Shadowrun
Shadowrun Play => Rules and such => Topic started by: Typhus on <11-20-19/1910:40>
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Has it ever been defined how *much* stopping power armor represents in prior editions? So for example, if on average a heavy pistol should "always" breach a vest (average rolls assumed all around), that's a balance point to work from. If it should "only sometimes" breach a lined coat (ie on a good roll) that's also a point to work with in terms of scaling up. I know it's an abstracted system obvs, but what would anyone speculate is the "normal" for the world of SR?
If I am balancing weaponry against armor, what would you consider as a baseline to work with? Not numbers per se, but in terms of expected outcomes? Personally I feel like a lined coat should have a decent chance of mitigating all of an average light pistol attack, but heavy would be more likely to allow a small amount of damage on average. Assuming single shots here.
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Historically Shadowrun has always abstracted armor to some degree however it has always had an effect until 6th edition.
You have to consider a few factors when writing armor rules for RPGs including what type of armor it is, what parts of the body it covers and what type of damage it can stop.
Some level of abstraction is required in a game like shadowrun that has no hit locations so bear that in mind (you can't just take the specifications of what an armor type stops in isolation).
Shadowrun 6e's inanity has recently forced me to take a hard and long look at such stuff.
You can find tables of bullet foot pounds and compare that to the various ballistic armor types (NIJ iii-a, NIJ IV, etc) to see what type of bullets can typically be stopped by typical armor types.
Once you grok the data you'll laugh uncontrollably at 6e's mechanics (or lack thereof) for armor to stop bullets.
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...it has always had an effect until 6th edition.
It still has an effect, it's just one that is even more abstract than any version of Shadowrun before. Specifically, where SR3 armor would adjust the target number for your Body dice roll to resist the damage being done to, SR6 armor adjusts the odds that you have an Edge point you can afford to spend to re-roll one of the Body dice you roll to resist damage being done to you.
Fact-izing aside and moving on to the question on what kind of base-line to establish to re-balance weapons by:
I'd use an armor vest as the baseline for armor performance since it is the most basic form of item that exists solely for its bullet-stopping properties.
And I'd probably set the "yeah, it basically always stops that" at a heavy pistol from the 2nd range category.
Why? Because real-life "bullet proof" stuff is a whole bunch of math and science and the above provides a relatively accurate (over-) simplification and doesn't completely defy the expectations that players are likely to have from seeing someone get shot while wearing a kevlar vest in TV show or movie.
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SR6 armor adjusts the odds that you have an Edge point you can afford to spend to re-roll one of the Body dice you roll to resist damage being done to you.
So that’s a 33% chance of removing one point of damage - as long as you didn’t already earn two Edge points during this combat turn, that is. That’s a one-third chance of stopping one-third of an Ares Predator shot. Or nothing at all if you’re at the Edge cap. And as long as your armour is 4 points above the attacker’s AR value.
Contrast that to a rating 9 armour jacket in SR5, which has a 98% chance of stopping 1 box (always, regardless of what else has happened in the turn.) It has a 35% chance of stopping 4 boxes - fully half the damage of an Ares Predator.
“Armour has no effect in 6e” is hyperbole, but only a little bit.
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OTOH if there's a tie between attacker's and defender's hits, the defender has a 2/3 chance to avoid all damage entirely by spending an edge point. The mechanical impact of 1 point of edge varies by context.
What's new to 6we is that armor is not going to make you bulletproof. It's a big change from prior editions (5e especially) but it's not really all that unrealistic. Even IF bulletproof vests were actually bulletpoof (and they're not)....
(https://qph.fs.quoracdn.net/main-qimg-b00de939b68dfe7ccc46df41440f87d4)
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OTOH if there's a tie between attacker's and defender's hits, the defender has a 2/3 chance to avoid all damage entirely by spending an edge point. The mechanical impact of 1 point of edge varies by context.
Sure, fair point. And roughly how often is that gonna happen, do you imagine?
Don't forget to factor in all the times your samurai already earned their two Edge by firing their big gun at goons on phase 25, meaning they got no Edge from armour when the goons fired back on phase 9.
What's new to 6we is that armor is not going to make you bulletproof. It's a big change from prior editions (5e especially) but it's not really all that unrealistic. Even IF bulletproof vests were actually bulletpoof (and they're not)....
Before the release of 6e, did anyone on this forum ever post about 1/2/3/4/5e to say something to the effect of "I think armour is way too good!"? "I just wish it did less!"? Who was asking for this change?
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@Penllawen
You seem to ignore the opposition side. When you wear no armor and have 3 Body its easy to earn Edge against you. And 1 Edge earned means the PR1 oppoent can try a Knockout melee attack Edge Action.
Wearing no armor is SR6 is a bad idea.
Further you could argue why does Torso Armor grant Edge when you use the "Called shot" Action to shoot the targets eyes ? So you could argue SR6 armor is still too good ;) [advocatus diaboli speaking]
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I actually like the change of armour in 6th.
Like in Dnd you could have a monk/barbarian/arcane caster with no armour. And they were still effective. The paladin and fighters etc were also effective in their platemails... until you had the stupid random encounter in the middle of the night at the inn. Suddenly the naked fighters and paladins were #%@$.
I mean if you look at many action movies then the protagonists would often fight without any armour. Bruce willis often just used a wife beater as armour, but he was still effective.
Edit: to answer OP.
Maybe something the likes of of adjusted DV isnt higher than your armour bonus, then the armour stops the bullit cold.
This means you would need a modified DV of 5+ to get through an armour jacket.
Problems naturally arises with cyberlimbs and their 15 armour ratings, and stuff like that.
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Personally, I think an armor vest should stop a light pistol round and an armor jacket should stop a heavy pistol round -- assuming average results from average dice pools.
For the purposes of 6E, someone (can't recall who or when) suggested a house rule that if the armor rating is equal to or higher than the modified damage rating (i.e., base DV plus net hits), then Physical damage converts to Stun, while Stun damage would be ignored. I'll probably go with that.
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Sorry to have inadvertently started another 6e armor debate thread. That was not my goal. In fact, part of the reason for my question was so that I could work out a starting point get that particular mechanic out of the 6e rulebase. That's part of why my question was not tied to any given edition.
Regarding using a vest as a baseline to stop a pistol bullet, that seems like a reasonable start point, but would need to be not 100% effective due to the coverage area being smaller.
I suppose I could also think of it that way for things like a lined coat, which might not have any better stopping power, just greater coverage, and thus better overall protection. So a lined coat should be more likely to stop the bullet, even if conceptually it has no better density that a vest. An armor jacket by comparison is a heavier armor, harder to breach, but with a little less coverage. So thus you still get a higher rating with that overall.
Playtesting to get final numbers right is always needed, but
I'm looking to divine a theoretical baseline, in-universe. Does a vest compete with a pistol? The answer of meeting expectations is a good one to consider. With the thoughts above tho, I think the lined cost is my new baseline armor balance point.
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Personally, I think an armor vest should stop a light pistol round and an armor jacket should stop a heavy pistol round -- assuming average results from average dice pools.
For the purposes of 6E, someone (can't recall who or when) suggested a house rule that if the armor rating is equal to or higher than the modified damage rating (i.e., base DV plus net hits), then Physical damage converts to Stun, while Stun damage would be ignored. I'll probably go with that.
Might want to make an exception for special damage types like Electric.
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As others already said, Shadowrun don't even use hit zones which mean the concept of armor is already seriously abstracted. Why would a vest prevent any damage at all if the shooter take a called shot to hit you in the head? ;-)
In SR6 they take this a bit further. it is now assumed that everyone will have some armor. But rather than resolving things like armor rating and armor penetration they decided to simply roll it into base damage values. This is the reason why damage values are much lower in this edition. Amor from that vest / coat / jacket or whatever is already factored and rolled into the base damage value of the attack.
Ares predator V in SR5 had a base DV of 8P
Ares predator VI in SR6 have a base value of 3P
Ingram Smartgun X in SR5 had a base DV of 8P
Ingram Smartgun XI in SR6 have a base DV of 3P
AK-97 and FN HAR in SR5 had a base DV of 10P
AK-97 and FN HAR in SR6 have a base DV of 5P
It is assumed that targets in SR6, not always - but in the above specific cases, have enough armor (before applying Body) to reliably soak 5 damage (or maybe 4, since unlike 5th edition in 6th edition the attacker will hit on a tie).
If it makes you feel better you can always just house rule that attacks against a naked target no longer have to factor in this default armor 'tax'. That attacks against naked targets instead will use unadjusted SR5 base damage values.
I can see why they wanted a change.
People have been discussing that it is very hard to challenge a character that have 30-60 soak dice and pretty much never take physical damage (unless you bring in attacks that risk one-shotting if another player character happen to take the hit).
There have also been concerns that the body attribute don't contribut enough, that it is overshadowed by armor rating. Many characters in 5th edition settled for Body 3 while it seem as if many characters in 6th edition go for body 5.
(Also simply rolling that many physical dice at once actually start to take both unnecessary time and effort)
I can also see why people are concerned that maybe they made it too abstract since now your armored jacket will no longer, in average, soak 1 box more than an armored vest (like it did in 5th edition).
But this, I think, is where the edge system is supposed to comes in. While both the vest and the jacket might reduce the base damage of a heavy pistol from 8P to 3P there will also be cases where the jacket might also provide you with a tactical advantage (or prevent that your opponent gain a tactical advantage) that you would not get with the vest.
Game mechanic wise lower armor protect more in 6th edition, armor jacket is basically as effective as ever and stronger armor no longer soak more than what you would expect from the jacket in previous edition. It is now very hard to build an immortal tank (but is that a bad thing? Honestly not so sure about that...
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It's honestly not that different than prior editions... the really prior editions.
1st Edition: Heavy pistols and rifles tended to do "M" damage, which is 3 boxes. Light pistols and small melee weapons, did "L", which is 1 box.
2nd Edition: Ditto. (the difference being, the Staging value was deleted and everything stages on every 2 net hits)
3rd Edition: Ditto.
4th edition began the era that resembles current rules mechanics: static target numbers of "5" and staging moves to every net hit goes up or down 1 box, rather than every two goes up or down the scale of L/M/S/D. But, even in 4th edition damage codes resembled the raw #of boxes in 1-3.
5th edition is the lone outlier in SR's history of having DVs the way it did, which necessitated armor being obnoxiously effective to compensate.
6th world edition goes back to more "historical" damage, and so obviously armor can't work the way it did in 5e. Nor can it work the way it did in 1-3, since TNs are pegged to 5 now. So it's either work the way it did in 4th, or invent something new. Something new was invented.
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Before the release of 6e, did anyone on this forum ever post about 1/2/3/4/5e to say something to the effect of "I think armour is way too good!"? "I just wish it did less!"? Who was asking for this change?
I didn't come posting about it on the forum or anything (at least not that I remember), but way back in SR3 I frequently found myself thinking "It'd probably make combat feel a little more threatening for players if they couldn't stack their armor to the point of their damage resistance dice being effectively automatic successes unless I've got their opposition using anti-vehicular weapons on them... but at least it takes 2 successes to stage a wound down"
And in SR4, I also didn't post about it that I remember, but on more than one occasion a player had their character deliberately drop a grenade at their own feet because they felt certain their character would survive - and the character didn't even take damage one of the times because "eh... I've got a lot of dice already between body and armor, but sure, I'll add edge and re-roll 6s"
So I guess you could say that I was asking for this change.
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A vest only cover the [upper] torso but should probably stop a light pistol round and most of a heavy pistol round if it happen to hit the vest. Averaging it over the whole body and you probably end up with an abstract value which is roughly half of the damage a light pistol deals.
A coat covers a lot more of the body but is possibly less bullet resistant. When averaging it over your whole body you probably end up very close to the armored vest.
The armored jacket (at least how i imagine it) would probably reduce the damage roughly one box more than the other two alternatives.
I think this is pretty well presented in the rules as is (in both editions). In SR5 both vest and coat have an armor value of 9 which reduce a heavy pistol from 8P to 5P while jacket have 12 which, on average, reduce the same bullet from 8P to 4P. In SR6 the damage code is already reduced to 3P. The jacket have higher DR which in turn increase situations where you will either gain an edge or prevent the opposition from gaining one.
Where SR6 falls flat (when taking 'realism') is when you start talking extremes.
Naked targets are very hard to one-shot.
Cybered up targets wearing full combat armor are very easy to hurt.
But from a game design point of view I am not sure if this is inherently bad. Unlike the naked paladin the muscle of the team will not instantly die just because he don't have his jacket on, instead he will become more Bruce in Die Hard. And on the other spectra a cybered up street tank will now have to play a bit more tactical and not just wade through hordes of enemies without risk of taking any damage at all.
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Has it ever been defined how *much* stopping power armor represents in prior editions?
In the classic editions your armor rating literally reduced the attack power, so, for example, you could clearly see that a hold-out or light pistol would basically be completely ineffective against a 5/3 jacket.
If I am balancing weaponry against armor, what would you consider as a baseline to work with?
Personally, I always considered the armor jacket/coat to be the standard shadowrunner armor, and would balance around that. In the classic editions the 5/3 jacket was balanced to reduce the power of a heavy pistol to 4, so each damage resistance die has an even chance of success and failure.
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I didn't coming posting about it on the forum or anything (at least not that I remember), but way back in SR3 I frequently found myself thinking "It'd probably make combat feel a little more threatening for players if they couldn't stack their armor to the point of their damage resistance dice being effectively automatic successes unless I've got their opposition using anti-vehicular weapons on them... but at least it takes 2 successes to stage a wound down"
I thought the layered armor rules worked pretty well. You could only stack jacket type armor over armored clothing, it raised your target number for all quickness linked skills considerably, and it reduced your movement to almost nothing. Where it fell down was allowing the armor spell to stack on top, but that's easily fixed with a quick house rule.
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this conversation ignores the fact that all shooters are trained to shoot center of mass.
when you wear most of your heavier armor in the area you most often get shot then most often it will have more effect than 6e represents.
that right there demonstrates how poor 6e's mechanics are.
where 5e and earlier fall down is that they let the armor creep up to high to the point that you can ignore small arms fire.
a tweaking of 5e was clearly required, 6e instead went totally the opposite direction and enshrined no armor as being almost as good as armor.
which just pushed the inanity in the opposite direction.
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this conversation ignores the fact that all shooters are trained to shoot center of mass.
when you wear most of your heavier armor in the area you most often get shot then most often it will have more effect than 6e represents.
that right there demonstrates how poor 6e's mechanics are.
where 5e and earlier fall down is that they let the armor creep up to high to the point that you can ignore small arms fire.
a tweaking of 5e was clearly required, 6e instead went totally the opposite direction and enshrined no armor as being almost as good as armor.
which just pushed the inanity in the opposite direction.
The counter argument that you refuse to see and/or accept is that 6e damage codes are also significantly reduced to compensate for armor too so the balance of damage is still close to the same curve barring the extreme tank types, so it feels like armor doesn't do anything. If you go through and change the armor rules you would also need to increase all damage codes to match.
So is it a broken system that doesn't work ... nope!!!!
It it a stinky bad feel ststem that players don't want ... yes mostly!
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Pfff, I love it. It just needs a bit of handling of edge cases, but for those that really care about those and intend to have them in their games, it's real easy to introduce a houserule or two. E.g. 'DV doubles without armor' or '+1 Edge (ignores edge limit) if target unarmored yet dangerous'. Or the whole 'DV becomes stun, after-resist DV halved, if pre-resist DV < Armor Boost' idea.
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Agreed. If someone's going take the "bikinis are just as good as armor" argument seriously and run around without armor, then as far as I'm concerned they'll be forfeiting every circumstantial edge to their opponent they might have otherwise earned.
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Pfff, I love it. It just needs a bit of handling of edge cases, but for those that really care about those and intend to have them in their games, it's real easy to introduce a houserule or two.
Nothing says “this is a well designed system” like “here are some houserule suggestions to punish players for taking the RAW literally.”
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In SR6 they take this a bit further. it is now assumed that everyone will have some armor. But rather than resolving things like armor rating and armor penetration they decided to simply roll it into base damage values. This is the reason why damage values are much lower in this edition. Amor from that vest / coat / jacket or whatever is already factored and rolled into the base damage value of the attack.
Well, that’s news to me. Where in the 6e CRB are the rules for “if your players have been taken prisoner and stripped of all weapons and armour, here’s the damage code adjustment you should apply” then?
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In SR6 they take this a bit further. it is now assumed that everyone will have some armor. But rather than resolving things like armor rating and armor penetration they decided to simply roll it into base damage values. This is the reason why damage values are much lower in this edition. Amor from that vest / coat / jacket or whatever is already factored and rolled into the base damage value of the attack.
Well, that’s news to me. Where in the 6e CRB are the rules for “if your players have been taken prisoner and stripped of all weapons and armour, here’s the damage code adjustment you should apply” then?
It's not, but does it need to be? All it would do is screw over players who choose (or get stuck in a situation) to not wear armor. If you want that factor in your game just double damage values against "soft" targets as a house rule.
Personally I prefer to rule on the side of cool and fun for the players and not do that.
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It's not, but does it need to be? ...
Personally I prefer to rule on the side of cool and fun for the players and not do that.
(I know, I agree, I was being sarcastic because I think Xenon’s post is nonsense ;) )
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I think people that play on roll20 lose track of how shitty it is for a troll tank to roll FIFTY DICE every time they get shot. That was terrible and I'm thrilled it's gone as someone who still plays with real dice. Armor in 6E is still very effective, it's just different. In 6E you could get shot 10+ times and survive, thanks to armor. I'm talking about a basic arrmor jacket, not milspec. 6E armor is way better imo. I can see why others disagree though.
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where 5e and earlier fall down is that they let the armor creep up to high to the point that you can ignore small arms fire.
a tweaking of 5e was clearly required...
I endorse this view. I’ve never had a serious attempt at houseruling it, but something along the lines of
1) halve the values of all worn armour
2) keep Body the same
3) re-scale melee weapons to work off Str/2
4) take 2-3 points of DV off all ranged weapons
5) ditch some cheesy stacking armour trickery/gear
...would go a long way to calming down the worst excesses of 5e but not throw the baby out with the bathwater.
In before some poster picking holes in this example, but that’s all it is - an example. The important words are “something along the lines of.”
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this conversation ignores the fact that all shooters are trained to shoot center of mass.
when you wear most of your heavier armor in the area you most often get shot then most often it will have more effect than 6e represents.
that right there demonstrates how poor 6e's mechanics are.
where 5e and earlier fall down is that they let the armor creep up to high to the point that you can ignore small arms fire.
a tweaking of 5e was clearly required, 6e instead went totally the opposite direction and enshrined no armor as being almost as good as armor.
which just pushed the inanity in the opposite direction.
The counter argument that you refuse to see and/or accept is that 6e damage codes are also significantly reduced to compensate for armor too so the balance of damage is still close to the same curve barring the extreme tank types, so it feels like armor doesn't do anything. If you go through and change the armor rules you would also need to increase all damage codes to match.
So is it a broken system that doesn't work ... nope!!!!
It it a stinky bad feel ststem that players don't want ... yes mostly!
im very aware of that banshee, and it's the design decision that seems to have pushed 6e into a corner re: strength not factoring into melee weapon damage and the lowered damaged codes giving unarmored opponents a free ride.
6e's assumes lot of stuff that often is not the case and the end result is a mechanical system then departs from reality often and without benefit.
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I think people that play on roll20 lose track of how shitty it is for a troll tank to roll FIFTY DICE every time they get shot. ... I'm talking about a basic arrmor jacket, not milspec.
I agree that sounds bad. How on earth do you get it that high, though?
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I think people that play on roll20 lose track of how shitty it is for a troll tank to roll FIFTY DICE every time they get shot. ... I'm talking about a basic arrmor jacket, not milspec.
I agree that sounds bad. How on earth do you get it that high, though?
By having a mage friend.
Or, by being a MysAd without needing outside help.
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<<DVs are reduced & armor soak is removed>>
Well, that’s news to me. Where in the 6e CRB are the rules for “if your players have been taken prisoner and stripped of all weapons and armour, here’s the damage code adjustment you should apply” then?
It's not, but does it ....
Banshee, thanks for reminding me why I put penllawen on ignore to begin with.....
No matter how specific and correct I try to be in my posts penllawen will always find something to be 'sarcastic' about.
His posts hold very little value to me.
penllawen,
If it makes you feel better you can always just house rule that attacks against a naked target no longer have to factor in this default armor 'tax'. That attacks against naked targets instead will use unadjusted SR5 base damage values.
Emphasis mine (apparently you need it)
6e's assumes lot of stuff that often is not the case and the end result is a mechanical system then departs from reality often and without benefit.
Actually, 6e assumes lot of stuff that is often the case.
Armor work perfectly fine when you wear any 'normal' armor.
Melee weapons work perfectly fine when you have a 'normal' strength rating.
When 6e break apart (from a 'real-world' point of view) is mostly only if you deliberately start exploring corner cases (like bikini armor or unarmed DV > combat axe if 11+ strength etc).
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6e's assumes lot of stuff that often is not the case and the end result is a mechanical system then departs from reality often and without benefit.
Actually, 6e assumes lot of stuff that is often the case.
Armor work perfectly fine when you wear any 'normal' armor.
Melee weapons work perfectly fine when you have a 'normal' strength rating.
When 6e break apart (from a 'real-world' point of view) is mostly only if you deliberately start exploring corner cases (like bikini armor or unarmed DV > combat axe if 11+ strength etc).
To state this more clearly, 6e assumes a lot about combatants, when combatants fall outside that average or assumption range 6e falls apart dramatically.
Shadowrunners and the things they encounters often fall outside those expected ranges.
ergo 6e doesn't work for a great large part of shadowrun.
hope that helps xenon!
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6e assumes a lot about combatants, when combatants fall outside that average...
I agree that 6e will probably fall apart a lot more often than previous editions at tables with veteran GMs and players that are used to min/max and really push the boundaries of what is sometimes even technically allowed.
Edit: 6e is not what we are used to. It is... different.
At over 300+ pages where most of the fluff have been cut out I would not go so far as claiming that 6e is 'rules light' or 'Anarchy 2.0', but compared to previous editions this edition seem to have less emphasis on detailed realism (which often seem to come at the cost of time consuming bookkeeping and complicated ways to resolve even minor game mechanics). Rather, this edition seem to have more emphasis on rule of cool, style and resolving rules more quickly to help the story flowing (which often seem to come at the cost of a higher level of abstraction and with that a bigger disconnect from reality).
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@Penllawen: 13 body, 7 edge, 12 armor jacket, 5 from assorted armor pieces, armor spell, mystic armor, and some others I can't recall. With exploding dice it gets extra crazy. That's a lot of dice to fit in your hands and a lot of people have tiny hands. My hands are huge and I find it really cumbersome, especially carefully counting hits and hunting for 6's.
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At over 300+ pages where most of the fluff have been cut out I would not go so far as claiming that 6e is 'rules light' or 'Anarchy 2.0', but compared to previous editions this edition seem to have less emphasis on detailed realism (which often seem to come at the cost of time consuming bookkeeping and complicated ways to resolve even minor game mechanics). Rather, this edition seem to have more emphasis on rule of cool, style and resolving rules more quickly to help the story flowing (which often seem to come at the cost of a higher level of abstraction and with that a bigger disconnect from reality).
Exactly, everyone on the development team had that in mind as went through it and knew it would have casualties. In the end it should be about having fun while playing ... not needing a bunch of book keeping and number crunching.
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@Penllawen: 13 body, 7 edge, 12 armor jacket, 5 from assorted armor pieces, armor spell, mystic armor, and some others I can't recall. With exploding dice it gets extra crazy. That's a lot of dice to fit in your hands and a lot of people have tiny hands. My hands are huge and I find it really cumbersome, especially carefully counting hits and hunting for 6's.
Mathematically, the reroll is superior there. At 7 Edge, 19+ dice already is better reroll-wise. :P But if you have ~45 soak dice, that's still 25 average soak with a reroll.
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I thought the layered armor rules worked pretty well. You could only stack jacket type armor over armored clothing, it raised your target number for all quickness linked skills considerably, and it reduced your movement to almost nothing. Where it fell down was allowing the armor spell to stack on top, but that's easily fixed with a quick house rule.
Since the amount of negatives from layering on armor were quickness-based, it was very easy for a character to be put together to have an armor rating of like 8/6 B/I without any ware or magic affecting it and not having any penalties (specifically, that's a 9 quickness, secure jacket, armor vest with plates, and security helmet) and then be at TN 2 for damage resistance tests against every weapon on the core rule-book's firearms table except the sniper rifle.
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I thought the layered armor rules worked pretty well. You could only stack jacket type armor over armored clothing, it raised your target number for all quickness linked skills considerably, and it reduced your movement to almost nothing. Where it fell down was allowing the armor spell to stack on top, but that's easily fixed with a quick house rule.
Since the amount of negatives from layering on armor were quickness-based, it was very easy for a character to be put together to have an armor rating of like 8/6 B/I without any ware or magic affecting it and not having any penalties (specifically, that's a 9 quickness, secure jacket, armor vest with plates, and security helmet) and then be at TN 2 for damage resistance tests against every weapon on the core rule-book's firearms table except the sniper rifle.
When calculating the penalty you use the full ballistic rating for each piece, not the half you use for the total armor calculation. So they would actually be +1TN for all Quickness tests (possibly including dodge?) and Quickness linked skills, and would calculate movement as if at Quickness-1...they'd also probably be the first target of anyone with autofire capability...
Can you tank yourself out in 3E? Yes. But the cost is that you have to build to be a quickness monster. Even Quickness 6 is pretty hosed in that getup unless they just don't use quickness skills or intend to move faster than a slow crawl.
I would also point out that even that geared up, tasers and stun batons (which are very common among security staff) are still plenty useful because the tank only gets half impact armor against them. They're also not impervious to the random ork or troll ganger with a decent melee weapon. So there were still (a couple) reasonable options to challenge such a player without breaking the game world by giving everyone APDS or rocket launchers or something silly like that.
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Before the release of 6e, did anyone on this forum ever post about 1/2/3/4/5e to say something to the effect of "I think armour is way too good!"? "I just wish it did less!"? Who was asking for this change?
Not about armor directly, but I do recall a number of posts/posters commenting on how absurd the extreme end of tanking was in 5e. In fairness, they were not wrong.
Agreed. If someone's going take the "bikinis are just as good as armor" argument seriously and run around without armor, then as far as I'm concerned they'll be forfeiting every circumstantial edge to their opponent they might have otherwise earned.
Out of personal curiosity, in this statement does armor = worn armor, or armor = things that add to DR? For example, a naked troll mage with Body 9 and his natural dermal plating with a sustained combat sense spell has a DR high enough to get edge from the substantial majority of printed weapons in literal underpants.
To state this more clearly, 6e assumes a lot about combatants, when combatants fall outside that average or assumption range 6e falls apart dramatically.
Very much this.
@Penllawen: 13 body, 7 edge, 12 armor jacket, 5 from assorted armor pieces, armor spell, mystic armor, and some others I can't recall. With exploding dice it gets extra crazy. That's a lot of dice to fit in your hands and a lot of people have tiny hands. My hands are huge and I find it really cumbersome, especially carefully counting hits and hunting for 6's.
That calculation is low ball too. Just out of chargen a missions legal troll with the restricted gear quality and 4 cyberlimbs can pack 55ish dice and 11 auto hits on soak.
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I think people that play on roll20 lose track of how shitty it is for a troll tank to roll FIFTY DICE every time they get shot. That was terrible and I'm thrilled it's gone as someone who still plays with real dice. Armor in 6E is still very effective, it's just different. In 6E you could get shot 10+ times and survive, thanks to armor. I'm talking about a basic arrmor jacket, not milspec. 6E armor is way better imo. I can see why others disagree though.
Sure. And while some argue for keeping that level of tank I think most are fine with that becoming manageable. But from armor+body to just your body is far too large of a swing imo. Something basic like rating in armor is auto successes on damage soak but have armor be fairly limited to like 1-4 and that’s with a helmet. Bump current damage values up by 3. Keep melee as is but add 1/2 strength to the dv.
Still fast. No giant die pools that are unmanageable, but armor feels like it does something.
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Armor as automatic hits is pretty much what I'm building. I tried just a +1 DV but it feels too weak. I think +2 will be the sweet spot, maybe +3 if the Armor values require it, which the higher end ones might.
I've found it leaves me with an occasional quandry on what to do with some items that used to provide armor, but I think they can safely act as bonus dice for DR tests.
I tried removing Body tests too (+1 DR/4 dice) but it caused to much hell elsewhere, so it stays in.
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When calculating the penalty you use the full ballistic rating for each piece, not the half you use for the total armor calculation. So they would actually be +1TN for all Quickness tests (possibly including dodge?) and Quickness linked skills, and would calculate movement as if at Quickness-1...they'd also probably be the first target of anyone with autofire capability...
Can you tank yourself out in 3E? Yes. But the cost is that you have to build to be a quickness monster. Even Quickness 6 is pretty hosed in that getup unless they just don't use quickness skills or intend to move faster than a slow crawl.
I would also point out that even that geared up, tasers and stun batons (which are very common among security staff) are still plenty useful because the tank only gets half impact armor against them. They're also not impervious to the random ork or troll ganger with a decent melee weapon. So there were still (a couple) reasonable options to challenge such a player without breaking the game world by giving everyone APDS or rocket launchers or something silly like that.
Uh... 9 quickness, one piece of armor 5/3, the other piece 4/3, and helmet doesn't count so I think I got the details right on this example. And "the cost is that you have to build a quickness monster" is kind of a weird phrase because of how heavily rewarding it is for combat-oriented builds of literally any type to put a heavy emphasis on Quickness in SR3. In effect, the opportunity cost is "nothing" because there isn't any drawback for the combat-orient character to be built with maxed-out upfront Quickness.
And my issue wasn't that there was literally no recourse to get around this - it was that there was something that actually needed to change if "normal runs" as presented by published material were going to present anything resembling a challenge. I should have been able to have stock goons with stock weapon load outs and regular ammunition be enough of a threat even if players "built tough."
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If They really wanted to streamline things Theyd of created a threshold system for pretty much everything. The attacker rolls, compare vs threshold to hit. Net hits get added To base damage that is compared vs soak threshold. Net hits on that is the damage done. Body might factor into soak threshold but maybe it’s just armor and body just determines how big your health pool is. The Who roles could be changed to the player always rolls. On defense they roll against GM set thresholds that are coded into the npc stats. But I think the stagnates the opposition too much unless some Variable is put in for The thresholds.
6e streamlined only really for the edge case where people min maxed it out to the nines. I’ve seen it in missions but never at any of the home tables I’ve gamed at. I guess I’m lucky. I just don’t see the value add here. But again I never dealt with 50 die soak man as a GM. The “tank” at our table had 24 dice. Most players soaked with 15ish. So the soak rolls were pretty much in the ball Park of every other roll. 6e it’s 3-12 so I guess that’s technically less but I haven’t really noticed a streamlining effect from it. Maybe over a campaign I would. We’ve only really done test plays.
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@Michael Chandra: That is true and I have checked out the math in the past but I almost always went with exploding dice just because I found it more fun. Also, from a game design standpoint, you have to assume that many players will not know the probabilities and use the explode option pretty frequently, so even leaving that door open can lead to a lot of frustration when dice rolls become exceedingly tedious.
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Uh... 9 quickness, one piece of armor 5/3, the other piece 4/3, and helmet doesn't count so I think I got the details right on this example. And "the cost is that you have to build a quickness monster" is kind of a weird phrase because of how heavily rewarding it is for combat-oriented builds of literally any type to put a heavy emphasis on Quickness in SR3. In effect, the opportunity cost is "nothing" because there isn't any drawback for the combat-orient character to be built with maxed-out upfront Quickness.
And my issue wasn't that there was literally no recourse to get around this - it was that there was something that actually needed to change if "normal runs" as presented by published material were going to present anything resembling a challenge. I should have been able to have stock goons with stock weapon load outs and regular ammunition be enough of a threat even if players "built tough."
Helmet doesn't count "as layering", meaning it adds it's full armor value. It still counts for the Quickness penalty (p. 285 SR3, paragraph 3 of Layering Armor).
Every group is different, and each group (and each player in that group) may need to be challenged differently than another. Published material acknowledges this. Taken from Double Exposure:
The gamemaster must adjust the game statistics and capabilities of the opposition to provide an appropriate level of difficulty for his group...If the characters (with bioware and cybernetic enhancements bulging from every available body part) seem able to stomp their way through the carefully planned encounters, make the encounters tougher.
So maybe to challenge that character in combat you make sure a ganger has an SMG and some recoil comp. Or just a big pipe. Or the corp goon with the smartgun takes placed shots. Or the mage is just...a mage. These are all common elements of published adventures, or they were in the day at least. You might even have to write your own stock goons just for your group. If all else fails, a social interaction with the friendly neighborhood LoneStar squad that's been alerted to someone walking around clearly expecting to be involved in some drek could be a different, but well deserved, challenge.
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And my issue wasn't that there was literally no recourse to get around this - it was that there was something that actually needed to change if "normal runs" as presented by published material were going to present anything resembling a challenge. I should have been able to have stock goons with stock weapon load outs and regular ammunition be enough of a threat even if players "built tough."
Except lethality cuts both ways in Shadowrun. If stock goons with stock guns and regular ammunition are a threat to bunch of shadowrunners who build hard, then either
- shadowrunners who don't build hard are going to be a threat to an HTR team
- shadowrunners who do build hard and keep building hard long after chargen are going to get slaughtered by an HTR team
Or heck, both might be true.
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And my issue wasn't that there was literally no recourse to get around this - it was that there was something that actually needed to change if "normal runs" as presented by published material were going to present anything resembling a challenge. I should have been able to have stock goons with stock weapon load outs and regular ammunition be enough of a threat even if players "built tough."
Except lethality cuts both ways in Shadowrun. If stock goons with stock guns and regular ammunition are a threat to bunch of shadowrunners who build hard, then either
- shadowrunners who don't build hard are going to be a threat to an HTR team
- shadowrunners who do build hard and keep building hard long after chargen are going to get slaughtered by an HTR team
Or heck, both might be true.
This is actually something that I was going to touch on while responding to GuardDuty regarding adjusting for combat-tuned characters:
The desirable outcome, for me, is that the offensive capabilities of the opposition be able to be potent enough that the characters built on the higher end of the defensive spectrum will still consider them threatening (not to an "oh my god, we're all going to die! way" but like, not deliberately standing next to grenades or walking into the spray of an automatic weapon because they are confident in their survival), but not so potent that the characters built on the lower end of the defensive spectrum will consider them an unmanageable threat.
Achieving that is more difficult the wider the spectrum is, and when you try with a wide enough spectrum you can end up with a situation that boils down to the threat intended explicitly for Character A's incredibly high-combat build is engaged by Character B because they're just trying to contribute and now they feel like they can't, but then Character A takes out all the lower-threat enemies in the engagement in short order and all that's left is only the threat that Character A can handle, but the rest of the team has no hope against.
And when it comes to adjusting published material... I can get behind that to a point, like if I am expanding the number of goons to fight because I've got a larger group playing than the design assumed I'm fine with that, or if I decided I like the story but I want to change the power level entirely... but adjustments that boil down to ignoring the narrative because of the game's mechanics (which is what loading everybody up with heavier weapons and APDS and the like no matter who they are, or having the runners only ever going up against elite badasses and dragons and such are) are a deal-breaker for me
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The desirable outcome, for me, is that the offensive capabilities of the opposition be able to be potent enough that the characters built on the higher end of the defensive spectrum will still consider them threatening (not to an "oh my god, we're all going to die! way" but like, not deliberately standing next to grenades or walking into the spray of an automatic weapon because they are confident in their survival), but not so potent that the characters built on the lower end of the defensive spectrum will consider them an unmanageable threat.
Achieving that is more difficult the wider the spectrum is...
This.
In SR5 it seem as if you you have a rather wide spectrum, and as a result characters built specifically with durability in mind seem to be virtually immortal, but also that characters not built for durability risk being one-shot-into-overflow by the same guys that are capable of dealing even just one box of damage to the mystic samurai tank.
With a too wide spectrum a risk is that a specialist might feel that he is a bit too good at what he do and he will become very hard to challenge
In SR6 you instead seem to have a very narrow spectrum, and as a result it seem as if characters built with durability in mind are now far from immortal (and that even a small number of grunts might pose a threat) while at the same time characters not built for durability seem to be quite durable out of the box (and will probably not get one-shot by the guys capable of dealing damage to the mystic samurai tank).
With a too narrow spectrum a risk is that a specialist might feel that he is not special enough at what he do and he might feel that he never get to shine.
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Stopping power in 5e didn't make sense either.
If we use the standard of a light pistol vs armor vest we come across the question of why enough net hits equal physical damage. If the net hits reprisent accuracy and we're aiming for center mass, where the armor is, accurate shooting will hit the armor plates.
On top of that, if the stun damage from a gun not exceeding your armor rating is representative of the blunt force trauma that results from a bullet failing to penetrate a vest, why does a baton do physical damage?
6e chooses to reprisent these things differently, with changes born of a gaming perspective rather than a futile attempt to simulate reality with dice. Does armor even have stopping power in 6? No, it literally does not work that way. Will it save your life? Probably, edge is fairly nebulous. But if your enemy has it and you don't, you in trouble.
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The desirable outcome, for me, is that the offensive capabilities of the opposition be able to be potent enough that the characters built on the higher end of the defensive spectrum will still consider them threatening (not to an "oh my god, we're all going to die! way" but like, not deliberately standing next to grenades or walking into the spray of an automatic weapon because they are confident in their survival), but not so potent that the characters built on the lower end of the defensive spectrum will consider them an unmanageable threat.
Achieving that is more difficult the wider the spectrum is...
This.
In SR5 it seem as if you you have a rather wide spectrum, and as a result characters built specifically with durability in mind seem to be virtually immortal, but also that characters not built for durability risk being one-shot-into-overflow by the same guys that are capable of dealing even just one box of damage to the mystic samurai tank.
With a too wide spectrum a risk is that a specialist might feel that he is a bit too good at what he do and he will become very hard to challenge
In SR6 you instead seem to have a very narrow spectrum, and as a result it seem as if characters built with durability in mind are now far from immortal (and that even a small number of grunts might pose a threat) while at the same time characters not built for durability seem to be quite durable out of the box (and will probably not get one-shot by the guys capable of dealing damage to the mystic samurai tank).
With a too narrow spectrum a risk is that a specialist might feel that he is not special enough at what he do and he might feel that he never get to shine.
I disagree it just shifted more to dodge. Street sams might be routinely dodging with 18 dice a low end 6 dice maybe less. Opponents designed to deal with the 18 dice dodge will murderlate 6 die dude. In my mind if anything this increased the spectrum as it focussed defense down more onto one aspect. Not getting hit. In 5e even a clutz could buy up enough armor without ware to get okay on that aspect. Someone whose style wanted light armor could focus on dodge. You had to tank both sides to truly be low on defense. Now with the focus on dodge you are less capable of going low on defense without getting murdered.
Which isn’t to say 5e didn’t have issues. I hated base damage=death on shots. Getting grazed/it’s just a flesh wound should be a thing even if you aren’t a tank. And it didn’t matter much what your armor was for most characters vs certain weapons. You’d survive them but you were seriously hurt. But heck a tie on autofire assault rifles is near death in 6e so it’s not like my it’s just a flesh wound is happening here either.
Out of two heavily flawed soak/defense systems I’m. It sure which is better.
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I disagree it just shifted more to dodge.
The spectrum is both though, because there wasn't anything stopping a high-soak build from also being a high-dodge build, which means that SR6 having narrow the soak portion of things it is still an over-all narrower scope despite dodge being the emphasized portion of defense now.
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I feel like the importance of Minor Actions is being overlooked.
It's one thing to boost your Reaction and Intuition so you have a nice dodge pool. It's even better to have a bunch of Minor Actions for Blocking and Dodging attacks. Of course since Block and Dodge are linked to skills rather than Attributes, it pays to actually invest in the Skill rather than relying mostly on Agility... but that's another balance rejiggering topic of discussion :)
Even back in 5e there was a triad of defense: dodge pool, interrupt actions, and armor. Clearly some had more impact than others. I see 6we as evening the field a bit in lowering the importance of armor.
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I disagree it just shifted more to dodge.
The spectrum is both though, because there wasn't anything stopping a high-soak build from also being a high-dodge build, which means that SR6 having narrow the soak portion of things it is still an over-all narrower scope despite dodge being the emphasized portion of defense now.
Sure but it also gave people a second avenue to shore up a weakness. One that was fairly cheap and didn’t really impact your concept.(expensive armor). 6e has focussed it mostly to one avenue. Not getting hit. And that’s a pretty expensive thing to boost. Skills and attributes aren’t cheap. Ware isn’t cheap and might not fit your concept, actions to dodge not cheap. The soak avenue was definitely narrowed but I think the dodge avenue was broadened.
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Group,
I seem to be falling into the Xenon and Noble Drake camp. I like the new rules and think the Orc/Troll tank has been brought more in line. As pointed out armor has been lowered but so has weapon damage. However, weapons are a threat now and players don't just go walking into the middle of people knowing their armor is going to cover them from light to heavy pistols (typical security guard weapons).
If you want to talk about real life, talk to a soldier/police officer that has taken one while wearing vest/armor. It still hurts/distracts and they all spend more time trying not to get hit (dodge) then standing up and soaking it on armor.
I'm not saying 6E is perfert... I will be posting questions about Matrix/Hacking/Technos at a later date, but I think it was a decent improvement.
Regards,
Ludwig
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I'm amazed how many people believe that weapons weren't a threat in SR5. Big armor values, sure, but you needed 28 armor value to have a more likley-than-not chance to soak an Ares Predator using normal ammo on only 1 net success. Add that to massive offensive die pools and options to remove defense? I guess the big numbers just scared too many people.
Armor is weaker in SR6, sure, but it was never an issue in SR5. The night our game's troll tank saw a burst-fire shotgun with flechette was the same night he rerolled into a defense adept build.
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I'm amazed how many people believe that weapons weren't a threat in SR5. Big armor values, sure, but you needed 28 armor value to have a more likley-than-not chance to soak an Ares Predator using normal ammo on only 1 net success. Add that to massive offensive die pools and options to remove defense? I guess the big numbers just scared too many people.
Armor is weaker in SR6, sure, but it was never an issue in SR5. The night our game's troll tank saw a burst-fire shotgun with flechette was the same night he rerolled into a defense adept build.
Yes, this whole thread of reasoning is ridiculous. Everyone is so desperate to defend SR6's bad combat that they're rationalizing every straw they can grasp. It's a bad game that wasn't properly tested before they released it. Get over it!
That being said, I can't find a SR6 game to play in. Nobody on Roll20 is running it. I want to get in a game so bad so I can torture the hell out of these rules.
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I'm amazed how many people believe that weapons weren't a threat in SR5.
I think I missed it if anyone said 5th edition specifically... my comments, at least, were about 3rd and 4th.
[quote authoer=topcat link=topic=30633.msg531685#msg531685 date=1574740502] Big armor values, sure, but you needed 28 armor value to have a more likley-than-not chance to soak an Ares Predator using normal ammo on only 1 net success.[/quote]Your numbers are off. It's actually 26 dice (after AP modification) to have better odds of fully soaking 9 damage than not fully soaking it, and that includes body dice so it's likely to be way less than 28 armor value to get to that kind of damage resistance total.
For example, an armor jacket (12 rating) and a 4 body plus spending an edge to re-roll non-hits is better than coin-toss odds to fully soak this admittedly narrowly successful hit. Or you could build a high-body troll, wear armor, add some 'ware or adept powers to boost body, and have a friendly mage set you up with an armor spell and have this level of damage resistance without spending edge - and looks like then you can still pull off the grenade-at-own-feet trick I saw in SR4.
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All,
I skipped 5th edition. So my examples were from 4th.
Regards,
Ludwig