Help a noobie understand critical hits

[Colonel__Klink]

Originally Posted by Varyon

This has been suggested, but OP has expressed (understandable) resistance to it - better to have consistent rules that give the results you're looking for than having to frequently fudge rolls. I'm not certain why the various other solutions offered - giving the characters traits that prevent death (or make it into a temporary state), using cinematic rules like Flesh Wounds, etc - are unacceptable, however.

Well, just essentially halving the firearm damage while similarly reducing armor DR is a pretty similar solution to what has been suggested in terms of cinematics. It's also pretty simple. Unliving advantage is also useful but not every player is going to be a vampire. I want the margin for failure to be more than a straight and narrow path thereby allowing for a lot of possibilities and creativity. Not "well if you aren't built this exact way due to the sheer deadliness of the slightest failure... you won't last five minutes!"

I'm setting up some short campaigns with myself (playing 2-3 characters of my own to "simulate") before I commit to any such thing now though. We will see. Also being TL9 first aid apparently is pretty good now...

Originally Posted by Purple Snit

While I understand trying to avoid "instant death" for PCs, it's worth noting that guns are deadly; that's why they are used. And why police (who are very likely to run into guns in the real world) wear armour. Hell, if they hear of a firefight, the SWAT officers look like big cyborg beetles when they respond, they are so armoured-up.

Cyberpunk is about danger, violence, and risk-taking; that includes the risk of getting hurt or killed. Nerfing everyone's boom-sticks isn't solving the issue, it's circumventing it.

So maybe most of your baddies use shock weapons, or pepperballs, or beanbag rounds; if anyone has heavy firepower, telegraph it so the PCs know what's coming and can adjust tactics accordingly. Keep the bullets to a minimum, and then they are a deadly threat when appropriate. You didn't say if you plan to downgrade the PC weapons as well.

Also, Vampires in my games usually have Damage Reduction/2 or more, so incoming damage is less menacing in the short term. I had a PC with DR10 and IR/2 who survived a car wreck at 90 kmh. That would also give them a "that should have killed you!" surprise factor in play.

Just my thoughts.

As mentioned elsewhere there are impossible trans dimensional beings, vampires and magic as well as cybernetics we have yet to achieve in the real world. I'm not particularly interested in "well this gun puts down someone this reliably in real life so it should in game" arguments. This is a fantasy game, get with the fantasy lol.

it seems so freaking odd to me that the game name is Generic *UNIVERSAL* Role Playing System and time and time again people are mentioning reality "well this is like the real world." No no, this is supposed to be a *UNIVERSAL* role playing system and I'm not interested in playing a realistic campaign where my players get shot and die within five minutes for being gonk enough to think they could actually do anything. Nope nope nope. Lets expand our options and variety a bit from "realistic" and adopt the motto of a *UNIVERSAL* role playing system!