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Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 6 2013, 12:24 PM

It has always been known that you can do a lot of damage with household chemicals and other easily obtainable off-the-shelf items. Note: DO NOT DO THIS AT HOME.

For instance, cleaning products containing Bleach and Ammonia are both easily obtained, and with the right excuse (EG a fake job at a cleaning contractor) their purchase in bulk won't even raise an eyebrow. When mixed, they create Chlorine gas, which is toxic.

Has anyone statted some of these up? It seems to me that easily available and weaponizeable chemicals like that are an obvious choice for shadowrunners as they're easy to get and with a little care hard to trace.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 6 2013, 12:28 PM

The problem with WWI chemical weapons is that they won't be all that effective unless you manage to lock your targets in with it. You might succeed in gassing a floor of cubicle workers, but only if the standard chemical gas attack is to lock those floors so the executives' escape goes unimpeded.

Really, if you can lock someone in, you have sufficient control over the place they will be that you might as well set charges and invoke the chunky salsa rule instead. On the other hand, chemical warfare is a great way to call down disproportionate retribution, so if you're framing someone, it's a great idea. Just beware that when you pull something like that, they're going to pull out all the stops and actually give the CSI team something to do.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 6 2013, 12:33 PM

Alternatively, you put chlorine gas in the air conditioner of a building and you can bet it will be evacuated quickly. That can be very useful, in the right circumstances.

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 6 2013, 12:36 PM

Yes, but you have a very, very short window of time before the NBC High-Threat Response Team shows up, and it won't do jack shit to drones or spirits, which will likely be switched into "Kill everything that moves" mode.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 6 2013, 12:40 PM

Honestly, I'd either use it as a distraction (get all the attention in the wrong location while we do the actual job elsewhere) or against opposition such as gangs. Also, are you sure it wouldn't work on spirits?

Posted by: Sendaz Sep 6 2013, 12:44 PM

Effects on spirits would be minimal as they do not need to breathe and the effects are best against organic materials, which elementals are not.

There may be some level of effect, but nowhere near its true potential..

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 6 2013, 12:47 PM

Most chemical warfare is not going to work on spirits.

Most chemical warfare works because it chemically reacts with substances such as mucus membranes and the moisture in a human's lungs. Chlorine, phosgene, and mustard gas are all very nasty things... If you have an actual anatomy.

A spirit doesn't. A spirit, if it has lungs at all, are only for better simulation of speech. Its lungs don't suffer chemical burns, and if they did, it wouldn't impair the spirit's blood oxygenation system. Its eyes won't sting, water, and get disrupted. Its skin won't break out in massive, nasty horribleness.

To affect a spirit with chemical warfare, you'd need Hollywood acid, the kind that doesn't actually exist in real life, and if it did, certainly isn't the kind of stuff a 'runner can cook up with a low-grade fake SIN and a fake cleaning company registration.

Also, I'd expect most office buildings in the 2070s to have chemical filters in the circulation system capable of acting as a countermeasure against cheap and cheerful chemical warfare. But sure, it'll fuck over a gang if you somehow get them into a position to use it against them. You know what else will fuck over a gang? IEDs. Bullets. Another gang paid off with the location where they'll be and a cheap handgun each.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 6 2013, 12:49 PM

Drat. How about insect spirits? Any edge when dealing with a bug hive is worth it, should you be in the unfortunate situation of having to go in rather than nuking the site from orbit.

Any other easy homebrew toys runners might use, either for ease of acquisition or difficulty in tracing it?

Posted by: ShadowDragon8685 Sep 6 2013, 12:57 PM

Bug spirits all have Allergy (Insecticides, Severe) as a Weakness trait. This is a special exception to the normal rules of their general archetype (Spirits), the way Vampires have Allergy (Sunlight, Severe.)

So yes, you can kill a bug Spirit by having the troll adept restraint it and the street samurai use his cyberarms to cram cans of raid down its throat then shooting them.



Well, if you're super-black-hat paranoid, hand-loading standard ammunition into cased cartridges instead of using manufactured ones isn't too hard. If you know what you're doing, you might even squeeze another point of damage or AP out of them by hotloading them, but you're risking fucking up your gun. Of course, then you have to police your brass.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 6 2013, 01:05 PM

Might be viable with a revolver...

Posted by: Sendaz Sep 6 2013, 01:45 PM

Go get the entire DVD run of MacGyver if you want unorthodox ways to use things. Granted they were mostly non-lethal in the show but should give you some ideas for improvising in the field.

For actual mayhem look up the Black Medicine series of books by Mashiro (paladin press). Basically lifting tons of ideas form old military handbooks and other sources, this is for when things have gone toes up and you have to make do with what you can find.
CAUTION: This is NOT a book for children or the careless, the practical applications can be hazardous if misused or mishandled.

Posted by: Modular Man Sep 6 2013, 02:14 PM

That's actually a good cover: Dress up as said team, and report to the originial one still on the way that is was a false alarm. Might actually work.

As for nifty ideas, I'm back to watching "Burn Notice". Oh, the evils one can create simply with stuff from a hardware store... Good thing my character has the juryrigger quality.

Posted by: Sendaz Sep 6 2013, 02:21 PM

Still say an episode of Burn Notice with a mature MacGyver (Hey, he's older not ancient )would be almost more awesome than the TV can handle.

Posted by: Modular Man Sep 6 2013, 04:56 PM

Yeah, I'd watch that. Proabably would be grinning like a madman all the time.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Sep 6 2013, 05:14 PM

The Horror.........

Posted by: thorya Sep 6 2013, 09:28 PM

I think the perception that you can make chemical super weapons with things in your house is a little overblown. About the most dangerous thing I can think of that you could reasonably make at home is Nitrogen Triodine and that's more dangerous to you than anyone else. And if your runners have ready access to guns and combat chemicals, like they do in most games, it's probably not worth their time for things like this.

But I can still respect the spirit of the thing. Some fun things you could have runners do of an improvised nature:

1. Short the power cell for a vehicle or bike, that should put out a nice bang and could probably count as an improvised explosive.
2. If you come across a vehicle that still runs on a liquid fuel of some sort, add draino to it. It won't explode or anything, but if it's got an aluminum engine block or anywhere else the fuel gets to, it'll corrode it and do some serious damage. (before someone links to the mythbusters about this, they used a vehicle with a steel engine block when they tested this)
3. Rubbing alcohol Molotov cocktails.
4. Ground cayenne pepper loaded into a leaf blower.
5. Boil ammonia cleaning solution. The ammonia comes out first, very unpleasant. I work with concentrated ammonia, it's not very dangerous, since you know in about 2 seconds if there's a spill or leak.
6. Put a large quantity of cheap booze on a heat source and let it build up in a closed in space until you've got an intoxicating, flammable mixture.
7. Set some magnesium rims on fire. Bonus points if they're on the vehicle of someone you don't like.
8. Fill a space with lots of noxious and poisonous gases by setting every petrochemical product and anything else you can find on fire.

Posted by: Udoshi Sep 6 2013, 10:20 PM

I'd throw a Technomancer on there too.

Not full on-hack anything super expensive techno, but just enough to grab skinlink and hardware hack watever you can get your hands on into doing what you want it to.

Posted by: Cain Sep 6 2013, 10:56 PM

Well, if you're really into it, homemade thermite is cheap and easy, and relatively safe and effective if you're very precise. It's not a homemade superweapon, but it will melt steel in seconds.

Posted by: FuelDrop Sep 7 2013, 12:09 AM

Considering the price tag on thermite bars in shadowrun...

Posted by: Cain Sep 7 2013, 12:46 AM

Yeah, it's slightly nutty. Considering that the two components are perfectly legal and commonplace, and the only skill involved is in precisely measuring the ratios, I'm surprised it's so expensive.

Posted by: Sendaz Sep 7 2013, 07:50 AM

ingredients = cheap

Good set of scales=priceless

Posted by: kzt Sep 7 2013, 09:06 AM

Do you think the writers or the dev have any idea what thermite really is? Like their understanding of shotguns, it's all based on the anime and bad movies they have watched.

Posted by: Dolanar Sep 7 2013, 09:12 AM

A show that gives a good idea of what Thermite is capable of...Mythbusters.

Posted by: kzt Sep 7 2013, 09:12 AM

You actually can make quite a lot of high explosives from scratch. It's not at all safe. Particularly the primary explosives, but even just producing the purified acids seems kind of nasty.

Making nerve gas at home is a lot harder, the precursors are well known and sales are supposed to be monitored. If you are actually a chemical engineer or industrial chemist then it's a whole different ballgame. But they can probably make a lot more money if they go to the dark side by making drugs then nerve agents. And drug dealers are probably a lot safer to deal with.

Posted by: Sendaz Sep 7 2013, 07:25 PM

Though to be fair, I can think of a few nerve agents that while toxic at normal concentration if well diluted in alcohol do give a powerful buzz.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Sep 7 2013, 08:21 PM

*Shakes Head* The things that people do...

Posted by: Voran Sep 7 2013, 09:18 PM

Heh from burn notice I 'learned' that apparently if you take olive oil and spray it inside an exhaust pipe you get smoke that looks dangerous, but doesn't actually have fire/explode. So good distraction apparently.

Posted by: Shemhazai Sep 7 2013, 09:56 PM

Demolitions has an Improvised Explosives specialization.

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Sep 7 2013, 10:27 PM

Indeed it does... And your point?

Posted by: Tyro Sep 8 2013, 07:09 AM

Read the Army Ranger handbook (US military, available to the public if you know where to look) or similar field manuals. Step by step instructions on how to create mayhem in many different flavors ^_^

Posted by: Tymeaus Jalynsfein Sep 8 2013, 02:08 PM

Yep... Can't seem to find mine of late, but it has lots of such goodness in it.