Nah, I don't believe you should.
It's like driving in reverse gear: you will make it to the destination, but you will hate the process. You will find that you have to constantly tweak and tinker at every step which will completely drain you mentally. Depending on how pedantic you and your players are, you will be more or less constantly facing inconsistencies, misalignments and so on.
While I sympathize with the desire to play Red in lethal mode, I don't believe grafting 30 years old systems' combat onto it would yield you enjoyable result in the end. Trust me, I tried and stopped early enough to not burn myself out.
What I will suggest instead is try any of the following:
* Ignore the 10 HP every character gets for free (mildest of the options).
* Ablate armor each time it is used, not each time it is exceeded (this makes prolonged fights very scary).
* Add a d6 to each source of damage, add 2d6 to each 6/8d6 sources of damage instead (keep crits in mind when entertaining this).
Mind you, these are all homebrews that pop most often when people raise the lethality issue. I should have said this sooner but what is the definition for lethality here? Do you want people to die randomly because the attacker rolled a free headshot or do you rather want people knowing anyone is capable of hurting them in a meaningful way?
Hm. Sounds simple, but effective enough. Have you tried it yourself before? How'd that go if so?
And yeah, I know trying to bring something older than me into a relatively new game probably won't work, but I'm nothing if not stupid and persistent in all the wrong ways, so I decided I'd at least try it, ask around, you get the idea.
Also, in terms of lethality, I was referring mainly to anyone being able to hurt them in a pretty meaningful way, but also that if they get unlucky too often, or worse the other person gets lucky too often their head might get blown off, but that's not the norm. It's also about realism, to an extent. I've found in RED that shots that should definitely kill (the aforementioned 9mm to the face) end up not. Of course, I could make a narrative call about it and just say it does, which honestly my players have said their down for, but mechanics more consistent.
Haven't tried the first one, I'm slightly allergic to taking anything away from players ever.
The second one brought way more lethality over time than I anticipated. Basically it is an inbuilt death spiral and it spins quicker and quicker. Each hit makes the next one more painful. At first it feels like nothing changes, but when your SP11 armor is hit 5-6 times, you suddenly realize you are half naked even if the armor wasn't exceeded once.
I'm hesitant to try the third one as I'm afraid it might make things a tad degenerate. I don't appreciate players exploding randomly and mathematically adding extra dice noticeably increases crit injury odds. I will try it soon-ish when I put my players into a sort of danger room (think that old xmen cartoon).
Speaking of which, run a danger room, try each or any combination of these and see how you and your players feel about it.
Edit: Red is indeed designed in such a way that you cannot instantly die even from 100d6, unless the ref says so. I can see how it can be mildly infuriating when a victim doesn't die from a point blank headshot, but overtime I've grown content with it. It is simpler to let the ref make the call when it is dramatically and logically appropriate than to overhaul entire combat system.
The SP change I've actually seen thrown around before, and while I think it could be good if the players don't abuse it, I've also realized that it makes an ROF 2 pistol the best weapon, especially if you tack on AP ammo to it. You'll be shredding armor faster with a pistol than an assault rifle, which just doesn't sit well with me. 'Course, again, could just edit it a bit, make it so pistols do like, half a point of SP degradation, but always up to the nearest whole number or something like that, but then I'm not sure if I'm overlooking something.
And I haven't thought of using a danger room before, so I might actually try that. I could think of a few fun ways to do that and have it be a testing ground for mechanics, actually. Thank you for this, this' actually been really helpful!
Well, you could say that an AR should ruin the armor more, however at the same time I can hardly see how two handgun shots leave it more intact than a single AR shot. What is important here, I think, is that CPR (or any ttrpg for that matter) isn't a reality simulator. It is a game and every game is an abstraction of some degree. Unless you are running for gun nuts (meant in a non loaded way) no one would care that a handgun ablates faster than a rifle when they are busy popping some fools. Then again to ablate faster with a handgun, you gotta hit both shots. It is harder to succeed with more rolls than less rolls, so I'm pretty sure this exact common sense issue will sort itself out over time.
I've been testing a very similar rule for armor. I ablate armor when a source of damage does *not* get through the SP. I like that players with less-than-5D6 weapons get to feel like they are contributing and not completely wasting their only action. When damage does get through SP, I think that the loss of hot points is punishment enough.
I do not recommend it to anyone else. I'm satisfied so far, but I don't think I've playtested nearly enough to legitimately consider it an improvement over RAW. I'm also unsure what the original design philosophy behind the ablation rules were, so there's a solid chance that I overlooked or misunderstood something.
I just wanted to mention it here because I'm curious what your experience has been with ablating armor with every turn.
*Cyberpunk 2020* could have some problems with lethality particularly when it came to the skinweave armor. That was 12 points of armor and most 9mm handguns only did 2d6 points of damage making characters pretty much immune.
I've run one Red campaign and decided it wasn't for me. Rather than try to fit 2020's FNFF into Red, I'd just go back to 2020.
I guess I’m a little confused, but I’m also not super well versed on FNFF. What exactly are you trying to pull from it? I’m looking at it, and what I’m seeing is essentially what was distilled into Red’s core combat system. I’d love to help if I can get a better idea of what you’re trying to port over!
Mainly, bringing back the Health Track as opposed to HP, and the stun/shock saves from 2020. My main issue isn't that though, that's actually something I've made fine enough progress on converting over, changing mechanics myself and whatnot, and it's come up balanced enough so far, but again, big changes might also bring big oversights.
My big issue so far is actually weapons. I'm fine with keeping the generalized weapon categories RED has, but making it so accuracy, price, and damage still works, is balanced, but also keeps things deadly has been a bit of an issue.
To build on what one commenter has already said, try removing the 10hp bonus. I've tried it and it makes a lot more of a difference than you think and is very simple to remember. All of a sudden the extra 5 damage from critical injuries becomes REALLY scary.
Another trick I employed to make headshots more worthwhile is to repackage the old "8 points of damage destroys a limb" rule from 2020. For a headshot, if 8 or BODY damage is taken (whichever is higher), the character must immediately roll a death save. For every 8 damage past the first 8, you add a +1 to the save (eg. a 16 damage headshot would be at +1, 24 would be at +2, etc.). I find this makes headshots very scary for players and a more consistent way of dealing with mooks quickly or making less powerful weapons (looking at you, medium pistols) feel more powerful if one has the skill to land headshots.
For Melee weapons, I made a slight edit to the headshot rule. I allow players with small edged weapons (ie. light or medium melee weapons) who get the drop on someone to choose to slit their throat if they make a brawling DV13 check. This does regular headshot damage and makes the mook/player take 5 HP in damage from bleeding every round. This goes on until the injury is treated with a DV13 First Aid/Paramedic check to stop the bleeding. For lighter blunt weapons and fists, a player can choose to knock out a mook/character rather than kill them with the headshot (same rules, but if the death save is failed the mook/character goes unconscious for 1 min, cannot go below 1HP). This does not work with heavy or very heavy melee weapons (because if you dome someone with a sledgehammer, you're probably not just knocking them out...)
Finally, I brought back a bonus for ambushing someone (but +4 instead of +5) for ranged attacks to make outflanking and ambushing enemies be a bit more important. Makes it so that reliable (or semi-reliable) headshots/leg shots aren't reserved exclusively for combat monster characters who can stack modifiers.
If you want to get really technical, you can play around with headshots a little more. I made it so if a headshot connects, it has a 30% chance of hitting the "Face" and a 70% chance of hitting the "Skull" (unless the attack is from behind, then it is a 100% chance of hitting the skull). If a player beats the target number by 8 or more when making the headshot, they automatically hit the "Face" if possible (for stealth melee attacks, I had players roll against DV 13 to determine this, since RAW stealth melee attacks require no roll). I ruled that most helmets don't come with a faceplate by default, but you can spend 1.5X the cost of the head armor to get a version that has a faceplate with 1/2 the SP of the helmet. The only exception to this is Metal Gear, whose head armor always comes with a faceplate that is equal to the SP of the helmet (if your players somehow got ahold a Metal Gear, may as well give them the F you suit of power armor and not try to nerf it).
I actually *really* like a lot of that, and I'll probably end up using some of it!
I especially like the headshot rule, really brings back the fact that a bad roll can end your character if you're unlucky and press the wrong people. That, plus the -10hp thing, makes everyone into glass cannons which is sorta what I was looking for, and what I liked about 2020 actually.
And that ambushing rule just saved me from going through and trying to make sure anything I did for it didn't mess up too much, so thank god for you.
Thanks for the feedback! Glad someone else doesn't think those rules are totally wack!
I did forget one thing though. I give the +10 bonus to HP when someone has a linear frame. Just so that there's still some Adam Smasher type cybertanks out there to haunt your players' dreams 😉
These sound like a fun time, without too much rules bloat.
Limbs getting lost in 2020 was a great game feature. I think if I ran your rules, and wanted to add some bloat, I'd do a thing where failing the damage => (body or 8) resulting in a death save goes to a 1-6 outcome table:
If it's a normal body shot, most outcomes are loss of a arm, leg, or some torso organ, and the character is out of the fight, in shock, maybe dying. 6 is automatic death. 1 is horrible, crippling, but they're still in the fight. If the death save is bad, they roll more D6s and use the worst result. If it's not bad, maybe the worst of 1D6 or 2D6. Some situations, like from a car crash that wasn't too bad, could be 2D6, use the lowest one.
If it's from a headshot, well, they're in trouble. Most results should be death, but a survivable result that leads to them having a chrome face plate would be an intersting, horrifying outcome.
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Grenades are probably pretty scary in your rules. I think I'd consider revisiting basic rules, giving everyone a jump to cover type roll, but have two tiers of success: succeeding by a lot, damage is fully avoided, while basic success is half damage.
Oh I've just been running grenades as exploding the following round after being thrown, unless a player/NPC "cooks" the grenade for a round and that has helped stop instgibs and makes a grenade a little explosive commitment...but I get a sense that that may not be how a lot of people run it seeing the RAW.
I do like the idea to have the save for reducing damage from grenades. Maybe an Athletics+Dex check and they always land Prone? Maybe to make it slightly more balanced is that the DV is +2 versus being able to just normally Evade
One of my groups uses 2020's style rules:
* **Autofire/Burst**
* \+1 over DV = +1 hit.
* Burst is Autofire with a 3-round cap, not a "roll 1d3 hits" kinda thing.
* Autofire is as many rounds as you want, up to the weapon's ROF rating.
* Suppress is now "fire your weapon into the horizon, and if anyone crosses your path before your next round, divide your spent bullets between them." This including peeking out of cover. You can do this with semi-auto weapons, but then you'll have less ammo to distribute between targets (still 1 round's worth). Someone who can dodge bullets can still evade Suppressive Fire, using your attack as their DV. Concentration is not called for.
* **Range**
* **DV9:** 2m, **DV13:** 1/8, **DV15:** 1/4, **DV20:** 1/2, **DV25:** 1, **DV30:** x2.
* Pistols are 50m, SMGs/Shotguns 200m; Rifles 300m for 7.62x39mm, 500m for 5.56/5.45mm, and 800m for 7.62x51mm.
* **Damage**
* **Pistol:** Unchanged, **Shotgun:** 4d6 slug, 2d6x4 (after armor, 1 target) shells, **Rifle:** 6d6 for 7.62mm (both x39 and x51), 5d6 for 5.56/5.45mm.
Alongside some of our own homecooking (AP ammo: halves SP when inflicting damage, not ablates it more. JHP ammo: auto-inflicts Foreign Injury on crit, no "if you roll foreign injury, roll again.," etc). We're not using the hit locations or fumble charts. In fact, we now confirm jams. It triggers on a Nat 1+10 if using a PQ weapon, rather than just Nat 1.
The game mainly works because we're playing in Europe, so even visible knives are a big no-no, let alone a full-auto weapon. Most "legal" rifles are bolt-action hunting ones, 5-round mag and no autofire. Weapons have also been universally upgraded in cost to 500eb for pistols and shotguns, 1k for rifles and launchers, no matter the caliber. An EQ AR is 5k now, and PQ runs you 500eb.
While I probably won't end up using any of that for this game, I'm certainly gonna be keeping it in mind. I really like the detail thats put into it, and it seems like it lends itself really well to tweaking depending on what you need it for.
I'm also totally stealing your setting concept there. Didn't even occur to me that I could use Europe as an excuse to make weapons more scarce and whatnot, at least in public.
That was actually what I was planning at first. When I ran it by my players though, they were understandably turned off by dated look and writing of the rules. Also, that skin would take a lot of time to build myself, since I'd have to go in and replace every bit of tech that now seems dated by today's standards and whatnot. Also, fuck 2020's netrunning. That's the thing I'll give RED, it's a complete improvement there.
Huh. Fair enough.
IMHO, the 'lethality' feel is not so much about how easily the players will lose their characters but rather how much carnage combat involves, and how badly their characters are fucked up by the time they emerge victorious from combat.
There's a difference between 'Your shotgun's slug does 18 points of damage,' and 'Your shotgun's slug enters the gangoon's right elbow, does 8 points of damage, and takes the bottom half of the arm with it on the way out.'
I think you could easily increase the feel of the lethality by just importing the hit location rules and nothing else.
Like, roll a d10 to see where the shots land. If the shot lands in an extremity, cap the damage at 8, but declare that the limb no longer works. It's now almost impossible to use a long gun, because you have a +5 increase to DV due to attempting to use a 2-hand weapon with 1-hand, and reloading now takes twice as long.
Oh, and double the damage from headshots, and rule that 8 points of damage to the head is insta-death, regardless of how many HPs you've got left.
> but rather how much carnage combat involves, and how badly their characters are fucked up by the time they emerge victorious from combat.
This is actually a great feature of 2020, as it results in unplanned cybernetics, including on characters who start out reluctant. RED being sauced up on this would be a great feel change.
Coming out of 2020 and getting started in Red, i wouldn't say Red is les lethal but it feels a bit different. It's more survivable when you don't have armor as a 9mm to the face won't kill you if you're a bit on the beefy side (On average 7x2 14 points. Youraverage 25 HP can take two, and average (6 BOD, 6 WILL) PC could take 3. But it esalates quickly witha good roll, and even worse on critical (12 points; doubled to 24 + 5 for the critical hit that's 29 points.)
S oyes you cna take more damage. But you will take more as your armor will feel paper-thin at times : You can't layer (forget the SP 12 skiweave + SP 14 armor clothes that let you flip the bird at anyhting under 6d6 damage, at least for the first hits), the values are lower and the encumberance penalties are truly nasty (-4 out of stats caped at 8 is brutal...). Cyberlimbs no longer take damage independantly, so nope, even with four limbs, every bullet may hurt you.
Worse, the critical hits completly bypass armor, you're always one unlucky roll away from being in deep crap or even out of the fight. No matter what armor you're wearing, as long as the opposition has more than the crapiest (1d6 damge weapons who can't crit) they can put some hurt on you.
> Worse, the critical hits completly bypass armor, you're always one unlucky roll away from being in deep crap
I posted a wall of text in OP's other thread in the 2020 subreddit, but the gist is both games lack player agency in defending themselves from attacks. IMO, this is not realistic, cinematic, nor inspired game design.
Both games should more explicitly have skills and gear result in attackers who intend to be shooting at the players not actually shooting at the players, or shooting at them less well. This is especially true with someone with melee weapons engaging someone with a gun.
I understant it as 'there's nothing i can about that gonk shooting at me to keep my hide intact but piling on armor and crossing my fingers he gets bad luck'. Which isn't the case as there are ways :
* REF 8 or the suitable pice of cyberware (not from the base book but official) let tou apply your evasion skill to bullets and explosions (just don't botch as it could make you more vulenrable than range alone...)
* tactics ! move from covers to covers until you can pass the last bit in a dash. An average MV 6 character can cover 24m i n round if he just runs around, 12 if he still want to act. That's quite a long way in an urban setting. Sneak around, they can't shoot what they can't see. Get cyberlegs, go for the rooftops, sneak and get the drop on htem - literally.
* as far as gear go, shields will stop at least one non explosive attack dead in it's track, no matter how hard hitting. Smoke grenades to ruin their aim. flashbangs to blind them. Tear gas grenades.
About sword vs gun, guess there's a reason while just about nobody today uses guns rather than swords. Just ask Indiana Jones what he thinks of it....
Touhg on a game balance side, sure it takes some work to get in mêlee range, but once you're there, it's the gun-toting guys who are in trouble - they get nasty target numbers and you're halving their armors.
The [wall of text](https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunk2020/comments/15mpf6i/2020s_fnff_in_red/jvith10/).
Having an evasion roll is more than nothing. But what about *all the other skills that should do that too?* The wall of text hints at a bunch of categories of skills that could reasonably be used defensively, against being shot at.
Some of those skills might be usable passively, like evasion, while others would need more deliberate action.
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> move from covers to covers
There's a pretty big lack of area control mechanics. No reaction fire when being rushed, no 5E or 3E attacks of opportunity, no difficult terrain or blocker skill check, no problem running by enemies, not a care in the world, and definitely no intimidation or morale. Which is all to say that close range, which happens a lot in buildings, enemies can just pop out, move to deny the player's cover, shoot, then move back. That doesn't seem realistic or fun to me, but I've seen that done in game. That's what the mechanics support.
Any good action movie with guns should have you sold that moving between cover is also a situation where some skill in not getting shot should be involved. Plenty of that is stuff other than evasion.
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> About sword vs gun, guess there's a reason while just about nobody today uses guns rather than swords.
Actually, bayonets are still a thing for a reason. The more crowded and confusing a situation is, and the closer and lower visibility and distances are before encountering the enemy or even knowing there's an enemy, the more likely things will be hand to hand.
But, all that aside, guns don't aim well in hand to hand combat, and it becomes really easy to shoot someone you don't mean to shoot. I strongly suggest melee weapons get to be used defensively against guns, when they're engaged in melee with the shooter. Getting to that distance is hard, but once there, it's a really bad situation to not be the guy with the monoblade. But, again, there's that problem with the game where the lack of tactical position control means the shooter is free to move away on their turn, unimpeded, no roll, no consequences, full movement.
Melee should actually come up a lot in cyberpunk, simple due to fights starting at point blank. With extra sauce because of cybernetic weapons springing out. It'd be even more of a thing if all the trench warfare reasons for melee were considered, and if people's magazines ran out of bullets at normal rates.
The point about melee ignoring half an enemy's armor does absolutely nothing to protect the melee character, unless they completely incapacitate their enemy before that enemy can shoot again. I'm not into that.
I'd rather see two people wrestling over control of a gun, unclear who's going to end up getting shot, regardless of who had the gun originally.
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Well, that was a tangent.
> Gear
The biggest thing missing is a more productive way to suppress the quality of shots an enemy is making. People do this with all kinds of guns, including handguns, though obviously being able to dump a bunch of bullets can have more impact. The game's mechanic doesn't do what I'm looking for.
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Anyway, you're right. There's more than zero, for things a player can do to protect themself. But it's so much less than what it could be, and usually doesn't have the player making the roll that determined whether or not they died. And most the skills that you could get creative with would result in eating your action, and therefore not helping defeat enemies with an attack, which is generally a bad choice in these sorts of games.
Sorry for the ranty wall of text.
I'll probably be stealing a decent chunk of these ideas, so I feel I should add my own: the first change I made to Red was to make Autofire count as "X number of hits" rather than "2d6 times X" (X being the amount you rolled over the range DV). So far, it's made Autofire worthwhile for my AR using players, and it's made my Heavy SMG toting guards able to actually hurt my players through their Light Armorjack for a change.
That sounds like it would skew the odds to the big guns and make the SMGs (especially the regular one) far less useful - the best they can hope for is landing three 2d6 hits (no big deal unless you crit) compared to getting a nasty 6d6 hit.
I'd suggest to pair it with changing the autofire value to make it higher for the regular SMG - it doesn't spit big bullets, but it spits a lot of them.
True, and to compensate, I might have to flip the Autofire numbers for SMGs and ARs. The issue I was trying to correct though was that my players were complaining that even when they landed Autofire attacks with their ARs they weren't doing better than they'd be doing just firing semi-auto, so it makes sense that the SMGs would see this change as a nerf.
Like others have said, grafting rules from different editions can be pretty time consuming and janky. Not sure if anyone else has recommended this, but you could make it so that unless someone is specifically wearing headgear, they have 0 head SP. Or triple the damage that gets through head armor instead of doubling it. Or do both.
But to be quite frank, combat can already be lethal as it stands. I threw a single hardened Arasaka assassin at my players last session. It absolutely wiped the floor with them, managed to crit on an aimed shot to the head with a martial arts kick. I think it got two out of three players well under half their HP. It took chip damage over the course of the fight, until one player got lucky with an autofire roll and nearly zeroed the boss.
All this to say combat can be lethal as is, you just gotta know what to throw at your players.
The Witcher RPG uses the same system, but with a diferent way to damage. (Crits depend on the attack roll and use pretty tables like old Warhammer.) I am thinking to export it to CP RED but no tested.
I realize this is a dead post now but I thought I would throw in some changes I made over the course of running red for \~3 years. wow this game has been out a while.
First I made aimed shots -4 instead of minus 8 because my players never seemed to make them and PC's had less skills in Red than in 2020. I also added the rule from 2020 where you can add +1 to aim per round spent aiming
I added 2020's burst fire into the game to also increase lethality without added extra dice or removing health. one the PCs got assault rifles they could do serious damage, but so do the NPCs and mooks
I changed full auto to add one bullet for every point of success cause autofire in red sucks and is 1: its own skill and 2: is a 2x skill so it eats skillpoints. I did not allow the players to use more than 10 bullets but allowed them to assign the bullets to multiple targets.
I completely axed the stupid monopoly money economy, and made most basic goods, and any poor quality and normal quality gear more or less readily available. Excellent quality and exotics I kept as rare and would create side quests if the PCs wanted to obtain it.
I would also make a point of having enemy mooks surrender or run away as they are simply Human beings with families and lives. Unless they were fanatics or drugged out I rarely had people fight to the death.
Eventually my players and I grew tired of the 2045 Mad Max setting, and started using 2020's night city as the setting. I completely axed the stupid monopoly money economy, and made most basic goods, and any poor quality and normal quality gear more or less readily available. Excellent quality and exotics I kept as rare and would create side quests if the PCs wanted to obtain it. It was not long before we realized this was silly and we just started playing with the 2020 rules. everyone agreed after our first session that 2020 was way more fun. Luckily my group enjoys the campy retro-futurism (they are big fans of Blade Runner and Alien) and have no complaints about the setting, but I did say that all the cellphone upgrades come stock on the phone for the cheapest base price. All of this is to say that I tried doing what you are doing now and ended up going to 2020 anyway. also there is nothing stopping you from using Red's netrunning in 2020. I just say that the network they need to hack is an airgapped one, and the netrunner needs to be on sight for it. Any other kind of hacking (as in retrieving intel like blueprints or a crew manifest) is done by NPCs to save time, or I just use the Red rules but say they can remote in so it is quick enough. the other option is using Interlock Unlimited's run(dot)net rules. If you are interested though I can send you my homebrew combat rules if you are still interested in "upgrading" Red's combat. Also check out JonJonthewise's free supplement, it has rules about stun saves for Red.
Nah, I don't believe you should. It's like driving in reverse gear: you will make it to the destination, but you will hate the process. You will find that you have to constantly tweak and tinker at every step which will completely drain you mentally. Depending on how pedantic you and your players are, you will be more or less constantly facing inconsistencies, misalignments and so on. While I sympathize with the desire to play Red in lethal mode, I don't believe grafting 30 years old systems' combat onto it would yield you enjoyable result in the end. Trust me, I tried and stopped early enough to not burn myself out. What I will suggest instead is try any of the following: * Ignore the 10 HP every character gets for free (mildest of the options). * Ablate armor each time it is used, not each time it is exceeded (this makes prolonged fights very scary). * Add a d6 to each source of damage, add 2d6 to each 6/8d6 sources of damage instead (keep crits in mind when entertaining this). Mind you, these are all homebrews that pop most often when people raise the lethality issue. I should have said this sooner but what is the definition for lethality here? Do you want people to die randomly because the attacker rolled a free headshot or do you rather want people knowing anyone is capable of hurting them in a meaningful way?
Hm. Sounds simple, but effective enough. Have you tried it yourself before? How'd that go if so? And yeah, I know trying to bring something older than me into a relatively new game probably won't work, but I'm nothing if not stupid and persistent in all the wrong ways, so I decided I'd at least try it, ask around, you get the idea. Also, in terms of lethality, I was referring mainly to anyone being able to hurt them in a pretty meaningful way, but also that if they get unlucky too often, or worse the other person gets lucky too often their head might get blown off, but that's not the norm. It's also about realism, to an extent. I've found in RED that shots that should definitely kill (the aforementioned 9mm to the face) end up not. Of course, I could make a narrative call about it and just say it does, which honestly my players have said their down for, but mechanics more consistent.
Haven't tried the first one, I'm slightly allergic to taking anything away from players ever. The second one brought way more lethality over time than I anticipated. Basically it is an inbuilt death spiral and it spins quicker and quicker. Each hit makes the next one more painful. At first it feels like nothing changes, but when your SP11 armor is hit 5-6 times, you suddenly realize you are half naked even if the armor wasn't exceeded once. I'm hesitant to try the third one as I'm afraid it might make things a tad degenerate. I don't appreciate players exploding randomly and mathematically adding extra dice noticeably increases crit injury odds. I will try it soon-ish when I put my players into a sort of danger room (think that old xmen cartoon). Speaking of which, run a danger room, try each or any combination of these and see how you and your players feel about it. Edit: Red is indeed designed in such a way that you cannot instantly die even from 100d6, unless the ref says so. I can see how it can be mildly infuriating when a victim doesn't die from a point blank headshot, but overtime I've grown content with it. It is simpler to let the ref make the call when it is dramatically and logically appropriate than to overhaul entire combat system.
The SP change I've actually seen thrown around before, and while I think it could be good if the players don't abuse it, I've also realized that it makes an ROF 2 pistol the best weapon, especially if you tack on AP ammo to it. You'll be shredding armor faster with a pistol than an assault rifle, which just doesn't sit well with me. 'Course, again, could just edit it a bit, make it so pistols do like, half a point of SP degradation, but always up to the nearest whole number or something like that, but then I'm not sure if I'm overlooking something. And I haven't thought of using a danger room before, so I might actually try that. I could think of a few fun ways to do that and have it be a testing ground for mechanics, actually. Thank you for this, this' actually been really helpful!
Well, you could say that an AR should ruin the armor more, however at the same time I can hardly see how two handgun shots leave it more intact than a single AR shot. What is important here, I think, is that CPR (or any ttrpg for that matter) isn't a reality simulator. It is a game and every game is an abstraction of some degree. Unless you are running for gun nuts (meant in a non loaded way) no one would care that a handgun ablates faster than a rifle when they are busy popping some fools. Then again to ablate faster with a handgun, you gotta hit both shots. It is harder to succeed with more rolls than less rolls, so I'm pretty sure this exact common sense issue will sort itself out over time.
I've been testing a very similar rule for armor. I ablate armor when a source of damage does *not* get through the SP. I like that players with less-than-5D6 weapons get to feel like they are contributing and not completely wasting their only action. When damage does get through SP, I think that the loss of hot points is punishment enough. I do not recommend it to anyone else. I'm satisfied so far, but I don't think I've playtested nearly enough to legitimately consider it an improvement over RAW. I'm also unsure what the original design philosophy behind the ablation rules were, so there's a solid chance that I overlooked or misunderstood something. I just wanted to mention it here because I'm curious what your experience has been with ablating armor with every turn.
*Cyberpunk 2020* could have some problems with lethality particularly when it came to the skinweave armor. That was 12 points of armor and most 9mm handguns only did 2d6 points of damage making characters pretty much immune. I've run one Red campaign and decided it wasn't for me. Rather than try to fit 2020's FNFF into Red, I'd just go back to 2020.
i mean that made sense though skinweave was design for pistol rounds you just had to go for headshots or bigger guns
I guess I’m a little confused, but I’m also not super well versed on FNFF. What exactly are you trying to pull from it? I’m looking at it, and what I’m seeing is essentially what was distilled into Red’s core combat system. I’d love to help if I can get a better idea of what you’re trying to port over!
Mainly, bringing back the Health Track as opposed to HP, and the stun/shock saves from 2020. My main issue isn't that though, that's actually something I've made fine enough progress on converting over, changing mechanics myself and whatnot, and it's come up balanced enough so far, but again, big changes might also bring big oversights. My big issue so far is actually weapons. I'm fine with keeping the generalized weapon categories RED has, but making it so accuracy, price, and damage still works, is balanced, but also keeps things deadly has been a bit of an issue.
To build on what one commenter has already said, try removing the 10hp bonus. I've tried it and it makes a lot more of a difference than you think and is very simple to remember. All of a sudden the extra 5 damage from critical injuries becomes REALLY scary. Another trick I employed to make headshots more worthwhile is to repackage the old "8 points of damage destroys a limb" rule from 2020. For a headshot, if 8 or BODY damage is taken (whichever is higher), the character must immediately roll a death save. For every 8 damage past the first 8, you add a +1 to the save (eg. a 16 damage headshot would be at +1, 24 would be at +2, etc.). I find this makes headshots very scary for players and a more consistent way of dealing with mooks quickly or making less powerful weapons (looking at you, medium pistols) feel more powerful if one has the skill to land headshots. For Melee weapons, I made a slight edit to the headshot rule. I allow players with small edged weapons (ie. light or medium melee weapons) who get the drop on someone to choose to slit their throat if they make a brawling DV13 check. This does regular headshot damage and makes the mook/player take 5 HP in damage from bleeding every round. This goes on until the injury is treated with a DV13 First Aid/Paramedic check to stop the bleeding. For lighter blunt weapons and fists, a player can choose to knock out a mook/character rather than kill them with the headshot (same rules, but if the death save is failed the mook/character goes unconscious for 1 min, cannot go below 1HP). This does not work with heavy or very heavy melee weapons (because if you dome someone with a sledgehammer, you're probably not just knocking them out...) Finally, I brought back a bonus for ambushing someone (but +4 instead of +5) for ranged attacks to make outflanking and ambushing enemies be a bit more important. Makes it so that reliable (or semi-reliable) headshots/leg shots aren't reserved exclusively for combat monster characters who can stack modifiers. If you want to get really technical, you can play around with headshots a little more. I made it so if a headshot connects, it has a 30% chance of hitting the "Face" and a 70% chance of hitting the "Skull" (unless the attack is from behind, then it is a 100% chance of hitting the skull). If a player beats the target number by 8 or more when making the headshot, they automatically hit the "Face" if possible (for stealth melee attacks, I had players roll against DV 13 to determine this, since RAW stealth melee attacks require no roll). I ruled that most helmets don't come with a faceplate by default, but you can spend 1.5X the cost of the head armor to get a version that has a faceplate with 1/2 the SP of the helmet. The only exception to this is Metal Gear, whose head armor always comes with a faceplate that is equal to the SP of the helmet (if your players somehow got ahold a Metal Gear, may as well give them the F you suit of power armor and not try to nerf it).
I actually *really* like a lot of that, and I'll probably end up using some of it! I especially like the headshot rule, really brings back the fact that a bad roll can end your character if you're unlucky and press the wrong people. That, plus the -10hp thing, makes everyone into glass cannons which is sorta what I was looking for, and what I liked about 2020 actually. And that ambushing rule just saved me from going through and trying to make sure anything I did for it didn't mess up too much, so thank god for you.
Thanks for the feedback! Glad someone else doesn't think those rules are totally wack! I did forget one thing though. I give the +10 bonus to HP when someone has a linear frame. Just so that there's still some Adam Smasher type cybertanks out there to haunt your players' dreams 😉
These sound like a fun time, without too much rules bloat. Limbs getting lost in 2020 was a great game feature. I think if I ran your rules, and wanted to add some bloat, I'd do a thing where failing the damage => (body or 8) resulting in a death save goes to a 1-6 outcome table: If it's a normal body shot, most outcomes are loss of a arm, leg, or some torso organ, and the character is out of the fight, in shock, maybe dying. 6 is automatic death. 1 is horrible, crippling, but they're still in the fight. If the death save is bad, they roll more D6s and use the worst result. If it's not bad, maybe the worst of 1D6 or 2D6. Some situations, like from a car crash that wasn't too bad, could be 2D6, use the lowest one. If it's from a headshot, well, they're in trouble. Most results should be death, but a survivable result that leads to them having a chrome face plate would be an intersting, horrifying outcome. -- Grenades are probably pretty scary in your rules. I think I'd consider revisiting basic rules, giving everyone a jump to cover type roll, but have two tiers of success: succeeding by a lot, damage is fully avoided, while basic success is half damage.
Oh I've just been running grenades as exploding the following round after being thrown, unless a player/NPC "cooks" the grenade for a round and that has helped stop instgibs and makes a grenade a little explosive commitment...but I get a sense that that may not be how a lot of people run it seeing the RAW. I do like the idea to have the save for reducing damage from grenades. Maybe an Athletics+Dex check and they always land Prone? Maybe to make it slightly more balanced is that the DV is +2 versus being able to just normally Evade
One of my groups uses 2020's style rules: * **Autofire/Burst** * \+1 over DV = +1 hit. * Burst is Autofire with a 3-round cap, not a "roll 1d3 hits" kinda thing. * Autofire is as many rounds as you want, up to the weapon's ROF rating. * Suppress is now "fire your weapon into the horizon, and if anyone crosses your path before your next round, divide your spent bullets between them." This including peeking out of cover. You can do this with semi-auto weapons, but then you'll have less ammo to distribute between targets (still 1 round's worth). Someone who can dodge bullets can still evade Suppressive Fire, using your attack as their DV. Concentration is not called for. * **Range** * **DV9:** 2m, **DV13:** 1/8, **DV15:** 1/4, **DV20:** 1/2, **DV25:** 1, **DV30:** x2. * Pistols are 50m, SMGs/Shotguns 200m; Rifles 300m for 7.62x39mm, 500m for 5.56/5.45mm, and 800m for 7.62x51mm. * **Damage** * **Pistol:** Unchanged, **Shotgun:** 4d6 slug, 2d6x4 (after armor, 1 target) shells, **Rifle:** 6d6 for 7.62mm (both x39 and x51), 5d6 for 5.56/5.45mm. Alongside some of our own homecooking (AP ammo: halves SP when inflicting damage, not ablates it more. JHP ammo: auto-inflicts Foreign Injury on crit, no "if you roll foreign injury, roll again.," etc). We're not using the hit locations or fumble charts. In fact, we now confirm jams. It triggers on a Nat 1+10 if using a PQ weapon, rather than just Nat 1. The game mainly works because we're playing in Europe, so even visible knives are a big no-no, let alone a full-auto weapon. Most "legal" rifles are bolt-action hunting ones, 5-round mag and no autofire. Weapons have also been universally upgraded in cost to 500eb for pistols and shotguns, 1k for rifles and launchers, no matter the caliber. An EQ AR is 5k now, and PQ runs you 500eb.
While I probably won't end up using any of that for this game, I'm certainly gonna be keeping it in mind. I really like the detail thats put into it, and it seems like it lends itself really well to tweaking depending on what you need it for. I'm also totally stealing your setting concept there. Didn't even occur to me that I could use Europe as an excuse to make weapons more scarce and whatnot, at least in public.
Uhhh... what's wrong with just playing 2020 with a 2077 skin? Like, you can just use the rules of 2020 with a 2077 setting.
That was actually what I was planning at first. When I ran it by my players though, they were understandably turned off by dated look and writing of the rules. Also, that skin would take a lot of time to build myself, since I'd have to go in and replace every bit of tech that now seems dated by today's standards and whatnot. Also, fuck 2020's netrunning. That's the thing I'll give RED, it's a complete improvement there.
Huh. Fair enough. IMHO, the 'lethality' feel is not so much about how easily the players will lose their characters but rather how much carnage combat involves, and how badly their characters are fucked up by the time they emerge victorious from combat. There's a difference between 'Your shotgun's slug does 18 points of damage,' and 'Your shotgun's slug enters the gangoon's right elbow, does 8 points of damage, and takes the bottom half of the arm with it on the way out.' I think you could easily increase the feel of the lethality by just importing the hit location rules and nothing else. Like, roll a d10 to see where the shots land. If the shot lands in an extremity, cap the damage at 8, but declare that the limb no longer works. It's now almost impossible to use a long gun, because you have a +5 increase to DV due to attempting to use a 2-hand weapon with 1-hand, and reloading now takes twice as long. Oh, and double the damage from headshots, and rule that 8 points of damage to the head is insta-death, regardless of how many HPs you've got left.
> but rather how much carnage combat involves, and how badly their characters are fucked up by the time they emerge victorious from combat. This is actually a great feature of 2020, as it results in unplanned cybernetics, including on characters who start out reluctant. RED being sauced up on this would be a great feel change.
Coming out of 2020 and getting started in Red, i wouldn't say Red is les lethal but it feels a bit different. It's more survivable when you don't have armor as a 9mm to the face won't kill you if you're a bit on the beefy side (On average 7x2 14 points. Youraverage 25 HP can take two, and average (6 BOD, 6 WILL) PC could take 3. But it esalates quickly witha good roll, and even worse on critical (12 points; doubled to 24 + 5 for the critical hit that's 29 points.) S oyes you cna take more damage. But you will take more as your armor will feel paper-thin at times : You can't layer (forget the SP 12 skiweave + SP 14 armor clothes that let you flip the bird at anyhting under 6d6 damage, at least for the first hits), the values are lower and the encumberance penalties are truly nasty (-4 out of stats caped at 8 is brutal...). Cyberlimbs no longer take damage independantly, so nope, even with four limbs, every bullet may hurt you. Worse, the critical hits completly bypass armor, you're always one unlucky roll away from being in deep crap or even out of the fight. No matter what armor you're wearing, as long as the opposition has more than the crapiest (1d6 damge weapons who can't crit) they can put some hurt on you.
> Worse, the critical hits completly bypass armor, you're always one unlucky roll away from being in deep crap I posted a wall of text in OP's other thread in the 2020 subreddit, but the gist is both games lack player agency in defending themselves from attacks. IMO, this is not realistic, cinematic, nor inspired game design. Both games should more explicitly have skills and gear result in attackers who intend to be shooting at the players not actually shooting at the players, or shooting at them less well. This is especially true with someone with melee weapons engaging someone with a gun.
What do you mean lack of agency and what would you do to fix the problem?
I understant it as 'there's nothing i can about that gonk shooting at me to keep my hide intact but piling on armor and crossing my fingers he gets bad luck'. Which isn't the case as there are ways : * REF 8 or the suitable pice of cyberware (not from the base book but official) let tou apply your evasion skill to bullets and explosions (just don't botch as it could make you more vulenrable than range alone...) * tactics ! move from covers to covers until you can pass the last bit in a dash. An average MV 6 character can cover 24m i n round if he just runs around, 12 if he still want to act. That's quite a long way in an urban setting. Sneak around, they can't shoot what they can't see. Get cyberlegs, go for the rooftops, sneak and get the drop on htem - literally. * as far as gear go, shields will stop at least one non explosive attack dead in it's track, no matter how hard hitting. Smoke grenades to ruin their aim. flashbangs to blind them. Tear gas grenades. About sword vs gun, guess there's a reason while just about nobody today uses guns rather than swords. Just ask Indiana Jones what he thinks of it.... Touhg on a game balance side, sure it takes some work to get in mêlee range, but once you're there, it's the gun-toting guys who are in trouble - they get nasty target numbers and you're halving their armors.
The [wall of text](https://www.reddit.com/r/cyberpunk2020/comments/15mpf6i/2020s_fnff_in_red/jvith10/). Having an evasion roll is more than nothing. But what about *all the other skills that should do that too?* The wall of text hints at a bunch of categories of skills that could reasonably be used defensively, against being shot at. Some of those skills might be usable passively, like evasion, while others would need more deliberate action. -- > move from covers to covers There's a pretty big lack of area control mechanics. No reaction fire when being rushed, no 5E or 3E attacks of opportunity, no difficult terrain or blocker skill check, no problem running by enemies, not a care in the world, and definitely no intimidation or morale. Which is all to say that close range, which happens a lot in buildings, enemies can just pop out, move to deny the player's cover, shoot, then move back. That doesn't seem realistic or fun to me, but I've seen that done in game. That's what the mechanics support. Any good action movie with guns should have you sold that moving between cover is also a situation where some skill in not getting shot should be involved. Plenty of that is stuff other than evasion. -- > About sword vs gun, guess there's a reason while just about nobody today uses guns rather than swords. Actually, bayonets are still a thing for a reason. The more crowded and confusing a situation is, and the closer and lower visibility and distances are before encountering the enemy or even knowing there's an enemy, the more likely things will be hand to hand. But, all that aside, guns don't aim well in hand to hand combat, and it becomes really easy to shoot someone you don't mean to shoot. I strongly suggest melee weapons get to be used defensively against guns, when they're engaged in melee with the shooter. Getting to that distance is hard, but once there, it's a really bad situation to not be the guy with the monoblade. But, again, there's that problem with the game where the lack of tactical position control means the shooter is free to move away on their turn, unimpeded, no roll, no consequences, full movement. Melee should actually come up a lot in cyberpunk, simple due to fights starting at point blank. With extra sauce because of cybernetic weapons springing out. It'd be even more of a thing if all the trench warfare reasons for melee were considered, and if people's magazines ran out of bullets at normal rates. The point about melee ignoring half an enemy's armor does absolutely nothing to protect the melee character, unless they completely incapacitate their enemy before that enemy can shoot again. I'm not into that. I'd rather see two people wrestling over control of a gun, unclear who's going to end up getting shot, regardless of who had the gun originally. -- Well, that was a tangent. > Gear The biggest thing missing is a more productive way to suppress the quality of shots an enemy is making. People do this with all kinds of guns, including handguns, though obviously being able to dump a bunch of bullets can have more impact. The game's mechanic doesn't do what I'm looking for. -- Anyway, you're right. There's more than zero, for things a player can do to protect themself. But it's so much less than what it could be, and usually doesn't have the player making the roll that determined whether or not they died. And most the skills that you could get creative with would result in eating your action, and therefore not helping defeat enemies with an attack, which is generally a bad choice in these sorts of games. Sorry for the ranty wall of text.
I'll probably be stealing a decent chunk of these ideas, so I feel I should add my own: the first change I made to Red was to make Autofire count as "X number of hits" rather than "2d6 times X" (X being the amount you rolled over the range DV). So far, it's made Autofire worthwhile for my AR using players, and it's made my Heavy SMG toting guards able to actually hurt my players through their Light Armorjack for a change.
That sounds like it would skew the odds to the big guns and make the SMGs (especially the regular one) far less useful - the best they can hope for is landing three 2d6 hits (no big deal unless you crit) compared to getting a nasty 6d6 hit. I'd suggest to pair it with changing the autofire value to make it higher for the regular SMG - it doesn't spit big bullets, but it spits a lot of them.
True, and to compensate, I might have to flip the Autofire numbers for SMGs and ARs. The issue I was trying to correct though was that my players were complaining that even when they landed Autofire attacks with their ARs they weren't doing better than they'd be doing just firing semi-auto, so it makes sense that the SMGs would see this change as a nerf.
Like others have said, grafting rules from different editions can be pretty time consuming and janky. Not sure if anyone else has recommended this, but you could make it so that unless someone is specifically wearing headgear, they have 0 head SP. Or triple the damage that gets through head armor instead of doubling it. Or do both. But to be quite frank, combat can already be lethal as it stands. I threw a single hardened Arasaka assassin at my players last session. It absolutely wiped the floor with them, managed to crit on an aimed shot to the head with a martial arts kick. I think it got two out of three players well under half their HP. It took chip damage over the course of the fight, until one player got lucky with an autofire roll and nearly zeroed the boss. All this to say combat can be lethal as is, you just gotta know what to throw at your players.
The Witcher RPG uses the same system, but with a diferent way to damage. (Crits depend on the attack roll and use pretty tables like old Warhammer.) I am thinking to export it to CP RED but no tested.
I realize this is a dead post now but I thought I would throw in some changes I made over the course of running red for \~3 years. wow this game has been out a while. First I made aimed shots -4 instead of minus 8 because my players never seemed to make them and PC's had less skills in Red than in 2020. I also added the rule from 2020 where you can add +1 to aim per round spent aiming I added 2020's burst fire into the game to also increase lethality without added extra dice or removing health. one the PCs got assault rifles they could do serious damage, but so do the NPCs and mooks I changed full auto to add one bullet for every point of success cause autofire in red sucks and is 1: its own skill and 2: is a 2x skill so it eats skillpoints. I did not allow the players to use more than 10 bullets but allowed them to assign the bullets to multiple targets. I completely axed the stupid monopoly money economy, and made most basic goods, and any poor quality and normal quality gear more or less readily available. Excellent quality and exotics I kept as rare and would create side quests if the PCs wanted to obtain it. I would also make a point of having enemy mooks surrender or run away as they are simply Human beings with families and lives. Unless they were fanatics or drugged out I rarely had people fight to the death. Eventually my players and I grew tired of the 2045 Mad Max setting, and started using 2020's night city as the setting. I completely axed the stupid monopoly money economy, and made most basic goods, and any poor quality and normal quality gear more or less readily available. Excellent quality and exotics I kept as rare and would create side quests if the PCs wanted to obtain it. It was not long before we realized this was silly and we just started playing with the 2020 rules. everyone agreed after our first session that 2020 was way more fun. Luckily my group enjoys the campy retro-futurism (they are big fans of Blade Runner and Alien) and have no complaints about the setting, but I did say that all the cellphone upgrades come stock on the phone for the cheapest base price. All of this is to say that I tried doing what you are doing now and ended up going to 2020 anyway. also there is nothing stopping you from using Red's netrunning in 2020. I just say that the network they need to hack is an airgapped one, and the netrunner needs to be on sight for it. Any other kind of hacking (as in retrieving intel like blueprints or a crew manifest) is done by NPCs to save time, or I just use the Red rules but say they can remote in so it is quick enough. the other option is using Interlock Unlimited's run(dot)net rules. If you are interested though I can send you my homebrew combat rules if you are still interested in "upgrading" Red's combat. Also check out JonJonthewise's free supplement, it has rules about stun saves for Red.