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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: "Jason Carter, Nightstalker" <CARTER@***.EDU>
Subject: Armor, Deadly Plus, Combat Pool, and Tasers
Date: Thu, 8 Apr 93 09:58:44 CET
First Roberson and now Spectre (actually Spectre was gone long ago). Well I'm
here to try to defend the line. I might fail, but we at least need a devil's
advocate.

Pitiful Guns verses Butch armor:
I kinda like it. Especially since it takes the autofire bonus in before it
compares. I assume it takes ammo modifiers in first also.

Deadly Plus:
Doing one point of overflow per extra level of staging is cool with me. It
allows for the one shot instant kill (as opposed to the one shot, on the ground
bleeding to death we have right now).
As for them living ten minutes before they die, people can live for an amazing
amount of time while mortally wounded. This is especially true when they were
reduced to that state by multiple attacks. This might sound wierd, but you'll
live longer after being beaten up by 5 guys than if some samurai rips out your
throat with one swing.
On the question of Deadly + stun damage, I'm actually kinda partial to
starting over on the physical track. The first stage past deadly stun does a
light physical in addition the the stun. This allows a drek hot fighter to
kill with a stun attack. This would not accure in stun weapons like Tasers,
Narcojets, and Stun battons.

The Combat Pool:
After arguing this point back and forth and seeing everyone go to the "power
level doesn't matter when your dodging an attack" side of the discussion I was
forced to pull out the secret weapons. That's right boys and girls, I pulled
out my rulebook.
I've always had some problem with that line of thought, but I couldn't figure
out why. Now I know. Your all looking at combat pool dice as SRI Dodge Pool
dice. But their not Dodge Pool, or even dodging dice.

Combat Pool (SRII page 84)
The Combat Pool represents that attention the character is giving to his or
her offensive and defensive posture. Dice from the Combat Pool may be allocated
to any offensive or defensive combat-related test, such as Firearm, Projectile
Weapon, Throwing Weapon, Gunnery, Melee Combat, or similar offensive Combat
Skill Test (see Success Test, p.66). It is also possible to use dice from the
Combat Pool to augment Damage Resistance Test (see p.102) against normal
attacks.

>>>>>[ Notice that neither here, on page 87 for ranged combat, nor page 102
for
melee combat, the word "dodge" is never used. The term used to indicate an
attack were the defender exceeds the attackers successes with combat pool alone
is know as a "clean miss".

Note to David Giridot (sorry I mispelled your name): You were correct. The
defender does need to exceed the attackers successes with combat pool alone to
gain a clean miss. SRI got me down.

Now Ed was peering over my shoulder saying that a clean miss means a dodge, but
there is a reason FASA put this rule in. It was to prevent really pathetic die
rolls from doing damage just because the gun was awsome. If that attacker got
one success and you got two on your Combat Pool the basic idea is that your
defensive posture was so ready for that attack that you avoided all the damage.
Whether this was by an active dodge, taking the bullet in an area that does no
real damage, or doing something clever like putting a piece of wall in front of
the part of your body he was attacking doesn't matter. What matters is you
take no damage. ]<<<<<

A character's Combat Pool is equal to his Quickness, Intelligence, and
Willpower Ratings, divided by 2, rounding down. Note that the personal combat
sense spell (p. 153) does affect the Combat Pool, as do other spells that affect
Quickness, Intelligence, or Willpower.

>>>>>[ Yet more supporting evidence that Combat Pool dice are not dodge
dice.
If they were than Intelligence and Willpower would have nothing to do with the
Combat Pool. As is, they make up the majority of the Combat Pool. ]<<<<<

The Combat Pool refreshes according to the standard Dice Pool rules.
The maximum number of Combat Pool dice that a character can add to any
offensive Success Test is equal to his rating in the skill for which he is
making the test. For example, a character with a Combat Skill of 5 can add only
5 more dice from his Combat Pool when makinga Combat Success Test.
There is not limit to the number of dice that a character may draw from the
Combat Pool for a defensive Damage Resistance Test.
The only time the Combat Pool can be used to augment or resist magic-related
Success Tests is in the cas of damaging manipulation spells. A character can
use dice from the Combat Pool to augment the Damage Resistance Test against
these spells. See _Manipulation Spells_, p. 127.
An attack is considered to be a complete miss if the successes earned purely
from the Combat Pool dice exceed the successes earned by the attacker. See
_Resolving Ranged Combat_, p. 87, and _Resolving Melee Combat_, p. 100.
Characters wearing partial or full heavy armor take reductions to their Combat
Pools. Those types of armor reduce the Combat Pool by 1 die for every point of
Ballistic Armor Rating the armor has over the wearing character's Quickness
Rating. See _Armor_, p. 242.
I agree with Janne Jalkanen about making the target number of defensive Damage
Resistance Test equal to the attacker's skill. The attacker's skill has already
been taken into account by the number of dice used on the attack roll. Bringing
the number back again is like the SRI Magic Resistance rolls. Remember that in
SRI you used the spellcasters Sorcery Skill as the Target Number to resist
spells. Remember how SRII got rid of that rule as abusive. It's just
as abusive with Firearms.

The Taser Problem:
I'm for anything that will reduce the effect of Tasers. The guys know this
because I had the misfortune of being the GM on the adventure when the Yamaha
Pulsar was first used. What should have been a rather long fight without lethal
weapons turned into a one turn taserfest. At least they got arrested by Mall
Security.

See Ya in Shadows,
Jason J Carter
The Nightstalker

Further Reading

If you enjoyed reading about Armor, Deadly Plus, Combat Pool, and Tasers, you may also be interested in:

Disclaimer

These messages were posted a long time ago on a mailing list far, far away. The copyright to their contents probably lies with the original authors of the individual messages, but since they were published in an electronic forum that anyone could subscribe to, and the logs were available to subscribers and most likely non-subscribers as well, it's felt that re-publishing them here is a kind of public service.