How to avoid killing your player characters as GM

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by sjmdw45

Huh? I don't see how it implies that, since I don't. It just means I can't remember if there's a canonical order for DR loss vs. HP loss. (Or at least couldn't at the time. Turns out there is, and HP is lost first, so DR 6+ saves you from dying to the first shot.)

For a single damage roll, there's no order to be concerned with. If you deal 30 corr to someone with effective DR 20, 10 damage penetrates to become 10 HP Injury, and the fact you hit the DR with 30 corr means it loses 6 DR. If they were independent hits in the same attack roll - say from being beyond 10% of 1/2D range - then there may be the concern that earlier hits could reduce the DR against later hits, but for simplicity as GM I'd just resolve all the hits and modify the DR at the end.

As for your particular build, yeah, at extreme RoF the general rule of "multiply damage and DR by half the number of 'pellets' within 10% of 1/2D" is problematic. Or at least, it is if using that rule - High Tech states that, when going from a single projectile to a multi-projectile load, you divide damage by the square root of the number of projectiles - so the multiplier for 300 projectiles should be around x17.3. Which, don't get me wrong, is still rather powerful, but at least in this case winds up with what is arguably a fair price - a 17d+1 (1/17) corr attack with a Range of 50 would be something like 17d+1 Corrosion Attack (Increased Range x10, 1/2D Only +15%; Armor Multiplier x10 -70%; Decreased Range x1/2 -10%) [43.25]. The fact your attack is still useful at longer range is certainly worth more than a mere [1.75], but it's not as egregious as if it were a 150d (1/150) corr attack!

I will note that those rules in HT don't quite gel with the way buckshot vs slugs functions, where slugs are simply 4x the damage of buckshot - which means if we back-calculate from 16-20 gauge slugs being 4d, 12 gauge being 5d, and 10 gauge being 7d, buckshot for these should be 1.46d (7-8 projectiles, for an average divisor of 2.74; this would be 1d+2) for 16-20 gauge (+2 over RAW), 1.67d (9 projectiles, for a divisor of 3; this would round be 2d-1) for 12 gauge (+1.5 over RAW) for 12 gauge, and 1.94d (13 projectiles, for a divisor of 3.6; this would be 2d) for 10 gauge (+1 over RAW). Alternatively, instead of x4 buckshot damage, just using the rules to calculate slug damage would result in 16-20 gauge slugs dealing 2.74d (3d-1), 12 gauge slugs dealing 3.86d (4d), and 10 gauge slugs dealing 6.17d (6d+1).

Originally Posted by Ulzgoroth

If you want some real hilarity, use crushing instead of corrosive damage. It won't directly hurt (armored) people. It'll just fling them away at around Move 50 so they splash when they hit a solid object. Good chance of first-hit lethality and it costs half as much.

You can also save some more points - and double the effect - by making such an attack No Wounding, No Blunt Trauma, and Double Knockback.