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Mailing List Logs for ShadowRN

Message no. 1
From: Eric e-lemme@***.cso.uiuc.edu
Subject: Stress Sams and Lightning
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 09:10:53 -0600
Hi All, I know we have talked about this some but I was looking through
the stress rules last night and have decided that either I am reading
the rules wrong or it is way to easy to completely mess up a street sam
with a lightning or ball lightning attack.

If I hit a sam with a deadly force lightning bolt 10 - his highest roll
on his soak pieces of cyberware automatically take stress correct? Plus
each successful hit on a piece of equip has a chance of damaging another
piece of equip?

How could anyone take the financial risk of high cost cyberware when it
could be so easily disabled?

Cybereyes move from an asset to a liability.

The fear factor of having 500000-600000 nuyen of cyberware messed up by
some newbie mage would have to be pretty huge.
Message no. 2
From: Lars Ericson lericson@****.edu
Subject: Stress Sams and Lightning
Date: Mon, 06 Dec 1999 09:33:32 -0600
Eric wrote:

> If I hit a sam with a deadly force lightning bolt 10 - his highest roll
> on his soak pieces of cyberware automatically take stress correct? Plus
> each successful hit on a piece of equip has a chance of damaging another
> piece of equip?

The way it works is *IF* the sammie takes a Wound Effect, you then roll
an addition D6 and on a 1-2, a cybersystem is additionally damaged. This
is done for each Wound Effect. The examples seems to make it quite
clear. It says that if Leggy had taken the damage from a Lightning Bolt
spell instead of a Powerbolt, then in addition to the reaction enhancer,
nephritic screen, and reaction attribute being effected, the GM would
also roll D6 three times with each 1-2 being an additional cybersystem
that was damaged.

So, no attack is going to cause "automatic" stress. The highest damage
resistance die still has to be lower than the number of boxes inflicted.

It makes lightning and electrical attacks nastier, but not game
shatteringly deadly.

--
=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-Lars Ericson: Professional Vagabond
Smalley Research Group, Rice University
E-Mail: lericson@****.edu
WWW: http://www.ruf.rice.edu/~lericson/

Life is like a Wankel Engine. In between the emptiness of boredom and
despair, and the compression of stress in one's life, there's that one
spark of enjoyment that keeps you going.
Message no. 3
From: Sebastian Wiers m0ng005e@*********.com
Subject: Stress Sams and Lightning
Date: Mon, 6 Dec 1999 15:40:17 -0600
:If I hit a sam with a deadly force lightning bolt 10 - his highest roll
:on his soak pieces of cyberware automatically take stress correct? Plus
:each successful hit on a piece of equip has a chance of damaging another
:piece of equip?

No, the number of wound effects is based off the *FINAL / STAGED* damage.
So the above would only apply if the spell actually did deadly damage. If
the samurai succeded in staging it down to serious, he'd suffer only 6- his
highest roll wound effects (probably not any).
But yes, electrical attacks sometimes inflect extra wound effects on cyber.

:How could anyone take the financial risk of high cost cyberware when it
:could be so easily disabled?

Well, if any of the cyber you have makes you less likely to be injured in
combat, you chances of taking ANY wound effects goes way down. An extra
body die or 2 helps a lot, as does simply not getting shot / zapped because
you are fast / skilled / aware.

:Cybereyes move from an asset to a liability.

The chance of you cyber eyes breaking is less than the chance of your
perception attribute being equally badly affected, even from electrical
attacks. Yes, cyberware has drawbacks; it can break. Such malfunctions are
not common, however.

:The fear factor of having 500000-600000 nuyen of cyberware messed up by
:some newbie mage would have to be pretty huge.

Having done the math and even checked it with others, I think the chances of
anything really nasty happening to your cyber in any one combat (or even
over several) are very low, even with electrical attacks. If you take D
wounds, your cyber busting does not affect your combat ability. Fixing the
cyber is not all that expensive, and it is unlikely to break, even in
combat, if you do good maintenance. Most cyber will not break from a single
wound effect; the amount of stress inflicted is fairly low.
If the cyber is expensive, and you are really really worried about it
breaking (maybe you operate through multiple combats with no medical care; I
can see this for military types), get surgery (or limb improvements) that
enhances the cyberware's ability to resist stress (or reduces the stress it
takes). Higher grades of cyber also get more dice on stress tests; they can
"take a licking and keep on ticking". On the other hands, if you get all
your cyber installed by some bumbling surgeon who packs on "sensitive" and
"fragile" options- well, you get what you pay for.

Mongoose

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Thwap!