Strawberry-Cream

Yep, that's what I meant to some degree when saying "but that's for the role playing.".

Well, but on the other hand, uses should be applied to a skill - if I have authority +8, and play well, the GM might say "screw the dice, you get through with it". But, I often had this "problem" with myself, that I, hm, played a bit above of the skills my char posessed, meaning, that for instance my Solo came out with a clever solution for talking to those two enemy boostergangs, and so on, or people believed a fantasy character of mine with a skill of lieing -5 just because I played it well, and the GM didn't care to look for my skill . Of course, I told him so then, but in less apparent situations, one gets benefits by not having to roll.

And of course, we should take into consideration that modificators are applied - if I want to tell this "boy" in his ACPA that he better put his gun down (in fact, he is a totally freaked-out psycho), well, an authority roll of 15 won't be enough . 20 Will not help, either... 25? I still doubt. Perhaps a roll of 30 ("impossible") will get him to hesitate before mashing me. That's life. And that is not the purpose the skill is designed for. Well, you can always give it a try, though.

Of course, I normally would not force a PC to put down his weapons and comply, because an NPC-cop told them to. If he has a high authority and COO, I would describe that he "looks very sure of himself and it seems that he is not joking, perhaps you would better comply", but then again, the final choice lies with the player characters. I won't even have the NPC roll, normally.

This is the disadvantage of the Authority-skill, pretty much relating it to role playing and social behaviour. But nevertheless, I consider it a useful skill, and I would just not allow a character to roleplay as the totally sovereign and self-assured policeman if he has authority only +3. No way, no matter how good he can role play it.

Well, that was my crap again .

Yep, it works quite well. The SWAT guy does not go around and arrests people - so he does not really need an authority value. If he cares, okay, intimidation, but he is, from my p.o.v., not the guy patrolling the streets. He can still try, using his basic coolness, and hope the other guy has a respect for his uniform.

And if he comes to a situation where he could need authority as a cop - bad luck, that's not his personal specialty, so he would have to shoot or get away, using his high initiative. As I told, he will surely not become a higher ranking officer, but nevertheless, as a specialist he is needed within police squads. And, as someone stated above, not all cops necessarily have the skill to cope with situations and criminals, those that have posess the authority skill, others don't. Most likely, those with the cop set of skills will make the best "cop career", and become the best all-round street-cops. But your regular SWAT-sniper IS a Solo.

You got a point that he may be scarier than the regular cop, but then you would have to argue that every Solo is more intimidating than any cop also - even if it were that way, never mind, that is not displayed in points in special abilities.

Wielding a huge auto rifle does not give me intimidation +4, huh? Although it does intimidate - but that's for the role playing.

But strange, I am defending the basic rules here... feels kind of weird ^^. But the rules are as good as we interpret them, right?

Hm... I would say "fake spam" if it was Kibble instead of Tofu . So... let's call it substitute spam.

Oh, thanks a lot .

Too bad I'm not norwegian, and even worse, a vegetarian .

Do they come in Tofu also?

<shrug>

Don't know, personally, I do not consider cursing THAT bad, but, well, hm, I'm from glorious Europe ^^, not so much puritans around here .

I mean, as long as there is no intention to really insult someone, and there are some thresholds not passed, it is quite okay with me... I mean, what is the big deal, when even the rulebook kind of encourages us to use a bit worse language. I do not see what is so f*cking (uh oh ) bad about that.

In Cyberpunk, it is, from my point of view, a part of the game, I would not say "Oh, noble sire, thou art greeted." in CP, also my cute sorceress would not say "Who the f*ck are you moron?".

It's all about perspective and relation.

Whoa, wasn't that freakin' wise .

Hm... about the point with combat sense, cops HAVE combat sense, you know, this sniper there from the SWAT team, he is pretty much a no-nonsense guy and quite adept at handling other weapons as well, too bad he is not that much into talking and inspiring people, so I guess that is why he is not going to be police chief, whatever, he is a good specialist... oh, did I forgot to tell, his role is "Solo", and not "Cop"? Thus he lacks the authority skill?

And don't you think a netrunner or techie could work for the police as well? Well... best example, at the moment we have a party consisting of a "special unit" within the NCPD. We are so special... erm... well... because we get nearly no funding and are all kind of crazy .

We have...

The leading officer, a 2nd Lieutenant with +8 authority, his role is a Cop.

We have a sniper / combat guy, a Solo, with +6 combat sense.

We have a female netrunner doing infiltrations and counterintelligence, with Interface +6.

And we have me, a nice little psychologist with a hang for real plants and toy elephants, she has authority +4 and is a cop.

The games are FUN, being on the other side of the law, and being confronted with the various problems... no funding (usually, the nettie and the sniper "borrow" a police car to sleep in...), no equipment (we get these crappy things as armor and weapons that you all wondered what they were good for in the rule book), of course no motivation (you should see our payment.... ouch). That just for the point with cops and a second special ability - being a cop does not necessarily mean, you have to have the role "cop", the role cop is mainly the career cop that will end up as police president (or more likely, dead). SWAT-teams have a lot of Solos on them, believe me. And the computer guy in the department IS a netrunner.

For authority and retirement... well, I do not think it actually has to decrease, as from my point of view, authority represents also self-confidence. Not only getting help in your department, but also "Put that gun down, boy.", whereas I think it does not really matter whether you can wave a badge or not, it would rather matter how you act, look like, how sure you feel of yourself. It IS possible to impress another person this way, and I think, this will be so even in Cyberpunk 2020, as for as the bad guys grow badder, why shouldn't the cops get the attitude also? I think you all know these headmaster-type guys, they just posess authority, no matter whether you are a pupil or not .

Of course I would not send the 20 boosters scrambling away in fear because of an authority roll of 15, but hey, this little punk with his 9mm, I don't think he really would want to pick up a fight against this officer in uniform, who is not only older, but also looks like he is completely confident of what he is doing and how to act... perhaps he WILL pay his parking ticket then, it's better than a firefight with this policeman.

Well, just some ideas... hope it helped you.

Hm, bullet, I think the problem is, you don't have lights going all the way up ^^.

Huh, you all forgot the neon nobbler in your package.

Ca, c'est un truc qui plaît les filles ^^.

See it this way - with this posting, I increased my post-volume by about 9%. With your post from 199 to 200, you only got an increase of slightly above 0.5 %, bonie .

If I were a stock, people would invest in me  

Too bad noone wanted to explain to me what spamming is ^^.

Perhaps you should put some rules for the use of a forum into your FAQ as well .

(^v^)

Oh noooo  

Deep down in my heart, I will always remain noob ^^.

I may not tell, since this bad bad thing under my cute Leilia says I am a newbie too <sniff>.

But hey, at least then I am allowed to ask stupid questions ^^.

Like...

What's spamming? I really don't know... tell me?

Would you?

Please tell...

And abusing ^_°? No idea...

8[

Hehe... well, something funny about cursing and being polite... when I was in London some years ago, the tube was, like always during rush hour, overcrowded... and there was a man trying to get out, and had to shove a woman out of his way, she of course was quite angry, and nearly shouted at him, in a dangerous voice "Don't push me!, ...", with a softer added "... sir.".

Well, I couldn't help laughing then ^^.

lol ^_°

That's the spirit ...

...and don't forget to explain the cute fuzzy little noobs what the term "newbie" means ^^.

Hehehe ^^.

Thanks for the advice, but don't be afraid, I wouldn't go around making fun of the rules if I was too uncreative to come up with some solutions of my own . With us, with a full auto weapon, you can make REF/2 single shots a round (round down) against up to REF/2 -1 (round down, minimum 1) targets .

But it's fun putting such questions about obvious rule mistakes into FAQs .

And then even helpful, telling the cute little newbies that they can twist and bend the rules if they don't see them fitting.

Okay, another one... try to explain why, in the standard rulebook, you can fire 48 single shots a round with a CG-13 (oh yes, and make them called shots, for the fun).

<- it's not the case ejecting, it's his sweat firing 15 called shots a second

We also use armor damaging, but still, it can take quite a while to get an SP monster down. Our "formula" is: if a shot could have penetrated the armor (meaning the maximum damage exceeds the SP of the armor hit), it decreases its SP by one.

Hm, you don't have to walk around fully loaded with armor to get a good SP, and besides, a longcoat is always an option.

Well, we thought about increasing or adjusting damage as well, as even armor penetrating ammo in CP standard rules is only helpful in very few situations, as one can easily calculate.

The problem is, in Cyberpunk the balance between "one shot, you're dead" and "invulnerable" is only very, very small, which depends on the few "hit points". If unarmored, nearly any standard gun can take you out within one or two rounds. But, when I am carrying around SP 10, which is not that much, forget everything below 10mm (the average damage for 9mm is 8... even 10mm only does an average of 10, with 11mm an average of 10,5). Also, the incredibly slow healing rate makes chars wanting not to take damage at all. I fully understand that players want to have armor, so they don't get killed with the first hit, but when buying even only mediocre armor, they come out being invulnerable to most handguns.

Well, big dilemma . Armor damaging is one option we use, and of course called shots (while we do called shots at an difficulty of +6 for the head). I think the best solution would be a re-balancing of the "hit points" and damage.

For the solos, I am strictly against adding combat sense either to to hit or damage rolls, they have a very good career skill already (I have a solo myself, and I would not recommend giving her additional benefits for game balance purposes).

The idea with the damage increase depending on your excess of the to hit roll is better, so everyone who has a good fighting skill can use it. But, for simulating the advantages of a high skill with a weapon, you already have called shots. We only thought about using an additional "called shot" system, with the region hit being chosen randomly, but you can say a difficulty that is subtracted from your roll, but if you hit, you get it as damage bonus. We like it more than that you get bonus points automatically for a good roll, for now you have the chance to miss entirely, or get your nice shot.

Well, just some ideas

Okay... perhaps my sources are quite a bit outdated... I use a really old CP 2020 german copy, which came as an heirloom from my elder brother. C'est la merde, so to say (yes yes I know that was french, not german).

And there it says for autofire... when autofiring at someone, I get as many hits, as my to hit roll exceeds the difficulty to hit the poor victim. For every 10 rounds fired, I get +1 on the hit roll when I am within 1/4 of the weapons range, and -1 respectively above that. So...

A guy stands 10 metres away, I shoot him... let's y, 10 rounds. Hm... let's say I got SMG +6 and REF 8, roll a 7, thus getting a 6+8+1+7 = 22. So I would hit him 7 times... not bad, giving me 70% accuracy.

If I shoot 20 rounds... I get a 23, resulting in 8 hits. My accuracy has dropped to 40%, but never mind, still okay to waste 10 rounds more for one additional hit. Shooting 30 rounds would decrease my accuracy to 30% (9 hits, 30 fired).

So rule one... just fire 10 shots.

Okay... now this guy is above 1/2 range of my weapon... let's say, this time I rolled a 9, giving me for 10 rounds: 6+8-1+9= 22. So I would hit him 2 times... 20% accuracy, not bad, taking into perspective that he is a bit away now. Okay... if I shot 20 bullets, wow, still one hit. Accuracy now 5%, I quartered my accuracy for 10 bullets more. And now for the 30 rounds autofire... no hits. Great! 0% accuracy, for 30 bullets wasted.

So what? Okay, a gun IS hard to control when on full auto... that would explain why the relative accuracy would drop, but why does the absolute amount of hits decrease? Shall I tell the GM "Okay... I autofire at him... using all my full rate of fire of 30... divided in 3 10 round bursts.".

I think some of you came up with some quite more applicable rules and will gladly show them to me, or argue that the rule presented is realistic, whatever. Perhaps I just failed translating it correctly, who knows... feedback would be nice, especially with some hints and help.

Thx!

In the games I use to play or GM in, normally, the big idea about chars biting the dust is the following:

To die ought to be possible. If the players are aware of the fact, that they can die, they will act accordingly, thus reducing the chance of getting killed. Also, if the chars know the risks and are willing to take them, and don't feel like "we are the heroes and don't get to die", the GM (including myself, when it comes to it) is more generous about surviving. On the opposite, if you feel too sure about yourself, that fatal head blow will really kill you, without trauma team or your friendly elf mage arriving in time (depending on the game, of course).

This philosophy we follow with nearly all games, be it Cyberpunk or some fantasy stuff. If the GM does everything to save you, you have no risk, and the game is no fun. On the other hand, a well made char getting killed is a pain in the behind. But normally, the players (including myself) have no problem with dieing, if the situation is okay (and hey, a shot in the head by a random encounter IS a shot in the head).

Fortunately, we seem to be grown up enough not to play against each other, meaing GM againgst players.

More interesting, what to do when players go for each other? We once had this VERY aggressive and proud southerner in a party, which would draw his scimitar for only you looking at him the wrong way... shall the GM interfere there? But how, and why? I mean, in another situation, I was involved, playing and another char insulted me, I failed my coolness roll (kind of, it wasn't a Cyberpunk game), and so I decided to throw a knife at him, just to warn him... of course resulting in a critical hit, wounding him badly, causing a coolness throw of him, with some kind of critical failure, making him going all berserk with his sword on me... and within 8 seconds, due to some really tough rolls we both would have dreamed of against enemies, he was dead, and I took 25 damage. After we all finished laughing or gasping unbelievingly, we were in the dilemma of what to do - noone wanted to kill the other char, but it happened.

Well... so as GM, I normally avoid killing chars on purpose, but also, we all dislike fiddling with rules and situations to save characters, ever since that "a healing potion drops from the ceiling into your mouth".

Woo, seems I talked a lot of crap here, neway, enjoy

Try to explain why, in the standard rulebook, you get a decreased absolute number of hits when firing more rounds on full auto...