Not exactly Cyberpunk 2020

Finally started up my latest Cyberpunk campaign with (mostly) new players and even more house rules along with alternative rules pinched and modified from various online resources (Blackhammer, Ocelot et al) and alternative sources (Cyberpunk 2013, Ianus Games' Dark Metropolis etc) - and a number of other mods.

The new character sheets look quite interesting with tick boxes for stress and fatigue points (a la Ianus Games), CP2013 wound status and hit locations/percentages loosely based on CDC reports of actual firearms assaults (so D100, natch.)

Every time I've GM'ed Cyberpunk 2020 I've tweaked and modified something as I find the source has a number of flaws and I'm constantly finding more the more I GM.

Humanity Loss? The first thing to go ages back. Roles and skill sets? Abandoned ages back in favour of Ocelot's system. Hit locations? Tried a number of systems and now trying my own. Task resolution? Came up with a D20 system based on the difficulty levels from Cyberpunk and 6 levels of "proficiency" - "Untrained", "Novice", "Adept", "Expert", "Guru", "Lesser God".

Previously, I based a character's "proficiency" on STAT + Skill points + relevant DMs (from Ocelot's advantages and disadvantages) but the problems were: some characters' stats were such that they were automatically at "Adept" before taking any levels in the skills and it meant that characters who should be better at something than others were not because of where the divisions between proficiencies lay.

It seemed to me that it was ludicrous that a person with a year's experience/training could be far better at a skill than someone with 4 years' experience just by having sufficiently higher stats.

That's an inherent flaw in the Cyberpunk system - REF 10 + Drive 1 has an advantage over REF 6 + Drive 3 any day, regardless of how the CP2020 book might describe the skills - and it took adding the figures together and clumping them into "proficiencies" to realise it.

Sure, a person with higher dexterity will be better at fiddly work than a person with lower dexterity - but not to the degree that it equates to years more experience.

I wanted to change the system so that the number of years experience or training actually meant something but that still factored in the characters' natural abilities so this time, I decided to expand out Cyberpunk's own attribute bonuses for BOD to cover all attributes except LUCK (which is spent to bump up die rolls): -2 for 2, -1 for 3 or 4, 0 for 5-7, +1 for 8 and 9, +2 for 10 and +3 for 11 and 12 (superhuman, if the attribute can be boosted above human maximum). No attribute can be boosted above 12... Munchkins: Read it and weep!

I then had the proficiency levels purchased with SPs during character creation - 1 point for Novice, 2 for Adept and so on up to five points for Lesser God (but with a GM's limit of 3 points ("Expert") for any skill). Available skill points as per Ocelot's alternative character generation.

After this modification, two "Experts" in a given skill have both expended the same number of skill points (3) to reflect the same amount of training/experience but the one with a relevant stat of 10 is at a +2 advantage (die modifier) over someone with a relevant stat of 5,6 or 7.

It makes a lot more sense to me: those who are more dexterous than average are at a slight advantage, those with more than their share of thumbs are at a slight disadvantage; those who have put in the same number of years (SP or IP) are more or less at the same level.

Other mods: Netrunners and Fixers are not character classes. Why not?

Because why would someone who spends their entire time coding, cracking systems and traversing the world at close to light speed want to go far from their extremely fast internet connection and risk being shot when they can help the party from the safety of their fortress (or parents' basement) via phone or internet? Cellular phones - not as prevalent in CP2020 as they turned out to be in real life - mean your netrunner easily reached from most places thanks to the magic of VOIP and similar phone/internet links.

Likewise, why would a Fixer be running around risking his/her arse in a dark alley when there's more money to be made by being at home when any random adventurers turn up looking for some decent hardware. A fixer that's following a team on the off chance they might need something (s)he can supply is going to miss out on a lot of business from other sources.

So I play both of those as NPCs - characters contact them, use their services and pay their money.

Everyone running around armed to the teeth, armoured up and shooting the hell out of each other is not an option - firearms are available to civilians with certain restrictions (no auto weapons, ten-round magazine maximum, licensing and registration required, different jurisdictions have different rules etc), cops and other armed forces have better access to weapons that the civilians aren't permitted to own and the criminals have what they want as they don't care what the law says.

Much of the OTT stuff pitched at munchkins in the various supplements - full-body conversions etc - is plain unavailable. You don't need "Humanity Loss" to keep munchkins in check, just a firm "WTF? No way, you can't have it." Too expensive, will take ages to heal after surgery, just doesn't exist - all ways to limit.

PCs with ACPA? Tanks? Attack helicopters? Sheesh, a clapped out second-hand AV-6 that's been well and truly hammered by TraumaTeam for 10 years, deemed unsafe and then stripped should be out of the average Edgerunner's price range.

Trying to keep the campaign as low and edgy as possible where a cranked-up junkie with a knife is an actual threat to character safety, rather than the PCs going through battle-seasoned Elite Forces like they were popcorn.

Ah. That's a shame. . . from my perspective, anyway, as I feel strangely compelled to append, this being an interwebs forum 'n all.

The loss of humanity loss strikes ma as a loss for the game. Or for the players, at any rate.

I have never seen it as a munchkin nerf bat, munchkin warding charm, or the like. Rather, it embodies one of the core tropes of, well, cyberpunk in the old school (i.e., not post-cyberpunk or transhumanist) sense.

I agree that skills and stats need a bit of reworking. I went the other way, by assigning skill points more weight. Not that, as you would have it, stats having less, is a worse idea of course.

As for why anyone but a Solo (and even then. . .) would want to 'risk his/her arse in a dark alley' (yikes!) -- well, they need some kind of motive. Enter The Lifepath, and the judicious interpretation of it by player and GM alike. Also, Personality Traits. . . and more, if you are using much of Dark Metropolis, for example. Failing all of that, a player (or GM) could simply decree whatever motive(s) for 'adventuring' (which often does not mean 'D&D with guns', anyhow) they see as making sense for the setting, character, party, situation.

I've done a mostly Fixer campaign before, and it was great fun. Then again, there's been most sorts you could think of, and most of those worked at least OK. Sometimes a right barnyard collection, which is fine as well.

And that's another thing. Roles aren't really classes. A PC can get by just fine without any 'Special Ability', seeing that it's fundamentally a skill-based system, and the majority of those Abilities simply add on a bit more, or take the place of, normal skills.

Hm. Rambling a bit, sorry.


edit --- But all that aside, your campaign sounds great! Not meaning to take anything away from that with the above, by the way. Honestly, sounds like it's all workin' for ya.

Thanks for your reply, Aus_Snow. My understanding has always been that Humanity Cost was there to prevent overly cybernetic characters - in a character creation system where you can fit yourself out with a lot of stuff for only a few hundred Eurobucks. (Stuff that would cost thousands in game by the time you factor in surgery costs on top - millions if the prices were a trifle more realistic).

Humanity Cost certainly makes no sense in light of real-world responses to implants and (Disclaimer: I have not read every Cyberpunk novel out there) does not seem to have any support in the genre.

I do run a version of "Humanity Cost" though...

How human you look afterwards.

Natural-looking replacements carry no cost, unnatural looking replacements (and exotic sculps) do. Weird cyberoptics - cat/wolf/lizard/goat (don't ask me why, I don't know)/vampire eyes that could just be contact lenses not so much but glowing red ones definitely so.

So, you no longer look human to a casual, unmodified observer. What does that mean? Well, this is "the Real World" so it means "that depends".

Anything from "Wow, you look like an elf! Way Cool! Did the surgery hurt?" to "Hah! What a dick! Whatnhell you do that to yourself for?" to "The body is a Temple and must not be defiled! Die, you heathen bastard, for your crimes against The Lord!" - all depending on the person doing the perceiving.

No numbers, no die rolls - you either look human or you don't. Your modification might look like non-surgical costuming and therefore be glossed over or it might be so obviously cybernetic that it sends all the religious zealots scrambling to get the blazing torches.

For years my take on cyberware has been rather non-standard as well. Cyberoptic option: camera, actually takes up spaces. WTF? A cyberoptic is a camera! Who puts a camera inside a camera? So, pay a little extra for the wiring, jacks and storage and you can record those "Kodak moments" for later.

Why do you need a "neural processor" to operate a basic limb or cyberoptics? Surely they're hardwired into your nervous system and feedback would be appropriate to the part of the body they are replacing. Only reason you would need a neural processor would be to control non-standard options (reading your synaptic responses) or to feed non-standard data to the nervous system (Times Square display, targeting etc).

Which brings us to why do you need cyberoptics for Times Square and targeting? A neural processor could feed the data - left/right differentiated, of course - direct to the sight centres of the brain bypassing the eyes entirely. Feed the right signals in the right format and you can convince the brain there is a targeting cross/dot or the weather conditions in the town of your choice hovering a couple of metres in front of you no matter where you turn your head. Kinda like when you start "seeing spots" - it's not your eyes, it's your brain.

So naturally, even if you do have cyberoptics, Times Square or targeting would not "take up spaces". Basic cyberoptics - convert incoming light into a format your brain will translate - like it translates data from real eyes. Low light option: nothing more than increased sensitivity to low light levels, automatically adjust until it's too dark for even them to work. No problem.

Thermograph: a whole other problem as real thermographic cameras have to be adjusted by trained personnel - contrast, heat range, whether hot areas are displayed as white or black or artificial colour spectrum (which must be adjusted for the current temperature range) - either you are going to have hand controls sticking out of your body at a convenient location or you are going to control it using a neural processor.

I'm one of those horrible people who actually read up how real-life things work - so my Edgerunners don't use Thermographic vision to spy through walls and see people moving around - like certain cruddy Hollyweird movies [cough] Blue Thunder [/cough] would have us believe. My characters can't even see through a glass window using thermographic vision - but they can pretty much instantly spot which vehicle has been running recently.

I love the idea of cybernetic implants for style and or profit, love the edgy Corporate-controlled dystopia against/within which the characters can strive. The stress, fatigue, environmental rules in the Ianus Games books are great for putting that bit of extra edge in the game. Tired, stressed out characters having to handle yet another crappy situation that may well blow up in their faces.

Wolf1066 said:

I'm one of those horrible people who actually read up how real-life things work

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Yeah, I know the feeling. My perspective (and heck, the game's) on Humanity Loss is, if taken in a real (present day) world context. . . a bit controversial, to say the least. Distasteful, even. So I don't go applying it to the real world as we know it. However, I think it's also fair to say that cyberware as it is known today is far indeed from what is found in this hypothetical 2020 A.D. On that note, I tinkered with the setting's timeline ages ago. A number of times now. So no longer is it 2020. But anyway.

I love the idea of cybernetic implants for style and or profit, love the edgy Corporate-controlled dystopia against/within which the characters can strive. The stress, fatigue, environmental rules in the Ianus Games books are great for putting that bit of extra edge in the game. Tired, stressed out characters having to handle yet another crappy situation that may well blow up in their faces.

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Totally agree with all of that. And yeah, Dark Met. is my favourite CP book. It adds so much to the game that was, frankly, missing.

Where we differ is essentially that I like for there to be that hard, cruel balancing act to consider at every stage of 'augmentation': cold chrome vs. intangible humanity. Naturally though, this doesn't actually prevent people left and right cybering up for whatever reason, to whatever extent. Some will, some won't. Consider, just for one thing, what some individuals will do nowadays for the sake of fashion. Add cybernetic and bioware enhancements to the range of 'must have' items, fill their heads with advertising, and watch it all unfold.

Therapy can also be. . . attempted at some stage, provided the opportunity and funds are there. Not a given, on either count. And then there's the efficacy or otherwise, the trustworthiness of the practitioners, what tech is involved. . .

But of course, there can be other tough choices, complications and consequences, not to mention barriers to entry, and it seems you've got those bases covered just fine.

Different strokes, is all.

Aus_Snow said:

And yeah, Dark Met. is my favourite CP book. It adds so much to the game that was, frankly, missing.

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Yep. So much stuff in there - in a usable format that is easy to work with.

Aus_Snow said:

Where we differ is essentially that I like for there to be that hard, cruel balancing act to consider at every stage of 'augmentation': cold chrome vs. intangible humanity. Naturally though, this doesn't actually prevent people left and right cybering up for whatever reason, to whatever extent. Some will, some won't. Consider, just for one thing, what some individuals will do nowadays for the sake of fashion. Add cybernetic and bioware enhancements to the range of 'must have' items, fill their heads with advertising, and watch it all unfold.

...

Different strokes, is all.

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Yep, so right.

I'm enjoying having reacquainted myself with FNFF2013. We played it years ago and the same GM also brought it across to a Traveller game we played. Rereading the rules again and doing a few side-by-side comparisons with FNFF2020, I far prefer a lot of the older system.

It didn't take much to convert the basic combat resolution across to my weird D20 system - it's a simple opposed task, for which I already had a system: each proficiency has a number value (left over from when I originally clumped ATTRIB+SKILL into the five trained/experienced proficiencies): Trainee/Novice = 5, Adept = 10, Expert = 15 and so on.

Instead of FNFF2013's

Attacker's REF + Weapon skill + 1D10 (or two if you get a critical success) vs Defender's REF + Athletics (or similar) + 1D10 (or two) (with each side adding positive or negative DMs as relevant)

it's

Attacker's Weapon Proficiency Value + 1D20 vs Defender's Defense Proficiency Value (athletics, dodge etc) + 1D20. With relevant modifiers, natch.

A single D10 would serve to sort out the contest between "equals" (Expert Handgun vs Expert Dodge) but I stuck with the D20 as it is a skill roll and we use D20s for skills and it allows a Novice to have a (slim) fighting chance against a Guru (PV=20)

I much prefer FNFF2013's opposed combat to FNFF2020's "target shooting" with a couple of small negative modifiers if the target is evading... regardless of how skilled at evasion the target might be.

I'm working on bringing in "Called Shots" for 2013 - with suitably realistic DMs for shooting in the general direction of head or torso (not limbs) at various ranges.

I did not keep FNFF2013's "add the amount by which you exceed your opponent to the damage" rule (which is eerily absent from 2020 rules) but then, I'm using significantly higher weapon damages (which 2020 doesn't). .45ACP is 2D6+5 at Point blank in my games.

Like 2013, projectile damage decreases with distance.

I'm still nutting out the bludgeon damage at the moment - I find 2013's "divide killing damage by 5" makes things rather weak (especially given a club only does 1D6 + any strength and "To Hit" bonuses - a properly-wielded club should do up to Critical Damage to internal organs without so much as puncturing the skin) and I find the CP2020 rules ludicrously over-powered - they dropped the "divide by five" rule but left in the "add your martial arts level to the damage", making a Thai kick-boxer effectively more powerful than a .38 - as Luciferin so adeptly illustrated.

My primary thoughts on the matter are: once you've learned how to punch or kick properly and transfer your energy effectively and stably, you are not going to get any more deadly no matter how many coloured belts you get. Most of us can't punch for peanuts. Any boxer, seasoned brawler or martial artist is going to learn how to use their body to its best advantage when delivering a blow. They will learn that fairly early on. Therefore, any trained fighter above a certain level of proficiency is going to be doing the maximum damage with hands and/or feet that they are ever going to do. All they are doing past that point is learning new techniques for avoiding being hit while ensuring they can hit and becoming more practised at delivering their damage consistently.

Aside from that, still juggling numbers and trying to work out what are reasonable damage levels for average cf strong; untrained cf trained hand-to-hand or melee combatants.

And praying I get it sorted before one of my players decides to use his or her brawling or melee skills in-game...

Back to the combats and wounds.

Love the Wound Table and Cumulative Wound Table of FNFF2013 - no subtracting BTMs from damage and ticking off boxes, just look up the number on the table, track across to the Body Type and Voila! That's how wounded you are. After your next wound, look up your current wound state and track across to your new wound and see where it puts you - two Serious wounds put you at Mortally wounded, anything worse than that kills you outright! YEAH! Three words:

Don't

Get

Shot!

At least flesh wounds don't accumulate.

Far more deadly than 2020 in some ways - but also harder to hit, harder to be hit as well.

Then there's secondary damage where you could lose limbs and eyes etc.

There are good points in both the fighting styles - FNFF2013 does not allow you to snap off shots in the vicinity of a person's Centre of Mass or head ("Called Shots") - something that trained people do in real life - even with an increased chance of missing altogether. FNFF2020 does - albeit with a standard small modifier regardless of range.

I've gone a stage further: If you miss a called shot, you use the rules as for a thrown grenade to see if it hits higher or lower or misses altogether. "Well, you missed his head but got him in the guts..."

Just a bit more controlled than every shot having a good chance of hitting a leg.

I've also adopted the idea that you have to pass a COOL check (factoring in your current stress, fatigue etc) before you can make a called shot otherwise you revert to purely random snap-shots.

Aus_Snow said:

I agree that skills and stats need a bit of reworking. I went the other way, by assigning skill points more weight. Not that, as you would have it, stats having less, is a worse idea of course.

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How did you work that one up? Did you have to rework the difficulty values to deal with higher STAT+Skill numbers or did you have some other way of weighting the skill level?

Aus_Snow said:

As for why anyone but a Solo (and even then. . .) would want to 'risk his/her arse in a dark alley' (yikes!) -- well, they need some kind of motive. Enter The Lifepath, and the judicious interpretation of it by player and GM alike. Also, Personality Traits. . . and more, if you are using much of Dark Metropolis, for example. Failing all of that, a player (or GM) could simply decree whatever motive(s) for 'adventuring' (which often does not mean 'D&D with guns', anyhow) they see as making sense for the setting, character, party, situation.

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I agree that there's plenty of reasons for people of all levels to go "adventuring" per se, but I figure l33t /-/4X0rz of the calibre the team might want would be quite comfortably esconced in their fortresses raking in money from clients all over the world.

Aus_Snow said:

I've done a mostly Fixer campaign before, and it was great fun. Then again, there's been most sorts you could think of, and most of those worked at least OK. Sometimes a right barnyard collection, which is fine as well.

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An all-Fixer campaign or an all-Netrunner campaign would work very nicely and Fixers would work well in a mixed group. I've often found though that non-Netrunner characters tend to get bored sitting around while their web-dweeb and I run through the information-retrieval bits - they're all keen to get back into BSU (Blowin' Up) and don't really give a rat's arse about data fortresses. Moving the netrunner to a "fixed" location (if someone who can access LEO or the other side of the globe in seconds can be truly classed as being in a fixed location) lets the "IRL" action progress while the netrunning happens in the background. They can do the whole Matrix thing of being on the phone to their "Operator" and getting things done. Their "operator" can also say things like "do you have any idea of what time it is over here? It's midday, I was bloody sleeping!" and "here's your information, I have deducted my bill from your bank account..."
I can also find plenty of reasons why the data might take longer than they'd like to arrive - netrunner asleep, busy with other clients ("hey, they're actually being shot at, man, and you're moaning about a pass-code for a door? Wait your turn!") and so on.

Aus_Snow said:

And that's another thing. Roles aren't really classes. A PC can get by just fine without any 'Special Ability', seeing that it's fundamentally a skill-based system, and the majority of those Abilities simply add on a bit more, or take the place of, normal skills.

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I must disagree with those points. In CP2020's unmodified form, the Roles are very much restrictive classes and the Special Abilities are critical to the system.

The roles very much dictate what core skills your character has and the Special Ability also determines your starting cash with which to equip your character. Under straight CP2020 rules, no "Special Ability" = no money for clothes, cyberware and gear.

The Skill Pools for each Role/Class restrict what skills the character's basic 40 skill points are spent on, forcing every Solo or Techie etc to have pretty much the same skills as every other Solo or Techie etc. It's an extremely restrictive class system as class systems in RPGs go. The only customisation of the character skills available is a piddling-small number of "pick-up" skill points - less than half the number of points allocated to the extremely limited (and limiting) Skill Pool.

When playing and GMing straight CP2020 games in the past, I'd notice a lot of people with extremely high skill levels in a subset of their class' Skill Pool (unless there was a GM-enforced skill level cap) as they (or I) did not want/need certain skills and had no choice but to use up their 40 points on the remaining skills in the pool. And all had low-level skills outside those pools as we frantically tried to get as many other useful skills as possible with the very few pick-up skill points we were given.

Even before I found Ocelot's alternative character generation system I dropped the Skill Pools in favour of "you have this many skill points to spend as you like" for my games. It was quickly amended with "... and make sure you put something into Awareness/Notice unless you want to die really quickly."

Made for far more rounded and unique characters. Newbies were advised to look at the skill pools as guidelines for what skills their characters might typically have, or might find useful, but they were not required to expend 40 SPs on that small group of role-specific skills.

When I found Ocelot's system I adopted bits of it, including age-based skill points as it made the characters that little bit more unique and realistic - experienced "old codgers" cf inexperienced "yoof".

I also liked his alternative way of gaining starting cash rather than having to have an inordinately high Special Skill level in order to have decent gear. Prior to that, starting funds were often based on me randomly deciding how much all the characters had.

Aus_Snow said:

Hm. Rambling a bit, sorry.

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Your post's about one third the length of mine and you apologise to me for rambling??

Aus_Snow said:

edit --- But all that aside, your campaign sounds great! Not meaning to take anything away from that with the above, by the way. Honestly, sounds like it's all workin' for ya.

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Many thanks. I try to keep it balanced. When effectively increasing the number of options for cyberoptics (like when Times Square, "camera" and other things take up no "spaces", you can trick them out a lot more, even with a 4-space limit), I also limit availability on certain classes of gear.

I want to give my players a "fighting chance" without them being able to become so "Mondo" that the only thing that can stop them is a platoon in full ACPA. To that end, I tend to take current Real World rules and extrapolate them out to my Dark Future. e.g. The "Post-Ban" laws re semi-auto handguns in the USA - limit of ten shots in the magazine for civilians, armed forces and police have no such restrictions. Fully automatic weapons are strictly military-only with serious penalties for those caught with full auto weapons etc. Certain cyberware is only available to military, some of which only for the Elite forces. Other cyberware just plain has not been developed, no matter what Chrome might say...

I've had characters go into Full Rambo Mode in previous games where cyberware and weaponry are not as restricted as in my current campaign and it effectively killed the game. Got to the point where what should have been a challenging encounter with a few armed thugs was a rather dull walk in the park for the players.

Armour, and why I really need to get bludgeon damage sorted Real Soon Now...

In the Real World, body armour does actually stop bullets dead.

Well, within its rated level, anyway.

In Cyberpunk, the rules are kind of shaky and the armour SP values do not reflect Real-World levels of protection.

I decided that for this campaign, the armour would be based on Real World armour levels and SP (required for working out how much damage gets through when struck by a weapon for which the armour was not designed) should be calculated accordingly.

Before we start, I'll point out that I reworked the damage levels of weapons based on Rogue's alternative damage values (which were in turn based on Luciferin's work), taking Rogue's values as "Point Blank" damage and decreasing damage over distance a la FNFF2013. (A great way to show the differences between different types/weights of bullet within the same calibre, BTW, if anyone wanted to get that detailed.)

As I don't use FNFF2013's "add the amount you beat your opponent by to the weapon damage" rule, which made added to the amount of damage a 2D6 weapon could do, I figure it's right to increase the damage level of the weapons to compensate for that loss. (Something FNFF2020 failed to do when they dropped the "add to damage" rule, thus enabling people to take loads of wounds from firearms and still shrug them off like Arnold Terminator.) No need to "subtract from this then add to that" and the weapons pack punch again.

Then I consulted my notes on armour levels and the threats they are designed to stop.

Based on Real World images/video of Richard Davis ("Second Chance" Armour) shooting himself in the torso - about as "point blank" as it gets, Choomba! - I've made the assumption that the armour levels refer to testing at point blank range. I may be wrong about this regarding the higher levels' abilities to stop high-powered rifle bullets (they may be tested at a greater "minimum range") but it really doesn't matter a lot.

So, a given level of vest should stop the maximum possible damage of the most powerful calibre for which it is rated.

Conversely, other calibres stopped by the armour may not be more powerful than the most powerful calibre for which the armour is rated - an important point as Rogue did not include .22 - arguably the most common rifle calibre on the planet - in the list of rifle calibres. .22 was included in pistol calibres but a .22 rifle is a lot more deadly than a .22 pistol.

Likewise, the damage levels were set for pistols - not longer barreled submachineguns. (My players might not be allowed to have 'em, but criminals tend to disregard the laws...) Knowing what calibres are stopped by various levels of armour helped with setting the damage values for 9mm and .45 SMG (by far the most common SMG calibres).

So, we wind up with:

A) a list of armour types from Level I up to Level IV, each with an SP value slightly higher than that of a specific weapon's maximum possible damage at point blank range (feeling really glad now that I did not keep FNFF2013's "added damage" rule, it'd be a nightmare to work out!)

B) a list of additional calibres not found in Rogue's work that do around the same amount of damage as comparable handguns/rifles.

C) a great need to sort out bludgeon damage rules ASAP.

So, the armour stops the bullet dead. Great. Excellent.

Except it has not been "stopped dead" it has been prevented from penetrating by being spread across a greater area. You still have, in the case of a 9mm at point blank range, 2D6+5 points of damage slamming into you. Muhammad Ali probably didn't hit that hard (I don't know, I'll find out when I finish working out bludgeon damage).

So, presumably subtracting a little for dispersion of energy (energy loss), I need to work out what that approx 2D6 of bludgeon damage does.

I don't agree with FNFF2013's "divide by 5" rule - I've run the numbers and it seems inordinately weak.

FNFF2020 has no such rule, bringing the actual damage from bludgeoning up but making the damage done by a martial artist ludicrously strong (by failing to adapt a 2013 rule that relied on "divide by five" to make it less devastating. Idiots!)

So, I've got my work cut out for me making a cohesive bludgeon damage system.

OK, buy the right armour and you can stop anything up to high-powered rifle! Sweeeeeet!

Except: Encumberance Value.

And, thanks to Ianus Games, heat stress.

I'm giving the armour progressively higher EV and HV. You can wear it, but for how long in this heatwave?

In Real Life armour is readily - and fairly inexpensively - available. Why aren't all the gang-bangers or average citizens wandering around in it at all times? Many people on this site undoubtedly live in the USA which has more lenient firearms laws than we have here and none of the people I know in the USA routinely wears body armour to work. Here in New Zealand the gangs and other criminals ignore the firearms laws and have illegal firearms which they use - yet no one I know outside of the police force wears a bullet-proof vest. And body armour's not a lot more expensive here than overseas.

So in my campaign: armour will be available, it will stop the bullets penetrating (but not bludgeon damage) and it will slow 'em down and heat 'em up.

If they want to lessen the bludgeoning damage a bit, they could buy a Sorbothane Blunt Trauma pad for under the armour - at increased EV and HV, of course.

Standard armour types and the threats they are designed to stop are as follows:

I
.22, .25, and .32 calibre handguns, .38 Special lead round-nose

II-A
high-velocity .38 Special, .45s, low-velocity .357 Magnum & 9-mm, .22 rifles

II
Higher velocity .357 Magnum and 9-mm

III-A
.44 Magnum and submachine gun 9-mm

III
High-power rifle: 5.56mm, 7.62 mm FMJ, .30 carbine, .30-06 pointed soft point, 12-gauge rifled slug

IV
Armour-piercing rifle bullet, .30 calibre (1 shot only).

So, according to Rogue's tables, a standard or low velocity .357 Magnum does 2D8+6, giving a maximum damage of 22 (at point blank range going by my above reckoning).

This means that in order to stop it from penetrating, your Type II-A armour must have at least an SP of 22. For a Kevlar vest.

It cannot be too much higher than that in order to give the high velocity .357 Magnums, 9mms and .40S&Ws a reasonable chance of penetrating at point blank range or further.

OK, there's more to bullet penetration in the real world than just raw foot-pounds and so it's rather simplistic basing things on just maximum possible values on a few dice, but it has to be simplified somehow.

So now we know roughly how many points of damage to subtract from the .30-06 round (3D12+6) that's just ripped through your Type II-A armour (legal maximum for you, citizen) body armour...

And that's not an armour-piercing round, Choomba, it's just a plain ol' Jacketed Soft Point hunting round that's not gonna do "half damage" after penetrating. In fact, after it's hit your armour - and deformed somewhat before smashing its way through - it's gonna do some pretty ugly stuff to your insides...

Hold it! Legal Maximum?

What, you think the Powers That Be are going to let the average citizen have free access to levels of armour that can prevent duly-appointed Law Enforcement officials from carrying out their sworn duty to subdue anyone who decides to threaten the peace? (Or force them to work harder to do so?)

And even when it does stop the "killing damage", there's still bludgeon damage which can mess up your day (broken ribs can be nasty, I hear, and a ruptured spleen can be fatal) - even Davis puts in extra padding before shooting himself in the guts with a .44 Magnum, just to make sure his spleen stays the same shape as before...

Some of the higher levels of protection (relevant only to certain military personnel if you're running them) rely on inserted ceramic plates - not only would that screw up REF for anything requiring flexibility of your torso, the weight is going to start mounting up. And did I mention it's hot?

My [mumble] in the Police Force told me - I said my [mumble]niece[/mumble] in the... all right, my NIECE in the Police Force - yes, it does make me feel a bit old, why do you ask? - told me that the stab-proof vests they wear are bloody uncomfortable in hot weather. Sadly, it's part of the dress code, along with the heavy Batman Utility Belt with pepper spray, radio, cuffs, baton, torch etc.

Having had my own experiences with being "armoured up" in the heat of summer (motorcycle armour), I can attest that it's not something you want to endure for too long.

OK, after comparing the maximum possible damage done by various rounds with the level of armour that's supposed to stop it, I've come up with the following:

Type I - 14SP
Type II - 22SP
Type III-A - 30SP
Type III - 42SP
Type IV - 84SP

What happened to Type II-A armour? Frankly I don't have enough data to figure out values for high velocity and low velocity rounds and the gap between damage levels is so small there'd only be a few points difference anyway. So, for the sake of simplicity, I'm going to:

A) Forget there are different velocity bullets for .38, 9mm and .357 Magnum and
B) Forget about Type II-A armour.

After all, there's such a thing as "too much realism", especially if it's going to slow down game play or make the system too unwieldy.

Which gives us the following, especially for the World of Cyberpunk, armour types:

I - SP14
.22, .25, .32 and .38 Special pistols

II - SP22
.45ACP, .357 Magnum & 9mm pistols, .22 rifles
(Legal maximum for civilians in some jurisdictions)

III-A - SP30
.44 Magnum and submachine gun 9-mm
(Typically used by on-duty police officers, will also stop .454 Casull and .50AE)

III - SP42
High-power rifle: 5.56mm, 7.62 mm FMJ, .30 carbine, .30-06 pointed soft point, 12-gauge rifled slug

IV - SP84
Armour-piercing rifle bullet, .30 calibre (1 shot only).
(Typically Torso and groin only, would have a very high EV. Treat MetalGear as Type IV armour - with increased EV for covering more than just Torso/groin.)

SP84 for Type IV? Well, the way I read it, given that Type III stops pretty much every standard .30/7.62mm calibre out there, they mean that Type IV stops an armour-piercing .30 of some description. Under CP2020 armour rules, AP bullets halve the SP of the armour. In order for the armour to still be guaranteed to stop a bullet capable of doing up to 42 points of damage, it must be at least twice that, hence an SP of 84.

One shot. A hit from an AP round will shatter the Ballistic Ceramic plate, robbing the round of energy - like a motorcycle helmet delaminating to disperse the energy of an impact. The next shot to that same location will be tearing into what is now basically Type III-A armour with a lot of broken ceramic: SP42, which will be halved by the AP round, resulting in a possible penetration.

You may want to cut the soldier some slack and have an additional "Hit Location" roll to determine which of a number of plates (say 1D4 or 1D6) across the torso is hit by the round - first-time hits on different plates not penetrating, subsequent hits on the same plate resulting in possible penetration.

For the record, I don't think it would be enjoyable for anyone to be hit with a rifle round, even if the armour stops it penetrating. Bludgeon damage is probably going to put them out of the picture pretty quickly.

Please note:
These are guaranteed stops at point blank for rounds doing maximum damage. Obviously, lower-rated armour may still stop heavier calibre bullets on an average roll, especially at ranges greater than point blank.

However, I dare say that in real life Type I armour may well stop a 9mm bullet fired from a distance, too - it's just not guaranteed to.

A decent-calibre rifle round is likely to go straight through Type I armour at any range though - in game or IRL.

Wolf1066 said:

Because why would someone who spends their entire time coding, cracking systems and traversing the world at close to light speed want to go far from their extremely fast internet connection and risk being shot when they can help the party from the safety of their fortress (or parents' basement) via phone or internet? Cellular phones - not as prevalent in CP2020 as they turned out to be in real life - mean your netrunner easily reached from most places thanks to the magic of VOIP and similar phone/internet links.

Click to expand...

Because if someone really wants their information to be secure it wont be hooked up to the NET and neither will the security system that holds that secure data.