While we're on the subject, don't forget the old Remington Streetsweeper, the jury-rigged, instructions-for-download-on-the-Matrix, black-powder-cube-taking, shotgun from Cannon Companion.

And... you beat me to it. The street sweeper from arsenal is the worst shotgun in the game by most objective measures, but it's dirt cheap to own and operate and because of this is common enough on the streets that it won't rack up distinctive style for you, and in fact may implicate a gang or the like.

And reprinted in Arsenal, so that design isn't going anywhere anytime soon.

A Street Sweeper was the very first firearm discharged in my game.

A dirt-poor ganger wannabe shot one point-blank at the neotenous little elf when she woke up with amnesia in Redmond.

She was wearing an Urban Explorer jumpsuit and Lined Coat. She didn't even feel a thing, despite him unloading from close range.



Then she whipped out her taser and double-tapped him in the nuts. You better believe he felt that.

(Then an enormous Newfoundland dog saw her, fell in love with her, and sat on his chest, while another growled menacingly at him with her hugging it from behind. He felt that, too.)

Reminds me when one of our players decided to ride his bike to the meet with the Johnson through the Barrens. A couple of orc gangers stepped out of a doorway in front of him.
"No problem, I draw my katanas"
The one orc fired his shotgun, knocking the PC off his bike and almost killing him.

I remember one of the books (maybe in SR2?) had stats for a home-made pipe-rifle, a la Fallout 2.

But I am still a little confused about the advantages. A character with the gunsmithing skill can remove any tags, serial numbers, firing pins, etc. from a hot gun. And while owning a black powder weapon may be legal, I can't imagine walking around with it loading and shooting people is.

But if you're going to do it like that, you may as well do it well. Replace the stock with carbon fiber, the barrel with ceramic, perhaps with rifling. The balls replace with some sort of alloy which is soft enough to fit into the rifling without being machine-fitted. Or replace it with specialty rounds. The black powder replace with a water-proof explosive, paired up with an electric igniter. Install your smartlink.

The other way to look at something like that is have a melee combat specialized physad and make his weapon a musket with a bayonet. It's his spear with reach bonus that can also shoot.

As a GM, in a melee heavy campaign, I'd consider assigning a penalty to sub-optimal or improvised melee weapons versus specialized weapons, i.e. a modern carbine with knife-like bayonet fixed versus a giant musket with gigantic spike bayonet.

Was he unarmored or something?

Everyone's unarmored if you can aim.

Everyone's unarmored if you can aim.

-1 dice pool for every point of armor you're bypassing. Generally not worth the tradeoff.

Depends. If you can aim for a tire on a moving vehicle for a minor penalty, you can aim for the head, which in general is unarmored.

As Halinn said, that head shot is -1 dice per armor point bypassed. There are no explicit hit locations in shadowrun.

He had armor, but it was a close range tight spread shotgun blast. The armor is what kept him from being a red smear on the pavement.

<double post, sorry>

Too much "Assassin's Creed III" has got me thinking this would be an AWESOME idea.

And it's so very not.

But it'd still be cool when you gear up, instead of "shoulder holster" or "battle harness" you tell your teammate that you need to get your "brace of pistols." Just for the look they'll give you.

And the line "Don't go off half cocked." becomes a very real piece of potentially life saving advice for that person (IMG:style_emoticons/default/nyahnyah.gif)

Brace of pistols = piece of string.

How about modernizing the brace of pistols with a bunch of Krime stoppers? quickdraw 2, fire each twice (They're single shot so use separate actions), discard, repeat.
That single-shot heavy pistol of doom also works for this.

For bonus points have them all upgraded for high powered rounds to represent the inaccuracy of ye olde unrifled weapons.

well, you'd need the quick draw power, and wrists of adamantium. Other then that, maybe?

This is why people invented cyberlimbs.

Cyberlimbs + adept powers = not so much.

black powder weapons are notoriously finiky. DLN's husband reneacts and we've experimented with his musket.

For weird look on the face-in New york i stopped a guy from pushing into my aprtment with a wakazashi. He tried to push in the door ad stopped cold when I put the edge to his throat. What was even better was the double take the cop did when writing it up. I think he was expecting to have to do a little editorial shuffle to not mention a fire arm stopping the guy, but when I said 'samurai sword, THAT got a oduble take as he looked up at me.

*Stumbles over this*

I think she might have typoed "fire axe"?