Shadowrun-esque hit box opinions

[jadagul]

This means that if you give +1 damage and +1 soak to both sides the amount of damage inflicted will be the same.

That's actually not true. Part of the distribution gets cut off because damage taken cannot go below 0, creating a bias in the attacker's favor that increases the more dice are involved. E.g., the average net hits for 5 damage vs 5 soak is 0.58, and the average net hits for 10 damage vs 10 soak is 0.83.

The overall point is good though, that if you scale damage and soak linearly with power level, then you don't have to scale HP as well. You do have to be careful to ensure that players end up within a pretty tight range of soak, otherwise you end up in the territory where any enemy that can even scratch the high soak players will turn the low soak players into paste, and anything that's a reasonable level of threat to the low soak players cannot touch the high soak players at all.

I think he actually meant +1 damage and +1 soak, not +1 damage die and +1 soak die.

You don't want to roll fifty dice at the table anyway. So if you want a Super Dragon you give it ten soak and twenty soak dice instead. (or probably like thirteen soak and eleven dice). And if you want to put a rat on the combat scale you give it six dice and negative three to soak or something.

[kzt]

You now start to see where the damage system kinda breaks at not even that high end right?

There is also the minor detail that grandma with a .22 is basically incapable of seriously hurting anyone.

[Stahlseele]

If said gramma has some skill and does some aiming, she could be moderately dangerous.