| From: | shadowrn@*********.com (Ice Heart) |
|---|---|
| Subject: | Impulsive (was Things to speed up combat) |
| Date: | Tue Feb 12 13:40:02 2002 |
>to bother looking up the rule. p.45 Man & Machine "Effects Of >Increased
>Reflexes". I won't quote the rule because it's three >paragraphs long and I
>neither feel like writing it all out or feel >like being told not to write
>so much from a book. Suffice it to say >it's not the impulsive flaw, it's
>simply something bad that happens >when you're wired.
>
>George Waksman
There are a lot of ways to handle this. Some of them may come off as deus
ex machina on the part of the GM. If you are hard on cybered PCs then "will
of the machine" seems like a good idea to me. I am thinking of people near
0 essence or below. For the average runner with wires, they will have
trained themself to fight reflexes on occasion. Else they shoot their
boy/girl friend a lot when off duty. This is my approach to highly wired
characters with sudden stimuli. I give partial information and let them
choose their next action. I might say "a figure lunges at you", you hear a
loud crash behind you". Then I will ask them for their intentions. Usually
they elect to take evasive action before trying to observe any more details.
One PC has actually shot another PC in the leg before recognizing him, but
he apologized and bought his fellow runner a new leg right after. :)
They could elect to use a simple action to roll perception, followed by a
simple action to shoot a gun or something. The example in this thread of a
runner rolling perception AND killing three goons in one phase CANNOT
happen. Three goons cannot be targeted with a simple action. IIRC, a
three-round burst is targeted at a single opponent and cannot be broken up
to multiple targets. A FA attack could be, but that is a complex action and
therefore not available after using a simple action in that phase. Making
observation in detail a complex action does work, but seems overly harsh
IMO. You discourage PCs from ever using their senses in combat. They do
not see clues, forming strategies, or attempted surrender by NPCs. Combat
become hack-n-slash, until death do us fight. I personaly like my players
slowing down and using perception a bit. BTW, I have a house rule for
perception that has been working great. --House rules to be anotated
hereafter as HR--
HR: Perception = (Intelligence + Quickness)/2 ... round up.
This keeps the genius with the cerebral booster and encephalon combo from
noticing everything, while the speedy little elf sam who is twitchy and
watches everything never catches a clue. Geniuses are often overly focused,
and wired reflexes would make it very hard to NOT be constantly looking
around for input.
Korishinzo
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