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 Manchu wrote:
Is torturing a prisoner also an attack? Emperor give me strength.

Strawman much? Again, this is a simple shot against exactly the target you would be shooting at in combat, and yet the combat system does not correctly model this.

 Manchu wrote:

Again, no -- p 197: dual-wielding aside "[a] character can only perform one attack action per turn." RoF describes how much AP it costs to perform an Attack with a given weapon.

My understanding of thti s that the attack action costs less by using less than the full ROF. However, that said:


I found the actual solution: according to this all the wounds from a given attack action resolve simultaneously. So there is no 'previous'. This does raise the rather bizarre situation where a target hit by 5 shots from a heavy bolter might live, but hit by four shot and then a single shot would be killed.

 Manchu wrote:
Is torturing a prisoner also an attack? Emperor give me strength.

Again, no -- p 197: dual-wielding aside "[a] character can only perform one attack action per turn." RoF describes how much AP it costs to perform an Attack with a given weapon.

If the DH2.0 system is supposed to represent characters as being difficult to hit because they're zig-zagging and ducking all over the joint, that should be dealt with in the phase where you determine whether or not they are hit, not by making it possible to survive being shot in the face by an anti-tank laser(and they have been shot in the face, because the combat system has already established that the shot was fired and that it hit them). There simply isn't an argument here, and the fact that you are struggling desperately to summon one from the aether in the face of simple elementary logic(C follows B, follows A) makes your earlier protestations of objectivity in the face of Baron & HBMC's supposed "hate" all the more laughable.

It isn't a strawman. Not every instance of violence qualifies for combat in this game.

You cannot spend fractions of an AP: p 132-33 "these weapons [with fractional RoF] cannot be fired unless the action being used to attack multiplies their RoF above 1 [...] If the character does not spend enough AP to get the RoA of an attack action over 1, the attack fails."

I am not conflating attack and attack action. They simply aren't separate terms as far as the combat rules go.

Attacks that inflict multiple wounds do make subsequent attacks on the same target more lethal. I never said otherwise.

 Manchu wrote:
It isn't a strawman. Not every instance of violence qualifies for combat in this game.

You asked me if torture was combat. That's a strawman. And insulting.

You still don't seem to be grasping the point. This is the most basic sort of ranged shot. If it can't perform this really basic function, then there's something fundamentally flawed with the combat system.

@Yohdrin: The wound effect table actually clears this up. When you get hit in the head (or anywhere else), the amount of damage from that hit modified by whatever wounds you have already taken. The resulting number is the entry you use look up on the table. Each table has about 20 entries running from about 1 to 30. Any time the wound effect result is 30 or higher (and sometimes lower), you die. Before that point something bad but less than death occurs.

For example: getting shot with an energy weapon in the head to the tune of 12 results in "The target tries desperately to shields [sic] his eyes an instant before the shot strikes him in the forehead, knocking him off balance and temporarily blinding him." A result of 27 on the same table by contrast yields "With a sickening series of pops, the target's eyes burst and his flesh boils as an inferno fully envelops his face." (Every result yields certain conditions, too, but I won't bother posting them unless you want.)

I think the problem a lot of folks are having conceptualizing this is that they keep thinking of damage in terms of HP. Damage in this game is about wounds instead. You take wounds until you are so badly hurt -- by an accumulation of wounds and/or by a devastating blow -- that you die. In the meantime, you're getting maimed.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 Manchu wrote:
It isn't a strawman. Not every instance of violence qualifies for combat in this game.

You asked me if torture was combat. That's a strawman. And insulting.

You still don't seem to be grasping the point. This is the most basic sort of ranged shot. If it can't perform this really basic function, then there's something fundamentally flawed with the combat system.

It's not a strawman. Again, not every instance of violence qualifies as combat. Even you own example, target practice, is not combat. Shooting a passive target may be a basic shot but its not combat.

 Manchu wrote:
It's not a strawman. Again, not every instance of violence qualifies as combat. Even you own example, target practice, is not combat. Shooting a passive target may be a basic shot but its not combat.

Yes, it is a straw-man, as it's misrepresenting my position to refute or dismiss it. It's the very definition of a straw-man.

If that's the case, then why do sniper rifles use the combat system? As we just were discussing earlier,the sniper rifle cannot one shot kill targets in the combat system (save through a crit). It can ONLY do so in narrative. Which is sort of completely at odds with the entire purpose of a sniper rifle, which is, as they say, one shot, one kill.

I am not misrepresenting your position. I am disagreeing with it. Executing someone is no more a combat than torturing a prisoner. You can use any of the weapons in the book in combat, including the Sniper rifle. But the rules no more intend to simulate a one-shot sniper kill (at least not with this particular sniper rifle) than an execution.

EDIT: I'm talking about one-shot kills against PCs and Master-level NPCs. It is possible to one-shot Novice- and Elite-level NPCs with any weapon provided you inflict a critical wound.

I do love critical hit tables (right back to ICEs Rolemaster),

they make combat so much more interesting than just subtracting X until you hit 0

so I'm glad to see them coming in here

Skill trees could be good or not, depending on how broad/narrow your choices are (I'd imagine they've come in as they are so ubiquitous in MMORPGs and FFG is trying to please players who are familiar with them)

 Yodhrin wrote:
HBMC's supposed "hate" all the more laughable.

I've hardly said anything, and you're immediately labelling my words as 'hate'.

Grow up.

 Manchu wrote:


I think the problem a lot of folks are having conceptualizing this is that they keep thinking of damage in terms of HP. Damage in this game is about wounds instead. You take wounds until you are so badly hurt -- by an accumulation of wounds and/or by a devastating blow -- that you die. In the meantime, you're getting maimed.

There's no problem here, we grok the idea just fine, the issue is some weapons simply shouldn't be "maiming" anyone if they shoot them in the face. If a bolt round hits an unarmoured head, please explain how that person survives, without resorting to some ludicrous 1 in a million scenario. Please do the same for melta weapons, lascannons, large-calibre sniper weapons, etc etc etc. I don't mean in terms of mechanics, I mean explain to me how it's remotely plausible for characters to be running around getting shot in the head multiple times before they drop.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
HBMC's supposed "hate" all the more laughable.

I've hardly said anything, and you're immediately labelling my words as 'hate'.

Grow up.

Righto chief, take a deep breath, go back, and read that post again. Perhaps the second or third time through, you'll notice that the context of the remark was meant to imply that your "hate" was nothing of the sort.

 Yodhrin wrote:
I mean explain to me how it's remotely plausible for characters to be running around getting shot in the head multiple times before they drop.

I tried to, by quoting the wound effects. A lot of the lower entries for the head describe near misses rather than hits. Like I said, I assume the idea is that everyone is trying to not get hit in combat. Even in a HP system with called shots, getting shot in the head does not necessarily result in instakill.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I've hardly said anything, and you're immediately labelling my words as 'hate'.

He was saying that I am calling your posts hate, which is inaccurate. You read the rules and ran the game. If you don't like it, at least you have knowledge to back it up.

 Manchu wrote:

EDIT: I'm talking about one-shot kills against PCs and Master-level NPCs. It is possible to one-shot Novice- and Elite-level NPCs with any weapon provided you inflict a critical wound.

The problem is that without that critical wound, you can't even head shot kill a low level mook with anything short of a melta at point blank range. To use the bolt pistol example, as you pointed out elsewhere, the absolute max the commissar shooting him in the head can do is stun him.

 Manchu wrote:
You read the rules and ran the game.

Considering by your own admission you have not really done one of those, yet are quite loud in your proclamations of how superior it is, there's a just a bit of hypocrisy in this statement?

I'm not happy with the wound mechanic at this time. 1st Ed has a wonderfully lethal aspect to their weapons where a single hit had the potential of killing an Acolyte. This makes players cautious and fearful, which fits the genre.

In 2nd Ed even Novice NPCs take two hits (wounds) to kill. This means using a bolt pistol against a rat will require two shots of rare and hard to replace ammo to dispatch. The wound mechanic is intriguing but it needs to be more lethally scaled in my opinion.

As a GM, after running Shadowrun for a while, I have a rule that if a PC in their pajamas isn't afraid of a mook with a gun, there's a problem.

I think a good GM can always wave the amount of wounds for low level mooks and critters, not everything has to be followed so strictly by the book.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
The problem is that without that critical wound, you can't even head shot kill a low level mook with anything short of a melta at point blank range. To use the bolt pistol example, as you pointed out elsewhere, the absolute max the commissar shooting him in the head can do is stun him.

Yep. I don't see that as a problem. Again, the combat rules are clearly not supposed to simulate an execution. As per the FFG forum thread, the sniper rifle is a much better example -- and just like I said there:

I don't think the rules for the sniper rifle itself should be changed. The way I think about is, just giving someone a sniper rifle doesn't make them a sniper. It's the person that matters not the gun. One shot/one kill levels of accuracy takes specific training. And the DH2E beta admittedly currently does not support mechanics simulating that -- a couple of people have posted good reasons why that might be. It's not hard to imagine a Vindicare-like talent tree showing up later.

 PrimarchX wrote:
In 2nd Ed even Novice NPCs take two hits (wounds) to kill. This means using a bolt pistol against a rat will require two shots of rare and hard to replace ammo to dispatch. [...] I have a rule that if a PC in their pajamas isn't afraid of a mook with a gun, there's a problem.

So should mooks be easier to kill or harder to kill? You seem to be saying both.

 BrookM wrote:
I think a good GM can always wave the amount of wounds for low level mooks and critters, not everything has to be followed so strictly by the book.

That's an excellent point.

 Manchu wrote:

 BaronIveagh wrote:
The problem is that without that critical wound, you can't even head shot kill a low level mook with anything short of a melta at point blank range. To use the bolt pistol example, as you pointed out elsewhere, the absolute max the commissar shooting him in the head can do is stun him.

Yep. I don't see that as a problem. Again, the combat rules are clearly not supposed to simulate an execution. As per the FFG forum thread, the sniper rifle is a much better example -- and just like I said there:

I don't think the rules for the sniper rifle itself should be changed. The way I think about is, just giving someone a sniper rifle doesn't make them a sniper. It's the person that matters not the gun. One shot/one kill levels of accuracy takes specific training. And the DH2E beta admittedly currently does not support mechanics simulating that -- a couple of people have posted good reasons why that might be. It's not hard to imagine a Vindicare-like talent tree showing up later.

 PrimarchX wrote:
In 2nd Ed even Novice NPCs take two hits (wounds) to kill. This means using a bolt pistol against a rat will require two shots of rare and hard to replace ammo to dispatch. [...] I have a rule that if a PC in their pajamas isn't afraid of a mook with a gun, there's a problem.

So should mooks be easier to kill or harder to kill? You seem to be saying both.

 BrookM wrote:
I think a good GM can always wave the amount of wounds for low level mooks and critters, not everything has to be followed so strictly by the book.

That's an excellent point.

Manchu - Mooks should be easy to kill and not take a lot of book keeping to track their status. Players and major NPCs should have a healthy fear of being killed from common weaponry but have formidable abilities that usually protects them from such things.

BrookM - As a GM I prefer a system that doesn't require my intervention to take care of common issues the game engine should easily handle. I could write a whole gamut of house rules and NPCs with special exceptions. That takes time and often annoys players who get confused when things start to deviate from the published rules set they're accustomed to.

In DH2E, mooks die on at most two hits no matter how little the damage. Weapons are lethal to PCs as well, just not (mostly) on a one-shot basis.

 BrookM wrote:
I think a good GM can always wave the amount of wounds for low level mooks and critters, not everything has to be followed so strictly by the book.

Yes, but saying that GM fiat can make the issue go away doesn't actually address the issue.

Saying that is like saying 'Well, you don't HAVE to play the game." It's like Manchu's 'well, they're not snipers' cop out. It avoids the issue rather than addressing it.

And sniper rifles are just one example.

Shooting someone in the face with a shotgun or bolt pistol at point blank range has the same issues. These are wounds that should be automatically fatal to an unarmored normal human mook (and extremely serious to even the biggest baddest PC) in any working combat system. The excuse 'well, they're evading' ignores the fact that moving around and using cover has already been dealt with in determining if the hit took place to begin with. (and evading a shotgun blast to the face... after it's already been determined to hit... REALLY?).

 BaronIveagh wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
I think a good GM can always wave the amount of wounds for low level mooks and critters, not everything has to be followed so strictly by the book.

Yes, but saying that GM fiat can make the issue go away doesn't actually address the issue.

Saying that is like saying 'Well, you don't HAVE to play the game." It's like Manchu's 'well, they're not snipers' cop out. It avoids the issue rather than addressing it.

And sniper rifles are just one example.

Shooting someone in the face with a shotgun or bolt pistol at point blank range has the same issues. These are wounds that should be automatically fatal to an unarmored normal human mook (and extremely serious to even the biggest baddest PC) in any working combat system. The excuse 'well, they're evading' ignores the fact that moving around and using cover has already been dealt with in determining if the hit took place to begin with. (and evading a shotgun blast to the face... after it's already been determined to hit... REALLY?).

By that definition, none of the existing 40kRP lines have a working combat system.

 Manchu wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
I mean explain to me how it's remotely plausible for characters to be running around getting shot in the head multiple times before they drop.

I tried to, by quoting the wound effects. A lot of the lower entries for the head describe near misses rather than hits. Like I said, I assume the idea is that everyone is trying to not get hit in combat. Even in a HP system with called shots, getting shot in the head does not necessarily result in instakill.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:
I've hardly said anything, and you're immediately labelling my words as 'hate'.

He was saying that I am calling your posts hate, which is inaccurate. You read the rules and ran the game. If you don't like it, at least you have knowledge to back it up.

And like I said, that's a stupid system - you determine whether something hits or not first, then you determine what damage is done. Again, and this time don't just cut out a single sentence, answer the question; give me a plausible and not one-in-a-million scenario in which a person who has been shot in the head with a bolt round does not die. I'm not interested in what the game does, because I think what it does is fundamentally flawed, I'm interested in seeing if you can actually justify the game system without referring back to the game system in a gigantic circular argument - ignore that we are discussing DH2.0, pretend you're in the background forum, someone has described a scenario in which an ordinary human has been hit in the face with a bolt round, they want you to engage in plausible speculation as to how said human could survive. No "he dodges it", he HAS been hit.

@BaronIveagh: Hmm, not to be flippant but I think I have a pretty good argument: just picking up a sniper rifle doesn't make you a sniper. I'm not saying there shouldn't be one-shot sniper kills. I just think it should be a talent -- i.e., have to do with the person wielding the gun rather than the gun itself.

@Yodhrin: "Hit" does not mean killed. "Hit" encompasses everything from "grazed" to "devastated." Again, even in a HP system you can shoot someone in the face without killing them. And it can happen a lot. Let's be clear, we're not talking about a one-in-a-million scenario here, in "real life" or in games. In games, it's simulated as a matter of rolling 1 (or some small amount of) damage. In DH2E, doing so is more dangerous than in a HP system because even though you don't get a bad wound from that particular low damage hit to the face it still counts as a wound and will modify further hits to be more serious. So you mostly give up lucky/cheap one shots to make all shots more dangerous. I'm pleased with that trade-off.

 BrookM wrote:
I think a good GM can always wave the amount of wounds for low level mooks and critters, not everything has to be followed so strictly by the book.

But if you're ignoring rules to get around a problem, it means there's a problem!

SpaceRatCatcher wrote:

By that definition, none of the existing 40kRP lines have a working combat system.

Burning a fate point has always been a bit odd to me, but it works as a mechanic to avoid instant death. Because previously characters with a handful of wounds getting shot someplace unarmored with a shotgun was a pretty quick way to die, particularly at low levels. It didn't always work with characters with max TB, and i know a lot of people did not enforce the hitpoint limits, but...

 BaronIveagh wrote:

SpaceRatCatcher wrote:

By that definition, none of the existing 40kRP lines have a working combat system.

Burning a fate point has always been a bit odd to me, but it works as a mechanic to avoid instant death. Because previously characters with a handful of wounds getting shot someplace unarmored with a shotgun was a pretty quick way to die, particularly at low levels. It didn't always work with characters with max TB, and i know a lot of people did not enforce the hitpoint limits, but...

I wasn't talking about Fate Points, since the question was about killing mooks, who don't have Fate Points. There's a difference between "a quick way to die" and "automatically fatal," which is what you previously specified. Assuming 10 Wounds and TB 3, it will require Righteous Fury to kill a mook in one hit, or else the Scatter quality and several DoS, neither of which is assured by any means.

 H.B.M.C. wrote:

 BrookM wrote:
I think a good GM can always wave the amount of wounds for low level mooks and critters, not everything has to be followed so strictly by the book.

But if you're ignoring rules to get around a problem, it means there's a problem!

Sure but not every group has the same problems with rules. Some will homebrew X, some will homebrew Y, some will play it as-is, some will not play it all. Unlike video games, you don't just have to "take what you get."

 Manchu wrote:
@BaronIveagh: Hmm, not to be flippant but I think I have a pretty good argument: just picking up a sniper rifle doesn't make you a sniper. I'm not saying there shouldn't be one-shot sniper skills. I just think it should be a talent -- i.e., have to do with the person wielding the gun rather than the gun itself.

No, just picking up a rifle doesn't make you a sniper. But being hit by that rifle, in the head, as an example, is no more or less dangerous if done by a pro sniper then if done by someone with experience with firearms (look at Charles Whitman).

Again, a hit can be a graze or a melon-exploder or somewhere in between.

SpaceRatCatcher wrote:
Assuming 10 Wounds and TB 3, it will require Righteous Fury to kill a mook in one hit, or else the Scatter quality and several DoS, neither of which is assured by any means.

No, it's not 100%. but it's significantly higher than the apparent 'never' in the new edition, aside from rolling RF.



Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Manchu wrote:
Again, a hit can be a graze or a melon-exploder or somewhere in between.

yes, but but the point is the first shot with a bolt pistol can only ever be a graze if shooting at flak or better.

 BaronIveagh wrote:

SpaceRatCatcher wrote:
Assuming 10 Wounds and TB 3, it will require Righteous Fury to kill a mook in one hit, or else the Scatter quality and several DoS, neither of which is assured by any means.

No, it's not 100%. but it's significantly higher than the apparent 'never' in the new edition.

As I explained on the FFG boards, that's simply not true. In fact, since there is no roll to confirm Righteous Fury, it's actually more likely to happen.

Manchu, you're gonna tell me, with total seriousness, that with, as an example, six degrees of success, at point blank range, I'm only grazing him?

Which is exactly what happened with a low damage roll in first edition.

 BaronIveagh wrote:
yes, but but the point is the first shot with a bolt pistol can only ever be a graze if shooting at flak or better.

Depends on how good the shot is. IN DH2E, your BS test only tells you how many times you hit. How well you did is a matter of rolling damage ... and ultimately the wound effect tables.

SpaceRatCatcher wrote:

Manchu, you're gonna tell me, with total seriousness, that with, as an example, six degrees of success, at point blank range, I'm only grazing him?

Which is exactly what happened with a low damage roll in first edition.

Also, the six degrees of success have nothing to do with damage. DoS = how many hits you get in an attack. The range issue, as I mentioned on FFG's boards, might be what is really twisting you up. The combat rules don't account for shooting someone in the face at point blank range. I guess that's not part of their vision of combat in this game.