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Shadowrun

World of Darkness

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[Rowanas]

It's not that you're not hurting them, it's just that it's mitigated - flesh wounds and temporary internal shock rather than blowing massive chunks of meat out of each other.  A quick peruse of statistics shows that we're actually pretty good at surviving bullet wounds, and a simple flak jacket will stop pistol caliber rounds at normal engagement ranges, with bullet wounds to non-critical locations being very unlikely to down an opponent within the timeframe of a firefight.  The standard NATO 5.56/45 caliber is largely insufficient to actually kill someone immediately, and that's for rifles!

[Criptfeind]

But you're saying to me that if I shoot a dude in the chest with a pistol a good 4-5 times that's the sorta thing he'll walk away from without any need for medical attention? Sure, we can survive gunshots in real life, and you can survive lethal damage in shadowrun. But we don't just get bruised and quickly recover from gunshots in real life.

[delphonso]

I guess if trolls were real things we could try and find out.

Shadowrun is a setting where it's totally reasonable for someone to put a gun to your head after you've soaked lethal damage into stun and gone down. You're not soaking that hit, chummer.

[Telgin]

Or, in my experience in shadowrun, if you want to take someone down with a nonlethal attack, just shoot them in the head with a relatively low caliber bullet. They'll basically just shrug the lethality of it off and only take stun damage.

I've never played Shadowrun, but this reminds me of a character I made for a Docwagon game that never happened.  The character was a pilot for some kind of Osprey that had some kind of nonlethal ammo in its machinegun / autocannon mount.  The idea was pretty hilarious, although if I recall it did so much nonlethal damage it somehow (sensibly) became lethal damage.

[Rowanas]

I've never played Shadowrun, but this reminds me of a character I made for a Docwagon game that never happened.  The character was a pilot for some kind of Osprey that had some kind of nonlethal ammo in its machinegun / autocannon mount.  The idea was pretty hilarious, although if I recall it did so much nonlethal damage it somehow (sensibly) became lethal damage.

Too much stun damage rolls over. We can only take so much bruising and shock.

I guess if trolls were real things we could try and find out.

Shadowrun is a setting where it's totally reasonable for someone to put a gun to your head after you've soaked lethal damage into stun and gone down. You're not soaking that hit, chummer.

Also that. A coup de grace is lethal, no matter what.

But you're saying to me that if I shoot a dude in the chest with a pistol a good 4-5 times that's the sorta thing he'll walk away from without any need for medical attention? Sure, we can survive gunshots in real life, and you can survive lethal damage in shadowrun. But we don't just get bruised and quickly recover from gunshots in real life.

Without some basic armour, no, he probably shouldn't walk away from that without assistance, and in my experience of SR he probably wouldn't. 4-5 bullets have almost certainly rolled into the average unarmoured combat character's lethal pool, left them unconscious and pretty buggered, honestly.  SR (blessedly) has no rules (that I recall) for bleeding out/infection/etc after the fact, which is where a lot of gun-related deaths happen, but my understanding of damage in SR is that it never really goes away - a gunshot ends in a scar and little niggles that often stay with you for life, but they don't have a mechanical effect, so we think of the character as "all better now".  Even bullets that hit armour might have cracked a rib, but it's not lethal and your character will roll into action tomorrow without much in the way of penalties, though in a bit of pain.

I did a bit of calculation and a 9L pistol shot with a single extra success will take an average (human) character down in about 3 shots with Lethal, not Stun.  A proper combat junkie could take about 36-40, including all the times they simply ignore the bullet, but assuming they never manage to dodge for some reason.

[Mephisto]

Eww. That would smell horrible.

And that's the beauty of it. Once the capsule rounds are filled and you've capped off your barrel of fun juice, the smell should go away. Shoot a valuable target. Even if they run some distance away, you can use your robonose to locate them.

[Rowanas]

Eww. That would smell horrible.

And that's the beauty of it. Once the capsule rounds are filled and you've capped off your barrel of fun juice, the smell should go away. Shoot a valuable target. Even if they run some distance away, you can use your robonose to locate them.

My olfactory sensors are returning sensations of disgust and regret, I choose to acknowlege them.

Wait, wrong universe.

[Trekkin]

Shadowrun's level of scientific accuracy was a source of much mirth for my old college group. Cargo cult science is a staple of *punk, of course, but Shadowrun in particular tries so hard to contrast its overt fantasy elements with serious-sounding technical jargon that you can't help but like them for trying -- and, of course, it helps that they aren't actually aiming for actual scientific accuracy.

It's just a nice middle ground between the people loudly insisting that their games are so realistic and accurate (Eclipse Phase, for example) and Star Trek whateverino gibberish. Parts of it are plausible enough to suggest how they might work, and most of the rest is either explicitly supernatural or at least doesn't distract from things.

That, and it's exploitable as all get out if you play with a bunch of engineers.

[Cruxador]

Shadowrun's level of scientific accuracy was a source of much mirth for my old college group. Cargo cult science is a staple of *punk, of course, but Shadowrun in particular tries so hard to contrast its overt fantasy elements with serious-sounding technical jargon that you can't help but like them for trying -- and, of course, it helps that they aren't actually aiming for actual scientific accuracy.

It's just a nice middle ground between the people loudly insisting that their games are so realistic and accurate (Eclipse Phase, for example) and Star Trek whateverino gibberish. Parts of it are plausible enough to suggest how they might work, and most of the rest is either explicitly supernatural or at least doesn't distract from things.

That, and it's exploitable as all get out if you play with a bunch of engineers.

Yeah, the best science is the bit where everything that can work by real science does, but anything that doesn't is explained by magic instead. One of my favorite ideas I've seen is a space opera where the artificial gravity was simply done by enchanting the ship.

[Jimmy]

I just figure the mega-corporations are dumping cheap gene editing compounds into their soy based foodstuffs to enhance baseline human resiliency. Easy way to ensure workers are healthy (no sick days), work harder (stronger muscles), and less prone to injury in hazardous environments (thicker skin, lower injury risk, faster healing).

[Mephisto]

Shadowrun was following Numenera rules before Numenera was a twinkle in Monte Cook's eye. Everything is secretly nanobots.

[Grim Portent]

So my brother and I were talking about a stupid character idea for D&D 5e. Basic idea was a food critic, but it kind of turned into just a critic in general.

Basic mechanical idea was a Kenku Mastermind Rogue with terrible dex and strength, but using the Help action as a Bonus Action at 30 feet from Mastermind's features, with the bonus from the Historian feat from 8th level, and casting Vicious Mockery from either a Bard dip or the Magic Initiate feat. Everything skill wise possible is dumped into knowledge skills and other gentile abilities, nothing particularly adventuring related.

Aesthetically we imagine him as a big fat pidgeon man, one of the ones with the big puffed up chest but also just generally fat on top of that. Struts around puffed up with arrogance and condescension, offering useful advice in a demeaning manner and followed by a rather put upon retainer who has to carry his special long cutlery for him (think the stuff used when people wore very wide ruffs.)

Something akin to Anton Ego from Ratatouille personality wise.

[Jimmy]

I like that character idea! So long as the rest of the party's on board with a character that doesn't contribute in combat, it offers a really cool option for roleplaying.

Last week my group was short of players, down to four instead of our usual six. Despite that, our intrepid guardsmen managed to pull a fast one on Bruce 'Sharky' Sharpe, the local supplier of 'green death,' the latest narcotic on the streets. Sharky was selling this dangerous substance in the city's slums, but given how cheap and addictive it is, the group's mission was to discover the source of this substance to ensure it didn't spread into the rest of the city and cause a crime wave after the addicts unerringly turned psychopathically violent.

The group managed to track down Sharky, disguise themselves as addicts, and convince Sharky they were defending him by dressing up a few local criminals in their own city guard outfits and executing them in front of Sharky (courtesy of our chaotic evil rogue).

They'd previously learned that Sharky was a natural lycanthrope, specifically a were-shark, and one tough customer in a fight. Given the group was all level one, a well placed blow could probably kill any of them in one round, so they used a remarkably rare show of insight in setting an ambush. The evil rogue gained Sharky's trust, being given the honor of accompanying him to visit the gnome who manufactured the drugs in his Breaking Bad style cookhouse down in the city's sewers. After returning, the group ambushed Sharky, and the defeat was a remarkable victory for all involved, especially given the mini-boss was balanced for their full party of six players.

Still, I'm sad I won't be able to bring back Sharky's horrible Australian outback accent again. He was a hell of a lot of fun to portray.

[Sirus]

I've been looking at Shadow of the Demon Lord, a dark fantasy RPG that seems to be a bit of a grab bag mechanics-wise: 4 attributes, numerous characteristics derived from those, dice rolling involved d20s and d6s, also tracks both Insanity and Corruption. It takes place in a world on the verge of Armageddon, with the titular Demon Lord causing the world to become more and more craptastic as he/she/it gets closer.

I'm hoping that someone here has tried it, and can offer their insights on how well it works. Or doesn't work.

[Mephisto]

First session of my Pathfinder game was tonight. I have rolled up a half-orc rogue a la Krod. I went greataxe so I didn't have to spend a feat on 2h flail. We did 4d6b3 and ended up with things mostly in the 14-17 range. One 11, one 13. With my half-orc bonus, my rogue has 19 strength. I've got a similar attack to our barbarian and greater than half the HP. I could be anything with this. I chose to be my own take on a joke.

I've been looking at Shadow of the Demon Lord, a dark fantasy RPG that seems to be a bit of a grab bag mechanics-wise: 4 attributes, numerous characteristics derived from those, dice rolling involved d20s and d6s, also tracks both Insanity and Corruption. It takes place in a world on the verge of Armageddon, with the titular Demon Lord causing the world to become more and more craptastic as he/she/it gets closer.

I'm hoping that someone here has tried it, and can offer their insights on how well it works. Or doesn't work.

Yay SotDL. I haven't played but I did flip through it several times. Seems to be very well-received.