Notes - ShadowRun

House Firearms Rules

These rules are more realistic and also sharpen the divide between concealable/stealthy weapons (such as pistols and SMGs) and powerful weapons (such as Assault Rifles and Heavy Weapons). This forces players to choose between the risks associated with blowing their cover or being on the losing end of a firefight. Grenades are an option for those seeking concealability and lethality, but are highly illegal and can be detected by chem sniffers and olfactory boosters.

• +3 DV and -3 AP to Assault Cannons and Rocket/Missile launchers.
• +2 DV and -2 AP to all other Heavy Weapons, including Grenade Launchers (and grenades)
• +1 DV and -1 AP to all Assault Rifles, Sport Rifles and Sub-Machine Guns (NOT Sniper Rifles or Machine Pistols).
• +1 DV to all other firearms (Sniper Rifles, Shotguns, all pistols, NOT tasers).
• Silencers and Sound supressors impose a +1AP penalty on the weapon.
• Hidden arm slides can only be used with holdout pistols, light pistols and tasers. You try putting a large pistol up your sleeve. Maybe trolls can manage larger weapons.

Note: Remember a negative AP means more armour penetration.

The stats for a typical weapon in each class should now be:

[1]: These weapons are only concealable with special effort and long clothing. Note that SR Assault rifles are designed for shorter range urban combat and are somewhat shorter than their 20th century counterparts.
[2]: Note that some sniper rifles are designed to be disassembled to fit in a briefcase.

Armour Concealability

Like powerful weapons, powerful armour will help in a firefight but may draw unwanted attention outside of one. Note that although an observer may not positively identify someone wearing armour, unless they badly glitch on the test they may still be suspicious of bulky or expansive clothing (GM's call).

GMs should consider modifiers based on range and ultrasound visual enhancements (great for detecting hard surfaces under soft ones). Furthermore, if the observer gets a chance to touch the armoured character they should get a significant modifier (around +4 for a brief touch; grappling should identify it automatically).

• Full Body Armour and Urban Explorer Jumpsuits are obvious at even a casual glance (Perception+Intuition(1) at long range, no test required at close range).
• Armor Jackets, although styled like a regular thick jacket, are fairly obvious (Perception+Intuition(2)).
• Armor Vests concealed under clothing, and Lined Coats are less armoured than jackets and provide less protection, but are harder to spot (perception test 3).
  Remember, coats give a -2 modifier to perception tests for objects concealed beneath them.
• Actioneer Business Clothes look like regular suits to most observers (Perception+Intuition(3)), but observers with knowledge of the line will get a positive dice pool modfier.
• Armor Clothing contains no hard plates and is virtually impossible (Perception(4-6)) to detect by sight. However, they only provide ballistic protection (no impact armour rating) and are easy to detect by touch.

Simplified Matrix Rules (Not finished yet)

I haven't finished writing these out OR playtesting them (I haven't had the chance to play ShadowRun for a while now, which is why this is taking so long). The cybercombat rules in particular ar nowhere near complete.

SR4 contains extensive rules for hacking, searching, cybercombat and manipulating other matrix entities, making the online world an exciting game setting in itself. However, keeping track of which of your 18 softs are loaded into your persona can be a pain, and it's even less fun for the other players back in the meat world. The following rules use only Attributes, Skills and commlink stats and are much simpler:

Stats

• Commlinks, terminals and servers should have a full set of matrix stats (Response, Signal, System, Firewall) as well as a device rating (usually the average of the matrix stats). See SR4 for details.
• Matrix condition monitor is still 8 + System/2 (rounding up).
• No programs (softs) are used. All tests involve attributes, skills and/or commlink stats. The gamemaster should consider increasing the cost of commlinks (especially those with a high Response rating) to compensate for this.
• Accessing nodes may be via AR, regular cold-sim VR or illegal hot-sim VR. Initiative passes are 1 for AR, 3 for cold-sim VR, 4 for hot-sim VR. AR users are immune to Black IC, whereas hot-sim VR users are more vulnerable than cold-sim.

Hacking In

Hacking in this context refers to gaining access to a node above what is normally granted to you. Three types or accounts (or types of access) are available:

• User accounts - held by normal end users. These accounts can only read and write to one user's normal files. Hacking into a user's account will be necessary if the hacker just wants to steal some paydata. Some users with access to more sensitive data may be more heavily protected and harder to hack into (increase threshold at GMs discretion).
• Security accounts - held by security riggers ('spiders') and some management staff. These have access to all security cameras and sensors, alarms, etc and are necessary if the hacker wants to deactivate security systems.
• Admin (root) accounts - allow access to do everything on the system, including adding, removing or changing other accounts and altering other behaviour. Root access is required of the hacker wants to establish a backdoor into the system or wipe certain data from the system.

Some nodes may also have public areas (akin to websites) which you do not need an account to access.

Brute Force (on the fly)

Breaking in to a system quickly without any preparation usually requires a brute force approach. Roll an Extended Response+Hacking+Logic(target System+Firewall, 1 Initiative Pass) test (keep in mind that running in VR gives more initiative passes). However, each time the attacker takes a test the target gets a free System+Firewall(hacker's Hacking skill) test to detect the intrusion attempt.

Probing

If an attacker has days or weeks to break into a system, the attempt is more likely to be successful and unnoticed. Make an Extended Logic+Hacking(Firewall, 1 hour) test if the hacker is using VR. An attempt using AR extends the interval to 8 hours. Every test [TODO]

Detecting

[TODO]

Jamming

• [TODO]

Cybercombat (Not finished yet)

Cybercombat can occur between deckers, nodes, IC and agents.

1. Resolve intiative passes etc. as for normal combat.
2. Attacker rolls Response+Cybercombat to hit, defender rolls Firewall+Cybercombat to avoid.
3. If attacker scores more net hits, the difference is added to the response and this is taken as Matrix damage
4. Damage resistance tests are made with System only.

• At the end of each Combat Turn (not initiative pass!) each node/persona may [TODO]

Miscellaneous

• [TODO]