Not exactly Cyberpunk 2020

MortonStromgal said:

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.

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Partially true.
It won't be directly connected, but the prevalence of cell phones with wireless connection systems (blue tooth, IR, etc) plus near-constant broad-band internet access means that any iPhone in the same room can provide external access to the "secure" computer network / data storage. It's tricky and unreliable (people move about and take their phones with them), but usually (not always) possible.

Wolf1066 said:

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...

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This is an argument for leaving the reduction at a lower level than the maximum for the weapon category. The armor can stop those rounds, reliably, but some of the force transfers to the body, and that force can prove fatal even though the round never penetrates.
So, make the armor good (say, average damage +1 to 3; i.e. II-A would be 16-18 reduction) but not invincible.

Wolf1066 said:

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?

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Sure, it gets hot and heavy.
So what? You've already got 10 to 14 pounds of primary weapon with ammunition, 4 to 8 pounds of secondary weapons (pistol with ammo, knives, etc), hopefully 2 pounds of grenades (because frags are your friend), 6 pounds of clothing, 4 pounds of helmet, 4 pounds of water, 3 pounds of gas mask, 1 pound of communications gear, and that's assuming you aren't carrying any food, spare clothes, NVGs, or mission specific gear. (42 pounds.)
Another 5 to 10 pounds of body armor, armor that can let you survive getting shot or catching blast fragments with your favorite anatomy, is totally worthwhile and difficult to notice after all that training.

Wolf1066 said:

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.

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Again, it's something you get used to. This is why units train in deserts, in full gear, to get used to the miseries of combat; to make them so routine that you don't notice them and can function very near full ability while suffering from them.
Having my own experience armored up in the heat of central Iraq and Kuwait during combat, and the deserts of SW USA during exercises, I can attest that while you don't want to endure the experience, you learn how to do so and can endure it as long as you need to.

Good luck.

ValhallaGH said:

Partially true.
It won't be directly connected, but the prevalence of cell phones with wireless connection systems (blue tooth, IR, etc) plus near-constant broad-band internet access means that any iPhone in the same room can provide external access to the "secure" computer network / data storage. It's tricky and unreliable (people move about and take their phones with them), but usually (not always) possible.

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And the number of people who need/want to be able to access that data without the hassle/time of actually getting there so insist on a secure VPN they can access from home...

Thinking on your above post, ValhallaGH, it seems to me a strong argument for apportioning major bonuses and skills to any military personnel when it comes to dealing with the rigours of traipsing around in armour.

You have had training that the average citizen does not undergo - and frankly has no motivation to undergo.

The average citizen roaming the mean streets of Night City or wherever has not been conditioned or hardened to the degree you have. We're talking of people who think Armageddon or TEOTWAWKI has arrived if the aircon goes on the fritz in the middle of summer and five minutes later is stressed out and screaming at the spouse and kids. The average streetpunk who strips down to his boardshorts and hangs out in the shade praying for a cool breeze.

I fully take your point that armour is something you can get used to, even under extremely adverse conditions, but I think the average citizen, lacking a drill instructor to push them and condition them, would not have the resolve to condition themselves on the off chance that someone may shoot at/near them.

You are trained as you are as there is a certainty that where you are going, you are going to be shot at.

However, even people living violent lives on the wrong side of the law seldom condition themselves to wearing armour as there is no certainty that they are going to be shot at. It's a possiblity, but not enough of one to warrant the level of conditioning and training to which you have been raised.

For the most part, they rely on their other skills to preclude the possibility of violence escalating to that level. Doesn't always work, people are shot every day - but they are in a very small minority, even among the gangbangers. Small enough that it's not deemed a major risk.

Someone who is high-profile and a frequent target of assassination attempts would take the effort to armour up, tho'. (And most likely it's for short periods of time anyway)

Just thought I'd throw this out there re: Stat vs. Skill

In a game system I've gotten into lately (Unhallowed Metropolis), each point in a skill gives you something in addition to just increasing your modifier on a die roll. For combat skills, these are called Stunts, and non-combat, Specialties. Stunts are pretty much like Feats in a d20 game. Specialties give you an additional +1 when making a skill roll where the speciality is relevant.

So a character with a Reflex 5 and 3 points in Pistol would have a +8 and 3 stunts, whereas a character with Reflex 8 only gets the +8 modifier.

May need some tweaking for CP2020, but you get the general idea.

Wolf1066 said:

Thinking on your above post, ValhallaGH, it seems to me a strong argument for apportioning major bonuses and skills to any military personnel when it comes to dealing with the rigours of traipsing around in armour.

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Depends upon the military. Most squids never spent more than fourteen hours, over the course of six years, in body armor. Flyboys, and their ground crews, aren't much more experienced. And even doggies and jarheads have certain MOSes that rarely go to the field (or train in body armor).
And once you start talking about non-NATO countries, body armor quickly gets very rare.

Thanks again, ValhallaGH.

What branch of the armed services were you in?

United States Marine Corps. 5th Batallion, 11th Marine Regiment (field artillery).

OK, thinkin' aloud, folks.

I've put together a few lists. Please let me know if I've missed anything.

Thinking of various situations from hand-to-hand combat - general punch-up, brawl, martial arts - to melee, thrown objects, thrown characters, accidental or deliberate impacts with vehicles etc.

Hit Locations
These are the areas of the body likely to be struck, most will take different types of damage and withstand different amounts of damage.

Edit: BTW, I'm not aiming to make it overly complicated, just a table with ranges of damage and roughly what it does to certain areas with FNFF2013-style secondary rolls dependant on area hit e.g. "Head" for a certain range of damage might read "1D6: 1-2, blood nose; 3-4, split lip; 5-6, black eye" or similar, hence the need to list the various parts under the general heading.

Of course, the secondary die roll may be omitted if the character's stated intent was to "smack that ugly sod right in his smart mouth"...

Naturally, in an up-close-and-personal hand-to-hand fight, participants are more likely to hit somewhere on that part of the body for which they were aiming, FNFF-style "random hit locations" need to be refined down to within those areas - a standing person swinging a punch is not very likely to hit another standing person in the leg...


Major categoryHeadTorsoArmsLegsObjects
These are the objects likely to cause some form of bludgeon damage to a character - more or less depending on strength and any other modifiers.


Fist/HandFeetHeadElbowKnee
Short club, bottle etc – short lever
Long club, baseball bat etc – long lever
Nunchuku - articulated lever
Non-penetrating bullet – high energy
Thrown object – low/medium energy
TerrainVehicle

Damage
Injuries a character may sustain from bludgeoning - from "Flesh Wound" up and how those injuries are manifested.


Bruising
Stun
Pain
Broken bones
Broken/lost teeth
Split skin
Swelling
Damaged organs
Killed


Modifiers
Primarily when thinking of body parts doing the striking - bare feet cf steel-capped work boots; bare fist cf knuckle duster etc.


“Naked”
“Shod”My next aim is to work out damage levels that are realistic given who is hitting whom with what. Joe Average punching John Q. Public in the head is not likely to do more than cause temporary dazing, a blood nose, split lip, black eye etc.

OK, think I've pretty much got a workable system sorted.

I started with the gentlemanly - and not so gentlemanly - art of fisticuffs and worked out what sort of damage the average joe should be able to inflict upon another average joe - strength and body bonuses irrelevant.

Based on my own observation of the average punch-up, an average person is not going to do a lot of damage with fists alone. Bruising, winding, black eyes, blood noses, split lips, loosened teeth, stun. Unlikely to break bones but can do a reasonable amount of damage if critical areas are hit - groin, solar plexus, kidneys.

Add to this the fact that the average person cannot hit worth a damn - they may occasionally fluke it, but they have no idea how to effectively channel their body's full power into the punch. Trained/experienced fighters, boxers and martial artists can, but the average citizen - even the strong ones - does not use their full hitting capacity.

In a typical "scrap", expect soreness, swelling, bruising - "flesh wound" sort of stuff and both parties departing a little tattered but not seriously wounded.

Occassionally, a serious wound might be inflicted, teeth might be lost, a person might sustain serious damage to internal organs, easy to break/dislocate bones (nose, jaw) may be broken, person may be KO'ed.

Going by FNFF2013, for an average person a flesh wound is 1-4 points, a serious wound is 5-8 points. The average person should not be able to inflict anything more than 8 points of damage anywhere on the body - including the head, which takes double damage.

This puts the damage dealt by the average human fist around 1D4 before any modifiers.

Someone who knows what they are doing would be able to inflict more damage, as would someone stronger.

Still trying to work out whether a kick should be 1D6 or 1D8 - haven't done all the sums for that, yet, but a kick is definitely more powerful than a punch.

Modifiers:

Well, there's the strength ones, obviously. Peewee is going to hit like a wet noodle at -2 (minimum 1), Ahnuld is going to do +2 as per the standard cyberpunk body type strength modifiers.

What if they do know what they're doing?

And here's where I branch off totally from Cyberpunk's take on martial arts.

As stated above, the average person does not know how to punch or kick properly, they use less than their body's full striking potential.

Once a person learns how to strike properly, they can use that body's full potential. But that's it. Nothing more. Martial Arts, contrary to what the movies and CP2020 might tell us, do not turn you into a killing machine capable of punching a 200-lb opponent the length of a basketball court. What they do is teach you how to set your body so that you use all your strength to hit - with no weaknesses on your part to rob the strike of its sting.

You typically learn that long before you get to blackbelt.

So, my take is this:

In boxing, brawling or any martial art that uses strikes:
Trainee +1 to damage
Adept and above +2 to damage

Martial arts that use kicks get the same bonuses to kicks. Perhaps even +2/+3, given that they teach movement dynamics to accelerate a foot far better than you can accelerate a hand.

But that's it, that's the extent of the damage bonuses for martial arts, boxing etc. You learn to use your body's strength to its fullest extent at Adept (or around level 2 in the art if you use the standard cyberpunk skill resolution) and anything above that just increases your chances of actually hitting your opponent or blocking his/her attacks.

So, Joe Average who's adept at boxing is going to do 1D4+2 with his fists.

Except:
The naked hand or foot is not an ideal thing to hit with. I came up with four classes of cover: Naked, soft, hard and heavy.

Naked would also include negligible cover such as light gloves or socks. I've put a -1 to damage on this on the grounds that most people (not high on drugs or so far lost in rage (or so drunk) that they don't care any more) are going to instinctively pull their punch/kick a trifle to protect their bare hands/feet. That also makes it slightly less likely for an average punch to the head to do serious damage. May not apply under all circumstances.

Soft - casual shoes/sneakers, padded leather or Cordura motorcycle gloves: no modifier. The person hits to the best of their ability.

Hard - hard leather shoes or boots, motorcycle gloves with plastic or carbon fibre over the knuckles: +1 to damage.

Heavy - Steel-capped boots, brass knuckles: +2 to damage.

So, a very strong and adept boxer with a knuckleduster is going to wind up doing 1D4+6 damage with a straight punch - if that connects with the head, the average recipient is going to be in serious trouble.

However, a punch-up between a couple of average guys in a pub is probably not going to result in a trip to the hospital unless one of them smacks into the edge of the bar as he goes down...

Still need to do the maths to work out what damage the average kick should do and whether the training mods should be +1/+2 or +2/+3 but I feel confident that I've got the fist-fight figures somewhere between 2013's "divide everything by 5" soak-up-an-infinite-number-of-punches and 2020's "why have a pistol when you can head-kick them to death?" that does close to real-world damage levels. Supplementary injuries are of course modified in keeping with "non-penetrating" wounds: broken bones, pulped squishy bits, lost teeth, black eyes, detached retina, temporary or permanent brain damage etc...

I saw an alternative damage table that assigned 1.5x damage to abdomen injuries and I'm inclined to agree with that system. Also think that damage to groin or kidneys should have around a -2 to your stun number. Fail and you're on the floor deciding whether or not to vomit...

So, with double damage to heads and damage-and-a-half to guts and groin, the average Joe with no modifiers at all should be doing 2-8 points to the head, 1-6 to the guts and 1-4 everywhere else. Against the average opponent, that's enough to seriously wound heads and squishy bits but not enough to do much to arms, legs and chest - which is pretty much right for the average punch-up between guys bickering in the pub. Things get a tad messier when Jake the Muss steps in - strong and adept and just as likely to use a bar stool as his fist...

When looking at the damage feet in steel-capped work boots can do to heads - even at 1D6 damage - we're getting into mortal wound and death territory, which is reasonable to expect. I'm not thinking Chuck Norris head-kicking everything to death to the point that the audience falls asleep, I'm thinking punk "laying the boot in" against a downed opponent... which I've been told constitutes "assault with a deadly weapon" in Texas.

Seriously thinking of giving modifiers to certain types of strike - e.g. negatives to haymakers as they are mechanically inefficient; positives to back-handers as, when properly applied, they use the body very efficiently.

I also came up with some preliminary figures for how much damage the armour soaks up - Type I and II halve the damage and convert it to bludgeon, Type III-A and up divide the damage by 3 and convert to bludgeon.

Even with those figures and figuring 1.5x damage for a gut shot, a powerful weapon at point blank is capable of major, potentially life-threatening, damage to internal organs even if completely stopped by the armour.

Given that under CP2020 you subtract SP and BTM from the damage a bullet does, down to a minimum of 1, I think my system's a tad nastier. A 9mm at point blank may well be stopped by Type II armour but half of its 2D6+5 damage is going to get through as blunt trauma. You may be lucky and escape with bruising to the chest - or you may take a serious thump to the stomach, winding you, forcing you to save vs stun for serious wound etc.

That same 9mm pistol is not going to be as effective against the Type III-A armour worn by the cops, of course, but a .44 Magnum is a force to be reckoned with.

Of course, that was the "stick the pistol in his ribs and pull the trigger" value, damage drops off over distance.

Also still working on realistic figures for damage done by various melee weapons - even an average punk with a beer bottle can do serious damage as recent news reports over here can attest.

Also got to get my kids running backwards and forwards across the park to start working out suitable negative modifiers for called shots. Don't worry, I'm not actually going to shoot at them, just see how big their torsos and heads look at various distances.