[Wu Jen]

As stated, say you have 26 dice when making a shot, but your shooting at a low security guard and your already using gel rounds, but your fairly certain that you will still kill them with stun overflow.

By RAW do you have to roll all the dice in a pool, or can you choose to roll less dice to ensure that you don't kill the poor stuffer shack guard?

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

No, there's not an explicit rule for that. But it seems silly that a GM would not permit you to forfeit dice, if you wanted to.

Also, since circumstantial modifiers are not exhaustive, if for some reason formality must be adhered to, the GM can say that this kind of called shot will cap out at a maximum of X boxes and cost -Y dice.

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Another thought if this is a 5e context:

Something I've done (both as a player and as a GM) when obliged to roll a task I deliberately didn't want to excel at is to spend a point of edge to reroll all hits rather than all failures.

[Michael Chandra]

You may want to look at the Location Location Location called shots in SR5. They come with after soak damage caps.

[Finstersang]

Site note: Apart from damage control, this can also be relevant for low, even-numbered dicepools. Even dicepools have a higher chance for a glitch, and with lower pools (like 2 or 4), this chance becomes so high that you might want to ditch one die to get an uneven pool. Just sayin 

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Another option is to just ask if you can buy hits.  Limiting your number of hits will serve the purpose you need in that scenario.

[adzling]

As stated, say you have 26 dice when making a shot, but your shooting at a low security guard and your already using gel rounds, but your fairly certain that you will still kill them with stun overflow.

By RAW do you have to roll all the dice in a pool, or can you choose to roll less dice to ensure that you don't kill the poor stuffer shack guard?

you would do a called shot to a less lethal part of the body, lose dice according to called shot and adjust effects appropriately.

[Michael Chandra]

You may want to look at the Location Location Location called shots in SR5. They come with after soak damage caps.

Just checked, Neck is 10 DV, but one of the two possible effects is them bleeding out so yikes. Sternum also is 10 DV max. Since those limits apply after soak, any enemy with a physical CM of 10 or less can go down.

[Reaver]

When ever this issue came up, I just allowed the player to roll this dice pool as normal, then choose how many successes he is using...

Keeps things simple.

[Xenon]

We all have ideas on how to allow this, but it seem as if OP is specifically looking for a RAW answer to this.

By RAW do you have to roll all the dice in a pool

By RAW, "Yes".

can you choose to roll less dice to ensure that you don't kill the poor stuffer shack guard?

By RAW, "No".


But some of the "Specific Target" Called Shots described in "Location, Location, Location" could possible be used. Most of them limit the DV lower than most stun condition monitors, but as MC said, if you go for Sternum you are guaranteed to not deal more than 10 boxes of damage no matter how many net hits you get (and 10 boxes of stun damage is often enough to cause lights out on most NPC guards).



Edit.

It seem as if with "Specific Target" Called Shot, net hits can not be used to modify the base DV of the attack at all, which will make it hard to knock someone out with a single attack...

[Stainless Steel Devil Rat]

Asking the GM if you can just buy hits on the shot is fully RAW.

[Wu Jen]

Asking the GM if you can just buy hits on the shot is fully RAW.

I thought that any test where you could glitch didn't allow you to buy hits.

[Michael Chandra]

Yeah, so if glitching or crit-glitching matters a lot, it's definitely a no. GM also has the final say. For example, there's someone who asked 'hey, if I have 19 drain dice, can't I just buy hits and cast any 4-drain spell risk-free?' on Facebook, where I said 'nope, there's 2:25 chance you take drain still, so I'd keep that in'.