Critical Hit System

The following rules are modification to the Shadowrun, Second Edition System. They are meant to add an extra level of realism and deadliness to combat. Also, they are intended to give wounds a more lasting effect.

I love Shadowrun, but it's combat system is too campy for my tastes. The target modifiers for wounds are too wimpy. I mean, you're one box away from being clinically dead, and you've still only got a +3 to your target numbers. For experienced characters, that's next to nothing!

Also, there's the whole overdamage problem. Unless the guy is dead already, he's ALWAYS, under the main rules, got at least ten minutes to live. There's no need for the medic to hurry things along or anything. There's always a safe zone.

Not any more.

In these rules, it is possible for a character to die (if he doesn't get medical attention), no matter what the severity of the wound is (light, moderate, serious, deadly). Sure, certain wounds are more likely to kill than others, but you never know. The medics become even more valued. Is it really just a flesh wound, or is the poor street sammy bleeding internally, dying from the inside out? Also, there's no longer the ten minute safe zone. Different critical hits take longer or shorter times to cause death. It adds a lot more uncertainty to the game.

Also, an added bonus is the hit location system. While it's only intended to be used when a critical hit occurs, you can use it for non-critical wounds if you want.

SUMMARY

Here's a brief summary of the rules presented below.

1) Every time a character is wounded, he must make a Body check to determine whether the wound was a critical hit. The number of successes determine the lehality rating, which ranges from "Mortal" to "No Critical Hit." If no critical hit is done, there are no further modifications to the original SRII rules.

2) If it was a critical hit, however, the location must be determined, by rolling on the charts below.

3) Determine the "time before death" if it was a mortal critical hit, or other effects if it was not. These can all be found in the descriptions of each critical hit following the charts.

4) Determine any symptoms that the character suffers immediately resulting from the critical hit.

5) After the fighting is over (or sometimes during it, with magical healing) you'll want to know how your character can be treated for his injury.

Step 1: BODY CHECK

Whenever a character is wounded, the GM must roll his body, against a target number determined by the severity of the wound he just took. Note that the wounds are not added together, each wound is treated seperately. An individual hit is no more lethal just because the character has been previously wounded.

Severity	Base TN
Light Wound	auto/2
Moderate Wound	2/4
Serious Wound	4/6
Deadly Wound	8/10

Note that there are two TNs given for each level of wound. The second one listed (the higher of the two) is the one I recommed for the most change of game play and the most realism. Even a light wound could end up killing a character, and deadly wounds are really fragging deadly. However, I realize that not every team has a medic or a mage to save the characters from critical hits, so this could cause an extremely high character mortality rate. So I've presented an alternate set of TNs, which can be used to tone things down a little. Light wounds can not cause critical hits, and the others will not be as deadly.

Note that it's important for the GM to make this roll, and not the players. Because the whole uncertainty of the critical hit is eliminated when the player knows he got three successes and therefore is fine.

Step 1.1 : LETHALITY

The number of successes a character gets on his Body check will determine how lethal the critical hit was, and even if there was one at all.

There are four levels of lethality. The first is "No Critical Hit", and if this result is obtained, then ignore the rest of the steps in this system and continue with the SRII rules as written. The next lowest level is "Critical". Then comes "Crippling " and finally there is "Mortal." A mortal wound is just that...mortal. The character WILL die, unless he receives proper medical/magical care. The same goes for crippling. In some way, shape or form, a part of the character's body has been crippled. He will need a cybernetic/organic replacement, or else will have to deal with the disability. A critical wound is usually not much more than a severe annoyance. It's not life-threatening or life-altering in any real sense. Broken bones are usually the most common representation of this.

The number of successes directly corresponds to the lethality, as shown on the chart below:

Successes	Lethality Rating
0	Mortal
1	Crippling
2	Critical
3	No critical hit

In other words, a character with a body 3 will have to get all successes on his body check in order to have no critical hit. If you think this is too severe, I recommend one of two options. First, you can allow the characters to spend combat pool on this roll. Or, you can delete the "critical" category, so you only need 2 successes to have no effect.

Step 2: NATURE OF THE CRITICAL HIT

When a critical hit is suffered, roll 2d6 to determine the general area of the body that was affected. Consult the hit location table below:

Die Roll	Hit Location
2	head
3	right leg
4	right arm
5	abdomen
6	chest
7	chest
8	chest
9	abdomen
10	left arm
11	left leg
12	head

The chart below shows the various critical hits that can result in each hit location. To figure out what exactly happened as a result of the critical hit, roll 1d6 and consult the part of the chart that refers to the proper hit location.

Step 3: TIME BEFORE DEATH

There are four reasons that a critical hit can be lethal:

1. If it causes internal bleeding (abbreviated "IB")
2. If it causes brain death (abbreviated "brain")
3. If it causes a heart attack (abbreviated "heart")
4. If it causes suffocation (abbreviated "suffo")
5. If it severs an artery, causing massive bleeding (abbreviated "art")

Step 4: SYMPTOMS

Each critical hit has related symptoms, which are described in the section after the critical hit chart under "immediate effects".

Step 5: TREATMENT

Each critical hit has its own condition monitor. It is completley seperate from the physical and stun tracks for the wounded character. The lethality rating determines the number of "boxes" marked off this monitor as a result of the critical hit.

lethality	wound	penalty
Mortal	Deadly	+4
Crippling	Serious	+3
Critical	Moderate	+2

In other words, if a character has a serious physical wound, a moderate stun wound, and two crippling critical hits, he has a grand total of 21 boxes of damage, spit up over four different condition monitors as shown below. His total target number modifier is 3+2+3+3=+11. Sucks to be him.

X

Physical	Stun	Criticalhit+1	Criticalhit#2
X	X	X	X	L
X	X	X	X
X	X	X	X	M
X	-	X	X
X	-	X	X
X	-	X	X	S
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-
-	-	-	-	D

Step 5.1 : PENALTIES

The wound penalties listed above are TNs that apply to ALL tests relating to the injured location. So if a character has a broken arm (a "Critical" critical hit), he receives a +2 to all TNs using that arm. The GM must decide whether a given action involves the use of an injured location.

Step 5.2 : MAGICAL HEALING

A magician using a heal or treat spell must split his successes between the various condition monitors. However, there is a catch. If the magician doesn't know that there is a critical hit, he cannot allocate successes to it. The best he can do is decide to split his successes evenly between the actual damage and any critical hits there might be. If the successes won't divide evenly, the physical wound gets the "remainder".

Each successes "erases" one box of damage, just as in the main SRII rules. Once all the appropriate boxes have been erased, the new severity of each wound is calculated. So if the "mortal" critical hit (a deadly wound) was brought down by just 1 box, it is now a serious wound and this is only a "crippling" critical hit. If it was brought down by 5 boxes, it is now a moderate wound, and is a "critical" critical hit. Brining a critical hit down to a Light wound doesn't have any additional effect, it remains of "Critical" severity until it's healed completley.

For example, if a shaman was treating the poor slot described in the previous paragraph, he would need 18 successes to heal the man completely (there's nothing the shaman can do about the moderate stun wound). However, if he only got 10 successes, he would have to decide how to split up those successes. If he knew the critical hit was there, one choice would be to put 6 into the first critical hit, 1 into the other, and the remaining 3 into the physical wound. The revised condition monitors are shown below. However, if he didn't know the critical hit was there, he could either allocate all the successes to the damage only, or he could split the successes evenly (4 for the physical wound, 3 for one critical hit, and 3 for the other)

Note that this leaves the character with a moderate physical and stun wound. Also, Criticalhit#1 has been reduced in severity to a Moderate wound, which translates into a critical hit of "Critical" severity. Criticalhit#2 has been healed completely.

Step 5.3 : MEDICAL TREATMENT

A character with a Biotech skill is also able to treat critical hits. Anyone can default to biotech and attempt to aid a wounded character. However, medics have limits that healing magicians do not. First of all, in order to treat the critical hit at all, the medic must make a Biotech skill roll. The base TN is listed in the critical hit chart in the Diagnosis column. If the skill check is successful, the critical hit has been diagnosed. If it fails, then the medic doesn't realize that the critical hit is there, and CANNOT treat it! A medic who is keeping a close watch for developing symptoms (GM's call) can make another roll every minute, assuming the wounded character is still alive.

A magician with the Biotech skill who asenses the wounded character receives a -2 modifier to the diagnosis roll. Note that if the critical hit has an asterix (*) after the TN, that means that if the wound is open (like a bullet wound, knife cut, etc) then diagnosis is automatic. For closed wounds (falls, blunt attacks, spell damage), use the listed target number.

Another limit of modern medicine is that the attending medic cannot treat a crippling critical hit. If the wound was crippling, that's it. The wounded character must rely on cyberware, organic replacements, or take his chances with healing magic.

A medic can, however, treat mortal and critical wounds. In order to do so, he makes a Biotech skill check with a Base TN and base time determined by the lethality rating of the critical hit, as shown on the following chart. If the skill check is successful, the wound has been reduced in severity. A mortal wound becomes a crippling one (Serious wound on the critical hit condition monitor). A critical wound has been treated, but isn't cured completely. It is reduced to a Light Wound on the critical hit condition monitor (which reduces the wound penalty to a +1 instead of a +2).

Step 6 : NATURAL HEALING

A critical hit of "Critical" severity will eventually heal on its own. The base time is 8 weeks, divided by the number of successes on a Body roll. The base TN for this roll is 6, modified by the conditions in the following chart:

condition	modifier
Not In Hospital	+2
Wound not treated by medic or magic	+4
Wound not properly treated by medic	+2
Character's Body is a 1-2	+1
Character's Body is a 5-8	-1
Character's Body is a 9-12	-2
Character's Body is a 12+	-3

SPECIAL NOTES

• Magic and Critical Hits:

Combat spells can be a little tricky when talking about critical hits. You could say that since the spell affects the target's aura, then it wouldn't do a critical hit to any individual location. But this makes magic inherently less deadly than physical damage, because it CAN'T do a critical hit. So we came up with the following explanation. The spell hits the target's aura in a certain place, and from there it radiates to the rest of the body. So the part of the aura that's hit first takes the brunt of the damage, which could end up causing a critical hit.

• Logic

One final note about this system. It is impossible to create a damage system that works perfectly for every single type of wound that could possibly happen. So if you roll a result that just doesn't make sense, ignore it! These rules are meant to be a guideline, and work best for physical attacks such as bullets and melee attacks. Magic works all right most of the time. When in doubt, just keep in mind the descriptions of the lethality ratings. Mortal means that it was a mortal wound, in some way shape or form. Same with crippling and critical. That's the basis for this system, so always go back to that when there's some confusion about an individual result.

THE CRITICAL HIT TABLE
DieRoll	Hit	Reason	Time	Diagnose
CHEST
1.	lung	IB	1d6x10 min	4
2.	ribs	IB	1d6x10 min	4
3.	spine	suffo	1d6 min	4
4.	diaphragm	suffo	2d6 min	6
5.	heart	heart	1d6/2 min	2
6.	collarbone	art	1d6 min	4*
ABDOMEN
1.	stomach	IB	2d6 hours	8
2.	intestines	IB	2d6 hours	8
3.	diaphragm	suffo	2d6 min	6
4.	spleen	IB	1d6 hours	8
5.	kidney	IB	1d6 hours	8
6.	ribs	IB	1d6x10 min	4
HEAD
1.	skull	brain	1d6/2 min	2
2.	eye	brain	1d6/2 min	2
3.	ear	brain	1d6/2 min	2
4.	nose	brain	1d6/2 min	2
5.	jaw	art	2d6 min	4*
6.	neck	art	1d6/2 min	4*
ARM
1.	shoulder	art	1d6 min	4*
2.	upper arm	art	2d6 min	4*
3.	elbow	art	1d6 min	4*
4.	lower arm	art	2d6 min	4*
5.	wrist	art	1d6 min	4*
6.	hand	art	2d6 min	4*
LEG
1.	hip	art	1d6 min	4*
2.	thigh	art	1d6 min	4*
3.	knee	art	1d6 min	4*
4.	calf	art	2d6 min	4*
5.	ankle	art	1d6 min	4*
6.	foot	art	2d6 min	4*