Hey guys, been away from the forums for a while, moving and doing grad school, etc. So, 'welcome back' to me.
Hopefully I wont vanish in a puff of logic again anytime soon. On to business...
I have been looking into using the streamlined combat rules option listed in SR20A (2nd bullet point only, pg.75) for a game I am planning to start up, but am concerned that it changes the combat system too much as far as balance goes. I am fully aware that using any optional rule to reduce the number of rolls made and/or number of dice rolled per roll is going to change the inherent balance in the system, but am hoping to minimize the change. Or at least make sure the skew is in a subjectively positive direction.
In this case, subjectively positive is being defined as "Speed up combat in as many of these 4 ways as possible while taking into account the fact that I like my combat to be fairly lethal, but only in as much as it speeds up game play to make it more "action packed" or "cinematic". I'm not looking to be a mean vindictive PC killing GM.
1. make combat scenes take less real world time to complete
2. have there be less dice rolls occurring
3. have less dice rolled per roll."
4. have there be less in game/real time math required.
Math-wise, by eliminating the damage resist roll and having armor subtract from attackers DV directly, you are effectively making Body worth far less as a stat, and armor worth quite a bit more. Normally, on the defensive, you would average a third of your Body + a third of your armor as a reduction to attackers DV since you would have to roll them both and have a 33% chance per point of getting a hit. But with the optional streamlining, people would only need enough Body to be able to wear a crap ton of armor without the encumbrance penalties, and then they would get more reduction to boot.
Example: 5 body + 10 armor vs 10 incoming damage:
Vanilla = 10DV - ((5 + 10)*.33) = 5 + net hits on the attack roll damage taken.
Streamlined: 10DV - 10 = 0 + net hits on the attack roll damage taken.
I really want to streamline my combat, but i don't want to make the game that much less deadly. The net result of having people take that much less damage would actually make combat take more time, rather than less.
I have considered a few options, but rather than tell you what I've come up with, and possibly influencing or limiting my results, I would rather just ask everyone for their ideas and see what we can come up with as a community.
