Surprise Rules In Every Edition Of Shadowrun Are Terrible

[Heisenberg]

The Surprise Rules In Every Single Edition Of Shadowrun Are Terrible
Please, Please, Help Me Fix Them

Some background. I am working on my own edition of Shadowrun. As a free SR4 fanhack, it will address all the major problems of SR4A without "fixing" anything that wasn't broken. In other words, it will be everything SR5 should have been, but wasn't. I'm qualified to undertake this epic task because fuck you. To paraphrase the movie Pi, "10:46, Restate My Assumptions". Well, design goals restated.

I am 61 pages and 24,000 some odd words in and almost to the meat of the stuff I really want to fix: Magic and Matrix.

Character creation has been revamped and 98% of the combat chapter is behind me, and I have saved the vehicle combat rules as a battle to fight another day as their own stand-alone chapter (treating riggers the same as deckers and mages). I am working on the remaining 2% of the combat chapter, and that means the shit job I saved for last. Fixing the Surprise rules, which is probably going to require, at the very least, discarding everything there and rewriting them from scratch.

The Surprise Rules in SR4A are fucking bullshit. They may be the single worst rules in the SR4 corebook. Pages and pages and words and words of bullshit. I'd be shocked if the seething, rancid bullshit was not transferred to the unrepentant train wreck that is SR5.

Because it turns out when I gave up on trying to fix the SR4 surprise rules and started casting about for inspiration to help rewrite them from scratch, I checked out the SR3 Surprise rules. And the SR4 Surprise rules are just a direct translation of the (still terrible) SR3 Surprise Rules.

How deep did this rabbit hole go? I reached for one of my two Shadowrun Second Edition Core Rulebooks, and flipped to the Surprise Rules. Surprise, surprise...the SR3 Surprise rules were lifted WORD FOR WORD from the SR2 Surprise rules.

Oy vey. It's turtles shit all the way down. I haven't checked SR1, but I don't have much hope for a drastically different system.

Here is basically what we're working with, in it's most distilled bullshit form (from SR2, but really the basic principles carry on all the way to SR4A, and probably SR5):

To resolve surprise and ambush situations. all participants must make Reaction Tests. Each character rolls his Reaction dice against a Target Number 4. The ambusher-characters, if they have delayed actions as they lie in wait for the arrival or appearance of their targets, receive a -2 to their target numbers. ...

Each character's succeses are then compared individually against the successes generated by the opposing characters. One of the following two results may occur against each of the opposing characters:

* If a character has not generated more successes than a particular opposing character, he cannot take any actions that directly affect, impede, or counteract that character.
* If the character has generated more successes than a particular opponent, the first character can take actions against the second.

Here's the word-for-word example that appears in both SR2 and SR3. SR4A did not even bother with an example, perhaps they couldn't keep their own BS straight long enough.

Tess, Virgil, and Winger are waiting in ambush for three Mitsuhama security goons. The goons arrive, and our heroes spring their ambush. Tess has a Reaction of 6, Virgil an 8, and Winger a 9. The three goons all have Reaction 4. All characters make Reaction Tests. Rolling against Target Numbers of 2 (4, minus 2 for being ambushers) Tess gets 3 successes, Virgil 4, and Winger 5. Goon A gets a 4, Goon B gets 2, Goon C gets none. Comparing successes, we find that Tess (3 successes)can act fully against Goon B (2 successes) and Goon C (0 successes) but can do nothing against Goon A (4 successes). Virgil can take actions against Goon B and C, but not A because Virgil and Goon A have the same number of successes. With 5 successes, WInger can act against everybody.

The goons are in deep trouble. Goon A can only take actions against Tess (4 successes versus 3) and that's it. Neither Goon B nor Goon C can take actions against any of the shadowrunners...

Even this extremely cherry picked example evidences some of the problem. First off, it's so needlessly complicated it hurts your brain to look at. Secondly, it adds ages of fiddling and twiddling to the game's already far-from-streamlined speed and handling time. It's inelegant and can lead to results that range from quirky to nonsensical to truly infuriating.

But if you deviate to other scenarios, things gets worse.

What if a team of PCs winds up throwing down with a dozen hellriding Halloweeners and both sides aren't expecting a rumble and make surprise tests? Let's say that all the PCs but the Decker beat the Halloweeners on their Surprise Tests.

* All Other PCs can target Halloweeners.
* Halloweeners can target only Decker.
* Decker can't target anybody and depending on the edition you're looking at, probably can't even DEFEND herself either.

The Halloweeners can't attack the Street Samurai, Shaman, Mage, or Rigger at all...but all 12 of them can dogpile on the Decker, probably fatally. Yep. And that's far from the most fucked scenario I can come up with. In other words, the GM has no choice if using these rules but to brutally curbstomp the defenseless Decker into a fine red mist while not dealing a box of damage to any of the other characters.

Do not want.

So...brass tacs then. If this was just a house rule for my home game--or paradoxically, if I was designing an RPG of my own for scratch--I'd just go with a much simpler rule with not even the most tangential relationship to this one. Something like... "In surprise combats, the side with the element of surprise (determined by the GM based on the Stealth and Perception rolls of both sides and the overall situation) gets one free round of actions against the side that is surprised" or whatever. Not exactly robust, but totally workable. It's not going to cause weird traffic jams, head-scratching confusion, or grind the game to a halt.

But this is Shadowrun, and it has to be recognizably Shadowrun. I want some element of the original rule to survive, some degree of texture or functionality or intention to be carried over. But how to untangle this age-old legacy clusterfuck of clusterfucks? I'm completely stumped. Denners, aid me!

[Username17]

The rules that people actually used in every edition of the game (once they realized that they could not parse the "official" surprise rules) is that everyone makes a Perception test (or Perception + Intuition for SR4), and people who fail it don't get to act on the first round of combat (or first initiative pass if your MC is feeling generous).

Seriously, that's it. Takes about one sentence, it's what everyone uses, and it works. Everyone maxes their Perception (or their Intelligence in SR1-3), and that's fine because it's a game about detectives and shootouts.

-Username17

[phlapjackage]

Yeah, I still don't know what the surprise rules are supposed to model, with the whole stupid "character X can act against character Y but not character Z".

I would think it would be something like everyone has to roll for surprise, with some bonuses applying based on preparation or abilitiies. Only players reaching a certain threshold can act at all during the "surprise" round.

ALSO, I think surprise could be extended for more than one round. Imagining a character that's so surprised by what's happening around them ("holy shit is that an elven lesbian stripper ninja riding a unicorn?!?") that they stand there shocked for x amount of time.

[TheFlatline]

Two rounds of inactivity probably equal a dead character. The situations where you were stunned for anything more than a moment or two should probably be pretty rare for professionals that in theory have experienced a few firefights.

[Username17]

This of course loops back around to the fact that Shadowrun combat rounds are way too fucking short. Freezing up for 12 seconds shouldn't be a rare occurrence, but when that allows even an untrained enemy to make 8 distinct attack rolls against you (or four attack rolls while literally boxing you in with palettes if you happen to be playing SR5 for some reason), the game system has clearly shat itself.

The vehicle rules cannot handle a 3 second combat round timeframe. But balanced sensible surprise rules can't be made with a 3 second combat round either. 12 seconds or even 20 seconds would be a much better fit.

-Username17

[TheFlatline]

If you're standing slackjawed for 20 seconds in an ambush, you're probably ground meat before you get your senses together.

Which means a sensible surprise system needs a few gradients of surprise, ranging from "not surprised" to "slackjawed" with two or three midpoints in between. I mean, it doesn't take much to hit the dirt when shit starts happening, and you can still be stunned while you dig yourself into the closest cover you can have.

Which probably means combat needs to center around suppression instead of accurate shooting: Then ambush becomes a chance for accurate shooting and an even better chance for instant suppression of the enemy.

[phlapjackage]

I could see the surprise gradient being something that's like the other status effects I saw in another older post (bloodied / stunned / etc)

So there could be 3 levels (arbitrarily chose 3 just cuz):
1. Startled
2. Surprised
3. Slackjawed
with 0. normal being the default character state

Depending on your surprise roll, your character is at one of the levels. Slackjawed allows no actions, Surprised allows limited types of actions (drop prone/run/full defense), Startled allows normal actions but with penalties. Each round, your character moves one gradient towards the default state.

[Username17]

If you're standing slackjawed for 20 seconds in an ambush, you're probably ground meat before you get your senses together.

That probably sounded true in your head. But it's actually not. Watch some actual ambush, and count how long the guy on the right just fucking stands there after saying that he can't see shit.

20 seconds in a firefight actually isn't all that long, and people stand around with their thumbs up their asses for that long without getting turned into ground meat all the time.

Hell, let's look at the world of action fiction and count how long it is between when The Rock shouts "Ambush!" and when someone on his team actually returns fire (hint: it is 24 seconds). Even within the genre there is no reason to believe you get turned into meat just because you spend 10-20 seconds picking your ass at the start of a firefight.

-Username17

[Rawbeard]

Yeah, SR combat turns are on speed cocaine, so people still judge 20 seconds of brainfart as "enemy gets to take a billion actions for 6 to 7 turns, lulz". This whole timeframe nees reworking, as Frank has said on several occasions. Unfortunatly that might lead into more abstract actions and people tend to get real pissy about that, just look at DnD with AC and Hit points. "He missed your AC by 1... You dodge his attack!" "Dude, I got like 30 points of armor, I didn't dodge shit." or "He hits you, plunging his sword into your gut, leaving a gashing wound. Take 4 points of damage" "He eviscerated me? How am I still alive?" "You still got 30 hitpoints left" "..." And that shit has been around for decades.

On the other hand getting cornered by security and every action taking actual time might make cops relevant. Those guys can never show up without teleportation or "it was a setup all along, muahahahaha!" twists. In the current system you can shoot a couple of dudes, throw some grenades, run into some other cover and shoot some more dudes in three seconds flat... and realize you forgot to turn on your Reflex Booster and wasted soooo muuuuuch tiiiiime. *sigh*

Also it might be a nice idea to change the way Reflex Booster shit works. Instead of making you shoot guns more often, it might actually make you act sooner in a meaningful way, actually dodge bullets, whatever.

[TheFlatline]

If you're standing slackjawed for 20 seconds in an ambush, you're probably ground meat before you get your senses together.

That probably sounded true in your head. But it's actually not. Watch some actual ambush, and count how long the guy on the right just fucking stands there after saying that he can't see shit.

20 seconds in a firefight actually isn't all that long, and people stand around with their thumbs up their asses for that long without getting turned into ground meat all the time.

Actually this goes to support my idea. The guy is in an armored, moving position and has time to get his bearings. And though you don't see much, he still probably would have dropped to the ground if he wasn't in a vehicle. My point is that he's not completely slackjawed, he's getting his bearings, and if shit had been hotter he probably would have been far more defensive- ie suppressed.

I read a bunch of historical books on firefights from WW2 through Vietnam, and there's a lot of different variables going on. For example, in the video you linked, we're looking at a few hundred yards between the vehicle and the enemy: 99% of SR ambushes probably happen in less than 30 meters, and a significant number probably happen at around 10 meters or less.

I can count on one hand the number of combats I've conducted or participated in RPGs where the combat range was hundreds of feet. It's just not a trope, probably because of D&D ranges, but also because it makes map sketching a bitch.

Then again, most games treat going prone as more of a bad thing than a good thing in a firefight, which is straight up hollywood there.

[Strung Nether]

If you're standing slackjawed for 20 seconds in an ambush, you're probably ground meat before you get your senses together.

That probably sounded true in your head. But it's actually not. Watch some actual ambush, and count how long the guy on the right just fucking stands there after saying that he can't see shit.

20 seconds in a firefight actually isn't all that long, and people stand around with their thumbs up their asses for that long without getting turned into ground meat all the time.

Hell, let's look at the world of action fiction and count how long it is between when The Rock shouts "Ambush!" and when someone on his team actually returns fire (hint: it is 24 seconds). Even within the genre there is no reason to believe you get turned into meat just because you spend 10-20 seconds picking your ass at the start of a firefight.

-Username17

I will argue that most ambushes in shadowrun happen at much shorter ranges than than convoy ambush, and that shorter-range ambushes are more lethal and faster. jumping a dude from behind dumpster while he walks down an alley will be over in less than 10 seconds, one way or another.

[Pulsewidth]

Real life combatants don't have wired reflexes, smartguns or tacnets.

Movies characters can have equivalent superpowers, but they're crippled by the low framerate of the medium (making it literally impossible to show fast action clearly), and the expectation that untrained audiences should have some idea what's going on.

I imagine Shadowrun firefights to be more like this, only with less jumping (again crippled by the low framerate imposed by YouTube, but at least there's no motion blur and you can pause and rewind freely):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cALELmIo8zk
(action begins at 1:31)

[Taishan]

Is there any reason that each time we roll initiative, it has to be linked to a set amount of time? The only reason to roll initiative multiple times in a combat is to input some kind of randomization of action sequence, right?

What is the argument against a mechanic where each initiative pass is 2 seconds, but the time between each generation of a new initiative sequence is dependent on the the number of passes?

1st Initiative Generation- 3 passes are generated, each pass taking 2 seconds. Total action time for that Initiative Generation- 6 seconds

2nd Initiative Generation - 1 pass is generated, each pass taking 2 seconds. Total action time for that Initiative Generation- 2 seconds

3rd Initiative Generation- 2 passes are generated, each pass taking 2 seconds. Total action time for that Initiative Generation- 4 seconds

Most things would be the same except how we describe real time passing. Instead of 6 seconds passing for those 3 initiative generations, 12 seconds go by.

Time delayed mechanics like grenades would be more work for the GM, but not that much more work.

Interaction with vehicle combat would not be seamless but doable; if you had vehicle actions occuring every 5 or 10 seconds, you could monitor where you were in the 'real time passed' and interject the vehicle/player's action at that time. Said vehicle/player would need a mechanic to see at what point they get injected into the time stream.

[Archmage]

Sounds like a bookkeeping nightmare.

[Heisenberg]

This of course loops back around to the fact that Shadowrun combat rounds are way too fucking short. Freezing up for 12 seconds shouldn't be a rare occurrence, but when that allows even an untrained enemy to make 8 distinct attack rolls against you (or four attack rolls while literally boxing you in with palettes if you happen to be playing SR5 for some reason), the game system has clearly shat itself.

The vehicle rules cannot handle a 3 second combat round timeframe. But balanced sensible surprise rules can't be made with a 3 second combat round either. 12 seconds or even 20 seconds would be a much better fit.

-Username17

My combat turn is 12 seconds long.

The rules that people actually used in every edition of the game (once they realized that they could not parse the "official" surprise rules) is that everyone makes a Perception test (or Perception + Intuition for SR4), and people who fail it don't get to act on the first round of combat (or first initiative pass if your MC is feeling generous).

I think this is (ding ding ding) the winner. I'm going to go with a codified version of this for the actual rule, I think. Perception + Intuition at the start of combat to perceive enemy combatants/that combat is about to start. Basically, there won't be much chance of anyone being surprised unless at least one side is being sneaky, and the Perception roll is opposed by an Infiltration roll.

I think I may mix in a bit of this idea too...

So there could be 3 levels (arbitrarily chose 3 just cuz):
1. Startled
2. Surprised
3. Slackjawed
with 0. normal being the default character state

Depending on your surprise roll, your character is at one of the levels. Slackjawed allows no actions, Surprised allows limited types of actions (drop prone/run/full defense), Startled allows normal actions but with penalties. Each round, your character moves one gradient towards the default state.

Fail the Perception Test and you are startled. Glitch it and you are Surprised. Critically glitch it and you are F'd in the A.

I think I'll define the tiers of surprise as...

Startled...cannot act in the first Initiative Pass.
Surprised...cannot act in the first Turn of combat.
Slackjawed...cannot act...or DEFEND...in the first Turn of combat.

The latter is really bad, but then again Critical Glitches are pretty rare.

Thanks Den. Hugs and kisses.

[silva]

Rules In Every Single Edition Of Shadowrun Are Terrible

Corrected for you.

[vagrant]

Silva, you shill for a game where the rules are 'Have the GM make them up.' Your opinion is shit.