What do you all think about the idea of either a modern or futuristic ROS? THe conversions would be pretty simple, and my gaming group and i have done it before a few times. Converting the skill packets to things like Military, Smuggler, Electronics, Automobiles ect. A few new gifts and flaws, and new weapons and youd be ready to go. What do you all think? The only difficult part will be determining damage for weapons, which would make the game even deadlier (getting hit by a bazooka with a damage rating of 20 ro something like that...)

Thanks,
SMB

You think TROS needs to be MORE deadly?!?!?

lol no but by default it would be unless were still using swords and bows in the future...of course to counter that deadliness there would be all sorts of futuristic armo, force fields/shields ect.

I would love to do a Fallout RPG based on TROS combat with guns, lasers, power armor etc. That would kick ass

Well why not get some stuff down now? Some skill packets ive come up with are as follows. please add on if you have any more.

Automobiles/Driving
Computers
Bassistics/Weapons technichian
Military
Politics
Smuggler

im currently working on the stats for some weapons such as the M16, AK47, 45. pistol, shotguns, sub-machine guns/carbines, grenades, heavy ballistics(grenade launchers/missile launchers).

Some races im considering making stats for are Mutants (from possible bio/chemical or nuclear fallout and cyborgs (either complete robots or humand with cyborg implants and additions).

Any ideas are welcome!

I've messed around with it a bit. Converting a futuristic game, I don't know, but it's an excellent and user friendly system for building it from the ground up.
For instance, a modern combat hand gun or medieval matchlock should be able to create a lethal wound through a medieval breastplate. A modern ballistic vests AV should be able to stop said modern handgun.
All the same wound tables, and missile combat rules still apply.
It's all a matter of judging a weapons damage, armour values, ATN, etc. A scope can reduce range penalties, a laser sight can add an extra die to your MP, etc. etc.
Most of the skills have modern equivalents, minimizing ones you have to make up. I'm pretty much using tros for every game I do now.

what we really need is damage for modern weapons. i know quite a bit about modern guns, whichn ones can be stopped and not stopped by certain body armors, their range ect...converting it to ROS, though, i will need some help with ATN's and stuff. Im almost finished a writeup of some modern weapons.

I was thinking of adding a d6 of damage as a randomizer, to reflect the random wierdness that happens with firearms wounds.

Instead of adding a d6, just add successes, as usual.

Here's generic modern rifle and pistol stats I just thought up. Could probably use some tweaking, but it's a start. Using standard, average hardball ammo. Lemme know what you think

Pistol- DR=10 + successes (able to cause lvl 5 wound thru medieval armour, w/leeway for successes + toughness)
ATN=6, + 1 ATN per 10 meters.

Rifle- DR=20 + successes, +1 ATN per 25 meters, ATN=5.

Prep time varies for ammo capacity, weapon type, all that stuff.
1/2 ??? MP for reflex/hip firing, refresh begins w/aim.

Hollow pt. ammunition-AV x 2, +1 pain, shock, BL. ?
Armour piercing ammunition- AV x 1/2, wound lvl x 1/2. ?

yea adding successes would still make sense because of the accuracy of the hit or whatever missile successes represent... also, im trying to think how melee weapons could be incorporated into this, because melee combat is, after all, a huge part of ROS. in thiking future melle weapons such as in warhammer40k (power fists, chain swords, ect...) it would be pretty cool to be able to slice someone in half with a light saber or ocmpletely maul someone with a power fist. Anyway, any suggestions on melle combat?

Some futuristic melee weapons ideas.....

Lightsaberish weapon-unless you wanted to balance it with contemporary armours or something, could be an automatic lvl. 5 ish wounder. (- the BL)

Neural mace (or warhammer or whatever)- Take the stats for the unmodified weapon, and when activated, jack up the shock value to whatever you deem appropriate (perhaps it's adjustable), maybe even make automatic knockout rolls when struck.

Vibro blades- Take the unmodified weapon stats, and when activated, add a certain amount of damage to it, whatever works for your setting or is balanced with your armours.

Monofilament/monowire blades- Just stack on an appropriate # to the damage, or a divisor to the opposing armour.

Anyone want to see a really impressive example of Melee combat and firearms, watch the movie "Equilibrium". The end fight in that movie blew my mind. That's how I invision TROS with guns.

BTW a 10 DR differance between a pistol and a rifle is a bit extreem. What caliber weapons are you comparing. Unless its an assault rifle Vs. a .22 or .38 revolver, your numbers should be closer togeather. Say maybe 15 DR instead of 20. The damage should be based off type and size of the round being fired regardless of if it's coming out of a pistol or rifle. Range, reliability, recoil and magazine size are based of the weapon itself.

The same caliber round will be affected by what weapon it comes out of due to muzzel velocity being different coming out of a long barrel weapon vs a short one. Being hit by a higher velocity round will do more damage due to increased penetration (at the very least). I am working on a unified damage system for TROS and the basic rules for Phoenix Command.

Honestly, does 15 dmg or 20 dmg realy make a lot of diffrence? Even if someone has a toughness of 10 they still take a lvl 5 wound. (limb blown off, head exblodes, heart distroyed, ect.) even with just 1 next success. By this thinking accuracy is almost irrelivent. Hit the target just barely, even once and it dies. period. Now, add armor to the equasion and things change, maye you are wearing a AR 10 Flack jacket, but realy you have to judge the effects of a firearm against an unarmored target as the vast majority of real life shootings are against unarmored targets.

Perhaps a lower dmg. lvl, say 6 for pistols and 10 for rifles? Even then a rifle shot is almost 100% fatal against an unarmored human. A realy tough person (TO7) would, if the attacker had only 1 net success, suffer a lvl-4 wound. Not instantly fatal, but it's close.

It might make more sense to just say "Get shot in te head or chest and you die. Get shot in a limb, it get's blown off." Saves haveing to do the math.

I guess I was kinda going off a 9mm and 5.56 mm round.
That's just my first guess, and they're more generic than anything.
For the high damage of the rifle, I was taking armour penetration into account, as not much in the way of (practical) modern armour will stop a high powered rifle round.
And, I was supposing it should be able to average around 10 pts of damage actually applied to a persons TO and wound lvl after a certain amount of protection. (if medieval armour can reach AV 6, modern is probably at least that much)If they aren't wearing armour, standing behind cover, whatever, that much is lost and doesn't matter anyway.

How would you guys suggest handling automatic fire?
Reuse your same MP for every round fired in a burst, at -1 CP (depending on the weapon) for each successive shot sound alright?

I'd handle auto fire and three round bursts as manuvers. For automatic, pay activation cost, representing greater difficulty in aiming a bucking rifle and get a massive damage bonus. Should only be effective at short ranges. Spraying rounds en-mass at greater distance or in wide fire arcs is called "cover fire" and should be a different manuver.
For three round bursts the rules should be similar but not as penalizing at distance. Perhapse it would allow for three seperate attack rolls to the same taget area, take the best roll and use it to apply damage. If the others were sucessful as attacks as well we could use the "worrying the wound" rules from the book or just bump up the DR by 1 per round. This allows armor to absorb each individual round before damage.

Armor should deteriorate. Im thinking, reduce armor value by one for each round taken. Standard kevlar vests are made to absorb 1-2 small calibur bullets fired from small arms, after that they have much less ability to absorb impact. Also, modern armor is made to stop bullets, not swords. Medievil armor is made to stop swords, not bullets. Bullet proof vests work off of the ability to transfer blunt trauma over a larger surface area, thus reducing point damage, but not impact. It still feels like taking a shot to the chest from Tyson. A sharp knife will berely notice a flack vest. New types of modern armor are experimenting with layering materials. Flak style padding on the surface for shrapnel, hard ceramic or plastic under that for punctures and slashes, and then the kevlar.

Modern weapons could simply be given base DR's based on size and type of firearm, and similar to rules for hammers and picks, have a substantial bonus against hard armors. The firearms rules in Cyberpunk 2020 are the best i've seen, good referance material.

I see small arms not having DR's greater than 10 or 12. People suvive gunshot wounds all the time. Not just soldiers, regular people. Two weeks ago there was a drive-by shooting in my town. A 16 year old girl stuck her head out the door when she heard the shots and got hit by a stray bullet. In the face. The .22 calibur round lodged in her nasal cavity. She was released from the hospital less than 12 hours later. Bullets are bad news, for sure, but the facts are that 80 percent of bullet wounds are non-fatal as long as the victem can recieve medical treatment.

Actually, kevlar vests these days can survive multiple small arms shots over and over and still be fully functional. These things can even take multiple shots in the same place and still be ok. But anyway, im not sure about haveing automatic weapons be like maneuvers. Im not even sure about only being able to fire a single round from, say , a semi automatic every round. Basically, i think that there should be two modes of shooting: aiming and wild volleys (for the lack of a better name). Its easy to let off multiple rounds from a semiautomatic round in 1-2 seconds, but to aim effectively you wuld probably only get one. therefore you should probably have the option of shooting one bullet a round at a low ATN or multiple ones for a higher ATN.

......Ionno i just woke up maybe this makes no sense....

There are a few things wrong with some of your points (I'm not trashing on you though).
Armour deterioration is extremely unrealistic, unless you're planning on getting the guy through the hole 9mm wide you just put in his armour. Though it should be kept in mind to make your pcs pay for repairs occasionally, medieval or modern.

you're right about loose kevlar not being made to withstand blades. Resin bonded kevlar, though, can very well. (such as in helmets)

Good point on people suriving gunshot wounds. I haven't figured an ideal way around that in tros. Seems all or nothing.

Adding automatic fire up to one big DR is very unrealistic. That means that say, 3 individual bullets can hit armour on exactly the same spot and punch through it. Or 3 rounds strike a person, not in exactly the same spot, but just close enough together to make a really big hole. Automatic fire can be, and is taught to be, in civilized countries, very accurate, unless you're firing on an area target. Then it's suppressive fire, often used to "cover". The method I stated so far best reflects the effects of aimed auto fire and recoil. Every round has the chance to damage individually.
And, in a standing unsupported firing position, most often several of your rounds will miss in a burst, even as close as 15 meters.
But I've put entire 6 round bursts through a bowling pin target at 600 meters with a light machine gun, in a good firing position.

Nice shooting Caz, what LMG? What kind of mounting?

Anyhow:

Why such a high DR?

Being whacked with a sword or shot makes no difference. You are still going to end up badly hurt or in the deadbook.

Why are then guns used, and not medival weapons?
Well less training and damage at range makes a gun preferrable to waving a spear around. Not higher damage. Amputated and bleeding is amputated and bleeding.

Higher DR may make up for such things as tumbling, but if you want to go there you might end up in a world of hurt (no pun intended, really).
As you might end up having to deal with multiple locations and such.

I dont think I was as clear as I should've been. When I was talking about where rounds were impacting I didn't mean to make it seem like they were hitting in the exact same spot, that's just silly. How I ment it was that using the ROS damage tables, being hit in the same area of the chart multipul times simply means you take the most damaging result, Being shot in the leg sucks, but the difference between being shot in the leg once or three times isn't that extreem. You're still screwed.

I've never seen rigid kevlar body armor before. If it's the same stuff as the helmets I really would not want to wear it. Cumbersome. Of course it's probably less cumbersome than a bullet in the lung. Given the choice I'd take something with some flexibility. Each shot taken by a regular protective vest does weaken it's structural integrity and make it less effective against successive shots. I'm sure there are armor types out there that are better, I'm just not familiar with them.

Sir Mathodius brings up a good point about rates of fire. ROF does not represent actual speed of firing. It's a good idea to aim first, say using missle pool refresh rules without preparation time. Unless of course it's close quarters with multipul targets and autofire weapons. In that case screw aiming. Snag some cover and severely upset the open air vs. lead ratio. Really folks, watch Equilibrium. The principle of the "Gun Kata" is really cool.

I'm really not very good at the mechanics aspect of this discussion, but it seems to me that the basics of it already exist within the rules. The stuff I cant make work within the rules as they stand are area effect things, like grenades, flame throwers and machine guns. (I know, I know. Machine guns are quite accurate and capable of point targeting. Come on though. Happyness is a 300 round belt and one solid trigger squeeze.) The idea of a TROS flamethrower is scary.

Kaare, you are so right. Guns are weapons of choice now not because they do greatly more damage than other weapons but because they do it at longer range with less training.

My LMG of choice is the M-249. On its bipod. Though I've seen the same accuracy with M-60s and M-240 Bs.
This is getting to much for me, I'm not trying to write a supplement here. Anyway, my concept of high DR was simply to allow for proper materiel penetration, be it certain body armour or car doors, whatever.
Here's another idea I'll throw out off the top of my head. Rolling random wound levels for bullet wounds. Use the DR only for armor penetration. ?
I dunno.

I would treat firearms the same as other missile weapons with a bit higher of an ST. The big difference between shooting someone with a bow or with a bullet is the training required. Any goon off of the street can pick up a pistol and have a reasonable expectation of hitting a dinner plate at 10 yards whereas with a bow you do not have that expectation.

Semiautomatic weapons have a reload/refresh time of 0 unless it is time to change magazines in which case refresh doesn't start for at least 2 rounds and possibly more. Multiple shots could be taken in one round, each successive shot with a pistol lowering the MP by 1 in addition to the MP spent for each shot.

Semiauto rifles lower MP by 2 for each successive shot in a round.

Automatic rifles have a higher TN if fired full auto. 1 die in the roll per round fired. Maximum rate of fire is the cyclic rate of the weapon divided by 60. (800RPM = 13 rounds per round). Refresh after a full auto burst, 1 unless you want to continue un aimed fire (raise TN by 2). This is obviously modified by the mount of the weapon (bipod, pintel mound, etc)

Bolt action rifles have a refresh time of between 1 and 5 rounds depending on the weapon.

Does any of this sound useful?

I think that the refresh time accurately reflects the time it takes to assess and take aim. I thought that was what it was for with bow and everything else.
The reason soldiers move under fire in 3 second rushes is that's an average time it takes to draw a bead on a target of opportunity like that. Instant MP refresh would be too quick unless firing randomly.

Caz Wrote

Anyway, my concept of high DR was simply to allow for proper materiel penetration, be it certain body armour or car doors, whatever

Dave,

I really like your suggestions, but I've got some questions.

Semiauto rifles lower MP by 2 for each successive shot in a round.

Automatic rifles have a higher TN if fired full auto. 1 die in the roll per round fired. Maximum rate of fire is the cyclic rate of the weapon divided by 60. (800RPM = 13 rounds per round). Refresh after a full auto burst, 1 unless you want to continue un aimed fire (raise TN by 2). This is obviously modified by the mount of the weapon (bipod, pintel mound, etc)

Why not have armour multipliers depending on the caliber of the bullets and such. Thus a 7.62N might punch trough the brick wall you are hiding behind while the 9mm will not.

Like your comment Wolfsong, makes sense.

You just have to make sure to only subtract the damage bonus from the armor value so that the guy in the 2 armor value flak vest dosen't end up taking more damage than he would without any armor at all.

Semiauto rifles lower MP by 2 for each successive shot in a round.

Does this mean that you could pay a cp cost for each additional round you want to fire, then devide the remainder of your pool by the number of attacks you're making?

My thinking was to divide the MP by the number of rounds fired, the number of rounds being declared ahead of time (if you have to stop and think about whether to shoot again it is the next round anyways). Let the player divide the dice up into any number of shots, up to the ROF of the weapon, The first shot being the most accurate (the most dice) and every shot after that being a little less accurate (number of dice in decending order) with a minimum of 1 die per round. The usable number of dice in the MP is what is left after paying the 1 or 2 MP per shot cost. Firing with 1 die per shot is unaimed fire, hitting anything with that is basically pure luck.

Auto fire is a little different, especially since it is mostly used as supressive fire and generally unaimed. My thought was the higher TN reflects the difficulty of hitting a specific target, but 1 round per die reflects the chance of hitting something with each one. You are likely to hit something, but not quite sure what it will be. Obviously this needs a bit of massaging to reflect aimed autofire. maybe the player could designate an arc of fire and each die that passes the TN has an equal chance at anything inside that arc. I don't have an MP cost for each round of auto fire since it is really unaimed.

Some stuff that I haven't really had time to work out: Weapons with a burst mode. firing from prone or vehicle mounted weapons. Large caliber weapons.

From my experience in the military and playing lots of paintball, by the time you see a target and take aim at it, the target is already gone. To increase the odds of a hit, you have to lay down fire into likely areas and hope that someone sticks their head out or runs across your firing arc. 3 seconds is about the most that I would care to run, some guys can target, lead and drop you within 1-2 seconds of exposure. It's just a matter of practice.

2 more suggestions.....
The size of the round shouldn't effect the armour penetration, only the power of the cartridge and the weapon design. Example- A .45 caliber pistol round is much larger than a 5.56mm rifle round, but far less likely to penetrate armour, etc.

Bullet tumbling is an old wives tale, like smashing someones nose into their brain or dropping pennies off the empire state building to have them drive through concrete. It doesn't happen.

Caz wrote: 2 more suggestions.....
The size of the round shouldn't effect the armour penetration, only the power of the cartridge and the weapon design. Example- A .45 caliber pistol round is much larger than a 5.56mm rifle round, but far less likely to penetrate armour, etc.

Bullet tumbling is an old wives tale, like smashing someones nose into their brain or dropping pennies off the empire state building to have them drive through concrete. It doesn't happen.

Thanks Lebo.

In game speak, I was just suggesting that not removing the modifier for armour penetration would imply that the bullet causes greater wounds since it maybe deformed by passing through the kevlar, not to mention that it may pull fine threads of Kevlar into the wound.

Being shot wearing insufficient armour is worse than not wearing armour.

Hummm... I guess I can understand that. However, while hitting armor may deform the bullet, the loss of kennetic energy, along with flattening of the bullet will reslult in less total penetration. With a relitively low-energy round, this could result in insufficent penetration...

I'd take those pics with a grain of salt. If you watch the same on high speed film, the channel is usually caused by hydrostatic shock and sometimes bullet fragmentation, and other things I don't understand.
In an elastic human body, that same wound channel will occur, but immediately return to it's original shape with the exception of the actual channel caused by the bullet tearing through. But, bullets do strange things sometimes. When a round travels through a body, it's like amplified aerodynamics. Tumbling like the picture shows just doesn't make sense.
At first though, I thought you were talking about the round tumbling through the air.

Okay, the relevant characteristic ballistic path in media is one that is pretty much unique to at least 6 things. The velocity of the round, the diameter of the round, the shape of the round, the composition of the round, the mass of the round and the media through which it has to pass.

For starters, I think Caz is referring to the old wive's tale of 5.56x45mm NATO rounds glancing off leaves and tumbling in a breeze. These things do not neccessarily happen. As it is, any round can be deflected and made to tumble out of control, but 5.56mm is no more susceptible than any other round in the small arms medium, and no .50 BMG is NOT a small arms round (more on that another time).

On the same website there are also several examples of other rounds being fired into Ballistic Gel. These include the 5.56mm NATO round I have the most experience using. Now if you will refer to:

http://www.firearmstactical.com/images/Wound%20Profiles/M855.jpg

You will see the M855 round (Current US Issue) has deformed, fragmented and altered path in such a way as to maximize damage and create a horrendous permanent cavity as well as penetrating 34cm into the target. That's a little over a foot. This round has had such a catastrophic failure due to the above mentioned 6 things. This round has spun about and fragmented almost simultaneuosly due to the shape of the round with it's "flange" in the middle of the length of the round. This is where the crimp to the casing goes and makes for a tail heavy round. As the round travels towards it's target it remains stable in flight as it is one system with the heavy end stabilized behind the lighter tip. However when the round impacts something of enough mass to absorb its kinetic energy, the heavier end begins to swing around as the system becomes unstable. This leads to the front becoming the back and the inherent structural weakness allows the round to fail and fragment into (at least) two pieces. These two pieces have different mass and shape and thusly follow seperate paths into the target. In this case it was ballistic gel, not another human being (it's easy to shoot at paper cut outs, but another thing entirely to double tap another human being, especially when there are rounds flying by like rain). We see that the higher velocity 5.56mm does much more terrible damage than the heavier & slower rounds such as 7.62x39 BLOC or 7.62x51 NATO which both overpenetrate, wasting energy by smacking into a wall somewhere instead of lodging fully in the target. 5.56mm NATO is also a pretty good penetrator of light body armour and soft skinned vehicles. In the above discussion we saw the term "Hydrostatic Shock". This refers to the energy of the round being absorbed and transferred or transmitted to other parts by the body, which is made up of mostly water. Since the water really has nowhere to go, it is "Static". It does play an effect, but the exact effect it plays is open to furious debate. However we are here to discuss the end result, not how we achieve said result.

Now that we undertand one aspect of this whole complex idea, lets move on to the misconception of body armour. There are several types of body armour available, the most basic kind is a type of weave of ballistic nylons such as spectrex or kevlar, both of which can stop the bullet, but not so much the energy from penetrating the body. With these softer types of armour the round can (in certain crcumstances) still force the armour to penetrate the flesh and do significant damage, enough to kill you in the right circumstances, again refer to the big 6. So the round may not penetrate, but the energy from the round can still literally beat you to death. Of course, a burst of three rounds from a 9x19mm SMG such as the HK MP5 may not kill you or even breach the armour, but it will still beat the living hell out of you, all thanks to our friend, hydrostatic shock. As with all things there is much more involved... but I only have a few thousand words here...

Next best thing is a type of weave with a supplemental plate of harder material, which can spread out the impact even more efficiently than the soft armour. These plates are commonly known as "trauma plates" and have saved the lives of many soldiers and police constables/officers over the last 15 years. These trauma plates make the hit go from being a deadly pentrating wound to a blunt trauma.

Last and worst/best of all is the Hard armour, usually a composite of ceramic/metal weave plates over kevlar designed to stop rifle rounds at 100m or even closer. They are best as they can reduce the chances of casualty from ballistic incursion, but worst as they are hot, heavy and slow you down on the draw. This is the stuff the soldiers are wearing in 35 C/96F weather in Iraq right now. If you think it's not so bad, go to arizona, put on a 2-3cm thick vest of plastic.. oh and you're only allowed one bottle of water a day... now let's go running!

I am sure my post is full of holes, please feel free to point them out and when I have a chance I will share as best I can. But for now. I am pressed for time... In my gaming experience, I have encountered a few games that have tried to model these things. One of them actually came pretty darned close. So much so that DarthTang used it for his firearms combats in his Fading Suns campaign.

well weve gone a bit off topic here, but are there any other things besides weapons that would need to be altered? Im thinking about rules for cyborgs/cyborg enhancements. basically, your race priority can be anywhere from F (little or no impacting cybernetic implants) to A (heavily modified human, how even moslty robot) depending on how cybernetic you would want to be. Any thoughts on this?

Sir Mathodius Black wrote: well weve gone a bit off topic here, but are there any other things besides weapons that would need to be altered? Im thinking about rules for cyborgs/cyborg enhancements. basically, your race priority can be anywhere from F (little or no impacting cybernetic implants) to A (heavily modified human, how even moslty robot) depending on how cybernetic you would want to be. Any thoughts on this?

Sir Mathodius Black wrote: well weve gone a bit off topic here, but are there any other things besides weapons that would need to be altered?

I like to use the Traveller universe from GDW. it's been around for a long time and has been fairly well fleshed out. There is actually a new d20 conversion out that can be put into TRoS terms fairly easily.

For a future setting, I was thinking along the lines of something between the years 3,000 and 4,000. Humanity has colonized some of the nearby star systems. To make it playable, some sort of warp drive would have been discovered so that PC's can actually go from one planetto another in one lifetime.

There would most likely be a Stellar (more effective) version of the UN to handle big issues and each planet or system would mainly govern its own day to day issues.

No alien races would be discovered, but cyborgs and mutants would not be all that uncommon if you look hard enough. Perhaps instead of magic the human race is discovering its psychic potential (although the system would probably remain largely the same for magic, just replace the word magic with phychics or somehting).


As far as priorities go, i would put this list off the top of my head:

A: Psichic Mutant or Phychic Cyborg
B: Full Mutant (real extreme alterations to the body), heavily cybernetic (were talking terminator with possibly a human brain to make it "human")
C: Mostly cybernetic with some organs still in place, or half mutant.
D: some cybernetic modifications and enhancements, but recognizably human, or minor mutation
E: few cybernetic modifications (arm, eyes, leg ect...) or little or no mutation.
F: average puny human.


Im thinking that all playable cyborgs would still have at least a human brain to make them human. Cybernetic enhancements would only be attainable midway through a game either through government experience or for an outrageously high price on the black market.
Mutation would most likely be something that has to be prearranged and cant happen midway through game. Im thinking that mutation would have effects like increased physical characteristics and/or mental characteristics, some sort of physical deformity (most likely having to take the ugly flaw), and any other modifications you can think of.

I'm wondering how you can get the priority system from going to crap if the PC decides to make himself regular human when he generates his character, and then shortly thereafter goes to the doc and makes himself a cyborg?
Perhaps the cyborg priority is for people whos bodies will accept cybernetic parts, other priorities reject them for some reason?

that could also be a reason, but take in mind a few things about starting at normal human and upgrading:

1) It is outragiously expensive, time consuming, and hard to find someone who can perform such an operation

2) it is illegal unless the governmnet condones it for a sanctioned experiment

3) as you said, not all bodies will take the implants

im thinking that if you start out as a normal human then get the upgrades, there is a chance that your body will reject the implants and there would be negative reprocussions (possibly make a health check and every success lowers the negative effets??).

Im also trying to think of some of the negatives for taking the cyborg priority. you would have nice mental and temporal ability bonuses, but what could we have as negative modifiers if any???

I was going to add a knockdown stat to the guns in my mod... I figured they could represent the blunt trauma aspect mentioned as well as general stopping power and use existing rules for knockdown. just my two cents.

Thinking up negative aspects for cyborgs....
Perhaps repairs and spare parts are hard to come by, and expensive. You can't heal.
Perhaps there are actually negative mental consequences. Perhaps it's harder to learn, easier to go insane, and quite likely to reduce your Soc over time. It's not like you could get a date if you're mostly made of metal.
Chances are, the major reasons for it would be military, and as such if the cybernetics are obvious, it would be a stigma or a liability.
After all, your fully human characters wouldn't walk into any old place in their armour 24/7. Just some ideas...

Ashren Va'Hale wrote

I was going to add a knockdown stat to the guns in my mod...

Just off the top of my head, maybe the wound level in feet for the splatter effect. If a character is close enough, give em a reflex roll to avoid it, the target # being wound lvl + 2 or 3.
Acid that splats onto armour takes AV rounds to eat through, neutralizing after 10 rounds or so. The acid damage is 1 wound lvl per round?
Hope this gives you some ideas at least

Caz wrote: Just off the top of my head, maybe the wound level in feet for the splatter effect. If a character is close enough, give em a reflex roll to avoid it, the target # being wound lvl + 2 or 3.
Acid that splats onto armour takes AV rounds to eat through, neutralizing after 10 rounds or so. The acid damage is 1 wound lvl per round?
Hope this gives you some ideas at least