Which SR* damage soaking system?

[Catharz]

Looking over SR3, SR4, and SAME, two damage systems seems useful to me.

1) Simple, SAME:
For fire arms, damage is weapon base damage + recoil-derived damage + 1/2 net attack test successes.
Damage is resisted by armor rating + Body.

2) Tiered, ~SR3:
Damage is recoil + 1/2 net attack, of a tier determined by the weapon.
Damage is resisted by Body, and downgraded to a certain number of tiers by armor type.

The damage tier acts as a multiplier for damage, with 0 (or less) = *0, 1 = *1, 2 = *10, 3 = *100, and so forth. Or something like that, I don't know.

Example: Jeff fires a sawed-off shotgun (recoil 4, tier 2) at Linda, and rolls one net success on the attack. This means he rolls 5 damage dice, and he happens to make two successes. Linda makes one successes on her body 4 roll, downgrading the damage to 1. She is wearing a leather jacket (tier 1 armor), which lowers the damage tier of the weapon to 1. She takes 1 [box of] damage.


So, which system would you use? How would you get them to work better? What other good systems am I missing?


Other info:

The attack rolls are Agility + weapon skill - net recoil.
The dodge rolls are Reaction + dodge skill.
Yes, adding skills to the rolls unbalances them. Removing the skill would mess with Shadowrun rules a lot.

You can add other modifiers (aiming, weather, range, ammo, etc) to the attack and damage rolls.

Recoil is used to make strength important to tech weapons. Weapons have a base recoil value, which can be increased with burst/FA-type attacks. This value adds to damage, and you subtract [recoil - strength, min zero] from the attack roll.

For the sake of balace, I'm assuming that Strength is always equal to Body and Agility always equals Reaction for one character.

Because of the way the rolls are made, you can either take the total combat numbers, use them as a d6 dice pool (with 5 & 6 as success), and compare, or you can just add thm to D20s & base DC numbers.

[Draco_Argentum]

So a short barrel version of a weapon does more damage? Thats ass backwards.

[Catharz]

1169451856[/unixtime]]So a short barrel version of a weapon does more damage? Thats ass backwards.

Er, where do you get that from?

[RandomCasualty]

1169442182[/unixtime]]
1) Simple, SAME:
For fire arms, damage is weapon base damage + recoil-derived damage + 1/2 net attack test successes.
Damage is resisted by armor rating + Body.

We are talking about the SAME system Frank created right?

Well, SAME isn't based on net successes, SAME simply uses a d20 attack roll and for every 2 points that you beat the attack roll, you get a +1 to your damage.

Also, SAME is based on a principle of using one stat versus another for soaking. So you'd use your strength to increase damage and they use their strength to soak.

2) Tiered, ~SR3:
Damage is recoil + 1/2 net attack, of a tier determined by the weapon.
Damage is resisted by Body, and downgraded to a certain number of tiers by armor type.

Tiered systems never really worked well. Just look at SR3 where light pistols were much worse than heavy pistols. You get a lot more granularity for balancing attacks if you don't use broad tiers and use actual damage values, like SR4 does.

So, which system would you use? How would you get them to work better? What other good systems am I missing?

Well if you're rolling multiple dice, which you seem to want to, you should probably look at SR4's combat system. It's alot better than SR3 in my opinion.

[Catharz]

1169474524[/unixtime]]

1169442182[/unixtime]]
1) Simple, SAME:
For fire arms, damage is weapon base damage + recoil-derived damage + 1/2 net attack test successes.
Damage is resisted by armor rating + Body.

We are talking about the SAME system Frank created right?

Well, SAME isn't based on net successes, SAME simply uses a d20 attack roll and for every 2 points that you beat the attack roll, you get a +1 to your damage.

Also, SAME is based on a principle of using one stat versus another for soaking. So you'd use your strength to increase damage and they use their strength to soak.

Yes

1169474524[/unixtime]]

2) Tiered, ~SR3:
Damage is recoil + 1/2 net attack, of a tier determined by the weapon.
Damage is resisted by Body, and downgraded to a certain number of tiers by armor type.

Tiered systems never really worked well. Just look at SR3 where light pistols were much worse than heavy pistols. You get a lot more granularity for balancing attacks if you don't use broad tiers and use actual damage values, like SR4 does.

In this case, light pistols would do the same damage tier as heavy pistols but have less recoil. A tier 3 weapon (given my example) would be something like a LAW rocket. Tier 4 would be a larger-scale conventional weapon or satelite-mounted microwave laser, tier 5 a "tactical nuke," tier 6 a full-scale H bomb, etc.

If you like, you can have tank duels (which is basically rocket-launcher tag) or space-mechas (with tier 4 armor) dueling with nuclear missiles and lasers.

1169474524[/unixtime]]

So, which system would you use? How would you get them to work better? What other good systems am I missing?

Well if you're rolling multiple dice, which you seem to want to, you should probably look at SR4's combat system. It's alot better than SR3 in my opinion.

SR4 has the advantage of a much simpler combat system than SR3, and the lack of damage tiers makes for better numbers at low levels of armor and firepower, but that's about it.

[RandomCasualty]

1169486350[/unixtime]]
In this case, light pistols would do the same damage tier as heavy pistols but have less recoil. A tier 3 weapon (given my example) would be something like a LAW rocket. Tier 4 would be a larger-scale conventional weapon or satelite-mounted microwave laser, tier 5 a "tactical nuke," tier 6 a full-scale H bomb, etc.

If you like, you can have tank duels (which is basically rocket-launcher tag) or space-mechas (with tier 4 armor) dueling with nuclear missiles and lasers.

Ah ok. You sort of confused me by citing SR3, where the tiers were used for different levels of personal weapons, as opposed to setting tiers based on anti-personnel attacks, anti-vehicle attacks, and even larger area attacks at high tiers.

That might actually work, at least as far as keeping numbers smaller. The only tricky issue is of course figuring out how to convert according to tier. You probably don't want the game to turn into Rifts with megadamage that instantly kills anything in one shot that doesn't have megaarmor or whatever the heck it was called. Really though, without a full write up of the system, I'm not sure I can make many meaningful judgments.

[Draco_Argentum]

1169455185[/unixtime]]
Er, where do you get that from?

You're adding recoil to damage. In general use recoil and muzzle jump are synonymous. A shorter barrel increases muzzel jump (less mass) but reduces projectile energy (less time so accelerate it). At least assuming the barrel is =< the most efficient length.

[Catharz]

1169537097[/unixtime]]

1169455185[/unixtime]]
Er, where do you get that from?

You're adding recoil to damage. In general use recoil and muzzle jump are synonymous. A shorter barrel increases muzzel jump (less mass) but reduces projectile energy (less time so accelerate it). At least assuming the barrel is =< the most efficient length.

Right.
As is often true, for the sake of the game I misuse and generalize words and phrases.

In this case, "recoil" refers not to any movement of the weapon but to a (possible) penalty to attack, and usually an accompanying bonus to damage.

If I wished to include concealability in weapon damage balance, I would probably give a sawed-off more recoil relative to damage dealt (in the first system, at least--the second doesn't account for that).