[Geewaagh]

How would you cover charging? When an opponent is within walk range but you still want to run up to attack in melee.

I would say u make a complex action called charging. Same as my sprinting.  So, you get your free base move plus base move plus net hits for the "charging" action.  So to get off a charge, you would have to be no more that 2x you base move plus however many hits you think you can make on a running roll. Now I get a chance to have some nice rules for failed charge for those who want to push their luck.

[Namikaze]

That would work quite well for a battle mat scenario.  Failed charges would suck!

I just thought of how you can smooth out movement though.  Take the number of Action Phases that the character is supposed to get at the start of combat, and use that as a divisor for their movement rate.  So if someone has AGI 3 (normally 6 meters of walking) and 2 Action Phases, they get to move 3m per Action Phase.  If they want to move more, then that turn is treated as Running.

[Michael Chandra]

Won't work due to ways of losing/lowering Initiative. Furthermore, you'd be penalizing people with a higher Initiative by not letting them move as far, which may very well cost them their chances at reaching cover.

[Namikaze]

Won't work due to ways of losing/lowering Initiative. Furthermore, you'd be penalizing people with a higher Initiative by not letting them move as far, which may very well cost them their chances at reaching cover.

Touche.  Hmm, no good solution that I can think of right now.

But what I did think of is a new mechanic:

Favors
Description: score works as a dice pool modifier for tests by the contact.  Negative score reflects favors owed to the contact, positive score reflects favors owed to the character.  Score changes at GM discretion.
Uses: character can burn a number of Favor points equal to the desired Loyalty rating of the contact to increase the contact’s Loyalty.
Example: If a contact has 1 Loyalty, it takes 2 Favors to increase Loyalty to 2.  It would take 5 Favors to go from 1 to 3.

[FasterN8]

Won't work due to ways of losing/lowering Initiative. Furthermore, you'd be penalizing people with a higher Initiative by not letting them move as far, which may very well cost them their chances at reaching cover.

It works fine.  I know because that's very similar to how my table used to play 4th edition.  We divided movement by 3 and gave every character a free action to spend in each initiative pass regardless of initiative score.  So every player got to move in the first 3 initiative passes, but (obviously) not every character had the initiative score to actually act productively throughout all that movement.

The result of our house rule was that on the first initiative pass, people did lots of running for cover and sometimes had to make sprint tests to do it, which sounds a lot like what the start of a firefight should look like.  Rarely was anyone in combat ever just walking.  It also meant that low initiative characters were constantly engaged if only to a smaller degree.

So to translate that houesrule to 5th edition, a character with a 3 agility would have a run rate of 12, so 4 meters per initiative pass without a sprint test.  That's more than 13 feet in about 1 second starting from a dead stop.   That's enough to cross a small room or get to cover in most cases, and that's just a guy with average agility and no running skill.  Things get a lot more interesting with higher agility and sprint tests.  (I also think that sprint tests should remain simple actions)

Now, I understand that melee characters benefited greatly from the "teleport" type movement of RAW 5th edition, but the cases where an agile melee character cannot close to melee range with this system should be relatively rare (10+ meters).  And I have no sympathy for players who complain about not being able to attack with their sword from 25+ meters before the enemy can even get a single shot off.

[Michael Chandra]

It works fine.  I know because that's very similar to how my table used to play 4th edition.

When you make sure everyone has the same movement allowance percentage per IP, and you make sure they can move even in IPs they cannot act in, then yes it works. However, that's not the system he described, and without those details, the system does NOT work because someone with a high Initiative ends up having their movement rate heavily damaged. So no, what he described won't work.

[ZeConster]

Won't work due to ways of losing/lowering Initiative. Furthermore, you'd be penalizing people with a higher Initiative by not letting them move as far, which may very well cost them their chances at reaching cover.

It works fine.  I know because that's very similar to how my table used to play 4th edition.  We divided movement by 3 and gave every character a free action to spend in each initiative pass regardless of initiative score.  So every player got to move in the first 3 initiative passes, but (obviously) not every character had the initiative score to actually act productively throughout all that movement.

Except, of course, the flaws Michael pointed out are precisely flaws your houserule avoided, which means that the success of your houserule doesn't really say anything about how well Namikaze's proposed houserule would work.
You see, under Namikaze's proposal, someone who loses an IP due to Initiative score reduction (interrupt actions, wound modifiers, electricity damage...) would either lose out on movement or end up in the strange situation where their Initiative Score going down means they can move more in their remaining IPs, and someone who starts with 31 Initiative will have half the movement per IP as someone who starts with 20 Initiative and has the same Agility. Under your houserule, those problems don't occur.

[FasterN8]

Sure, his idea had some issues, he was shooting from the hip with a brand new idea.  But his idea was exactly what mine started out as and if we're constructive instead of just pointing out the flaws, then his idea would likely develop a bit more and end up as good or better than mine.

[Namikaze]

I'm actually going to move this topic to a new thread, so we don't clog up the House Rules thread with debates and discussion.

[ZeConster]

Sure, his idea had some issues, he was shooting from the hip with a brand new idea.  But his idea was exactly what mine started out as and if we're constructive instead of just pointing out the flaws, then his idea would likely develop a bit more and end up as good or better than mine.

There's little constructive about not pointing out obvious flaws.

[FasterN8]

Perhaps my definition of "constructive" is too narrow, but I was using it to mean criticism that included suggestions for improvement (hence construct-ive) rather than only pointing out of flaws (which still has value and necessity).

I don't want to start a debate on semantics, I just wanted to clear up what I intended by my comments.

Sorry for offending anyone.

[Flip]

I've found the rules for ramming a bit rediculous (or I might be reading them wrong).

On page 203, it says that "the base damage value of the attack is determined by the ramming vehicle's body and speed". it later says "Characters in the ramming vehicle only take half that ammount (rounding up)".

So... This means if I am in a Suzuki Mirage going 80 m/s and ram Rover 2072... I have to resist 5 damage using my characters body and armor

If I am in an Rover 2072 however and ram a Suzuki Mirage while going 80m/s I have to resist 15 using my characters body and armor.

So when I am driving in a giant van, I get more messed up ramming a Motorcycle, than I do ramming a giant van with a bike. This seems utterly absurd... So instead I decided to make my own rules.

Rammed Vehicle Body x Ramming Table Modifier(Using the Ramming vehicles speed) / 2

Still a bit wonky, but I'm not a real math/statistics/game-design wiz so it's the best I got. Thoughts?

[Namikaze]

I'm just an armchair physicist, but I do work with basic physics a bit.  Most of the time, my simulations already have the physics worked out correctly, but I do have to fix their formulas on occasion.  In any event, most of the damage in a collision is caused by the speed of the vehicles, magnified by a factor based on their mass.

The basic formula looks like this:
F • t = mass • Delta v

F is the force, t is the time that the collision takes effect, Delta v is the difference in velocity between starting and stopping.  So as the time goes on, the force of the collision can change, in part because of the speed difference at the moment.

So the way that I'd handle collisions is to take out the time element and the delta velocity element as well.  Just say that time is 1, and delta velocity is equal to the speed of the vehicle (the vehicle comes to a complete stop instantly).  So in this case, you'd take the mass of the vehicle, multiplied by the velocity, to determine the force of the collision.  All of these forces create vectors that interact with each other, but for simplicity's sake it might be best to simply use the Body rating of the largest vehicle on both sides of the collision.

Aside from the Body of the equation, Speed is a huge factor.  Remember that the faster vehicle will take less of the energy of the collision, so the slowest vehicle takes the most impact.  If you're in a head-on collision with another car, the best thing for you to do is speed up.  It means that the other driver is going to get hosed, but you might live.  To translate this into Shadowrun, I think that you take the other vehicle's Speed as your factor.  So if you're the ramming vehicle, you use the "recipient" vehicle's Speed to determine the damage.

The ramming damage table should be based on the largest of V1B and V2B, in both situations.  The speed should be based on the other vehicle, regardless of who is the rammer.  So if you're using the example that Flip provided of a Suzuki Mirage going 80m/s and a Rover 2072 going...  zero m/s? the Mirage takes 7 damage while the Rover takes 10 damage.  The driver (and passengers) of the Mirage take 3 damage in this situation.

[The Sword Emperor]

By the rules, there is no way for the character on the receiving end of an area-effect attack to avoid the blast. There is a nod in the defense rules, but the rule doesn't explain how to actually defend against something where the character isn't the direct target.

Here, I have created a house rule to address that concern (inspired by Michael Chandra's rule, in this thread).

Dodging Area-Effect Attacks
Characters may attempt to avoid an area-effect attack by attempting to move away from the epicenter of the blast. This is an Interrupt Action called Move, which costs the character a -5 Initiative Score. The player makes a (Reaction + Intuition + Running) [Physical] test, at a -2 penalty. Each hit enables their character to move either 1 meter (for dwarfs and trolls) or 2 meters (for elves, humans, and orks) away from the epicenter of the blast (as per the rules for Sprinting).

This Interrupt Action counts against the character's total movement for the turn. Also, the character is considered to be running until the end of the Combat Turn, and so incurs the normal penalties and benefits of running. Finally, count this Interrupt Action against the characters maximum number of Sprinting tests for the Combat Turn.

As with any other Interrupt Action, you may combine this Interrupt Action with Full Defense. You still suffer the -2 penalty to the roll.
End Rule Text

Notes
Practically, this means that characters may be able to get further away from the blast radius of an explosion, and thus take less damage overall, or even escape it entirely. Of course, when it comes to spells, they usually need to escape the area entirely, or else they take the full brunt of the spell.

By the rule text above, a character must take the -5 Initiative in order to dodge the area-effect attack. If the player is unwilling or unable to make that sacrifice, then their cannot avoid the blast. This is intentional because of the drastic effects that this Interrupt Action has on combat. A generous GM may allow characters to make a standard Reaction + Intuition test, without the -5 Initiative Penalty; all of the other factors, including the -2 penalty to the roll, would still apply.

The rules text does not say what happens if the player fails, glitches, or critically glitches. I am divided on how I would handle this. Here's a few options.

Failure 1: Treat this result as if nothing happened. The character simply didn't have any time to react.

Failure 2: The character still suffers all the benefits and penalties of running and Sprinting, even though they don't actually make any significant movement. This represents the character already being in "run" mode, so to speak; they just haven't gotten anywhere.

Glitch: The character experiences all of the penalties, but none of the benefits.

Critical Glitch: In addition to the results of the glitch, the character, in a blind panic, runs toward the blast. Move the character either 1 meter (for dwarfs and trolls) or 2 meters (for elves, humans, and orks) toward from the epicenter of the blast. If the character is already at the epicenter of the blast, he will be knocked Prone or effectively disarmed (whichever the GM finds more appropriate) in addition to any other effects.

[Coldstone]

On the offhand, I like the overall notion of that for dealing with  'hit the deck(er)' , and using features already built in to boot.

as far as glitches go...may be more of a GM moment really. trip during the end of your movement, run into something, dash out too far and become a target on other end, etc. critical glitch I think can be spared - you're about to get a grenade (or similar) to the arse. I think a little GM mercy is fine at this point.