How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

I still don't think there's a ruling in the basic set that declares that a full ROF attack from a firearm gets all shots landed on a critical hit or only the first is guaranteed. I found that rule *here* and I have a suspicion that the rule is actually in high tech not the basic set!

I have a suspicion that it isn't in any rule book (an unfortunate oversight) and is from a clarification by the line editor.

This is the burden of me, the GM and so I need to master this and be the conduit that makes it all intuitive for my future players. That... that's my burden but the rest of it. The powers and cybernetics and spells that say "see this other page", at least I can fix that. My players won't have to reference basic set 245 or whatever in order to see what the power listed in my book says. The power, cyberwear, spell, hack, special ability ect will have a complete description of it's effects right then and there. Then there will be an index at the start of the chapter so you know what page said ability is on within the chapter itself. When you open the source book (at first digitally, if it's good enough? Who knows maybe I'll print one copy and bind it!) asking "what are the advantage of cyber arms" there will be absolutely no confusion about where exactly on what page that information is. No skipping around, no flipping between books. It's right there. Clean and easy to get.

This is the effect of several things. Firstly, the main rules being only able to be a certain size. Secondly, not all the rules for stuff even being invented at the time the core rules were printed. Thirdly, putting very niche rules in the books with the stuff to which they apply (and if you think 4e is bad for that, try 3e, or most other game lines by other publishers). And fourthly, you're looking to set up and run a game with very high detail around gunfights and injuries, and want outcomes that require the use of many of these optional niche rules.

One thing I'd do, once you've decided on all the rules you think fit your game is to go over them and ask yourself which ones can be dumped for being too fiddly or adding too much rolling for the value they bring, and then discarding those.

Also on survivability it was a lucky pass in a sense. I could shift the point of target to one that's not 4x damage and the others don't hit. I have a few more tools now. Roll 1d6. 1-2 body. The other 4 possible outcomes represent arms and legs. No head targeting for now. The face has a good chance to obliterate an eye doesn't it?

Not by default. To damage an eye you generally need to target the eyes, though a critical head hit has about a one in eight chance of turning into an eye hit.

Originally Posted by Colonel__Klink

And yup, you're right about the face hit. Maybe I was reading the critical hit table for faces? I dunno. It seems odd that shooting the face provides no benefit other than bypassing many armor types considering how obsessive gurps is with putting the boot in on characters who are losing. A portion of the t-box is actually in that facial area... Not gonna complain though.

Hitting the face for any damage at all forces a knockdown check (B420), and if it's a major wound it's at -5, so it has a very good chance of putting your average dude on the ground, ready for a good kicking.

Also you're exactly right about the modern armor. That's a whole can of worms that also got me to consider deleting that original comment. I don't know why gambeson were a fair bit better at pointy threats than modern fiber armor. Were gambeson thicker than the normal 40 layers of kevlar? I have no idea!

They were very tightly woven compared to most kevlar, for one thing.