[ArkangelWinter]

One thing I do, since I use hit location, is let players use Body  to heal, but then there's s chance I'll hit em with some premature arthritis, or if a guy who was recently gutshot glitches, he poops himself.

If theyd rather use just Body, then none of these temporary lingering effects come up because they took time to take care of thrir wounds.

[Waratah]

I was looking at the healing as an extended test still, but the threshold idea was to allow for recovery period where the character holds stable for a period of time before they start improving.
It felt like a heavily wounded character could walk off those wounds after a couple of days without any assistance and that didn't feel right, hence the idea about the threshold.
Adding in the wound modifiers certainly extends that time and can make it impossible for a character who is badly wounded to recover at all unless they do get help.

I have to say that the rules for healing and where the modifiers get applied is not very clear.
After going over it yesterday I was using all relevant modifiers to the healing test (The BOD+BOD and BOD+WIL) as well as to the First Aid and Medical tests. Started to feel like doubling up in some areas but in otherways it made sense.

Anyone else apply these modifiers?

[The Big Peat]

Has anyone come up with some good house rules for allowing Longarms to be anything other than the ugly unwanted stepchild of the Shoot People family?

[JustADude]

Has anyone come up with some good house rules for allowing Longarms to be anything other than the ugly unwanted stepchild of the Shoot People family?

Chop the not-really-an-automatic-weapon-at-all Battle Rifles out of Automatics and put them into Longarms.

Battle Rifles are burst-fire at best, stock, and there's plenty of burst-fire Heavy Pistols and Shotguns... even some FAs for the Shotguns... that don't use the Automatics skill.

[Mirikon]

Well, Battle Rifles are more closely related to assault rifles than they are to longarms. To be honest, the problem with Longarms is that the only weapon class in the skill you're gunbunny is going to be using in most situations is a shotgun. For Street Samurai and Weapons Specialists, there isn't much call for such things.

However, I've found that longarms is a great skill for low-IP characters. Any character that normally has 1-2 IP can arguably be more effective with a sniper rifle or shotgun than they can with automatics. Especially if that character is a mage or a hacker/technomancer. Use a sniper rifle to 'reach out and touch someone' at range, and then switch to a shotgun when people are closer in.

So Longarms isn't that bad, all told, it just isn't good for the primary 'shooter' types. But it makes a great secondary or tertiary role for a character, since there are times when sniping will come up. Just like having someone with Demolitions is nice, even though it doesn't come up too often. (What? Why would giant explosions bringing down entire buildings get the cops to hustle to that location?)

But it is true that the skill needs more love. Look through Gun Heaven, and you see one sniper rifle, one sport rifle, and not a single shotgun. Now I'm not saying we need to pump out a ton of Barrett 121 clones, but new sniper rifles, sport rifles, and shotguns would be great.

[JustADude]

Well, Battle Rifles are more closely related to assault rifles than they are to longarms.

True enough. Just throwing some suggestions out on how to give Longarms some more love, though.

Another option, which I believe has been discussed elsewhere on the board, is simply eliminating Automatics as a skill and having all stocked, shoulder-fired weapons use Longarms and all pistol-type weapons use Pistols. Then you strip Rockets/Grenades/Missiles/Mortars into a separate skill called "Launchers" and fold the remaining Heavy Weapons (Cannons and MGs, IIRC) into the Firearms Skill Group so it still has 3 skills.

[Mirikon]

Meh. Honestly, I think the best solution is to bring out more toys for the Longarms skill, and let the Pistols and Automatics chill for a while. Occam's Razor, and all.

The real problem with Longarms isn't the skill, but the fact that, except for the shotgun, the skill isn't much good for "I'm in the middle of a corporate facility, and turned the corner to come face to face with storm trooperscorpsec". Sniping is a niche ability, much like demolitions, parachuting, and Pilot Anthroform. You just don't get much call for such things. When you do, however, they are very good to have.

[Mirikon]

Um, Dude? What you just described is pretty much the definition of a niche ability. Something that can be very useful, but most of the time isn't applicable. There just aren't many sniping opportunities in Shadowrun, unless you're either in a war zone, or doing straight wetwork. Afterall, even in the real world, most (read: the vast majority of) shootings happen at a range of 20 yards or less.

[JustADude]

Um, Dude? What you just described is pretty much the definition of a niche ability. Something that can be very useful, but most of the time isn't applicable. There just aren't many sniping opportunities in Shadowrun, unless you're either in a war zone, or doing straight wetwork. Afterall, even in the real world, most (read: the vast majority of) shootings happen at a range of 20 yards or less.

Yeah, I realized that right after I clicked "post", which is why I removed it. Looks like you read it before I could pull the trigger, though.

However, I must point out that most shootings happen at 20 yards or less because most people getting into shootings don't have sniper cover.

[Mirikon]

Yes, but ambushes like that are tough to set up in most situations.

[CanRay]

True enough. Just throwing some suggestions out on how to give Longarms some more love, though.

Honestly, there are a LOT of Longarms in Shadowrun, we just don't have stats for them.  I really doubt that M1-Garands, SMLEs, and Kar98Ks are going to be going away any time soon.  Not to mention all the other hunting rifles specifically designed as such that weren't military designs.

[The Big Peat]

One of my problems with longarms is that sniper rifles aren't a good reason to take them, because as by rules you might as well take an assault cannon. Any house rules fix I did would have to get around that. Two possible ideas I'm seeing are a) allow sniper rifles an increased bonus to aim actions and b) make it so they're very quiet, and the likes of assault cannons are very noisy. I'm not completely sure on how realistic both of these are, but it would at least encourage stealthy snipers to take the sniper rifle, not the bloody Gauss cannon.

I've no problem with Longarms being somewhat niche, but when they're outperformed in what they were designed to do, there's issues.

I was also (and this is possibly a different discussion) under the impression that IRL shotguns are an excellent choice for short ranged urban fighting, which, in SR, they're just not - making the shotgun an attractive option for 'Screw subtlety' moments would be a big benefit to them I think.

Thoughts?

[Mirikon]

Assault cannons are already really loud, as are unsilenced sniper rifles (or sport rifles, for that matter). The difference is that you can throw a silencer on a sniper rifle, and (unfortunately) you can't on an assault cannon. Beyond that, the difference between the two becomes the fact that one draws a police response, and the other draws a national guard response to the scene. It is the difference between driving an Bulldog with a machine gun mounted on the roof and driving a main battle tank. One of these is going to get more attention from people yes? And in the shadows, unless you're Kane, attention is generally bad for your health.

Also, it is a lot easier to get sniper rifle ammo than it is to get assault cannon ammo. This basically boils down to whether the DM properly makes the players feel the consequences of their actions. A sniper rifle is a scalpel. A Gauss rifle is a machete. Yes, you can use them for some of the same things, but they both have different intended roles. And using one where the other is called for is going to cause some issues.

As for shotguns, they are an excellent choice for short-ranged urban fighting, if you're a low IP character. Someone with 1 initiative pass would do much better with a shotgun than they would with a heavy pistol or assault rifle, because the shotgun does more damage in fewer shots. Just like Suppressing Fire gets more useful the fewer IPs you have.

[JustADude]

As for shotguns, they are an excellent choice for short-ranged urban fighting, if you're a low IP character. Someone with 1 initiative pass would do much better with a shotgun than they would with a heavy pistol or assault rifle, because the shotgun does more damage in fewer shots. Just like Suppressing Fire gets more useful the fewer IPs you have.

I still want to see some Dragonsbreath ammo for those things. Maybe treat them like you would a shot from the "pistol-size" flamethrower, and you get a -1 to shoot the weapon (which doesn't go away until it's repaired and refitted) for every X rounds you fire without a cooldown, since the stuff overheats the metal?

[Crash_00]

They've already created treated barrels now that don't warp from the fire rounds, but you can't fire regular shot/slugs through them without damage. Kind of ironic. You could easily make it a weapon mod to not damage and have swapping barrels take one or two complex actions.

Personally, I'd like to see something similar to the old tac nail rounds people used to load in the ozarks. They were useless at more than across the room range and ruined barrels fast, but were amazing for close range defense.