I don't expect this topic to arise all that often, but a moment in game got me thinking-how does the world of Shadowrun deal with finding and dealing with Snipers? Tonight was a perfect storm in favor of the PC-superior terrain, superior position, exceedingly great cover and concealment and an initially unsuspecting target.

But it seems like I am missing something. So what are your tactics for dealing with snipers? I'm not looking to get down on my players, because proper prior planning deserves to be rewarded; but I am always looking to improve my game!

1. Don't go up against snipers, they're a pain. Don't be one, it's boring.
2. Bullet tracking (acoustic, visual, radar, whatever).
3. Sky eyes, and astral.
4. Stay indoors.
5. Use rifle damage rules that aren't silly. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

How do people do it IRL?

Usually they find the best spots for snipers to set up and get there first. Drones are good for that, or some Spirits if you want to be discrete and have a bigger budget.

Spells that protect against bullets and are triggered BY high-velocity projectiles are always a good investment, again, pricey however.

Enter and exit only by underground garages and drive around in heavily armoured SUVs/Limos. Bit more affordable, especially if you're willing to get a cheaper car and armour it up. Also less conspicuous to have a VIP in a Jackrabbit when everyone expects him in a Westwind or better.

In situations where you don't have to be subtle, smoke grenades. Lots of smoke grenades. Cheap, too.

Misdirection. In comes the "Pizza Man", out goes the Target as the "Pizza Man".

IRL, it's an extremely difficult problem. The way it is dealt with for people at risk who don't have the secret service working for them is to minimize exposure, travel in armored vehicles, be unpredictable, enter and exit your vehicle were sniper won't have an LOS.

In SR, if you are worried about a sniper you meet somewhere where a sniper can't see you or operate safely. Like a mall. People will react badly when you pull out a rifle and start aiming from the walkway in front of Victoria's Secret.

That's why they made Streetline Specials and EXEX Ammo.

Oh, and sewer grates.

I remember in the Army they gave us flash cards about how to find a sniper. I remember it looking like a pie chart and served me better as a coaster.

Thermographic vision, for one, in situations where there's not a lot of other people. Even if the sniper picks her time and place - dense foliage, rain, thermal insulation suit - she's still got to buy all the stuff for her sniper rifle, like its own Thermal Suppressor.

Drones. One, they've got great ears: even with a silencer, a sniper rifle isn't silent - there's mechanics for it, and a silencer isn't that great - and drones can have things like weapons signatures programmed into them, so they know a gunshot from a backfire. [There's stats for this somewhere, too, but I can't think where.] With more than one drone [or a drone with a Spatial Recognizer], pinpointing the sniper is trivial. Two, their ability to lock onto a metahuman with Sensors [including those microphones] is pretty decent, even in inclement conditions, particularly with a skilled controlling rigger at the helm. Three, they're very difficult to hit: the same factors that make the sniper hard to find also work for many types of drones [some of which actually get die pool reductions to detect and hit].

Magic and spirits are great equalizers. If the sniper has some kind of magical camouflage, then she stands a chance, but otherwise, her astral form is still there to see. Being in dense brush and so on will help, but only so much. [I would also argue that a summoner could provide a spirit with a mental image of a rifle and the spirit could use its Search power, but that's a little liberal.]

And of course there's area-effect weapons: just spray autofire over the area, or hurl Flame Bombs, or fire grenades. The sniper will have to either move or risk one lucky shot taking her out, and once she moves, your odds of finding her are a lot better. If nothing else, it'll be harder for her to concentrate.

Sniping really is effective, and counter-sniping tactics are difficult. That's why, when range allows, it's used in the real world so much. But there are some simple and effective countermeasures...even as simple as another sniper.

"Even at the time, burning an acre of forest seemed a bit... Excessive. But it prevented the sniper from shooting at us."

Unless the sniper is astrally active, he shouldn't have an astral form. While most astral forms are immediately obvious, an aura isn't explicitly stated as such, all the more so since the sniper is presumably trying to hide.

Bruce Wayne: The bandit, in the forest in Burma, did you catch him?

Alfred Pennyworth: Yes.

Bruce Wayne: How?

Alfred Pennyworth: We burned the forest down.

Yeah, sorry, I just meant "astral form," not "Astral Form," which was stupid of me. I should have used the specific "Aura."

That said, "the auras of living things are vibrant and colorful," [SR4a, p191] so despite the fact that "Astral forms are more colorful and brighter than auras," [SR4a, p191] auras are still, if not "immediately obvious," [you, p1] at least, "still there to see." [me, p1]. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)

Yeah, auras should be basically obvious, except for the Astral Visibility modifiers (including hard cover).

"Some people just want to watch the world burn." These are the worst people to try and predict, or attempt to stop. They're also the type I write about... They're right on the edge of being at that point for the most part. (Dr. Browning from my Fallout 3 FanFic is the one exception so far.).

Which makes secondary explosives also a fun thing with Snipers. He doesn't have to hit the target, just something that will sympathetically explode when he hits it with an EXEX round. Mailbox full of Shaped Hi-Ex and a Copper Plate as an improvised Anti-Armour device comes to mind. (This was used as a assassination device against an armoured car awhile ago. Wish I could remember what TV Show I saw it on.).

That's overly complex. You just need to fire the blasting cap. There are a dozen different reasonable ways you can do that, having some guy need to make a rifle shot at just the right moment and hit the dead center of an explosive charge isn't one of them.

CanRay: Wait, what? Surely most such cases are easier with timers, remotes (possible laser-linked), or on-board Agents/sensors? That just sounds like a messy Rube Goldberg trick.

Ha, exactly, kzt.

I know. But I was thinking of OCD Rube Goldberg-Types that want to get things done.

My mind's been going to weird places recently...

Something I've always kind of wondered about in regards to snipers: How visible is a laser-sight's output? I know that on television shows and such, you can 'occasionally' see the laser itself with the naked eye... how much does shadowrun's sensortech impact this? I know laser sights are a common option for guns, including sniper rifles, but wouldn't a guy with the right amount of thermographic vision really screw with the laser sight? Especially if he had the reflexes necessary to interpose his body between a potential bullet and the guy he's guarding? Similarly, would the drone suggestion earlier be able to take advantage of this, with some kind of laser-detection program? I mean, sure you'll get the occasional false alarm from laser-links... or will you? Is there a difference between the laser frequency necessary for a laser link and that of a laser sight?

Alternatively, is there something better than the laser sight, which prevents this kind of thing? I know smartgun links exist, but such items incorporate a laser range finder as per Page 322 of 4A.

A laser that isn't bright enough to be seen isn't usable. At night a green laser is damn bright, usable as a poor flashlight. Red lasers are not so bright, but are still highly visible. You can't see the beam unless it's very dusty, foggy etc. A sniper should not be using a laser, it would be silly.

Laser are mostly useful when you can't use the sights. the military uses IR lasers, which are only visible using NVGs, to shoot using night vision gear that doesn't allow you to use your normal sights.

The issues that come up with lasers that (I've heard of) are: lots of people "chase the dot", trying to get the dot on the target instead of aiming the gun at the target; in a team, which red dot is yours? The one on the hostage or the one on the hostage taker? (some fancy systems allow you to change the dot to a variety of icons); And it can be just as bad at night using IR lasers.

First, both the Barret model 121 and the Walther MA-2100 use a smartgun system, which as mentioned has a rangefinder laser built in; there was mention of night vision goggles by Kzt which are used to detect IR lasers; I would imagine a mix of that system is involved in the smartgun link itself (to pick up its own laser and display it through your smart link...otherwise, as mentioned, it's kind of silly) but I suppose that means if your opponent is foolish enough to use their smartlink system, there's a chance you or a drone equipped with the right IR sensors should be able to pick that laser sight up.

Granted, any reasonable sniper should have that system disabled, but hey... you might get lucky and have one targeting you who isn't that smart.

Edit: The way I generally avoid a sniper situation is, I let the group know up front that most Johnsons frown upon that kind of thing, in the campaigns I run. After all, if your team robs another corporation and steals some data/prototype/employees for you, and said corporation retaliates in kind? No permanent harm is done (aside from perhaps some guard and building breakage) but if you up the ante and start assassinating people in power via sniper rifle? I hope you live in an armored bubble because your competition is going to try and return the favor.

Similarly, if the shadowrunners are known for excessive sniper tactics, they're less likely to get certain jobs out of fear of that kind of retaliation; this doesn't come into play mechanically, but it does somewhat impact the campaign story, at times. At the same time, I let the players know "If you do this, and I send a shadowrun team against you at some point or other, I'll have no issues using a similar tactic..."

I don't do this for typical low-level targets, like taking out a guard in a tower or something... again, that comes down to breakage (though the games I run I prefer to emphasize the fact that nonlethal methods of guard disposal is better overall, in the end its up to the players how they want to deal with things) and nobody minds. It's the big players who frown upon other big players being hit from a kilometer away... as it brings close to home how vulnerable the rest of the big players are.

Sniping: The new MAD?

Snipers have always been hard to deal with, a good example of why would be reading "The master sniper" by Stephen Hunter


You learn why snipers are scarey, and you find out just how hard it is to hunt them... even when it's sniper vs sniper


The problems are they have the position, planning, etc to get that one shot off and then get gone. The only protection from them is a bubble and saying away from the outside world

In SR this is especially true, since the sniper can easily be a rigger controlling a drone with a concealed weapon... which isn't detected by a detect enemy spell, doesn't look like anything other than a standard non-combat drone..

One reason most people dislike them is the feeling of vulnerability they instill in them, they can claim it's due to the lack of honor and fair game but it sill boils down to them not liking the though of someone they can't see or retaliate against dropping them or someone of importance to them (lover, employer, coworker, etc)

Next time your players have a standard, boring meeting at a train station or an alley way in which nothing will go down but a meeting, tell them their are no clear lines of sight for sniping.
Spend the next four hours watching them loose their minds convinced the apocalypse is nigh.
Do this until they stop trying to set up a sniper in every scene.

A similar discussion on dealing with snipers can be found here.

Around page 4 of that topic we started discussing how to pinpoint the sniper by sound, and the houserule I came up with looked like this:

"Something like Threshold [2] per range category, so Threshold [8] at Extreme Range. (I don't know if basing off the range cat of the weapon makes sense, but it seems easier.) The threshold would likely be higher than spotting the sniper by beating his Infiltration hits, but the targets would accrue successes on each perception test for the aural pinpointing, whereas with the visual they'd have to beat the Infiltration all at once.

A sniper who moves every few shots becomes very difficult to pinpoint by sound (hopefully, he'll blow his Infil roll and get spotted that way), but as I pointed out before the sniper moving helps the targets as well, since that gives them time to move, seek cover, and escape and evade. Meanwhile, the targets can be using their tactical skills (LOG + whatev [longarms or tactics were the suggestions]) to pick the best sniper spots. It's a gamble, but so is everything else.

The idea being that hearing a silenced gunshot is a threshold [2], and any hits above that count towards the pinpointing of the sniper, so at extreme range, 10 hits on an aural perception test would be enough to have a good idea of the sniper's location (within a few meters anyway). It's also noted that a sniper can stack up around a -14 to perception tests to be heard, so this is not an easy test by any means. But if the sniper stays in one spot then the targets will hopefully be able to put some hits on the track to locate him, and if the sniper moves that gives the targets time to seek better cover or try to find him through other means (astral scouting and so on).

In an urban setting, a sniper will generally either have to choose between a wide angle of fire at short range, or a very narrow field of fire at a longer range because of intervening obstacles. At shorter ranges the sniper is easier to find, at longer ranges the sniper is easier to avoid, so it's a trade-off.

My personal favorite sniper countermeasure (assuming you survive the opening shots) is the spell Trid Phantasm. It's instant, mobile concealment good for blocking line of sight. Once you've hidden from the sniper, you can use it to make phantom targets to draw his fire. And once you locate him, you can make a giant, blinking red arrow appear in the air above him, just to mess with his head.

The dot on a standard modern laser sight is exactly as visible as, say, a laser pointer: it's a vivid red [or green, or blue] dot on whatever it's pointed at. The beam will be visible in any circumstance in which there's anything in the air for the light to reflect from: dust, smoke, fog, rain, etc. Lasers do come in a variety of frequencies, though: infrared lasers, for example, would be invisible [beam and dot] to the naked human eye, as would UV lasers, but eye systems capable of seeing those wavelengths do exist in Shadowrun.

As regards avoiding this issue - which, as you point out, the smartlink shares - I would think making use of Shadowrun's magic "polarization" would be effective, like the way the windows and Eye Light system work. This way the beam would be visible only to someone on or near the [reflected] beam path, or with specialized lenses. This doesn't make sense in terms of physics, but none of Shadowrun's polarization does, so there's at least precedent, if for some reason you needed to design a mostly-undetectable laser sight.

You put it most succinctly, but several people seem to have mirrored this sentiment. I get where people are coming from but at my table I am loathe to simply say "You can't do that." For a variety of reasons this just won't be an option I choose. The good news is, we don't really have a "sniper" character, and I don't expect to see a lot of sniper moments.

My line of thinking was fire track systems-the kind they use to track missiles, but there are some ideas for me to think about in this thread (Trid Phantasm! Never occurred to me). My goal is not to crank up the opposition (Unless they're given a reason to step it up, otherwise that's just capricious.) but rather to ensure that things are dialed in correctly, with fun but challenging opposition.

Edit

Fixed my grammar.

Yeah, I mentioned that kind of system. There are Sensor Software options, and someone else mentioned the Spatial Recognizer (though I think he vastly overrated a drone's ability to roll Sensor tests). Obviously, that only works *after* they shoot… (IMG:style_emoticons/default/smile.gif)