I didn't miss it, I just think that's an unsound tactical approach. If you wait for the other guy to start a fight on his terms, you're already at a disadvantage. If you know that you're going to have to fight somebody, pick the fight yourself, on your own terms.

Well, that riposte build would certainly allow the girl to not start the fight and still have a decent chance at winning...

If your running against a troll tank (or any tank for that matter) Nerve Strike (Adept power) is going to be hands down the best way to take them out. It completely bypasses the soak roll. They either dodge it, or get their agility/reaction reduced by the net hits. Once either of the attributes hit 0, the target is paralyzed. At that point, you can do whatever you want with him.

Actually, Karoline has it right. It's 30+ Soak Dice, about 2/3rds from armor. Also, I did say that he has no ranged ability to speak of (Low Agility and only two ranks in Heavy Weapons, and he doesn't own any heavy weapons). You're right about the IPs though, he's got three, so I figure I'll need at least three, and high Initiative (or at least higher initiative than his) in order to deal with him.



I like this idea. Maybe it could be combined with the Riposte build Neraph posted? I think I'd like more than 13 dice to parry with in case he does get into melee range (or if a fight breaks out at spitting distance). Also, did somebody mention a kind of ammo which would force him to use his low willpower instead of body to soak? That would be very good for me, as his will is very low.



I'll check this out. Can it be done with guns?



Unfortunately, that's the tactical situation. I'm not out to get this guy, I just know that he might be a problem down the road. That said, I've been thinking about some of the ideas presented, and I think I've come up with a workable variation. See, he's the group's explosives expert, so I can't exactly pack his commlink full of semtex and blow it if he becomes a problem. But, I could probably install an autoinjector in his 'link, which would let me hit him with something nasty and should be able to do it without it being noticed. So what should I be injecting him with?

Slab
or if you're feeling really obnoxious, inject him with Kali-10. Preferably while he's in the middle of a gun fight.n And then run like hell (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif) When he falls unconcious, shoot him in the brain pan.

You could certainly grab a martial arts and take the two weapon style to let yourself go into full defense while still firing once he reaches melee range, that would give you another 4 points into your parry, bringing you higher than him by a hit on average. I wouldn't bother with riposte though, it is fairly useless. All it does is let you attack this round instead of next, and since he has already attacked you and there is no one else in combat, getting to attack this round is no real advantage over attacking next round, since you'll be attacking next either way.

And no, there is no mundane way (besides maybe something obscure like the pain inducer, don't remember exactly) to force a will roll instead of a body roll for damage resistance. Best you can do is throw stun damage at him instead of physical damage because his stun track will fill up much faster (A big problem with tank characters in general). SnS is your best bet. Someone else suggested DMSO cocktails, but that doesn't seem very viable if the whole reason this problem exists is a lack of cash in the first place as they tend to be expensive.


No, nerve strike is exclusively the realm of unarmed combat, so not particularly suited to this character.

An autoinjector is cyberware, you can't install cyberware in his commlink. Well, I suppose you could make an argument for doing so, but there is no guarantee that it would work out because he might not have it in the exact right spot when you activate it. Not to mention that commlinks are important to people, and it is going to be hard to separate him from it without him noticing.

One thing you could do is give your sister character a couple of drones at home (most likely place to get attacked) with some kind of weapons armed with SnS ammo. They don't have to be particularly accurate or anything, just forcing that -1 to his dodge roll for previous attacks can be useful.

The Screech sonic rifle from Arsenal. Granted it's 8.000 (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nuyen.gif) , availability 16 and an exotic weapon, but against that the tank will have to roll Willpower (Willpower+2 if he has Dampeners in his cyberears or earplugs/muffs/helmet) and no armor against damages of 7Stun+net hits (Base damage of 5S +2DV for setting it to narrow spread - you shoot a single target without über-dodging), which make it likely harder to soak than SnS (which are resisted with (Body + Impact/2) in the 25 dices range, more if he modified his armor with non-conductivity).

Also if you go for small, fast weaponry like dual-wielded pistols or SMGs and he is not a grenade user, try to drag the fight indoors.

Why ? Think about that : he stands 3 meter (10 feet) tall - possibly more if he is at the upper end of Body and Strength for the metatype - but a typical ceiling is roughly 2.4 meters (8 feet) and a normal door 1.9x0.9 metersx1 (6.5x3 feets) - it's a pretty tight fit so he won't be able to use his superior running speed, and he may suffer from a reduced Dodge pool, making him easier to shoot and to damage. Finally if his sword is a large specimen he may even have trouble swinging it properly.

You want to know the best way to drop this troll?

Suck it up, go mystic adept.
Grab some decent unarmed.
Grab Decrease Charisma.
Wait till Melee occurs.
Spend Edge or Multicast if necessary.

He won't roll more than 4 dice to resist.
Once he fails, he's incapacitated.

On the Autoinjector being cyberware - yeah, but my GM is willing to let me do it, as long as I make the hardware check. I also like the idea of throwing him into VR and just capping him, and I should be able to install a backdoor in his 'link easily enough.

So I think I'm set on how to kill this guy (SnS rounds or popping him into VR and capping him). Now all that's left is how to build a John Preston-esque Adept.

Instead of the Ruger S W get Yourself 2 Yamaha Sakura Fubuki with S&S Ammo, Flechette,AP and Explo, 1 Kind per Barrell

HokaHey
Medicineman

Unless you define a gunslinger as someone slinging pistols, go for two modded Ingram Smartguns and Automatics.

Ingram Smartgun X: 650¥
Gas Vent II-> Gas Vent III: 400¥
Personalized Grip: 100¥
Underbarrel Weight: 25¥
Improved Rangefinder: 1000¥

Being able to shoot two long burst fom one-handed weapons without penalty at up to 40 m: Priceless
(IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

@Medicineman: why Ex² and APDS? they do more more less the same thing.

explo not ExEx -Ammo (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
ExEx is whay to expensive
or Hollowpoint instead of Explo

And it was just a thought
A Pistol Gunslinger needs the YSF
A SMG Gunslinger the Ingram Smart X

with a cheap Trick Dance
Medicineman

What is the point of mixing ammo in the YSF?

Options without having to reload.

Wouldn't that require house-ruling from the GM, and an ammo skip system?

Why would it require house-ruling, the think has 4 "clips".

Probably depends on the GM, then.

The answer is staring you in the face all the time. PAY YOUR DEBT. Killing the troll may save your sister...NOW...what about tomorow or next week? YOU are the problem. If your a true brother you would let him kill you to cover the debt and let your sister live. (although no one is promising she will be left alone)

How much do you actualy owe? Maybe you can start working on THAT and get an extension for paying it back. If the tank is part of your group and sees you are working to paying the debt back then he may wait longer or never go after your sister.
Maybe next time you wont go arround creating In Debt characters without ever planning to pay them back. There should never be FREE BP when it comes to negative qualities. If the GM is worth his salt he should make you pay for every BP bonus you got out of your negative qualites and many times over.

My players loved Flaws/Neg Qualities until I made every one of them think otherwise. These days they are happy to either avoid them altogether or just pick 1 very very small one they know will be a nuisance but wont necessarily be a game breaking experience that results in a failed mission or dead runners.

The way i see them Positive Qualities benefit you all the time or depends on the situation. and rightly so, you paid for the luxury. Neg Quaities should be in the same boat. You still have to pay for he luxury of the extra BP.

so my advice is stop trying to find ways to min-max your sister just for 1 particular combat and pay your debt. Once the troll is dead how is she going to live her life with all that hyperspecialised skillset. And how do you explain her student lyfestyle yet hyperspecialised skills. Improvement comes from experience. is she spend most of her day studying where is he getting the time to practice and more so there is no substitute to the real thing. spending hours at the gun range or at the dojo is no substitude to getting acosted by a mugger of havng to shoot on the move while adrenalin is making a mince meat out of your steady pulse.

If you are hellbent on breaking the wall with your head then at least try and get few more of your teammates to do the same, just make them believe there is a chance they can succeed (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)
Plant some matrix seeds of distrust they will end up receiving through their own contacts. Make them believe the street sam troll is secretly working against them and there is a hit on them he is tasked to complete. once you have the whole team watching out for this guy you can start voicing your concerns to them and get them to come on your side. once the as you put it "inevitable combat with my sister" comes you have all of you agsinst him. some of you MAY die but thats what the life of a shadowrunner is all about. If being in debt to the russian mafia was a cool thing everyone would be doing it.

It has to do with the fact that the firearm in question essentially has a separate "clip" for each of the four barrels.

It's based off the MetalStorm idea from real life. A bunch of bullets stacked in each barrel instead of in an external clip. They get fired in sequence, front to back.


-k

Something I never quite got about Metal Storm: it seems to me that the first rounds would be noticeably less accurate than the last rounds, given that they travel less of the overall barrel length. Sure, you get ridiculous rates of fire and very precise control, but how do you get around the changing barrel length?

Well the Thingy has 4 differrent Barrels and is Barrell fed
Just like Karmal Inferno posted

but how do you get around the changing barrel length?
By not integrating unnessesary Rules !
Sorry but we don't need "Hardwurst" in SR (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

HougH!
Medicineman

Metal storm is not for sniping (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

There is enough variation of muzzle velocity from bullet to bullet as we speak. even if you load them with the same grain of same powder you have multitude of variables that can impact your acuracy. length of barrel actually cancels out some of these factors.
The longer the barrel the greater muzzle velocity (to a point bound by internal balistics etc etc )so if you were to plot the balistics you will see if all things considered equal, and they are not, such as neck thickness, wall thickness, neck concentricity,neck tension, OAL or length to ogive consistency between the catridges, flash hole uniformity etc etc, the velocity variation will put the bullets in a storm like ballistic trajectory, hence the name. so the first bullet SHOULD hit the shortest distance and the last bullet the max distance and anything in between better feel lucky or be behind some hard cover (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Working as intended i reckon (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Metal Storm might be accused of having many qualities, but accuracy is not one of the generally listed ones.

Most articles tend to focus on the rate of fire.




-k

I have to say though, I think we've already far surpassed the point where a higher RoF is of any real use.