Mosca Syndrome

Quote from Archangel, posted on Oct. 29 2001,13:27

They should be impossible to conceal, really.  I have noticed a lot of people play fast-and-loose with concealment codes.  Even if a katana can be hidden under a long coat, what about when the character sits down, walks, or runs?  

It's a tangent, really (though less of one than skull-f*cking or lollipops)--but the best demonstration of concealment problems was made by a friend of mine who happened to have a short rifle and a long coat.  A player was maintaining that he could hide an assault rifle under his trench coat.  The player was a big guy, so friend got his duster and rifle out, and had player put on the duster.  He then handed him the rifle and said to conceal it.  It took some doing, but the guy actually got it to the point where you couldn't see it at all....

....at which point freind pulled out a chair and said, "have a seat"....

....the guy stiffly walked over to the chair, and went through a ritual reminiscient of a hemmorhoid victim trying to sit on a bicycle seat.  The rifle stuck out all over the place.

I imagine the same thing would happen with a katana....aren't those things about a meter long?

Dual nickel-plated, mother-of-pearl-handled .25 automatics with custom engravings of naked women on the slides.  

Just kidding, though my characters do tend to travel light and low-tech when it comes to the guns.  Usually a titanium-framed .357 magnum 5-shot revolver backed up with a two-shot .357 derringer is a typical set-up.  Maybe an extra speedloader for the revolver, and the wits to stay out of situations that require more than five .357 hotloads.  Or maybe a pair of compact 9- or 10mm caseless guns--using both at once gives you 4 shots per action, which is sort of like having an SMG without all the legal hassles.  One character had a custom "Officer's Special" version of an AMT-2000 made, which had a further -1 to ACC and only carried six shots but was much easier to live with.    

If it's going to get ugly, a shotgun with slugs (or gel-rounds...a stunned attacker is no more effective than a dead one) seems to do the trick.  

that's where the luck saves come into play.....The guy who T-boned your car made a killer LUCK save, that's for sure....but he's not going to last long if he keeps counting on them.  If he had hit you just a few feet further back he would could have maybe shattered his pelvis as it struck the passenger side roofline.  As someone here mentioned, that's a serious boo-boo.  

In my approach, the luck save is going to be what saves you.  If you get past that tumble and aren't on course to hit a solid object, you'll take at most 6 points of abrasion damage over three locations.  Painful and hideous to look at, but quite survivable unless you're already rather injured.  

Even though a professional stuntman could probably do it over and over again without trouble, we're talking about people who are getting shot, knocked, or thrown off the bikes when they really weren't trying to let that happen.

It's really up to the GM to decide when it's appropriate, I guess.  If a PC on a cycle was tearing up the sidewalk in the park and fell off, he'll probably end up in the grass and not have to worry about abrasions, though he would still tumble like crazy and might hit a tree (or a soft, puffy shrub).  

Any way you look at it, I think I would hesitate to make falling off motorcycles a part of my tactical bag of tricks.

Okay.  When you fall off a cycle onto a paved surface, a couple of things happen.  The fall from the cycle to the ground is only a few feet, so that's probably negligible as far as damage starts.  But the fun is only beginning.

The typical fall from a motorcycle goes something like this:

Guy falls off motorcycle and hits ground.  It's only a few feet, so that's negligible.

Guy tumbles violently as he skids across the pavement, continuing in whatever direction he was going when he fell off.  Here's where the breaks and sprains will happen, usually to a wrist or an ankle, but sometimes a collarbone or a neck.  He also almost certainly lets go of anything he is trying to hold onto, and also may injure himself as he lands on anything he's wearing on his belt.  One thing that's not going to happen is the "I leap off the motorcycle and continue shooting at the bad guy until I come to a stop"...

Guy stabilizes (hopefully--people who really spend a lot of time crashing motorcycles do their best to go limp as soon as possible) and skids across the pavement.  Road rash city, if you are not protected by heavy leather or kevlar or something very resistant to abrasion.  Jeans don't work as well as some people might think.  I would take a stab and say even a light layer of kevlar would negate the road-rash factor....a lot of current riding suits use kevlar, and I have seen at least one set of Kevlar-lined blue jeans on the market.

Guy comes to a stop.  If this is because he slammed into a vertical object--curb, pole, car, dragoon conversion, etc--then treat it as you would falling damage.  This is what is going to mess him up if anything is.  If the guy just grinds to a halt, then he hopefully gets up and out of the street before he gets run over by the car behind him.

Here's how I would do it.  I would make the guy roll a luck save first (vs. CURRENT luck).  If he misses it, roll a location and do, oh, 3 points of damage, plus one for every 10mph he was going when he hit.  If it's the head, he may well end up breaking his neck and dying.  He could easily disable a limb.   Armor isn't going to help, as were are talking about twisting limbs the wrong way...  If he makes the save, he lucks out and won't suffer any damage from the tumble.  Then comes the slide.  Roll three locations....if any of them have less than 4SP of clothing on them, the character takes maybe two points on each underprotected location and the clothing there is destroyed (don't even ask about their hair if you roll the head).  If you are feeling sadistic, reduce any soft SP at those locations by 1 point per 10mph they slowed down from as they grind their armor down on the pavement.  Also consider how much of their stuff from their belt is now scattered along the roadway behind them.  

If you use maps and miniatures, the guy will generally travel in a straight line and you can see whether or not he's gonna hit something solid and get badly hurt.  If you don't use maps or miniatures, then either wing it or ask for another luck save.

Also keep in mind that the cycle itself is a 200-600 pound projectile, gyro-stabilized by its own wheels, that will keep going whichever way it was going when the guy fell off.   Look out!

Anyway, that's how I would approach it after 16 years of riding on the street.

hope it helps....

...I think the real reason the stealth suits disappeared is that someone in Quality Control left them turned on.  They're still sitting on the loading dock, but since the average man only has an INT of 5 and may not have any Awareness/Notice whatsoever, nobody can see the bloody things.

Quote from Elint, posted on Oct. 23 2001,00:05

No problem!

well, maybe....the idea of someone that "everyone wants" means that this person is intended to use her, uh..."charms" to manipulate people.  This will probably work on lowlifes and college boys, but few people with anything worth having are going to compromise their jobs, fortunes, or lives for the sake of some tramp.  

And then there's the fact that nobody takes a porn starlet seriously.  No matter what else she is good at, she is always first considered a prostitute.  

And then there are the stalkers ("If I can't have you, nobody can!"), religious psychos (You are poisoning the minds of our nation, harlot she-demon!"), embarrassed family members ("You have caused this family more humiliation than we thought could exist.  See you in hell."), drunken fratboys ("Whoooo!  Party time!"), militant feminists ("Anyone who so undermines the pursuit of equality must be destroyed"), and other hassles that go with this kind of fame.

And the ties to organized crime....maybe she never would have gotten where she is without a little help from the Family?  Maybe they expect favors in return....after all, there's a long line of girls waiting to be the next big thing.

Just some thoughts....

Ummmm...I dunno about your locales, but generally a gun is "deadly force" whether you just wing someone with it or kill them.  If you were to shoot someone, say, in the arm, and later relate that you were only trying to wound him, you are setting yourself up for a world of trouble.  

You see, a prosecutor/civil lawyer/judge/whatever can easily take the opinion that if you did not feel the need to kill the person, then you had no reason to employ deadly force in the first place.  Of course, since the person is still alive, they have their side of the story, too, in which they will most certainly be the innocent victim of your murderous rampage.  Even if you eventually prevail, you could spend thousands just defending yourself in criminal and civil courts.

If you're gonna use a gun, then a wounded bad guy should only be the result of an unsuccessful attempt to kill him.

As far as dragging crooks back into your house after shooting them goes, it depends on your local laws--if they are restrictive enough to make you want to risk tampering with the crime scene by dragging this guy back into your house, you are probably going to have a hell of a time explaining the entry wound in his back.  And if your snooping neighbors spot you doing it and wiping the porch down with lysol, you can bet they'll open their big mouths at the worst possible time, whether or not they mean to be harmful.  It would be better to learn the laws straight from the penal code, not by the word-of-mouth of someone else.

Meanwhile, a conversation is overheard at Skinny's Bar and Grill...

Edgerunner #1:  ....mighty slim pickings these days at the corporate/military HQS around here.  We had to resort to stealing the executive bathroom from PanOmniCorp last night.  

Pal:  What do you mean, steal it?  I heard it was just trashed!

Edgerunner #1:  Well, we stole one from Blivitron Pansolar first, but we liked the padded seats in the one at PanOmniCorp, so we took that one instead.  We left one from Blivitron at the POC headquarters, but we trashed it first.

Edgerunner #2:  They'll be wondering how that happened.

Pal:  What in the world are you doing with a stolen executive bathroom?

Edgerunner #1:  Our fixer is getting some contractors to install it at our secret hideout.

Edgerunner #2:  --we really do need the extra space...the closets are all full of cheap stealth suits and the rooms are full of stolen corporate tech and weaponry.  Luckily they are all stupid enough not to put any kind of tracking device in anything.

Pal:  I can't believe these corporations came into any power if they can't keep out a group of glorified street hoodlums

Edgerunner #1:  Are you calling us crooks?

Pal:  well....only in the sense that you steal things.

Edgerunner #2:  He's got us there.

Pal:  anyway...so what's next for you guys?

Edgerunner #1:  Well, Neotech has a cool statue of the founder in their lobby...it would look great in my den...techie'll have to build a cigar dispenser into it, though...

Edgerunner #2:  And Orbital Labs, Inc. has some really cute ducks at the pond in their dirtside complex...

Edgerunner #1:  Again with the ducks!  We can buy some lousy ducks!

Edgerunner #2:  But I want *their* ducks....

Pal:  umm...oh, look at the time....I'll see you guys later....

Edgerunner #1 (waving):  Bye, Pal....

Edgerunner #2:....man, is he gonna be miffed when he finds out we stole his apartment building.....

Quote from Golgotha, posted on Oct. 24 2001,18:59

Jones:  But sir...if they are so much better equipped than us, why do they keep breaking in here?

the Detcards are handy for the whole blowing-locks-off thing.  I wouldn't do the wallet thing, though.  It reminds me of Eggparka, an idea for motorcyclists which was a jacket or vest that inflated like an airbag if you fell off your bike.  It used a cord-mounted deadman switch to activate, so I can just see forgetting about it and getting off the bike, only to suddenly swell up like a balloon in front of everyone else.  I know I sometimes forget to unplug my electric vest, so I am certain this would happen to me.  I would therefore not put it past me to leave my wallet at home and end up blowing up the dresser.  (go to www.eggparka.com for details on this thing)

Others (I am fully aware of the impracticality of many of them):

A laser sight that projects an image of "Hello Kitty" instead of a little dot.

A harness rig with four SMGs, two per side, under the arms facing forward, connected to smartlinks and firing through concealed flaps in a long coat (it helps if you're tall and skinny).  Clumsy and good only for suppressive fire at very close ranges, but try making that athletics or dodge roll versus 80 bullets into a two-meter space.  Add a couple more SMGs built into a briefcase to add to the fun.

a "quickbag"--a heavily armored (SP 20 or so) bag that designed for bodyguard use.  At the first sign of trouble, the bag is slapped down over the person to be protected.  Handles on the bag make it easy to carry them out of danger.  Of course, now that person is trapped in a bag, which may end up being tactically inappropriate.  It can also work for abductions.  The same company is supposedly working on a large bullet-resistant shield that can explode like an airbag out of a lectern or podium.

A hand flamer mounted like a grenade launcher under the barrel of an assault shotgun or heavy SMG.  Talk about a messy weapon for close work...few people are going to keep their cool when a huge hole is blasted in their door, followed by a gout of flame that catches half the room on fire.

A 40mm grenade shell that contains a large superball.  Stuns like a gel round but but bounces like crazy in rooms with solid walls...."okay, everyone in the room make a dodge roll!"

A couple of "gift cards" for a local brothel.  Real handy for giving something a little more special than just plain old cash.

A flask of single malt scotch hidden in a cyberarm, with the spout connected to the thumb.  Just suck your thumb any time you want a shot of the good stuff.  Alternately, you could fill it with drugs and use it to squirt into someone's drink as you hand it to them (slightly curl your thumb over the edge of the glass).

A convincing-looking phony detonator, to make people think you've got the room (or yourself) wired.  For that matter, fake bombs to distract and consume resources that could otherwise be used to foil your scheme.

An armored vest that says "I'm with Stupid" on the front and has an arrow pointing down toward the wearer's crotch.

A tourist camera that scrolls a message across the viewfinder when a character puts it up to his eye.  The message says, "This camera is a motion-sensitive bomb and is now armed.  Do not attempt to move or it will go off."  The NPC "tourists" ask the character to take a picture of them with this camera.  While the character is standing still to avoid being blown up, the NPC "tourists" gently clean out his pockets and take off.  Of course it's not a bomb.  It's just a camera that someone hacked the firmware on with some easily-obtainable software from the net.

A friction cannon, fired by feeding the projectile in between two rapidly spinning car tires, which fling it down the barrel at considerable speed.  The one I saw in real life was electric and fired baseballs.  The one in the game had a more powerful gasoline engine and was optimized to fire 12-oz cans of beer.  Works best on crowds.

I just made the "sneak suit" expensive and hard to find in addition to not being very useful against electronic devices (esp. sensors that work on a SONAR or RADAR principle that are sensing the physical presence of an object compared to what the room looks like without it).  Also, if the SP is penetrated once, it's WORSE than useless.  Have you ever seen a laptop computer's LCD after it's been cracked?  Suddenly, you go from being stealth boy to looking like a 225-pound rainbow lava lamp stalking around.  You have to turn the thing off, which means you have an SP9 suit when you could have been wearing something better to begin with.  Characters might buy (or rent from a fixer with a big deposit) a suit for some lucrative job where they desperately need every point they can get to keep from being spotted, but they aren't likely to keep a closet full of the things or wear them out and about where just one streetfight can sh*tcan the whole investment.

I mean, really you should only use something like this against relatively low-tech places--maybe ganger hideouts, small-time crooks, suburban houses, etc.  If the bad guys are counting on their unenhanced eyes to spot you, it's a good idea.  If you are going to go after some big corporate facility or military base or something, you really should be using a netrunner to provide most of your stealth by defeating most of the systems that would be detecting you.

I admit that I don't care for the ninja/sniper/prowler archetype in my games (as someone mentioned, they tend to go wandering off and want me to divide my attention, which results in that player getting far less attention than they would if they would stay near the group).  Since sneaksuits (or as a character of mine whose English +1 chip was defective would say, "Seeksnoots") are part of the stereotypical "want list" for these archetypes, they just aren't a game-crippling issue.

Quote from psychophipps, posted on Oct. 18 2001,06:29

Apparently you haven't bought Chrome 7 yet, which contains Militech anti-armor-piercing-armor-piercing autocannon rounds and "Robo-matic Mole Mines," which sense a character flipping over head, disarm themselves, burrow through the ground using high-speed augers to where the PC is landing, and re-arm themselves.  Boom.  The only drawback is that they sometimes fail to make a left turn at Albequerque and get lost.

It doesn't matter anyway--Chrome 7 also contains the "Mr. Neutron" class full-body conversion.  All stats and skills are immediately elevated to +20, it is completely indestructable, and its full-auto mighty rocket bomb gun never runs out of ammo courtesy of new rounds being beamed into the magazine through a matter transference device located in an invincible super fortress on Io.  It is devilishly attractive, reads minds, knows its wines, speaks all languages, can breathe in a vacuum, flies, cleans up on the baccarat tables, and the owner is guaranteed to sleep every night on a pile of money with no less than ten beautiful concubines of his or her choice.  It even has "anti-fumble tech," which prevents any fumbles from happening, EVER.  No longer will anyone have to agonize over which piece of gear is the "best," or any of those boring role-playing hurdles like characterization or plot or fun when the "Mr Neutron" fbc is available at most convenience stores and gas stations for only thirty-nine cents.

I dunno...I think the only time a guy with a knife or sword really has the upper hand on an equally skilled gunman is when the gunman doesn't know the blade guy is about to strike.  

I think the 1/2 SP thing works well, too.  

I suppose if you wanted to you could adjust the damage based on the TYPE of attack made with the edged weapon, IE thrusts/stabs act as AP (sp is 1/2, damage after is 1/2) because they penetrate well but cause less tissue damage, whereas hacks and slashes are less likely to penetrate but leave more greivous wounds and are therefore non-ap (full sp, full damage)....  Of course, then you have to have separate damage ratings for each attack you can make with each weapon, and the character attacking must specify what they are doing before rolling.  It is probably more trouble than it's worth.

Also, remember it's not necessarily that the blade got through the armor, the idea is whether or not the damage got through.  Try this:  You are wearing a soft armored jacket.  If someone competent brings a big sword crashing down on your collarbone, the sword doesn't slice you but collarbone can still break, leaving the arm on that side pretty much useless--maybe even killing you if the big blood vessels underneath get torn... or break your ribs and puncture a lung if you get hit in the side, whatever...there's always a way to rationalize how the damage got through even without resorting to saying that it somehow slipped in through the armpit or something...

Some weapons, like Axes or Picks, come down with such tremendous force that I would have to think that even hard armor would have to be halved.

And these are just with meat people swinging them.

Don't get 'em in a knot....I only bother with slug/buck/bird and am not interested in "individual pellet energies"  (New age ammo philospophies?  Punk band name?).  I figured you might have already had something worked out and thought it wouldn't be much trouble for you to post it if you did.  More of an inch after a mile rather than vice versa.  I'll look at this 3g3 thing, though, and see if I can bang something together.  I may well never get around to actually playing this game again at the rate I'm going, so my motivation for it is kind of low.

Currently I don't need a calculator.  If the system requires one on a regular basis, I fix whatever is making it necessary.  By keeping the decimal places to tenths, I could whip up a spreadsheet in a few minutes that would fit on a page and give the calculations for all the realistic multipliers.  I hate charts, but if the chart would make it that much faster than it's fine by me.  Besides, you have to round the damage off somewhere just to fit in the wound boxes, right?

Who the hell would use birdshot?  Nobody in their right mind who is going after armored targets.  But who limits their game to people in their right mind?

People that have used birdshot in my games:

A>  Low-level streetpunks who can't afford or don't know any better.  The sort who at some point stole some heirloom $5000 over-and-under skeet gun in a burglary and promptly sawed it down to about a foot long and use it to rob people for crack money.  Bird shot nowadays costs about as much for 25 shells as buckshot costs for 5.  In drug-fiend economics, that's more to spend on dope in the long run.

B>  Anyone in a situation where they can't find anything better.  Places where gun control is heavy and getting any kind of ammo is murder and the choices aren't there.... "Well, I have six rounds of 9mm ball, 13 rounds of .22 hollowpoint, seven 12 guage shells with #6 shot, and one 5.56mm greentip.  I'll sell you the whole lot for 225 eb, and buy them back from you tomorrow for 100 if you don't use them...for 250 I'll throw in a zip gun that can fire the .22s"

C>  Anyone whose diet consists of large rats, pigeons, cats, and dogs hunted in the combat zone.  The shotshell is both a cheap method of getting food and in a pinch can be fired at pesky urchins (also a delicacy to some).

D>  Crazy old men who live in bad neighborhoods that shoot at anyone who walks on the patch of scorched earth that was once their lawn.  Eventually someone takes care of them, but that someone hasn't come along....yet...

E>  Characters who are on an operation in a distant country and their gear smuggler gets intercepted and jailed ("Oh, that would NEVER happen").  They then have to make do with what weapons they can beg, borrow, or steal from the locals.

F>  People who provide comic relief.  Sometimes it's just funny to have a hidden ganger open up on a character with an stolen police autoshotgun full of the stuff in the middle of a big fight, leaving him standing there, covered in little round bruises, clutching the handle of his shattered monokatana, staring out from behind the cracked and spalled lenses of his smart goggles underneath his completely devastated hair-do, and growling as pellets trickle out of his clothes and hair onto the pavement.  Of course, the ganger didn't know the cheapest ammo he could find would be so ineffective, and kind of stands there in shock as the PC pulls out a gun of his own and shoots him.  It's funny as hell, and the PC has to buy a bunch of new gear and explain why he looks like he's got some sort of skin disease to everyone he meets for the next week.

In other words, NPC fodder for the most part.  But since they so often seem to find themselves at odds with PCs, I thought it might be handy.

Quote from Edgecrusher, posted on Sep. 25 2001,10:42

I have been a member of this forum for a short time, but already I see how much of this place is used to discuss guns, damage, combat, cyberware and everything even remotely munchkin. I thought that maybe there were someone here who shared my opinion. Cyberpunk is more than just combat and new gadgets. If it wasn`t, it should have been called Dungeons&Drugdealers (from the core book).

Please post here and say you`re not all munchkins!

I don't agree with the implication that a gamer is a munchkin just because he is interested in rules, damage, guns, combat, gear or whatever.  I am interested in those things but only if they enhance the roleplaying experience.  I like (my heavily modded and bastardized version of) Cyberpunk because it has the capability of doing both chaotic combat and good roleplay when the game calls for it.  Many other games can't seem to do much of one or the other.  In its basic form, Talsorian's Cyberpunk, due to its easily-abused rules and materialistic, violent nature, is very munchkin-friendly.  One of my aims when I modify rules is to curb this sort of thing without turning the game into a circle of one-upmanship.  A good gaming group can transform this game from a munchkin-fest to a really entertaining experience...a lot of people will stop being munchkins when they realize this, too.  Of course, some are unsalvagable.  

If you don't care for the discussions on guns, combat, cyber-stuff and gear, I would suggest avoiding those respective areas of the forum.

duct tape, bailing wire, and zip-ties are not odd gear.  They are mandatory.

cyberarm-mounted business card dispenser.  Shoots it right into your hand.

chromed cybernose.  Pure style.

gloves with pressure sensors that triggered Batman-style horn spikes from the belt-mounted sound unit whenever someone got punched.

An SP10 duck suit, for special occasions.

A chromed head-plating job containing hundreds of tiny pores connected to an oxy/acetylene canister in the chest (where an independent air supply might normally sit)...the faceplate was that of a skull.  On command, the head could burst into flames, ranging from spiky blue flames a couple inches long creating an "afro" effect to thick, greasy orange flames extending a couple of feet off the head.  The empathy cost was staggering.  Yeah, he was a one-trick pony, but man, what a trick!

self-extending and retracting cocaine straw.

A bolo tie with a breakaway clasp in the back.  People just love to try to grab your tie in a fight.  This leaves them wondering why the trick didn't work and gives you a free shot or two.

A chip guaranteed by its third-world makers to finally get stupid pop songs out of your head.  It works, but there is a mild chance it might get other more important things out of your head, too.  Like your name, or something.    

I have to say that smartgun ECM is a brilliant idea.....

"What do you mean, THE GUN DIDN'T FIRE?????"

I would assume that anyone with a smartgun should be able to override and fire it manually, but the bonuses go out the window, and they have to wonder whenever they shoot something if it's going to work or not.  Of course, they'll want one of these, too.  Have to make it work on the bad guys a couple of times before smartguns go completely out of style.

and snipers....don't get me started.  In the urban settings I run in, a full-on sniper character is practically useless--here's a guy whose job is to sneak around by himself and lie in wait for hours if need be for the target to show up.  I've had guys with sniper PCs spend whole sessions camped out on a rooftop staring at the wrong apartment through their scope.  It wasn't something I did to them, it was part of their "master plan."  There's a night of great roleplaying for the whole group  Just get a few points (or even just a chip) for rifle, get a good rifle and let the gun's accuracy help you out.  The base difficulty is almost never going to be over 15 in the city.

Quote from BaronSamedi, posted on Oct. 06 2001,04:00

In (I think, I don't have any of this in front of me) the main book, you can buy supposed "low-impedance cables" that give you a +1 to whatever you are linking to.  BS.  Anyone who works with, say, computer or audio gear knows that the gear is designed to work best with good cables to begin with.  Crappy cables just slow you down, fail quickly, or both.  It should be a minus if you DON'T buy the good stuff.

I always assumed these were spun gold or shielded cables or something along those lines for extra conduction. They have analogs in RL. You can use normal Cat5 cables for a network and still have it work fine but if you slap shielded Cat5 in then it will work better due to the cut down stray emmisions.

....but you don't really see the advertised performance of the gear unless you spring for those good cables....it's a matter of baseline--I consider the performance statistics of the thing a character is jacking into to be the best the gear can give, and to achieve that level of performance it needs the best cabling.  Performance degrades if you try to be a miser and buy run-of-the-mill (or worse) cables.  So yes, the good cables are better, but they should be the baseline, not a bonus.

I consider the +1 bonus they give to be in the "nickel-and-dime" category...small bonuses so often stacked on top of each other so much that the overall bonus is way out of proportion.  

Hmmm....(very) minor epiphany...I speak of modding the mod for my own purposes....

First off, round the multipliers to the nearest tenth (differences like .74 vs .75 seem insignificant enough to ignore).  This means that, as much as I hate charts, it would be easy to put one together like I mentioned above to cover almost any level of damage for any round, or still "wing it" with a calculator if you don't have a chart.

Second, for each bullet that hits, roll 1d10.  If the result is a 1, it's a graze or glancing shot that only does 1 point of damage.  If it's a 0, add something to the multiplier (like .4 or .5 or whatever) to make it a little more lethal.  If it's so many bullets you don't want to do this, put them in groups of three or something.  The "Hound Effect"--where a bullet cannot penetrate a certain class or SP level of garment is enabled, too, because the graze/critical roll only effects the multiplier, which is used AFTER the armor is penetrated.  

That actually would satisfy all three of my complaints...the pistol rounds mentioned above can potentially (though unlikely) put you in the mortal states, grazes/criticals are enabled, and the players actually get to roll dice in hopes of that big score or in fear of a graze.  The speed isn't hurt too much because you only care if the die is a 1 or a 0--you aren't really adding rolls up or anything, just determining how many are grazes or vital hits.  Grazes speed up play by leaving you only with 1 point to deal with (less math).    

D***, I like it.  I think I'm sold.  Wish I had time to get a game together.  

Phipps, have you got any numbers for birdshot and buckshot rounds in shotguns?

Phipps,

My mistake...sincerest apologies...

...you're still funny when you're annoyed, though.

Outside of my own, these are now probably my favorite bullet damage mods that I have seen on the net.  My only issues are:

A.  It's not that I think the .357 should always or often kill immediately with a chest hit, but I think it's just out of the question to think that it (or the 10mm, or the .45, or the 9mm) has no chance *whatsoever* of killing someone (immediately or not) with a torso hit.  If it gets you into the mortal wound state, you eventually die because you missed that death save.   That is, unless you have modded those rules, too.  I know I did for my games...

B.  No grazes or big-time damage.  No random factor--Again, I have not met a player that didn't enjoy rolling for damage.

C.  That decimal action gives me bad Aftermath! flashbacks....a .74 multiplier (5.45 Russian)  ack!   With that extra calculation, it's not really faster anymore (for me, at least).  I suppose a chart with damage numbers on x and multipliers (.6,.7,.8, etc.) on y could restore and even enhance the speed, but *shudder*....charts....anything but that...

It's still miles ahead of that namby-pamby system in the book, though.  

Now, now...if we must pick at Phillips (and we must because he's funny when he's annoyed) we should really look at the most glaring inconsistency.  It takes 15 points to put the average (BOD 5/6) man into the "mortal" wound states.  In essence, it is no longer possible to kill the average guy with a standard .357 magnum round to the bare chest.  A 12 ga. slug, a huge (usually .50-.70 cal and around a full ounce) projectile normally travelling at much higher velocities than most pistol rounds, barely squeaks its way into lethality.  In other words, it's not deadly enough.  Another thing is the fact that the possibility of a low-damage grazing hit is done away with.  I for one would miss the look on a player's face when he makes "the shot of a lifetime" and then rolls nothing but ones for damage.  Priceless.

But none of this is the point.  It's clear that this system is a good bet for games with a high lead density, especially when dealing with a lot of armored characters, vehicles, etc...  But most players I know do relish the idea of rolling the damage themselves.  

For what it's worth, Phipps, I appreciate the work.  I did my own alternate damages once and got a FLOOD of critical email (some constructive and even some kudos, but not much).  I never have the time anymore to publish more house rules (like you I have pretty much rewritten most of the game), but I hope you'll  contribute more.

MS

Sword canes are only useful in that the second a cane appears in an NPC's hand, the PCs go nuts thinking that this is a sword cane and the guy is some kind of ninja who could dice them all like onions at any second.  Distracts them from more important things.  Then, when the guy does pull the head off the cane, the characters all freak out and spray him against the wall with their guns, only to find out he had a cigarette lighter in there and was trying to offer a nearby friend a light.  

Of course, even a regular cane in the right hands is bad enough...

Not "useless" but "too useful":

In (I think, I don't have any of this in front of me) the main book, you can buy supposed "low-impedance cables" that give you a +1 to whatever you are linking to.  BS.  Anyone who works with, say, computer or audio gear knows that the gear is designed to work best with good cables to begin with.  Crappy cables just slow you down, fail quickly, or both.  It should be a minus if you DON'T buy the good stuff.  

-MS

Even 10 years ago you could by a motorcycle helmet with a built-in 12 volt solid-state heat exchanger that cooled your head down to about 85 degrees F in hot weather (anything cooler in really hot weather is a recipe was, according to the manufacturer, a recipe for a headache).  I think it was made by a small company, then the design was picked up by a larger one (AVG, I think?) but it wasn't successful due to the expense and hassle of having a(nother) wire dangling down to the bike.  

I would think that "fridge jackets" would be pretty common in 20xx in the hotter climates--if they can figure out how to make a cyberarm work, they oughta be able to crack that one.  Living in central Texas (it was over 100 F here for the better part of July and August this year), you can bet I'd want one.  There is that pesky IR problem, but it beats reduced COOL and ATTR due to the fact that you're sweating like a pig.  It could even perhaps be set up to warm you in the winter, too, by reversing some kind of polarity bit or whatever (hey, if I knew what I was talking about, I'd be making them!).  

I gotta agree, though, that letting characters equip for a temperate situation and arbitrarily dumping them in the tropics sounds pretty unfair--like it's GM vs. players.  It would take an amazing feat of GM-ery to get me to stay for a game after that kind of stunt, let alone come back for another one.  But verbally skull-f***ing someone and then going to lengths to discourage anyone from gaming with him over this isn't "evil"...it's just "mean"....there's a big difference.

Now stealing his good players (if there are any) for your own game...THAT would be evil.  

MS

Quote from psychophipps, posted on Sep. 29 2001,10:18

other than the fact that i rarely even see a +7, nothing much.  no one in my games would even think of hamstringing their characters with 10 points dumped into one skill.  it's just not cost-effective...

Mark(psycho)Phipps( HAHAHA! )

Oh, that's just a matter of scale, I guess.  You could pull the numbers down a bit if you wanted lower-powered characters.  If your players are more sensible then the ones I seem to run into, it's irrelevant anyway.  

I kind of abhor the "dump all my points in a few skills" idea.  You end up with hyperspecialized characters who only know one way to solve any problem.  A 10 in any skill is a remarkable human being.  Several of them is damn near impossible...even one 10 should require HEAVY maintenance, something on the level of say an olympic athlete's regimen if this is a phyisical skill.  

I think the next game I run (whenever that is) will have a set of options for the points that can be distributed.  Haven't thought it through yet, but here's a sketch-out:

Option 1 (specialist):

1 skill at 10

2 skills at 7

3 skills at 6

unlimited skills at 5 or less (until the max skill points are spent, of course)

Option 2 (diversified specialist):

1 skill at 9

1 skill at 8

3 skills at 7

unlimited skills at 6 or less

Option 3 (more diversified specialist):

2 skills at 8

4 skills at 7

unlimited skills at 6 or less

Option 4 (jack of all trades):

unlimited skills at 7 or less

This doesn't take into account the number of special abilities allowed or anything like that--like I said it just occurred to me as I read this thread...  

In addition, no skill roll can start at any more than 10+ the governing STAT of the skill being attempted.  In other words, If you are trying to (oh, let me pull something out of thin air) shoot someone and your reflex is 8 and you have a miraculous 10 in handgun, nothing in the world is going to make your base larger than 18.  At your level of skill, all the smartgun links, targetting scopes, and high-tech gunsmith jobs in the world are just training wheels that get in your way.  

Any thoughts, anyone?

(I had to add this guy because his little headband is so cool)...