Quote:

Quote: from admiralducksauce on 12:05 pm on June 17, 2002
Another thing:

If you're getting damage bonuses on vital AND non-vital locations, where the hell are you hitting normally so as to "only" do normal damage? After our fiasco with the SMG gunmen, do we really need more feats to do extra damage?

Actually, I'm really confused by the whole thing. It's not the Called Shot feat's part. I like the Vitality Point idea and how you can have improved longevity without increasing the chance of completely missing (therefore running combat that could conceivably last forever) but still reduce what my brother calls "Slab of Meat Complex", also known as "I'm a Lead-Soaked Watermelon but I'm OK". Standard D&D falls prey to the Slab of Meat Complex.

Anyways, if it's not guaranteed that you're physically struck by Vitality Point loss, why would armor have any effect? Yet it does. I hope my conundrum is somewhat clear.

Argh...yeah, this does turn into the Slab of Meat Complex. While I do like slabs o' meat, I don't like being ones in games.

Perhaps we could institute a "fire for effect" rule. It would use the called shot rules, but instead of doing more damage, it would have a random, undesirable effect on the victim.

Alas, that would mean more charts!

Why? You can always make special effects up as dramatically appropriate.

Making up stuff is all fine (and expected) on boards such as these, but I'm thinking you'd want a more concrete set of rules when playing a normal tabletop game.

Usually in my experience called shots have one of 3 uses:

1. Do more damage
2. Bypass armor
3. Have some other effect (usually shooting the gun out of the bad guy's hand, or shooting the rapelling rope on a bad guy getting winched up into a chopper)

I agree that the most common usage is effect #1.

Disarming shots, trip attacks, and targeting objects are all covered under the rules already. Critical hits already do more damage. In my case, I'd rule that called shots that aren't already covered, say to bypass armor, I'd impose a flat -4 penalty on attack rolls.

Also, I see vitality damage more as glancing hits than near-misses. Action heroes can ignore a certain amount of punishment before they begin to slow down, as a rule. Critical hits are those lucky shots that do more damage than the rest.

So, if we're basing called-shots on the principle of bypassing armor/defensive bonuses, what's there to say?

I think the penalty should correspond with the armor worn. Maybe a penalty equal to the armor's defensive bonus. That may be a bit weak since most armor would fall into the 2-4 range. Perhaps twice the armor value or maybe adding the target's DEX bonus too?

i.e.

Captain McLean has on a Kevlar Vest (+4 DEF bonus) and a DEX of 16 (+3 DEF). To bypass his armor, that would be a total of -7 penalty plus any other circumstance penalties. If the shooter were aiming for his head, that would be -3 for McLean's DEX bonus and another -2 for firing at a small target (McLean's head). Add that with circumstance bonus (cover, movement, etc.) that could work.

What say ye?

It could work. Re-adding the armor and Dex bonuses effectively doubles the target's Defense bonus, though. Maybe just doubling the armor's Defense bonus?

The only problem with just doubling the armor is that everyone (including me) would be always aiming at unarmored parts of the body. Adding your DEX bonus decreases the likelihood of people always doing called shots to the head and also increases the surivability of characters.

Although if you consider that the average Joe has a DEX of 10 (zero bonus), the called-shot penalty wouldn't matter anyway.

Oh, people with DEX penalties would also suffer too. It makes you re-examine the idea of taking a "8" for DEX.

In an unrelated note, I give the Chase rules in Spycraft a big thumbs up!

Quote:

Quote: from Dieter on 4:46 pm on June 19, 2002
Oh, people with DEX penalties would also suffer too. It makes you re-examine the idea of taking a "8" for DEX.

Not that anyone would take a low Dexterity in Spycraft. It's even more important here than in D&D.

Similar to the "10 Agility" shtick of Fallout ?

Gatac

*glances upward, barely missing the reference passing over his head*

What I mean is that every guide to Fallout makes one thing really clear about character creation: If you wanna fight, you need 10 Agility. I know it because I've tried to go against the grain a few times, but in the end, having less than 10 APs was always doom-spelling for my poor characters.

Gatac

I'd go along with that, adding that when you're designing a character you should have at least a +1 modifier for Charisma. Of course you can always get around that if you have someone else with a high charisma.

It's not detrimental, but it helps.

Yeah, Charisma's a lot more powerful in Spycraft, too, because of how it affects your budget points and personal funds. That certainly caught my eye.

I have a question about the firearm mechanics, actually. This was sparked by Paladin's post in the d20 Fallout thread.

When you get shot, and your armor stops all of the damage, as I understand it you take subdual damage to the tune of 2 points, yes no? Is that in effect even when your armor doesn't stop all the damage? I.e., I've got a Kevlar vest (4 points of armor) and I get hit for 7 damage by a 9mm.

Do I take 3 "real" points of damage or 3 "real" pts PLUS 2 subdual on top of that?

If the bullet only did 3 dmg originally, I'd take no real dmg and 2 subdual, correct?

I'm pretty sure that you only take the "real" damage. You only take the two points of subdual if the armor stopped ALL of the damage.

Subdual and real damage are pretty relative when you're using VP and WP's. I try to distinguish the difference, saying things like,


Subdual
"Boris shoots Artis with his Makarov, the bullet hitting his vest but fortunately bounces off a rib. It hurts, but is otherwise ineffective."

-as opposed to-

Real
"Boris shoots Artis with his AK-47, unloading the rest of the clip into him. The bursts of 7.62mm Russian justice shred Artis' vest, leaving him drowning in a pool of his own blood and grey matter."

This is also why I tell you when someone scores a critical or at least when you've taken appreciable damage to warrant healing, buring an action die, etc.

AEG issued official errata for all books released under the Spycraft license.