[Blue_Lion]

Hah. Reminds me of a player in our group we had who kind of seemed to have forgotten this.
He came to the table with a street sam rolling about 20 dice on full defense and 20 dice to soak damage. Our heaviest opposition was a bunch of Yakuza who rolled 10 dice attack and had 1IP, so I guess he must have felt he was immortal or hyper-fast like the agents from the matrix, because he decided to take on 7 guys at once.
Each of these guys doing two short wide bursts reduced his dice pool to almost nothing, damage came in, he soaked a lot but then wound modifiers made his dodges even worse, taking more net hits... he died first round in combat.

Pffft... he broke one of the first rules of combat; never give them a chance to hit back. You want to take out a cluster of 7 guys, that's when you use a couple frag grenades and turn them into salsa.

Kinda like why does my mage need more than one action if i have adrenlin rush and high magic and spells like mana ball and power ball. One action is usaly enofe to take out the other side unless they spread out. If they are spread out then you might need an action or three, unless the street sam can burn them down.

[Eye Eternal]

So by that, in all relative terms, getting shot at enough and HAVING to dodge every bullet would result in near definite loss of being able to fire back without use of edge. I understand if you get shot at enough you are probably a bullet graveyard by then, but as stated, having a 1 in 6 chance of critical glitch does blow hard. Edge makes it viable to not go that route, either by upping the pool or allowing a reroll so you still COULD dodge, but will likely get you dead quickly anyway. FA shots with that -9 is a large problem to anyone who has already dodged, full defense or not. I assume they wanted full auto be be mostly undodgeable without at least some cover to help.

[Falconer]

first off you always get at least one dice for defense or a skill unless it says you can not default.  And yes to the second one.

The rules never state this anywhere I'm aware of.  Cite it please.

Actual Rules to the contrary....
p61-62 SR4a  "Long Shots"
"In some circumstances, modifiers may reduce a character's dice pool to 0 or below.  In this case, the character automatically FAILS the test...."  spend edge long shot test (which answers Erich's second question).  Nowhere in the rules am I aware of anything which says a character always gets at least 1 die on any test.

So if your reaction pool is reduced to zero... you can spend 1 point of edge... and roll your edge and only your edge to go for broke on that one defense test.

(oh dear. the fun people would have with MrLucky type stuff then... yeah I role 1 die with my pet rented 'guard' spirit to never glitch... 33% of the time... miracles happen, and when I really care I actually spend edge).


Tecumseh:
No, each shot is most definitively a separate attack.
The first shot is resolved fully... attack, hit, damage soak... before the second is declared.

[Eye Eternal]

I know the rules say shot defended by reaction, but doesn't that take away from the whole of "Hey I am an armor tank and very NOT afraid of bullets flying at me, wtf would I even try to dodge?" Did robocop dodge bullets? NO he took that ish like a man and kept firing. It kinda gimps the fearless gunslinger motif by saying he HAS to dodge and lower his dice pool for firing back bc of losing dice for multiple actions in a turn. UNLESS you are trying to say that the -1 is coming either way from being struck, but id say no bc thats where damage modifiers come in, if he gets hit he has to suck damage anyway. There's a chance he will eat minus modifiers anyway, even from stun damage. (which there is not as much as physical damage to soak up as is.)

[Falconer]

Stop and think this through this way.  Every single shot that hits does damage + hits damage.  This is soaked with Reaction + Body + armor.

Think how much firing a gun makes just your hand move with the muzzle flip... all that energy is still in the bullet when it hits someone... it's not going to toss them bodily around in most cases... but it will still knock them off balance.  Also you have to remember the combat system is abstracted... the idea being that firing more bullets at something is more likely to end up with one of them hitting a vital place and doing damage.   (remember armor doesn't work only by absorbing damage... deflection is actually far more important than soaking!  reaction is used to position properly to deflect).


Robocop is also a cyborg (jarhead).  He's not flesh & blood so much as he's a humanoid combat drone.  As a vehicle any bullet which doesn't exceed his armor bounces and does no damage.  So every combat test on him isn't just an opposed check, but also a threshold test (you need at least this much damage to exceed the armor and scratch the paint).

Normal players on the other hand still need to soak damage less than armor into stun.


Any player who made a habit of choosing 'not to dodge' would learn very quickly the sheer folley of his ways... as mooks would all switch to called shots for damage... (effectively trading 4 dice for 4 points of assured damage) and he's not dodging.   Or they'd see a long-shot called shot to bypass armor... they're not dodging... so no reaction.  Who cares that the mook only has 3 group edge... and is only rolling 3 dice to hit you... when your reaction is normally plenty high enough.   There are a lot of ways to make someone very sorry they chose not to dodge (if you allow it).

[TheNarrator]

Think how much firing a gun makes just your hand move with the muzzle flip... all that energy is still in the bullet when it hits someone... it's not going to toss them bodily around in most cases... but it will still knock them off balance.

The momentum of a bullet isn't very much compared to the mass of a human body. Unless the recoil of a shot is going to knock the shooter over, it's not going to knock the target over either. People who've been shot tend to describe the impact as like that of a punch, and people can and have been shot and completely fail to notice it until later. If the target falls down, it will be a psychological reaction, not a physical one, unless the brain or spinal cord is damaged.

[raggedhalo]

It kinda gimps the fearless gunslinger motif by saying he HAS to dodge and lower his dice pool for firing back bc of losing dice for multiple actions in a turn.

I don't think anyone is saying that.  The only dice pool that is reduced by dodging is your dice pool to dodge.  It doesn't affect your ability to shoot back at all.

[Falconer]

I see people get knocked off balance and topple all the time by as little as a finger poke in the right spot.

So yes, it is quite apt.  Punches regularly knock people over.   You're not dealing with armored people here... a lot of those times the bullet just whizzes through makes 2 neat little holes and keeps going.. and people don't realize they're hit yes hopped up on adrenaline.

The problem here, is it's not always the case that they're NOT knocked around.   

You take a solid steel robot humanoid... spray it down with MG fire... while the bullets aren't going to do much... it will get knocked over more than likely.   Or find it's gyros fighting wildly to keep it from toppling over during which time it's not going to be very maneuverable.

[KarmaInferno]

Unless it's got software that can anticipate and compensate for that. (I.E. high Pilot and Maneuver)





-k

[JoeNapalm]

   (remember armor doesn't work only by absorbing damage... deflection is actually far more important than soaking!  reaction is used to position properly to deflect).

Maybe for plate armor vs melee...but ballistic armor is all about soak.

Bullets move REALLY fast. The only "positioning" you can do is square off before the shooting starts, so the chances favor taking a round center-mass (where you generally have the most armor) rather than through an armpit or something. This is one of the reasons why people who are used to wearing armor shoot isosceles vs bladed.

Cover beats dodging, anyway. Dodge is for when you have screwed up and get caught in the open.

-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[Glorthoron]

This is another reason I prefer the optional rule of threshold based ranged combat.

[Falconer]

Joe...

Reaction though is how you keep your armor squared to your opponent.  Again same bit... rather than taking the shot on the flexible kevlar which results in a deep bruise and possibly broken bones...   you take it on the ballistic plate.   In the abstracted system... reaction is what reflects your positioning to accept damage.  It's not reacting to the bullet in flight neo style... it's reacting to the shooter(s) and positioning correctly.

If your reaction beats his attack roll... it could mean he whiffed utterly... it glanced off your armor for no damage... or it hit square in the ballistic plate and did jack... the system is abstract and doesn't say nor care.

[lurkeroutthere]

Hah. Reminds me of a player in our group we had who kind of seemed to have forgotten this.
He came to the table with a street sam rolling about 20 dice on full defense and 20 dice to soak damage. Our heaviest opposition was a bunch of Yakuza who rolled 10 dice attack and had 1IP, so I guess he must have felt he was immortal or hyper-fast like the agents from the matrix, because he decided to take on 7 guys at once.
Each of these guys doing two short wide bursts reduced his dice pool to almost nothing, damage came in, he soaked a lot but then wound modifiers made his dodges even worse, taking more net hits... he died first round in combat.

We had a similar setup occur at my table. Guy with a wared and high karma (with no log sheets, but i let it slide) character in our missions game decided to try and stick a gang member up behind gang HQ thinking he would't have a problem. 6 gangers with pistols and two with sporting rifles whittles dodge down quite nicely even if their just using SA. Once his dodge was burned through it was just a matter of how bad the hits were going to be.

[JoeNapalm]

Joe...

Reaction though is how you keep your armor squared to your opponent.  Again same bit... rather than taking the shot on the flexible kevlar which results in a deep bruise and possibly broken bones...   you take it on the ballistic plate.   In the abstracted system... reaction is what reflects your positioning to accept damage.  It's not reacting to the bullet in flight neo style... it's reacting to the shooter(s) and positioning correctly.

If your reaction beats his attack roll... it could mean he whiffed utterly... it glanced off your armor for no damage... or it hit square in the ballistic plate and did jack... the system is abstract and doesn't say nor care.

If that were the case, the amount of armor you have on would be factored in your defense roll.

It's not.

The amount of armor you have on determines how much damage you soak, not how much damage you avoid.


-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

[Glorthoron]

Joe...

Reaction though is how you keep your armor squared to your opponent.  Again same bit... rather than taking the shot on the flexible kevlar which results in a deep bruise and possibly broken bones...   you take it on the ballistic plate.   In the abstracted system... reaction is what reflects your positioning to accept damage.  It's not reacting to the bullet in flight neo style... it's reacting to the shooter(s) and positioning correctly.

If your reaction beats his attack roll... it could mean he whiffed utterly... it glanced off your armor for no damage... or it hit square in the ballistic plate and did jack... the system is abstract and doesn't say nor care.

If that were the case, the amount of armor you have on would be factored in your defense roll.

It's not.

The amount of armor you have on determines how much damage you soak, not how much damage you avoid.


-Jn-
Ifriti Sophist

Took the words right out of my mouth.