed to be "less than lethal". The most well known of these is probably the stick and shock round, which is essentially a little taser in the form of a bullet: It sticks to your target and gives them a zap, replacing whatever damage code the gun would normally have with 6 stun damage.

This is clearly designed as a way to put people unconscious without killing them at range, right? For normal people, not a problem, but it occurs to me that being an expert marksman rather fucks this up. Why? Because net hits in the shooting test add to the DV of the weapon. Let me give you an example to demonstrate:

My character, Lex, has Agility 7 and Sniper 8, with a smartlinked sniper rifle. Under optimal conditions, presuming I've had a bit of time to aim (+4) and the target is unaware (so cant dodge) that gives me an epic dice pool of 21. On average, a third of dice are hits, so that's an average roll in that situation of 7. So, on average, I can one shot pretty much any metahuman into unconsciousness, as long as they are not armoured. Brilliant, right? no. Because what if it isn't an average roll. Potentially, all of them could be hits, and I could end up with a s&s round doing 28 damage to someone. That's enough to kill them and leave a pretty big hole in the corpse.

Now, I wouldn't have a problem with that were it not for the fact that you get more likely to accidentally s&s someone to death the better a marksman you are, which seems utterly arse-backwards to me. Possibly causing accidental death is ok ("oops, the stick and shock round hit him squarely in the eye, and you have cooked his brainmeat."), but it should surely get easier to knock em out without seriously hurting them the better you are at shooting. Anyone got any ideas how to implement this? I haven't.

[Dog Pants]

Either make the extra damage stun damage, or give the shooter the option of how much bonus he'd like to use. After all, the extra damage presumably represents being able to hit a weak point rather than making the actual round more powerful. So presumably you could choose not to aim for the eye.

[Joose]

Either make the extra damage stun damage

The extra damage is stun damage. Trouble is, once you have filled a characters stun damage, any further stun damage they take is converted into physical damage. So if you do 20+ stun damage to an average dood, you fill the stun track, then fill the physical track: death.

or give the shooter the option of how much bonus he'd like to use. After all, the extra damage presumably represents being able to hit a weak point rather than making the actual round more powerful. So presumably you could choose not to aim for the eye.

Ooh, actually, that could work if you couple it with glitches. I had though that, but didn't go for it on the grounds it would mean nobody ever accidentally does physical damage with a stun round, but you could do it so that if you score a glitch, the target gets the full damage whether you wanted it or not. That could work!

[HereComesPete]

Instead of using called shot to up dv with things like SnS or toxin delivery rounds, the called shot and upped dv represents the bypass of armour for the precise non-lethal shot, as such introduce further negatives -

eg - moving target negs on a guy in full armour might be -2,

but with an SnS shot needed would be negs to the tune of running target, in full armour, with face protection and gloves, possibly -8 dice, so there's not many places the shot will successfully discharge unless it's from a top notch marksman who can hit the sweet spot.

Furthermore, those negatives apply to people who try to make the same type of shots but don't have the ability - they roll low it doesn't discharge on skin, or if they glitch it's an eye shot or the target has a weak heart and you hit them in the chest. Or the toxin dart misses and hits someone else etc.

I realise this sounds painfully complicated compared to pants' version, but I think it'll work quite smoothly as long as the gm keeps the dice mods clear (kind of like I don't. )

[Joose]

I realise this sounds painfully complicated

So much so i have no idea what you mean

I would avoid changing too much when house ruling stuff. Change as little as possible, in fact.

[Anhamgrimmar]

could you not just lower the damage of the weapon when its using LTL rounds though? A normal (metal) bullet would do normal kill dmg, but the LTLs are sort of plastic arent they? i dunno.

But the thought of one-shotting someone with a LTL round does remind me of something....


[media]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x-k4i0JBs8E[/media]

[HereComesPete]

So much so i have no idea what you mean

I would avoid changing too much when house ruling stuff. Change as little as possible, in fact.

Well - the shot is basically made harder to hit successfully, so only decent shooters are going to have a go without throwing edge around, otherwise something will go wrong or you'll just fire an expensive round and miss the target.

[Joose]

could you not just lower the damage of the weapon when its using LTL rounds though? A normal (metal) bullet would do normal kill dmg, but the LTLs are sort of plastic arent they? i dunno.

they already do less damage than normal rounds. The problem isn't so much to do with the rounds themselves so much as what happens when you reach the really high end of the skill spectrum. Also, Sns rounds are not just rubber bullets, they are little one shot tasers. I've no idea if the science is remotely plausable ( I would guess not, but who knows). If not, presume they are powered by handwavium. The intention though is for them to work like a normal taser, but at bullet ranges. Like I say, it's when the skill levels get high that things go wrong.

Low skill: you miss
normal skill: good chance of a hit, maybe knock out the target
super high skill: good chance of death.

My problem with that is not with the low or medium skills, they seem fine to me. My problem is with the super high end. Lex could shoot the nuts of a housefly at high range, but he can't stop himself accidentally killing people with a round designed to take two shots on average to ko someone? That seems wrong to me.

How about this: tasers, sns and so on can only have their dv increased by net hits up to a full stun damage track. This gives us the intended effect, isn't too complex, and doesn't massively buff or nerf anything. Sound good?

[Dr. kitteny berk]

Actually plausible, just not super small yet.

[Joose]

Actually plausible, just not super small yet.

Fancy! Its just a case of en-smalling it then.

[HereComesPete]

They can be made smaller, it's just that those 12 gauge ones can deliver a shock almost a minute long if necessary.

There is a variety of rather future sounding weapons that have been to prototype stage, there's one that floods a room with conductive gas and possibly even one that uses an ionizing laser to deliver the charge through a stream of potentised air particles.

As for tiny versions, there are piezoelectric substances that can generate a potential difference of thousands of volts in small quantities, they are already used to tip certain experimental less lethal systems as they can deliver enough charge to be equivalent to a short tase.

editz - I forgot, the pze substances are man made, so we no longer have to rely on quartz and such. These compounds are getting more efficient at a steady rate still so I can imagine it'll not be too far distant when they announce snub nosed sub 9mm stuff capable of doing the job of the current issue taser.

[HereComesPete]

How about this: tasers, sns and so on can only have their dv increased by net hits up to a full stun damage track. This gives us the intended effect, isn't too complex, and doesn't massively buff or nerf anything. Sound good?

Yes, much better than my meandering method.

Do we apply this across the board though? Because a reduced dv against spirits will be a bit annoying. Or do we just say - living flesh gets the max the stun track effect, majical other worldly stuff gets the full fuck effect.

[Joose]

Yes, much better than my meandering method.

Do we apply this across the board though? Because a reduced dv against spirits will be a bit annoying. Or do we just say - living flesh gets the max the stun track effect, majical other worldly stuff gets the full fuck effect.

Wouldnt matter. You fill either of a spirits damage tracks, its banished. No such thing as a KO'd Spirit. So the effect would be the same either way, as soon as the stun track fills, spirit gets punted back to the metaplanes.

[HereComesPete]

Sorts that out then.

To the wiki!