Because unlike S&S Tazers have a very limited range.
Actually Definace Ex Shocker is pretty much the best weapon in shadowrun,atleast as long as you never have to go against opponent who are more then 20m away (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Or who can IGNORE the damage completely. For one reason or another. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I can't imagine what you're talking about. In 99% of cases, SnS will result in more total wound penalties than normal ammo (rarely, super-ammo like APDS is nearly as good, or better). This is without mentioning the chance of total incapacitation, of course.

And out of the fight is out of the fight.

There are a couple of ways this isn't the case. Tons of shockproofing plus stimpacks on automatic *might* tip the scale, and Pain Editors mean it takes more shots (depending on the armor stackup, this probably means lethal wins). Neither of those are typical, though indeed possible. Vehicles, *obviously*. I refuse to repeat this debate again. It's a known fact. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Chill out, Yerameyahu and Tymeaus Jalynsfein

I bow to the wisdom of the Administrators. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

And to my overwhelming body of evidence. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

A couple points earlier: one, if you absolutely can't finish people off, and we're assuming you let them see your face/whatever, I can see how killing people the first chance could be better. I consider that a small, but reasonable, possibility. In most cases, there'd be so many cameras around that it doesn't matter what the living witness see or don't see, though.

Two, if the mage is shoot stunbolt and the team is shooting lethal bullets (assuming they're beating armor)… isn't it still good to have the stunbolts? Wound penalties stack, right? Obviously it's better to have someone fully dead or fully KO'd, but P wounds plus S wounds together seems effective enough. Not better, but factoring in lower Drain, it seems solid.

Agreed... the Reasoning for the Mage to use Stunbolt is solid, if all you care about is the drain. My point is that if you are using Non-Lethal weapons to start with, it is highly unlikely that you would all of a sudden decide to kill your opposition once they were down. That takes time. If you were intent upon killing your opposition in the end, you would have just used lethal weapons to start with. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

I do truly enjoy the discourse, though. Not sure about your overwhelming body of evidence, however, as I have never actually seen you before... (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

It's still good to have stun bolts, because not every target should be killed. But it's a bad idea to mix the two damage types. Using a P spell instead of an S one against a guy with an assault rifle risks you taking one more point of drain. Using a stun bolt and leaving the enemy conscious risks someone on the team taking a long burst and a short burst. Wound penalties stack, but not everyone cares about wound penalties, and even one hit on a longshot test can let a long burst cause some pain. I'd rather just take the enemy out in the first place.

The problem is that in Shadowrun we're not talking about contemporary tasers. We're talking about crazy future bullets and future tasers made out of handwavium that do a good job of zapping people through their body armor in a setting in which normal everyday people are waltzing around in outfits that compare rather favorably to modern light vests while big meta runners can armor up like the North Hollywood Shootout boys without even taking encumbrance penalties. That makes it really hard for me to believe that few people in the shadowrun universe got the stick and shock memo considering that a lot of conventional also fails to kill people without first chewing through their stun track.

@Summerstorm

Yeah so when you kill them the HTRT goes straight at you and shoot you in the head.

If you dump them in a roum the HTRT is divirting resources to get to the guards and you have a chance to get away.

If they get you after all it does not matter if you are outnumbered 10 or 12 to one.
It does not matter what is in 5 minutes after the first HTRT arrived. In 5 minutes you are gone for 4 minutes. Either out there alive or the other gone.

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein

The same reason nobody is using sniper rifles in close quaters or is even thinking about using a minigun in a building.
Because real life has no abstraction to keep the rules simple.

@Mäx

Well, I would go with the pulsar, since the Ex Shocker has just one attack. Thats kind of a draw back.
The Defi ance Protector is also something to think about, since the gecko grip makes it easy to hide.

Maybe. But In my opinion, Individuals that totally resist the Damage from the SnS/Tazer should not have to resist the secondary effects. Kind of hard to rationalize any secondary effects if there are no primary effects. In this instance, such weapons become relatively useless against well armored/protected targets. I know that it is not how it works by RAW (Secondary effects are always resolved, IIRC), but it is how it SHOULD work.

Besides, If you are going up against such targets, there are weapons to handle that. And any good HTR Team will have those weapons, and people who know how to use them. And no, they are not Electrical weapons for the most part. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

*shrug*. Massive house-rule changes massively change the situation. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Indeed they do. Not saying we use the proposed idea, but it does make a lot of sense. *shrug* (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

Regardless, acknowledging that Stick and Shock seriously ruins the weekend of live targets is hardly metagaming. Having a good notion of the pros and cons of various ammo types hits me as something plenty of 'runners would understand, particularly gun bunnies. That's why the last samurai I played had a custom Praetor with an Additional Clip system that let him swap between APDS and SnS with a Free Action. The former is mostly there for stubborn drones that I don't want to see again.

God gave you 2 hands, might as well use them to easily get around the problem of SS firemode (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

The problem is that it does not "Seriously ruin the weekend of live targets". Typically, it allows them to live so that they can return fire, often with a gun that ruins the day of the runners. Keeping a clip on hand is good business (After all, it is great against Spirits), to be sure, but none of the characters I play ever use it as a primary ammunition type. The choice is never objective, but subjective.

Unfortunately, as with anything related to weapons and ammunition types. Opinion is King. The combination I use I consider to be the best combination. The same goes for someone else. It is a lose-lose proposition when trying to change the opionion of someone elese about their favorite combination. In game or out of it. I cannot tell you how many hours-long discussions I have been in, in real life, regarding who had the best combination of gun and ammo load. Never really solves anything, since it is so subjective, and relies upon so many circumstances.

In my opinion, all the ammunition types in Shadowrun have their place. For me, SnS is the round of choice against Spirits. I do not think that any of them is truly the single, magic bullet of choice for all situations, however. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wobble.gif)

@Max

So you have to reload two weapons after two shots. (It is not much better)

@Tymeaus Jalynsfein
Well, it depends on. If you are could just sneak in a pistol or a small automatics SnS is just the freaking good.
If you got yourself a snipe rifle...

I personally like the AV rounds.
Since I learned that the drone rules allow an Otomo to carry 18 points of hardend armor...(An an additional 10 Smart armor).

8 actually, the defiance has a 4 shot internal magazine.

Right, I guess I missread the description.

You can say the same about most rounds short of performing full bursts. In the race to see who incapacitates who first, Stick and Shock is a top flight choice for everything from SMGs on down. As for your IRL ammo convos, I don't really care. Shadowrun isn't real life. Shadowrun is a game with a bunch of math that is attempting to model a goofy future fantasy. Thus, things can be pretty objective since nobody has to worry about the finer points of hydrostatic shock vs energy transfer and fast rounds vs heavy rounds. There's enough situations in shadowrun that favor dealing Physical that I do not believe that SnS is infallible-- it cannot disable drones for more than a couple turns, after all-- but I do believe that it's enough better than other ammo types that it's literally 1 of only 2 types of ammo my characters carry, and I certainly do not believe it is really metagaming to do so given that it's a game world in which many people are armored up to the point where light pistols just end up giving people nasty bruises.

Well as you get 2 shot per IP, most targets are down one way or an other, thinks that do stun damage have an edge in this case as their quranteed to do same damage type on both shots.
This is actually the reason why I'm mostly of the opinion that S&S isn't really unbalanced, as you need 2 shots anyway, it doesn't really matter whether you just did 10 damage to their 10 box monitor or did 16 damage to that same 10 box monitor, he's down either way.

I'd say SnS is the ammo of choice for LMGs and lower. 6S(e)/-half is better than 7P/-2 if they've got 10 armor, and if they don't have 10 armor than a burst from either of those is going to crush them. Tack on the chance to knock them out and the guaranteed -2 penalty, not to mention the lower availability and lower cost, there's very little reason to ever not use Sns. You'll want a clip or 3 of AV ammo for vehicles, but the double clip mod works great for that.

Yeah, I love the additional clip system so much.